The Know Ledge*

Have you ever been loved? I bet you have been loved so much and so deeply that you have become blasé about the enormity of the grace it confers. So let me remind you: To be loved is a privilege and prize equivalent to being born. If you're smart, you pause regularly to bask in the astonishing knowledge that there are many people out there who care for you and want you to thrive and hold you in their thoughts with fondness. ~ For Her Scope

* A beautiful place to bask.

"The most wonderful of all things in life, I believe, is the discovery of another human being with whom one's relationship has a growing depth, beauty, and joy as the years increase. This inner progressiveness of love between two human beings is a most marvelous thing: it cannot be found by looking for it or by passionately wishing for it. It is a sort of divine accident, and the most wonderful of all things in life." ~ Hugh Walpole

"It was when she first dared to see her truth that the winds howled. After a time, it strengthened her and she spoke her truth and the earth shook. And when she finally believed her truth- the stars rejoiced, the universe opened and even her bones sang her song "I MATTER!" ~ by Terri St. Cloud via my soul sister, Leah.

Into the dark tunnel / love cast its light / creating hands from shadows / gently pulling her / home.

Seconds / slip from the clock / bounce off the desk / fall at her feet / begging her to sleep.

Inhaling figments / exhaling fancies / so then believing / like breathing / became second nature.

Their giggles / dangling in the open sky / amongst countless stars / each peal of laughter / a wish come true.

More than slightly placid / dreadfully tepid / she plans 2 dip n2 the script / but decides: / CANNONBALL!

Still a tap of the foot / a tingle up the spine / her poem lacks form / anywhere / near her mind.

If this poem were you / it would be brilliant / tinged with the sunrise / still entwined / with the stars.

I'm in the mood / for a little midnight/ poetry / but my synapses / are not.

What a clever sponge / to soak up the Sun / then wring its rays / over a gloomy day / again.

Upon the bridge / between winter's winds / and summer's showers / the song lay dormant / in healing hands.

"Picture the Grand Canyon," says Buddhist teacher Jack Kornfield. "Every hundred years, a child comes by and throws a mustard seed into it. In the time it takes to fill the hole in the earth with mustard seeds, one maha­kal­pa will have passed. To perfect the virtuous heart—the joy of integrity -- takes a thousand mahakalpas."

If that's true, then you've still got a lot of work to do. The good news is that civilization is in the midst of a critical turning point that could tremendously expedite your ripening. So you could make unusually great progress toward the goal of perfecting the virtuous heart in the next 40 years.

For best results, meditate often on the phrase "the joy of integrity." Get familiar with the pleasurable emotion that comes from acting with impeccability. And try out this idea from Gandhi: Integrity is the royal road to your inner freedom.

P.S. Oddly enough, the work of perfecting the virtuous heart is very effective in helping you master the art of cultivating everyday ecstasy. Meditate on the connection. ~ Sowing

Be You. Be Full.

A life worth living is one that is filled with valleys and great mountains that soar to the heavens, the jagged peaks of experiences that reach the sky. ~ Ships of Song

ROUND 2

was Why Am I Not Surprised? before sleep and a few revisions:

After writing about my dreams, I get a call from my paternal aunt whom I've not talked to since her brother-in-law's death (my uncle). Kat, is that you? I love her voice. It sounds like my grandmother's. We talk up a storm. I've been missing her. Naturally, I ask her how my aunt is doing. She begins to fill me in on everything. I'm not surprised when she begins telling me of the dreams my aunt is having about him. Both my aunts are prone to believing that it's Jesus' way of comforting them. I tend to think it's direct communication and, since we're all connected, it makes sense we're all just talking to ourselves anyway. ANYWAY. It was a wonderful opportunity to share with her my experience with my uncle or with Jesus or Om-ever upon returning home from his funeral.

First, my uncle dubbed me Katastrophe because every time I walked into a room something would fall over, spill or break. It was this weird but true phenomenon. You know how your parents gather around a table playing cards or drinking with old friends and family as they tell all those stories about when "the Kids" were little. Well, that's MY story. I was klutzy, too. You can imagine the heights of my self-esteem. He never called me anything else. For the longest time I DETESTED that name. The whole, Do I have to see uncle Mike, I hate when he calls me that!

As the years pass, though, it became a term of endearment. Particularly, as the years afforded me more grace. Later, when I would see him in fits and spirts, he would make something fall over and wink at me. Ha! But in between teasing me when I was young, he would sit with me and tell me fairytales. My favorite was The Princess and the Pea. He said I reminded him of her. Later, I realized he knew me much better than I thought he did. Yikes...

