Don’t be afraid. Go somewhere your phone can’t go, like the water. Spend a day where signals don’t reach. The whole day. You’ll be okay.
Take no pictures. Tell no one what you did. Hold the moment in your heart for yourself. Know you are not alone. Feel the immense power of being invisibily observed and in observation, say nothing. Just feel and do what you love until your heart bursts wide open. Breathe. Hear only breath. I’m swimming in the waters, sun breaking through the surface. I can see my $1 thrift store hot pink flippers, wearing my $10 bikini that wasn’t the right color, so I spray painted it. My hands are breaking the surface towards the light warmth is steaming in to meet me when I realize... That is all.
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It’s March 21, 2011. Like all near human extinction prophecies and mass hysteria movements the fervor and speculation is high.
I’m sitting in a health food restaurant being run by a young bright healthy man I met at a yoga studio in Kauai years before with my best friend Magnolia, member of the last original homestead family registered in the United States, adopted daughter of tribal elder Beaver Chief and author of The Diamond Path: A Guide to the Art of Healing, We overhear behind us, Zeus a self-proclaimed scholar mystical expert on the year 2012. We pause in our own spiritual discussion to listen. Both of us burst out laughing as a reflection of spiritual conversation is revealed to us. Wide eyed and with love in our hearts we both turn and exclaim, “We thought we were crazy! Ha ha you guys sound crazy!” It takes them aback a bit but slowly, when removing the bias that we are all coming from the same place and reviewing conversation, we all begin to laugh. It’s no wonder modern day thinkers and survivors of many a Nostradamus Enquirer covers often dismiss spiritualists as delusional dreamers. I understand this problem, as both a spiritualist and an educated ex-high school teacher, I value research and information but I’ve come to realize that there are some with genuine connection to this planet and Earth COMMUNICATES valuable truths before data is collected. What I think is of value is feeling into fundamental truths about disconnected Earth practices and the footprint of the human beings who live here. Its obvious and would be ridiculous for people to not agree that we live in the age of overconsumption, mass pollution, and obstinate unwillingness to alter our course or direction in accord with these observations. Some attempt to address these concerns politically butting heads with Big Oil companies and corporations making big bucks off of our fast paced throw away society. So, while politicians try to pass land and water laws, spiritualists, naturalists, and healers attempt to tackle the problem of the human condition individually and within communities. As knowing crescendos and the outcome of choices affect all people leading to cancer of spirit, body, and mind, we look to our visions hoping there is a Source of information greater than our own limited vantage point and believing in the ultimate savability of our race. I've been thinking about statistics, observation and prophecy of late. A curious connection tying back into the day in Sedona with my friend Maggie. FUNDAMENTALLY TRUE, as in no data or facts at this time to support a greater understanding but tied into recorded change, is my uneducated but observant story about the future of our planet. In 2012, the Mayan end of calendar year (as with many conjectures) ideas were as varied as there are people. What was said is that in that year there would be an ending to things as we knew it, which to me indicated some kind of shift but we didn't know what. I heard a lot of theories and ideas but I didn't know and, I was really sure after hearing people talking about it, that no one knew the truth either. So, I just waited to see. One of the things that caught my attention during that time, however, was that just like a person who reaches zero point, the planet's internal rhythm was reaching such a high velocity that the vibrational waves were going to overlay on top of themselves and essentially cancel each other out, in essence going so fast it would imperceptibly stop. Zero Point. The rate of speed and frequency at the center of the Earth reached zero point in 2012. (This is not a spiritualist concept. My t.v. watching dad and I compromised on a show about the Universe. A station I agreed to watch because it appeared to contain useful information to which I am now referring. (I obviously watched just to tell you because boobtubing and google searching looks like a room of zombies, or greys, and it freaks me out.). Scientifically speaking the pulse of the earth has a vibration which when measured looks like sound waves. Using this visual, the movement overlapped itself. Zero. Point. Only for a point in time because it all resets and starts to beat to a different rhythm, the original one, like paddles on a heart attack victim or as resuscitation. What would happen after zero point? In the a human body, a restart puts everything into alignment, rebalances, and transforms previous reality into a new reality. Transformation. Also known as near death experiences. Some hopefuls actually believed we would transcend into an overlayed different planet that would appear through the energetic tunnel of all planets lining up but that humans would have a hard time waking up because they live everyday the same instead of seeing sleep as a portal to another dimension and believing in miracles. Their habits and behaviors would continue as if everything was the same. impossible, even under normal circumstances, but that God would put it all back together again perfectly. So, everyone relax, this will only take a second. I loved the concept. It made me laugh. I thought “Well, hell! I’ll take that. Yes, please, so much easier than our small mindedness could ever do!” It reminded me of my mother’s version of Paradise Earth and other concepts of compassionate transformation. It reminded me of Bible stories, like Lot praying for all of the good people on Earth and going into the condemned cities to find the people who loved God in their hearts. All the good people who loved the Earth. All the good people who loved their families. All the people who cherished their lives and gave credit to a Higher Source. In fact, my dad and I were talking over breakfast (because I won the t.v. debate that morning and it was off.) The conversation revolved around global health, population, sustainability, consumerism, and generational differences. We were feeling a little low and unfaithful that things could get better. My mom, because of her faith, is eternally optimistic and while refraining from the conversation was reading the paper listening. This is the time her little eyes popped up over the paper and she said, “Don’t worry guys. Jehovah is gone take over the planet and the Earth will be a paradise.” Now there are many ways to act and respond to this. One is laugh, which is what we did. Two, is say to each other, “Is she serious?” To which we both laugh again because we know she is. Thirdly, with all the love in our hearts my dad, a Vietnam veteran agnostic, and me an ex-Jehovah's Witness disfellowshipped for having sex now retired Shaman yogini who travels the world teaching sexuality, union and divinity courses to those recovering from sexual trauma, repression, lack of information, and disconnection from self/ others both said, in unison, “God, mom! I hope so!!!!” To which we all smiled and laughed again from our deepest hearts. If it can be so, please let it be. Amen. At these pivotal moments, also seen in major disease patients, change of what was transforms into a different state of being. In The Fifth Sacred Thing by Starhawk, this is called el Mundo Bueno. In Native Traditions we call this, The Dreaming. In yoga, Third Eye Contemplation, and, in Christianity, Heaven. It’s a forgetting and a remembering. A deconstructing and reconstructing. Jump start. For example, if a person who has a spiritual awakening or evolves to the crown of their head (Sanskirt terminology for the energy above the head representing devotion akin to Holy Spirit at Pentecost 33 C.E., also the Pine Cone at the Vatican, or the Buddha’s knot), which moves at a high rate of velocity, person will receive grace in order to start over again, differently. I contemplated this and asked what would be different? How would the Earth be after zero point? What I heard was that the poles would shift. How would that go? Instantaneously or slowly over time? Would everything frozen melt and everything liquid would freeze? Made sense, crop rotation for human beings. Well, according to recent studies, the poles have in fact shifted 3%. Something I recently described to my father, a retired Chevron executive, who is not a spiritualist nor did he ever put much faith in Mayan calendars but who does pride himself on facts and statistics. And, yes, he agreed the poles are in fact slowly shifting, he saw it on the Science Channel. According to him, I haven't factoid checked, but scientists agree the poles have slightly shifted. Makes sense in terms of evolution and adaptation. Which leads me to another observation about seasons and cycles. They are off by 2-3 months. In the meantime, I'm listening to conversations about global warming and the fact that things are changing. I'm thinking “Yup!” Latitude and longitude lines are shifting too, that would put us in different climate zones and also adjust our expectations of seasons and grow areas. Winters are starting later and going two months later. I hear the general panic of “Oh, my god! Oh, my god, (A literal cry for many.) something is wrong! It hasn't snowed until January.” Then at the end of the season, I hear, “Oh, my god! Oh, my god! Something is wrong, it is snowing in May.” I start wondering, if we let go of the linear calendar and allow ourselves to observe cycles seasons and changes what we might see as the new norma,l is now two months later which means we would have to leap months. I say this to my sister in law and she suggests, perhaps this is a result of following solar instead of lunar calendars. Also, variation of seasons is also dependent on the angling of the sun. Do do we need a new globe reflecting a 3% shift? We did have to redo maps when continents shifts, why not poles? Perhaps the real problem with current status is the static nature of our current existence, no longer migratory, we are unable to move with our changing planet. Are you saying there is no global warming? It's clear we are in the middle of a dramatic shift. While having breakfast with my friend in Colorado, she is showing me pictures of Venice. I ask her if rising waters are affecting the city. She laughs and tells me the whole city is propped up and caving in on itself. We laugh and say we are mid-way to another Atlantis. Only time will tell. There is, however, a correlation between adjusting norms to cover over unhealthy which is what happened with lab results and the average person. \u0010So many people's levels are in the level of unhealthy that it has been reestablished as the norm. On the other hand, if a person tests normal then they respond to life and environment as being normal. Same thing is happening with our planet. Go back to original, all levels are off. What's right? In shifting times, time is telling the effect of actions. The standards of response can change in order to reflect track now healthy behavior living within parameters of a functioning reality. A good reality. How does it look, act, think, and feel? Do that now. As in, really imagine we are gifted with everything in its purest most crystalline structure. How would we treat and value it the second time around? Do it now. The first time. We are a part of this Earth. She wants us here. We live in her memory past, present, and future. She loves us. She wants us to flourish like the many flowers on her hillside. She wants us to grow, like the many trees reaching skyward. She wants us to enjoy our life, like the dolphin spinning circles over oceanic tides. She wants us to feel inspired and free, like the red tails with their wings spread wide. She put us here as an act of Creation to add to her own beauty. We are beautiful beings, may we touch upon the soul of our many waters, breathe deep clean air, and drink into the deepest cells of earth in us waking upon this planet as Beloveds. I’m visiting my dear friend, a science technology teacher and mother of two. We are in Kings Beach, Lake Tahoe discussing health care, insurance and pharmaceuticals.
Both of our parents are baby boomers and highly prescribed patients. I'm discussing with laughter the strange behavior I’ve observed in my parents in regard to Lipitor, their cholesterol medication. During my my last visit home, I have taken over the shopping for food for the simple reason that when I open the overstuffed fridge there isn’t anything in color. As far as I’m concerned, there isn’t food or room. Styrofoam containers, formaldehyde filled jars, sulfite pressed meat, aspartame, corn syrup, and dairylike substances get thrown away leaving empty shelves. I go to the grocery store, head to two places...protein and the produce section. When I return home with fruits and veggies my dad cries, exclaiming “There is nothing to eat!” “Dad,” I say, “Eat food. Look, Dad, I bought grapefruit. You love grapefruit.” “I can’t eat it anymore.” “Why not?” I ask as I spy the section of bread products I haven’t gotten to yet and see him with an apple fritter poised at his mouth. ”Because,” he says between bites, “ It interferes with my cholesterol medication.” I’m watching him silently, hoping he’ll laugh and see the same irony of high fat in his body, his need for the medicine and his current choice of food intake. He doesn’t and so I do. Laughingly I say, “Dad, are you trying to tell me the people who prescribed the medication said nothing about the donut but prohibited grapefruit consumption? Did it occur to you that if you made healthier choices like the grapefruit to begin with your body would be in better balance and you wouldn’t need the medication?” I see his eyes raise. I look back at amused. ”Dad, a spoonful of lecithin in a smoothie with fruits and color would lower your cholesterol and free you to eat grapefruit again. Plus, you’d lose weight.” He eyes me, takes another fritter bite, “This is easier.” ( Ok ok pause for factoid check. Father: this is filled with hyperbole and Trumpisms😂 Me: Would you like to despite accuracy. F: I would. M: What would you have me say? F: Just make sure they know I love fruit, avoid pain killers at all costs, go to the gym and only eat apple fritters on occasion. M: Ok true. Maybe you are a hybrid of you and mom in this story. F: Now that’s true. M: So for the record, my pops is one bad ass ex Vietnam vet who goes to the gym and has biceps like my thighs. He taught me everything about using my body and interfacing with the physical world. Thanks, dad. Love you. Also this scenario is true😂) Paula and I sitting in the living room in Tahoe laugh. Listing out strange baby boomer stories such as in-house reverse osmosis water filters and reusable bottles unused but plastic bottles in the fridge. She holds up a book she’s reading, “Zonia, you’d love this book.” Its called Functional Medicine and it’s written by doctors who are freeing themselves from the tyranny of insurance companies and big pharmaceuticals in order to actually heal people of lies and false information. The main tier dedicated to a very important fundamental truth, diet and lifestyle matter. I hold back the urge here to shout, “Duh!” and instead focus on the language and vocabulary to communicate these basic concepts to the masses. I’ll use whatever words people want me to, how do we learn to speak truth in the medical community. Meaning someone is heavily obese with 30 pounds of weight pulling the spine forward and complaining about back pain. Honesty. I have actually said this to people. The weight of your belly is pulling your spine forward. If you want the pain to diminish you, have to lose weight. Common practice now, pain killers. How about personal accountability and radical truth speaking from those whose opinions people trust? This is the premise of Functional Medicine, a restructuring of the health prescription of doctors. In this example, a doctor, instead of prescribing pain pills would write a prescription to a dietician and exercise specialist. Radical honesty. A patient instead of saying what they know they should actually eat, would have no other choice but to eat that way to eliminate pain and, instead of sitting on the couch watching t.v. while their psoas shortens and pulls the skeleton inciting sciatica, would actually go for a walk. Bureau of Land Management is the conservancy organization that has bought and maintained for the people the right to camp by the Yuba River.
I’m at the trailhead contemplating this and remember that my friend from Kansas, a hunter and financial advisor, has told me it’s one of the groups he volunteers to work with. I’m standing at the sign with my friend from San Francisco, who travels 4-6 hours depending on the day, to find refuge from the City and be able to find silence, sanctuary, and hear the voice of the waters. It's possible because the land is not privately owned. It’s a group of people who buy the land for people. I’m thinking this when we see a different sign saying one of the beaches is closed because this particular area is owned privately and that access is granted all year except once a year they like to allow contributors to come for a weekend undisturbed and experience what it is they have saved, refuge for so many. They have made this section available to others for 362 days a year. I’m thinking about this when I am invited to the California Waterfowl Orgnaizations dinner. Their mission is to preserve waterways so that waterfowl populations have the opportunity to flourish in a healthy environment and, to prevent population explosion and the tradition of being able to feed self and family continues, they offer permits to acquire your own food and that is also why they are proponents of moderate gun laws. My friend looks at me and asks what I think. I tell him the story of an intuitive healer in Kauai who during my raw fooding days, offered me a session. When I entered he was in a trance. As I sat down he recited my entire lineage, akin to blood type eating, a reasonable book written about eating according to where our relatives were born. (I.e. most Mexicans are gluten intolerant because their ancestors ate corn. Most Europeans do best with artisan breads and wheat because they were not introduced to corn until migration to the New World) After his recitation the healer opened his eyes and asked me a question that evoked a very strong vision. He asked, “What did your ancestors know about the cycle of life that you do not?” I immediately saw an animal whose life had been taken merged energetically with a native person who was deep in gratitude prayer for the body of the animal and who sat in communion with the spirit of the animal. This I weighed inside of my raw vegetarian yogini body. Within the next 10 years I will meet many yogis suffering from autoimmune disorders and suggest they eat food rather than supplementation and imported goods. Soon after, the paleo diets will emerge as aides to immunity and also as elimination diets similar to going raw or vegan but addressing body chemistry and allegic response to sources of food, not meat or vegetable. This being the foundational level to what is called the Functional Medicine Pyramid, meaning that at the basis of health is diet and lifestyle. Side note about diet and lifestyle, in trying to find the cause of disease one must address and eliminate food sources and add in ones that will support the body’s necessary healing. Meaning humans love to over correct and be extreme. Sometimes we must visit the other extreme in order to integrate and balance. All that being said, I tell him one of my best friends, roommates of 8 years, and hunter used to tell me, as he said, “hippie ass” hunters love animals and the environment more than the average person because they understand directly the life cycle, seasons, and migrations. They observed more quickly population and environmental changes and then, key point, joined together to make measures that would help to fix the problems. Of course, I know many a river guide, farmer, ecologist who could say the same. All in all I agree that anyone spending life and revolving it around nature will know a thing or two about what is happening and what is needed. So, when my friend asks me, what do you think, about the Waterfowl Conservancy, I tell him, “ It makes sense to me.” I then commence to listen, learn, integrate and ask, where is the confusion? We are all wanting to protect the sacred elements of earth, our right to food, water, and a sustainable life for the future. So, why aren’t we working together? I joke, then we’d have organic salads and vegetables to go with the truly free range protein. A metaphor for two peoples coming together in health on one plate. I believe at the core of all beings, despite color, race or creed, that all beings want beauty in the world and they want it for their families. What I learned most clearly from this conservancy group is a pooling of resources and a passing around of them so they have more to invest in order to preserve a lifestyle and everything they hold dear. I saw generous land donations from donors who, when given first choice of prizes, chooses a simple cooler. His humility astounds many who beam in admiration. I see as magically the man who donates all the wines is rewarded with raffle wins. Also, people beam about spirit rewarding those who give. I see conservancy efforts that have representatives who teach living generously, preserving and protecting a way of life that will preserve future generations and allow them to flourish. Education programs. My friend then asks about my Kewa bracelet’s images of rain cloud and corn stalk. I tell him it is the basic teaching of land cultivators: Protect the seed. Protect the water. We will always have life. Simple. We are the same, I tell him only we are using the plant world as our guides. We are speaking the same concepts but using different languages so that understanding is shrouded in arrogance and vocabulary. What would happen if we spoke to each other non-reactively, instead of focusing on political objectives? What if we worked soul to soul, people to people instead of corporation to money resource? You know, human to human? As a united group who needs the Earth to survive. Leave the corporations and their monetary agenda out of it. I clearly saw the “boys club,” I’ll admit deservingly patting each other on the backs for accomplishments. Mostly, I saw friends, people who praised and expressed gratitude to one another, I saw people who put their money where their mouth is and who banded together to actively educate, pass laws, and keep expanding their vision of food, land and water. I saw people who involved themselves by donating time as volunteers for the world. It it made me think of what would happen if the best of both groups balanced each other out and actually learned to communicate more clearly? What if the spiritualists, artists, healers of Earth typically democratic and standing for the common people, joined forces with the values, resources, and activities in place to increase knowledge and formulate ways we could eat salad and have meat at the same table. Be what Republicans deem self initiators and creators. Rebellions like in the Fifth Sacred Thing where we broke concrete removed the separation people feel because of the two inches between them and soil and used the land to plant seeds and direct the waters towards shifting planetary conditions, as in, if there is a drought in California, plant the foods of the desert. What if the family values were shared so that one group’s educated powerhouse women who stand by supporting their Kings who treat them like Queens, “ruling class” met with the humanities filmmakers performers arts music Earth mommas whose soft hearts and focus on enriching the human condition led to healthy husbands and children active bodies healthy hearts and peaceful minds who could return to natural states? Perhaps, I thought, in this pivotal time in history determined to heal cancer separation and misunderstandings we could make the ECOLOGICAL ideals more important than false anythings. Having travelled into what one might assume on the outside is so different from me, although I consider myself to be an apolitical futurist omnivore who is striving for the simple life with the efficiency of linear clarity and resources to help my community with a desire to promote inherent connection to spirit, Earth, and humanity (seeing we are essentially the same), I am happy to announce the following: I’ve been into the heart of “other,” it’s not my first time. I am a witness to something greater than myself and my limited viewpoint. I am a clear channel and I am happy to observe: There are beautiful loving kind people everywhere. This group resembles the teaching of my native elders, many are in fact older and wondering how to influence their children’s generation and knowing the mid-generation has dwindled in skills, now working towards influencing a younger generation to retain those skills. Respectful clearly defined males and females working together in a smooth family dynamic for the children by lifting up both the men and giving appreciation for the women. I see dedication to the Earth, it’s cycles and the animal kingdom. I see kind actions and political worth. I see resolutions and commitments. I see substantial donations of time resources and support for those spearheading the work. I see men who love their families and women. I see women who influence the men so that one man chooses a purse over a gun and declares that’s how I’ve been married for 40 years! We all laugh in appreciation. I see people willing to look at darker aspects of humanity, to serve, and be devoted to callings. I see rites of passage for youth to be strong, resourceful and sustainable. I see a desire to contribute to animal population growth. I see concern for their habitats and understand the freedom held in guns to acquire food from animals they use all of including hides. I see men willing to do the hard work for the women. I see children exposed to life skills learning self worth and the ability to sustain life. I see wives who are loved. I see power couples fully appreciated cared for respected, who stand side by side lifting each other up trusting in the others abilities and strengths of equal worth. My perception shifts into one of inspired action. I see many good people. I see what is really needed to unite the planet is cross translators versed in heart languages able to convey English dialects through linking vocabulary so it makes sense. Direct translation of English does not work. Native tongues symbology mythology and their dialects must be corrected because the syntax doesn’t make sense and even if we are all speaking the same language there is mass global confusion. It's quite ridiculous. It’s happening, this miscommunication of values. So I ask the leaders, what would happen if we devoted ourselves to truth righteousness and rebirthed our species, busted out of age old concepts and into Universal wisdom? As in, believe in God, act like it, imagine that connection extends to all people, and make miracles happen. Together. What would that look like? Financial Mastery. EntrepreneurialSpirits. Spiritual Devotion. Family Values. Self Edification. Conservancy Efforts. Heartfelt Communication. Commitment to preservation. Mutual respect. Most importantly absolute focus on what we LOVE. Real healing is requesting GOD to remove blocks to understanding where we are all coming from and where we would like to go. Where would I like to go from here? Volunteering for greater communities with systems already in place. How can I serve causes I believe in? Beyond myself and my household, how can I band together and be a bridge of understanding? How can I find the commonality in all people and transcend perceived differences? I am asking when a woman approaches me. She’s Native American. Her last name is Lucero. We are cousins. Linked. It makes sense. Conservancy in action. Waking over the bridges that have been built. Information sharing. Ending addiction overconsumption of food and alcohol obesity and dominion, tempered with simplicity moderation compassion. Ending passivity, poverty, infusing passion for ideals and actively seeking abundance all brought together as conservancy in action for the benefit of all life. Yes, please, Universe. I am ready. How can it get better than this? Zonia?
Si. Tell the story from here. It is the story of adoption and love that is stronger than blood relations. It is the story of discovering closeness that is greater than ourselves. It is the story of hearts and it is one of my greatest teachers on how to love others as your own family because they are by choice and you hold them with spirit stronger than sangre. They are your grandparents who adopted your mother who flew to your grandmother’s bedside when she had cancer. It is the story about how I learned to stop everything by watching my mother hold the hand of the woman who raised my little mom by walking to the store befriending all she met and fed us Lucky Charms, and cooked my grandfather meals. My Grandfather who loved my mother, who loved me, who loved my brother Robbie...Bobby❣️My brother who was adopted by my father, brother who gave life to my nephews, birthed out of their mother, who is my sister despite 14 years of divorce because her children are my sons. One of which looks like my mother’s first husband, who I know as my brother's dad, though our father is shared. It is the story of my great grandmother whose daughter was pregnant with baby seven, my mother, who was adopted by my grandmother Carmen, who was adopted by Panchita, the midwife, who took in all the village kids, who had no family, because she loved children, everyone’s. The woman I thought adopted my grandma is actually my real great grandma and my mom came from her daughter. My great great grandmother was a Tarahumara. Her husband was teaching in her village and fell in love with her. I am so thankful we are together as one familia. Gracias por mi vida. It is the story of my grandfather, unable to have children with his wife, who worked, loved, and looked at his first just born great grandson and never once conveyed separateness. The photo in my mind pure joy. And this one grows up to clickety clack his shoes like my grampy and keeps all our favorite things about cardigan dressing alive. And my aunt...also adopted bore me cousin from grandma but not grandpa. Well, she is also beginning her story again. So, we all say hey! I choose you family. It’s ok. We all are rag tag bunch of other people's, now ours, to love and to cherish. We call it belonging and hold together the glue of family. We blob tag along, hinging arms. "Family, I chose you. Love connects us all together." All of this hits me as I land from Maui after flying to lay next to my "sister" friend with ALS and helping my best friend of 17 years who is my family, whose family is my family. Together we visit his real father who did not raise him, is now alone in a elderly home but who set up altars for his son to yoga and self-realization to explain to my friend who he is spiritually inside forever devoted to yoga so he can be the man his adopted father who raised him wants him to be, and his mother who is both mother and father enabled him to become loving, kind, peaceful, generous, willing, forgiving, beautiful, happy, and healthy. I realize, there are no stories. Only meaning. The ones that mean the most we put in the center of our hearts where they guide us through anything that would dare to take away the love our family has for my lovely grandparents who, childless, were praying for a baby when they met Eli, pregnant with little Carmen, my 4’11” mother. Wonder of wonders, when my brother says, "Who do we belong to?" I tell my mom who tells me, "You belong to me!!!" And then I realize, we all belong to everyone. So true, Theresa. So true, Saint Mother. So true. I awaken at sunrise. Walk to my shell with cedar, sandalwood, bay, palo santo offerings. I watch the smoke rise, light a candle, sit on my knees, and lift the mala gifted to me by a beautiful being who visited at Mar de Jade in Mexico.
