What are our deepest dreams? What hopes do we have for ourselves? For the future? How equipped are we at addressing life when it doesn't meet our expectations? What about when we use all our powers of envisioning and the perfect life we are waiting for takes another form?

I remember years ago I read an article and in it the author suggested that we choose to look at all situations as a gift from God. Look at current events and at life and ask, what is right about this? This is the only way we can truly understand the love that arrives for us is supporting a common goal.

What is our common goal? My advice is to ask. To listen. To trust the heart of the person who is talking, their life experience, and imagine they have been walking on the other side of the moon and might have a few insights into the shadow of possible we call the Great Mystery.

The Greatest Mystery of all is how can a benign Source of life provide for all its children what they need when they are in conflict? So focused on differences, we forget there is one planet, one species. Perhaps the greatest act of cooperation we can express is allowance and acceptance that perhaps, we don't have all the answers and we should start asking more questions. Its called dialogue. Its called communication. Its done with the intent of seeing eye to eye and it starts with a mind set. Self-inquiry meet your neighbor, public domain.

What makes us the same as those who surround us? What unites us? What brings us together is a common goal for the future, for our children, for the planet. And who's right is it to decide? What is right to decide?

It is easy at times to believe that if people don't fall into the same patterns of thought or behavior that somehow they are disconnected from the source and that we have a better understanding of how its supposed to be, but what if what is truly needed is a paradigm shift that forces us to accept others thought forms different from our own as inspired.

Zonia?
Yes?
What inspires you?
Breath.

As in take a deep one, monkey. Take life moment by moment and stay in a state of trust. Watch for it. The truth will reveal itself. Pray with your imagination and keep dreaming when reality shows itself.

What if, instead of the world ending because one person takes over a role, it births us whole? What if the quest for globalization and the corporate desire to invade other countries and fleeing expats who set up american lives in other countries are forced to return home and create a climate of ease in our own borders? What if the corporations are bankrupted for the people? What if they become a write off and other countries tell Monsanto no? What if we just escaped the greatest insurance pharmaceutical take over of all time? What if Republican is deregulation and incentive for becoming a small businness owner? What if de-globalization meant local economy? What if the answer is being given but because you can only see it one way in your minds eye you have missed the shift over into a linear way of creating change that is more efficient and clear than sitting circle and going counter culture.

What if what we really need now is UNITY CONSCIOUSNESS? As in, we all agree...change is necessary.

Just, What if? All of our justice policies and all of checks and balances make us pay closer attention to the details rather than the big dream picture. What if, in order for the dream to manifest, we must also become self-sufficient self-made people? Isn't that evolution? Isn't that evidence of personal growth?

The unlimited experience of inhale, meet the finite human being exhaling. Harness your energy and power up your community. To create. To become. To provide.

Ask how are you giving back? you expect it of the govenerment, do you expect it of yourselves? What are you co-creating? And what are you doing with all your energy?

Pipelines and walls of people come together driving, flying suing oil to protest the providing of oil. What if the answer is...stop driving? Would you give up your car? What if the answer is focusing on what is present right next to you but you are watching the new T.V., having it guide your thoughts and feelings through algorhythms and unoriginal shares...clutching the ipad...stressed to the max.

Get off the screen. Walk into the reel. Cast the movie. See a new world and imagine the opportunities arising. Write a success story. Write a peaceful revolution. Write freedom to decide your personal life and then live it.

A new dawn. And the pink and red of sun and sky is either Armageddon or the Sun rising.

Where did your mind race? If chaos and destruction are the immediate end result of your mind...perhaps the reel, as in the movie reel you are playing, is the problem and you, in rebelling and following the alternate path have demonized and ostracized the other, who, may be your most generous ally simplifying and making each person accountable for solution oriented thinking at local levels of government, community and family.

Perhaps what people are seeking is a return to moral value and what we are seeking is freedom from dogma a return to an understanding that religion has overlayed separating blueprints that needs to be sketched and redrawn by people who are neither here nor there, unemotionally attached but proud of who we are becoming.

Who are we becoming? In what ways have we created a schism in our minds through what a dear Italian friend described as CREDONISMO, the mental disease of only talking to those just like us. And if we can not accept that which is different than our form of optimistic freedom are we truly free?

So then we bow our heads and join the monks in their prayer flags for spiritual recovery, pray to Jesus Christ consciousness, pray and pray...that we all be freed from the causes of suffering, imagined or real, that we all be liberated into our happiest lives and learn a new way of interacting with the world at large...as in the whole world...as in our Earth...as in our Mother.

Mother?
Si mija?
Are we going to be ok?
Si.

I look inside. I believe it is ok. One day at a time. Keep loving and living and loving and living and who and what we are will prevail. Love...love will prevail. It is the most powerful force in the world.

 Whew!  Today is in fact a new day. I am in Santa Cruz following too many story lines happening to people not here with me, but they are all important to me.

I have friends whose homes are now lost in Calaveras County fire and since I can't get to them I am posting remedies for mucous membranes but staying present and happy while I pray for them.

So I am also  surrendering into the ocean, dolphins, sea lions, iron man, contestants, and visiting herb shops to make teas and test combinations for the varying degrees of lung, chest, sinus, migrane, intestinal and assisted dear ones with sexual traumas.

 I figure I can help half with the one tea I posted on facebook earlier (if you want that lung remedy friend me on facebook.)  

So this blog is on sexual trauma.

This combination of herbs and alternative remedy has roots in healing sexual dysfunction in women around menopause who had pain in their vaginal canal which released painful memories about repressed molestations, sexual assault, self esteem and body issues that resulted from the arising consciousness of sexuality and orgasm at too young an age with little to no guidance.  

So many women explored curiosity about orgasm (hiding because as we all know it feels so fucking good to orgasm and our young brains are like...what was that?) and tried to understand sexuality either by closing up or letting it all out.

I was molested at 3, masterbated as a natural curiosity about my body and had a religious mother who taught me it was a sin so every time I went there, and of course I did because orgasm is a gift, but because of this conflict  I experienced painful separation and guilt.  Happily I have now freed myself of all that and have found my personal sexual freedom within the loving arms of sacred space...and have at the same time cleared up chronic conditions associated with accepting my human nature and God given gifts.

Tea: kava, rose hip, wild yam, spearmint, marshmallow root  (Just cause everything is more pleasant with a cup of tea :) no there are herbs for hormones and relaxing and love and joy in there. Enjoy! 

Featured herb:  Slippery Elm Bark

After learning about slippery elm bark I have been wondering why it isn't handed to all women at menstruation and why isn't each daughter taught to explore her canal (no not sexually you pervert, but informationally...as in its yours you can touch it but everyone else must ask permission.)

We used to have an amazing indigenous ceremony and tradition called RED TENT during which all the menstruating women would gather to learn folklore, medicine, the power of the feminine and their connenction to Earth Magic, sexuality, self-image, open hearted communication and now...we leave it to someone else and just hand out condoms or imagine it isn't happening...well imagine a world where a woman is taught from an early age to honor and respect her procreative powers and the important of healthy touch.

Why she would get to know what she is made of,  what the inside of her is made for and she wouldnt be waiting for a man or doctor to show her.  

​I  firmly believe you should know your body better than anyone else, love it and be able to communicate what does and does not work for you so you can experience complete surrender.  

Who can you trust more than yourself until you find a partner who actually cares and listens to how your body works and honors it?

From an educational standpoint without the overtones of sexual fulfillment or orgasm but literally as an inform yourself about your body kind of a thing. This includes the anus by the way and the double sided barrier between rectom and vaginal opening.

Anyways started to offer self massage with this herb after my own healing of infection and restration of balance. Passed it on to the most important women in my life including my menopausal mom.  It is something a person could try and the techniques, that to some might be considered foreplay if done  by a man, but from the mouth of one woman to another (as in this is my experience but i realize how that sounds...hahah.)...just make sure you check out every nook and cranny from front seam to back seam at entrance and up rib by rib looking for sore points or anything that  ignites an emotional response gently tap like you would the tackiness of tape or gently press like you would to check soil of a plant to see if it is needing water.  Reset bioelectrical field or memory imprintation with loving touch and repatterning of the experience that happens in the canal restoring the sacredness of your space. Its yours, you are the only one that does not need permission to touch it.