Some very early memories are of going to see boxing matches with him and my dad. I wasn't even in Kindergarten. I don't remember anything linear just sounds and images. Shiny shorts. Laces. Swimsuits and high heels. The sound of the bell. Sweat. Profanity and cheering. Anyway, he'd been a regional Golden Glove champ for his weight division. I heard he was really good as that was also table talk when the stories of "the Kids" ran low. Anyway...

I went to his funeral. I cried. I hugged people I didn't remember who remembered me "this high" and I ate with a priest...a first for me (who spilled his water, come to think of it...OMG...I just made the connection...too funny). Then I spent time at my aunts, caught up with my cousins and drove home. Home was a little under 5 hours away. The whole way, I thought of him. I was wondering what kind of sign I'd get because I make up everyone that crosses tries to "ring" you up to say: Hey, I made it. You can relax now. It pains me to think they can't get through or, worse, they got hung up on...so...I was on the look out.

I didn't have to look hard. Shortly thereafter, I see in the middle of Main Street a boxing "ring". I'm like WTFreak? So, I park and get out to ask what's going on. I'm told they're having regional matches with particular clubs. Which clubs? My uncle's old club. The one he rep as a Golden Glove! So, of course, to celebrate money is swiftly exchanged for tickets and beer and the fight is on! Now, if giving me a boxing ring wasn't sign enough, his club walked away with the trophy. Ha...yeah, rub it in. You're even a badass in Heaven.

It takes grace to be a prize fighter. It's painful choreography. Looking back, he probably thought I was a lost cause. But he was always in my corner. He fired me up more than once. And he had me on the edge of my seat with story after story of happy endings. Even while shaking his head at another folly of mine, he never stopped smiling while giving it to the chin: Oh, Katastrophe. What am I going to do with you?

I guess that question, at best, will remain rhetorical.

I think I can sleep now. Maybe, I'll dream.*



*I didn't dream. I was completely knocked out!

Emotion's Pictures

I dream of houses. Everyone does, right? When I was very young, I had a scary reoccurring dream. I am in the basement of a large old house. The floor is a burial site, basically, of dirt with row upon row of open graves. My senses are alert in the dream. It smells of old people and it is damp and clammy. There is darkness and silence except for my footsteps. The goal is to walk around the maze of graves from one side of the basement to the other. My fears, with each dream, mutate from that of dead people coming out of the graves to get me to walking the maze and not falling into the graves of said dead people to the relief of crossing to the other side alive...my own kind of undead. When I finally made it, the dreams stopped. It would be years before I understood the significance ~ there is life after death ~ but to an 8 year old, it was just pretty freakin' scary.

Later, I would go on to dream of my childhood home. The dreams were also reoccurring. Each time the house is a little different. My mind creates extra rooms. Remodels like Martha Stewart. Sometimes, I am locked out and can only look through the windows. Because it was common to find scorpions in the basement, I dream of them at the doorway not allowing me to enter, yet, knowing everything I treasure is behind the door. In one dream, I create an attic that is straight out of Architectural Digest. In it is every possible item I can remember owning and loving. It's more like a museum. I am told to choose something. Too overwhelmed, I chose nothing. I can't surrender the words right now of what it's like to lose a home but I actually love these dreams. They are, ironically, memories my mind refuses to release framed in letting go.



Then there is the dream I have only dreamed once. I am on the steps of an old beautiful Victorian home. I sense that all of the rooms are a collection of various disciplines. There is science, art, music...there is even a hair salon...all things are housed here. As I walk up to the door, I hear her laughter. While walking all the hallways and peeking into all the rooms, her laughter grows louder and louder. As I climb upwards, I begin laughing, too. As I make it to the top room, she greets me with hugs and kisses and my tears just pour and pour to the point they've crossed over into the waking world and I'm forced to open my eyes...and there, smiling at me, is her namesake, my then 2 year old baby girl, who has been lavishing me with hugs and kisses while I sleep.

"The more one dwells on oneself," says psychoanalyst Adam Phillips in his book Going Sane, "the more one is likely to suffer." He thinks people need encouragement to avoid excessive introspection. "My project as a psychoanalyst," he writes, "is to free them to not have to think about their lives so much." While I feel he overstates the case, I do suspect his message would be good for you to heed in the coming weeks. For maximum success and robust mental health, take a generous portion of your attention off yourself and focus it on living your life with compassion, curiosity, and concern for others.

Want to hear more about the subconscious factors and hidden forces that are influencing your life right now? Listen to your EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPE for the coming week.

I'm also still offering a MID-YEAR PREVIEW -- an audio report on YOUR LONG-TERM DESTINY from now through JANUARY 2012.

