Convergence Divergence

I came on this page to write a letter to someone, and then I saw the Daily Prompt: Blossom. I don’t know about you, but there is something about the word Blossom that makes my heart swell, and I am reminded of the quote:

The day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom -Anais Nin

And I find that I am up against some tightness in my life, and not sure where to “break through,” but I sure know I want to blossom again. I have been in this stuck place for quite some time, and the more I look at where I am and talk to the amazing entrepreneurial people in my life, the more it is clear to me that I don’t believe in what I do.

When people ask me what I DO for a living, I tell them I am a Pharmacist, but I don’t say it with pride, and it’s not that I loathe what I do, or that I am not proud to be a Pharmacist. The problem is that I don’t believe in our Sickcare System. We have hundreds of thousands of people trying to take care of our population, but the insurance companies have tied our hands behind our backs. We document in ways that are not meaningful, and we focus on externally defined clinical measures, and we reduce the time with patients to get more through, all so we can survive and keep our doors open.

The problem is that people are getting sicker, and the truly heartfelt HealthCare providers are either burned out and leaving, or they are starting concierge services outside of the System. Not everyone can afford this……But, I digress. I could go on and on about our SickCare System, but I am here today to put words to this divergence within me.

A little over a year ago, I realized I wanted to dance and perform again, so I found a small local dance company and performed with them last April. This January, I found some ballet and modern dance classes in Portland and San Francisco, and it was AMAZING to feel my body respond after 11 years off! And I come home to my tiny hometown of Ashland, and there is just not enough here to get me in dance shape and to perform. My work as Director of Pharmacy is certainly not fulfilling that part of me. It fulfills other analytical, strategic and creative parts of me, but it doesn’t touch me deeply like movement and dance. My work does not help me get closer to myself.

So, I decided to start bringing more somatic experiences into my life (stay with me…..I am going somewhere with this). By day, I was building my little Pharmacy empire, and on weekends and evenings, I was doing Contact Improv and going to workshops like Orthobionomy and the Psoas with Liz Koch. You know, my timelines are all messed up. This really started last year when I did Mogadao Sacred Sexuality Workshops with Sarah Byrden. The Mogadao work so spoke to me that I have done pretty much everything Sarah has offered in my area since then. I did a 5-day backpacking trip in the Trinity Alps with 11 other women (Sarah included) last summer, where I entered a portal of existence that felt more consistently awake to the synchronicity of life than ever before. Recently, I went on a writing retreat called Writing Back to the Body, with both Sarah Byrden and Kate Grey, in the most beautiful area of Hood River, Oregon. Wow! I couldn’t believe that all the times I had gone to Portland, I had not continued north into the Columbia Gorge. Put that place on your Bucket List! At the same time, I was starting an online course with Sarah to take more time to learn her work, which I had started in person with her the prior year.

So, now I have somatic experience, sacred sexuality work (which includes qi gong), and what is called the Gateless writing method at the most recent retreat working their magic in my life. The Gateless method is an amazing way of not only fostering an immensely safe and loving space between a room full of what may be strangers, but also a surefire way to turn off your inner critic and see what comes through. 

multnomah falls

Feeling radiant after a week of Gateless writing, sharing and loving

During the retreat, I realized that the Gateless method could be used in so many ways, and potentially with dancers. If I could have tapped into that and seen that the critical way is not the most fruitful way, I may not have put aside my dance shoes for so many years and I may not have suffered 24 years of shame and guilt and wondering. So much wondering…

It didn’t take long before I contacted Suzanne Kingsbury to sign up for the Gateless Teacher Training in July. I explained to her that I have this profession of pharmacy that I worked very hard for, and it allows me a good living. Yet, what I am most passionate about is movement and the spiritual alignment that happens through conscious movement. I explained to her that I want to find a way to marry what feel like 2 divergent sides of myself. I was offered the Golden Scribe scholarship, and am excited to say that I will soon be certified in the Gateless Writing Method!  

Yep, I signed up for the training, and instantly entered the Convergence Zone.

You know how sometimes your life goes through phases of being almost freakishly synchronistic? My last couple weeks were very much that way, and it has me feeling nervous and excited. I went home to visit family in New Mexico and to celebrate my sister’s wedding. Well, after 5 days of being with the whole family, they left town and I had a whole week to myself in my parents’ home.

Ok, you ready for this? The Mogadao Institute was founded in Santa Fe, New Mexico by Zhenzan Dao, the man that trained Sarah Byrden in the Sacred Sexuality work she teaches. He had been in silence for quite some time, and recently came out of silence and started teaching again in Santa Fe. I had the immense pleasure of entering 2 days of training with him and his students, two of which I did the backpacking trip with last year, and who moved from both Oregon and Montana to train with him! It felt so new and like a reunion at the same time.

I could write a small book about the magic of Santa Fe that week and what transpired in the classes with Zhenzan and his students, but I will save that for later. Suffice to say, the sky was alive, and so was my heart and my curiosity. I left knowing I would train with Zhenzan at some point. And that Wednesday, after gong fu and Mogadao yoga and then meditation, I met with my best friend Shane Robinson, whom I had met in Albuquerque 16ish years prior, and we had both lived in Maui at one point, and now he happened to be flying into Santa Fe! Lives converging on this planet over thousands of miles, over and over, I refuse to consider merely a coincidence.

Many other magical things happened, but the magic of the possibility of the Mogadao training and the softness and strength of reverence and daily attunement to our body’s needs speaks to a place in me that is timeless and not of this current realm of reality we live in.