If a man is reading this and wants to do this for your beloved like my dad did for my mom...this is how they restored   safety and sacred space between them after surviving prostate cancer and a mastectomy.  (Gotta figure out how it all works again. )  Remember it isnt about your entry this is a healing session about her release and surrender.  Check out David Deida Dear Lover for more description from lover to woman.  My parents got impatient a couple times, which is awesome, but always remember to pick up where you left off.  Full exploration, inquiry and presence.  Everything is working fine now so....mom's pain is gone...give it a try...(sorry mom...have to tell the story :)

So slippery elm bark is super powerful for releasing you from guilt and shame via the pleasure portal and sensory receptors lining the internal organs. also spiritually speaking can release you from religious overtones that teach masturbation or touching your own body is  sinful...what?  Ok.  Reach out and touch yourselves.  God said so.  He made you that way.  How loving and awesome of him.  If it got stimulated inadvertently (as in not by your choice) in an unhealthy way it is still a gift and we should all learn to appreciate it again. If you can't fathom doing it yourself, offer it to your lover and ask him to help you heal past wounds or use it as lube or? well you get the drift...

So....speaking of the pleasure portal which includes the uterus and bladder, (seat of sexual energy) and somewhere in there the trigger for amrita cleansing healing waters...other internal organs benefit from slippery elm bark because it coats the tract but also, much like the herb via the vagina will help with yeast 
infections, bacterial imbalances and  is said to reverse the polarity of syphilus, this herb taken internally will help with digestive tract issues .  Its anti-spasmodic and anti-viral.  

Basically it returns mucous membranes to homeostasis and whatever needs to happen does. because it knows how to communicate via your own mucous whether it be digestive, procreative, or nasal head chest related.  its smart!  they are so much alike its like they are the same...only one is a plant and has no memory of trauma so it passes on the easy going gene.  

Preparation:  
1 T in about 1/3 cup water with med hot water stirred with prayer and love for like 5 minutes and a 

Prayer of gratitude:  Thank you Creator God for restoring my body to balance.  For helping me feel safe to be vulnerable and open in the deepest parts of my body.  Thank you for helping me forgive everything and return to this one moment of perfected bliss.  I am so grateful I am wonderfully made and everything we need to enjoy life resides deep inside.  Thank you for freeing me from the concept of sin and teaching me how to trust the integrity of my inner knowing about what is best, healthy and good for me.  Allow me to ground down into my body and allow all attachments to sufferings to float away.  tell a happy story, plant seeds of hope.  May I transmute stories of pain to ones of presence, joy and gratitude, surrendering to the orgasm that is my one amazing life.  Showing compassion for others but having boundaries well defined so that I can sink into the vibrational reality i am in for my personal growth and happiness now.  Send this joy and beauty to those in need and allow me the peace of mind to be in peace and witnessing miracles unfold in my personal life.  

Something like that...basically pray your intentions in there.

Ayahuasca is an excellent colon digestive tract cleanse this is the way to get the same level of consciousness in your rectum and pelvic area through touch, exploration, massage, herbal folklore, conscious intention, tantric prayer power associated with orgasm, without the hallucinogenic trip.  Ok happy drinking...massaging, or whatever you choose to do with it.  haha...don't tell me :)unless its an awesome story...then..oh course I wanna talk story.  its one of my favorite things to do.

Incidentally...somehow drinking the brew from a metaphysical level also touches the deep places where we repress shame so let it go man and poop that shit out.  Ok. And when you massage clean everything out with love.  

By the way don't use if you are pregnant but I am wondering about using it during birth to stretch the membrane like some do with castor oil...or something...not sure wait on me for that.  Ok  Love you...take care and be loving to yourself and those who surround you. xoxoox

Maybe my doula sisters can consult with me about that last part...Try it on yourselves and share your experience.  Ok.  Thanks!

If the crown is our divine inheritance, after humbly submitting to divine will and receiving Universal grace and blessings, the Ajna chakra is the chakra of the Indigoes and Global Unification.  The Pituitary is the master gland that is activated and controls the third eye known as the Ajna, and it is through divine wisdom that our dreaming enters the field of consciousness for the healing of our planet.

Scientifically speaking, the indigo is a reflection of MRIs that have shown in catscans the brains of meditating masters.  They have discovered that in deep trance like states the brain’s energy unifies at a central point and, rather than emitting heat, cools and becomes blue.  All this blue energy localizes in the center of the hemispheres, in essence, shutting down the left logical fact gathering mind and the right creative story telling mind so that the mind of a person in deep trance is no longer emitting frequencies but receiving.

The Pineal gland, which is the meditating blue pearl, is centrally located, not only between the two hemispheres of the brain, but also at the apex where adjoining vibrations collected by the 3D situated ear drum receives vibration that is transmitted into pictures by the pineal gland, which does in fact have rods and cones like an eye ball, hence the description of it being the third eye.  Although, for me, it has come to actually be our ONE eye that is collecting information from the ONE source that is our Mother, the blue pearl of our solar system.  Microcosm, macrocosm.

I have heard people in the past voice concern that secret information is being taught and that people are misusing it rather than harnessing the collective power inherent within all of us to affect the human dream and create change.  I would like to note, however, that obviously the creator of the Universe is smarter than that, and, if the information can now be utilized, it is still a product of divine grace that unifies, through the network ansibles, those whose hearts are pure and focused on the collective dream of humanity for the soul purpose of fulfilling the great plan, which is, to us, a Great Mystery.

For me, it is impossible to discuss the properties of any chakra, or wheel of knowledge, without the gates of connection that interweave within us like a sacred geometric point of light grid.  Just as the crown is difficult to discuss without discussion of the Jahlandhara bhanda, the ajna chakra is difficult to discuss without Jiva Bhanda.  Jiva bhanda is the correlating spot for the pineal/pituitary glands located at the roof of the mouth.  Touching the tip of the tongue to the roof is said to activate these two glands which then emit frequencies that either open the gate up towards the heavens to receive information, or, as the chin bows forward compressing the thyroid, ignites our etheric hearts in response to our heart intentions, or prayers, transmits information.  It is a signal to both ourselves and those connected to us, “now, here.”    In between these points is the zeal point which connected to the thymus, accessed during tapping.  The thymus is interrelated with the base of the skull, or occipital ridge.  Jiva bhanda, then, is the activation of the dreaming center in relation to reset us in patterns of truth and wholeness.

In ancient people it is said that the area at the base of the skull was more pronounced and developed in relation psychic connections.  These psychic connections become the transmitters of information utilzing our memeories, bloodlines, connections to the earth via our feet, our hearts via right relations to others, and our spiritual connection to our soul group.

All of this is a very elaborate way of describing the powerful network of connections that we are.  In essence, if you consciously extend those 72,000 nadis that weave through our bodies and connect them to points outside ourselves, dissolving the barrier of our skin, through intention, prayer, belief and focus, and connect to the trees, stones, birds, and ancient water molecules of information that are in between everything in order to create an ocean of energy that transcends time, through what scientists have called phantom DNA.

The water is a molecular conductor of information that is stored in spirit energy recycling around the planet for all of time.  Hence, the saying that water is life.  Water is also one of the elements that contains the soul of the earth and the vital essence of our own bodies.  So, for ajna and body health, drink a lot of water and protect water sources.  Do not drink water with fluoride or sodas as they calcify your pineal gland.

The magical pineal gland we have been discussing that connects us to the cycle of life on our magnificent Mother, gives us all a collective blueprint and understanding of why we are here  remembering ourselves and our true nature at this exact time in history.

Some of us were born indigos, also referred to as old souls, and have been paving the way for remembrance for decades.  There are some indigos who have passed into a different reality and are currently interceding and interpreting information for us from spirit world through human experience and, vice versa, are communicating and translating the human experience for the spirit world.  These beings are the ascended masters and it is possible to call upon them and remember whatever it is they know.  

There are also indigos on the planet that range in capabilities but who I will refer to as the medicine people.  They are people who are now here remembering themselves because whatever healing practice they have mastered, they have accessed their pineal sent themselves forward in time fully connected to memory and their knowledge is the medicine or the healing of the world.

Not to be pigeonholed, I do believe it the responsibility of indigos to work through their karma, learn their lessons and evolve to a more purified crystalline state, like their modern day, younger generation of star children, new evolved, perfected souls or crystal children, who lack the innate wisdom passed down from the ancestors, so work together.  We need each other.

There are many medicine people and in order for us to complete our cycle of evolution, crystallization, purification, and  transformation of our cells, we must come back to the beautiful responsibility we have towards ourselves, this planet, the universe and future generations to let go of suffering, and attachments in order to dream a better world.

What is the difference between denial of the shadow world and our own shadow inclinations with grounded stable heart centered dreaming?

