meditate – Purpose and Prose

Are You Ready? Winter Solstice, Full Moon & A Meteor Shower This Weekend!

December 20, 2018by Purpose and ProseLeave a Comment

MOONLIGHT ASSIGNMENT

I don’t know if you are as hippie as I am, or if you’ve been feeling this lately as well, but there is a freeing sensation in the air. An awakening. I’ve been lighter these past two days. The grief is present but it’s not aching, I have finally slept 3 nights in a row without nightmares and my heart is settled and planted firmly in my chest.

I was wondering what this was all about, because the last time I felt a shift of this magnitude was during the autumnal solstice. I did some quick Googling, (sidebar: I really don’t like using “Google” as a verb), only to find that this weekend is not only the winter solstice, but it’s also going to have a full moon and a meteor shower. I am vibrating with excitement!

During the autumnal solstice, I was not ready. I was unstable, anxious as all hell, missing my partner who was out on tour, and our wedding was like 8 days away and everything felt like it was falling to pieces. Fortunately, for this solstice, I am super ready.

I am ready to embrace this season of transformation. I have been in darkness for months, I have felt the pain, the loss, the depression, the shadows and I am learned. I have new discoveries in my heart and in this moment I feel prepared to self-reflect and free them into the powers of this moon and welcome the light to come.

The winter solstice is a time of major change. On the northern hemisphere, it’s the longest night all year. On the southern hemisphere it is the longest day. With such a sharp contrast, it reminds everyone that with darkness, light will come and with light, darkness will follow.

It’s not about longing for one, or being distressed with the other – it’s about accepting that both are present at all times. There is light and darkness in the world, in each of us, in all things – there is a sun and there is a place of no sun.

It’s about allowing these polarities to flow through us as the universe allows both the sun and moon to gravitate around Earth simultaneously.

Alongside this time of acceptance, we have our beautiful first winter solstice full moon since 2010, with the next one not returning until 2094. A special occasion to be witnessed.

To some, this moon is also called the Long Nights Moon, or the Cold Moon. With the power full moons bring, it really delivers the weight of introspection, heart-searching and renewal.

Full moons often remind us of our wisdom and our intuition and if you’re in a calm state of mind, you will receive some very positive influence during this winter moon. But, if you’re feeling a bit chaotic or disoriented, the full moon could increase your emotional state due to her powerful energy. Be gentle with yourselves and know it’s okay to be quiet.

With this beautiful combination of the wise full moon and the reflective winter solstice, I feel the urge to dive inside. I’m reminded of this time to hibernate, to recharge, to fatten up. I’ve been storing all of this darkness, and foraging for education in the experiences around me and now it’s time. It’s time to allow the cold moon to light up my inner silent voice.

With the end of the year being a phase of completion, I’m looking forward to honoring the light and dark inside myself. I plan to greet myself wholly as I am and becoming more fluid with my solar gravitational pull.

Now, if both of these weren’t incredible enough, the Ursid meteor shower will also be taking place Friday and Saturday nights. We’re expected to receive about 5-10 per hour, but some have said that in the country it’s possible to see upwards of 100 in a burst.

The showers can be seen between the big and litter dippers – Ursa Major and Ursa Minor, from which the shower was named. The showers will start around 1:00am in the north-northeastern sky. But with the full moon in bloom, the viewing might be affected from the harsh glare. The pre-dawn hours are usually the most favorable for viewing.

It’s a time to delight in! It’s a season of mistletoe, cinnamon, nutmeg, deep reds and lush greens, pine cones and wood. It’s rich and earthly everywhere and the warmth of the people are all around. If you are in the darkness, hibernate and listen deeply while the sage moon guides you into welcoming the light. If you are already feeling the sun rotating your way, open your home and heart for it is a time of generosity.

Veneration
Have you ever lived in a dream?
“I’m in one right now,” whispered the little blackbird.
My song is the most beloved,
And I like it best after a rain.
Usually I sleep at night, but not now,
Tonight, there is a beautiful refrain.

