Ardently

This is a borrowed title, for I love the feel of the word and it's meaning. This piece is not for one person, but for all, and it's essence came to me from the half-awake place that things of great worth sometimes do. In the early hours. So I won't capture it exactly here, as it is not a thing made of words.
A friend tried to describe to me something about the nature of true love a couple of years ago, as she drove me out of the mountains and into the foothills. It was a transient meeting, a gift of transport and an hours' time. I wonder now whether her soul's intention was to deliver this message to me at just that moment in life, so that I could let it slowly percolate and sink into me over time and through experience. I am slow at processing many things, at least the most important ones, and it tends to happen deep in the underground of my consciousness, sprouting quietly below the surface. I appreciate those in my life who have to patience to see this, that I am slowly unfolding, but unfolding nonetheless. Sometimes there is an appearance of sudden insight, but really it has been residing and growing in me over a lifetime.
At the time, as my friend drove me across the green hills west of Calgary, I did not know it or understand what she was describing. I had not settled that deeply or fearlessly into my own heart. But a seed was planted, and though I can see that I have waged a battle with this understanding of love over my entire life, something of it has landed for me now. For what it's worth, I will let it sink deeper and become one with the way that I move and see in the world.
And I am guessing that it is worth everything.
A few posts ago I referred to it - the wisdom that is shared rather than singular. We are built to disintegrate into one another, to sink into the knowing place beneath the surface of all things where there is no separation. The protective shell of individuation is not needed, and does not actually protect us but serves only to keep us locked in a prison of our own making. Safe behind the invisible bars of our own identities and certainties. We like to have things to cling to.
I have long been of the opinion that my strong boundaries were one of my greatest assets, my ability to discern and protect myself from people and situations that might disable me, or somehow steal my soul. I have held fast to the notion that I would never abandon myself. I can easily see some of the places this drive has come from in my early years, the conditions and difficulties of my youth. In those days it was sometimes necessary, and gave me the much needed strength to know who I was, to be unequivocally myself.
Whole.
Sane.
Resilient.
Grounded.
All good things that have served me well. And also locked me out.
Whatever resistance that is met on this journey is here to be breathed in, assimilated, and released into the ether with each exhale. I have always believed that true love arrives suddenly and with certainty, but now I think that it is just a practice, applicable to whomever might be sitting across the table from you at any time. It is something that can only be found in choosing. From moment to moment, to soften the edges of who we think we are and find the unified place where longing and arrival have merged into the beautiful mundane.

Wanting

"Your path is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you've built against it." ~ Rumi

Over this winter, I have been amazed at the things that have sprung up around me. Many unexpected invitations have arrived at my doorstep for which I have been most grateful. Friends and friendships of all kinds have shown up, often unbidden but so very welcome. Even my young dog Kimik has shown up as a kinder and even more gentle and empathic spirit than I was previously aware of. He's even better behaved, his originally generous 'orbit' on walks has become increasingly smaller, he returns to me more often to check in, despite the squirrels. Of late I have been deeply humbled by the love that surrounds me. 

I have been sitting with this idea of wanting. There are things in life that I do 'want', badly, sometimes urgently, sometimes calmly and patiently, but I this morning I awoke to the meaning of that word and a better understanding. There is a turn of phrase we use as English speakers:  to "want for" something denotes a state of lack and separation from what is desired. If I want something it suggests that I don't or can't have it now. It is to desire something that is not currently in my possession. Material items, the love, action or acceptance of another person, more time, more space, less busyness. But this wanting can act as a barrier to love, disallowing me to actually perceive and receive all the things that are here now. 

"It is easy to want and long for the thing that you cannot have, and perhaps easier still to reject the things that offer themselves up to you freely." I wrote these words a few days ago and as I sink into things as they are now, I am generating a deeper understanding of what they mean and have meant in my life. I have, over the past several years found myself yearning for things that were out of my reach. As I did so I wrote, I ruminated, gave up, tried again. I created much beauty from a whole lot of pain, and I am grateful to myself for that. Sometimes I cultivated stillness but at times was more attuned to the call of impulsive angst. I protected a feeling I was carrying in my heart like a wolf mother. Blinded to the very real and present love that was actually showing up. All the time feeling denied by something that was not present. Unable to receive either. In short I was deeply flawed, as humans are. I broke myself repeatedly against an unrelenting shore while showing up in my life as an impervious headland. 

I wrote a while ago about regret - this has been a critical lesson for me, and lingers still as a sense of loss and wanting. I can only strive to be kind to myself and allow this to pass. And I have a path forward. We often think in terms of giving as the ultimate expression of love - giving love, gifts, attention, time, whatever, and it is truly a beautiful thing. That is part of my path - to truly give when I can, with an open heart. But the other piece that we have a harder time with is the receiving, without guilt or immediate reciprocation. Sometimes the greatest expression of love is to simply pause and be grateful for all that comes, including the people that are not showing up in exactly the way we want or hope they would. To see that actually, however they are showing up in that moment is perfect, and always changing anyway. My task is again to 'stay put' to notice what comes my way, just as it is, and receive as fully as I can. Both the things that may be hard and uncover resistance in me, as well as the things that are beautiful and light. To receive and hold them in an open palm, so they are free to go if and when they need to. I need to learn that all the things I could ever want are already here, in whatever moment I find myself in.

Now that is a practice. To want what is here.