108 times. The Adi Mantra: Om Namo Guru Dev Namo. I am moving from medicine ways back to yogic practices of breath as my Creator, the Great Spirit, that moves me, that moves all things. I remember this being the first information I learned as a child, that God was the spirit of the breath breathing us alive and causing us to become. I pray to that force for universal insights and ask for the highest source of wisdom. Adi Mantra: “I bow to the All-That-Is. I bow to the Divine Wisdom within myself.” The chanting leads me into my deepest heart and to the Golden Chain of teachers through whom I am linked by the energy of generations of beings who also were seeking union. I channel in spoken words: Praying outloud requires us to listen to our own words as they are being spoken and decipher if they are being spoken from a place of truth or from route words that have been deposited in our minds through various mediums, even good ones. In the secret places of our hearts is what is called the cave of Buddha. The cave of Buddha is our truest most authentic self and it sits in the very center of our heart, said to be the 5th chamber. It is our soul connection. It is our Earth connection. It is our connection to both adopted and blood family. Most importantly at the center of the Buddha heart is the electromagnetic pulse that is the Source of Creation. Intelligent, responsive, at the heart of all cellular structure in all beings seen and unseen at a vibration of Universal caring, attention, a conscious being sitting steadfastly in silence as the black matter that encompasses the entire Universe in its own heart. What are this Being's desires for its own creation? What play would it have us enact that allows us to transcend the dual nature of both light and dark aspects of both Creator and Destroyer? Good and evil is a topic of discussion since time immemorial, but within us was implanted the seed of Ultimate Destiny, of peace, love, unity. Like the sifting of flour in the sieve to remove impurities we must first bring them to the light and be willing to look at them. Those little clumps, imperfections based on false premises, implanted ideas, and traumatic events that need to be dissolved so there is no barrier between our highest, truest Soul Self and the outpouring of Holy Spirit, Mana, Awen, Qi. Functioning from this higher level we see ourselves as whole and healed. Free from the need for (as in addiction to) medicine, we sense inside of our healthy selves an elevated state reached through the mediums of divine worship, concentration on our highest qualities and longing for what is described in the Bible as the fruitage of the spirit, (love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faith, mildness, and self-control), bestowed upon those who, in earnest and for no reason other than knowledge and wisdom, recognize there is an operating system that was put in place long before our physical birth, and a desire to help it run smoothly as all other things in the Universe do. "Just as a tree will bear fruit when it is properly tended, so a person will manifest the fruitage of the spirit when holy spirit flows freely in his life."—Ps. 1:1-3. Human beings have been endowed with a beautiful gift of freedom to choose a value system that clearly denotes what our purpose for embodiment is. As spiritual beings functioning at a human level, the goal of Jaccob's ladder or the effort of any practice you choose, be it singing, dancing, gardening, yoga, mediation, writing, film-making, raising a family, devotion to the Beloved, path of prayer, the list is endless for the ways that there are, as Rumi says, to kiss this ground. The intention behind why we do what we do is the value system and at the end of our life will be an accumulation of evidence supporting what we know to be true living with Soul essence or to the contrary in which case we have lived a life unable to connect our base desires with what we know to be true for ourselves, in which case we have not met our soul mission which is to align our physical bodies with what our Spiritual bodies know is the path of health, truth, and beauty. To be sure, all things contain God. It is impossible to be in existence without this functioning at a core level. Acknowledgment of God and surrender to divine force is a different matter. At times, due to environment, imagery, and false teachings, we develop addiction and appetite for ourselves and the path of endless pleasure, also known as hedonism. It is a study. There is wisdom in knowing the path of excess, as Enigma, calls it. There are other paths. The study of Tantra is the study of how to bring pleasure, joy, passion, beauty, love, and relationship into alignment with our personal truth and devotion to a higher calling that is the harnessing of energy in the world that is directly around us as a result of that which we meditate upon silently and quietly in our own private homes and spaces. This we may keep private and secret from others, but it is always seen and known. The meditations of our heart are heard because at the center of our heart is our Soul and in our Soul's heart is our seed of connection to the Grand Master. What part do you wish to play as the Grand Master comes to know and display all infinite aspects of personality and their ramifications and blessings. There are differences in qualities of life. What is the quality of life you seek? In seeking that quality of life do you maintain your connection to the Earth? Do you connect to the divine source of wisdom? Do you take care of your body? Do you elevate you mind and thoughts through self-development? Do you feed your spirit? Do you nourish your connection to God? This is what Ghandi called, "spiritual resistance" and Krishnamurti reminded us "it is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." Being a force of health in a sick society, however, can help to be a beacon of light and hope. We are not victims. We are greater than our own limited thoughts. So,though we may not understand the course of events, and though those course of events may appear to be on a collision course, we must always remember, this Earth, this Solar System, this Galaxy, this Universe is functioning at a perfectly, mathematically, precise level. If we surrender to our dharma, our calling, then we will know we came here as Souls to manifest our collective Ultimate Reality, which is beyond any of our imaginings. We are allowed, invited, blessed to have the most beautiful life we can and to cultivate compassion for our fellow human beings so they also can prosper. enjoy life, and learn to have courage in order to change the structures, habits. and addictions to either stories and behaviors that are negatively impacting the quality of life being lived. My prayer this morning is for all of us to recognize our inherent connection and to utilize that inherent connection to add more positivity, light, peace, trust in the Great Spirit who breathed us all to life. May that final projection of our Ultimate Destiny be maintained clearly so that we have extraordinary reason for praise and thanksgiving. On this day, I circle the air with my red tail hawk feathers, collecting all my selves from all times and places choosing the stories of my life that reflection of love for other myself and those moments in time that have been unequivocal synchronistic guarantees that my life, that all of our lives, are precious. I invite all Beings to continue on their own path to wholeness, not getting stuck in one aspect of our personality, but continuing to evolve shift and change as age and experience naturally give rise to. On this day, to all of my loved ones, past, present, and future, I send a heart song. May we all vibrate with the Universe in conjunction with those here to assist us and our survival, not only now in the physical realm, but also as we transcend and complete our Earth mission. May we be welcomed with open arms with those who love and appreciate the beauty we contributed to society in whatever way we could conceive on those perfect days that caused us to become aware that the choices and value systems we hold inside like prayer bundles matter so much more than we can ever realize but certainly can celebrate. Before I can begin to finish this route that took me through the states down to Mexico, before I can finish one blog, before I can land fully at my new home where my ex is now remarrying, and my former ex and I converge, while I fall deeply in love with my boyfriend and learn to softly swirl in the pool love has prepared me to swim, I pause to reflect on memories-recollections of life as it is and as it is going.
That none of it was planned orchestrated or organized, if anything I have merely beep beeped along this road of life and taken it for its challenges and many great blessings. There are many ways and meetings that come from Source energy higher functioning soul and passively accepting so that all I can say is life in all its ways is perfect. Gratitude for unexpected reunions and unity. How much we feel into it’s perfection depends on our ability to let go of what was into what is for us now in this place for reasons we may or may not understand for questions to be answered with experience to guide our way along routes we would not take or perhaps are so far down that it’s time to circle back to beginnings. Birth and rebirth. Children running in fields and best friends that giggle swing sets for hours of observation and play hoola dance around make a little love ok a lot of love and spread joy friendship and truth in the end it isn’t about the sex it’s about feeling in the end it isn’t about position or prowess although the more you love the life you’ve lived and know how to follow your spirit to the beach where breath meets breath and sun rises nap on native blankets walk. Keep walking don’t get caught up your whole life will be an orgasm. There’s a blank spaciousness opening around your heart, it’s infinite. Zonia? Yes? Ask me a question. I’ll tell you no answers. All I have is the path of tears hope trust love that has laid itself out in front of me and I follow. I don’t know where it’s going but it feels like the past and the future dna chain spirals together it’s the link to those who lead and have past and those who follow born again What day is it? The best day. Do you know how to live it? The same way you live everyday. With prayer eyes open to the quietude of heart floating sweetness and ease. And laughter follow the laughter it’s the path that leads you to happy homelands your true friends and a place you know that knows you back. All your life path all you do feel think sense it flows into one love...the one that brought you here...the one to which you return...pranayama moons and stars constellations and chariot rides. The spirit horses that ride gliding like sail boats and tree swings to golden rays and your own heart settles in the dust like prairie skirts and wide open skies. Manifestation of love’s power on your behalf. What does it want for you? The things you can not voice that live deep in the valley that hums a little ditty that reverberates collar bone skull and heart pulsing electrical to connect you with the cellular breath that is God directing us connecting us whole. Helloooo! Hello! or, as my mom said today on the phone at varying octaves and pitches, "HiiiiiiiiiIIIIiiiiiii!"
Ha ha ha! Why? I don't know because she's nutty and she's one of the funniest ladies I know. She is also a gypsey artistic soul who, from recent ancestry DNA data, comes primarily from the Iberian Peninsula. Northern Spain. Which is where I was told my maternal grandfathers family originated. Only one surprise...none of the 200 ancestors my mother built on her tree came up matches confirming a story told by a great aunt who meanly said my mother was adopted. The relatives I knew were bull fighters and flamenco dancers all around performers who, blood or not, influenced my mother, which is why when my mother tells me she needs a trainer to help her exercise, I tell her she just needs an audience because then she naturally does wacky dances and moves around showing off. No shame. Biggest smile. Loving the attention. Gypsies who came across the ocean. They were caravan, crystal ball, jingle jangling, people who dematerialize and materialized reality and lived free in their soul. I am 28% and live the gypsey road. I still have to get myself a pair of flamenco shoes and build a wooden platform so I can practice perfect rhythmic measure (using one of those note measurer thingies...metronome?) Perfect rhythm is the basis of flamenco. Rhythm...wouldn't it be amazing if I could channel my brother who has it naturally, drumming the sound of clocks on his leg by age 8. I tell him he embodies rhythm and wish I could awaken my own genetic code because it is essentially the same! He's my brother, why not!? We are the same ancestry! In fact, genetic results are so impossible to deny that I, living in California traveling for work to Mexico crossing 8 state-lines turned in my saliva test and received them yesterday as I drove in from Salt Lake City, Utah (Pull right behind my sister, also gypsey Romanian blood, who came from Fernley, Nevada in her RV and magically arrived here Grass Valley, CA at EXACTLY THE SAME TIME) turned in my test and my mother living in El Paso, Texas turned her's in days before me and the results passed through the web and sent me a picture of who else? My mother! Same thing with my first cousin! Yup! That's my cousin! Wow! They said given all the results and our database, this woman is my mother and I said, Hey! She is! So this must be that accurate and true. Including all the magic it took for relatives to cross paths make babies and magically, I am here! In time, I will discover the rest of our family stories from different perspectives. Why? Because its nice to know what happened to all your relatives along the way, especially according to COCO the movie who reinforces what we all know, telling family stories keep relatives alive! So, to all my family alive now or in another time in place! Helllllooo!!! By blood, by birth, by place, by story, we talk story a lot. Talking story is the number one past time. Which stories define us and are the place from which we began, are shared life experiences. I was talking to the daughter of one of my friends and she told me she didn't really know why she came home when her mother was sick and needed help. She told me, "I now see she is doing fine and I don't know why I am here. She doesn't need me anymore." I said, "Well, yeah, the only reason we are given choice is because it builds a value system inside of us. A value system is built by specific stories and real life experiences. They aren't projections or imaginings, they are a pattern you can see in your life about what really matters to you and your lineage. For example, when I was 14 my family lived in Pleasanton, CA. My Dad had the choice of supporting my mother who wanted to go and take care of her mother who had bone and breast cancer or clinging to his career. She wanted to move our life to Texas and devote herself to her mother. Carmen Martos Olguin. . She died when she was 63. I was 14. My father's decision was to relocate us and put family values of honoring elders first. When we got there I had the decision to go along with my mother and father's value system or to create my own. I wish I could say that I naturally arrived at the choice of caring for the aged and dying, but at 14, I I decided to get caught up in my own drama and focus on suffering pain and addiction. Its possible that it was in response to my first experience with death, but instead of serving those who loved and raised us, I decided to struggle with a cocaine addiction. My road was short and deep. I overdosed by 16, had a heart attack. That's the memory I have, which I may or may not have been constructed in my mind in response to the "Hospital Halucination Incident," induced by cocaine and too much acid. If my high school friend who was there would ever get really deep and serious with me, I have a lot of unanswered questions from that night. Did I masturbate with that puppy? (Who admits to that, let alone writes that?!) Ha ha Did those guys finally get me to take off my clothes by repeatedly chanting hot hot hot? Until I said, yeah, I'm hot (As in burning up.) until I took off my clothes? Power of suggestion is really strong even if you do understand what is happening. I remember trying to understand but at one point it sunk into me and overtook me. Then, I remember blurbs in and out. I don't know if my memory is exactly what really happened but I do remember that throughout the night I was having to make decisions regarding running out of time and looking for someone. It was very important that I find this person. It was really, really, really important. Even the next day, the second day during which the acid had not worn off. Half a tab made our friend want to rip his skin off, I did two and was trying to find God. At one point I remember not caring. I remember being dead. That's what I remember. I remember being dead and being rolled through the hospital on a gurney. I can still hear the clinking of the wheels as it passed over the metal strip between granite tiles. I remember the fluorescent lights and see the variation of light and dark as we rolled under them and they passed over me from the ceiling. I remember looking over into the waiting room where I saw my mom and dad in anguish. My parents love me and each other so much and this part of the vision is clearly telling me what a great great tragedy it would have been for them and my whole family if I had not decided to live that day. What kept me here though, was not the love of my family. Actually I passed through with non-attachment and entered into another room at the end of the hall. I don't know what I was expecting, liberation? The actual experience was Universal sorrow. It was soooo sad in there and all I could think as, "Oh, my God, how can I create so much pain and suffering in the world?" I then felt hands putting me back in my body. I felt myself being put back into my own heart, my own body, and my own brainwaves. Family value systems so strong that they transcend choice, so that, in essence, every other choice decision moment such as this one is for my ancestors. This is a major visionary moment of change in choice for me. Ha ha. So marked is the difference that my parents say that is when the aliens, who took my brain away, finally brought it back. I did have a marked change in my behavior after that incident. I became more interested in bringing love and light into the lives of others, not only my family, but also to the people I met along the way. Choices. It came down to choices. At that time I remember relinquishing my power to choose anything other than the very simplistic rituals of daily living because everything in this Universe moves according to a very specific plan and is perfectly orchestrated. It was clear to me that life lessons would be hard teachers if I didn't choose divine direction. Scientists can predict everything in celestial bodies, the rotation of stars and the birth of supernovas. A Source of Organization and Creation is so great that, though our simple limited eyes may look at Orion's belt and see three stars, through the lens of a telescope we can see a supernova birthing. We see only one star on the left, but it's actually three and they are light years apart. It is awe inspiring to contemplate the Universe. It is grand and magnificent. It is impossible to comprehend the enormity of space but we can contemplate the intricate plans, like gears inside of a watch, all working together to capture time, which is the origination of space, and choose to allow everything to fall perfectly into place. I don't know what Creator God is but I choose to be led by that awesome force. The other day I used the word Source and someone asked me, "Is that what you call God?" "I don't have a specific name for that and none of the names offend me." What I perceive is a force present in everything. I feel it especially at the center of the fire pit and the sun. Especially in those two forces do I feel the power of a creator spirit. I consider them at dawn and dusk and wonder at their meticulous orientation and the existence of both. Their greatest power is in observing the day and in realizing another day has come and gone and no one person did anything to make any of it happen. Even the opening of your eyes in the morning is involuntary, as was your breath, digestion and motor skills. All functioning on perfect nerve endings firing via the spinal column through vertebrae and every pathway of skin. A Central Intelligence that knows how to put us all in the right place at exactly the right time, happy coincidences. This is know as "Going in the way for you." and leads to the happiest, healthiest version of yourself. I am testing at 40% Native American New Mexico Southwest to Northern Chihuahua. Through this I connect to my father's ancestry and remember a grandfather who travelled north through Colorado and across the states to California, which is where I live. I followed the way for me and it ended up being the way of my ancestors. Value system. My father's choice when I was 14 informed my value system when his mother got sick and I returned to Texas at 36 to help take care of her. The seed of family ancestry. As in how you train the next generation to preserve the values, the seed of beliefs that affect actions. For my family the seed of ancestry is love of our grandparents, the elders. We really love our grandparents and we hear stories about them all the time. We talk story about them constantly and laugh. We hear the same story 15 times and it still bring us close to them. Sometimes people loop. "Mom, you told me that already." "I don't want you to forget." Its important to listen. Its important to remember. Through time we can see the spiral around a topic and see the theme that is the road to healthy behaviors and defining relationships. Choices. Ultimate trust in a governing guidance system. Creator God, What is the way for me? Show me. Give courage to follow it down gypsey roads and unknown routes. My choice, my choice is for your existence. Allow me to show the world what miracles are possible when we stop trying to orchestrate flow of nature and instead, honor those who came before us, who followed oceans wanderings and merged blood to create me blood bone and soul. Put it all in order through my choice, and will, to be governed, directed, guided to the place where I am meant to grow and tell stories of remembrance. This is a poem. I wrote it starting from the back of a journal forward one poem per day. Wyrd it makes sense forward, like life lived in reverse:
EGO mind can not heal itself—silly monkeys. Get out of your own way. Side step then slide along visions into feeling the deepest part of heart where dreams and memory reside. Let Spirit enter the field and follow the energy to the place where the greatest healing is needed. Zonia? Si! Remember, you said yes. I did! To what?🙄 An agreement. Yes, I remember but the question was vague. Remind me of the context. Too late! You already said ,yes. I did...so whatever the question...I agree with your directions. I agree. Whatever it was you asked of me, the answer is yes. Zonia? Will you? Yes. See...It’s like that this life I’m living. So, with my life in the greater hands of Universe, I go to the beach draw a spiral in the sand and tell Love it’s in charge Aphrodite arrives in all her costumes and many faces. They wear sparkles, rainbow colors, bhindis, flowy dresses and harem pants. They smile, giggle, dance in the sand, sing, praise, and pray like I do at night when the guests have gone or are sleeping. And though the outer ring is my home the inner circle is spiraling through all the places I’ve lived and people I know connecting stars in the sky and together we awaken to what we sometimes forget the very places where we hide is what spirit will ask us to Dis-play. As in life is a stage and dis de play of how we all come back together—find your monkey hands. As in, Hi Monkey Friend, wanna hold hands? My heart is open, so soft. Melt into it. I'll hold you. How long before you feel held? How long before you let go into and release everything you hold onto? What if the very things you love and protect are keeping more love from entering? The walls-the barriors-the divisions-the us and them that stand between me and you... I quiver at the vulnerable state of EXPOSED and left wide OPEN. Easy target for arrows. Unprotected. Let the arrows fly. Arms wide. Send them into me, pierce my heart that I may bleed for the Earth Mother, Sacred Heart. Relinquish victim mentality and stories of why it is OUR RIGHT to cause suffering or else swim lost in the past when the PRESENT is the place for dreaming a new future. Life circles and flows in on the SEED OF REMEMBRANCE. I remember when love was all we needed and Earth Mother provided beauty in abundance. A WELL SPRING OF DIVINE FLOW A RIVER RUNNING THROUGH IT. It? Your heart. This is my home--CORAZON in the jungle SANCTUARY tucked away. Blow the conch in your humble heart, tend the fire, dance your temple dance to all the people of this land, honor and pray for ASSISTANCE, To take in and morph with love the heaven inside us sings choruses like angels to vibrate the field of connectivitiy KNOWING UNIVERSAL CONCEPTS flow freely. Symbology-mythology- no, says Tony, LEGENDS. The key to the MAP OF CONSTELLATIONS star beings on spaceship traversing the GALAXY towards our beginning is where all things end. END CONFLICT on LOVE MAKE AGREEMENTS start today tolove people and places more than things. Are you hiding in the jungle, Zonia? No...I dont' know...maybe...a little. Resting. Recovery. Recentering. TOTALLY ALIGNING with NATURE. My nature and the natural flow of things as they exist in space. Time is a loop closing in on itself. Hiding? Escaping consuming technology and need. Trusting land and spirit that brought me here to heal the hearts I pray for UNIFICATION and PEACE a return to meaning. Out of the hold of infinite want is the palce of PURE CONTENTMENT. LOVE REIGNS here in my heart is the HAND OF GOD at work. How can I trust more? Serve the children in the truest way I can. Eye to eye. Heart to heart. We pray to God. God's little children bow heads to the ground and mother hears them and her helpers rise to meet us as the angels descend and interdimensional beings step forward. Prayer to a HIGHER POWER. Elevate my thoughts to SPIRIT CONNECTION. Multi-layered. Multi-dimensional. Help me see the love you are that exists inside and everywhere may it blossom and flower. Muchas Gracias. Bienvenidos. A grateful welcoming spirit as in OPEN TO RECIEVE the truth of people OPEN TO ACCEPT your BEINGNESS. Your presence is LIFE ALTERING because you are not just here but EVERYWHERE all at once and you know where people are COMING FROM and WHERE THEY ARE GOING. It's not the same place. It's not linear but is is COLLECTIVE. Collect together the CONSCIOUSNESS of you and fill it with your life of understanding and compassion. Quan Yin feminine recepticle touch lightly. Let them rise to meet you at the center watching then stop and turn all your stones over to the ultimate knower above all time and place from a HIGHER PLANE OF EXISTENCE. The flower has many petals each with their own texture and fragrance attached to stem it roots down to Earth in the ground squirmies and crawlies loosen soil for nurtients to nourish and the seed reaches for light rain falls a collection of evaporated ocean drops whale song dolphin play. Rainbow lit clouds that bless us with WATER BIRD angel and currents taht dance back and forth. Bird wing to running jaguar mergin SOURCE connects us to ONE EARTH MOTHER BEATING STEADFAST. Hit the drum at the center of fire is prayer and contract within to deepest lave flowing magma. Volcanic planet. Vapors. Waters. Life. Mermaid dreams sunlight shafts from teh dpets we crave to land where seeds sprouts and oxygen breathes us alive. We see stars rotating planets RISE AND FALL constellations BIRTH Orion rides Pegasus towards horizon night sky. We dream with moons and tides. Push and pull until we have stretched contracted back to still center creation creator ORIGIINATION SINGULARITY pulse parts and particles collide coalesce and you are in the spaces between waiting listening watching. Stop obsessing about other. In this moment there is only you, saves, crickets and darkness. Find the space between worlds words are not the way feeling is the only ally it drops you down to your feet. Walk. From here to there. Don’t look around to know if you have been observed or walk in a way to be noticed. It is merely TRANSPORTATION but enjoy the sultry journey. Soon I'll be in other palces with other people and what path will I take? Home is where you long for the sounds rhythm of life. You love all its parts like lover you laugh to take it all in and struggle to let go the psyche dwells on lives that aren't yours. Your life is the one you claim and only your heart knows words don't explain verses and love knows the way. Diosita, Madre. Mia. Love. Expect to be loved. Find your power in CONTENTEDNESS as in enough. Be wise enough to see who is manipulating you for money and then got he way of Love. see with SPIRITUAL EYES. They see not the exterior but the actions of the embrace genuinine SOUL. Be held in love and love holds you clsoe enough to comfort you. Deepest ease. Rest. Diosita, teach me how to hold people softly so they can surrender tot he love that is here. Lo siento, sometimes fucked up shit happens but we are also blessed, gifted, spiral beyond memory to know the greatest presence is the gift of our true selves as in heart to heart, it is nice to know you. Diosita, how can I have more love for the yogini festival goddesses whose dopplegangers intimidated my little girl soft spirit who ran to the jungle for peace and anonimity? Triggered. I do love them and adore their beautiful hearts. Soften. Relax. It's not them. It's me. Well--maybe both. Two ends of circles closing in. Trust more. Hold softer. They will allow themselves to be held. Letting go into the love that is surrounding us. Dissolving barriors. Question being: Did I not say I wish to be a part of? Only if I can still retain my soft center. Softly enjoying youth beauty and the feminine to share gifts without fear. Zonia? Si! Do you as a Goddess still have moments of insecurity? I know so many that do. Dolli says in those moments she closes her eyes and focuses on her center. There she finds the love for what she does and she SINGS because she loves it. So loving to her soul self to not withhold her gift in any way not from herself or others. The gift is you. It is your life. If you follow it, it leads to blessings. The road is paved in flowers bhindis and color. Wrap yourself in beauty. Get soft. Soft enough for your heart to LISTEN TO THE EARTH. Open hearted. Shining. Encompass that which surroudn you like a globe of sky water land swirling atmosphere floating in space. Small. So small is our solar planet rotating edge of galaxy cherished in the Universe. What do we have to prove to selves or others? The system of BIODIVERSITY we lean into and are supported by the ancestors now dust. Step forward now, softly, softer still, softer than your've ever been. ALLOW heart in hands and bend int he ocean breeze sway to the quiet heart family. Sisters. Brothers. All together under heavens on Earth. Listen with your heart and let your head go that it may be easy and fall into PEACE. Si accepto. Si accepto. Si accepto. Accepto mi familia. Accepto mis amigos. Accepto mi Cora-Zonia-cita, mi mente, vida, deciones. Accepto. Accepto todo. Zonia, do you accept your path and place? Si, accepto because it is full of heart and barefeet. Its effortless when you factor in your COMFORT in skin not to say there aren't days when self is conscious and soul wants to hoola on the beach but little girl tucks her head, no me mieras. I hear the trap and often times my inner mother strokes my hair, Love, do it because it makes you happy get IMMERSED in the experience and if people start watching PERFORM MIRACLES attention focused on core group praying for the voice of God to speak. Letting go of vanity and beauty which are the pursuits of youth for the study of surrender and peace with cycles of time. To be at ease in roles of gender, age, practice whatever shape or form you be in whatever devotion you have filled your heart with, people will in time see that as your greatest quality. Presence with self. Peace with life. Acceptance of body. KIND where there is no competition there is no winning, there is only you as you are dling not as performance or costume but as self loving what self does. Your life becomes an extention of these pathways of experiences. Times meandering ways. Full circle. Not travelling. Visiting. Willing to be seen. Not willing to be someone other than this me at ease in private unobserved moments self witnessing self and what it loves. In agreement with SOURCE ENGERY depends on who you view as the Source of Life beyong SELF as Soul is Soul of World but little me connects down Mother Earth loves her children of which I am one. In a world of SELF CENTERED people what impels us to action is clearly visible and happy peaceful PARALLEL PLAY is possible compelled form an inner impulse towards sea, contemplation, movment and ALLOWING SELF TO CENTER awareness on this impuls trains God guided Soul directed. When we describe SELF here let it be COLLECTIVE SELF EXPRESSING. All perfectly don. Love you's. "I" can only do one thing at a time but "WE" accomplish so much more. All super lovable. I love my "selves" Sunrise bursting rays over palm tree victorious breath run beach to ocean little pink fluffy coulds 360 degrees of beautiful from ocean floating back morning perfect no witness except my soul who birthed me. Thank you, Mother. How can I be perfectly me and oh so in love with the life we breathe alive? Stay in heart and give rise to dreams bird song running runs into oceans and soft woman meditate on life's beginning which is every day. Time is a gift of knowing love is the water falling from the sky. You can't compete with anyone over self-creation, expression, and expansion. Zonia? Si! How do you know who will be your best lover? Well, it will be the person who lvoes you best, sees you clearly, puts you at ease with you. You at ease is open. You open is expressive. You expressive is expansive. You expanding is creating you which is orgasm. SELF CREATING SELF CIRCULAR ENEGERY from mulhadhara to crown ECSTASY all chakras open, not 7, infinitely. Don't get caught in a aclosed system trying to recreate experience. EXPERIENCE something new. Every time. Every person. Every you and you is a state of discovery. Wonder. Behold your senses. IMPRINT experience of smell, touch, taste fully take int eh energy of shared. Dissolved boundaries skin touch skin breathe pores and join electromagnetic resonance. Pulse together. Along front. Back to front. Extention of each other. Dance energy.Birth the Universe inside you. Love is Lover and touches you everywhere especially the heart. How can we make it easier? How can we allow love to enter effortlessly? How can we surrender to bliss? How can we feel held? Safe? To act on natural impulse express heart turth and love this cellular memories of body feeling elements and passing mooncycles? What is at the center? the fixed compass set in the direction of travel always inside. Zonia? Si! Where were you born? In a lodge made of Earthen Clay on indegenous lands with my family, I travel through the firepit as thunderbird and arise as water bird in Mexican cove green like jade with visions of sunset to sunrise and the moon, its path of sun is a cross. I've been sitting silence seeking nothing. Not words or outer concepts. Just listening. Enjoying the peace of mind not narrating. Creator God orchstrating my life calling my spirit to places and feelings inside of myself attentive connections without apology changing eas in sanctuary housing heart. Touch spirit in the flesh according to inclination. Feel loved beyond measure for being and experience infinite love. Prayer of for the loved ones who pass under hand let go of rejection, release shame connect in compassion and pray dream manifestation and always sit silence after asking, that is to ask, only to ask, always to ask. In the unknown beyond our mind and thinking lives MAGIC. IT EXISTS NOT IN ANSWERS but in QUESTIONS and Mexico, it heals the heart. Sitting on the rooftop in the Mexican Riviera listening to the waves lap as the sun rises over jungle building and people stroll on the beach.
