Illness, Forgiving, Music, and Intent

I have been ill. The cold that snuck up in the last day of planting our Community Garden took me down hard as I put in the last pumpkin and watered. All other gardening has come to a screeching halt. I found myself blue with sadness, sick, and on my moon cycle all at once. ("It's Mercury in retrograde," says Anne).

As usual, in deep sickness and healing, big stuff passed through and came round. I drank a lot of water. I laid in bed having visions between sleep and waking. My kids were miraculously independent and held by the community in turns. When I rose, I had only enough energy to write my first original piece at the piano. It took me in, dragging my feet, and set this moment to music. I called it "Neap Tide," and I find it very beautiful. It got much longer than I expected (I have to end soon... I'm going to fall through the piano bench, I thought), and insisted on offering its last note only when it was ready. Perhaps someday I'll get technosavvy and put it up on the blog!

Last night I laid in bed and invited myself to forgive all of those in my life that I hold pain around. The last and longest challenge lay in forgiving myself. I am not consciously hard on myself, but it brought tears to my eyes to send this careful attention to my heart. It feared complete forgiving and acceptance without judgment for its inclinations because it did not want to be hurt again.

My heart made a request that I support it in this effort consciously. But, do I wish to guard against opening it fully? Do I want to guard against receiving others' care, particularly in the sphere of intimate relations? No. That did not land right at all.

Then the words of Sharon Sweet, a gifted intuitive reader (sweets@oregonfast.net -- I recommend her!), offered in great transitional turmoil three weeks ago sounded once more: "Do not be afraid to ask for what you want." She reminded me to listen to what others asked for consciously and look at whether that was what I wanted, too. I can listen with care and intend to find spaciousness to really hear what they are consciously asking for, no matter the mixed signals to the contrary. What are they intending for themselves? (If mixed signals due to perceived subconscious intent, then a mix of intentions have been sent out to the Universe and all are fulfilled... am I content with my role in each and every one?)

I need not guard myself against that which I do not want. I just need to be clear about what I do want and then let the rest go. What a relief to support my heart with such ease! I just need to give myself the spaciousness to see whether and how a situation sits with my overall intention. So, I intend to live life slowly and deliciously. Chew well and swallow with care.

As I look at the journal I've kept over the past 5 months, I'm in awe at how many of my intentions have manifested beautifully. May the journey continue!

The Big Questions

Journaling last night, I explored a sneaking fear that "love," as I held it, between two people, does not even exist. This is how it went (the abbreviated version):

Is our "loving" of one another actually only the shape and intensity of our own needs being experienced in the universe, some exquisite harmonic tone that sends us reeling? Is unrequited love a felt intense longing attached to an unmet need, the catharsis of empathic resonance nearly at hand?

I had some fear here; what if there is no love? What would that mean to me? Is the only true love what we experience within ourselves?

If this is so, we only feel our own jubilant vibrations of needs met, more apparent as they resonate with the attentions of another. We hold ourselves through the ecstatic caring of one another. But why, oh why, is it so unnatural seeming to shower this affection, this love, on ourselves in the first place?

Are we designed with this reflective dimension (loving one another) in order to survive as a species -- all of us organs, cells, to the body of our people, of creation? Why is the greater whole so important? Why not just create one person who is self-sufficient in all of his/her needs?

Such a solution would be apparently static. As a whole, we can achieve a balance that appears this quiet from the outside in our individual or collective consciousness. Is the dynamic that we move through in order to find equilibrium as great a truth as the balancing point itself? Is the drive to evolve in consciousness as we dance toward equilibrium in the moment what this is all about -- learning to love, make peace and beauty?

Is evolution the life force itself, a living love? If so, how can I best let go of the "here" and "there" I like to mark -- that human charting of the beginnnings and ends of paths that suggests that evolution is a hierarchy in which we better ourselves?

What if our spiritual evolution, reflective of our physical evolution, is only about getting "here" in a state more adapted, alive, and awake? Becoming as Being. Sinking into what Is.

If so, then love is an Awakening of all creation as a whole. Not a feeling limited to our singular reflective experience with one another. Not a feeling flowing from and to ourselves, reflecting only within. It's not about loving oneself or loving one another. It's about loving, just loving, without the notion of boundaries or celebrations of the exclusivity of loving me or loving you.

It's the embrace of the living, a loving in being, in all for all.

I include such serious play in my blog because it is as real in my life as the laundry, the garden, the food I eat. Integrated. I would so love to hear from you all -- is this something you've explored recently? Do you have a different angle on it? Disagree with parts? Find it boring or too heady? Your comments bring my posts to life for me. Would you leave one?