As I continue along my way.
Things show up. Pictures happen.
Art is somehow made.
Grammatical rules get broken.
Text gets disorganized,
thoughts jump out of order.
This is very liberating, sometimes.
Art is not artifice.
Things are not what they seem~
And so it is true that
Everything has its wings.
This morning I awoke to discover that there was a book atop my open book, A Manual of Acupuncture. I asked my husband if he was reading Rumi and left the book there, and he said, “No. Not recently.” Both books have a red cover and they seemed to “go together” even though they were different sizes.
Here’s the page/poem that I opened to, with the same title as this blog post:
The soul within our individual souls
loves the one who runs and falls down
more than the one who sits and watches.
The soul within soul lives in a lover.
Consider this metaphor. How you love is the open sky.
These personal selves are the separate roofs of a town.
Your tongue, the guttering where words flow.
If the roof is not clean, the words get thick and murky.
Some people have elaborate systems that drain water
from other roofs. This is not wise.
There is a false eloquence to it.
A lover is one who waters a garden from a rain barrel
that fills under his own roof.
Roses that grow from that have tears in them.
Sometimes the scale pans may weigh correctly,
but the balancer is off.
A sweet doctor may give bitter medicine.
A foot finds the right shoe in the dark.
Love moves on its way through the pleasure it feels.
Even though the time you live in is violent
and frightening, you are safe in Noah’s boat.
If you want to know who someone is,
hang around with those close by. They know.
The rule that covers everything is,
How you are with others, expect that back.
As usual, I find Rumi’s poems are very beautiful. Perhaps it’s my natal Mars in Libra that the fire always finds its resolution in the embrace of allowing. But it’s probably more-so that regardless of whatever ‘my stars are’ I ought to make the best of this life in the loving of it – finding the tender spirits who would embrace me along with themselves in the lamp-light of our wandering.
Following my typing of Rumi’s poem, and my writing here, I decided I wanted to add an image. I did a google search like this, “image of a lamplight diogenes,” because it was what came to mind. What you see is the first image that resulted from my search query.
A friend of mine died recently. I am mourning her; but mostly, I am inspired to write this message.
Yesterday one of my classes was canceled – it was a relief because I spent some time at my favorite neighborhood Kwan Yin spot: the Mission. I just let it flow. The rain sprinkled on me, and my hot coffee in my hand transported me to my undergraduate years. I do know that I have to make up for the day that we missed in class [graduate school] – because that’s just how work is. It still needs to get done. Test next week. The routine continues behind the scenes.
I know she is with me.
I would never have known that she had died in a tragic bike accident, if it weren’t for the fact that she is with me. Sometimes my own faith amazes my doubting mind. I trust that I’ll always know what I need to know *when* I need to know it. So, I don’t do a lot of the normal, conventional “keeping in touch” with people type of stuff. I let life lead me. I’m not really into schedules, for that matter. I follow nudges from my inner cosmic awareness. I don’t cling to people when they need space. (I like space.)
Yet, I look at the “two minds” as equally beneficial. I really don’t see it as a problem.
Susan and I used to discuss the mind, and what is beyond it.
Her name was Susan Hicks: please continue to light up the path for her. Susan is.
A song from the heart
can only be heard
with the silence of presence.
Silence need not be silent in the English sense of the word.
~Aloha nui loa~
You are remembered for our precious times together.
Susan was my dorm neighbor during undergrad. It was my sophomore year, and her freshman year. I finally got a room all by myself, thanks to the lottery system; and of course, after completion of my freshman year, I got to be in the housing lottery system.
I would see her in the hallway when I came home from work or class. She’d have her books open, and we talk about the 3D geometry she was working on. There was a cone shape inside a bowling ball. It was challenging stuff. We would talk about lucid dreaming, and discuss lots of things that compose a personal connection and exchange. She was uncertain about her major. I was an anthropology major. I thought it was the greatest substitute for indecision. I thought I was clever, picking a major that wasn’t very focused, ‘in and of itself.’
I really want to honor her family, and their healing process.
I stayed at her parent’s house during one of our holiday breaks.
Susan and I had become roommates off campus, and coordinated our travel with another roommate. Then after I returned from some of my travel, we shared a house with other roommates. We were in touch in 2013, and I was able to congratulate her on her job at Pitt as well as for completing her PhD in Cultural Anthropology. We connected with more depth than that, but that’s no one’s business but ours.