The Hawaiians describe this process as Hunaism, the sacred secret.  They describe the process of identification of the victim mentality that perpetuates the cycle of suffering much the way one would describe the tending of weeds in the garden.  As we pull the visions and dreams of the weeds from our mental environment we are better able to locate the seeds of truth that transcend culture, nationality, and religion.  In truth the divine creative spirit that put this ever expanding Universe in motion before human beings ever conceived a metaphor, or religion, to describe and capture the essence of the divine love that manifested us.  In this belief system, protecting and living for the health of the soul seed is our Kuleana, or divine responsibility to future generations.

This is the stuff of our meditations and prayers.  Meditate upon and water these seeds with light in order to enlighten our planet.  The most powerful determination of the health of meditation is the question:  Does my decision, action, or thought celebrate the gift of life was implanted in me?

This is the state of gratitude.

Rilke once wrote that it is our divine responsibility to imprint this world so deeply upon us that it may rise again.  So then, what we focus on, or what we love, is being rebirthed day after day after day.  Whatever life we are living right now is the result of thoughts we followed two months ago, last month, two weeks ago, two days ago, last night his morning and the second you began to read this article and made it this far.

 If we honor the gift of life that has been given to us then we will:

1.        Feed and nourish our bodies with natural foods from organic sources.

2.       Protect, purify and drink spring water.

3.       Honor all beings alive, animate or inanimate, on the planet as the Mother’s children.

4.       Participate in recreation that uplifts our spirit and leaves our bodies refreshed, rejuvenated, and       healthy.

5.       Meditate, pray and give thanks.

6.       Embody our highest selves and follow a path of service as an outward display of our gratitude for life.

The change that is taking place is an act of deliberate, personal, change and release from destructive addictions in order to recreate the world in which we live.  It requires courage, faith, patience and combined will, but this is what we were born to do.  We are the ones we have been waiting for, so act and stop waiting for the future.  The future is now and starts, as Martin Luther King once said, with a dream. 

Let all spiritual warriors unite in the face of everything to the contrary and see freedom, not only for ourselves but our children that they may be freed from the tyranny of injustice that has taken from us the most inalienable rights, that of enjoying the glorious freedom of the children of God as we live the real life we were meant to live here on this gift of a planet in order to glorify the ways of providence who did allow us the opportunity to unite again in our hearts to the love that has existed since times immortal and live with the belief in our hearts that we can co-exist in peace, that we can all give up whatever is cause for division, hatred and crime in order for us to unite under one cause, dreaming life for all humanity in harmony with this mother we call Earth, and give thanks to the Mother.  

In talking about the energetic system of the body and the wheels that spin along the spine, concentrated where our organs need the most amount of vital energy, people often break the chakras up in order of importance from the base up or by color.  For me, however, I like to think that the entire system of energy is focused on elevating our consciousness towards our divine inheritance, realizing our divinity.  This is often portrayed as being anointed in spirit and receiving our crown, the blessing of grace.

With that, I have often been faced with the question:  If we are the children of God and we have a divine inheritance, what does it truly mean to receive our crown and for what purpose are we blessed with the opening of our brain to receive information to carry out whatever is necessary?

When I consider this question a man comes to mind, Solomon, who, when praying to understand how to use his energy in serving God, asked first for wisdom.  With this, I think it is impossible to consider the crown without considering the bhanda that links our human heart and desires with our humility in asking for guidance. 

Jalandhara bhanda, is the act of bowing the head, allowing the crown to enter into the 3 foot wide electromagnetic field of our physical heart space.  In bringing the chin down to the chest we are entering the communication with our high heart, or our soul connection as seed to the flower of consciousness.  In connecting to our soul, we are also connecting to the light in us that is eternally bound to the light, or enlightenment, of God.

In essence, we can receive grace, change and transform instantaneously, in one heartfelt, deep experiential moment of realization draw all the energy up and have a life of miracles, wherein we are directed to the places either inside ourselves or on the planet where healing is most needed in the form of our most embodied and connected selves. In simple terms, be exactly your truest selves where you will be most loved and a healing presence for all around you.  In sharing the wisdom of our transformation and consecration we can be living examples, or Bodhisattvas, and teach how to integrate the divine experience with our physical one.

Our divine inheritance, then, is our inherent connection to God source energy. To contemplate the awesomeness of the Divine intelligence that governs and orchestrates the Universe is to come to the beginning of wisdom and to recognize that there is a purpose that is grander than our own life span.  That the opening of the crown gives us only a glimpse at the Divine as it spans through time and space eternally connecting all beings seen and unseen with unconditional love that permeates at the smallest cellular structure and holds it all together like an invisible web, that we can only imagine this type of connection and intricate intelligence that extends out into the ever expanding Universe.

This contemplation at the level of order in the rotating planets gives us confidence so that we can surrrender our own thinking ability to a higher power and allow ourselves to be guided.  This guidance system is available to all beings.  It does, however, require practice.

For me and those who practice yoga, or union with their spiritual nature, the energetic practices of consecration, prayer and meditation, clear the mind, and make it possible to hear the voice of our highest selves and, without attachment or expectation to results, faithfully follow through.

This way of living is far different than the linear one most of us have grown up with.  We, as a race, are in a very special time that the Native Americans like to call the hour of dreaming. 

I believe that most have recognized that need to transform our lives, live in harmony with the earth and each other, take care and steward the earth and to do so with the faith that if we live in right relation to our Creator God and allow the Creatress Goddess to move us, we can become reconciled with the original dream for humanity.  That the course of evolution is to become enlightened, or soulful, and live wisely.

Living in the dream then releases us into a world of immediate change.  We could spend years moving slowly through our wounds, process, excuse and forgive, delve into our shadows or we can just allow these changes to take place in our thoughts, behaviors and release addictions to any distractions or barriers that are preventing us from living in union with the Divine that lives in union with our light. 

Therefore, rather than taking the time to climb Jacob’s ladder from the base to the crown, we can focus on the crown and pray for grace to adjust our way of being and then imagine it has happened instantaneously, awakening in the morning to our true selves, forgetting our old routine and just picking up as though we are the person we have always wanted to be.

 In giving our lives over to the Divine in order to come into contact with the seed potential we are meant to embody in this life we can experience union in this very moment.  As the Buddha said, we are all golden and filled with light.  The question of change then becomes, what do we love more?  The practices and life experiences that create more light or are we addicted to patterns of destruction, sadness and chaos born of man’s blind and selfish thinking?

The crowning moment of our existence is choosing light and our self-realization is blessed by Divine grace when we begin to cultivate awareness on it and meditate upon it.  We live as we imagine and if we choose our divinity it increases in and around us.

People have asked me what it is like to live like a yogi, owning very little, having only what I need, being moved about the planet and asked to help whoever it is I am called to help. 

The only way to describe it is that every day is a prayer, a call and response.  It is a willingness to pause, ask a question and listen for the answer.  That all the years of asana practice have taught me to be aware that my feet are moving to the right and then move the rest of my body with it, allow the energy to propel me forward so that I come face to face with a synchronistic moment. 

 It is a life of miracles and an expression of gratitude.  It is a life spent in faith based on the way life continues to pulse and change for the better around me as I change and transform with it.  It is staring into the void, where I have been on this path long enough to not be in charge of the story line so  it is impossible to pick it up and truly it is a mystery to me what will happen next.  

 That my Divine charge as a human being is to know that I am enough, and then move from a place of confidence when I am transported to places and people in time that surpass my expectations.  That when I get there, I know it is both the meditation of my heart and a source higher than my Self that has created the situation. 

There are times when I experience suffering as result of losing people, places, beliefs, or experiences that I feel a deep attachment to, but in the end I have come to know that I will receive blessings if I allow myself to move with the divine flow towards what end I still do not know.  I do not think any of us ever really do, but if we can have enough magical experiences in our life, then we can begin to understand the perfection of life and the lessons we learn.

 So that, in the humility of bowing our crown, we are given the exquisite pleasure of daily affirming the existence of something outside ourselves and, to this, we can give all our fears, doubts, and sadnesses about our own lives and those whose reality is governed not by the dream but the nightmare, or even the state in between.  This empathy then directs energy towards what needs the most amount of love and, though I cannot see into the future, I know that Divine grace is in charge and that gives me peace that transcends all human circumstance and connects me to the web of life that is divinity.

Over the last ten years I have been a gypsy wanderer, a traveler, a medicine woman with a bag of tricks, but it was not always this way.

I actually started off as a high school teacher at 20.  I devoted my life to those students, taking many of them under my wing who felt abandoned by society, home, and life.  I held students in my arms who had been gang banged on the weekend, comforted students when suicide befell fellow students, and sat with parents whose worry had created separation and who somehow forgot the art of speaking from the heart.  I think what drove me then as now is life experience.