Self-Help, Self-Reflection

Loneliness Is Just A Label

December 14, 2018December 14, 2018by Purpose and ProseLeave a Comment

LONELINESS IS JUST A LABEL

Meditating last night, I found myself chanting “sit” on repeat. Going through my mala beads at least twice, maybe three times consistently reminding myself to “sit.”

“Sit, sit, sit, sit, sit, sit..” and so it went.

Having been born in a house of chaos, it’s been challenging for most of my adult life to sit still in times of uneasy emotional circumstances. Instinct tells me to run away from the feelings, either by moving to another apartment, city or even state. Instinct also tells me to lose all the friendships I’ve made, destroy or abandon them all and start anew. It’s fear-based, it’s fear that people are getting too close, it’s fear that tells me to run.

I’ve moved 20 times in the last 12 years because of this flight-based instinct. I have recreated my life and developed new friendships more than I can count. Only showing people what I want to show them and leaving the rest as the past, fearing judgment, criticism or inability to relate.

Sitting in uncomfortable moments where our anxiety is high, our emotions are abusively loud and our hearts are aching, are signs of true growth. If I can sit quietly with my pain long enough, I can uncover the root of the disturbance. In this circumstance, like most children of alcoholics, my root was and usually is, loneliness.

I was alone in my childhood. My dad traveled 90% of the time. He was home for maybe 1 weekend a month for 15 years. When he was home, he was devastatingly drunk. To put this into perspective, my dad usually drank about a half gallon of vodka a night. So when I say he was drunk, I mean he was terribly drunk. That led to fights, slurs, stumbles, accidents, hurt and eventually him passing out with a lit cigarette in his hand – to which I often put out at the end of the night when I heard it was finally quiet, and safe.

My mom started out as a very loving and doting mother. But, from the years of isolation and an inability to self-reflect or grow on her own, she too began to drink as a coping mechanism. Alcoholism ran in her family as well so it came as no surprise why she married a drunk or why she herself found it easy to treat her symptoms with alcohol. However, that left my sister and I very much alone.

I responded to this by becoming a classic internalizer. I felt so much of the responsibility in my household that when problems arose, I turned the blame on myself and wanted to mediate the entire family until there was peace again. Which, there could never be because alcoholism doesn’t allow that. I often found myself depressed, anxious and drained by the internal voice in my head constantly criticizing and accusing me of things I’d never really done.

Because of this internal monologue, I decided it was probably better for me to just live in the woods, so that’s what I did. I retreated inward, into my dark cave of anger, confusion, hormones, self-hatred and dying light of childhood and went into the woods. I slept under the stars, exhaled the sunrise, listened to fawns gingerly walking towards me on the ever-so-loud crunchy autumn leaves. And in this solicitude, I started to find some semblance of peace. But, I also found loneliness.

It took me another 10 years to figure out how to quiet my mind, sync in with myself and my world and my love and realize that I’m never alone. It took me 10 painstaking years of dating, promiscuity, drinking, drugs, depression, anger, boxing and eventually deep-healing for me to fill that often-referred-to as “God-sized” hole inside of myself.

Now, when I hear myself chanting “sit,” I remember that fawn walking on those leaves. I see the slideshow of grief and moves and echoes of myself – and they all remind me that I am here, I am whole, I am worthy and I am forever surrounded by love because I am love. Fear was only a self-induced mechanism to aid in my survival. Loneliness was just another label for something I didn’t understand, which was quiet.

“Sit, sit, sit, sit, sit, sit..” and so it goes.

Poetry, Self-Reflection

I’m A Sucker For True Love

December 12, 2018by Purpose and Prose2 Comments

I'M A SUCKER FOR TRUE LOVE

There are so many flavors of love. There is the kind of love that comforts you, like watching a puppy rummage around in the dirt and roll on his side and sneeze his snout into the grass. There is the type of love that heals you – when you are tired, or sad and you are given a hug so warm and gentle you can breathe and let your shoulders fall. There is another kind of love that excites and sends tingles from your fingertips to your toes. And then yet another, there is a love that is so infinite it’s like staring at the ocean, mesmerized at the expansiveness of the horizon, making you question how far the human eye can see.

I understood the tingly love, boys are good at giving that. It’s a physical love. You feel butterflies and heat and inquiry. But once the clothes are off and the lights are on, I would feel lonely. Not every time, not with everyone, but mostly I would feel it. A hint, a glisten, an underlying simmer of loneliness.