To hear my LONG-TERM AUDIO FORECAST for YOUR LIFE in the next six months, simply log in through the main page, and then click on the link "Long Term Forecast for Second Half of 2011." The cost is $6.

Who do you want to become between now and January 2012? Where do you want to go and what do you want to do? I'm ready to help you muse about the interesting possibilities. Tune in.

*

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Try this experiment: For seven days, see what it feels like to be secure in your knowledge that you have passed the tests of Judgment Day many, many times.

Shock & Rah!

I am loving my new friend. She's so vivacious and strong. A woman full of love and ferocity. She's completely in tune with me. She senses where I'm hording and releasing energy and she is so good at facilitating balance. Believing we create those in our lives, I must say, I did pretty damn good when it came to her. She seems ageless though she has a good 20 years on me. She makes time to see me every week and it's become ritual to hear her thoughts as she manipulates my body and the space around it. She's a wonderful mirror that allows me to open up and safely reflect parts of myself I have not wanted to look at let alone openly share. Together, what I see as ugly, we make beautiful.


It's a trip...

























...or is it just the journey?

"The passion to explore is at the heart of being human," said Carl Sagan. "This impulse -- to go, to see, to know -- has found expression in every culture." But Steven Dutch, a professor at the University of Wisconsin, disagrees. He says there've been lots of societies that have had little interest in exploration. Africans never discovered Madagascar or the Cape Verde archipelago, for example. Few Asian cultures probed far and wide. During a thousand years of history, ancient Romans ignored Russia, Scandinavia, and the Baltic, and made only minimal forays to India and China. Where do you personally fit on the scale of the human exploratory urge, Virgo? Regardless of what you've done in the past, I bet you'll be on the move in the coming months. Your hunger for novelty and unfamiliarity should be waxing.

As I'd said in an earlier blog, I began using astrology as a short cut to character development when I am writing. Particularly when it comes to addressing conflict. Let's face it, certain personalities are less at ease with each other than others. Of course, saying someone is this sign or that is an over generalization but works when it comes to a template. Anyway, for me, it's just fun.

Disclaimer: I Make Up Stuff

Deepak Chopra has written more than once: The big bang of cosmic creation was everywhere simultaneously as prior to it there was neither space nor time.

It reminded me of a thought I've carried around: Desire had to have existed. The Big Bang was the cosmic climax that gave birth 2 the 3rd dimension. Desire is always present in creation. If Love is not an action but a state of being ~ in this case, The Ultimate Being ~ than desire is Its action. Love desires.*

Later, he wrote in response to another, The universe was conceptualized into existence when his following thought was questioned, God is not a concept but the origin of all concepts.

I completely agree. However, conceptualized is such a cold word to me when it's coming from something as wonderful as Supreme Love that I'm taking the liberty of replacing it with dreamed...pretended...imagined...into existence.

It has been said, to know the origins of something as macro as The Universe once simply has to look to nature in its micro (here, like in Wikipedia, a siting is needed...I'll get on that).

So, I now desire greatly to ramble on about what some might find serious nonsense. Nonetheless , this has been the quest burning in my eyes from all those moments in the sun and stinging on my tongue with all those illegitimate communions. What is God?


Chopra has written more than once: The big bang of cosmic creation was everywhere simultaneously as prior to it there was neither space nor time.

And in delightfully deep conversations imbued with a little Merlot, my girlfriends and I have gotten into deep discussion where they've heard me say more than once: Desire had to have existed prior to the Big Bang which, in my sunburnt eyes, is the cosmic climax that gave birth 2 the 3rd dimension. Desire is always present in creation. If Love is not an action but a state of being ~ in this case, The Ultimate Being ~ than what it inspires is desire. Love desires.

Later, he wrote in response to another, The universe was conceptualized into existence when his following thought was questioned, God is not a concept but the origin of all concepts.

I completely agree. However, conceptualized is such a cold word to me when it's coming from something as wonderful as Supreme Love that I'm taking the liberty of replacing it with dreamed...pretended...imagined...into existence.

It has been said, to understand the origins of something as macro as The Universe one simply has to look at the micro in nature. To understand the origins of the Unknown is to look closely at the what you know. So, the disclaimer is: These are my thoughts and only my thoughts and had they been your thoughts you would have been notified where and when to look inside yourself for further instruction.

So, I now desire greatly to ramble on about what some might find serious nonsense. It might be more than 2 minutes. It might be absolutely insane but I'll claim it to be spiritual science fiction and let the world of theorist and mathematicians Nonetheless, this has been the quest burning in my eyes from all those moments in the sun and stinging on my tongue with all those illegitimate communions. What is God?