Braiding the Golden Thread

I am well aware that I have been blessed many times over by those who are blessed and that spirit moves in every direction towards the center of human beings.

Some, born into wealth, will never know the journey of survival but move towards their spirits and these have always had the leisure to create the beauty that is their hearts. Whatever they can conceive, they can do it with no blocks save what their minds can conjure. This I pray for all beings.

Some, born into love but poor, will forever seek and passionately drive towards their freedom and these know the courage and discipline that comes from working hard to create space to breathe, to eat good food, fresh water, and live in alignment with a higher nature than the one struggling to survive. This strength of spirit can only be created not bought. This I pray for all beings.

Each have their own journeys, all are programmed at the center to forever seek that which is life. For some this life is all there is, self-made and driven they seek meaning and have the freedom to find it under in through around any possibility in the world, possibilities are endless. For others, there is a greater sense of Creator and, in that their life is the result of prayerful dependency, love is the only thing that truly matters and it is unconditional, to be found in the smallest molecule, even a teeny atom is of exceeding value .

Meaning and freedom. Strength, determination, and the gifts of previous generations. It’s spirits way of both descending the ladder and climbing it. In the middle is where we meet. In the middle is where our love is manifested and seen. How we spend time, where we place attention, how resources are allocated, all these are the test of humanity whether born blessed or striving to remove all barriers and feel the blessings of life.

It is easy to get distracted. When do we take the time to enjoy what we have been given/have and when do we seek opportunity to lift others up?

This is, of course the plight of our collective conundrum. How to weave these golden threads together? How to take the magic of all people and combine them to make a harmonious life together.

Become a creator, advertise it, attempt to draw without manipulation the masses seeking to fill the spaces with beauty. How to gain a following without creating followers? How to live a dream without becoming a slave to more? How to be content and still beautify? When to push? When to receive? When to be full? And when to be empty?

The in breath. The out breath.

The oldest ancient pattern of living there is in the Universe. Contraction. Expansion.

The real issues: Ownership. Freedom.

Since the money system in any form was created, the scales of have and have nots has teeter tottered back and forth, and if it isn’t owned but valuable, how can it be copyrighted?

Own what is needed. Water. Earth. Air. These are gifts we all deserve to enjoy.

And fire? I have a clear memory of a time I was asked to attend a tipi and travelled a long distance at my own expense to arrive, sit up all night praying for the life of another and in the morning came the first time I saw a money cup. We ate the corn for our energy body, the berries for our blood, the meat for our flesh and then, the money cup.

My ancestral brain sat on knee blinking. Blink. Blink. I looked at the fire. I looked at the cup. I looked at the fire. I looked at the cup. I whispered to it, “Psst. What are doing between me and the fire? Why are you in the middle of my prayer? Why are you between me and God?”
It said, “I don’t know. They put me here.”
”Oh,” I said, “I need to right my relationship to you. What would that be?” I continued to pray about the other bowls that passed, “The soul animates me, my ancestors got me here, and my body moves me around. What do you do?
”What ever people want.”
”Zonia!”
I looked up. “Yes?!”
”Pass the cup”
”I didn’t bring my wallet in here. I came to pray.”
”Pass the cup.”
Ok, I thought, this time, I pass the cup. It wasn’t to be the last time I saw the cup. Every time, I felt the same way: Blink. Blink. “Why are you here?” I’d whisper. Eveytime it would tell me, “Somebody put me here.” And I’d hear my inner spirit say, “Oh.” And sometimes I’d get very quiet and pray. “Heal my relationship with you.”

I tell this story to my thriving Mexican brother with whom I have co-sat sweatlodge. He is a peyote chief.

“What do you think it means?” he asks, “because when I put the cup outside the tipi I get less money and running tipi is expensive.”
I smile, “The more affluent the chief, the bigger the tribe. What did you think being chief meant? It’s expensive to take care of a big family.”
We both laugh and we know money collected isn’t just for feeding the people. It’s his job, but the chiefs used to have normal jobs and then run tipi. He used to give to the people, not take.

I think, I tell him, “It’s ok to charge, but don’t confuse love. If you make someone your family, it’s your responsibility to lift them up because you feel them inside your heart. If they are your brother, you want him to have a good life, to be able to have a wife and care for her needs, and feed children if they wish to have them. They are your family. It’s just what you want for them. These are old ways though, old male female dynamics. Everything is changing. I suppose if it is your job, then charge, but if it is your calling the door is open for all to know their intrinsic worth to Creator existed long before money and their relationship to that Creator is free. There should still be some meetings done just for love, it’s always the sessions I do that way that are the most powerful. Meetings are the same.”
“Is that why you got upset with me after lodge for telling people to support your work?”
”It was not my motivation for praying with the people and I didn’t want to detract from those gifts of songs by making people think I did it hoping to get money from them.”
”I saw you pull back when I did it.”
”I know but then I looked at the love on your face, felt your hearts support, and listened to your kind words. I asked myself, why should I pull away from blessings? I knew then, I am still healing my relationship between spiritual practice and money.”
”That’s funny,” he says, “you made me want to love more openly and freely like you.”
We hug and both say laughing, “Perhaps between you and me is the truth.”
I say, “It’s always between you and me that truth exists.”

A truth between two people is a witness and a participant. The experience of one balances the other and so we can shine light on those thoughts trapped inside corners of our silent minds. When I write, I like to believe that I allow my own thoughts to be seen in order to grow. Some thoughts I see and immediately can think of a million refutations to learn them into submission. In other words, change them immediately. Other times, I believe when my words are read the truth of another sends me illumination, as in, I see sister you are needing enlightenment, as in play with this truth a bit, make it more fun, and allow yourself to prosper.