I think about my prayer that began as I left the Sierras, resurrect me. What did that even mean? The phrase came from a place deep within that began to ask me to remember it. What had I forgotten? Seems I had been telling stories of remembrance for so long I couldn’t imagine who or what I was referring to but I kept the mantra in my heart and realized that was it’s place of origination. Our place of origination. Where “it” all begins. People ask me often to tell them my story, and I think about the many journals of my healing work yoga sequences recorded post class and little snippets of journeys from the Russian senile princess in London to my dear friend with Lou Gerrigs disease in Maui and the little sanctuary to which visitors come where jungle meets the sea. In this moment, it is quiet. What happens in between is breath. It’s yoga. It’s a lot of...wonder. I wonder what will happen today? I wonder what the hell I was thinking when...? My eyes open in the morning...ooo Iwonder what today will bring and my dreams? Are they still the same? Does my heart still remember where it came from? My mother and her country of origination is my heart. My father and his straight arrows into the future is my mind. My blood is a band of gypsies from the Mediterranean who crossed seas and imprenanted Indians from both north and south. My spirit is an aloha flower behind my ear and she came to life in 12 hour walks and spirit guided regressions back to the place of yoga where prayer births a flower princess naked under water falls out of volcanos and swims with whales and sea turtles. Every trip to Mexico is a resurrection. The cyclic ebb and flow of ocean waves brings tides of eternity and stories circle with cricket chirping night time lullabies and dreams...they come to me lucid dreaming in the jungle. And what is it that is resurrecting in me? Its full moon, semana santa, and I can’t sleep. La Luna esta llamando me. I awaken and pass the dining hall several times while I try to figure out what I wanna do to pass the midnight hours. A small couch, my Mar de Jade family all crowded head to head staring at a little phone screen. I smile and laugh, locos. I go up to the yoga hall. Yoga? Nah. I light incense get bored. Leave. Walk down the stairs. They are still there. I go to the temple hall....tap tap my feet breathe swing my arms a bit...no inner song tonight. She is awake but quiet. I light incense and stand in front of Quan Yin where I place my phone. Suddenly I know what I wanna do...leave it behind and run in my sarong wrapped in a blanket towards the ocean glowing white wave fingers curling towards the long pull wave leaving a huge canvas of sand. My little heart giggles and I walk two steps up two step down two steps up two steps down I see a zig zag snake and my little feet keep going to the spiral tail end and then circle it a giant heart with a fish hook and... Hey! There they are! At the steps! I wave at my friends in the dining hall where they stand watching. Hey! Come play with me! They scatter...boo...but I see a heart hanging at the end of the fish hooks and I jump image to image so as not to destroy the pattern and with glee begin the mermaid tail that leads to the torso of woman holding out heart and a male merman hand out stretched receiving as opening as giving. It is mutual and I finish to return to the spiral and watch the moon begin it’s set over ocean mother. I begin my return and out of the shadows a figure appears and a male voice approaches I contract and scatter, realizing I am receiving an answer to the question I have had since I overcame my midlife crisis and went opposite direction to believing my true desire now to live free. I realize I could have moments like this one with partnership and not fear the male in the dark. I run up to my room and hear the mantra..”Love is a protection.” I sit to meditate and the meaning of it flows through my open heart. The meaning of which, love can save us from ourselves. It can save us from our endless consumptions lists selfish paths. Love can protect us. It can be the angelic wings that support us. It can be the courage in our hearts to begin again...to end. Love can protect us from ourselves and from those who would enslave us for their own purposes. Love is freedom. I will bring this realization to breakfast where I will sit with my friend, tell her my story and end it with the drunk man under the hammocks. She will return to the reception desk where they will be telling a story about a ghost in a cape that was walking back and forth on the beach and tried to talk to them so they ran back to their room and Alicia will laugh and say Hah ha that was Zonia and she will tell them about the drunk man who will end up being our friend Krispy who the group sent and who was scared hiding by the hammocks... Bah ha ha ha❣️ Todos locos! Including me! ”In my defense it was full moon and I was left unattended” Las phantasmas de la mente. We are all running from them and running towards something we believe will keep us safe. Safe. I have many friends who are new moms and they are ragged with worry. They worry they won’t love right. That somehow they will get mothering wrong. Their greatest fear is that their child will cry, even worse that they will have caused it or be unable to comfort it. I’ll smile. I have heard this many times which now leads me to realize something all mothers are afraid to share that it’s normal. It’s normal to feel guilty inadequate afraid. It’s normal to want to keep loved ones safe but it is also impossible. I will think about this with my fairy client who is on sebatical in the jungle. I’ll tell her you’ll never know if you are doing it right. I tell her all you can do is love and trust Love. Leave the blessings to God. They will come. So will the tears and disappointments and heartbreak and firsts. Some of which you will not be there for. That’s another hard one. The witnessing. Of course there will be many shared moments but if your child is lucky they will also have moments during which they can self realize...become self aware. Hear their guidance have space to follow where it leads and understand how to move their right hand and then their left. In reality, the greatest experiences that youth leads up to will not be with you and can you allow that love? Will that guidance system teach them to follow their energy to source connection and trust where it will lead them. Perhaps to backback Nepali Coasts, definitely to fall in love. First kiss. First sex. First making love. And will you have taugh them to be free in those things? Will they love their bodies. Will they love their mind? Will they love their impulses? Their spirit? Their choices? Will they learn to trust? Will they learn what we are all learning? To love? To protect? To be courageous? To walk in the moon? To rise in the dark? A thing like this takes time. A thing like this takes patience. A thing like this takes faith. Zonia? How do you know where my pain? A client will ask me this and I will look at her inquisitively and she will feel silly so that later In the night after Ive thought about this question she will find me reenacting the beach scene ghosts and drunk men for Amber at the bar and my two new friends hummingbird and glitter bug. I’ll see her and tell her it’s a good question and that I don’t have an intellectual reply for an intuitive experience. I’ll reenact sessions and show them me dancing the body and smelling oils going to find them mixing them for each client special amounts special circumstances, their ligaments, joints, the empathetic touch that is my own relief so I know together we breathe sigh I feel better so I know they do and the tomes I can feel a client trying to make something happens their expectation for healing so high their belief that grace should hurt or tears must come instead there’s laugher or better peace in receptivity. The times I’ll stop touching people because they are so confused and overwhelmed so in their head about what should happen that they track my hands and try to beat me to the move when in fact I’m moving with spirit and they haven’t told me yet so I start over at the foot. Start over with flowers. Start over. If you came to me with a spiritual emotional intention what would it be? If you believed Love really wants to give you what you want but you had to ask, what would it be? Is it relief from the shoulder or the grief in the lung point I can feel pulsing under my hands? Is it the place in your neck with words you can not utter but long to hear that radiates heat and calls me to it like a magnet? Communion. Union. Harmony. How can we work together for the results we all long for? How can we make it easier this letting pain go which holds us to past? How can we instead fall in love with future? I’ll ask this as I wander home in the sunlight and my phone will stay with Quan Yin four days so that I am untethered to WiFi. I will go where it does not reach to find my coworker needing a hug and the ocean where the water holds me. Phones don’t reach but in all these moments I will feel the hands I hold holding me. I will think of people their smiles especially the ones hoping the way I feel is real. Do you really love me? Yes. I will remember you, I say. I’ll remember where we left off which hopefully will be like the day we met. Open armed. Big smiles. Before the session. After the session. Magic. It happens because we are so open. Stay that way. Know you need not be careful with me. My real friends know I will laugh when I tumble from the paddleboard doing cartwheels in the wave, that I’ll lose my purse and everything in it many times, that they should keep one of the keys, that I’ll be running and laughing, dance under stars leave conversations return forget myself remember myself stay up all night sleep early jump in the ocean in my clothes to swim with dolphins and always touch them if they stand close enough. I will remember as I read an early book by Wayne Dyer about the sacred self a thought I had weeks before I arrived. When the jungle and sea take me, I don’t want the phone I’ve left with Quan Yin. I never do. I’ve lost relationships over this as I stand in my heart request for presence breath dream days unfolding forever day by day as I change in relation to people whose life touches me. How did it used to be? When I could hold people in my heart and not text every minute day week. How did those friendships last? How was it when we just knew the thinking was the knowing and we were held in mutuality? How was when we just lived? And I will read a passage by Dyer warning us twenty years ago that if we continued to rely on technology for connection we would lose that which separated our ancestors from many today. A warning that what would be lost is telepathy. Conscious connection through the ethers. And I think about the necks of clients who come in. Collapsing occipital ridges, steel cable sternocledos shortened neck muscles from technology slump. I’ll think about telepathy the indigenous connection communication and evolutionary leaps...backslides. If we collapse the back of our skulls in 20 years and pass on the habits to children from birth am I witnessing the change of a species? Will we collapse the doorway in the notch at the base of the head exposed during prayer chin down that yogananda referred to the doorway to god? Information Age. Its not a physical problem, it’s a spiritual one. Too much thought, not enough knowing. What do we need to know? That we are loved. That the source of it is God. That there is a creative force greater than ourselves. That it’s way is beauty, that it’s gift is grace and that we can just breathe it. Believe it into the depths of our cells that remember we are made of stars and constellation sunbeams and earth she is our mother blooming flowers and kissing us in butterfly wings and that the only thing that separates us from her are the things we put in front of her, as in think is more important than but in truth our lives depend on her and her ways are beauty. Put yourself in the path of beauty. Let the gratitude rise to meet her and the spirit that descends let it be soft like starlight and accept being touched by compassion and feel into your heart the truth that connection it is here and it is close as breath. Observation. Who are you looking at? No matter what you are looking at, the only answer: My Self Projections are reflections. Receptive nature is collective. How do we heal separation between people of varying backgrounds? Ha ha of course the only way to heal separation is to bring our selves back together in one piece. Whatever divided us, I’m speaking to we/me past present future, let’s be one once again. Remembering and experiencing past presence into transcendent integration of being amplified and cracks filled with gold. Zonia?
Yes? You would love all the art music dance yoga visioning community. I do absolutely love those things. Ha ha yes, I’ve heard that before so I’m thinking about summer and immersion. Plus, love unicorn pixie dust rainbow sparkles and bright shiny beautiful happy incredibly talented hopeful people celebration laughter....they are my favorite things🌟🌸💕 Anyone who knows the power of God and prayer knows, whatever we perceive will be flipped over, it’s part of our evolving nature. Churning into depths, turning full circle through the unknown places in mind, repressed or unopened. As Emerson says, whatever we have spoken in hard words, tomorrow, let us speak in hard words the contradiction to everything we believed. Life experience teaches contradiction. Next couple months I prepare to healthily go into that which I observe from the outside, to fill the shadows in my perception with love light understanding by experiencing the transformative quality of that to which this generation, of which I am a part, has created. Parallel societies like flowers of life, I feel like a wonder twin calling us all to unity and love. Specifically me self. What magic we each contain, may we combine to be twice as wise and happily blessed in this creative life bringing divine spark to life in ourselves and around us in the form of mutual respect freedom and most of all...fun❣️🌟 Blessed new year, may you find us all and pour out exactly what is needed, desired, but unspoken and make us new again. On break from blogs but always available if you ask and, always, I am thinking of us all. Big love and big kisses.❤️❣️😘😍 By the time we are in our 40’s there is both no one person or situation to blame nor any to praise in our life. What we were is not what we are and what we do is not who we shall be. We are an accumulation of all our chronicles and experiences. We are the sum of our choices.
”Zonia?” ”Yes , Love?” ”How do we know what is real?” I smile. Good question. I ask that everyday. “You will find evidence to support whatever it is you believe to be true.” Also, there is no substitute for life experience. It’s why the older most people get, the quieter, the less you know, the more you understand. During one of his life reflections, Ken tells me there is a fundamental difference in the quality your life will take on as to whether you believe in magic or prayer. Magic. It’s a good reminder because I have been focusing on the little things, the zen practice of ordinariness. He says to me prayer is the only real power that exists in the world and that when he forgets how real it is, that is when life feels hopeless and his power scanty. He starts to channel Rocky and strings together all the beat Stalon lines until we are both laughing. He summarizes by saying that heart can’t be bought or faked that the most real moments are the ones in which prayer manifests and creates the undefeatable moments in the face of all odds and in those moments the hero births. Its what I need to hear because, despite what Ken says is the mythology surrounding me, that I am imperturbable, I am very human. At the time of this conversation, entering my first winter in five years, I am wondering about this thing called prayer and I am praying for myself. Its 4 am. I’ve been up two hours. I spent half that time with my head out my window getting fresh air, looking at the stars and the silhouette of redwoods in my yard where my garden used to be before the squirrel took a lightsaber to it. Before Mexico I was in a gardening rhythm, after Mexico I’m catching up and settling into short days long nights, painting, games and puzzles. Community building. Getting past the self imposed isolation and realizing no, despite the times I wish I could “fit in,” the answer for me is not to drink and do more drugs to follow the crowd. I did that in high school, it almost killed me. Literally, a near death experience at 16. A self-created rite of passage to unguided vision quest. I was looking for the same thing I look for now. I don’t have the desire to revisit old lessons but to apply what I now understand to new situations. It takes time to find what you are looking for, but if you believe in something don’t give up, until you do. It’s there, this life you know to be true. In between the lines, just below the surface is the life you know exists. Shift your vision. Pray with the rising sun. Listen to the voice of your heart in the darkness and silence of twilight, there is the answer you seek. Higher Power. Evidence of divine power. I think of my teacher uncle from the Washington Pullayup tribe. Every time he poured water he’d start out with a prayer to Creator in recognition of his humanness , “Creator God, I am not a perfect man, but I try.” Marvin Hannah I feel that this week. I am not a perfect woman but I try, not in the ancient religious way of sinfulness but in a humble way, I know my own heart and sometimes, I realize, it is hard to tell what is leading you, pulling you forward towards what end...until you look back. A year in review. Mini steps along the way so that when I die, there are no surprises. Winter. Introspective. I definitely feel separate from the very thing I wish to be a part of, I feel like I have done a lot of work on prayer, connection and sobriety. Mostly sober, I do believe in the use of teacher plants. I have done and on occasion partake in ganja, psyllicibum, acid, peyote and ayahuasca. It is all once in a while, microdosing and shamanic journey. I can't say they made me a better person. Only the meditations of your heart felt intentions fill you with all the goodness you perceive. They did help me transcend aspects of brainwashing but overall if the use of them is to follow dreams and live with heart, I know how to do that with mediation and breath. In fact, my shamanic burial and tumor healing took place a decade before my use. If anything, I can trace back relationship issues to when my partner and I were altered. I can remember the first ayahuasca ceremony they made my partner and I sit on opposite sides of the room, they separated us. Honestly, I don't know why I listened to them. I did have my own experience. I understand the value of developing a personal relationship with God, but I already had that. During my experience, I'm dead, I'm alive, I'm dead, I'm alive...ok I get it, now what? I ended up walking around and being a guardian for several people. But that imposed separation prevented me from wanting to connect to my partner who was falling into eternity with the love we had, and we still have powerful love together. We ran sweat lodges together. We took down that lodge because people wanted to start using that lodge for money. The concept of prayer as an offering and holding space for not charging was really important to us. We had a really hard time wanting to pray. We weren't a part of the ganja travelling circus, (I say that as in the fun gypsey caravan way) we joined it and had a blast but we were coming from a really different place with our vision quest travelling. We would have $300 praying in front of our own fireplace and we would individually receive the same message. Sometimes the fire would tell us that we needed to go to Maui, or wherever it was we ended up...Washington....sometimes I got called back to Texas to help with my aging grandparents, sometimes we got called back to Washington to help Ken string together a relationship with his daughter. We just never knew. More often than not we didn't' have anything. Some times we would have one more meal and, having met the circus kids, we would erroneously think they didn't have any food and we would throw a gathering with the last of what we had to feed and shelter them and it was always worth it! So much fun and then we would pray and move about the world at spirit's direction...fasting haha yea we would pretend it was purposeful. We would be hitchhiking 12-14 hours a day and I'd look around and everyone looked super blissed out...ha ha which actually I definitely had plenty of those moments but it was a contrast usually to the travelling trimmies eating their cocoa and wearing their super cute outfits. I wanted to be cute too! But I needed walking shoes more and coconuts were exotic and served their delicious purpose. Anyways, so this is where our dedication to the concept of "No can charge for prayer" comes from. Some of our elders found us on the side of the roadside looking for a place to pray and a community to love and they took us home with them. As a result, part of that story goes, we brought one of them his wife. They have two boys. That story came out of a prayer message in the middle of the night, during which we were both awakened and told to go the other side of the island and when we arrived there she was just arriving as well. So, prayer...that shit is real, although sometimes I do wonder what the hell I am doing, and the soul in me says, "We are praying and the other part says, yea, but what are we doing?" And I will get down on myself a little bit and have that feeling I told you about in the beginning, that I'll wish I drank and did more drugs so I'd have more "friends." We always wanted community. Ken specifically wanted to hang out with the "cool" kids. They were really cool. I saw them. I recognized them. I just never wanted to be in a container, either socially or structure wise. I would be in tipi, and I could never get up. Fire. That was it. I just stared at the fire and waiting for the morning to arrive so I could be free. But I did have really powerful experiences in front of the fire that manifested for my family lineage. The remembrance of relatives that had passed. A lot of times my relatives wanted me to reenact my life according to their value systems. It made me feel really old. I outright rejected and disobeyed those messages which led to...some really amazing times, sexual explorations, orgasmic fulfillments and its all short-lived. It made me really start to think about what they were telling me about what endures. I was talking to a friend I have known for a decade. God did always make sure I had a few people during those travels who supported and believed in me. I am so grateful for them being in my life. I missed a lot of things but I could skid into home plate....aghhhhhhh...and they would be there crouched like an empire...SAFE! Those were exhilarating times. I camped in friends yards, I slept in the back of yoga studios where I worked. I was really ashamed over my poverty. Financial restrictions led to social isolation, but I had spiritual wealth. Although everyone just keep asking me, "Zonia? What's it for?" I don't know. Its not really FOR anything outside of itself. It just is. I've made a little life for myself. I'm really good at what I do, I travel to other countries, and do crazy amounts of healing sessions, hold space for interdimensional healings, haha I guess! (I'm told! I don't know! I can't lay on my own table! One of my friends heard me say this once and looked at me in wonder saying, "Wow. To be so good at something and never be able to know.") Haha. Life is a strange thing, isn't it? Then, I come home. People are really busy, which is good. So I've created this really magical life, where I go somewhere exotic and warm, I work my butt off, people pay me a lot of money, I share it with my loved ones, and I come home. I live somewhere beautiful and only work a couple days. I go to the river and am constantly looking for people because they don't have time to hang out. Everyone seems to be functioning as high powered executives to FaceBook, answering emails, and I sure do wish we could simplify and come back to friendships and gatherings, so I throw game night and have people come over to cook and, you know, be with actual people. There's no substituting the very special connection experienced through eye contact, a hand on the back, laughter, the sound of voices. They are all so important. So many years of life, decisions and choices that have walked themselves out. I can see things much more clearly now. Does it mean I'll do it better from here? Who knows? I shift the more I age and experience so its not as simple as looking back and saying ahhhh...right there...next time I'm in that situation I will do this...Life is more complicated and in the moment who you are is who you are and so there is a level of trust and acceptance we must all come to. But my little girl self, does sometimes reflect and say...ahhh, Zonia...was it worth it? And sometimes the answer is, "No, but we will be ok." So, I look at the younger people who have so much life ahead of them and I see that they don't want to talk to older people. They just wanna be cool and beautiful and THEY ARE REALLY COOL AND BEAUTIFUL and there's a level of God-given happy that comes with youth. Life hasn't tried your soul as much. I definitely have the prayer that life will support that unlimited expression and that infinite view of life and themselves as being all powerful. I have walked the world like that. I get humbled. I listen to every prayer direction I have been given and, like the thunderbird I am, had to rise out of the ashes of many a prayer fire willingly serving, not myself, but some greater force. It is always for ME in the end. The stories it fills me with, the life experience, the purpose and meaning are irreplaceable. But I do have times when listening to prayer is really difficult to decipher. Is it my own mind deceiving me? Is it my heart guiding me? Is it the love of something in a healthy way? Is this going to make me a better person? Am I just lusting after something and I just can't stop? Is there a hole I'm trying to fill but I don't know what it is? or something I am running away from? And as humans we have evolution built into our soul blueprint and patterns, so no matter what there is inevitably a moment when the feeling that “life is supposed to be way more fulfilling and gratifying than whatever the fuck I am doing right now” surfaces and beckons us on to the next phase and cycle of learning. That you know, a knowing that you can do “better” and you are siting in it. I'm sitting in it. Sitting in winter. One year ago I left Mexico, I was in Texas, I look really fucking happy in those pictures. I was scared. I was getting ready to ship my car to Maui, I was going all in. My long distance boyfriend was 24. Silly! But my nephew is 24 and he loves his girlfriend. I could see that he is going to make it last, they are going to. I wanted to try. I wanted a fresh start, but honestly I had already fucked that one up a lot. Two years long distance, and every time one of my ex's would descend into my life with a hair brained scheme to do a yoga teacher training or start a non-profit religion for travelling medicine people, I would go. I thought I was doing something important, but I don't know. I see right now an opportunity to hold space for kind healers, for healers who are interested in sad, depressed, lonely people, the elderly, humble, quiet people. I will hold space for them. I will give them somewhere to go. I have tried to be friends with many healers and I find that they are suffering from scarcity mentality, only hanging out with those who will pay them or proving themselves to each other. It seems like a lot of wasted energy. So, it will strike me hard sometimes, this feeling....if I keep going down this road with everyone, because I am supposed to abandon the lone wolf mentality, but I don't know. Sometimes I see a herd of wild stallions running towards the cliff, I don't follow them. That actually reminds me of a story April Whitecloud used to tell me. She told me she didn't know why but spirit came to her while she was in meditation and told her to go out to this location and walk into the field with her hands raised powerfully in front of her and start singing. And when she did, this huge movement on the horizon was coming towards her. She didn't know what it was but she started singing louder. She had her hands out and realized it was a herd of wild mustangs about to run themselves off the cliff and she had been asked to go there to prevent them and to see if she could help change their course. April is a lot of things. She's crazy. hahah. Flat out one of the craziest human beings I have ever known. Half Hawaiian, daughter of a Kahuna, half Apache medicine woman, daughter of an Apache medicine woman. She stands about 6 feet tall, with giant hair, and always a huge smile and these arms that she would wrap around everybody. She always had these really big stories about being a model or singer in London. I always just knew her as an older woman sitting in her lounge chair meditating and dreaming, a nice man who loved her and tried to hold her on this plane. It's how she found me. I met her the year of my Saturn return when everything was collapsing. I remember once someone asking me, "What did you do to deserve all that?" I was like, well, fuck, good question. What did I do to deserve anything? What do any of us ever do to deserve anything? Good or bad? She had a dream that she had to go to the Sidestreet Boutique in South Lake Tahoe, at the same time I was having my awakening moment at sunset praying on my porch facing Lake Tahoe about what to do after my brain tumor had returned, I had gotten careless jumping jumps on the ice...busted myself from the coccyx bone to occipital ridge, and was in deliberations with the elders of my church who told me I was no better than animal for having sex for the first time 26. MY LIFE was just beginning. The one in which I thought for myself. I knew from that first time, hey! this is not what they told me. It was the most beautiful thing I had ever done. I mean since then I have seen what they mean about the animal of it, the lust and darkness, but I always like the way Mary Oliver described it as the "soft animal." We are animals; we are human animals. I mean there is an animal force that is ferocious, barring teeth in their predatory nature, but there is the aspects of those same animals that will huddle together, take care of their young and elderly. Like the elephants knowing the bones of their ancestors. The animals really take care of their young. That's the soft animal, take any predatory and see them with their young, they are soft for them. I was thinking about this the other day because a woman at yoga was talking about her daughter and how she had raised her to be a strong woman and independent. There are so many women like that. I was raised like that. My dad was determined that after seeing his mother struggle with 9 kids ironing and working so hard everyday to make sure they had life, that I would be able to take care of myself. I take care of myself. I do know how to take care of them. I know how to take care of people around me. So I appreciate that. But, I could really relate to this mom saying her daughter had a really hard time finding relationships because men are really intimidated by her. So, I said, maybe something really amazing will happen and she will fall in love and she will get really soft, feel held by love. The soft animal. That can happen and is just as much a part of our nature as anything. In the teepee they talk about the water bird. The water bird is the woman in the morning, the soft heart, the emotion. There's a lot of fire in the world, its actually put out mine. I have keen insight but I am always speaking form a place of love. I am not sure that gets communicated. I helped raise a couple kids. Not just my brother's, but I had partners who had children. Saga Sue she looked like a little fairy, she was 3. She used to sing and had the sweetest voice. She used to call us the mermaid family, which pissed her mother off and led to false allegations that resulted in a 15 year gap. It has been so many years. The kids I was a teen director for were in junior high and I think they have graduated college now. So time is flying by but, for him, I know it has moved with painful slowness as he hopes someday she will remember the love and find him. Kenna, she was 9. She is a feminist force to be reckoned with, an activist, who is in college now. She is so strong. Elliot, he was 12 going on teen. They were still babying him but he was watching everything happening on the farm. I hear he's a super star. Sometimes I wish I couldn't see things. I have always been able to look down the road and see where they could lead...like Starbucks? I remember when they were first coming out and I made my family crazy! I was way ahead of my time in the anti-corporation movement talking about local economy and local mom and