 At 14 my mother and I moved to El Paso so she could care for her mother who had breast, bone and lung cancer.  It was the first time I realized life wasn't all about me.  It wasn't not, but for that moment in time, I had the moment to experience that life is fleeting.  My grandmother was a very special woman.  I can remember my mom at her bedside.  I can remember the way they drank each other in through their eyes.  I can remember the first time I helped feed her.  Perhaps it seems like selflessness, but really, when you love someone it is for you that you are holding their hand, every bit as much as it is for them.  Because when you love someone, there will never be enough one more times.  And in the end the love you imprint will have to last a life time.

After she passed at the young age of 63, overwhelmed by death, I turned to drugs and alchohol.  I had a near death experience at 16.  My parents moved me two states away.  I believe it is the knowing that love exists and the way they were there for me, pleading, talking, loving embracing that I became the teacher I did.  

When I got a brain tumor in my 20's I continued teaching, sometimes barely making it home and not remembering the drive.  My parents relocated to live with me and when I awoke I would eat, sleep and then return to the classroom.  Then I met a medicine woman and began my own journey towards health and wholeness.  It was not easy.  The choices I made at that time in my life were choices that made everyone who loved me cringe.

I sold everything, I quit teaching, I put on a backpack and dropped myself down on the island of Kauai without a cellphone, no packing skills or experience, and trusted a divine force that led me to a shamanic burial on Big Island Hawaii.

What ended that journey was a final meditaion on the island of Maui, where I received back to me all the love and care of every single family member with whom I had not communicated in almost a year.  It was the time of no facebook and calls that came from me were spuratic and done in telephone booths.

The choice to self heal and to separate from my tribe was for me one of the many things along the way that changed my understanding of modern day mentality.  The mentality that self-realization and self-care is of primary importance.  I came to see that it was this mentality that in fact had caused so much separation in our world and the dissolution of tribe.  It is self-hood that brings us to our own paths in life, creativity...but truly it is what led me back to a field of service.

I see people on their own paths to wholeness and I know how important it is, also, at 39, both parents having survied cancer, three grandparents having passed, one aged and 94, I realize too that in the end, we always return to tribe. Perspective being that tribal unity is what keeps the family seed alive.  To care for aged ones and young ones alike.  It is the circle of love that brings us back.  Perhaps our parents weren't perfect, but we are alive...so the job they did was good.  We are always meant to learn and unlearn on our own.  But in the end, it is the love we put out that returns to us.

I feel lucky to be part of a family that loves deep.  We are all a little neurotic, have done one thing or another to each other, forgive, laugh, eat together and always we are family.  Some have their own family, some stay to themselves, I travel...we are all our own people.  In truth, it is the allowance of that allows tribes to dwell in unity.  We need not give up our individuality...but knowing where we come from, our ancestry, our birth, our blood is the first step to healing in the lowest energy body, our physical body, our groundedness, our root it is where we are housed, birth and die.

I saw a saying the other day, "not my monkey, not my tree."  I laugh now, in this moment because for our tree...we are all each other's monkey.  Different aspects of ourselves birthed in the outside world to know the truth and Mexicans do speak truth.  The older I get, the more the acts of love I consider ordinary seem to others outstanding, I can't help but think, we must as a race be forgetting something.  This behavior of love, care, and devotion used to be normal.  I can't help but pray that after we have gone into seclusion and self-inquiry, that we remember it isn't all about the one...it is about the we, the us, the entire human race and that we give ourselves back to that truth.

It is similar to the inquisitiveness that befalls my parents when in a yogic group, marveling over their love lasting from high school into their sixties.  How do you do it?  What is the secret?  My parents, slightly confused will look at each other and then back again, it isn't because we think the other perfect, it isn't because there are not minor disagreements it is quite simple...we love each other.  And many times I have seen a room go silent.  And so what is love?  What is the study of love?  

I can't help but think that love is the study of family.  It is the healing of ties, the forgiving of wounds, the willingness to see each other as perfectly flawed and imperfectly trying but never giving up in the trying, in the giving, in the communicating, in the saying of I am sorry. Please forgive me. I love you.  I trust you...such is the four tenets of the Hawaiian Kahunas.

Any tribe the world over all indegenous will teach you that seed, that little bit of knowing ohana, family, aloha, love, joined circles connected by fire, and prayer services over the sick that we must stick together and if the yogic practice of being happy, content and at peace while uncomfortable doesn't apply to this...check in with India...family, mother, grandparents is what they live for and marriage is for uniting tribes.

I hear alot use of the word tribe and tribal...it is a consciousness, it is a knowing and I believe in time we will come back to what it truly is. It is more than friendship.  It is more than fun.  To me it is the gift of having each other, to participate in the circle of life, not just in the yoga medicine worlds, but the whole world.  And perhaps as we come back in contact with all people's we will round out.  Help each other where we have each gone off track. 

Help each other unite...where we crave bliss...others crave security and is either one the truth of our existence?  ...life will always be slightly rickety, there will always be a curve ball, something that switches up our practices and blindsides us with unexpectancy, and in the midst of it...may we find enough hands there to hold us up, to bring us back to center (because God knows as much as I know where I am I sometimes get dizzy) so we can find our joy, our happiness, our bliss despite situations so that the one thing that never changes is our belief that the world is a loving place, that love is all around us and God is real, acting not only for us but through us.

 When the fires blaze 
my heart lights up
I come back to remembering
our eternal essence is not what we own.

I come back to remembering Jesus who when offered a kingdom
turned and walked barefoot into the desert
Buddha who rejected his wealth to
 sit under a tree

Crackling they endure the heat
and I recall the medicines
and people who sit in jungles
watching the Amazon fall to the ground
and facing extinction everyday they pray
for us

The shamans wife in
the Sierras of Mexico does sell her peyote
to visit doctors who give her medicine
to heal the illness
caused by

 Coca-cola
has found the remote villages
and history repeats itself in Modelo beer
drunken with need for money
that cannot be eaten

 The seed is the kernal that
 gives life to the people

 I pray those speaking medicine remember
we are here to pray for Earth and humanity
and can we step away from our own photos
 to pray
 for the wisdom of the ages
spreads out as land and sky
desert storm clouds
rain down
many waters spilling
blooming sage amid red rocks and scrub brush

The sky is infinity
vastness overhead
 horses etched cliffsides
sound thunderous gallops
pressing forward
lazer sharp
focus center points internal compass
due south
seaside Huichotle sweat lodges
merge
Navajo-Dineh
spirits intertwined
stories unravel
all this land is home:

Long ago a young woman held truth in her heart
preached it from the pulpits
and missed
the miracle of Jesus
working in her and through her 
she walked where she was led
stood at vistas on Cathedrals
pounding a grandfather drum
without a song
opening her heart
 she passed through her fears to run up walls
stood steady on legs 
the Goddess route
altars of tantric love
unionized on rock heads
pelvis vulva clitoris
making love all at once
they touch and pulse life into being
we are all born of this earth
and will return to its
steady still center
everything we have will go
but the love
experiences of service
we give
to those without money

God's divine presence is not for sale
It is ours
grateful to be guided to ancestral lands
whose horror and anger gives way to waves that
rush and pulse
surrender
I will fight no more forever
Aging I wear no costume
play no games for
time now unfolds
the grandmothers said...

None of this was for sale
now I do know what
commerce has taken
our humanity 
our fragility
our vulnerability
to be flawed
to cry
to speak an unpopular truth
we grin and bear
that spiritual sanctuaries
have created more emptiness

Where praises were sung to honor God
we raise ourselves up hierarchically
crushing the little children who need a knee and
sell them hugs for a dollar
to feed coconut cravings
festival addictions
have become highly exaggerated version of self
competing egos for the prize of the
most spiritual
goes no longer to the
crone with rosary beads praying
 privately for her family
but to the
young beautiful and rich
who sell you guru and hold back friendship--
for how can we charge for what used to be free
even elders sell tipi but

I remember when
we came together to
eat-sing-play-dance
I remember when friendship became sales's gimmicks
and struggling for money we
crawled begging our way

Back to the Kings and Queens
of the New Age Movement
Royalty in the making
we have created a parallel structure of
 successfully spiritual and abundant
Flyers, cards, costumes, and websites
Deny God
Claiming self as Creator...
No longer part or particle
I drop to one knee in the desert
Humbly
remember the ones who have come before me and 
pray to know another way
lineage passes on this:

We are now asleep
sitting together and
shining only our bliss
we neglect to use our
privilege, health 
as candles lighting the way