I was searching for the love I had been promised by childhood movies. The love that would wake me from my forever sleep. The one that would lift me up and guide me along the skyline on a carpet, or the one that would draw me “wearing this, and only this.” Let’s be real though, Titanic ruined all of us tweens for an actual dating life. No one could compare to Leonardo DiCaprio as Jack Dawson. Forever be still my heart.

However, I have. I have found the type of love I had been seeking. I have received all of the flavors, varieties, swirling colors and prismatic divinity anyone could dream of and the kinds I couldn’t even begin to dream of. The kind of love that rips your heart apart and then puts it back together with a million new pieces. The one that makes you want to discover new words, and then you realize that words are useless in the face of her beauty. The kind of love that longs, and causes tears at the mere thought of a hug from their gentle, perfect arms.

A hopeless romantic, a loveaholic, an explorer for fate – my everything had been waiting. And then, in the simplest form, as she effortlessly does – love appears. Patience, faith, and openness lead me to her path. Once you are walking with her, and your fellow falling star, everything begins – just as it always had.

Today, on this gray and cloudy and cold morning, I am grateful for her kindness. I am so glad love, in her grace, entered my life and taught me to smile in the way only she could make me smile. And, I am just so damn curious to know… what my love feels like to him.

Okay Jack Dawson, I suppose I can let you go like the heart of the ocean. I’ve found my own ship of dreams.

Divine
His eyes so confident,
Oh, how he seeks;
Like a wandering Sophophile.
Wise with no words to speak,
I want to be with him all of the while.

It’s a tragically ending ballet.
But I want him anyway.

I show him I’m his and wait out time;
Goodness is a choice and redemption is fine;
All things are clear but then turn on a dime.

Gentle release and then trapped in kind;
Two borrowed hulls endlessly intertwined.

It’s lawless.
Oh, how I break.
To feel the weight of gravity,
Selfishly and recklessly I want to take,
And feel him beside me.

Tell me it’s worth it, my moon and sunshine.
Tell me you want me some of the time.

Poetry, Self-Help, Self-Reflection

It’s Not Purpose – It’s Important Life’s Work

December 11, 2018by Purpose and ProseLeave a Comment

IT'S NOT PURPOSE - IT'S IMPORTANT LIFE'S WORK

To friends that are close with me, I say that my purpose in this life is unconditional love. But that statement is such a short cliff note of what I truly mean. First of all, I think saying that I have a purpose is like saying a single ant’s purpose is to build a colony for it’s queen. When from a grander perspective, ants as a whole, aerate the soil so water and nutrients can flow directly to plant roots, they serve as food for birds and lizards, and they distribute seeds by storing them in their tunnels.

I don’t know what my humanly purpose is much like an ant doesn’t know what his ant-ly purpose is. However, I do think what I choose to focus on here is important and my focus is unconditional love.

Nine years ago, when I realized that I wouldn’t make the kind of money I needed as a photojournalist, I was heartbroken. I had $23,000+ in student loan debt and I lived in California, one of the most expensive states in the U.S.. I didn’t want to move back home and I was freelancing for (sometimes) 90 hours a week to pay my bills. I lived comfortably, which was a step up from being homeless. Something I also experienced for a month straight out of college. I was grateful for the roof, the food, the work – but I was also alone in my apartment every single day for a year.

After I ‘gave up my dream of becoming a photojournalist,’ I realized that I could look at things in three different ways:

That I gave up my ‘dreams’ and my ‘purpose’ and I sold out.
That I chose a career that provided me financial security, while I could still pursue my passions in life: photography & journalism.
That I can dream, that I can envision a pursuit for my life. Acknowledge that gift, and realize I can do anything else I want and it can change at any time.

I chose the third. (And a little bit of the second). Once I realized that my career, and my financial well-being were not determining who I was or what I wanted to represent, that freed me up to dream even bigger. And believe me, as someone who has spent 9 years dedicating her life to unconditional love – this is the biggest thing I can think of still to this day. And that brings me to my next point. What’s so important about unconditional love?

