Author: gypsywoman

As of last month, I am sixty-one years old.

I will tell you, one of the main things I notice I do not particularly like about the way I look at this age are my eyes. The left one is rather cock-eyed and tends to wander off on its own. I’ve lost the central vision in it, and so it doesn’t track well anymore. I can find myself a bit self conscious about that…especially in a moment when I am looking into someone else’s eyes. It can feel awkward. But I am learning to love the woman who sometimes feels awkward about her eyes. 

That…and my skin. My skin was never even in its coloring, it seems as if it always was rather red and blotchy in places. Sun damage through the years hasn’t  helped. Still, I enjoy the fact that I am not the type who refuses to leave the house without make-up. In fact, I only rarely put it on, anymore. Maybe that’s just a little bit of rebellion. Maybe it’s allowing myself to be free. Maybe it’s a combination. 

At this stage of my life, I am learning to let go of the way I look more than I could in my youth. I have gone through stages where I hated my body and I definitely hated photographs of myself. I can appreciate myself, even celebrate myself, more these days. I have stopped comparing myself to other women so much, and I have stopped feeling a need to compete against them; as I did when I was young. Everything seemed so much more limited then…so small and finite and adversarial. The world is becoming a kinder place for me as I am becoming gentler toward myself. It is opening up. 

So let me tell you what’s wonderful about entering my sixties: most of the ideas I used to carry about the barometer for my self-worth being outside me are gone. 

When I was younger I thought, “of course”, that I needed to measure up against whatever was expected of me. If I was getting feedback that I wasn’t acceptable, (not smart enough…pretty enough…talented enough…interesting enough…whatever), then I  certainly wasn’t. That’s just the way I thought it was. I was the sum total of what people thought about me. The proof of my worth was out there. “Obviously.” 

I didn’t know any better. 

 If I wasn’t getting the feedback that I “belonged”, I didn’t. I hadn’t considered belonging to myself. I hadn’t considered accepting myself, with whatever quirks and weirdnesses there may be. I can be more tender with myself these days, which is lovely. Opening my heart to myself allows me, small step by small step by small step, to open my heart to others, and to see a sort of all encompassing compassion that really comes from a place beyond my personal limitations. It’s not “me”, it’s not “mine”…it just is.

There are still places where I would like to grow: in self-reliance, in letting go of fear, in gratitude, in playfulness. I am not finished yet by a long shot. I sit in meditation and I notice. I feel. Alchemy happens. It’s a winding road with plenty of switchbacks. Meanwhile, the view is fascinating and sometimes catches me off guard with how breathtakingly stunning it is.

On this Independence Day, I am noticing that my country doesn’t look a lot like those words of the pledge of allegiance.

I have mostly been stepping back from speaking about politics for some time now. Certainly that does not mean I don’t have an opinion or that I am oblivious to what is going on in my country.

I find there is a lot of “I’m right, you’re wrong!” happening.

There is a lot of righteous indignation and anger…and sadness. There is name calling and finger pointing and sarcasm, to the point where it seems to have become a national sport. All of which I feel does no good at all if the point is to actually change something. We appear to be at loggerheads. Not to call it into being, but sometimes I feel as if my country is on the brink of civil war.

And I wonder what’s to be done about that.

I find there are things occurring that surprise me…and mystify me…and twist my gut. I find there are things occurring that seem beyond unkind. They seem brutal and cruel.

How do I deal with that with clarity? How do I deal with that in a way that actually feels good to my heart and moves me toward love instead of away? How do I deal with it in a way that creates more understanding instead of less? (And I mean understanding on my part…because isn’t that where it begins?)

And how do I deal with it fearlessly?

It’s not just “can’t we all just get along?” It’s so much more than that. It’s about actually beginning to hear from a deeper place. Because when things don’t make sense, what doesn’t make sense isn’t “out there”. The confusion isn’t “out there”at all. It’s right here. It’s living in me.

I am knocking at the door,
not knowing what will answer.

I am answering the door,
not knowing what will present itself...
ask for entrance...
ask for what I have to give...
tea...or a bit of bread...
companionship...a moment...
everything.

Everything.

What was ever mine, Beloved?
All of it has always belonged to you.
You are shelter.
You are bread.
You are the birdsong singing to me now...
and incense burning a holy welcome.

“As your future approaches you, worry less how it may receive you and say a prayer instead for your becoming approachable.” ~ Toko-pa Turner

I have a confession to make. I’m fickle.

I fall in love with someone new all the time. While I was reading Eat Pray Love, years ago, I fell head over heals for Elizabeth Gilbert. And reading Amanda Palmer’s The Art of Asking, I adored her. The same thing happened while I turned the pages of Blessed are the Weird by Jacob Nordby and then Radical Honesty by Brad Blanton. I was smitten.

Jacob Nordby told me a story called “The Temple of Dreams” about a wise woman who lived high in the mountains where people would make their pilgrimage to see her. Nordby said he was not interested in any definition of Soul “other than the raw heartthrob of longing that has pulsed beneath the soundtrack of our lives since we were born.”