Awaken
in dark places we
look and find
humanity huddled together without fanfare
authentic like the stars remembering it is all about time spent together

Love shared is the presence of God

Sacred commerce has become another rat race
with
flowers of life, crystals, hoola hoops, fire and drugs
lots of them to
elevate the experience and make us believe

We are in ceremony
communion with the Divine Mother
whose breast has run dry and fires rage in
small towns we cry
what is lost

Remember the value of friends when we had nothing
we stood together in embrace
that is free

God is with us all along the way
reminding us that love is the only thing that matters
it is how we are here and the struggle is
the birth canal to our first primal yelp
this existence will be a cycle of emptying and filling
and no matter what comes in
we will all shit it out and cry our hearts out to be
loved--have attention--affection--praise

Connection to our Mother
in utero we were cared for and magically formed

Into this land
is a beautiful woman and do we plant and water her
until she blooms or bulldoze her
counting money and profits
raping the one who gives unconditionally to
dole out a chunk and dig up
ancestral finds of outer space origins
a knife to stab us in our own hearts

Living this life as if this is all there is
or looking towards eternal bliss in oneness
we are all here now
divided only by our stories
projections entitled blissed 
truly insecure and vulnerable
we are only human and dependent upon this planet

She will go on
the endless sky and stars do tell us
things burn out
civilizations dissolve
water runs out
no plastic bottle can be filled with what has dried
and do we now frack and infect our supplies for moneys and addictions
squandering the future with toxic fumes and GMO strains
cancerous dumps of
fertilizers to feed the masses
who do not plant seeds
who do not have land to grow

Laws are broken with the hope of freedom
and still we are enslaved to serfdom working what is not ours
in due season
we reap what we sow
spraying dandelions and then taking pharmaceuticals
for kidneys-livers-bladders-
passing stones and beverages made with
sugar 
rots our teeth
mercury our brains

We have given our food supply and
organic practices over to corporations who are now
the doorway 
to the apothecaries 
must sell the rights to herbs to be bought and

I remember when the silent scream unfurled inside myself that
the one had become a million
in every far reaches of land
we have sold ourselves and become slaves to our
master brands
bringing 
our talents
our voices
our hearts
our vision
to make others millions and 
trade amongst ourselves
playing cool
kids at 40
competing
ticks of the trade

Trimming
our intrinsic value declining
everyday we sit for chocolate 

All our thoughts and ideas wired into a
handheld device that tracks us to sell us what is already ours
in yoga postures, stretch pants

We forget yogis in loin cloths sat in caves
praying for Universal peace they gave over their egos and served

Our spirits now one with the new god--
money
is energy that propels things
forward we stream
grabbing for that which is temporary and 

Our souls of faith crave
peace that comes only in union with God
who makes the sun to rise
the waves to cycle with Goddess moon

Someday we will
 join the particles of our life to the one now here
and when that essence dissipates into God
will it pray land trees flowers hope children and
God itself back into being or perpetuate
the concrete poison and technology that is our cancer
may we learn to fear the cause more than the disease
and turn our focus back to
health color music dance slow time
dance in the breeze in trees to childrens laughter---and my heart beseeches everyone:

Come together
honor our partners
safegaurd our lineage that is family
forgive the separateness
bring us back to the one realization that can save us
beyond dreaming
beyond  hallucinations
let us be in the world and on the earth
humans reaching out to our grandmothers
slowing down to one breath one look that says
I am here for you and

Yes--young ones--
I am greying despite all my practices,
prayers, travels, medicines, service, love, joy, bliss
willingness to shadow to cry to scream to panic to
not know what to do if
all this beauty love humanity is lost
in a cloud be it fire, peace pipe, or solar flare

The time to break free of our addictons and
escape from behind fences
 to which we have been fleeing
separating people in open spaces

Find freedom
from people who sell you eternal youth and
 your own authenticity 

Walk your truth
in cities
at home
with your aged parents
and true friends
 hold you in times of loss
nurture yourself 
wholey rested
return to the work

You've given your life over to
the work 
is for others
to lift them up
to give hope
where it has left

Pray remembrance
life into death
experience miracles and 

Not to sell people God
but to guide them so that God is
 in them
around them
moving them and
one person 
at a time 

We will
re-fill
be fulfilled.
Reconnect
remember:

 Our human race
healing our Mother
and preserving our children
for generations to come.

I recently sat in a tipi ceremony where the prayer was for a man desiring to become a healer. Its a good prayer. He now works with trees. The greatest nation of teachers there are. I sat and listened to advice and pathways, watched as he filtered it all back to the fire giving thanks to the Creator for allowing him this moment to continue with his transformation. I said little by way of advice, remembering all the words I have listened to over the years about certifications, classes and trainings and I realize, the true path of a healer comes when humility and confidence merge together into one.

If anyone were to ask me where to start, my answer is with faith. With putting your life in the hands of God and proving that you believe there is a force greater than yourself guiding you because it is the height of arrogance to ever think we actually know what is best for anyone. I have had the privilege to sit and witness the prayerful receptivity of people who have cancer, releasing of traumas and accidents in stories and I have also be a witness to people who are so deeply identified with their stories of pain, suffering and wounding that I have chosen to be merely an observer, allowing them their path, however long they wish it to be. For the work of faith is a personal one, it is internal, and I do know I can not take a person anywhere they are afraid to go.

I grew up believing in Jesus and the benign force of a Creator whose miracle worker representative responded to a blind man who approached him saying, "if you just want to make me well, I will be healed" by reaching out and placing his hands on the eyes of this man and saying, "I want to." I have the story of his compassion and kindness emblazoned upon my deep consciousness and also, the willingness of the people approaching him to believe.

I have a belief that is validated and confirmed for me by my experience. I have experienced spontaneous instantaneous miracles when as a 28 year old my pituitary tumor came out my nose from, of all things, a spiritual experience (Shamanic Burial) confirmed by MRI to have healed my gland of its imbalance and the chaos it was wrecking upon my vision and my endocrine system.

And I sink into that space of knowing that healing, true to the bones, cellular altering healing, happens both ways. It is both the responsibility of the giver and receiver to accept that change is possible, not at a mental level where we tell stories and dictate timelines, but in our bones. True willing to be broken-hearted willing to press forward and know beyond all expectation beyond all the things people have to say in fear, beyond all the seeds any doctor has planted that you are now in a new body experiences new things and to accept with a state of wonder that you are not the same soul, spirit, mind or body. to give the outcome over to God...even if it means disappointment...that to me is the greatest act of faith.

To live as though the miracle has happened, to live as though you have been given a new lease on life, to leave off the fear to follow your heart, to allow space for it to be true...that is the healing that is hope...and where there is hope, there is life. Now or in dreams to come.

I know people will read this and have many experiences to share of people who are faithful whose bodies did succumb to illness, I have my own. I have also seen where paradigms have moved people whose metastasized grapefruit sized tumors have become gelatinous and quarter sized to go through with mastectomy and to this I say, "Thank God for modern medicine, thank God for internal guidance systems, thank God for all things."

And perhaps I have been challenged with being too idealistic, or too much of a dreamer, but that is my personal magic. It is what leads me to have the faith to let go of one life and leave for another where uncountable miracles take place and blessings are experienced, but I am not naive enough to say all people should follow this path of not knowing of passing through the void of money, home, friends, health and future in a belief that things can change at any moment in time, not because of anything I say or do, but because I do know there is a force greater than all of us that has set the sun rising and setting so that everyday can be brand new, the stars at night to guide us back to the light no matter how lost we may feel, and dreams to keep us from giving up when all things seem lost.

During some of my travels through conspiracies and wandering for 12 hours a day not knowing where I would sleep, I came to realize the greatest medicine we can ever give to ourselves and to the next generation is to remember things the way we would like them to be, not the way we fear they are. There is a way to balance our worries about our bodies or the future of the planet, there is a way to bring those things of the dark into the light and then bless them for their teachings on balance, on simplicity, on organic, on natural, on Earth medicine, on rejecting GMO, on not ingesting poisons and chemicals, and there is a place of knowing were are miraculous adaptable organisms who have somehow managed to survive.

Will we survive as a human race? Can we return to mental health? Can we remember ourselves whole and complete? Can we remember love, forgiveness, and drop our boundaries that have become walls that block us from human contact and healing our relations? Can we come back to community? Can we leave off technology that gives us the impression we are connected and actually lift our heads to see who is here with us now and to be present in the moment they are? Can we learn that discernment is different than judgement? Can we come back to believing in things of the light like devotion, integrity, care-taking for the old and poor? Can we come back to balance and not forget that we will age, we will grow old, we will die and what will our legacy to the next generation be? Will we teach them to see the sickness and death or will be teach them how to focus on the fire, the light, the potentiality within each of us to instantaneously transform and allow our bodies and relations to be healthy?