The reason why I chose this as my study and my important life’s work is to receive an endless and infinite answer. Love, time, and the universe are pretty much all I think about. They’re definitely all I write about and my poetry can’t seem to find anything else to grip on to. I tried writing a poem about a day in the life of my cat and that turned into a love poem too.

Unconditional love is a daily practice. I have to give it to myself, try to receive it from the world, bestow it to others – even to people that I may be mad at for not using their blinker. Seriously though, it’s so easy, I just don’t understand.

Sometimes unconditional love means boundaries. Sometimes it means ending a really loving, authentic and genuinely happy relationship because you know you aren’t right for each other and you’re enabling your partner. Sometimes it means saying goodbye to your dad every day so you can love yourself and heal. Sometimes it means ending friendships because they aren’t healthy for you. Sometimes it means being honest and admitting something you don’t like about yourself. Sometimes it means putting your cat to sleep because she has diabetes and is about to go unconscious into a coma.

Sometimes you have to receive it, even if you don’t feel worthy. Sometimes it feels too beautiful and too good to be given to you. But sometimes, it’s easy though, too. It’s all around and ready to be felt and absorbed and accepted and then churned inside of you to be handed over like a gift to passersby. It’s in the sound of the wind, the dancing fall of the yellow leaf, the mother gently caressing the soft cheek of her young baby and the woman pushing her elderly dog in a stroller.

Sometimes unconditional love is selflessness, and other times it’s compassion. Every day it reveals itself in a new, beautiful and expansive form. Every day I learn something new about people, about myself and about my important life’s work. One day I will even figure out the words to describe what I’ve learned. Until then, I’ll just write love poems.

Unconditional
You are the first name I hear upon waking,
The wind dancing in my hair.
When the sun turns gold
And the light feels old,
I hear you once more.

Poetry, Self-Help, Self-Reflection

The Original Song

December 4, 2018December 4, 2018by Purpose and ProseLeave a Comment

THE ORIGINAL SONG

Inspired by Robert Frost’s poem yesterday, I wrote the following poem. But before we get into that, I want to share a little bit about silence. I spoke with my cousin last night who was distraught upon finding out her best friend had been hit by a car. He was seriously injured, but alive. She told me about how when she found out, she called multiple friends but no one answered. She felt “alone in the universe, I just felt like I was left floating there.”

I remember this feeling back in my depression, I felt so alone and unheard, unwanted and living in fear. Just as she was. I explained to her that the unhealthy side of our brains, the parts of us unhealed, hurting, the addictions, the self-indulgences, the justifications, the instant gratifications, etc. That side always tells us bad things. Our brains are hardwired to make us feel better – at whatever the cost. When we were hungry as primal creatures, our brains would solve problems to get us nourishment. When we needed shelter, we would creatively find a solution. That has not changed, only our problems have.

We now need to be “perfect;” warm, comfortable at all times, loved by everyone, successful, eat the most balanced diet, post only the most beautiful pictures on Instagram, and have the most loving and adoring relationship. This list goes on and on. Our brain is constantly trying to give us the best solutions to all of our problems. For those of us who have unhealthy tendencies; eating to cope with stress, suicidal thoughts, using sex, drugs, alcohol, etc. It’s very easy to let that side have the loudspeaker. But there is another side.

The healthy side, in that moment for my cousin, was telling her to take some silence. No one answered the phone calls, but the universe answered the real call. Be quiet in your grief, in your fear, in your hurt. She wasn’t alone in the universe, because she was WITH the universe. And this beautiful world wanted her to make a healing wish for her friend and for herself. Sometimes, silence is the answer. That is where we grow, evolve, learn and understand ourselves more fully.

Our greatest strength, our greatest wisdom and our greatest kindness is silence. That is our original song. Silence and love.

The Original Song
Never have I met someone like you
Apologetically heroic while healing hearts.
Kind severity that stares straight through
Unabashed, unadulterated, a destiny long overdue,
Spoken softly, a secret of honey burns at our hearths.

Love letters left on pillowcases,
Sunsets seeping from the text;
A humanity overwhelmed with familiar faces,
Flowers filling up the blank spaces –
In between the places like lovers might suggest.