Brad Blanton pointed out to me that love between humans is always showing up in a single surprising moment, not in our stories of past or future. And he told me the story of “The Blue Unicorn” searching for its song.

Tell me a good story and I’ll follow you anywhere.

Lately, in her book Belonging, Toko-pa Turner has been telling me about becoming “approachable”. She reminds me to be soft as my future makes it’s way toward me…to be attentive and open. She shows me another way rather than demanding to know my purpose frantically. She presents the idea of yielding, instead…of being welcoming. How could I not fall in love with that? So often in our society we are taught to push our way through…to insist. What if it’s so much easier than that?

What if we really are enough, each one of us, just as we are? What if it’s actually true? What if we can be so much gentler with ourselves and with the world? What if by letting go into being gentle we find ourselves to be resilient, and supported, and discover the gift we have to offer?

Every now and then I am moved to share something from my personal journal.

I ran across this photo this morning and it just seemed to fit so perfectly with what I wrote this morning! I thought…perhaps it’s a sign. Maybe it’s time to peek back into my blog.

It’s been an interesting journey. I’ve been around the United States…to Paris…to Burning Man and to Ireland and London. It’s been a journey through leaving the job I had and selling a house. More importantly, it’s been an inward journey of seeing things in new fresh ways. It’s been a journey of allowing myself to simply “not know”, to let go and tentatively begin to trust something greater than myself.

28 March 2019

So, this is how it feels. This is how it feels to begin to nurture a small seed within myself. This is how it feels to slowly grow through the rubble of everything that used to be and push toward the sun of something new. This is how it feels to breathe into the cracking open…and into the stretching. Sometimes peace. Sometimes a simple faith in the “what is” of right now. Sometimes the electric static of “what’s happening?”

There has been fear. There has been grief. There has been rage. There has been confusion. All the while I have been learning something. I am learning how those things can be held in the body. I am learning how they can be loved…tenderly. I am learning how, when they are loved they can gestate. When the body responds with love, something new is born.

As I write, I notice a feeling of reaching out toward the miracle…a feeling of holding on…and also a recognition of its wispy nature. It won’t be held that way. It asks for my respect…my honoring. “I’m here,” the miracle whispers. “Don’t get grabby.” The miracle is somehow the nature of this life. I have only to get quiet to enter its presence. I have only to remember.

Let the hows come unraveled. Listen to the soft music of your body. Listen to its rhythms. Let that be your devotion.

My wish is to be free…not necessarily rigorous. My wish is to be devoted…not lazy. Somewhere in the middle a dervish spins with delight…pouring her heart out to God.

I have been working and playing through Julia Cameron’s book The Artist’s Way. One of the exercises/ writing prompts is to: Write about the God you do believe in and the god you would like to believe in. The idea, it seems to me, is to begin to see the discrepancies…the lack we can see in God and in our trust in God. I am sharing what came up when I wrote about that:

The god I believe in is not an “entity”…it is not separate from life…it is not separate from my own experience.

The god I believe in is the source of everything. The god I believe in is “is-ness”…Being…Awareness. It is life itself…the fountain of possibility…an emptiness from which everything arises and into which everything flows back.

The god I believe in is pure potential. It lives and breathes in everything…through everything…as everything…equally. It is not more “this” than “that”.

It is a blank page…or a blank canvas…or a blank screen and makes no judgements about what is written…or printed…or seen. It is the creator and the created and that which observes all of it.

This sometimes scares me…it scares what I think of as “myself” in a personal, psychological sense, because it can seem dispassionate. It can seem to allow all things, all circumstances, all appearances, all experiences. This appears evident in the wide variety of thoughts, feelings, beliefs, ideas and experiences that play out on the earth…in the kindness and violence…in the joy and the suffering. This god can feel capricious, and wild, and chaotic. This god can feel untrustworthy. It can feel as if such a god “doesn’t care”. It can feel unsafe from the point of view of the “me”…the small and limited ideas of “me”.

I would like to believe in a god who guides me…who is “for” me. I would like to believe in a god that knows intimately what is felt in this body and heart and is love itself. I would like to believe in a god that supports my creativity…is my creativity…just as it is all creativity.

I would like to believe that the experience of this life matters to God, somehow…that God enjoys it, somehow. I would like to believe in God’s desire to live this life.

This doesn’t mean that I don’t believe in any of that…but at times it gets sketchy and vague, and I would like to go deeper. I would like to feel secure in it…rooted in it. I would like to live in awe and wonderment and bewilderment and what Rumi calls love’s confusing joy.

If you are so moved, tell me…what God do you believe in? Do you see any discrepancies between that God and the God you might like to believe in?

I gather myself. I breathe. Something seems to pull itself up out of the long darkness of the night. What was that…that enveloping darkness…that space where the mind wanders…looking? It looks and looks. It watches.

It sees the one wondering about things…this…and that; the future…how to make herself happy…how to create herself happy. It sees her wondering in the night…playing with things…toying with things.  It sees her reaching in the darkness for a bit of warmth…pulling the covers up over her shoulders…reaching for the man lying beside her. It watches…this Presence behind her musings…as she breathes and sinks into the body.

