Sweet Reminders

For the past couple of months I’ve felt like I’ve slipped out of time and space.  My interior landscape was unfamiliar to me. Very little interested me.

And I knew it was important to rest and wait right where I was.

A poem titled “Metamorphosis” kept coming to my mind. I grabbed hold of that word – metamorphosis.  

I remembered I had that poem tucked away in my computer.

Ends up it was a poem I wrote in May of 2020.  I remembered the poem but did not remember it was me who had written it!

As I emerge from the cocoon I’m sharing it with you here.  

I’ve missed connecting with you here.   Hot summery days had slowed me down.  Then, a few weeks ago, Kenneth’s beloved sister unexpectedly left her body.  Maybe another day I’ll write more about Carol Jean and her passing. That’s not for today.

Two weeks ago Kenneth and I took a very quick trip to Texas to be with our family and attend Carol’s funeral. Now we’re back in the Dominican Republic, both of us recovering from very mild Covid infections.

Even before Carol’s passing I’d been reflecting on the nature of grief and the things I grieve for.  And then today I found this very short story that I had tucked away.    I share it with you in love,
Sharon

A Tiny Love Story from the New York Times …

Hello Old Friend
Grief was that relative I heard stories about. I knew her in the way I knew Uncle Gerald, someone I never met but learned so much about.

Then my husband died, and there Grief was, shaking my hand. I offered her the guest bedroom, scrambling to make it comfortable, but not too comfortable because I didn’t want her to stay long.

Instead of the guest bedroom, she marched right into my bedroom and dropped her heavy bags. Years later, she’s still with me, now an old friend, someone to sip martinis with and remember.
   —     Barbara Phillips (originally published on March 30, 2021)

Honoring the beauty of grief.
With love,
Sharon

The past weeks I’ve been riding wild waves of emotions. As Kenneth and I  take more concrete actions toward building a home in the Dominican Republic  I think every flavor of emotion has visited me.  

Let me begin again … The past two years I’ve been riding the wild waves of emotion. Every flavor of emotion has been having it’s way with me.

Or maybe this is how the story begins …  When I was a girl I learned to show “good” emotion and hide “bad” emotions. I didn’t dare make waves, much less ride them!

Learning to feel and welcoming ALL emotions is an on-going practice for me.  It’s a practice that brings me to the body.

My body. The body.  The shifting sands of bodily sensation grabs my attention. When I stop, feel, and welcome these sensations I meet what underlies my busy thoughts and find what is actually here.

What is here right now is always very simple.

Stay with the body. Be fully present with the body.  Feel  that emotion all the way to it’s core.  I know the freedom on the other side; yet, I still am a master at resistance. 

Being guided by a practice invites me to meet the resistance in a resourceful way.  Below I’ve shared one of my favorite practices for welcoming emotional tension.  It comes from the book  Leap Before You Look by Arjuna Ardagh.  I’ve also included Arjuna’s discussion about the nature and value of this practice.    I share them with you with gratitude, possibilities and freedom

Riding the waves in love,
Sharon
 

Kiss the tension with the softness of awareness.
Bring the breath all the way into this place,
As though you are pouring water into a dry sponge.

Wait, linger, until the flower opens,
Until your awareness is completely there.
Move on to another place of tension,
And then another.

Discover the lotus growing in the mud.

We generally have an unfriendly relationship to sensations in the body. Tension and pain are the body’s cries for attention, just like the call of a newborn baby who knows no words. When we try to ignore the body’s signals, whether directly with painkillers or just blocking them out through distraction, we cut off our connection to the real, to the world that can be truly known only through the senses.
 
This tendency to block out the sensations in the body goes so deep that we rarely even know what it means to experience the body as it is. A fleeting feeling arises, and it is met with an immediate thought that it should not be this way. This sensation is bad; this one is good.
 
One single thought can set in motion a pattern of tension, for instance in the pelvis, solar plexus, or chest, that shuts down the flow of blood and energy in such a way as to almost completely inhibit our capacity to feel. Only numbness and thoughts are left.
 
When this knee-jerk reaction occurs, stop for a moment. Retrace your steps. Whether you’re sitting in your office, waiting in traffic, or lying in bed, return to that which has been locked out.  Open the door with welcome, and consciously linger with that which has been banished.
 
If we acknowledge and welcome tension and pain, not in an effort to make them go away but with a loving embrace, they will transform themselves.  It is in this embrace of our greatest discomfort that we are initiated into the body of bliss, into wisdom of the body.
 