We were pretty much always on good terms – just busy people.
Susan, your light shines. Thank you for touching my life, and for letting mine touch yours.
As we strive to be “something” FOR the world, never forget what really matters. This is my message to people with ambition. Live fully, love fully, and remember there’s no place to go. There’s only the road. Self-compassion means honoring the process. Self-compassion means following the light of the inner spirit, and letting the gentleness of reality just really be love.
A guest post by Maria Ede-Weaving… Samhain is upon us and I have been feeling strongly the energies of release this year. At this festival, we think abou
Source: Let Go and Let Goddess/God
Today I light a candle for you. *You know who you are.
~I’m interrupting my blogging break~ for a moment to thank Susan for writing such a beautiful and touching blog article. Her thought to include me on her journey is beyonds words available to me at this moment.
We all encourage one another to continue along our path to realization. _/1\_
My blogging rest and break currently comes from the divine order of my body 😉 I can’t wait to return to y’all here! ❤
This blog post is written in response to a Time Machine Challenge given from Linda, over at Litebeing Chronicles.
To my surprise, I hopped onto my timeline, and I went parallel!
Also, I didn’t go parallel to just one place, but to many places along my timeline.
#1). Vacation on Molokai
#2). Art making periods along my timeline
#3). My back injury in 2012 that influences my current path.
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tripadvisor.com
#1) For this parallel timeline, I picture myself as vacationing on Molokai, and I’m incredibly healthy. I am meditating all the time on this timeline, so it seeps into the experience of my busy course load and fills me with the sense of always holding my center.
#2) Some of you, my dear readers, may have seen my recent blog posts where I published some of my old art pieces. One of the skills that I value in myself is my ability to live through my art, to express through color, and to step away from words. Though I value language, I do find so much contentment in the silence of visual imagery.
#3). Regaining myself/my life after my back injury.
I had to retrain myself to walk after the disc herniation.
My husband and I got me through the toughest time of my and our lives through this experience. What I know now is something far more valuable than I could ever learn in school about healing, from any person or book, or anything else. When I reach back into my past, I realize that I can overcome anything that weighs me down.
What’s happened is that there’s a level of confidence that I can tap into here, and it will get me through every failure, every false start, every terrifying moment of working with needles, fire, smoke; and if it doesn’t, and I decide: Hey, I’m not really into needles that much after all, that’s okay, too. I got my body back, and it became mine again: not necessarily ready to have it become a human pin cushion. Recently I had an acupuncture treatment that left my arm feeling a little bit numb, and that made me feel uncomfortable – it has made me question and doubt my path.
I’m in this,
and I know I could get hurt again.
After all, I can walk now. I made it through without the surgery that loomed in my mind as a possible next step to walking again.
That’s good enough for me. I value my mobility!
Note: I will be away from blogging for a little while 🙂 Best to you all in the interim.
Much Love, Ka
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Next Time-Machine Post: Julianne
Can you guess which ones I made during ages: high school years, college years, and post undergraduate years?
Tribus is a holiday now 🙂 Ra, over at Rarasaur [because obviously she’s a dinosaur] has launched the celebration.
There are no Non-Sequiturs in my writing, whateversoever!
We here at Fiestaestrellas, are always celebrating, so we love joining the fun, even though we’ve got A LOT of herbs to memorize, and some heavy studying to do for our course work which gets priority over these 3 loves (+Blogging! +Astrological Sharings +Community Conversation).
Here’s MY 3 without any further ado.
#1 Making Art to Make Art – Older Styles of mine
#2 Towergardening!
#3 Exploring, Eating (Gluten Free Pancakes with Raspberries), Drumming, Writing on my Dry Eraser Board (in no particular order).
It was a lot of fun to be freely messy all over my blog post – and still in list format! 🙂
Hello my lovely readers and co-creators!
Here are some blank images. I mean, here are some white spaces that may not stay white for long – although, I’d be fine if they did! In the pure state, there’s so much potential!
Here’s an interesting side note. When I went to purchase my head, the cashier said, “I found the prettiest one I could find.” I said, “Oh really? Thank you.”
She said that we students tend to be picky with our heads. I said, “You know what, I’ll work with whatever I got!” I also thanked her very much for her consideration. After that I noticed a little “birth mark” next to the ear. There’s no name yet for this new man. I’ll take name options, and consider it.