The Wisdom of Women

I sat on a sun-spangled rock today in the ocean breeze with two wise, funny and beautiful women. I am struck these days by the compassion of my friends. Many of them are men as well, but this post is about the female ones.
There is a tendency in our society to lean hard on the stereotypes we espouse about each other when the male-female dynamic gets tough or falls apart. I often hear the generalizations ("women are crazy", "men are dumb") get proferred out as solace, but I never find any resonance or comfort in that, unless it's offered up with the deepest appreciation of it's irony and untruth. Luckily my circle of friends shy away from relying on these lame expressions.
All of us feel deeply, regardless of gender, and if we are living a life of integrity and vulnerability, we will at times feel pain. Humans are imperfect, and as we muddle through this existence, many of us are doing our utmost to get it exactly right. It is imperative that we give ourselves and others when we can, the grace of forgiveness for failing at this impossible task. This imperfection is part of the journey. There are gifts in it. We have the option to come back to the table and risk exposing ourselves as having been wrong, or blind or unwise. It may not change anything on the surface, but it can change everything that lies beneath it.
It would be good for us as women to listen more deeply, and discern what is underneath what the men in our lives have to say. There are gifts there that we could not access otherwise. But today I am incredibly grateful for the wise counsel or simply listening ears of the women in my life. All of you, those close by in geography or connectivity as well as those who are more distant, have granted me more patience and kindness than I could ask for.
When we are grounded in ourselves, and living in integrity with our hearts journey, women are the source of a wisdom that men cannot perceive on their own. This world and it's inhabitants would be wise to listen to the feminine river of insight and grace as it moves without resistance around the obstacles in it's path and wears them slowly away.
This is a joint venture, and we're on the same team.

Imperfection

‘We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.’

And therein lies the rub.

I am pretty rough on myself when I catch myself being human. That is when I act with impatience, or less than perfect equanimity, fail to really listen and feel the myriad of emotions that all humans experience as a function of being human. But I think what I continue to discover for myself is that it is through these things, rather than around them that we become the human spirit. We are all flawed. So perfectly imperfect, so beautiful.

Regret

Brace yourself. This may be a dark one. But I hope the point is that something of great value can be found in the darkness.

I have rarely been one to experience regret, although there have been a few times. Usually caused by a sudden revelation that I have made an error in judgment, or followed the lure of impulse just a little too far. Mainly it has had to do with behaving with less compassion or wisdom than I would like to think I possess. A dawning understanding that I am not so wise or compassionate after all.

The thing about regret is that it's rare that you can 'undo' the mistakes that put you there. What's done is done, and though we are rarely alone in it, I carry a heavy weight at this time in feeling that I have not acted in a way that would have led to greater healing and a more beautiful resolution.  To commit to the (sometimes) hard road as a gateway to real ease. I imagine now in this light that to remain seated at the table, or at least return to it, can lead to a different and more powerful place than departures can ever go.

I circumvented a possibility that will now never come to pass. I unconsciously followed my wiring down a practiced path, feeling like I had to defend myself at every turn. Keep myself safe. And now, whatever insight I have had is little more than a moment too late. And moments can be etched into lifetimes like tombstones.

I am haunted by this sense that such a stunning opportunity was lost. I only see now that the invitation was to transcend the rut I have been creating in this soil for years.
There are reasons...I was not ready, I was protecting myself from what had come before, I was clinging to a belief in a fairy tale of my own making, but they all add up to the same thing. I was afraid. I could not bring myself to simply listen and silence my own ego and identity enough to realize the possibility of what was being offered to me.

These past few weeks I have been in the throes of a remorse so overpowering that it has served to throw me completely off my line. I have been grieving this thing that I abandoned in needing more time, space, and reflection. My old bedfellows. It has been a slow dawning, but the light has now hit me full force. The realization that in life and love it does in the end come down to choice. Knowing now that the lightning bolts of fate come in multiple forms, not just the ones most recognizable.
The choice is to get over myself and bow down to the grace of relinquishing the parts of me that keep me from seeing down to a deeper truth. There is a wisdom that is shared rather than singular.

I know this path is leading somewhere, but what I can see now is that I have been living an erroneous life. I know that the heaviness will pass, but I hope to carry the crux of this lesson with me on the next leg of this journey. It has been a costly one, and a door has closed behind me.

Although perhaps it was never mine to walk through. This, as many things do, remains unclear to me.

The Sea and the Seashore

For years the sea has collided against this shoreline,
Buffeting the sand and rock of the coast in the
Storm seasons.

The sea asking the shoreline to relinquish it's solid nature.
To be less still and unyeilding.
To give way more easily
And surrender to the flow and watery cacophony
Embodied by the ocean swells.
Insistent that she change quickly and constantly like the
Briny blue itself.

But the shore remained stoic,
Unchanged,
Convinced of the sameness of her world of earth and stone.
All the while wondering at the sea's ability to
Churn and crash at her shores so diligently.
The always changing tides
Bewildering.
And she quietly begged for silence, stillness,
Sameness.

Both were missing the point,
That the sea and the shore are not
Separate beings,
But elements made of the same cosmic stuff.
One stretching above and
One reaching forever below the other,
For miles.
Never breaking contact.
Engulfing and supporting the other.
Different, but never truly distinct,
Both moving and changing
In their different ways.
And needing one another's edges to find their own.