pop coffee shops. Everyone told me I was just being crazy. So, now, Starbucks is everywhere and everyplace looks the same now, it's even in Mexico. I'm not gonna lie, its how branding works. Its now so familiar that I will laugh and think, hey...don't worry. There’s Starbucks, everything will be alright. If we are all drinking coffee surely everything is not that bad. Everyone just drink your coffee. Don't worry about anything. Coffee. Ha ha that's a whole other conversation. I made people crazy after I worked on a coffee farm and realized how long it took to make it. I was like, holy shit! We should have one cup a year! No wonder it was sacred. The whole tribe was watching...What the hell is Juan doing over there? One year later Juan Valdez would arrive and say, "Finally! I have done it! It is the perfect cup!" Everyone was so happy and it was so good. Juan? When can we have another? Pues...next year...and they would wait and celebrate. Why is coffee only $3? Haha don't tell Starbuck s I said that they will raise the price again and we will all go bankrupt for that special tasty beverage. I love coffee. It makes me think about my grandpa. It's all he wanted. Eight cups of coffee a day, a sweet bread, paper and a pen. The little things. A simple man. It made him happy. My grandparents whole lives were built around these little things. He would sit and write. I remember visiting their gravesite. It was the first time my mother had been there since my grandfather died. She had a really hard time, she turned 5 and was hiding behind a tree. It was really adorably sad. I kneeled in front of that gravesite. It was both of them side by side. I saw them like they were in that kitchen. Their little novelas, my grand mother cooking the same damn food because that's all my grandpa wanted. Simple man. She had one sweater, green and rust striped. My grandfather would just sit writing at the table, sipping his coffee asking my grandmother to walk 4 feet to hand him something that was 4 inches from him. It was their little game. I watched them do that for a long time. I called my mom out from the tree. "It's ok, momma, come here," and I held her while she cried and I remembered. My grandma died at 63. She was a smoker. It took her. It didn't do anything to my grandpa, he lived to 99, but my grandma died at 63. I don't know, some people can get away with it, some people can't. She got lung cancer they took 2/3 of her lung. She got breast cancer, they took her breast. She got bone cancer, well, that took her life. We would still catch her locked in the bathroom with cigarettes smoke coming up out of the door. She just wouldn't quit. Would not. My parents had made a huge sacrifice to go from Pleasanton, CA to El Paso, Texas. I ended up going from the only Mexican to being called a coconut because I was brown on the outside and white on the inside. haha life has changed me. I had no idea what kind of trouble I was gonna get myself into living in a border town, crossing borders. I went head long into it. I wasn't the kind of kid that went into marijuana as a gateway drug. First thing I did was a line of cocaine with my friend Yaraseth, who ended up being a drug and alcohol counselor after we graduated. All of us ended up really interested in the well-being of youth. We became public servants, teachers, firemen, nurses. I specialized in at-risk youth as an educator. My last couple years of teaching I worked with Indigos. I wrote a book about this experience , which I never published because I'm not business oriented and there's always so much to do I can never understand how everyone gets everything done. I never think to ask my dad or anyone. I was taught to do everything myself! Too well! I am working on that. I have a lot of DUH! moments realizing that, I suck at business but that's what my dad did. I kept thinking I could just get good at it. haha. I'm still trying! My new meditation lately is filled with lots of duh! moments. So I am learning as I go. I don't have much money but he could help. I always felt like I was waiting for THE vision! The amazing thing that was worth investing in. I was waiting for the MOST INSPIRED thing. I didn't want to waste his help on something that wasn't worth it. That included sometimes helping me, even when I was sitting on, "Skid dirt." I actually felt ok. Some of my most fulfilling moments were simple, watching the sun set over the ocean from Ulapalakua than I did for most of my life. A lot of people came there to pray. I was hopeful, thinking we were going to harness all the magnificent energy Indigos were born to have. I was a teacher for at-risk high school age Indigos. I bring that up a lot because the list for at-risk Indiogs and what behaviors and attitudes would identify them as at-risk. They are worth taking a look at again, they are powerful human beings who would be around the age of 30 now. They are masters incarnate, there is no doubt about that, express doubt in this and you will come face to face with their ego and they aren't afraid to flip you off and go their own way. That is actually part of the power they needed to harness to make a new way in the world. They will always go their own way. Their magic is that there are so many of them and they magnify each other's power by banding together. What I have a hard time with is they don't want to talk to anybody outside of themselves. They are more concerned with coolness and spend an inordinate amount of time proving themselves to each other. There are so many people out here that are worth knowing and can be allies, not for money but for heart. Actual community is built on heart, care for. I try to build community. I find that people who are not a part of the nucleus see the possibility of a larger circle that will hold them, but also, it is not my intention to break the other circle apart but to widen it. I think that I offend people sometimes with the things that I say. Its my truth, I don't know how not to say what I feel in my heart. What's in my heart is not just a thought or idea, it's my own experience and those of people I have met. There are times that I wish I drank more, went to bars, wanted to have orgies, did more drugs, only for the fact that I can not relate to the majority of people anymore and I feel like they can't relate with me. I think that could be a problem, I mean I have been through a lot at a very young age, I've been through it, it being the wringer...it squeezed me to the deepest core. I hope that people know they can be open honest vulnerable with me because I will share my own frailties. I will share my own strange stories. I'm not a prude, in fact, I got in trouble once in Maui for the people across the valley being able to hear what was happening at the sanctuary. Oops! I don't care about that stuff, I care about what separates us and what human behaviors are expressed and repressed that are resulting in similar pain body scenarios when people come to see me. Like I have said before that sexual liberation means getting myself into a situation in which I feel free whatever that means, emotionally, spiritually, mentally, and physically. It requires knowing yourself and is a fundamental self-inquiry process. Knowing what is the best fit, for me it is people who are in their heart space. My canvases tell me better stories than my words. They paint the stuff of childhood dreams, not a 42 year old woman. I painted over the canvas a couple of times because it kept pulling up feelings that I felt silly for wanting still. I think that I have stopped trying to think about it being a representation of what is for me and to see it as prayer for the future, for the kids for what I would like to instill in their hearts, to show them what I value taking chances for love, to live with nothing if you have to, but to follow your dreams no matter what. You might lose everything and there might be a billion people against you but you have to have some people telling you to keep walking that way if it is right for you and it doesn't matter what anybody else has to say about it. If it is right for you, keep walking that way. I don't care if people don't agree with me or what I am saying, I'm saying that in the long run, I'm wondering if we will have missed the power we were sent here to unite and what we were supposed to do with it. That's all. I see all the people and what they are capable of accomplishing. They accomplish way more than me, their power to gather people together far exceeds I have ever been able to do in my life, but you get me one on one connecting with people in their heart and something special happens. You put my hands on them and something happens. You put me in front of the fire with a cedar bag, something happens. I don't know what anymore or if it matters. Maybe everybody else has it right. Hedonism. You only live once. Get everything you can, suck everything and everyone dry. We are just gonna die anyways. Maybe you get a disease. Maybe you dump all your dopamine and you can't be happy anymore. Maybe you get rich. Maybe you go to jail. Who knows? Maybe you can never fall in love. Who cares? I care. I'm having a hard time right now. One year in review. Where was I last year? What happened? Yea, what happened? I went to Maui, my boyfriend surfed sometimes 6 hours a day. Timing was off finanacially. I used all my money to get there, then a roommate moved out. I went from working as a healer at a retreat center to hoping to work as a barista. Which is fine, except that I couldn't get a ride to work. A lot of the surfing was my own fault, he was such a pain in the ass that I would tell him to go surfing, plus we couldn't stop having sex. haha so how am I supposed to plan anything? And out he would go. Maybe I should have just lost myself. I notice that about myself and others, that people, including myself, can't seem to lose themselves in things. They get too much up in their heads and block or abort things right before the magic happens. I would like to get lost in something again. I choose time over money and so I am praying to know what to do with that time that will get me lost in something that will lead me into my next life phase. I pray still. I think it does do good. I hope it does. It's my first winter in 5 years, so apparently it's seasonal and normal, because my roommate looked at me and said, "Ha! Welcome to winter! Now you know what the rest of us have been going through." Year in review. It's been a really big thing for me as a woman. I have had really wealthy partners who wanted to fly me off to Spain and India. Sweep me up. Support me in Maui, have me do all these things with them which left me no time to generate my own money supply. It took away a lot of freedom and when they were "done" with me I was "fucked" and as I got older that got scarier. There will always be a younger hottie in the yoga room purposely not wearing underwear with her shorty shorts, there are always going to be women who for the power of it will take what is basking in the light and love of another woman. Women love to do these things, especially when they are young and exploring the power of youth and beauty. The love of the woman is powering everything. Women take things from other women, I am including myself. Don't get me wrong, but reflection has taught me which choices lead to love and joy. I am marching forward in life and watching my parents age. They are headed towards their destination, which I would like to think is always in my heart. They are finally travelling which my dad put off until retirement and ended up being extended into the caretaking of their parents. So, they are finally enjoying their lives. They are part of the consumer problem. They also balance it with generosity to others. I can see why in their minds it doesn't really seem to matter but for our generation as we try to correct for the younger generation, I suspect we are OVER correcting. I am sometimes. I was working on a family lineage. The grandmother, mother, and granddaughter. The grandmother had colan and uteran cancer. Both the mother and granddaughter were holding tension in the same place, so I asked, "How do you heal generationally?" I kept hearing, "Comfort what the grandmother generation has experienced. Mother will have compassion and understand. The grandchildren are the ones who change." I changed my grandmothers's lineage. At her bedside she had a whole slew of family and I have me. So, as I head towards menopause, and paint my childhood dreams, I accept 12 years of travelling what I believe was helping other people, but it is possible I chased ego for a period. That's when I ended up in London, with the humanitarian woman who had been reduced to nothing but herself, clothes meaningless, hair falling out, scathing letters from ex-patrons. I came home. I just wanted to be with my nephews and now they are growing. I did that several times. I had a partner in India who wanted to take me to Thailand, but all I wanted was to take care of my grandmother. Now that I understand his lifestyle, I am so glad that I chose my own way and family. I understand that I love him. I did love people who I wasn't going to end up with and deny those who wanted to give me everything. It's an interesting place in life, full acceptance, full knowing, full responsibility...what stories you would hold out to younger ones who you see doing the same thing. I ask myself, do I trust my choices are based on conditioning or did my soul see my way through this life. I count my blessings. I would like to share with somebody. I would like to share the gift that is life with someone who sees it too. When I look back a year in review, the thing I will remember the most is that every time I opened my eyes, and this had nothing to do with Haleakela, the ocean, or the West Maui's, that person was smiling at me. Every morning started the same way. "Hey gorgeous." "Hey beautiful." And a knowing about how rare it is. So, I ask what happened? Tipi came to Maui and I was sitting in front of fire and I saw deer clan. I connected with my mother's lineage, the volcano pulsed, everyone there I knew was from California and I had followed a fire and prayer to know them. Now I live in the same town and I don't even talk to them. So, God knows. But I live in a house with a man I met 10 years ago. We are neither together or apart. He's been married and has a child 19. I like the idea of leaving possibility open for myself. He's my family no matter what. Romantic love? What is that? Does it last? Ten years from now does it all go away? Are you still putting a flower in their hair. Are you still waking up smiling? Or is it all going away? Really it is. One way or another. We have to make our peace with that. That's winter right, old age and death? Opportunity for evaluation. Introversion. Shit, I have warm clothes and all I'm painting is a plumeria, a bird of paradise , and an ocean wave. So, explain that neurosis. I remember when I was in Maui, daydreaming about laying on the rocks of the Yuba and trail running. I thought I was crazy, there I was in Paradise with the love of my life, young as he was, telling me I'd always be beautiful. It was my own fault that I saw my grey hairs more than he did. I had a standard of life, just a little more comfort. Just have coffee. You just want to go out and have a damn coffee. it's stupid. I guess. I don't know. Worked for my grandpa but he drank it at home, probably Yuban, cost a lot less. Doing a lot of yoga. Meditating. Sitting. Getting still. There's a part of me that says, no, what I really need to do is rev up so I can stay ahead of the winter curve. Really, we are almost there. Solstice is right around the corner, New Year and then its' practically spring. It's the year of the Rabbit! It’s supposed to mean something. I don't know what. Family. Success. Home. Family. Hopefully we have all cleared everything out. It has been a shit storm. I get women and their fears of being assaulted. I had very strange male female dynamics, fled a house, experienced purely functional interludes. Also, had a beautiful interlude with an old friend. A vixen story. Which means, I have to forgive everything. The reason I say these things is so people know where I am coming from that is to say, I've seen some things, I've done some things, and I still am smiling and embracing. All the people I call out, I love you. I love you. I call my own self out. The people who love me most, call me out. I can't give a glossy version of things. I know you. I know myself. I know what I have done and I can love the imperfect because that is our world. Looking forward to making a community. I have chosen my home. I am not running off anymore. Travelled 12 years . I've had amazing experiences. Many changes. Community. I didn't have a community travelling with me. I guess when I comment about festivals I do see the beauty, I do see the friendships and I see shared experiences bonded people together. And...You are cool by the way! Sometimes not very nice, though. I do often times confront the attitude of others, do you know who I am? No, but you don't know me either. Would you like to know each other? or a puffed chest and a Posh Spice face that says I am someone. Yes! You are amazing. I am also amazing. We all are and we are also not. So, I didn't have a warrior band tribe following me around, I have had to do it all myself. My warrior tribe is invisible. Its my ancestral line. Its my guidance system. They only get you so far. It's a tough bunch this one. Indigos as adults. Aye. God help us all. Soften our hearts. Unite our cultures. Open doors. Put us in contact with all our selves. Really. Unless they come in and they need me on the table, then they are have a squeezy heart, cute, super loving, healthy, creative, open. many who, if they never came to see me, would most likely not talk to me. Sigh. Ahhh...we are all still in high school. All still in high school. Haha what does that mean? I recon someday we will graduate, even if that age is 99. Hopefully we will have a really good life. There will be a lot of people around us when we die who care about us. Some of us will outlive others. We will all know of each other, even if we aren't friends. We'll hear of people passing. Some day that will be true of our teachers in Maui, our families, and then one day we will move on as well. Until then, keep smiling. Keep thriving. Keep playing. Keep making the world a better place one dance at a time. One hug at a time. One breaking social barriers at a time. By the way, you should listen to the new podcast from the vice-president of Facebook speaking to business students at Stanford. His children aren't allowed to be on there and he has guilt over the way social media has destroyed human connection. Just a thought. We should think about it. Anyways. Entering into the dark of winter. Heading towards our rebirth. Take the time to go in there. It usually some good stuff. Its gotta come up. Year in review. Holy shit. Eclipse. Memories from Ken. I watched a lot of friends go through heartbreak. I saw people be attacked on Facebook. Dear God, I quit that two years ago. Thank goodness. There's a lot of weirdness on there. Came back form Maui. Lots of trail running. Lots of river. Happy to know the people I work with. Wondering what I am gonna do. Wondering about relationships. What makes them real? What makes them stay? Wondering about all the little things. I'm burnt out. I know it. I lovingly flipped the reception desk off when they asked me to work on one more client. Done. Can not. I laugh.
“Sorry. It did it by itself.” I stick out my tongue. “Love you!” I say with a cheesy fake smile. My face feels heavy. I lug myself up the spiral case to my room to take a knee on my mat. 80 sessions. A Yoga Retreat. Second week. Two yogas a day, the owners, the staff, their friends and family, and two sessions per student. No matter how late I finish, sometimes 10 or 11 pm, I will come to this mat and do yoga. No matter how early I start, sometimes 7 am, I will begin each day here. Some days I have to dig deeper than others to find the love. When the depletion hits its thorough. I feel it in my bones. I get a lot of help, but I am only human. A new group arrives. I know this group too, we all hug and embrace they hope I am staying, I am not. They get sad grandma looks on their faces as they ask about my life, about Maui, about love. I didn't stay. They look concerned. I tell them it is the least traumatic break up I have ever had and though it has taken a year to not miss him everyday, I am happy I am in Nevada City. The rest of my life is so fulfilling and filling with new friends and community that I have the patience to wait on the gift and magic of love to arrive. I try Tinder for two days. It's both comforting to know so many people are looking and disturbing when I see two of the guys out at Mexican. They are sitting together on their phones. I literally stand in front of their table. They don't look up. I laugh inside and think to myself...this is retarded. Put your phone down. I defect and decide organic is better. I'd rather paint and go to the river. I feel spirit tapping me on the head. Zonia? Si! Write. I do. I write a book a month. I have books from my crazy London trip with the Russian princess who has dementia. Its filled with cooky stories involving my crazy medicine sister and a gift from the 9 indigenous grandmothers. Those grandmothers. I really need to talk to them. I've been upset with them since the women's gifting circles. Upset? How can you be upset with the grandmothers? Get me started. The climate of women isolated in their insanity, man bashing, began back then. I can still remember while on my travels having sisters I had known who randomnly would "think" to call me. Ask personal questions, tell me we could continue this conversation If I paid them $5000. Excuse me? Are you fucking nuts? Out of their mouth the sales technique of many a pyramid scheme. “It's a pyramid scheme” I tell them. “No, it isn't.” “Yes, it is and don't fucking use my personal life to fund your India trip.” Jesus. It’s an upsetting scheme of heart strings for money. I keep travelling. Many other sisters who used to be friends will quarantine their hearts and round people into circles. Some will make thousands, others will sell their cars hoping to get rich, and most will get left at the bottom of the pyramid all in a quest to "Be friends" with people who used to do so for free. It will issue in a whole new era of sacred commerce that stretches into the inner sanctums of a London bedroom with an ill princess who used to fund lamas and religious leaders, who will receive scathing letters from these people when she loses her fortune and can no longer be a patroness. She will isolate herself from public because of her thinning hair and to hide her new status filling boxes of high end lottery schemes hoping to refill coffers. All come from so called gurus and spiritual advisors, while old, not even a family member is present to help. She will run down the hall to my room, in the middle of the night, telling me the voices are saying she is going to die. I will calmly walk her to bed and discuss the journey of life with her. "Yes," I tell her, "We are all going to die." "But no one has ever talked to me like this." "Make peace with your life. It's time." I will fall in love with her while washing her hair and she will say, "I think I'm thinning back there." I tell her, she is. She will let me hold her and she will tell me she wants to give me the medicine bundle the 9 grandmothers gave to her. Its the end of a year of many sisters asking me for money. I smile at her and say thank you, but I will leave without asking for it. I will leave and walk the whole city of London, go across every bridge, see Micheal Angelo's sketches which are in and of themselves masterpieces, and attend a flamenco show that will change my life. I will change my focus from my father's New Mexico Apache ancestry to my mother's gypsey blood. I will have a dream of running a gypsey caravan for people to learn rhythm, movement, and voice. I will write the story of life as it unfolds, and buy new journals and always remember one very important thing. Our humanness makes us HUMANE. The less we accep our imperfections the further we get from our humanity. Humanity. So many choices to make. I’m thinking about my friend Paula who is angry with me for not taking her side in a custody battle with her ex-husband. She tells me to champion her rights though bedridden with Lou Gerriggs disease. I will struggle inside knowing her father will take her to the beach to play in the ocean. Her daughters anxiety attacks are fresh in my mind. I tell her I will pray for her daughter. It’s not enough. I ask, “God what’s right?” and keep doing what I can. I will think about all this as I cross over from Mexico to the United States. Nothing but time on the day of travel and lines that wrap around carosels to get into lines. I dance around. Strike up random conversations, play with kids and watch people anxious who will want to talk about how bad their day has been until they realize we are all in this together. We have all been waiting. I transition slowly from smiles, acknowledgments, hugs and laughter, into the grey mechanical world of technology and the American syndrome of group think that is infecting people linked by social media. One degree of country separation and what seems normal is crazy. Women are on a rampage about gender and, my aged dentist tells me that relations between men and women are back in the dark ages. We couldn't be further apart. People will come to see me in tears, tension in their bodies from lack of contact and I am still recovering form Mexico. I will take knee in yoga several times before I realize what I really need is sleep and a bath. I will get slow slow slower and I will ignore the message from spirit...Zonia? Si a little wearier than my usual Go write. Instead, I will find myself river rock jumping and bathing topless on the granite near the river. I will wish for the freedom gold, laugh knowing many have done so at the waters edge and I will let it go, feel settled in my heart with a golden sunray warming my bare chest to sky. And finally, the voice will crescendo until I am at the computer and I am praying. Who’s reading? I don’t have Facebook. Doesn’t matter. I write because I must, usually with pen and paper, today with keyboard. Breathe. When it comes it flows fast. Creator, write me. This is what comes through: Help me to say all the truths people know to be true inside their hearts but can't find words to say... Like...the messages of the stars coming to us from light hears away... Telling us the story about how money and technology almost divided us until we remembered to look to the Earth and God for comfort. Until we remembered that who and what we are can't be taken away from us. It's in us. But until we turn in again HOLD HANDS, let all the fucking bullshit go NOTHING is going to get better. Look with your heart, filter costumes from real people. You'll recognize them by the light in their eyes, by the fact that they believe in and talk about GOD...not as a concept or out there far away ideal. But HERE in our HEARTS. The real deal. You'll know them by the way they love people. Altruism. You will know them by the way they help people and give out of their want. They let people God Earth Spirit take everything from them even their life, but not their CONNECTION TO GOD that is called INTEGRITY. You'll know them because they keep faith in a higher power. You’ll know them because they don’t get caught up in mass hysteria or witch hunts. You’ll know them because they are a calming compassionate force that will bring you back to LOVE. THE ONLY THING THAT MOTIVATES A SHAMAN MEDICINE MAN is the heart of the MOTHER. The HEART of a woman is what saves the planet, not the power or intellect. And if ego beauty and charisma reign then we forget we are all born of a women and an egg without sperm washes away as blood. Mother. We are all someone to her regardless of station and money is no indication of divine favor. THE LOVE OF A WOMAN LIKE A MOTHER for her children is the power of love the world needs. UNCONDITIONAL. Forgive each other. Please. Forgive each toher everything. Whatever it was...START OVER TODAY. Please, everyone. Every single one of us. God, we need to organize a PUT THE GODDAMN CELL PHONE DOWN DAY. We need relief. Jesus. Holy Spirit. Buddha. Mohammed. Great spirit. Every Master. Every Angel Every Univeral Being of Light Break the chain of control over our heads--our hearts.--our body’s addictions. Bring us into UNION. Ecstatic. Super Nova Union Dance Pray Move. Channel God. and...be careful who you defend and side with...if you spew vileness in return to put a person in place, you are now an attacker perpetrating verbal abuse. Ghandi. Spiritual Resistence. It is softer. It is in the heart. Resist mechanic, cold cutting words you say to NO FACE, NO EARS. Words on screens are BRAINWASHING you. Take back your spirit. Go to river. Try sobriety. Get over your social anxiety, go in public interact with human beings get off news Facebook is propaganda. Propaganda written by peers who smile and sell you their success is still propaganda, especially if it divides. Give your tears and fears to the river. Pray our waters stay free. Band together to keep land otherwise GIANT CORPORATIONS ARE GOING TO BUY IT and turn the Sierras into MONOCULTURED GMO POTFIELDS. Wake up. While you inform others about how they should be, planning your next trip, playing rich and famous, selling your amazingness, the powers that be are sweeping the nation selling National Parks. Wake up. Burn your Pendleton blankets if you need to..no, don't they are cool, warm and once people traded horses for them. but SERIOUSLY... You will know Yuba lovers and Gold lovers because the GOLD lovers chase GOLD the river lovers lay naked on the granitie in infinite BLISS. Communion. Water Sun Love Freedom Hippie Gypsey Roots. We've lived with nothing. Live that way now, but don't sell the land. Save it. Band Together. This is when the power of community manifests. Don't break apart over power struggles, ego or fear. This is how FIRE hold together at the CENTER in the private PRAYERS of our HEARTS. For Earth, not fame, not fortune, not Apple, Ipod or IPhone, but EARTH. Guard her with your heart and fall deeply in love with her, realize YOU CAN'T LIVE WITHOUT HER. CAN NOT. Dumb. It’s that fucking simple. Geez. Brain Surgery. We need a lobotomy. Pull the fucking headset out of your ears and LISTEN to SILENCE again. Then rise up singing songs of LOVE and TOGETHERNESS. Human Family. Water Bird Songs of gratitude and rejoicing for nature's beauty. Make peace. Stop fighting. African. Native American. Mexican. Tribal ways depend on peace and communication between members. If two people are fighting they need to sit together and talk because no one will be happy where there is hurt. No one it’s why grandmothers used to gather the warring parties together not encourage shit talking and division. Pray to keep the love together. Can everyone bow their heads and pray this to their God? REVIVE LOVING FEELING IN OUR HEARTS AGAIN. PRAY FERVANTLY. To the fire, into the center of Earth which is our heart, to bring us back together, the two parts of our broken hearts and literally put them and our heads together in EMBRACE. HOLD EACH OTHER. CLOSER. CLOSE ENOUGH TO HEAR BREATH. And stretch ourselves to LOVE MORE. FORGIVE MORE. Make more space for other to make errors and experience us in our own vulnerability without carefully crafted photos. Pray. In time you will know who is praying with the ancestros for FUTURE GENERATIONS TO HAVE LIFE. At the river. A new serpant painting on rock. Got that right. We are the ancestors for the future. What will the children see we LOVE? Spread love become an orchestra of God's children. Come together in UNIVERSE. In praise of women. In praise of men. I remember going to a ceremony on the reservation for the women who returned from war who had been brutally raped by their own people. We were there together in a house surrounded by photos of all the ancestors and at my back was a giant deer cedar drum I could have fit inside that spoke water through me. It told me to tell the women, not to forget to include good men in their healing because their healing would be not be complete without them. Nelson Mandala. Stop fighting. Love. In hatred there is no freedom and no one will be happy. Guard your freedom and focus on the things our lives actually depend on BREATH. Fresh Air. Clear your lungs and find the words your soul want to express in starlit walks. The sunrising, no longer to the face of my Beloved or Haleakela is still beautiful. Just painting. Getting ready for work. Gluten free pizza. Bowling night. Simple. Getting really simple. Quiet. What a fucking crazy year. Anyone?!?!? Geez...thanks eclipse. Now I know why ancient people said NOT to look at it, it would destroy your life. Hahah crazy modern people we stared at it by the thousands and watched as our whole life gets stripped away, revealed, exposed, wow! So much to write... but I have so much to live. Gotta go. Love you's. "A sum can be put right but only by going back till you find the error...working it afresh from that point...the spell must be unwound" -CS Lewis.