Words falling short and gracelessly falling out,
Inexplicable in nature, what a marvel you are
Like God himself is even devout.
The land lacking light, without and in drought
And then you, like Renoir, painted the sky with heaven’s first star.

Poetry

“The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost (1874-1963)

December 3, 2018by Purpose and Prose1 Comment

"THE ROAD NOT TAKEN" BY ROBERT FROST

Today, for no particular reason, I find this poem to be quite significant. Beyond the beauty, imagery and profound verse of this poem – I am left questioning many things. At first read, this poem delivers the messaging of “Did I make a difference?” With the final sentiments of “I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.” But upon further reading, and interpreting, I’m left with realizing that either way he chose to walk, the destination would have been the same. (“Had worn them really about the same.”)

This poem, every time I read it, makes me feel very human. Because whether we choose to be musicians, or poets, or a construction worker – in the end, we are all on the same path, with the same wear, heading in the same direction. Universally human. I have read before (in various opinions of this poem online) that “The Road Not Taken” tears apart the traditional view of individualism. Some might find this thought frustrating, defeating, inaccurate; saying that our choices do have impacts and make large differences in our paths. I find this thought relieving, comforting and true in my world – regardless of the path and the small choices I make, I am among the collective human race.

This poem is not really about “Did I make a difference?” It’s about the strive to make a difference.

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Poetry

Anchor in Time

November 28, 2018by Purpose and ProseLeave a Comment

ANCHOR IN TIME

Anchor in Time
We have our own universe;
the space between the lines,
in the breath before the words.
The ethos that connect reality and dreams,
the dusk and dawn
the attraction of night to day.
A magnetic haul that lingers in our ocean.
We hear your heartbeat in my hand.
We are lovers, artists, romantics,
Our intimacy is cinematic.
You are my home in the heavens
and I am grounding to your spaceship.
Sometimes I think you’re too good for me.
Other times I hear, “Well, aren’t you two just the same type.”
Our meditation is an anchor in time.
And my grateful heart now lives in a world previously unseen.
You are so beautiful.

I am only here to have met you.

Poetry, Self-Reflection

Be here now.

November 26, 2018by Purpose and ProseLeave a Comment

FindingYourLightFromWithin

It could be from my husband’s absence (he’s a touring musician and has been gone for the past 6 months), it could be from my father’s passing, it could be from our recent move, our recent wedding, or any other living, breathing thing – but right now I’m floating.

Before therapy, a time like this would have me spinning. I feel the impulse to have a head full of questions. I used to beg the universe for answers. I wanted so badly to understand why I was hurting, why I was shown so many paths in life if I was “stuck” on only one. I used to bury myself so deep in fantasy versions of my life, the visions of timelines not yet lived, and other worlds I created that I would be so far removed from the present. But not now. And I gotta say, it’s refreshing as hell.

Yeah, I’m confused. I’m taken aback by my circumstances. I wonder why my husband has lost his faith, I worry on how to talk to him about my heart aches with loving kindness, over the years I’ve felt tired and alone in my pursuit to feel joy, and I am uncertain about the future and what it holds – but isn’t all of this the best part? Isn’t the unpredictability, the riskiness, the absurd and spirit of inquiry just so human?

Last night, the first primitive nuclei divided and created a new and separate nucleus. No one knows how the first nuclei was formed, there have been many theories, but to my knowledge, there hasn’t been a definitive answer and last night, I witnessed the creation of the secondary universal nuclei. The world split right in front of me – and in its beauty, and in its rapture, I was present. My eyes were swollen with tears, my lungs overwhelmed with mist and my hands were sparking with magic.

We all have the answers, every answer, to every question ever asked. I am floating in the translation of the word simplicity. I feel it in my fingertips, it sends shivers down my spine and causes goosebumps on my flesh. I am human, I am here.

Titleless
She was the only witness.
Only she heard my hunger.

And if it was that easy, she answered,
“Just you wait.”

Without hope, without need,
She drenched me in wonder.

Still frames projected behind my eyelids,
waves, the harmonic motion, stirring my source.

A lifetime with your touch, a life without your touch,
We danced with the line of collapsing time.