Two of the first teachings I learned in the tipi ceremonies were:

You (as in the spirit essence, the unalterable God core in each cell...YOU) are as perfect today as the day you were born.

You can choose to walk out the door and leave all everything behind, walking into the world in a state of wonder...that everything, everything has changed.

And in that moment of hopelessness within me or others, when people ask how...I am naive enough to smile at the most horrendous of things. I am willing to stake my future and life on the belief that there is a force in control of this chaos and surrender my fear to look people in the eyes who don't understand, even when I also do not understand and say GOD.

How will it transform? How will it heal? I don't know, but I surrender everything all belief all thoughts all actions over to this one intelligence and imagine miracles are real, miracles are possible.

The retreat I am organizing right now is basesd on journals I have been writing since the age of 7. Journals that have moved from mere observations into how I have been taught to transform my fears and worries (and all words and thoughts are prayers) into prayers of healing, manifesting. That if we can not change anything else, if all seems lost, how can we turn our thoughts because in the end, it is the way we feel about our life, our experiences and others that will heal everything else...one love breath word at a time.

And I turn from shadow work to light work, that I can choose to break through now and behave as one who has all my prayers answered, meaning one who is happy, healthy and abundant. I ask, what does Zonia who is happy, healthy and abundant do? She grabs hold of people now, she openly loves, dances, and believes. She takes care of her grandmother and smiles about it. She does her yoga, tells God thank you when all her housing has fallen away and packs her car up for the road, not because of what has been lost, but because of what she is looking forward to enjoying. There have been enough experiences now that I know something beautiful is coming. That is I can bypass regrets I can right now, today, in this moment act as one who is blessed.

Because no matter what is happening, I do know I am blessed because I am here. Somehow despite my father stepping on a landmine in Vietnam, somehow despite my ancestors being surrounded by genocides, crossing oceans, somehow the greatest miracle of all has happened today...I am here. The sun is shining. The birds are singing. And I take the time today, to thank God for all the reasons I have to be grateful.

Thank you to each and everyone of you for sharing this life with me and for believing in and trusting the love between us no matter how much time or space may pass between us...I bless you. I bless our relation. I bless our lives and pray for all of us a bright and happy future filled with miracles that are working for you.

Over the past year there have been so many gifts of travel and experience for which I am grateful...even the one that felt like a walk through shadowlands has proven to be a gift of balance and remembrance.  A remembrance for whom it is I am praying when I chant that "ALL BEINGS be freed of suffering and the causes of suffering."  Lest that become a rote idea that is based on my imaginings, I drove into San Francisco riding the bliss train on Thursday night, nature wanderer naively thinking that the light protects us when we ignore our guidance system....the one that told me, i don't know much about the city...but this does not look like a place I should park my car with everything I own.  

Doesn't matter why i did it, in some ways I would like to think it was my observer mind telling me that what I would experience in the Timberline District was a lesson in compassion, in living what I describe as the choice of happiness.  Over and over I say this while I am sitting near oceans, jumping in rivers, and climbing mountains, and how does my little medicine heart fare when I have to stare into the fire of poverty, concrete, and technology as God.

My voice told me to take my little cosmetic bag that has travelled with me from coast to coast, across oceans, around the globe but still some grounded place inside held me still.  I glaced carward several times and then set out on a walk my bright smile and open face attracting attention from the homeless, the downtrodden, I tried to take a cue from the stone faced numb walkers who pass me and the journey along the middle line between the affluent and the street people begins with $5 and a man who will forget my face in 5 hours and come back up to me with the same story line as my friend Mag bleeds and brushes glass from my seat cursing the system for perpetuating this animalistic need to smash the windows of good people...but that is a whole journey from now.

We turn the corner...I can not look away.  Not from the people pretending not to notice nor from the people who beg...some for money, others for drugs and alchohol and still some for the look of humanity that tells them they are still alive...so says our night guide to the diner who walks shoulder to shoulder with me and philosophizes with me about CS Lewis and the Shadowlands.

I hear people snicker about the smel and turn to see the source...i remember my days of wandering homefree...by choice, nothing but my backpack and how the moment I hit the city I was stricken by the impossible task of finding somewhere to pee.  There isn't one for the outcasts...what choice do they have when there is no tree to duck behind, no dirt to dig a hole...I realize that my past has shown me things only experience can teach.

I watch as shoppers exit stores many bags in hand and I think of India and Mexico...seeing our country has become no different as the separation between those who have and those who do not widens.  I think...you really have to "own it" to live here and indulge in excess of need.  I have been on shopping sprees as of late...and what have I given and how many earlobes do I have...in that moment, I imagine I am in sync with my vehicle, I think about how the disparity must boil up inside and for a moment, I drop into a still place that understands why some lash out...is this the moment my window is smashed..perhaps.  but there are more streets to travel, GPS on the fritz, blisters oozing...my barefeet now bound in city boots.

I pass by those curled in balls sleeping on sidewalks and I remember my night in the Cierras of Mexico at a Huichotle village -3 I curl in a ball wrapped in my only shawl and breathe deep yogic breaths to raise my heat before being called to the fires outside and I remember the gratitude I feel as the first ray of sunshine hits my face...i look around...there is no fire here and when does the sun rise above the shadows of the buildings?  

i tell Mag to put the GPS away and talk to people who point us in the right direction...two blocks.  Is it a mistake that i will then make it out of the city at 3 am with no phone, no GPS just prayer and instinct two turns to the ramp?

We round the corners, meet my philosopher, eat at a diner and then via uber, a cyber phenomenon that drops cars at your doorstep, we arrive at my car...busted window, phone stolen, computer gone...i won't realize until i am driving that no...I did not put my jewelry bag in the back...it is gone.  I feel my spine relax down, all my energy sinks into my pelvis...gone...it is the surrender of what is...to the temporary...emotions of all kinds circle us in that moment of frantic realization Mag's momma bear protective instinct is to rage at the city, society, mental disease.  She is right.  We have become passive and blind and what can we do to instigate real change?  She challenges me to rise up inside, to react, to be upset...but i can't.

I surrender.  It is the last of my things since I began my shamanic journey during saturn return 12 years ago.  Since then I have lost husbands, homes, cars, friends, careers, parents have survived cancers, I have travelled the world and in that moment my attention drops to my medicine bowl I fill after walks in the woods or at oceanside.  It is filled with eucalyptus buttons, mugwart balls, lilacs, cedar, big sur jade and a himalayan crystal.

Mag looks at me and challenges me to burst out of my shock telling me in two days it will hit me...which it does...the shattered window a metaphor for the cracking of my heart.  But for now, I look at the bowl...untouched...carefully avoided...not at all overturned, I look up teary eyed at Mag and tell her...but Mag...we have so much.

She shakes her head knowing that everything I own fits in this car...that she too has lived this way...Mag i shake my head yes knowing what I have  experienced can never be taken from me, the people who have gifted things to me are imprinted upon me and that is what strikes upon me later as I realize it is all gone in the physical. And yet I feel deeply into the truth that I have so much...that I am grateful for all they have left me. 

All of my masage and medicine things are in the back of the car...my prayer cards scattered and only 4 things gone.  it feels like a miracle and even I know that in the scheme of life everything we lose comes back around in some form or another...and in fact this very morning a love filled friend will quietly hand me a small container with a few beautiful things to refill the empty...just before class I will cry again.  Tears of gratitude and I will feel so much love.

The same tears I cried as I crossed over the bridge and saw Donner Lake to my right.   I give thanks that I have somewhere beautiful to retreat to, that I have love and friendships, that I have a choice, a clear healthy mind that has chosen prayer, joy and health and that I always no matter what, have a home to retreat to.

And as I drive off from the city, I hit the freeway and watch as the sun rises purple and blue over the marshes and water birds skim the cattails.  i watch as the sun rises and I finally cry the sad tears.  I cry for endings, I cry for suffering, I cry for rage and war and then I cry until i break through to laughing and my heart squeezes and I cry for the great loves of my life who were once animated at my side and are now memories and still images on computer screens.  I cry for our temporary existence and the rapidity with which the first thrid of my life has passed and for the second time my spine relaxes and all evidence of ego, strength, and denial melt into the tender place of humility, feeling and acknowledgement.

That today as i rose from bed, the pines green in the light, I remember the many lives there are to live and dedicate my morning practice to those who know only one way and do not see the way out.  I pray and imagine that somehow the soapstone from Mokulumne Hill, the amber, the indian silver, the Huichotle beads are connecting someone separated from the Mother to the energy of earth, to color, to the love that gave them to me.