I read this. I read this for three days. I read it and stare into eternity. I read this and I feel into the faith of CS Lewis. I read it again pausing with the book on my chest. I read it to the yoga class. I encourage a writing assignment. I ponder. I think. I feel. I consider one of my students. She has said nothing to anyone. She is choosing life. She is choosing to have a moment to dream goodness and spirit back into her body. She laughs. She plays. She prays. She engages with everyone. I can tell she is in a deep place inside her heart. She needs the relief. This is her moment. I know it. She knows it too. We say this in private in my healing space in the jungle. I give her amethyst and green calcite. She is sparkly faced, literally (the airport spilled my sprinkles so they are on everyone, even the ones who cry...actually especially the ones who cry.) She is giggly like a little girl the way I imagine I probably looked when I was 7, covered in dirt, running freely in the Colorado prairie behind my house finding amethyst and petrified wood. I tell her, this is your moment, but I think that you won't have to unwind it. It the defining moment that is springing you forward into your life. She nods crying tears of joy. I hold her story in my heart for the week and wonder if she will share it with others, just knowing brings the day into a balance between life and death. Her father was not a spiritual man. He wrote a book about death and mused on the futility of existence. He believed each person's life was their own to live or not. In a not so shocking, but tragic moment he acts on this and takes his life. Only one month has passed. She's holding the family together but in a brave moment she decides that everyone will have to deal with their own grief and flies to this magical place where the jungle meets the sea for healing and to touch the divine, to have someone speak of God, spirit and heart. To fill this futile life with meaning, infuse every moment with life, I imagine her father who is present in her sessions is opening her spirit to the ocean teeming with life and streaming forward in front of her is a life different from anything she has ever experienced. Its a transformative moment for all of us as she unfolds and embraces spirit and we all embrace her and I know that in her future she will unwind to this moment and it will not need to be undone or redone. It will be the beginning from which all life springs. Day One. I'm told class will begin in the afternoon at 4. I'm in pajamas after a long week of healings. Listening to the ocean, taking deep breaths. Zonia? Slight urgency. Zonia?! More urgency. I open the door and peer down the spiral staircase, one eyebrow cocked and a sideways smile. Si? The yoga room is full everyone is waiting for you. Wide eyed. What?! Ha ha oh shit! So Mexico. I change and descend in less than 5 minutes running up the path to the selva, the tower. It is definitely full and I begin class the moment I step in. Pranayama. I'm laughing. Bed head. Somewhere around child's pose I say, "Hi, everyone!" We all laugh. "Hi!" they say. I come back to the front to look at all the cutie faces. There they are, like it was yesterday. They are looking at me like 7 year olds hoping they are memorable. They are so memorable. Hey! I remember you! You are here! Yeah! They say in unison. The dancers. The Rotarians. Midwesterners, first time yogis, here to facilitate the many retreat center social projects. Two Mexican ladies who don't speak English, one recovering from breast cancer. A retreat yoga teacher needing to return to student. And my inspiration of beauty in transformation. Other guests float in and out, every class is different. Together we will journey the week. Biotensegrity. Qi gong. Asana. Pranayama. Feldenkris. Cortical Re-education. Joint mobility. Spinal Exploration. Brazilian Oraixias hand movements to the Sacred Elements. Yin. Props. Until finally we are on the beach, no towels. They are in horse stance with Brazilian water container, except this time when they hold the water the whole ocean lay in front of them. Hands over head, wrists cocked at the crown, light, with the sun above them. Air hands in at the chest and exhale the full expanse of the container that is our Mother. Triangle down at the pubic bone, sand under bare feet. We understand this movements now they exclaim! We flow, hold, breathe, pray laugh our way to our backs. I can't resist. Flat on their backs, covered in sand: "Go ahead and slide your arms from your sides to shoulder level and back to your side. Do that three more times. Great. Now slide your heels out to the side and back together again. Now do both at the same time." Doh. He he. Hah! It takes about three sweeps for them to realize what we are doing. Sand Angels. Ha ha now everyone is doing it on their own, heads rolling side to side, giant smiles, and laughing. I make them roll right, then left, just in case there is one place on their body that isn't covered in sand, it's everywhere. Laughter yoga. I remember the laughing swami. "I am happy. I am relaxed. I am happy. I am relaxed." This radiant smiling childlike expression, this is yoga. This is soul. This is connection. This is rebirth. We bounce off into the ocean. One older student holds back. "I'm just gonna head back." "Ok!" we all shout bouncing off into the ocean like dolphins, splashing, diving, swimming. I pop up out of the water. I see her at the edge to her knees. I give her a giant smile. "Yah!" I wave her in, "Come on!" I go towards her. "Yah! Come on!" I say with a smile. She looks at me a little chagrin, "I just couldn't understand why I wouldn't want to be having so much fun." "I'm glad you changed your mind." "You're here!" The group exclaims. "Nice!" She smiles shyly and we all go back to parallel play. Some talk in shallower waters. Others go far. I have healing sessions so I leave them all in their childlike glee. I leave tomorrow. It's been a whirlwind tour to my second home where I used to stay 3-4 months. In two weeks 80 sessions will pass and a yoga retreat. People will ask, "How are you doing this?" I will smile and touch them. I don't know but I do know, I get a lot of help. That is the beauty of the exhaustion. In the midst when I realize 10 sessions a day isn't possible. Five and two yoga classes a day, not possible. But it's happening. And I feel the energy there to support the healing of others. I am humbled. I bow my head and I know there is a force that is here for all of us. It arrives in support of love. And this place, this Mexico, it is love. From the moment you wake up you will say good morning to 20-30 people. You will pass them again. You will say good afternoon. You will pass them again. You will say good evening. You will see them again. You will say good night, sleep with the angels. And in the morning, you will ask how they slept and it will continue all day with hugs like it's been so long and each time you will be so happy to see them again. Faces. Here you see faces. Wifi works only in one places and water destroys phones. They jungle wakes people up in their hearts. You see them coming back to feeling. You see it all rising. You see the power of connection and you remember. Life is about this community. This human family. Face to face. Slower paced. In rhythm and tune with nature. It's Saturday. Grand opening for my friends little restaurant. They haven't given up despite all the palapa issues, they have had to rebuild three times. They never quit. It's been a theme. Don't quit. Don't ask too many questions. Just begin. Don't ask how. Obstacles. Summon your internal fire. I remember the students Friday before we jump in the ocean heels of hands resting on crown. Fire. I remember the people in 33 CE filled with holy spirit. And what would that spirit have us do? Press on. The whole town passes through. A couple who had me teach them fire and run sweat lodge years ago. They now have their own land with a tipi site. They asked me to attend. No time. But I tune in during sessions and feel the prayer is good. "I feel you into my heart." She tells me. "I feel I have watched you pray for all of us. I feel I know how and I speak. The fire talks me and I am loving you wishing you were there." "I wish I were too." Its a moment for me when after years of wondering if what i do in the quiet of life matters. The times i don't know if i have the energy to do sessions, yoga and run lodge...teach lodge to the younger humble hearts afraid to ask anyone else. Train the elders to pass on the ways. Move the fireman to the door man have him teach fire. Listen with a smile as i hear him give directions. "Approach the fire. Sin Miedo! Sin Miedo! Without fear! Without fear!" Feel in my heart how important the teaching is, especially from elders such as this many who was a temple dancer for 20 years and never fails to approach ceremony with humble heart, "Please, Mother, may we say this prayer. Please those from the North will you pray with us? Please those from the south will you pray with us? Please those from the east, west, above, below....calling you with a conch...will you please pray with our hearts for our hearts?" And always the answer is yes. A woman water pourer. He wasn't sure. After first lodge. What did you do, Zonia? “What do you mean?” “The fire was so bright and hardly any wood was used.” Love. Its the love. The heartfire makes everything burn bright. Always I will do your fire. Just ask. I will honor him with half of what I am paid though he is usually given only a drop. He will feel shy to accept. I will remind him, no fire, no ceremony. Thank you. I will move him to the door for the first lodge he has left the fire to enter in three years and he will train on the fire. Now these kids are young adults. They are strong, they are humble, they are full of heart and love. She teaches at the school. They ask me to come back in spring to bless their seeds with a lodge. I will. It magically works out that the retreat center needs me again in spring. Everything according to God's will. The night winds down. I am laying on the lava rocks in the pitch black praying to the stars, giving thanks. Thank you. Thank you for my life. Thank you for this life. Please hear all the prayers that have been said. I am doing yoga on the rocks, my finger tips attached to the stars. Strings of light. I am a marenanet puppet. Hands to the sky. Zonia! My friends husband says, only one person could explain the hands popping up out of the rocks. Si! We sit. Talk about the divine and the stars. He leaves me to ponder the awesomeness of this life. I think of my students. I wonder if the dancers will really send for me to do yoga in Idaho. I wonder if my lovely butterfly will have enough light and if my crystal friends will comfort her when she returns home. I wonder about my radiant teacher sister. I laugh inside remembering one of the Rotarians, six feet tall farmer, covered in sand, sitting cross legged looking up at me with a huge smile and sand even on his face, "This was my first yoga class!" There is a giggle in his heart and mine as well. So cute. All these people are so cute. Creator God, bless your children in their hearts and bring us all to the infinite. Do teach us how to unwind all our stories and live forward from today. Choosing joy, peace, forgiveness and life. Do teach us to infuse life with meaning and faith. Do bring us together. Do hold us together. For truly...the only life worth living is the one in which we are here. There is a time in every woman’s life when she realizes that we are all in the state of realizing oh ha ha I’m not separate in my experience of baring my soul and all my insecurities in order to liberate other women of the shame they feel for being ashamed of their bodies feelings experiences or thoughts.
If we are lucky we find women who look for the beauty in others instead of deconstructing other beauties for the purpose of comparison and lessening feelings of personal insecurity. If we are lucky we find those who praise women. If we are happy we are the one praising women. When I taught high school we participated in a program entitled Challenge Day, the original “me too” campaign of dissolving barriers to being happy and letting go of our belief that somehow it’s ok to curl up in a ball and contract into the pain we "OWN", more aptly, because it is shared, "OUR" collective pain. Personally, I would rather not. The question I want to answer is: HOW do we get to a place of healed, as in our soul observer comes into our experience and acknowledges that fucked up shit happens to these bodies and it affects the membrane that exists between bones and skin. AND HEAL MORE QUICKLY rather than allowing the pain of it to constrict around us like a sausage squeezing, contracting us and the whole body contracts around that ONE spot, ONE space in time, like a black hole so that our galaxy and universe is collapsing in on that SINGULAR experience. Really do we want to define our lives by our pain suffering and manifesting it in the mind or the body. We have choices to make. At the still point where our soul hovers in observation we have a question we need to answer: How to explain that situation and remain in love, in trust, in peace? A schism or separation may occur at that point the soul continuing to ruminate with its sole experience of love with “How the fuck do you explain this. God! Hey!” Fist in the air shaking it skyward, “fuck you for not loving me!” The experience of the body experiencing our contraction around that still point of “God, why didn't you love me enough to make everything perfect? Why didn’t you love me enough so that I never felt pain sorrow sickness aging death? God? WHY?” Its the ultimate question: Does God Source energy creation spirit lack love and interest? In turn we feel an empty void where we feel it should exist? Fill that space with longing separation or with intoxicating breath. Fill it with energy give it motion. Choose the feeling that pulls you forward call it e-motion. Free yourself from body shame. My legs aren’t long enough, I’ll wear heals. My breasts aren’t big enough I’ll have surgery. My hair is grey my skin has wrinkles stretch marks oh dear god my thighs jiggle and when I bend forward my belly rolls. Crazy monkeys. It’s normal those weird thoughts stop fearing them Otherwise in the cover up we sound like this: Hi, how are you? Fine. Fine. Me too. Everything normal here. Yup me, too. Silence whirling dervish around all the stream of consciousness things that we wish we could say out loud but are afraid for people to know for fear of being different and so we never learn all the ways we are the same. It’s called self imposed isolation through fear of insecurities and strangely enough hiding our insecurities well haha it makes others insecure. So you mastered looking like you’ve got it all figured out? Awesome! Now there people who are honest are going oh shit they figured it out what’s wrong with me why can’t I when in actuality none of us know anything for sure except that everything is so uncertain and yup looking back I’ve taught myself a hell of a lot I wish I could know at 20 but know now at 40 which at 50 I’m sure I’ll laugh at myself and by 70 well I hope I’m just staring at birds and my hands like my grandma until then... Silly monkeys. Live out loud. Think of a world Terets syndrome think Jim Carrey liar liar and those awkward silent moments become....I suffer from depression. Hand over mouth eyes wide did I say that out loud. I’m lonely. I need friends. I’m socially awkward. Just so you know I’m super anxious...incidentals the opening line for me and my sweet friend to speak openly. Will you hold my hand? I’m smiling but really I’m scared. Do I look fat? Hey you’re fat. I told my mom that once because I love her she was 50 pounds overweight. I am? Oh! Haha I didn’t notice so she went to the gym and looks amazing! Sometimes we look down and see, oh shit, I went from Sunday donut and coffee to one everyday I’m caught in a loop of too much of a good thing and maybe I’ll make that only special days when after a thirty day cleanse and I see how I feel and thank you I might just have this body type. As in can’t be changed I tried so instead of wishing I were taller blonder smarter funnier I started looking inside and asking what am I!? Put on a new hat, am I good at writing? Painting drawing singing walking talking listening? It’s called self-development also described as self-creation self love. As in I love my self when I lose myself in... Get lost in the swirl get lost in the color in the smell in the texture. Bring life to your dance and feel strong fluid in your body. Have you ever seen someone immersed a special light bathes them they are inspired taken... And suddenly you are Snoopy doing the Christmas dance because you are at ease with yourself. Do a water ritual: You put on sparkles exfoliate your skin stimulating the lymph system take baths in which you put gerbera daisies and marigolds add aromatherapy lily violet cedar frankincense vetiver. You clean your toes your foot your ankle your knee your thigh your buttocks your belly your sternum your collar bone your neck your face your scalp the back of your neck your shoulders you use Castile coconut soap a little coconut oil add sea salt maybe lemon and take your time. You love the skin you are in. It’s your miraculous body covered in organ that breathes contact with air that surround you. Breathe deep you now have this air inside you exhale the essence moistens the air like fog on a mirror the moisture of your lungs merges molecules with the oxygen you breathe together sky space water and you inhale a tree exhales you exhale a tree inhales and both bathe in sunlight hold a limb’s hand hold your own. Tell yourself you will be ok and ask ”Self what would you like to do?” And then LIVE FORWARD THIS DAY from your feet, from your heart, from your dreams. If I could reach a hand at 42 back to my 27 year old self I’d say, “Self, it’s ok. I’m sorry that happened to you but I want you to know you are loved and I want you to look forward from this day into the FUTURE. I want you to follow the laughter coming from inside your body. I want you to think of an experience that would make you the happiest person on earth and make it happen for yourself so that you know what it is to be gifted THIS DAY this reference point forward about why life is worth living to the fullest fearlessly BECAUSE I LOVE YOU AND I LOVE LIFE. Dream outside yourself. Know the world is bigger than our one experience. Talk to people. Realize life will go in the direction of our heart's choice to be happy despite what has happened and then dance. Twirl and whirl and leap! Bare your belly. Walk around your house NAKED. Take care of your hair and skin and feet. Go outside. Appreciate squirrels, even if the little bastard ate all the plants (Think squirrels with light sabers. Total garden annihilation! AGH....the tragedy! Thank God other people are farmers!)and since when did squirrels eat plants? Nuts! The pictures always show nuts ha ha and then remember nothing is as it seems don’t assume to know what another person is thinking or feeling. Ask a good terrifying question get the answer straight from the surprised heart. Zonia? Yes! Have you ever experienced sexual trauma abuse? Yes! Have you ever ever been in terrible pain and suffered to move your body? Yes! Have you ever felt so alone you prayed for death because the pain of isolation and body made you feel like life was cold and not worth living? Yes! Have you ever been so ashamed of your body that you cried in front of dressing room mirrors and refused to show your belly butt or thighs because you felt ashamed? Yes! Have you ever smiled wide eyed and said yes to something that it ended up was really a definitive NO and then felt dominated abused or manipulated for not speaking your truth? Yes! Have you ever spoken your truth in hard words at obscene levels wide strained neck muscles and practically spat hostilities cutting remarks and emasculating controlling nitpicking behavior until you broke the power of a loved one over your own heart and reclaimed your autonomy freedom and power feeling vindicated justified and righteous? Yes! Now what? A new “me too?!” Please!!! The point is yes. I have been through and done so much. I have forgiven and been forgiven at levels that don't require any other audience than the Creator God and those to whom I have bared my soul. I no longer identify emotionally with that Self. It’s been a long while. I love that little me. I empathize with her so much that I have held her past crying into that calm ease safety of...lo siento. I feel for you with so much love. Here. I love you. I love you. It's ok. It's ok. It’s why I feel for people but also remember, I went through a lot but life changing events allowed me to rebirth mother myself and have different experiences, now happy ones. Bitches victims housewives mothers sisters friends unite not in victim mentality but in the creation of a community of women who survived who broke through who enjoy every moment of this life. Once we realize that we aren’t alone then we can move on from there and say in a creation soul retrieval loving way to the terets blurp! Yeah, this is what I’m actually thinking. And for God's sake stop attacking people. Please. Be Kind. We are women connected to the earth mother we move with moons tides and pulls. we feel all of it and at least once a month we pour buckets of tears despair sensitivity so then be real, say what you are feeling we’ve all been there or will be at one time or another. I’m on my period going through menopause I’m getting old I feel sad I need a hug and don’t talk to me I think the whole world is dying that human beings are disgusting creatures with no regard for life planet or spirit. I think everything is sad really difficult and hard to understand I feel confused angry hopeless and unable to affect change. I feel overwhelmed by all the pain and suffering but for some reason I can’t stop feeding my brain on it. The images overwhelm me. The feelings of those images is so deep in my heart that I have to cry for the earth humanity all the victims the perpetrators the criminals the politicians. I have to wonder what planet they come from because none of this makes sense if we all die from pollution so why are we here at all? If you need to, cry from your deepest wound give your blood to the earth honor those who have died before us but somehow got through. Honor those who’s bodies came through but not their souls and then listen. People come in to see me and suddenly it all pours out in tears and why do I want to tell you everything and hope the thing I really want isn’t said because I’m afraid to hope that miracles are possible. So, there's this guy, John of God. He lives in Brazil and believes in miracles. My teacher Maria Lucia Bittencourt, who has since died, used to tell stories of miracles that happened there. She asked what we all wanted. I remembered saying I wish to stand for beauty in a dying world. Evidence that happiness and joy are possible. Then she asked us to write on a paper everything we wished to give away. I wrote everything I loved down on a paper and handed it to Maria Lucia and said miracles would happen to ensure us what we asked to leave would leave and what would we put back? I put everything I loved. It's years later, right now this moment, and I’m just remembering that happened. Why'd I write I wanted to lose everything I loved then regain it and what has been the result of that request? The things I have loved have stayed and the things I have loved have gone. Just like that. Love comes, love goes. I love this sunset wow breathe oooo I love that stretch of beach ha ha Om lived in that tree with a ladder it’s still there pretty epic. The story of Om the story of Mar de Jade the story of life. Its all changing and at somepoint, the ladder hanging there will be part of a mythology and all of us who know the account will be gone. Ask how it all happened. It? Life. No one knows for sure. It births out of intention, out of idea, out of SOLUTION ORIENTED THINKING. It came out of starting a thing and trust. It all happens one decision one moment at a time. My beautiful Nia friend asked the question, what would happen if only what you loved today arose tomorrow? This little Mexican village is filled with writers artists musicians happy smiling people. It’s on the ocean and I get to teach yoga do Massage and write blogs at my friends coffee shop in the beach so I think 🤔um... hand touching myself in space pat pat yep 👍 phew! I made it I’m all here but damn that was scary I thought I was getting lost along the way but really it’s all just getting started life is ahead of me not behind and I am zooming forward with intensity focused on the higher vision of life as a miracle so worth living and so glad to have this experience where the jungle meets the sea and magic actually happens. It does truly happen...magic. Magic. Trust unfolding. Creation. Take risks take chances hit a block ask how to go around what’s the different direction? what’s the next step? Take one step at a time. Zonia, how did you you end up here? An invitation. The word yes. Timing. Alignment. Agreement. Mutuality. Love. Gratitude. So much appreciation for life. ha ha like a water tunnel through space wormholes in the continuance spiral rocks ancient Huichotl village and a little spa up in a tree house tower sound of ocean waves drifting you to sleep. Cardamom. Yup, cardamom was the secret ingredient. I put it in a salve if arnica and put sparkles in there to lighten things up bring out the colors flowing from my rainbow wand hands Buddha essence renewed Nia retreat blew my mind. Yeah. Best decision I’ve made all year. To show up here where love is in charge of everything and the container is Earth. Accept your blessings and curses. Mostly, though,blessings let them out weigh the bad. Bless yourself. Bless those who came before you. Bless those who will come after. As in the scales are tipped in your favor. Today is going to be an amazing miraculous day look for it. All your dreams are coming true in the kaleidoscope of your life. Today is day one of wellness retreat in magnificent Mexico style I arrive late not knowing I’m teaching my morning class. Hair everywhere sand in my toes and begin. Breathe bhanda exercises to rejuvenate spinal fluid. Now, how to grow bone and cartilage? That’s something to manifest. Think wonderful thoughts. I wonder if it’s, beings from other dimensions here with us waiting for permission to help, possible and then settle into my simple prayer about leaving he past behind, streaming into future. Because if miracles are possible, then I’d manifest people being well, belief in healing inter-dimensional being like the ones John of God described as performing spiritual surgery X-rays showing incisions and spiritual staples where the physical body has not been touched. Is that possible? I'm willing to believe in miracles and also to make peace that bodies are mortal and they degenerate. Sometimes hair falls out stretch marks wrinkles tell the story of our face. I remember close talking with with my mom as she passed into fifty lifting her forehead to remove wrinkles. I remember touching her face I remember telling her I can remember every smile that created a crease and we laugh because the same smile sits on my face and will create the same ventriloquist dummy chin my grandfather drooled from and now my mom does too. What fate am I streaming towards? Experience and by now I’m over 30 years from molestation it no longer defines me nor the moment in college when I broke down crying silently in a stall when during swimming class I had a hard time being naked in the showers. That’s not even close to nude beach Maui Nevada City skinny dipping hot springs love making me. Free in this skin I am...A little yoda there. Life has sprung forward and always I’ve forced myself to do something fear inspiring like be honest with first myself then others. Zonia, people have been raped murdered killed. Yes, I know, I say empathetic heart and face retaining still my center. No, you don’t understand, people have had cancer. I do UNDERSTAND. Then why aren’t you sobbing yelling? But I have. I’ve done both. I realized something though, I don’t know what to do about it. It being the pain and suffering in the world but I know how to love people. I know how to hug people I know how to look everyday for evidence that good is and good does. I learned how to hear people say I’m lonely and hold their hand. I’ve learned how to tell strange stories and I have learned how to appreciated that none of us has figured anything out and that it’s ok. The right people will come into our lives. Our life stories matter keep living them. I remember the first time I met this amazing group of dancing women and my hair was turning grey and I looked around the swirling room and there were these amazingly beautiful silver haired women dancing smiling and I thought wow if I look like that in 20 years it’s ok and I fell in love. I remember seeing their their smiles as they immersed their self creating developing enjoying selves into the dance and thinking they have no cares in the world and then realizing one by one as they passed through my room that we all have cares. And I loved them more for helping me know what we all really need to know is, we aren’t alone and, if we aren’t alone, we are going to be ok. Keep looking around. Keep meeting eye to eye. Put the Goddamn phones down, close the screen, I mean really look around. Say to someone: You're ok. You are going to make it. Be a comforting hand, a hug, a smile. We can’t change the past but what we can let love arise in the future. WE CAN LET LOVE ARISE IN THE FUTURE. Miracles can spring from silent voids. Women can love each other whole bright shiny speak words of appreciation. MEN CAN TOO. Let them. Let us all heal. Stop villanizing and stop being the villain. You know. As in just right now. Let go. Look for the good. Let each other know that thing that special thing you do it’s working. It helps. I’m not alone none of us are. There are other beings assisting us. I know this to be true. I’ve heard tales, I have tales to tell. Miracles are true, we can manifest one today with beauty in female form sparkly shiny faces immersed in that which makes us beautiful strong courageous loyal devoted. We envision the future. we see ourselves healed and start living today as if it were true now. Happy. Loved. Loving. Tell the story forward from today: I’m sitting on a spiral staircase under the trees and the starlit sky approaching new moon to the sound of waves and crickets. I have no destination in this writing, just words phrases ideas...one is...well...no...actually... There are waves and crickets, smells of earth damp from humidity and the resort is quiet this night. Tomorrow is yoga for the class, tonight is yoga just for me. I gave over 45 massages this week to women who each change my life more than hands can convey and it’s quiet now. I didn’t even go to the spa today just reading CS Lewis, hanging with two young little ones, my friend, a puppy and a cat. Climbed rocks swung in a hammock and discussed the truth of sweat lodges the gap between people and my hope that things miraculously change. Sometimes they do, sometimes we just accept things the way they are and realize Que sera Is this pacifism? The best things that have happened in my life, chance meetings and invitations, I did nothing but say yes. Maybe it can be easier the quieter we get. I give thought to the idea many times that everything in the universe rotates upon axis and celestial bodies tango mathematically precise. Why are human the only ones who struggle to do what is right, as in head in the direction of heaven? Not as in another place but HERE IN OUR MINDS. Not as in hell isn’t here in earth but that maybe just maybe we can harness the power of the dream of the prayer of the universe of other beings and in the very least find moments of peace music journey dance rhythm fire beaches here and now and PRAY. Pray for miracles because one miracle will help one person believe who will touch others to believe and hope gives us future and future begins with dreams. Today is the end of the first week of my friend Sharon's son being born. I call him the gnome baby, he has the perfect little sideways smile and was born after 58 hours of labor. He is the love of a network of women, who when I tuned in during the days of labor prayed for his mother and joined together in celebrating the coming of new life.