These thoughts I have vascillated between within my own mind. Moving from the extremes of very little belongings but rich in spirit to thriving financially and investing in future. Knowing the riches of starlight descending upon hot springs and the gas it took to drive there. Doing healing work for others, using my body in health operating on food money has bought and being blessed to travel with partners around the world teaching, running down the alps, and meeting villagers in India. Giving and receiving. Rejoicing at others good fortune. Content with my little home and lots of time.

As a child, I never lacked for anything. As an adult I only lacked what I did not allow myself to receive, and this usually because I gave freely. Entering into a crystalline state with the light essence of a piece of paper, I heal my relationship to money. A blank trade system. Money is whatever we make it. It makes many things possible. It can itself be a practice. Learning how to master it with your gifts, is a blessing.

Yet, I can’t help but think of the many ways it can be a deception. The ways in which people hide their true source of affluence. Claiming to have prayed so much, or be so much more devoted, or such positive thinkers that wealth just happened.

Hiding that it is a gift from wealthy parents or intelligent investments, even hard work, is a falsity and I think if we are all to truly be healed in relation to money, deception and the impression that others can become what you have been gifted if they are only willing to invest in you, is the distraction that I resist.

I resist that fancy pants, better yoga mats and super foods make us better yogis, or that designer drugs and expensive ceremonies make us medicine people. False. Modern day “keeping up with the Jones” can bankrupt you but it can be fun.

I acknowledge that I came from a upper middle class family and am college educated. I did not realize our standard of living because my dad was modest enough with his money to retire at 50 and still help our whole family make fiscal jumps. I've thanked him for allowing my brother and I freedom to devote ourselves to what we love and forgive us that it doesn’t translate to wealth. We are simple people. My brother plays drums, thinks drums, hears drums. I love people and pray in nature. We live on what we make, sometimes it’s little, sometimes we have been shown how valuable what we love can be.

When younger, I get a disappointment to my pop, “Sorry, dad, you worked so hard to lift us up. I feel like we went back.”
He says to me, “Other people can look around them at what they have amassed, your wealth is hidden in your body, it resides in your heart and your share it with everyone.”
”Thanks pops.” I feel blessed and know in my heart, whatever your life, self-development is the key.

I was not raised to be an entrepreneur, my dad made money working his way up despite humble beginnings and brown skin. He teaches us to work, I tell my nephews and students to become the best at whatever you choose to do. Grace yourself with plenty. My mother loves shopping sprees and vacations were once a year. It took bankruptcy, many give aways, generosity, a brain tumor, and year long vision quest to create me. I believe in favorites I wear so often they can no longer be mended. I believe in nice things that last.

I retired from being a teacher with a small salary I used to travel for a year and tried editing, ghost writing, teen centers, private schools, being a barista, sandwich maker, new age store lady doing crystal readings, yoga teacher, massage therapist, ceremonialist, retreat leader, and healer. I was willing to live on whatever my devotions made me.

I knew little to nothing about alternative lifestyles as an artist, musician, festy, plant farmer worker, rainbow gatherings, or work trade, but I learned that within that system there was still hierarchy and at the top were high powered executive business people making lots of money paying workers very little. I saw workers playing but many investing little for the future. Smart ones educated themselves, courageous one took big chances, and creative ones became famous. In this journey I learned the answer to the question I had while still teaching.

In a class of 42 kids, 38 had individual educational plans because of their unique learning styles and differing intelligences. I remember knowing for certain, most would not follow the college bound course. I asked myself, “What will they do? How will they live?” Soon after, I had given away everything, put on a backpack and begun my own deconstruction reconstruction to be completed two decades later journey.

What would they do? Play. Dance. Travel. Experience. Live. Love. The lucky ones would.

The rest would struggle at minimum wage jobs trapped in pizza shops seeing no way out, knowing no differently, seeking mind numbing anything and still seeking love in all the little places until a spirithorse gave them small little boosts.

My father and I invested in the future. We gave my nephews boosts to find what they loved. Sometimes this meant I gave money and travelled no home or to other countries to work so I could help. Choices. Exchanges of one life for another. Oldest one gave his girlfriend a spirithorse jump and the youngest one joined forces with his lovely “wife” to make family. My brother devoted his whole life to drums and somehow the generations move forward and now I funnel it back to me.

What is my relationship to money? Ever melding, shifting, contorting, always grateful.

What are my feelings about thriving? We should all be so lucky. Some people can live their entire lives for the amount people pay for shoes. This seems crazy and yet it is reality.

What I seek is not answers, it’s peace. What I seek is my own value and to thrive within my own gifts putting what I believe to be of primary importance first. I believe in a creator. I believe what we do, what we stand for, how we spend our time and money matters. I believe in joy and bliss. I believe in loving others and giving them a chance. I believe in fairness m, as in we get what we work for and sometimes we get lucky and receive gifts. I believe in the best in people. I believe we all want similar things.

I have enough examples of people who use their wealth to enjoy life and educate others to have skills to have a better life. I see this all the time at the retreat center where I work. They inspire many people, they inspire me.

Mostly I believe we could all want less from stores and preserve more what comes naturally. I believe we all have choices and each of us has a golden thread that connects us to source. That Creator see us as having intrinsic value and that creatures would like to see what we will make of this life we are living.

I would like to braid a golden thread, going in all directions, Universal filaments connecting the seen and unseen, utilizing whatever bridges I am given to bring more of the love I feel in my heart into the open while thriving and feeling what it is to have.

​From one golden heart to another, big love, big kisses❤️🥰