And i remember the mala given to me by an Indian guru that was passed from his teacher and his teacher and his for generations and i remember that those who walk with me are in my blood and i come back to my medicine...I come back to my heart...and though in the middle of emotional turmoil I put down my cedar bag to let go into the bliss journey of self adventure and grand opportunity shining joy...i pick back up my bag and give my attention back to  the cedar medicine that says, love is the key.  Our heart cords most important.  And I will read from my ex that authentic love is the walk through the shadows and i will come back home to myself and the ordinary magic of nothing but aspen leaves fluttering in the wind, birds awakening at dawn, slow walks by lake and in forests with friends walking dogs, and I will remember what I have known for years...what happens when we stop moving travelling and journey far from home...is more still...it is the unfolding cycles and days...it is the watching of children over years...the friends who knew us when...

And I come back to just me and the realizations, the strange appropriateness of lessons, and my shadows that when faced still have moonlight and stars, to feel me back to place in my heart that is home.

This is the Eighth Sign:  "You will see many youth, who wear their hair long like my people, come and join the tribal nations, to learn their ways and wisdom...."


The Hopi spoke of a time, which is now, that we would see the forces of light procreating and expanding their consciousness to all beings.  In this, I have been lucky enough these last two weeks to make friends with both an 8 year old and a 9 year old.

The amount of widom they have been transmuting to me as we run through golden fields and sit at banks of rivers eating wild mint has been the healing my heart has been waiting for over the years I have departed from public high school.

What I have experienced in their presence is the keen ability to walk between worlds without vascilating.  To be in their presence is to feel the deep connection they have, not only to the spirit world, but also the Earth.  They are both Earth Child and Star Child living with parents and surrounded by people who are both prayerful and soulfully living in harmony with Earth.

Yesterday, I arrived on the land of friends to have a 9 year old approach me in absolute confidence.

"I need your help."  
"Okay...what is it you need help with?"
" I am preparing a ceremony and I have been told to gather cattails."

It was so matter of fact that I had no doubt as to the truth of both her claims:  She was is fact being guided by outside forces and surely, they were teaching her how to pray with the Earth, not only for herself, but for all people.  Of course, I put on my jacket and hat to walk over the three hills that led to the marsh where the cattails grew.  I saw her deliberately pick out the cattails and give thanks for their life.  As the sun began to fade for the day she returned and disappeared into the trees on her property.

Moments later she reappeared, sneaking me into the trees and away from the group in which I was gathered...we emerged in the midst of stripped cattails, fluffy like dandelion seeds, piled high into the sky like a snowy mountain.  Breathless for a moment, I felt wonder enter into my being and fill my head with possibilities...and light spread across my face in a smile.

When I looked at the bottom of the billowy hill, I saw a young boy like a wizard, covered in cattails, laughing and smiling joyously as he motioned with his hands to the sky, from his heart to the hill, and finally from the earth up his legs and again to the sky.  I looked at my new friend, shiny eyed and smiling back at me, isn't it beautiful? she asked. 

I quietly whispered...yes...yes...and yes.

More of these moments have been gifted to me as I let go of the past and sink into the dreams and visions of my friend the 8 year old.  She grabs my hand and asks me...do you want to race to the mailbox?  Yeah!  And away we run.  Returning she points to a fence that leads to a pasture...come with me, she invites.  I look down at my sari Haloween costume complete with petticoat...awww...I will get stuck on the barbed wire.

She looks at me.  Grabs me with both hands.  Stares me in the eyes and says with all her heart.  I've got you...no matter what...I am here for you.  And I believe her...so that seconds later I am stepping through an 8 inch gap with yards of material and indeed she did have me.  She brushes aside blackberry bushes and then smiles at me as we see the last rays of the sun peeping over tree tops and spilling like gold onto the yellow cow pasture.  Isn't it beautiful, she asks me.  Yes.  I answer again.  Yes. Yes.  Let's run she says as she extends her palm to touch mine and away we run to investigate fairy houses and mint patches...to discover skulls and leap over cow patties until joy is running me.

She teaches me to swing under the big walnut tree and we laugh taking turns and inviting the 10 year old standing by to try.  All three of us...present in this moment.  Still in our gratitude.  And the golden light of humanity at peace with each other, the Earth, and taking the time for these sacred simple moments wherein the Creator makes self known beams through the faces of these Rainbow, Crystal, now peaceable Indigo.

And I see the rainbow of possibilities this new generation extend in their smiles, in the light issuing from their eyes...I see the effect of being soulfully raised in healthy human bodies.  I see their open hearts, their natural connections, and feel the vibration of harmony as they show me what an integrated 8 octave being truly is.  

They show me what it is to be whole and holy.  They show me what it is to let go of stories and identities.  They show me what it is to be one with all life.  It is pure...like the youth who hold my hands and pray earth...it is humble.  And I give thanks for my new little teachers and their wisdom that is deeper than my grandmothers...because it is stretching forward into the dream of perfect and perfectability that lie inherent in each one of us...in each beautiful moment...each day...each gift of breath...may we all praise Jah with gratitude of heart and the stillness of divine presence will fill us...

I sit in the midst of the cedar trees, realizing as I do that it is an answer to prayers uttered in El Paso, Texas one month ago. "Please Creator, let me be with my greatest love in the cedar trees." In my heart, medicine ways and cedar trees are one in the same. I collect the leaves wherever I am, a little bag that carries my heartbeat filled with cedar leaves from Washington, Lake Tahoe, Haleakela, Prescott, India, and Ruidoso. To carry the cedar, is to carry all of the people and places in my heart from the many places I visit. To find the cedar tree wherever I stand, is to reaffirm that no matter where or for what we stand we are still a human being with our two feet upon the Mother Earth.

It is with profound reverence for the Mother that medicine ways preserve our connection to the elements of land, water, breath, and fire opening our hearts and removing the blocks of story and experience holding us back from entering into our joy in divine presence.

To give ourselves over to ceremony then, we are giving ourselves over in service to the Mother to accomplish her will that we live in peace and right relation, not only with ourselves and each other but with all beings seen and unseen.

To allow ourselves to be moved bodily in the direction of our greatest healings and face the pains in real life that are in need of healing so we can move forward into the future without the wounds of the past.

Over the years, I have come to realize that the situation and relationships that arise out of this soul commitment and willingness are often times beyond my wildest imaginings for what a human can and should endure, at least according to modern day paradigms of isolation, cutting cords, and exiling the past into some distant and irreconcilable story.

For me, my idealism has led me to believe in web of heart cords and forever love that encircles and protects the planet, giving rise to the Goddess as Mother and allowing her to compassionately transform all beings through love and forgiveness.

When people speak of the heart and the cords which bind us to the past, I think upon and consider that if the cords which bind me to the totality of my experience are the web of life that activates the healing potential of all beings then, surely I have the responsibility to bring to light the lessons I have learned in gratitude for the ways they have shaped me in the world I live, not only for myself but for all of existence and in service healing Universal Consciousness, especially in regard to relationship.

All of my ex's are my best friends. I have come to see them as a bridge to other facets of myself and in order to love myself whole, I have determined to make peace with my past selves as represented by those I have loved the most. To bless their life, is to bless my own. To open my heart cord to the healing of their lives and the blessing of their new loves, is to allow the prayers they say for me to stream towards me...for they have been, not only my best friends, but also my teachers.


When I began down these medicine ways, I sat up in tipi with a group of people who had been sitting and praying together for over 20 years. During that time, many lives had changed, babies born and tragedy endured and still, they sat together, ex lovers, wives, and friends...remembering that beyond the circumstance there is truth and beyond truth there is love...and they all continued on their path...for the children.


I remember the 4 song sets of some...that took me on a journey through the pain, anger, to the joy and finally into peace. Through the song of their life, I have come to realize that the healing of all relations begins within...where we hold, heal and forgive love for asking us to continue to rise up in courage...for asking us to grow...for asking us to choose God and his will, even when the situation seems impossible...it is...otherwise we would not be asked to live our prayers...another way of saying walk the talk.


Show up for yourself, show up for God...show up for each other and keep choosing life...keep dreaming love...and let that vibration flow with the ringing of the cedars.

Love is the most humbling force I have ever experienced in my life.

Having donned many costumes, earned a degree, been a professional, and traveled...I can honestly say that the most important thing I have ever done is love somebody.

I am not a parent yet, but I have had hundreds of kids pass through my life who didn't care if I was cool, who didn't call me Momma because of my clothes but because of the way I held them when they cried.