We are all in love with him. He is making me think a lot about what it is to have your whole life ahead of you, a fresh slate, a new life. It’s making me think a lot about prayers for life and the future. One of my co-workers has a little girl. She talks to me psychically, its true. She has big blue eyes super sparkly. Krista is such a good mom she is totally in love with her. I have known her two years. I've watched her get pregnant, be one of the most beautiful graceful working mommas ever. Have a baby, come to appreciate her partner and man, he has come to appreciate her and they are getting married. It's actually quite lovely. The first step in healing our hearts is realizing it is a really sweet and beautiful thing to want to get married and have babies. Not driven by that need but at least inspired by it. Call it a puppy. Call it tribal multi generational living. Call it feminine and soft. Call it the end of hedonism where lust greed and appetite destroy numb. Call it the rise of sensuality which is the savoring of all that is beautiful giving rise to it again as an act of culinary artistic musical sensory creation. Wherever those things live, it makes for a really sweet heart interacting with life at a heart level. It is a very soft place, topics for conversations are usually pretty light and playful and begin from today. They are not really intense because you are hopeful. You feel good about life. You feel like you are on the right track. You are making good decisions and you don't really have doubts. in this state of mind others aren't triggering you in any way which means that you emotionally are in a healthy state of mind. So the two of you are making an agreement, "Let's see if in our healthiest state of mind we can have a really good time living life together. As one couple put it starting a conversation you never end. In shorter terms for those inclined, date with a. View to presence in today’s perfect moment. My 19 year old nephew just started dating a really cute young woman after having been in a 4 year relationship with a young woman who he knew since 8th grade. Naturally they outgrew each other, she became very intellectual, she always knew what she wanted, to be a marine biologist and go to college. My nephew got to college and wanted to cry. He did not want to go to school. I have never seen my nephew depressed. He was depressed. He is a lot more humanities centered than his businness degree, but there was something else in his free spirit that just did not jive with college, at all, and he was so scared to disappoint my father and I, especially my father who used to joke that he was the "last hope." What that means is that my dad in one cycle, one generation, went from one pair of shoes, one suit. They were not rich people but they had pride in themselves. They were very clean and my grandmother would clean and starch his clothes everyday so that he even won "best dressed" at school. My grandmother had a really hard life but she always made sure that her children were fed and happy, played baseball with them. There were 9 of them, three of them died. Life moved on. She was really prayerful. I remember her always with her rosary beads and prayer book. Every morning, every night she would say nothing to anyone, silently she would move from her lounge chair in the living room to the bathroom where she would close herself away. She would not announce it to anyone. She would not tell people what she was praying about, but if you walked past her altar there you would see a picture of every single one of us. And some of us would have candles. One of my cousins was arrested for transporting marijuana across the country. At the time, he had a seven year old daughter, when he got out she was 14. He was never the same after he came out, my aunt and uncle adopted and raised her. She has gotten older and is just as fun as I remember him being when I was a little girl. She is beautiful, was cutie pregnant, two kids now, second marriage and everybody turned out alright. But one thing you could be sure of was that there was candle burning in front of that cousin's picture for years. So my grandmother may not have really talked about it, but she was serious about prayer and holding her family in the light for God to help. Another thing that would happen was that if you got married once, and you gave her a picture, you could be sure that the first husband and wife photo would be on the altar, it didn't matter if you were divorced ten times, remarried six, that one, first one would always be the one that was on the altar. She was very devoted to that concept. My grandfather abandoned my grandmother with all her children and my grandma ironed and made 12 dozen tortillas, or 6 dozen, whatever that exorbitant amount that was, everyday, to take care of them. My dad was the first one to go to college. He got college education because the two older brothers went off to war and sent pension to help my grandmother feed the rest of them. As a result, my dad got to go to college, my aunt went to college, and my younger uncle. Because of that they all help each other and we came to recognize the value of education as well as working hard to take care of each other, sharing what you have and giving each other a leg up. Because having your family all feel like they have what they need, and some of what they want, is a really good feeling for every body. No one in my family is gonna go hungry, be homeless, or without a car, unless you choose to be, which I did choose at one point to do while I was on a 10 year backpacking mission because God told me to follow fire to fire, even though I had no money. I followed directions and then astonishingly ran into the same people over and over again for 10 years until we were considered "family" or adopted tribal members. Even though I don't officially sit group settings praying for them, I do pray for their lives. I think sometimes I get to the point, I got this way when I was teaching high school, that I was praying for enough of kids already. There were a couple I fell really deep into. One I let move in with me after she was emancipated and the other, Tyfanny, in particular, really caputured my heart. I am really just so proud of her. In high school she had such a hard time, a lot of her sexual abuse surfaced and, because I had overcome my childhood molestation, we had a special connection that made her find confidence in my heart. She came out to be a nurse and an amazing wife and mother of two kids. I still talk to her. It took a lot of sheer love for them. My heart felt so full with what I could handle at that moment in time. So, I got that way with the Native American Church adopted tribal system because healing takes place over time and requires a great deal of physical presence and support. I saw in there that there was a need for people to relearn basic relationship concepts. I have a super good relationship with my dad. He is very kind. If anything he was domineering. He steered the ship of my life. He made me go to college. I didn't want to go to college. But my grandmother struggled really hard with all those kids and it was his determination that I would be a strong and independant woman and that no matter what I would be able to take care of myself, which I can and do. I was a high school teacher for ten years as a result of him pushing me pushing me pushing me. I am really glad I had that experience because it was a very formative and informative to me as far as my healing work is concerned because it allowed me to really see in a small year long container what exactly human beings need to feel loved to heal patterns of woundedness. It was my sole desire to help those kids be happy, healthy, determined, inspired, "successful." As in having all of your basic necessities. I still harness that information for understanding people no matter what age we are. Human beings are all pretty much the same. The little mining town where I live have been traveling in circuits, which to me, from and outsiders perspective, and this is one of the most beautiful things I took away from festival circuits, is that they all had a home, a touchstone and a jumping date with which to connect and get someplace where someone would be happy that you made it. They could celebrate the power of prayer and coming together. It was very energizing after a long period of time during which you were just trying to figure out how to live free. Alot of us grew up with parents, like my dad, who in order to free the next generation from poverty, sold the first half of his life to Chevron Corporation. I remember that if we wanted to see my dad we would go with my mother downtown Denver, Colorado. We would be the only ones on the floor. Everyone home and gone. This is during the years when my dad had to be bookkeeper for Chevron. Now mind you, this is long before computer systems and excel. There was no computer program wherein you put in mathematical formulas that would add columns 1-345 and recalculate if you changed one box. No, this was in the year of pencil, ruler, and little boxed geometric ledger paper. There would be times my dad would go into a meeting and in the meeting they would tell him they needed him to figure out what the effect on the budget would be if they changed this one box. So he would have to redo the whole spreadsheet, for Chevron Corporation, we are talking about huge mathematical sums in teeny boxes just to see what might, possibly, could, probably be the outcome should they decide to do this thing but then they might very well decide not to, but Art that is your job. My dad did it. He devoted very much of his time and energy into and we had to go into his skyscraper late at night, only one fluorescent light on for the entire floor and it was over my dad in his cubicle focused like shit on every little box because God forbid he have to do it again because he made and error. Intense mental focus and discipline in training so that his family could have a better life than the one he had So anyways, my generation wanted to free themselves of that mentality and to live free rather than slaving away for these massive companies to profit and festivals gave them a group of kindred spirits with which to bond and not feel totally crazy and alone. That is to say my dad's dream of college educated, financially secure, able to evolve, enjoy entertainment, recreate and have love and peace was not necessarily our dream. So anyways, my nephew had all this pressure from his yogini aunt, drummer dad and my corporate dad. What was he going to do with his one amazing life? Well he had stories to go by. I was 17 when I graduated because I was "smart" for my age and "mature" which basically meant I had gone through puberty early and looked like I do now in 5th grade, so they skipped me a grade. I had quit being a teacher by then. It was too much work for me and to be honest, I wasn't that dedicated to being the foundation of the community at that time because I was going through a lot of changes spiritually that made it really difficult for me to deal with anything outside of myself. Had I had a wider range community that wasn't based on my religion or work I probably could have stayed through it. But I was a new transplant to South Tahoe and a fairly new teacher who had recently been excommunicated from her religion of birth. Basically I needed friends and family, but I was working really hard, I had a brain tumor, was in a car accident, was teaching at risk students. I was in alot of physical pain and I was also in spiritual pain because I had lost 20 years of my friends, and for a moment was estranged from my mother, my family, because she didn't approve of my decisions. I did approve of them and I wanted to go find out what another way to live was. So what I did was put my whole life into a backpack, they called this the great giveaway. I gave away everything that was in a two bedroom apartment, I had a Jeep Wrangler, I was a high school teacher, I had a porch facing the sunset over Lake Tahoe and I had a pretty good living. I liked mountain biking, I was a spinning instructor and I was truly starting to make friends with teachers who are really amazing people who care and have big hearts, but I had a dilemna. Heal myself or others. I was really sick and I quit. My dad would have liked for me to have gone home but I quickly saw that wasn't going to be the measurement of a healthy successful life to me, so, in my early twenties, I took ownership of my life and devoted myself to healing. I realized that above all else, I needed to confront all the things that were at the core of the disease that was creating an imbalance in my endocrine system and causing a benign growth to threaten my periphery vision and the ability of my glandular system to function. Around that time, I began to devote myself to the practice of yoga. My co-worker was a yoga emthusiast and I quickly went from novice interested in kinda doing yoga to doing yoga 6-8 hours a day. He was a wealth of information. He just has one of those brains that can store all those facts and figures. Yoga is originally an imperical science and he had all these formulas for breaths and how deeply to breathe at such a rate to be able to keep up and do it for myself but I would just follow. I was raised to be a sheep. I allowed myself to be a student of yoga which was a final separation for me from the Jehovah's Witness faith because they tried to take that away from me as false worship, but I feel yoga has been for me a primary means with which i have connected with an active force capable of directing and changning our perception of things for our lives, experience, to be healthy. I have started praying as of late to reincorporate the value system I was raised with that being the sanctity of marriage and relationship, the value of communication, the importance of working hard and education, devoting yourself to a passion and becoming a master of it so that it takes you. One of the most important things that can happen in society, and one of the reasons I left education, is that I believe we should have free reign to show to ourselves and follow our hearts to the consciousness choosing us and then receive training to prosper in what we can not, because of our soul path, ignore. Kahuna village style. So, as I am thinking about the solution to healing our hearts, I can't help but think that we need to take our focus and attention off of ourselves and put it on the next generation. When I look at late 20's, who were deeply influenced by there elders, namely us, I see that they copied some of our behaviors and ended up pretty much where we are, which is to say they are afraid of being in love getting hurt and dreaming. I sense a little bit of fear of the opposite sex, which is really sad because I remember a really playful flirtation, an interplay, that used to happen between us. It was a little bit of a push and a pull, but it wasn't harmful. I start to think back to being sweet hearts. I remember the romantic aspects of what it feel like to be male female in love, or at least seeking it. I remember the soft edges rounded about our hearts. I start to look at the younger generation as my teachers. My 24 year old nephew is the product of my brother who was married 3 times before finding his current love. And they are older so its mature love, peaceful, kind, drama-free, very nerdy and geeky and they don't care what anyone thinks. They don't have much but its enough and, most importantly they have love. They don't fight. They are happy. "I love myself so much, that I can love you so much that you can love you so much that you can start loving me thats how much I love you." (Agape song) Also, his mom after divorcing my brother married her childhood sweetheart. So everyone's life went on and he has watched the processes with which they have grown and the process of holding things together. His first love was at 16. I remember not realizing the depth of emotion he was enduring, which is silly because I remember my first love, who is still in my life, was very difficult. I should have remembered that and that it happens at any age and I regret my calloused remark to what seemed a teenage crush and telling him to just go get laid. Thankfully his heart is bigger than that and he was always seeking love, which he has found and safe gaurds. Now when the younger one, 19, started dating in 8th grade and was determined 4 years in to make it work I gave him advice to hold it together. I actually met a couple who met in 8th grade, they have been together 12 years. They protect it and hold it really close to themselves and I told them they should its really pure. They said they knew. That was very nice to see. Rainbow unicorns. So innocent. I love it. So all of this just makes me realize that what we perceived in our parents as being great difficulty, whether it lasted or not, was their testament to something they really believed in and how much they were willing to struggle through to hold love in place. I think that if we think about the amount of struggle and communication that is involved then we can apply that to any circumstance. I was talking to a friend of mine recently about generational healing. I was talking about having sat in the fire for over a decade, I as I sat in there I saw the stories of my family, they would come to me with their sadness and their pain and they would want to reenact it in me and I would say to them: "Thank you. I am so grateful to you that I am alive. For whatever, you went through, for whatever you had to experience for me to be here. I come from a place of love.” My parents have known each other since high school, though its isn't a story without its own wound. My brother is my half-brother. My mom still has great love for her first husband but she is super happy I am here and I am too. I remember talking to my mom as she was going through menopause, she was having alot of vaginal pain, and the surfacing memories from childhood molestations, and even guilt and shame from her affair with my dad. We were sitting there. It was me and my brother, who is my full brother, he has a set of half-siblings who won't acknowledge or speak to him because we both chose to not be in our religion of birth. He has me. And if he wanted to his dad would love to be close to him. And my youngest nephew looks like his grandpa, which I think is interesting because my mom sees her first husband in her grandson, literally sees his face. So, that's facing up to what your choices have been and hopefully falling in love with all of it. Me and my nephew, which required two separate paths and choices. The point being that love never really goes away. We should choose who and what we want to invest our ernergy towards and if it is love, we should find a way to make sure that we are making decisions that will make us feel soft hearted into our older years. Sometimes when we do things we feel justified in doing there will be a rush of energy that comes around behind it, its almost like a flush of anger and its makes you feel exhilarated. I have found that in those times I have felt that, I have made the most drastic decisions or taken a course that has led to alot of hurt. It reminds me of the flaming arrows that sometimes get thrown in tipi ceremonies. By that I mean that literally, by psychic energy you can injure the heart cord of another human being especially in ceremony when they are wide open. I remember in one ceremony my partner and I were sitting in front of the fire for a woman with AIDS who had a homeless alchoholic husband. They were trying to hold it together. It was a very painful ceremony and there was a lot of animosity towards outsiders being there in that Twisp, Washington tipi but we brought our hearts there. We were wide open. There was one man sitting across the fire from us and I can remember the energy coming from him in his prayer and his stare and at one point two black salamander popped up out of the sand of Eastern Washington and started running towards us. I can still see the medicine man scurrying around in front of us to scoop them up and throw them outside. But I did sustain an injury that was behind my left shoulder blade right through my heart. It took many years for me to dislodge that arrow and heal that pain. I had a deeper understanding afterwards of how wide open we are when we are in there. When the medicine takes us and starts showing us all these thoughts, not all of them are meant for us to keep. Some of the we are litereally supposed to put in the fire which requires us sorting through with the wisdom of ancestry, that is to say the stories of where we come from or what our people know. You know a thought passes through and it reminds us of a story "Well wait right there. I had an uncle once who..." and so while I am not sure what to do this is what could or could not happen as a result of that thought process. This is called talking story. It is a way of presenting the antidote, or healing story line in the form of parable. The antidote is nearly always love and forgiveness, sometimes it requires addressing the issue. That happened to me. My older nephew addressed my behaviors honestly and deeply. When I first started my travels to heal my brain tumor and follow my shamanic course vision quest for which I had been training, I think my journey was validated. I was being prayed to different ceremonies and making connections with people but there was definetely a moment in time when I just got lost in the currents and was curious about what I could do or pray. I made alot of outlandish decisions that cost me thousands of dollars but, point being, my travels led to me missing the graduation of my oldest nephew. Which I will have you know, to this day, he is still pissed off at me and he will bring it up. He's right. I sucked for a couple of years. I just really didn't care about anyone or anything other than me and that included my partnership. It was really all about my own self-exploration and I'm not sure I was wrong but it wasn't graceful. I could have done alot of things differently so that less people were hurt, including myself and my family members. So in rectifying alot of that, we all made it to the youngest one's graduation and I stopped my 12 years of traveling and put my money where my mouth was, which is to say that I put my attention on my blood relations to be available to them. So, all that meant was not being off grid but reachable and to show them that I do actually know how to live a linear life. I know how to have a home, I know how to make car payments, feed myself healthy food, apply my trainings to have a job I love, and to create a life that isn't as eratic, global and magical but attainable for anyone. A peaceful, happy and calm life so they could get a sense of what is possible for them not just for me in a radical sense so that I could harness that energy and allow spirit to teach me how to live differently with the people who will be connected to me for all eternity. That being my own family which I believe arises again genetically. So, I have birthed no children at this time but I have plenty from when I was teaching and also from co-village raising really good men, with good hearts who are teaching me. As we look to the children, let us try to look and see what brings about the greatest amount of harmony and happy, the least amount of dramatic stories filled with great life experience. I pray that the cycles are long and allow us to breathe deeply into the sound of community and reconnect with people with people who may have injured or harmed us in some way so we aren't walking around in town two feet from each other acting like we don't know each other's name or actual family pretending we have no relations. I would encourage that to happen one person at a time. Behind the cash register, learn their names. This is simple. Learn the people making you a sandwich, make them have a great day. Some of those people are staples for your community. You don't even know why you are going to the Briarpatch but maybe you need to see Jonas the musician, Sparkles, hey Melanie has a new hat, Jared is getting married and Martin dances Blues Fusion. Get to know each other. Really cool people are in a lot of stores. When we see members of our community as contributing to our lives then that instills in the next generation a perfected sense of what it is to be ALIVE TOGETHER. I know its really hard and alot of people are suffering from technological addictions. One of the creators of Facebook just released an article talking about how when they were creating it they talked about how to get people literally addicted, not just to use their product but to need it and not be able to live without it, as is the nature of addiction, destroy other facets of their lives, especially relationships, in order to go more fully into the virtual world of friends for solace. So as we all face our addictions, and we all have them, make sure your addictions bring you closer and closer to happiness and to real life. That you interact with your world in a healthy way, get you thinking and creating and at the end of the day you have something to show for the energy you put into breath. Get to know people. Use their name. Hi. How are you? See them everydy. Hello. Terry it is very nice to know you. Oh, this is your daughter, I met her on the Edwards Crossing bridge. She plays cello how cool that we all come here so often and get to meet and be friends. I mean shit, when one of my friends daughters needed a training bra she came over to me, "Aunty? I have to tell you something" "Yes?" 11 year old Rosie on the brink of maturation and blossoming. "My breasts are rubbing on my shirt." "Do you need a bra?" "Yes." "Well, why don't you tell your mother? She's super cool. She would love to hear something like that from you." Could not. Could not! You guys don't forget that shit. We perceive ourselves to be really cool but the parental dynamics are still there. They can't talk to us sometimes. They need outsiders. We all need outsiders. That's really important because as we bring people into our inner sanctum, into our very private worlds we need to remember that we are there to support their family's prayer, not to come up with our own. For example, I remember a married couple in Tahoe. Very beautiful people who will hand out the love manual to anyone who comes to work for them, their job application is blank so you can show them who you are. But they took people in. They are the best. I remember them saying that, "If you are going to be hanging around us..." and they have known each other since they were 16 and they have made no exception always chosen each other no matter how difficult and it was difficult for them, "we are married and no matter what we are going through, no matter how it looks from the outside, the stories, we have committed to stay. " That's what they said. "We expect you to give us advice to have thoughts and energy that reinforces taht and if not, we can not be friends." So for people who don't know what the tenents of the Native American Church are, it is charity, family and the other two...I don't know. I'll have to ask Ken. He's really into it. I'm actually a yogini with a medicine family heart. I can talk to you about yoga, and union and God, spiritual studies, laying hands, imperical systems for the rest of my life, its what I love. So, in accord with my own belief systems I would like to let go of anything holding me back from what I love. Its the right thing to do. I just try to do the best that I can. When I don't understand I breathe. I go for long walks in Nature. I jump in freezing cold water. I do sun salutations. I do one posture for 30 minutes in varying degrees. I set weird goals I can't seem to reach. I can do hanumasana but I can not yet touch my foot over my head. Handstand? Fucking difficult but I keep struggling with it. I struggle. Life is pretty good. I believe in sacred geometry and indigos healing addictions and embodying their true mastery and remembering that they came here to be teachers and healers for a new paradigm. We agree to unite in rainbow tribes from varying thoughts patterns and ethnicities. I believe in the children and the next generation setting things straight for me. I am really grateful to them for being here, for coming. I believe in us. I believe in our ability to transcend any pain and suffering that we perceive or experience in human condition because that's what we came here to do. We came here to call God's attention to human beings. Hey, God, this is why humans can't get it together. This is what they are going through and this is what the experience of it is. You gotta come into these hearts of ours, please. We are a little bit insane and we are the ones who love you and want the best for this earth and humanity. So you gotta help us out because we are the ones that are supposed to help eternity, as in assure the future of a humane race of beings who look out for God's little precious loved ones. So, anyways, just enjoying a really beautiful 84 degree October day at the river, right before I go to Mexico to lay hands, reconnect, dance, give my love to the whales on their way to Momma Maui who has really done her work on my navel qualities refined, victim mentality and one on one relationships. Summoned to my last tipi in honor of Uncle Johnny and in behalf of Lloyd Raymond Buehl, who dared to, for half and hour during an ayahuasca ceremony do the muslim blessing. All praise all glory goes to god. All praise all glory goes to god. All praise all glory goes to god. And for anyone who says half an hour is too long, I would offer that it isn't enough. And to Lloyd and Lisa on the side of the hill in Ulapalakua watching the sun set and tending their garden I would like to say, "Thank you for doing it every second of your life. I appreciate you. Thank you for choosing love. Thank you for embracing us crazy rainbow hippies wandering the island for 10 years." Thank you Shiner and Kara may your children be blessed. I wanna thank my greater community there. Paula with Lou Gerriggs desease who reminds me that sometimes really shitty things happen to beautiful devout people. “May all these prayers go out into the sea May the moon comfort thee and the sun shine on your face wherever you be.” Remembering Jai and Jericho and their prayer for their children. To their prayers I add a hope that the next generation be: Finanacially responsible, businness minded with entreprenural capabilities, that they are educated with skills, confident, clear heart centered communicators dedicated to a path of love and forgiveness, that they be able to remember the best things they can put in their mind, that their bodies be free of all infirmities and their hearts of all sadness. Song from when I was a Jehovah's Witness came through: "Can you see, with your mind's eye, peoples living together? Sorrow has passed, peace at last, No need to weep or fear. Sing out with joy of heart. You too can have a part. Live for the day When you'll say Life without end at last." Ok. So that last line is infused with dogma but the song itself gave way to a prayer: Thank you for purifying my heart and aligning my moral code due North That's right my elders because they have seen some shits. Mostly patterns of behaviors different costumes same same but different Also, I've seen them do some shit. Same same but different than doing it myself Jumping spirit horses in my mind galloping towards setting sunds and prairie fields golden light rising in rays as remembrance held in a dandelion seed Making wishes come true sailing seas magic wands princess skirts bumble bees and chicken coops My friends children telling me about fairies they are being born crystallized joy impeturbability Expanding minds body and spirits Opportunity to grow in experience And skill healthy sexual relatinships with loving partners You may not have children but you may want to think ahead. Meet mother to mother. Hey, how about lets pray that the next generation have clear insight a sense of morality willingness to make mistakes and learn from them power of observation forgiveness to overlook minor slights allowance with healthy boundaries the ability to stand up for yourself and the understanding whats best for the long run, desire to see others happy, inner stability to be happy no matter what, deep feelings with focus on the best case scenario. Grown up deciisons. They are really humbling but they start to add up. One happy ending at a time. That's all it takes. One happy ending heals the past. Reconcilation. Heart to heart. Face to face. Eye to eye. Between me and you, only one thing matters. The future. Women in Native American communities have been producing art intertwined with spirituality, life, and beauty for centuries. In fact, the health and beauty of a community is based on the words and spirit of the strongest women in the circle.