You cannot try to relax: it is only counterproductive. The more you try to make any part of your body relax, the more tense it will become.  The body relaxes through just the opposite: through feeling tension and welcoming it completely.  It is a paradox: the more you are all right with being tense, the more relaxed you will become, and the more you try to relax, the more tense you will become.
 
Relaxation is the natural state of the body. It is where it returns to when it is left alone.  A relaxed body is the natural temple for relaxed and natural consciousness: free, limitless, and experiencing spontaneous Oneness with all that it encounters.
 

I’ve been gardening …. sort of.  I now have several baby celery stalks growing in my kitchen! 
 
For the past few weeks, ever since I participated in a women’s circle honoring the vernal equinox, gardening has been on my mind.  But it hasn’t been the garden in my yard or kitchen window I’ve been tending.  It’s been the garden inside of myself where I have had my attention.

I don’t know very much about gardening, but I do know …
 

 
My questions become …
 
What desires do I want to feed?   And, what food do those desires need? 

How do I best tend to the new blossomings of my visions?

What are the “foods” that nourish the dreams, relationships and inner qualities where I desire healthy growth?
 
And I also contemplate …

What have I been feeding that is not aligned with the longings of my heart and soul?   

Hmmm. Maybe I’m just feeding parts of myself with the wrong food?  Could it be that something just needs a little dietary tweaking?
 
How can I lovingly weed the garden?

And maybe what I see as a weed is simply a miracle that I haven’t recognized yet.  How can I  be curiously loving toward those weedy parts?  Can I listen to the true voice of the weeds?
 
What part of the garden have I tended with impatience and judgment?  How can I be better at offering tenderness?
 
Here’s another thing …  I don’t expect my windowsill celery to grow into carrots!  That seems obvious and even a silly idea;  but aren’t there still ways I expect myself to grow into something that is not my nature? 

I miss the beauty and the yum of celery when I’m waiting for a carrot to grow from that celery roots.  I’ll also try all sorts of futile wrangling to get that plant to transform into a carrot.    Oh, how the celery gets neglected when that happens!  Don’t carrots and celery each have their own unique, valuable nature? 
 
And after all that, I come back to simply reminding myself …
 

This message from Fred La Motte tapped me on the shoulder yesterday.  Take a breath with me and soak in Fred’s words. 

With love, Sharon

It’s not complicated. It’s very simple.

This is the time for us all to rest in the Being that is deeper than thought, deeper than any name, label, image or picture in the mind. Even if just for a few minutes a day. This Being has no opposite. This Being is the end of conflict, whose nature is peace. This Being is not “a” being, but Being itself.

And this is who you really are.

When you spend a little while resting in Being – not doing it, or thinking it, for Being is prior to any thought or action – then you create a magnetic yearning in every atom of the earth, every star in the galaxy, a yearning to follow you there, to feel your unity, your fullness, your peace which surpasses understanding.

This may seems like no-thing, but No does not exist there. There is only Yes. This only happens now, never in the future. Let it happen, the journey into Being. A journey greater than ten thousand miles, yet nearer than you are to yourself.

I remember one Valentine’s Day when I was in elementary school. My mom helped me bake big heart shaped sugar cookies for each of my classmates.  Each cookie was hopefully decorated in sloppy pink frosting.   

Each cookie was supposedly bringing a message; “Happy Valentine’s Day. You are special. You are special to me.”
 
But my truer message was “I hope you’ll see me. I hope you’ll like me. I hope I belong”.
“Please love me”
 
In the early 60’s, at my elementary school, Valentine’s Day was a group thing.   Every kid brought some kind of little valentine for each of the other kids in class.  We’d drop flimsy paper valentines into the special bag each kid had at their desk. 

Those cards had cute or sappy messages that usually boiled down to “Please be my Valentine”.  Please Love Me.
 
As you already know, Valentine’s Day is a messy commercialized day, laced with all kinds everythings.  Love it. Hate it. Skip it.

As it comes around again,  I’m reflecting on pink sugar cookies and some of the ways I reach out with the unspoken plea, “Please love me.”
 
I am also feeling what my heart genuinely longs for:  to authentically be one who’s presence, who’s smile, and who’s eyes, say to the world, “I see you. I love you. You belong.”
 
This Hafiz poem inspires me toward that.  Enjoy.
With love,
Sharon