I was just a kid when I started teaching but I, like most of the teens, I spent time with, was an old soul.  I saw their sufferings and battles through high school and remembered my own daily with compassion and all my heart.

I grew up in an upper middle class family in Pleasanton, CA.  My freshman year of high school, my maternal grandmother was diagnosed with breast cancer, she was 63.  It changed the course of my whole life, not just because at 14 it was to be the first time I came face to face with death, but for the choices my parents made when the news was heard.

At the time my father was a Chevron executive working in the University as a trainer.  When the news dropped down, everything became inconsequential.  My father gave notice at work, the company refused to accept it and instead put him in a factory job in El Paso where he laughed at himself for his blue uniform embroidered with his name.  A blast from the past, my father began his career at Chevron washing oil barrels at 18.  Suddenly a lifetime later, not even for his own mother, he was there again and the whole family relocated.

For the first two months it was only my mother and I.  Having been spoiled beyond imagining, I rebelled at this very tender moment.  I love my mother for never losing focus.  Having the choice between diverting her attention from her mother who lay dying and her daughter who in an effort to get attention dove head first into cocaine, my mother sat by her mother's bedside and let me cry my own way out.

It is a moment in my life that I know I can not regret, because for every time I came home from school scowling and stomping around while my grandfather gingerly helped my grandmother inch her way from the car to the house, I now have learned that it isn't all about me.  But if I could change that time, I would wish for more time feeding her.  I would wish for the wisdom to stop everything I was doing and just sit in the energy of her love as her eyes watched me cross the room.  The way I did when I flew across the ocean from my blissed out post tipi hillside in Maui to sit with this grandfather, who, when he saw me, gingerly placed his hand upon my face, a twinkle in his eye and a smile in his voice..."My, Zonia."

I think perhaps on the road to love and service, there are times when  a person starts to feel that they aren't feeding their own soul, that somehow they should be cooler or having more fun...at least that is what I was feeling when I got here almost two months ago.  I just wanted to be alone.  A sure sign...that I probably needed it.


I put myself on time out to feel everything I was feeling and in the course remember everything there was to remember so I could re-value the journey it took for me to get to where I am.


The journeys I have taken in my life have helped me to arrive at best one of all...that it is worth giving everything for love, even if I am uncomfortable, tired, overwhelmed..its the only thing that really matters.

I wish I could say I remembered all of this before my grandmother passed away, but I didn't.  I fed her once...she cried.  I didn't understand then what deep emotion went into the reversal of roles, but I do now.  

My destructive behavior continued through high school, crossing the border into Juarez, alcohol poisoning, and concussions were a mainstay that crescendoed with a night out partying...two hits of acid and a lot of cocaine.  I died that night and I had a vision.

I can still remember the feeling of being on a gurney rolled down a hospital corridor clink clinking along the cracks on the floor.  I could hear my friends drift into the distance and the sobbing of my parents from an imagined waiting room.  When the sound of doors opening  hit me I was engulfed in white light that overtook me not with love but with Universal sorrow of the deepest kind.   It was an understanding that what I do affects everything and everyone around me.  That I had a choice to be a force for healing and accept divine guidance, or continue to add to the pain of the world and live in self-imposed separation and isolation.  

I awoke to hands beating me on my chest and a knowing that my life was a gift.  I was never the same.

My father picked up and moved us to Arizona.  I met a holistic healer began working at his clinic where he practiced naturopathic medicine, acupuncture, chiropractic, nutrition and, most importantly, yoga.

I became a vegan and changed my body chemistry back to its natural state.  I immersed myself in the faith of my youth and became a missionary.  Graduated high school became a teacher at 20 and held those kids through drug abuse, alcoholism, cutting, gang bangs, divorces, beatings, heartbreak, suicides, arrests, pregnancies and low self-esteem.  I held them and I held myself.  I let go of all my ego because truly I had been one of them and the only thing that saved me was the love of my parents, both my physical ones and my spiritual ones.  I thank them for their vision of me happy and whole and the love they were willing to give me to get me there.

 I am grateful that I get the time to remember.  Mostly, though, at the end of the journey that takes days, weeks, sometimes months to recap...what I remember is not just the bliss but also the fierce love that doesn't give up.  It doesn't give up on me...it doesn't give up on anyone.  It just begs us to return to it, to live it, to share it, to be the hands, eyes, words that will give comfort to ones praying for it to come.  Not because they are less enlightened or evolved but...damn...shit happens...and some of it hurts so much it will be the force that helps us to grow for the rest of our lives.

We will hit the wall, feel it again, be humbled, face our choice to be happy anyways and use it like a slingshot to grow just that little bit more....and when we hit the wall...may there forever be people in our lives that believe in us...that know us to be strong, good, true....who will free us from the net of our own past and help us to step forward...changing the net to wings....and take flight again  into the soul bursting freedom that...love is.

Thank God I am not a teenager anymore.

But I remember the fight against the world, rail against the system, and, for God's sake, be anything but what my parent's want me to be attitude.  It's how we get to this...being.

IN-dividualized.  Not able to be divided.

I was a high-school teacher for 12 years from the ages of 20-32.

I always liked the rebels...who can forget Zar with his mohawk and leather jacket sitting in the bottom shelf of the bookcase trying to get a rise out of me...It looked uncomfortable...but what did I care...He starred me down.  I smiled a half smile...comfy? Yea.  Ok.

I walked away and kept teaching while silently laughing to myself, catching out of the corner of my eye him sliding around trying to really be comfortable with his neck jarring his head towards his chest and insisting on answering questions so everyone would look his way...

It seemed cool to begin with...he was an individual and unique...and also too damn smart to stay stuffed in the box for more than 5 minutes.  Shagrinned he went back to his desk. I looked at him...didn't say a word...it wasn't that comfortable he mumbled.  I smiled. Better?  Yeah.  He looked up and found no measure of judgement , he sat up and the gleam that got him to the shelf in the first place came back.  We smiled together.  He was glad he had at least tried.  

I wasn't that much older than him...and Lord knows I had more phases in high school and changed them faster than Clark Kent in a phone booth.  I went from skater...I hit pavement and decided that wasn't for me. Cowgirl full get-up with ropers, decided I hated the way the jeans rode up when I sat down.  Grunge...it was easy, shirts were huge...then I got a crush and realized the Eddie Vedder look did nothing for me.  Went vampy with low cut shirts and short mini's...couldn't do all my crazy monkey antics without tearing the hose...went Mod...softer, with clunky shoes...stayed that way until I realized I loved Led Zepplin and commiserated with Janis.  Started beading and wearing bell bottoms...same shoes...Got my first tatoos out of high school started wearing overalls by day and sexy silk dresses by night.  Fell in love with swing dancing, flipped and everything with the high heel mary janes and retro dresses.  Went to San Francisco started salsa dancing.  Moved to Tahoe, became a ski bunny and wore high heel boots in the ice that weren't functional...hit pavement.  Moved to the foothills became a writer, ran in the rain like Pochahantas.   Moved to Maui...wore florescents and ditched my bra...hell ran naked on the beach at sunrise to drums.  Became a sweat lodge momma and reconnected with my great great grandmothers.  Wore moccasin boots...fell in love with country dresses and braids just to make it back at 38 citified slightly angsty teen loves tatoos, black, and red nail polish...

And I...I realize that it's all me and every person I meet is a facet of those adventures in self-hood.

Now it's just a matter of choice...what other persona could I try on...in the end the center stays the same.  It's all just costumes...I love costumes.

I think about Zar with his mohawk desire to fight the system and the day he sat in the shelf...did that persona become a box...did it get uncomfortable...has he changed or in that moment of extreme selfness...did he hit the target first try and that get up has defined his entire life?  He would be 28 today.

As much as I want not to be my parents...I see my mother smile and strike up conversations with every stranger in her radius joy flashing...oh...that's me.  I watch my dad outside under a tree with a content smile on his face...yup that's me...and dressing up for an Opera...that's me...as much as barefoot in jeans hands in the dirt is.

And I realize...being individualized is being a part of the whole.  Being whole is having many individual parts of ourselves...all of which we have allowed to flourish and love...and as I collect myself together from the ancient past to my own past, I again realize that there are still two  more of my life times to go and rather than getting boxed into one part of myself...I'll take them all and everyone who represents some part of me...I honor the medicine of that part of me is easy to take and like and that part I'll deny...instead I'll take them as my friends and relatives...befriending every part of myself...and being grateful for my human family...because it is all so fun and we are all in this becoming unique unable to be divided from Source core energy journey....together.

Thanks for being you.