In circles where gossip is proliferated by the women, it is said that they are weaving a black web. This is especially true in communities where medicine wheels, fires and sacred medicine is being shared. There is an opening of hearts that makes the cords between individuals stronger and more powerful. As in, you are family indegenous style. What that means in my family experience is that your heart will hurt literally if your brother father sister mother are hurting. In family my family relation we have to fix things because it is like a vice grip between us when we aren’t ok. It’s like a kink in hose. We know when something has happened to one of us, it’s called only family the lucero grapevine. It happens psychically energetically and emotionally. If you are coming into a tipi, my first uncle brother in San Antonio said sitting in this fire pit makes you adopted family. We will be forever connected by the fire. If there are any problems between us it will make us ill. Please commit to the fire and each other. If you can’t commit to healthy relationships, please leave. It is possible to create a great deal of destruction and to proliferate victim mentality as well as diseased conditions where there are heart cords that are not being healed. In communities where ceremonies are being run without elders or without those who come from a strong family lineage, as in a grandma with a chancla who, sick of hearing about abuses, divisions, and accusations, would quite literally with a shoe in one hand and the other on an ear force the two opposing parties into a witnessed circle wherein the community could hear and unravel the web of lies, confusion, anger and sadness that was breaking down love and family relations. In communities with elders, wherein love is the dominating force, disharmony and diseased reactions were seen to be a priority and would not be allowed to continue. Stories and heresay, would require that both parties stand before the fire, cedar bag in hand, and voice the very words it is easy to say through the grapevine but not face to face. I have sat in two day ceremonies because wrongs were not being addressed and the meeting wasn’t over until the cause of disease were brought from the web of darkness, the cancers of community, into the light where they could be thrown in the fire and healed. That’s called throwing cedar. i have sat in healthy tipis with brother who stood across from the fire and each other and cried expressing how the had hurt each other and watched it end in embraces and reconciliation. This is called healing relations. It’s the whole pint of the circle not popularity, not money, not praise. Healing and community as in all together all one all equal. Sometimes wrongs are perceived and easily corrected within us in which case no words are needed. However, where others have been involved and black energy is magnified by tarish entities feeding on pain and suffering and sticky web like substance which can sometimes connect inside tissues and create disease spiritual emotional and physical manifestations through the community will become apparent in time. Hidden agendas prayers of condemnation and black magic are the reasons many tribes stopped sitting together and inviting outsiders because in an open state it can be extremely dangerous. Playing with medicine is not a child’s game. From an outsider perspective, and as a healer in a community of 30 something's that have taken the lead as teachers, I would recommend that all come together, not only for the inner circle to heal, address, and correct wrongs, as is a major platform for the Hawaiians in ho'opono'opono and also Native cultures. The giving of power to the darkness is the hiding away of words, stories and intentions. The words whispered in secret have an extremely harmful effect on those of whom the words are spoken and in time on the ones speaking especially if the facts are twisted and one sided. This is not a small matter. In one small Mexican community where I have poured sweat lodge, I have had feelings expressed to me in private that were addressed in the sanctity of lodge. As in I outed all the women to each other and gave them an opportunity to express their feelings and to remind them that their energy is better spent coming together than breaking apart. The result is a more unified healthy happy community with less addiction and depression. Also, as a high school teacher, whenever there were "warring" factions, it was our responsibility as teachers to gather together the very people at the core of the disharmony and all their latchkeys, in order to break down barriors and address wounds that existed inside of each person so we could then heal the individuals and the communities. This is no small task. It requires great courage to speak face to face, to relinquish our victim mentality and actually allow healing to take place in perception or in actual. For this, I would say, it requires actual leaders, elders, and teachers who are more interested in the long run than the immediate. It requires people to take their place as healers not as instigators, and it requires that all parties have witnesses that is witnesses to testify to the character and story being presented with the desired outcome being health, happiness and true peace. In ceremony, I have observed what the Bible refers to as "tickling of the ears" of leaders. In imbalanced communities, the elders, teachers, and leaders will be so taken by their egos that words of praise, flattery and expensive gifts will not allow them to address concerns, issues or problems. In fact those things will be repressed for the sole purpose of niceties and the appearance of joy to proliferate and the "good feeling" becomes just as big an addiction as the drugs, alchohol, sex issues that are not being discussed. In fact, in communities wherein money and popularity are themselves addictions many of the underlying knowings, pains, and wounds of the community members will be pushed aside, ignored, and those people be made to feel that they are lacking in spirituality, not evolved enough, or just not giving themselves over to love. In reality, all the most important, intimate relationships of my life have been the most difficult, required the most amount of heart to heart, and have infected/healed the circles around me. For this, I am willing to say that in relation to current events, that is the widespread victim mentality of women and the villanization of men, I would like to offer a few stories of my own. That is to say, I too have allowed myself to be objectified, utilized and been a willing participant of the sexualization of both the yogic and medicine communities. When I was in my early 30's, I remember having women friends in their 40's who were vehemiantly opposed to pornography, stripping, and objectification of women. I, having just come out of a repressed religion and being friends with mostly males, never really understood the impact of these things on male female relationships until now. What I have observed about festival culture has been from the periphery, as I was always too busy caring for aging and dying relatives to attend. What I saw happening, though, quickly infiltrated my spiritual communities as the younger women who had come into the knowing of sexual power began to flaunt their sexual prowess at sweat lodges, flirting and making advances on my sweat lodge firekeeper. That proliferation continued. As the years passed I began to see the way yogic mastery shifted not from egolessness but to full on external focus from yoga pants, to photography, and the mastery of being young and beautiful. Any discussion of the loss of spirituality in the community made by those who craved to be desired, famous, or powerful flock to their teachers who took the attention and prosperity with open arms and wolvish smiles, that I now see as a sign of one about to devour its prey. I aging, by that time, long into my practices tried for a moment to keep up until I realized that I would rather find a new line of work than lose my spiritual practice for a photo shoot or adoration. I became unbalanced in the opposite direction, taking almost nothing for myself, losing a sense of myself, and relinquishing relationships, communities and connection. This even happened inside the sweat lodge where I had once held cedar and prayed for healthy relationships for everyone in attendance, I saw that my humility and the hurt in my heart over addictions and money grabbing was not only not heard or accepted but almost made me an object of hatred. I watched as the teachers who had taught me either fell into deep depressions, became very ill, or worse were consumed by anger at trying to preserve native teachings and ways that had more to do with the heart than with creating connections for black market gains. I watched as the "medicine men" flocked to the 20 somethings who came baring their bellies and chests, who then began the climate of older women baring their chests and bellies who then claimed to have found their power and who allowed sexuality to then become a door to attraction and in the process objectification and willing participation in the liasons that I now believe in retrospect to be causing alot of pain. Both sexes are to blame. I remember after leaving one medicine community where I was holding space and running lodge and where topless trimmer girls led to my partner at the time expecting and almost demanding it of me, and the internal struggle I had to want to hold him close and the fear of losing him that made me run around in undies topless in order to be free and the way I realized I would lose him to hoola hooping girls no matter what I did because that had become the sign of the times. I did give myself over then to hoola, usually as my friend and ally who I would roll for children, but I lost my softness after that experience. I closed my heart to marriage, children, love for a couple of years delving into my sexuality, tantra, open relationships, multiple partners, and then finally giving way to abstinence and observation. Had these things made me more evolved? I remember my first open relationship was with a man who had circled my ex-partner and I always with a gleam in his eye and the sexual tension between us creating a rise in my energy that in my aging years and, feeling rejected by my new partner's desire for an open relationship, led to me reaching out to him not just for sex but for friendship which I thought years had cultivated. My first experience with open relationship was that the opening of my legs and the acceptance of his advances led to the closing of his heart. In an effort to make sure I KNEW he didn't love me, he showed me pictures of his girlfriend's ass and ignored me for the rest of the evening. He being someone I had sat in ceremony, it took years to address the dilemna and tell him that he loved me more before than after and I challenged him to look me in my face and feel my heart. Is this man still my friend? What is friendship? What is relationship? To my credit I have amazing relationships with heartcentered committed monogomous men, that is to say my father, uncles, nephews and brothers have taught me attraction without sex and I know love and healthy relationship. Is that man now my brother. He is. I speak truth to him. Sometimes he hears me. Coming out of a two year relationship and entering into a community who claims to sit with the fire, my dating process has been eye opening. I have had sisters tell me before that they felt their sexual partners, usually hook ups, were just "looking for a hole to put it in." I never understood what that meant until recently. It has caused me to pause again. What has been the effect of self-objectification, sexualization, dominatrix, untamed desire and lust? One of my first experiences was with a man who ties drum for tipi claiming to carry the heart of the ceremony and also saying he is a tantric yoga teacher. To say the least my communication to him afterwards was that if he wanted to learn the basics of tantra that is to say, eye contact, breath synchronization and perhaps a kiss I would be happy to assist him back to union with divine love and an understanding of what living with heart really is..that is to say a medicine man or woman heals hearts. Who we portray ourselves to be is all important. Not wanting intimacy is a choice, claiming, however, to carry the medicine and spirit of practices that are meant to connect us and not being connected or connecting is spinning a black web around practices meant to heal hearts. None of us are angels. Anyone who knows me knows I have had demons and spun black webs that created heart pain but the medicine and strength of my heart my ancestors my guides have forced me to sit with literally sit with until it’s fixed and return to those places of pain until the actual occurrences and story of my relationships were addressed and corrected. It has taken me decades in some cases and if I can lend my wisdom to others, man or woman, it is to deal with your pain as soon as it arises otherwise the cancerous tumor solidifies and becomes a sort of truth with its own life and then you aren’t in control anymore. The web spreads itself. Containment is in dislodging the original seed of untruth and retelling it courageously. Its taking the very connections that make us all one and emptying lies and deception so that truth and clarity can rise again. I learned from this. Had a deep self inquiry with this. And after my experience with this man I had choices. Did I black ball him? Did I spread gossip? At the very least I laughed for two days about a moment I called He-man, at the most for two days after that I cried deeply into my contracted heart and connected with my own self-worth. It was the first experience I ever had that did not have love or friendship. In that experience I felt that what is magnetic with love and a tango of push and pull, without love is a form of violence. But I looked into myself as a participant and I was willing. At certain points I was unsure and in a final moment I have the freedom at any moment to stand up and stop. There was no coercing, there was no actual violence, no struggle...just the unvoiced one inside of myself. Did I have need when I arrived? I did. Was it satiated by that empty experience? It was extremely unfulfilling and led to my second sexual encounter without love which was less body contact than I had ever experienced which led to me finally understanding, yup...that is what it means to just need a hole. And for women who have endured that more than twice, lo siento, I feel for you. I really do. It was absolutely heart breaking but I will survive and you will too. And for those of you who have only known this, may you know more than an empty possession. No body contact. No eye contact. No breath. No hands. No kissing. No thank you. I bought a paddleboard. Found bliss on the lakes examining the shores and falling in love and refilling myself white tantra style with god moments and tunes into my soft animal the purr of my inner kitty in nature. The practice has been soft. Softer has been my prayer. Feminine. Love. Patience. And days during ovulation when I could bite myself from the desire building inside of me I run I do yoga until I pass out masterbate but now know without love there’s no fulfillment. I don’t compromise that inside myself which isn’t easy but the alternative has proven worse than longing and lonely. Which is to address now women in their mid thirties midlife hormonal crisis. I am so glad to be in my 40’s I remember that time. It was like a mini death and I even remember giving my lovers ultimatums and deadlines on lifetime decisions before the dating process was even underway. I address this because I see unhealthy women’s circles with extreme power in crisis and feeling victimized by men who care for them but don’t want to get married or have children especially two months in. I’ve seen them get black balled, villanized and left groups gossiping about them declaring how could he and getting angry at me for suggesting everyone including men have the right to decide a person is not for them. Which is easy to decide when a woman desperate for relationship choosing a man who she then decides she will micromanage demasculinate and control and then be baffled that love isn’t flourishing. A black web of emotionally abusive women can result and in the retelling of the story from a victimized stand point that might seem justified but truly, no one belongs to us. So addressing what I discuss in tantric groups which is say sexual liberation. I want you each to realize, sexual liberation has nothing to do with how many partners you have had overall or at one time, your willingness to try anything, your performance, your porno body but rather it comes from being liberated from others concepts repressed or unbound and no longer allowing them to make the very personal connection only you can make with your heart your body your soul with another who is in agreement with whatever it is you are asking for at that moment and walking away if they don’t want what you want or their actions and energy don’t match words. Sexual liberation is found in safe containers and to partners ive had who claimed to be sexual healers, I have explained only your very own sacred space is healing. That is to say what happens between a man and a woman is between them and it takes a lot of emotional maturity wisdom and courage to speak nakedly between you and if you can’t then that person is not the right partner for you to be in relation with in life let alone bed. This is what it means to own your body own your experiences own your agreements be kind to each other. It is possible to recognize our own attachments and be aware that the other person is not reaponsible for things not going according to your expectations but they are responsible for their contracts and agreements at soul level. It is possible to evaluate a situation and realize it is damaging you without ascribing the worst possible vocabulary to express and gain support for your pain. Rather it may be in time you will have an experience similar to my own, that is to say that after my first sexual experiences without love I was brought into my deepest heart wherein I was able to finally receive how much I have been loved In Partnership that didn’t result in babies and marriage. Now that I am beyond that age of being controlled by my hormones I am able to steadily and quietly understand many things in private in reflection that I was too emotional to comprehend. In fact from a more removed stand point I am better able to receive their feedback and improve relations. A dear friend of mines who’s husband passed away after more than 30 years of marriage told me once, “Zonia, it wasn’t all roses romance and love. We went through all the faces of male female relationships I felt used by him disrespected emotionally isolated and so did he but we knew love we held love we committed to love so we worked back to it and sometimes it took longer than others.” Love and intimacy is no fairytale. I have had the best relationships and seen the worse sides of male and female had them duel had power shifts blame and reconciled with them all. In many instances they were right to call me on my obstinacy controlling and victim mentality and my willingness to address this continues to heal me in ways beyond my belief and comprehension. I learned not to just tell but to hear and I am still learning. That is true love and I truly love and appreciate them as my most intimate teachers. Thank you beloveds for shaping me into the woman I am today. To be sure love is the driving force that makes connection magic. The web that exists between us are the heart cords that make up the flower of life planet. If we want the spirit of God of meaning to proliferate our communitites, the energy we send out along those cords is all important. If we are going to try to be people of heart, if we are going to try to let love rise again, we are going to have to talk to each other, listen to our hearts, and be clear, not only with ourselves but with others. At a soul level for the planet itself we need to remember union yoga medicine Heart is really about true joy not one that masks and ignores the most difficult experiences in life but actually brings them to he surface not just to cry about them but to try to make amends. How do we heal hearts? How do we bring women back to love? How do men humble themselves to women again not as servants and villans but as the romantic who comes baring flowers and how do the women of the communities learn how to let their healing waters flow and forgive? One heart at at time. One silk thread at a time. One story at a time. One moment at a time. One conversation at a time and with courage may we begin to collect the black web that is creating sickness of heart mind and spirit so we can throw it into the fire as an act of love for the collective so that all our beauty may shine and so that our communities can live in health and thrive once again. This is a reading of the "Hall of Mirrors" a mandala done for Wanderlust for ceremony entitled "Heart Space." Directions for doing your own mandala are located under the CURRICULUM HEADING. I am also available to teach small group classes. If you are interested please, CONTACT ME.
The reading of all mandalas begins in the center and is the seed you were birthed to conscious on the planet and does not change. At the center of this mandala is the Mother Earth. It is the blue pearl in the center of a meditating head and also in the space of the pineal gland, or third eye center. This is starting with a chant that is written around the mouth, "Spirit of the sun, warm light healing me. Spirit of the sea, set my soul free." This particular mandala is beginning in answer to the question: "How do I move in the world? How do I trust more?" In other words, how can I trust my movements more by understanding how they take place. What the very center of the mandala is showing is a prayerful attitude and deep self inquiry. The aqua figure located in what is normally the black quadrant of the medicine wheel, which is deep introspection manifesting in the physical realm or meditating on what has actually happened. The prayerful figure is centered on the Earth, which also siting sits in the center of a steady flame that is the symbol of our relationship with the Creator God and there is a calling in of the sacred elements. This is me poised in prayer at the location for the ceremony yet to happen asking for permission and asking if I am allowed to hold space for the elements and requesting divine presence be with us. Every time I do a ceremony I question myself and my "right" to hold space. As in, is it all right? Am I in right relation to spirit, my heart, the people? I ask to be examined and for my heart to be purified so my intentions can be clearly for the benefit of others in attendance. Behind the aqua praying figure is a replica of my mother's psychedelic care bear. When I asked her what the bear represented, she said she didn't know she was just laughing. So, that painting is standing in for laughter medicine. The figure looking at the painting is seeing the cuteness of this creation and behind that is a figure in red speaking into the left ear of the meditating head. That figure in red is my literal mother and also a symbol of the divine mother. It is my experience of the female through my lineage which is healthy, happy, funny, artists and the best storytellers ever. Blood line Basque, nauhtl, Arabic. It's not about the ancestry it's about my relationship to my family, our stories, and my knowledge of their names so they can awaken within me. So there are multiple layers telling the story of how I have moved in the world in the past so I can have confidence and trust the way I move in the world in the future. The purple figure connected to her mother and in healthy relation is then looking into her connection with spirit. On the back of the purple figure is a heart with an eye looking into the etheric heart its not only the process of self-inquiry but also the mother looking back in on me and telling me what she sees based on my choices and life experiences. What unfolds is not only a visual representation of the mother, but also the trees. As I am calling in the sacred elements, I hear the wood element responding and I see the tree people are happy to share their stories with me. As the next figures began to be drawn, I literary felt the attention of wood element or, in this case, the pine trees immediately around me, I was drawing this in the spot for sacred ceremony performed for Wanderlust "Heart Space," I felt those trees awaken to their consciousness of me. I felt them connect with each other so that there was a collective Tahoe forest consciousness. I became aware of their knowing of me and was reminded I have been in this forest since I was 11. On the second layer as the medicine wheel expands, you see that Lake Tahoe has drawn itself and inside the lake are seeds of consciousness and little stories that my life experiences have planted in the water. Going back into the center of the fire and following the orange from the carebear up into the north there is an observer mind that is portrayed by a childhood friend who stands in witness of the events leading up to 2017. Upper portion north, how did I come to run ceremony and pour water for lodge? Inside the lodge, is the fire burning inside the center of the head, transcending all time and space, of a mermaid, who is a symbol of a deep connection to waters of emotion, deep empathy for other beings in their struggles and, yet, able to live in joy and innocence. Following that orange, it leads to a particular lodge, the Cedar Lodge, is what I pour. It's the lodge of right relations, in other words, there is enough cedar in this world to heal all relationships between people and eradicate our victim mentality. That specific lodge was poured at a partner's of mine in Mokolumne Hill so this layer is third layer medicine wheel spiraling out is pulling in stories from the Sierra foothills as well, and there is a fire pictured there that destroyed that land and my connection to those people as that was happening was profound. ..but how I became that person, that water pourer if you go back to the center of the fire there is a picture of the Love Lodge poured by my sister Janet Scott who was the first elder teacher to pass me the water during ceremony. I carry on that tradition in her honor and also experiences, teachers and trainings that unfold to the right, Eastern quadrant of spiritual challenges and tribulations. The mermaid is connected there to the South Tahoe High School, located in the South Shore of Lake Tahoe and that story commences the year of my Saturn Return. Surrounding that school is the Angora fire, the year of my purification. It was the year my brain tumor returned, the year I got into a snowboarding accident fracturing my spine, displacing my pelvis and jamming my occipital ridge. This accident also commences my use of yoga in order to heal my spine from the base all the way to my crown. It is also the year of my ex-communication from the Jehovah's Witness organization, loss of a lifetime of friendships, and the loss of spiritual community for exploration of my sexuality. I was able to use meditation and yoga to transcend my pain from perceived separation and isolation, and yoga, as in connection, continuing to feel my connection to spirit and trust that I was still a child of God. It is also the place of my blossoming passions, my first sexual experience and as I felt that steady flame present in me, when I met my yoga teacher Jason Milne and my Apache Hawaiian Mentor April Whitecloud who began my vision questing. So trials and tribulations right side begin to bleed over into my relationship with males, all of whom were my greatest teachers and guides towards the woman I am today, especially pictured in embrace far right, my relationship with my father. My father who is super sweet and kind but had to transcend his own life situations of Vietnam, single mother 9 siblings (three who died young), an alcoholic absent gambling father (my grandpa), and the perceived poverty of growing up indigenous in modern days society. He appeared to be impoverished but was filled with riches. He is a catalyst for me being able to tap into, lower right hand corner, South East trials and tribulations that lead to you inheriting your innocence by connecting with the celestial or soul essence and remembering that we are so much more than our human experience, more stately chambers, it is for us to spiritually evolve. Also in the lower right hand corner is my male lineage, Lucero (also my grandmother female lineage), colors are orange, yellow and tourqoise denoting my mental dispositions and the healing of my victim mentality. Lucero star Dineh Southwest Cathedral Rock pictured which is one of the places where I ran the grandfather drum for Hopi Nation after meeting Grandfather Martin. Attached to that Dineh figure is a purple lotus, ascension, enlightenment and rebirth, inside is the retention of my inner child, my relationship with mother and spirit, the zen walk taking a day at a time in order to heal victim mentality, the understanding of how to harness and direct sexual energy, and the ability to connect to the center of the fire for the healing of all relations (peyote chief) which gives way to a figure dancing who is connected to a healing source, right leg connected to the akashic records which is connected to a giraffe, which is the symbol of being able to look above circumstances and be a spiritual guide balanced on a figure in three legged dog bridging a gap in the psyche through stories but also the projection of the giraffe who is showing a genetic chain leading me to stand in front of a painting of a raven and a song that is talking about the ability to merge with magic and walk between two worlds. The two worlds to me is the ability to find the blue pearl at the center figure being able to find the place between the right and left brain hemispheres, no longer telling the story of our life from our human vantage point but from a vantage point that is beyond the earth and that is connected to the figure under the chin of the meditating figure in orange, soul freedom. If you continue to follow the orange up and over to the left you will see my inner spirit, the connection to my mothering self, my mother's laughter and artistic spirit, the Earth as it is Nature and also my body is the spiritual breakthrough that helped me to overcome the trials of my earlier life. In bike rides, the Kings Beach Wellness Center and another picture of that Lucero Dineh spirit in the upper North West looking with the spirit of the pine, which is courage, and above that a figure leaping with heart. So with courage of heart looking at the projection of life as it is being shown to me as a learning experience that created in me the ability to be able to hold space, back to north, above, for the ancestors, star nation and to have extended my understanding of the world based on, guiding question, how I moved in the world and learned how to trust myself which lead to, back to north, a Hawaiian figure. Hawaiian figure representing the cultivated prayerful and meditative movement that lead to my Shamanic burial and my ultimate awakening which is the full circle of that South Tahoe beginning. Going back to the center and then left, the children in the tree is probably a collective children of Lake Tahoe, including the kids at King Beach Boys and Girls Club, Squaw Valley Academy, and South Tahoe High School, who are standing witness for me as I am approaching the fire and asking permission to run ceremony. The figure in red looks like my very own little momacita. She is at the left ear of my meditating head. To the left of the tree is an interesting story involving one of my best friends and a collegiate athlete, Paula, who is running me up Granite Chief. What I remember about the story is that she looked like she was having the time of her life, pony tail bouncing everywhere, while I was in great physical pain. At one time I finally asked, "Are you in pain?" to which she cheerfully replied, "Yes!" That is the culmination for me of healing victim mentality inside of ourselves, is that it is possible to in a great deal of pain and suffering but still retain your joy in what you are doing. Right above that is a conch shell white and yellow which are the colors of spiritual warriors and those who are selling truth to others, in the case of the shell, sacred waters of the soul with turtle patience and Muslim moon poetry and Rumi. So going into the poetic soul of the Universe, the feminine spirit of truth that transcends through depth of emotion and a sacred container of water that I choose, figure dancing arms outstretched, on the shell to create more life in me. The dancing reminds me of Brazilian dance called the Oraixas which teaches that we are allowing ourselves to be danced by the sacred elements, connecting to the dock where I used to do yoga to the rising of the sun which leads to the unknown flower orange which is the portrayal of healing relationship with myself, the Creator, the Earth and others and following the orange all the way back to the center and dropping down the fire to the Southern quadrant, which represent me in the present moment of the drawing, in this case, mountain guide for Wanderlust "Heart Space" ceremony. To the left is what I want to be able to do for others at this ceremony which is to Tell a happy love story. That we are all one with the Beloved and that the Beloved does love us we are Beloved and that no matter what we are going through in life if we can view it as an experience that will shapes who we are and have an attitude of appreciation for how we are growing, Nautilus shell, the waters of emotion that spiral out from us can actually change everyone that they touch. So if we go back to the center of the fire to the one that is praying to the fire and the one that is observing there is alot of attention on the left foot which is the right to step forward pink lotus Buddha essence, true natured self and that Buddha essence is coming out of the right ear of a figure that is walking its walk and "talking story" The back right foot is connected to another aqua figure, which now shows us that it isn't a purple lotus but a butterfly, at the time I was living in Tahoe I was really into the story of the imaginal cells of a butterfly which is to say whether the butterfly wanted to change or not it would change. At some point, even if we resist our own growing and letting go, I let go of so many lives around the lake, high school teacher, tutor, center director, yoga studio manager, yoga teacher, healer, writer, editor, non-profit, coffee shop, food prep, the gym and every time spirit called me I was required to leave so when I look at the butterfly I also see the connection to a kite which reminds me of the partner from the north quadrant sweat lodge. He was an Aries and up until that period of time I had very little sense of my own self and now I understand that in the knowing of my own self I can be a healing source to others by reflecting the best in them and their life experience. I understand now that being able to receive the memory of who we are through the eyes of love is one of the most important gifts we can give to others. REtell the story of our lives that makes us feel grateful for everything that has happened regardless of how it felt at the time. One of my final questions for the mandala is How do we brige the gap in our psyche between our questions and knowing the answer. If you go back to the center there is only one way. Self-inquiry. Absolute honesty about who we know we are. Absolute honesty for the stories that we tell. There is no way around living a life in accordance with what our soul is directing us to do and that is the only way we can take these hall of memories or ceremonial life reviews and either make adjustments or give thanks. Some frames I haven't experienced yet but appear to me as memories. Other frames are talked about in my Bio. Lower frame with me and a cross which reminds me of my grandmother who took her private indigenous mother worship into their bathrooms with her rosaries and prayed with such intensity that when my dad stepped on a landmine in Vietnam and cried mother she heard him. So this deep connection transcends physical limitation and the cart in front of the frame, especially the purple of the drawing, my connection to spirit and my spiritual life is observed and witnessed. I feel a huge sense of responsibility but also it is an honor and a blessing to be able to access my own life, my own family, my own memory and use my connections to help others make deep connections themselves. If you have any specific interest in any one frame or have done a mandala (Directions available under the CURRICULUM HEADING) and desire a reading CONTACT ME. If you would like me to teach a class on mandala metaphors and their meaning let me know, it's one of my favorite things to do. How to express the overwhelming beauty of wandering Squaw Valley while prayers chants and people from all over have journeyed here for healing, for fun, for beauty.
How to express the perfection of having my brother's first wife, the mother of my nephews and one of my best friends, at the back of the line walking the trail of our lives together loving and embracing connection through time and instantaneously weaving new and old friends in our hearts expressing asking receiving and in direct presence. So so grateful to make the full circle back to Tahoe, yoga, family and pen to paper. Three Assignments: medicine wheel mandala, imagery poetry and prayer mantra. If you are visiting to get the keys or rules they are posted under CURRICULUM (click here for link) Thanks for joining us. Each of you made the journey so special.🌈❣️😘 To tell you the truth, since I stopped social media, and have been living in the reel...I don't have much to say. I'm not teaching...although I am realizing that by going back to being a student, being the student I expect myself to be, I am teaching.