*When I named my post originally, I was thinking of the Tablas or Tabla drum, and merging the two ideas in my title* Though, I did not photograph my drum here, I gave it away a few years ago as a gift to the person who gave me my first medicine bag.
Tender are the morning words
arriving as a trickling
fountain washes
up through the center of a hollow
I did a unique meditation sequence this morning. Since I awoke at 5am to my surprise, I had plenty of time this morning. I started with a guided meditation, for which I used the 5 minute mindfulness meditation track. Then I practiced some new Qi Gong techniques I learned yesterday. Following that, I joined with my study buddy for A Course in Miracles, day 8. I practiced more Qi Gong, and then I meditated and opened the Akasha .
I am completely new to opening the Akasha, so I’m just just briefly relaying what came up for me. It was while I meditated on my experience afterward that I was guided to share this video below, following a brief description of my vision.
I had this vision of lightning that struck a barn and caused a fire. There was trauma associated with a beloved horse’s death, but it has now been put to rest.
In honor of our animal friends.
Please see the Trust Technique here:
As an attuned Reiki master practitioner, I am often guided to be of service. I became a Reiki I practitioner in 2007, and I became a master practitioner in 2012, attuned via my teacher, Barbara Jeanne Igoe.
Photo credit: Ka Malana
Cannot fall for deception when
hungry for life.
There’s an angel inside of me
her name is ‘faith.’
Life is eating, breathing, loving.
Loving is the eternal present
moment.
Every face is beauty
and it always works out somehow.
I don’t know how how, but it does!
The angel and the warrior in me
are merging. The face of what I cannot
see, nor need to believe.
I am alive now. What matters is
all the past is now gone. There’s this
wonderful now moment, even in the midst of fear.
I do not fear fear today.
Moving toward my life, living in my breath.
What other temple is there?
Sitting at the alter of my broken shadow,
loving all parts, and trusting in the sacred.
Seeing the monsters on the walls have
shapes that form into smiles, too.
I will hug myself through it.
I CAN do it!
Today I don’t have survivor’s guilt. Today I DO for my family, for my sangha.
Today I find a little bit more bravery than I had yesterday.
When building a new schedule, and accessing “just what is it that I need to do during my day?” I create a “done” list. I started doing this a little while back, and it’s offered me:
Today as I created my morning “done list” which consisted of meditations of various types, as well as fixing the bed, making breakfast, eating, dishes, cleaning, reading/writing, taking care of my plants, visualizing, stretching, communing with my self, and then others. I was able to see that there are sets of actions and values that I’d need to prioritize and sort out. Without my daily “done-list,” I’d be thinking I accomplished nothing – which while good in certain contexts, is not so good in others.
Wishing everyone a happy, smooth, peaceful, productive, enjoyable, pleasant day – filled with the sweet breeze of accomplishment and a self-renewing sense of peace. _/1\_
Some people are just so easy to converse with!
That’s how I feel about April Elliott Kent.
When she and I met, I didn’t realize that I’d be taking my astrology anywhere. As a solo practitioner of astrology, I didn’t really have any astrology friends. I was mostly closeted about it for a while. I was discovering it all on my own, with the help of books, while maintaining and editing my own constant reflections upon the transits. To me, it was my private scientific investigation.
Eventually, I had this blog, and I was meeting with the occasional client. I was still feeling out what exactly I wanted to do with my clients in the astro realm. I kept looking for the “WE,” the co-creating. How could I really be of service in a way that also worked within the flexible framework of my highest values and within my integrity? These were the types of questions that I began asking myself while healing from a major back injury, when I met April two years ago, in my new city.
I didn’t realize that April was such a popular and well-established astrologer!
She was just such a great friend to me from ‘go,’ and I noticed that we linked up nicely when comparing our charts, but I really only looked ‘after the fact’ for any astrological connection. Then, after a while, I started to read her blog posts on the New and Full moon (just like I had been writing about on my blog!) and I kept getting more and more of this sense about her as a WISE woman, with a delightful conveyance of the astrological archetypes. Truly her writings are highly accessible, and contribute to anyone’s monthly astrological undertakings.
To say that I have developed a deep respect for this woman as a person far surpasses even my own understanding for what she knows about astrology! That being said, I want to move onto a review of her book. Yes, I will basically be doing that from the perspective of being a friend and a fan.