And so, what led me to a Sacred Sexuality course was curiosity of having a more intimate experience with my partner at the time, and I was inspired from there to partake in my first backpacking trip, deeper communion with nature, more embodiment, a writing retreat, Gateless Teacher Training, and potentially training someday….someday with a monk named Zhenzan Dao in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Life is a beautiful unfolding of possibilities and connections. We have only to trust in that unfolding and allow ourselves to blossom into our desires.

To be continued….

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A Year To Clear, Day 25

Ok, it’s actually day 54 or something, but I haven’t been doing my daily “drip” of information. I could beat myself up about it, but I am not. That’s not what it’s about.

If you are already lost, I am doing A Year To Clear by Stephanie Bennett Vogt, an online program that gives daily tidbits, thoughts, videos, etc on clearing stuck energy in your life, typically in the way of clutter.

Today was a video talking about the sh*t that comes up when we try and clear clutter. It doesn’t always feel good.

I love when Stephanie said, ‘It’s not about getting it done. It’s about getting it!’

She talked about taking a clothing item that we haven’t worn for whatever reason but still hold onto, and just holding it in your lap for one minute. With compassionate awareness, notice what sensations and thoughts come up.

Well, the first thing that came up for me was that I was resistant to doing this, to meditation. Evidently, a lot of stuff from my divorce has not been processed, and I am not really interested in processing it. Yet, I keep getting signs from the universe to go there.

Next, I thought about time, and I had this dread of adding a task to my day. So, I thought to my closet upstairs and pictured a yellow, Indian style flowing dress that I have had for many years and never wore. Immediately, it was clear to me that this yellow dress represented a side of me I was afraid of losing.

 

I realized in that instant that I was afraid of getting rid of the dress because that would mean losing that flowing, feminine, gypsy side of me, that free-loving wild soul from San Francisco that I so miss and adore.

Of course, that’s absurd, but we make these odd connections to our STUFF. Evidently, in order to be able to clear the stuck energy around this dress, I need to first be aware of this relationship, and then I need to allow myself to be that free-spirited gypsy girl more often. yellow dress

Compassionate Awareness leads to Unstuckness.

Amazing how all these years, I go through my closet to see what to get rid of, and in the TASK and DOING, I never made the energetic connection to why I was actually holding on to it. And the best thing about this exercise, is I never even had to go upstairs and into my closet. It helps, but an energetic connection does not need physical connection.

I would love to hear if you try this, and what happens for you. If you are interested in the online course, go HERE.

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Feathers bleeding rainbows

I’m tired of thinking.

“Why?”

“Is that true?”

Questioning my thoughts, constantly. Questioning myself, constantly.

Do I really want to do that? Or am I motivated by ….God forbid…Weakness?

I hear myself talk to people and feel I am dominating the conversation. Something in me believes that I am selfish, self-centered. I guess I am afraid of being perceived as so,…to be honest. My parents used to tell me I was selfish. They told a boyfriend of mine I was selfish. Stories.

It all happened then, so why should it matter?

Exactly.

Round and round the chicken coop we go. Feathers flying, words bouncing around and hitting the heart, emotions everywhere. Feathers bleeding rainbow…

I cry easily. I am emotional. I am rational. I think a LOT. I want connection with others….bad. I find myself wishing someone would reach out to me. I have reached out to so many, but things don’t come to fruition often. And when I really think about it, am I seeking connection with others or to disconnect from myself? From the mental chatter, the disorienting constant shift in thoughts? The internal drive to do, and the struggle with not wanting to do anything….

My, how shifty is the feeling of “rightness”, the feeling of wholeness and content. My, how the mind likes to drive me. It takes so much time, it seems, to be quiet with these thoughts, to let them play out until I reach the truth. Perhaps meditation is good for that… a focused exercise in being quiet and still. YET, for me, so much clarity has come from letting my mind chatter and watching it, following it’s thought patterns.

Feathers bleeding rainbows…I like how that sounds.

147- But I don’t want to be with myself!

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It is very hard to sit with ourselves. I found that when I committed to having several days to myself (save some counseling appointments and some errands), I was acutely aware of the urge to avoid myself. I touched on … Continue reading

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143- So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.

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This excerpt of T.S. Eliot’s work from Four Quartets: The East Coker speaks to my need for silence, and the innate uncomfortable-ness of that space between the light and the dark. It is in the anticipation of what lies beneath … Continue reading

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142- Oh, to Die Again, and Again….

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You say I am repeating Something I have said before. I shall say it again, Shall I say it again? In order to arrive there, To arrive where you are, to get from where you are not, You must go … Continue reading

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141- Going Inward

Photo by Lee Johnson www.collectivescience.org

I have found myself lately wanting to be alone, not to avoid others, but to truly BE with myself. I have so often over the years kept myself too busy and too distracted to spend valuable time with myself getting to know ME.

As my moon cycle approaches, and shifts are happening in my life, I feel a definite pull inward. Before, I would have pushed myself to do, do, do. Now, I am happy to have a good chunk of the day to relax with myself, and to honor my own personal ebb and flow.

I may even kidnap myself away for the rest of the week, like I would a lover on a honeymoon. Yes, a Self-Cation!

Going inward…. let’s catch up when I emerge.

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134- Sensuality

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I felt uncomfortable in my skin, but not motivated to do anything in particular. It was night, and nearly bed time. I have a great book to read…but not wanting to engage. Hmm…journaling? Nope. Interacting with others? Not so much. … Continue reading

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130- Spiritual Bypass

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Following is from When Spirituality Disconnects Us From What Really Matters Have you ever: Used spirituality as a sort of escape from reality, or as a way to avoid some painful aspect of your life? Let yourself get taken advantage … Continue reading

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122- On Not Being the Kink in the Weave

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It is in meditation where we can hear the ego try and convince us that love is limited, including our own, that we are not capable of action and love. The higher Self can then talk to the self, reminding … Continue reading

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