Classes I'm in are getting stiller, students more focused, and I remember what led me to teaching in the beginning. Profound changes in me, were recognizable. I morphed from editor, ghost writer, at-risk teacher, to yoga teacher, retreat facilitator, ceremonialist, bodyworker. I run into students now adults and they look at me declaring I am eternally ageless, forever young. What's your secret? Everything I used to talk about, I still do it. Privately and with no words, of course, my time of directing hung over students to the back row and those truly training to the front have passed. I'm not detoxing, I'm remembering what it is like to not be travelling alone. I am opening and fluttering at falling so madly deeply in love with everyone at the check stands of my favorite grocery, librarians, baristas and getting to see them again. Leo Buscaglia style. It isn't easy. People think I'm crazy, or on mushrooms. I open slower than I really want to, which is to say I want to pull people all the way in. Just love each other now. Why wait? Ok. Gotta get the details. Know where we are coming from...which is? Where did I come from? Courage. A willingness to walk away from anything that was preventing me from freely being able to follow the voice I heard so clearly inside, that had been trying to communicate with me since I was a child and before church and society told me that I had to focus on linear tasks or I'd be doomed. Better to say, we will all be doomed if we don't listen to the voice of our souls that leads us along the path meant for us. Spiritualists. Artists. Musicians. Body Movers and shakers. Visionaries. We were ahead of our time. But the time is now. The hardest part about starting out ahead is the waiting. The feeling of fighting. The realizing that you can't fight. The tired but must keep pushing. The absolute joy over experiencing transformation that touches a few and then watching it spiral out...it takes years...sometimes 20. The other day my dad got excited after having read an article about yoga and healing. I told him, yup...if I had started what I had been doing the last 20 years now, it would have made more sense to you. If I were just beginning and you had a context, you would have been more supportive silly. Made me feel less crazy. Invested in my journey, of which, I was actually ahead at one point. I forged ahead without support, found what I was looking for, or rather it found me. Strong in my determination. Feeling a little behind as the herd passes, I stop. I know I let them pass me, especially during my phases of fashion doesn't make yoga clothes doesn't make yogini phases. I now have a few Mika teeki and Onzies...they are cute. Tshirts worked too for a while. For the same reason, I put away my feathers and wings, my medicine bag my hands and hearts. After all the only real medicine women I truly knew were my grandmothers with their humble hearts and warm hands. In truth, somewhere deep inside I knew healing is who you are not what you wear. It's how you love even more than what you do. Many times, with my grandmother and parents it was really just a look in their eyes. I found it more important for a long period of time to stop needing, to have and remember. There was me and my crazy. There was a voice and a still listening. There was me running up cathedral rock. Working weird jobs and meeting my mentors. There was me being sick and finding my way to wellness of heart, acceptance of spirit, wholeness of body. There was the personal journey and there was the one I shared for the next 12 years skidding into homeplate having forged rivers with no bridges and mountains with no rope. There was exhaustion, isolation, and devotion. Deep seated devotion. Especially to family. Grandma and parents over festivals. On the outside a bit I dance on the fringes. I know people will see my spirit dance spirithorse and realize we are all same same just different ways of getting to our hearts, which was the magical life we prayed for...at least I did. Trust that when it was time to rest, it was because the flood is here. Our collective hearts have opened. And rest. I tell myself. You aren't behind. You are home. Welcome back from that journey. This is the starting point. Now. Here. The end of a twelve year cycle of travelling that culminated in a social media frenzy that I couldn't, no...wouldn't...keep up with. I decided I couldn't run and decided to walk. To slow down. To plant gardens. Write only for my own joy. Paint...just because. Run trails when the energy that propelled me rises because stopping travelling after twelve years is a commitment to sit through the uncomfortable. And to take yoga, dance do all the things that require home. Travelling had its own magic. This is a new journey. Into the still center core essence and letting it build around me instead of chasing it around the globe. Although there are still places I want to visit, and so many more people I am open to loving, this little place is vast and my current eternity. Changing the listening from endings, winds blowing, saying yes to everything new, into beginnings, calm, familiar. I now find myself in a state of wonder, that if I spent my whole life here, in this one place, I could never get to know it. I tell my nephews, much in the Benjamin Button style, that the hardest lesson of this life is you will never know when it of greatest benefit to hold onto the things and people you love at all costs, or to let them go to be free and grow. And you won't know until a long way down the road. But if you are true and listening, not following the herd, you will at least end up in the place your heart directs. You can own the experiences you yourself have chosen and trust, somehow in the end it all works out the way your own soul intended. Don't compare. Certainly don't compete with your life. Its yours. Just fall in love with it and, if you aren't, make space for more of what you do love to enter. A metaphor for love relationships, my polygamous earth adventure has given way to monogamous commitment to my home in the sierras where I have been coming since I was 11. A touchstone like people who have known you forever, I feel a sense of all my selves, the ones that traveled, that returned in circles to continue relationships with people I was drifting away from. And then, arrival. No emergencies. Spreading the experiences out. Taking my time. This year. The river is showing me all her curves and meandering through the expanses within me to show me that nothing is ever the same. Time wears away at the stones and softens the edges. Time brings us deeper into changes and remembrance teaches us that presence is the imprinting of a time and place that will never exist exactly in this way again. Slow down. Listen. Accept. Sometimes the thing to do is say, write, think...nothing...and just let the river of experience pass through you and to you. Softening the edges. Making changes fluidly. I rarely sit tipi anymore but after sitting with a dear friend in memorial of one of our mentors and adopted uncles, he asks how my quiet life is now, I say I am praying for us all to remember who we were before we all thought we were someone. Humble. Friends. Less Posh Spice fashion show selfy, more earth lovers kind spirited unique. The get along gang without matching costumes. It's why I love the river, no phone service, everything quiet, the journey to remembering comes easily. We came into this world with everything we need and our earth mother divine spirit adds the rest. I hope as it flows I keep ending up at the river banks remembering where the waters flow from...mother lake in the blue world and where it flows...ocean tides into infinite seas. The journey of life is different for all people. For some, the days of youth are punctuated by joy and it is there for them as remembrance of what it is to be in touch with their carefree divine true natures. Their homes are filled with love, their bodies with health, and their spirit with peace of mind. These are the ones we say are the lucky ones.
For others, the journey home takes them from a past of chaotic minds, health struggles, and a house that is filled with violence and rage. For them, the choices they will make through their life to find and be the love will require unfolding, forgiveness and they will wander far to find in metaphors and daily interactions love that is healing and restores their belief in, touches a special part of them and brings them back to soul. Still others, though coming from a place of love will have trials and be refined by the fires of time and life. They will come to learn the value of their innocence and they will come to know what it is to cause their own suffering by the choices they make. Regardless of where we are coming from, the journey is the same. How the journey begins is not as important as where we end up. The real test is at the end and whether we can come back to, find the way, or even maintain in the face of adversity our true selves. These are the selves that exist within us all....the real self that is beyond doubts and seeds of fear or lack of self-worth that are planted by negative experience....the real self that is beyond entitlement and ego that stem from easily achieved successes and though, perhaps not knowing their own failures must then come, somehow, to compassion, vulnerability, and support the fragile journey of humanity as a collective. The gateway to home is through the heart, the breath is vehicle, union is the arms that embrace, leads us, and teaches us the way to a warm meal, hot cup of tea, and a home filled with love. Connection, in every way from my hands and heart to yours. And even, if our focus tends to the external and not enough on our own life, then it is from my own hand to my own heart, I am listening. Having travelled now for 12 years, I have begun to hear a little teeny child voice inside of myself say, "I wanna go home." And an older version of me asks, "Darlin, where is home?" With all the places I have been I am eternally missing someone somewhere. But the voice has resorted to squeezing my little heart and, though, I have thought myself listening in practice and prayer it has only been in the quiet of the jungle by the sea that external noises have dropped away. Day by day, in the spaces between massage and yoga, the sounds of crickets and ocean waves drop me into places of my heart that have been singing songs of loss, of regret, of forgiveness, of peace. In these places I have found the poems and verses that have inspired a deepening compassion for those things I have done and the time it takes to heal them with the wisdom of experience they impart. In a society and a generation that teaches to live with no regrets, to claim what is yours and to do so at all costs, I might add a soft reminder that, "Regret is an honest and fair teacher." Over the years Chacalla, with its Mexican heart, has danced its way into my heart and revived a passion for living, for dancing, for opening and has given me the opportunity to embrace new people from all over the world while being comfortably in one special place. I feel into this experience and fall in love again and again with the sea, the sunsets, and the people with whom I work. When I return, it is a sort of homecoming, not only to the people I have known but in the quiet of the night, I come home to myself. I come home to feeling. I come home to realizing I have been away from the places where I started for so long, and from those I have loved. It is with a revived spirit of community that I write, not just about the courageous personal journey but with the knowing that true growth and a sense of self comes only from finding a place in community. And real community? How is it to be found in these days of heirarchy? In true friendship, in heart centered connection, in the vulnerability of allowing ourselves to be seen and, truly, in small community nothing is hidden. In true community, everything is seen. That is of course what makes a community so powerful either to lift us up when we are having trouble holding it together. And if you are unlucky, it has the power to tear you down and pull the last threads of your sweater. And, at times, our own self judgement and inability to face our own lives can contract us from fully embracing community to pushing it away. So it is that really coming home, not only to our own souls but to the places that will know and love us through our best and worst takes courage. It also takes love on the part of everyone to become, not just the people at the gym, or coffee shop, but to become in some human way a family that passes through all levels of experience together. Ask any community that has passed through fire, hurricane, or flood and they will tell you what it is like to be in it together. That in small community where you will see the same person many times, we are known. We are no longer blindly numbly paying at the register or getting our coffee but that we know each other by name. That we have a moment for a story. That we are connected. That we come to realize that no matter what role we are playing in the drama of life, we all have a story, either ours or someone that we love, that makes it so that we understand, so that we can support the safety and trust to, hold our own joy and presence, with someone who is in the throes of suffering. Some are in the circle stories of their own lives and will not jump the loop to the next ring. For them, it is not yet time. Some are ready to let go, for them a new story shows them that everything is possible. In the never now exists miracles are possible. An experience of triumph is a map that shows there is a road that stems from experience and that the vulnerability born from being true to our hearts, natures, choices, however difficult they are to make or bear, can light the way. True healing is knowing intentions are only one part of the journey, it is what we choose now forward, learn from life, and how we show we know life is long and regret, it is honest. Regret has spoken to me of learning, of traveling and it has spoken to me of home. The home that is more than our own heart, but is the love of the favorite little coffee shop on the corner, the little whole foods market, and the little studios in gyms that remind you that day by day is actually found in the simplest of places. It is found in the places that receive you back after you have faced the deepest hurts of your heart, that know you have been out in the world learning to trust your heart again, and to forgive the things done to live true to our heart, to do yoga, to breathe deep and to finally forgive everything by returning it to yourself. It is in revisiting and returning to the love that found you in the beginning when yoga started, when Nature took you, and everyday was an embracing of what was known, including yourself. It is the knowing, the accepting, the peace and the return of what is nearest and dearest to our hearts. Reconciliation. Integration. Experience. Belief. Trust. That though the way is not known or set for all people and the time needed to repair be different for all, and though we have love to give and gratitude to express for all the experiences we have had, that in the end, "man returns home to find what he was looking for." And so may our wonderings return us to peace, may they teach us that choices affect not only ourselves but all those who touch us, and that, in the end, may the prayer for home bring us to the greatest reflection of our soul. And so then, sit, and be quiet. Find a place of refuge with little to no external sound. Sit with your breath. Observe the memories as they flood in, feel them, be softer than they are and then dive through all barriers, all the things we know too much about ourselves, others or society. Dare to believe again in the deep things of your little self speaking. Let go of mind and all the thoughts that limit you. Imagine for a moment that you are really embraced, that you are safe and ask for the real longings of heart so they may rise again and fill you with the light of joy. And in your enlightenment, in your happiness, in the rising of spirit do not shrink back or hide alone but instead leave the light on to let others know...somebody is truly home. My little 4'11" mom is a warrior. I have seen her power her voluptuous round Mexican body through step, spinning and kickboxing classes, smiling sweating from every pore on her shin, face, and arms my whole life struggling with weight. She has done every diet--Jenny Craig, Weight Watchers, Adkins, South Beach and she is the video queen. At home she has tackled The Firm, The Firm with weights, Reebok, and Karen Voight. She would grab me and Jazzercise, Zumba, and dance me around our kitchen. There was even a stint of her jogging.
She is a flirt and a beauty. She never went out of the house without make-up and would look at my tomboy face, "Zonia, put on some lipstick." "Bleh, I would say. I just wanted to be outside planting flowers--in the crawl space in the mud. A new video--a new exercise. Yoga. I never clung to any of her weight or beauty obsessions but this one...set in Nature with the deep soothing voice of Rodney Yee...that sparked something in my 14 year old mind that never went away. It was at the end of my drug and alcohol high school phase and after a near death experience. It changed me. It changed everything. Until I began teaching high school at 20, I went to work with an acupuncturist, chiropractor, herbalist with an in house massage therapist . They taught me yoga of the spirit. To my biblical missionary life, I now added wholistic health, diet, energy, meditation...and I craved more. I wanted the physical aspect. My dear mentor only said to me and his son, "Make sure it's what you want. Your whole life will become a prayer. The asanas are very powerful," he warned. Neither his son nor I were afraid. We went to yoga like moths to the flame. Ashtanga. Hatha. Bikram. Vinyasa. Yin. Iyengar. Anusara. I moved to Tahoe to teach. I meet Jason. We are both high school teachers. I have a brain tumor and am on the way out of a being a Jehovah's Witness, a choice that will cost me a lifetime of friends. I am praying. Jason and I fall into sharing the spirit of practice. Never have we met another person who loves yoga the way that we do. We do yoga 6-8 hours at a time. David Swenson is our teacher. We finish yoga practice. We start again. It wasn't popular. There is no Facebook. There are no photos. Jason is my first glimpse of the spiritual on the outside of a religion that taught me everything out there is separated from God. God only exists in here, we are told. Evil lurks around every corner, but there is no denying...Jason loves God. So do I. We are the same, but also so different. We go our separate ways. I crash snowboarding, get tired of having a tumor, leave my religion and go to Hawaii to heal my spine, tumor, heart, and life. I cry for vision. I see God everywhere and in everyone. I walk 12 hours a day. Hike Kalalau three times. Sleep on beaches. Trust the direction guiding me is love. Pray. Yoga. My tumor comes out of my nose. I go back to Tahoe. Teach at schools. Wreck my car. Tear my thigh and abdominal muscles. Start over in yoga. Lay on the mat crying in pain as my dear friend and teacher Shaelah Morris lays warm hands on my pain. I don't quit. I start from the inside. I build my body back up. My spirit is strong. Yoga guides me. Five years have passed. Doing sun salutations to the sun rising. There are no pictures. Jason is in Tahoe. We are friends. We are both teaching yoga. It has taken us. We have left schools and entered yoga rooms. We are each other's greatest ally. Yoga is beginning to be popular. Our families still don't understand. We are each other's closest, strongest ally. We can see and experience how much we have both changed. You are not crazy. Don't quit. We separate. My sweet mom gets breast cancer. I return home to pray, care for her, teach her meditation. The house is a sanctuary of hope. I pray to heal our cancer lineage. Yoga. I have a vision. I go to Hawaii. I meet Ken. We travel tipi, both ex-Jehovah's Witnesses, we face our greatest fears together. Unplant seeds in our mind. Learn about our ancestry. I heal the breast cancer lineage for women in my line. Accept my medicine. There are no pictures...well a few, taken by a 12-year old at a retreat. There is a lot of heart. There is no money, only prayer, trust, love, and good friends. There is yoga, fasting, vision quests and long, long walks. We build and run sweat lodges and bring together people as family. There are no pictures of these. There are no cameras. We separate. Jason and I are in Maui, the Ananda Yoga Sanctuary. We teach yoga for free and support it with other work driving around the island. There are a few pictures....not many. Facebook is popular. I activate and deactivate with regularity. Craving the real. We go to India. We teach kids on a mountain top. Do healing work with families. Teach yoga to those who knock on the door. We did not come to teach but to learn. We are teaching. There are no pictures....well, one with all the kids. It wasn't a photo op. It wasn't for public. It just happened. We separate. Years keep passing. Yoga keeps happening. We both keep teaching, practicing, and learning. I teach and travel to California, New Mexico, Colorado, Washington, Oregon, Hawaii, Texas, Arizona, Florida, and Mexico. I am told to make a website. I gather pictures from a few people who take them. As usual, there are no pictures of my students or of me teaching...I am...well, I am teaching. Jason returns from Thailand where he has been doing teacher trainings. Let's start a school. Live True, he says, like our life. I agree. All people can ask for are pictures. Zonia? Yes? We need pictures. I send a couple. Who took these? My four year old cousin. Really, Zonia? Really? Ha ha. Yes, really. When she finished she said, "Now let's go live." Ha ha. Just my sentiments, we ran up a mountain. Zonia, just take pictures. Of what? Take a few. Get bored. Change focus. This is my family. This is art. This is Nature. This the White Sands desert where I am from, minus the best parts....snow angels and rolling down hills. We are playing so...there are no pictures. This is me and my friends in the rain and at the river, I start taking pictures of them. Try again to take pictures. My friend's farm burns down. A friend and teacher die. I pause again. What are we doing? Out here...it isn't about me. It's about being in the moment. It's about connection. My favorite moments are not in pictures. They are the moments before and after. Long hugs. Moments spread out over time. The whole sky, land and water, not just the frame. It's multi-sensory. The breeze. The sound of the water rushing. Rain drops falling on rooftops. The smell of rose and cedar. Fire crackling. It's about prayer. It's about healing. It's about God and it's been happening since I was born. It's been happening to all of us and, this yoga....it is life. How do I capture it without losing it? The internal experience. This journey, the powerful practice of presence...the way this yoga has become a life prayer just like I was told it would. In another photo of me in warrior, camel or wheel? Bleh... Zonia? Yes, Love? Just take a few pictures during personal practice for Instagram. Cannot...it's personal. Take some in class. Who will I ask to refrain from class? I am singing...a photo cannot capture sound. Who will I awaken to prompt, this is me adjusting, helping people connect to their bodies, explore their joints, know themselves? Someone's crying. Take a picture? Cannot. I dust them with sage. It's real...it's not posed. I look at my dear friend's photos--they are beautiful. Use Jason's, I say. Jason says, "Zonia, now it looks about me and it's not. Take pictures." It's ok, I say. It's ok. Two non-competitive people who hardly use computers, love yoga, serving others, God, and Nature wish to share their yogic life journey and must now somehow compete through social media which is image driven. I don't even own a camera. Overwhelmed. Ha ha. On the computer. Making websites. Resisting. Let's go grassroots, I say, travel to people, places. Just try. We will get a social media guru. What if this doesn't work? It will, have faith. Besides, no matter what, there will still be yoga. We will still be living true to ourselves. We will still be friends. It's been almost 20 years. Take pictures, Zonia. I look at yoga photos. Handstands. Sculpted. Abundant. Young. I clap and smile. Gorgeous. Gold's Gym. Social media geniuses. They help each other take photos. It's easy for them. They love it. I love them. I see it shouldn't be hard and that it can actually be fun. I join my heart to their smiles. Resistance softening. Open to someone who can capture my internal experience of yoga. Zonia, take pictures. Sigh. Two white butterflies swirl in front of a lava rock wall with a vine climbing. Three pelicans circle the sky. Waves crash. Birds sing. My room is quiet. One table. One yoga mat. A bed. I just finished teaching a class with 20 students. There are no pictures. And...no one is here to capture me writing with a pen in my journal, praying, practicing, but it's happening. It's all happening now.....and now....and again now. Zonia? Blog, please. Yes, my Love. Is anyone reading, feeling, understanding my heart, my prayer for us all? I am. Cannot give up living, experiencing for an image unless it happens naturally, authentically. And no image can substitute for the experience of being where you are when you are there with the people you are near. I look at posed pictures and laugh when I see my face. Ha ha. A deer in the headlights. I am way more lighthearted than this. I am my mother dancing to music in the kitchen. I remember my mom. She is beautiful....and strong. A cancer survivor. Hair grey. In tennis. Now an artist. Covered in paint. No make-up. Mom? Yes, Love? How does it feel to give up beauty? We laugh until we cry because even I am surprised I have asked her this question. Finally she says, "It's nice, Mija. It's so nice." "If destiny comes to help you,
Love will come to meet you. A life without love isn't a life" ~Rumi This is a new day and new story. It is our love story and it is the greatest story ever told. It is the story about how we find our place in the world both self-assured and softened in our compassionate soul. It is the story about how we learn how to live for those who die, laugh for those who cry and remember our value is in our experiences not our things. We are all writing this story together as we form a collective community that supports each other's expression of life, desire to enjoy the life we have been given and encourage others to let go of whatever seeds prevent our flowering into beautiful, adorable, lovable beings firmly rooted in our True Nature and guided by spirit. It is the story of our destiny to embody all the things we love about life and living. It is the story about how we finally are able to look to the past and allow regret to be a teacher that changes us permanently so that we give our lives over to Love. In this story we let go of fear, we stop worrying about mistakes and allow our basic instinct to merge with our intuition so that spirit can do its deep private silent work. Led by peace Love will show itself to be in and around us everywhere. The way to go is obvious. It's not a big secret. It is just the truest you have ever been. What does it feel like to be in love with someone, ourselves, beyond doubt and unknowns....remembering our sweet hearts, our value, our worth? Authentic. Loved. Independent. Committed. Open to the future. Accepting uncertainty and going with the flow of emotion that animates our very existence. Free of dogmas, restraints and teachings, we are liberated by the experience of Love in our private hearts and lives so that we are no longer costumed or performing, but our true selves. Forgive everything. We can never right all the things that have happened in some other place or time. We are still despite circumstances destined to be and to express, to explore and to understand Love. Eye to eye we breathe love into the world. And how long will it last? Forever...like all true love does, in memory, in story, in the stars. Create a future by starting today. It's the only day that really matters. Live your dream life, rejoice when you are in it, adjust when it shifts. All the while, through ebb and flow, hold onto love and the ones you love. Create sanctuary where you can both relax, "unburden and be kind." On this new day, fill yourself with these sentiments: I am willing to fall madly deeply in love with no expectations and fully connected to dreams fulfilled in gratitude. I am willing to know, acknowledge, accept, see, feel, speak as one in love. I am open to hear, feel, be told, shown, and to believe, I am loved. I let go of all other stories but this one. I have everything I have ever wanted unfolding in life. Everyday I look to see how the Creator is blessing me. As it unfolds I feel more and more love. I trust amazing things happen when I focus on my world and do what I want to in a carefree kind spirit. Bliss will find you softer than joy, quieter than celebration, its subtlety like eyelid kisses and a soft humming subconscious melody of your heart song singing. This is the love story I am writing. It is not just about God, Nature or partnership. It's about you loving what you love, who you are and when you love, doing so whole heartedly, trusting that which is pulling you forward towards the love destiny unfolding. This is the greatest love story ever written..it is yours, it is mine, it is all of ours. I can hear the fan overhead spinning with the sound of cars in the distance almost fading into the current of the rivers. It is a beautiful night with palm branches swaying and I am tucked away in a small bamboo bungalow. Trying not to contemplate the meaning of things in philosophical terms...a knowing passes through me to write:
We can never be truly prepared for anything When its time we can only harness what experience has taught us and pray for the spirit to know what to do to move forward one day at a time--sometimes one breath and pray and practice and breathe and when we are able to open again after loss or change live and find reasons to rejoice again in the little things the peace the calm the beauty that like the thunderbird rise softly like smoke from the ashes. In the deep caverns of the pelvis lives our darkest deepest most powerful root of human tendency and need.
Mula Bhanda, the energy lock of the reproductive organs, sphincter muscles, kegels, abdominal and bowel all pulling into body awareness at the physical level of strength, will, determination, and commitment to never yield. The warrior Bhanda that deepens our connection with our own personal bodies, blood, bones, muscles, ligaments. In it is the struggle to survive, the willingness to dig deep and experience the space in between effort where stillness and silence live. Slow. Steady. Moment by moment. Like the heartbeat of our mother. Electromagnetic pulse, thump thumping with the rhythm of cycles, seasons, time. Foundational. The place where we store all our stories of shame, suffering, anger, rage. The place where we have stored memories of life's imperfections, imbalances, and traumas. The place where we rise up and despite circumstances, despite externals, we find the internal resources to commit to the process of living and create a different story. Perseverance. Training. Change. A profound legacy of pioneers for the future charging forward in the face of adversity to stand firm in humanity and for humanity that despite all the trials and tribulations, despite moments in life that are suffering the human will to survive is a miracle. If that miracle can exist so can others. To dive deep and then surface again, break out and break through running awareness in the rivers of volcanos and eruptions that tunnels through our veins. Private sacred moments of internal change and catalysts that you keep for yourself to grow and understand how precious the simple things that capture the essence of time passing intimacy in life's slow treasures really are invaluable and cannot be bought only experience with time you set aside to slow down to the pace of nature. Trees that sprout from seed to give shade over the course of a person's lifetime. The sunset travelling over the mountain range with the passing of the year. The moon waxing crescent to full and waning to new. Flowers in seasonal cycles, budding, blooming and petals falling to ground. Children, once held, now birthing. Memories of friends over time that build community. Simple meals bursting color and spice. A cup of steaming tea. Fire. Water. A breeze. And yoga...the dance of prayer slowly unfolding breaths most intimate movement vertebrae by vertebrae to the base of spine and pelvis where you sit in your center, greying, wrinkling, but surrendering to time but holding to happiness of youthful heart unbridled freedom in flight no matter the gravity that holds us all on this planet rotating sun in solar system of small galaxy in Universe. We are but a speck...but a speck of sparkling dust that laughs and smiles, embraces and experiences. Your personal life matters and so does the choice to live, to mature, to be at ease in the process of natural evolution. Day by day. Day by day. Day by day. Until the day when the temporary physical gives way to dust and dust floats on the wind. |
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