It feels as if it stretches on forever…this Presence. Empty Space. It holds the stars of the night. It holds the body and its breathing. Without it…everything is gone.

The woman stirs and wakes from a slumber and she senses that, yes…here is the world…here is her world…and it seems like the same one she put down as she went to sleep. It seems continuous…connected to itself…like a life…like telling a story. Beginning. Middle. End. It seems that way.

What is happening, here?

There is also a sense that it isn’t necessarily so. The story isn’t necessarily what it appears to be. The darkness…the Presence…that was felt through the night…that stretching emptiness…there could be more truth in that. That is to say, if one is more “true” than the other.

The emptiness appears to create the story. Not out of anything solid…out of Itself, somehow; something from nothing…something from the possibility of something. Behind eyes. Beyond thoughts. Watching.

Consciousness…awareness…arising from…what? Where does it come from?

Life. Source. God. “Is-ness”. Where did the is-ness come from? How did it happen?

Something sings “awaken”. Something calls.

Something is already awake. Something has always been awake. It has no beginning or middle…and it shall have no end.

What is out beyond the woman and the story? What is right here…as this pen floats over the paper?

Everything…everything…everything doesn’t have to look perfect, pretty, acceptable, “appropriate”. Everything doesn’t have to be for show or to score points. Everything doesn’t have to be so much struggle and effort. Slowly, I am learning a little bit about jumping off that cliff.

And everything doesn’t have to be shallow…or hidden in the depths…or riding just above the surface…never quite touching what’s real. Everything doesn’t have to be that cold. The world doesn’t have to be that cold. My own world doesn’t have to be that cold. What I know is: it doesn’t change if there aren’t changes here in me.

Maybe this year is the year I learn to dive…swan dives, nose dives, belly flops…all of it…any of it. What if I let myself be that vulnerable? What if I let myself be that free?

Right now, I don’t even know how that might show up. I don’t even know what that voice might sound like, but I want to find out. I want to meet that person.

As this year opens, I wish us all discovery.

Acceptance. Affection. Closeness. Belonging. Dignity.

I am noticing the need, the desire in myself, for these things…these intangible qualities of life and well-being. I confess it.

I am also noticing something else more clearly than I may have seen it, before: I am noticing that although “they” (those mysterious knowing authorities) have long said that the best way to receive something is to give it, I may have been missing the full impact of what was being said.

Maybe it’s more than a pretty idea. Maybe it’s actually much closer to a universal law.

Treating my world with disrespect, for me, disrupts the very dignity I am seeking to cultivate.

Sarcasm and snarky comments, self-righteous indignation, mocking, being certain of my stand…such reactions to my world neither soften me toward it nor do they seem to soften the world toward me. They don’t engender compassion anywhere. They might engender agreement from some quarters…but not compassion. They don’t engender listening or honesty…or healing.

Seeing my world as a place to fix makes it forever a place to fix, right? After all, it will never be “just so”…will it? Expectation is a weird slippery slide.

Giving the world acceptance, affection and a deep respect will garner acceptance, affection and respect for myself, even if only in the form of self-respect. But haven’t you met people in whom that kind of dignity shines like a beacon? Haven’t you met people who felt like lighthouses of love…and change?

The funny thing is, I am learning this is not capitulation…it’s not being a doormat. It’s opening.

So, I have a discussion with someone and I am hurt or feel ashamed or angry or resistant. What if, in that moment, I give myself what I am needing…instead of continuing the fight? What if I let the resistance break? What if I surrender? What if I notice exactly what I am needing and give it to me? What if I respect myself and then, lo and behold, I find I am able to respect what I am hearing? What if I have compassion on myself and somehow I find I am then an open space to give compassion? What if I stand firmly in a place of unflinching peace?

What if I put down all my weapons…and look around to find the war over? Possible?

I read a marvelous phrase today: “purposeful inaction.”

It struck me rather like a thunderbolt. It has been a year and eight months since I left my job at UW Hospital in Madison and this is what I have been attempting, anyway, to do.  Take time to refocus. Reorient myself. Learn to live in a new way. Get quiet inside.

Sometimes it has been a challenge to find the quiet. (The head can be a noisy place, can’t it?)

I tell my mother I am feeling into the next thing in front of me…nothing much further than that. 

How “successful” I have been at it is another matter; how well I have been feeling into my own intuition and my own guidance is another matter. Still, how can I begin anyplace but right here, right now…always…right? It does no good to wish things otherwise. Whatever has gone on before, here I am. This is the place to start; every day, every moment. I don’t have another. 

Sometimes, it’s time to take a step…make a move. Sometimes, it’s time for purposeful inaction. May the universe show me, moment by moment, which of those two belongs to that moment. I suppose that’s what it’s been doing all along, anyway…whether I understand it, or not…whether I find myself making judgments about it, or not. Something bigger than me seems to have a handle on things.

Let us dance to the music that’s playing right now. What else can we do?