A Beginner’s Book is a beginner’s book; it is something that you can understand if you don’t have a lot of background knowledge. The full title of her book is Astrological Transits: The Beginner’s Guide to Using Planetary Cycles to Plan and Predict Your Day, Week, Year (or Destiny). Side note, I can admire a woman who uses parentheticals. It’s one of my favorite features for writing in TODAY’s complex world. I applaud her use of parentheses in the title of this book.
If you notice the way I photographed the book, it appears as though it is as big as my heart–no, even bigger. It takes up the entire space of my chest. Why did I photograph it that way? Although this book is a “beginner’s book,” I see the value in all things “beginner,” and recognize that this book is for me. ☺
I commend this text for its concise organization, while containing a lot of solid “How To” information. April writes to TODAY’s astrologer: Astrological Transits makes what is classic, accessible. I am also referring to her writings, here, where her style really shines.
For the non-astrologer: Other books like it (Beginner’s Guides: sure there are some exceptions but…) rarely do they include a tiny little box of helpful tips specifically like, “how long this transit lasts,” and the approximate age that you may experience a particular transit. You do not have to be an astrologer to learn from this book!!! Whether you are an astrologer or not, consulting with another astrologer can be very helpful, as it helps to guide your understanding of what you are learning, experiencing, and evaluating.
Here’s an excerpt: I like April’s advice here about the Sun transiting the 10th house of a natal chart; it’s good advice for anyone, at any time!
The trick to enjoying the Sun in the tenth house is to imagine not that you’re in an inferior position that must be escaped at all costs, but rather that you’re in the perfect position to get where you’re going. Part of that journey begins with a plan—for your career or even for your whole life. If you already have a plan, revisit and revise it. If you don’t know where you are going, you won’t recognize it when you arrive. Also, since you probably work plenty hard already, work smarter—and learn to delegate. Even if you can do anything, you don’t have to do everything. Partner with others who like to do things you don’t care for, and vice versa. You’ll go much further with help from others than you can alone.”
Please visit her here @ BigSkyAstrology.com, where she’s been publishing for 15 years! Astrological Transits: The Beginner’s Guide to Using Planetary Cycles to Plan and Predict your Day, Week, Year (OR DESTINY) is her newest book!
In Astrological Transits, astrologer April Elliott Kent teaches you:
- How Today’s astrological weather affects your birth chart and what is going on in your life
- Ways to make the most of good transits and harness and transform the energy of challenging ones
- The roles recurring planetary cycles play in your life and how to anticipate important transits
Make me into the softest
razor blade
of your truth-edged clarity,
chiseled by your loving warmth
and compassionate understanding.
Your [Mars-meets-Venus]
Soft Electric Love Touch –
Let the sparks fly!
You should know
that I am forged from the fire,
every day.
Yes, I am phoenix –
8th house
Mars and Pluto conjunction in Libra,
in love’s service.
Follow me and our spiritual marriage transforms!
I have seen my
own demons more than enough!
God dresses
up for Halloween.
The treats are always
the unexpected visitors that come
in and rescue any memory of OUR grace,
with a smile and a little open bag.
Jupiter and Neptune do not disagree.
While they transit,
they play Rummy.
I’ve got the leftover
potato chips to prove it – all those
notes I took for 20+ years of transits
are plenty crusty from love.
At the middle now,
I eagerly anticipate
sitting down
to attend
to the details
of expressing my perfection,
from the fruit of thy womb.
I am babe and elder
the in-middle years,
receiving and
sending off
souls of yours,
at your request.
Please do not
give me more than I can bear!
Love us, dear divine!
Bring us into an understanding where
the atheist, theist, pantheist do not
care if they agree or disagree.
The agnostic does not need to know
what she knows. It’s still none of
her business!
Where the word ‘I’ is
not a message in and of itself,
but a vehicle
for courageously attending to our truths
beyond divisions
and seeming perceptions
of splitting hairs.
‘I’ is one of the
tiniest words i know.
ya know? I still like it, though!
For all is
impermanent and pertinent.
Let us recover
the child lost to the shoreline of
warsome devastation,
Join in the only prayer worth
having:
A request for freedom in peace,
peace inside freedom, and justice for all.
Hallowed be thy…
Kingdom come.
Where and when the vague admissions of
the heart are seen as the clear
night and day offerings
of refuge.
We do not care
when we are needing help,
In Who’s arms we are held, just
that we are loved by you, Divine!
Here I am. Ready.
Amama, A’ho!
Fiesta Estrellas 
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