tangents, star wars and silver linings

I was driving up Highland Avenue this evening on my way home to Hollywood where my mom lives when I see Han Solo, Darth Vader and Obi-Won Kenobi walking down the street, the later two with capes flowing in the wind, light sabers on hand. It made me smile, such is street life in Hollywood, colorful, strange and unexpected.

I love Star Wars and the universal themes that stitch the story together. I love the idea of "the force" and how there is a need to have balance between the archetypal opposing forces, light vs. dark, good vs. evil, man vs. machine, etc. Somehow, there is always a balance. And when things are out of balance, disaster strikes until balance between the two can return.

Balance was something I did not have a good handle on today as I wobbled in my some balancing yoga postures. I wasn't surprised, my body usually empathizes with my emotional state. And today, I was feeling wobbly internally too. So much has happened lately. So many changes and challenges.

There have been a few clouds hanging over my head these last few weeks. Some have been dense and foreboding.

Today, the sky has been dotted by clouds. But with each cloud, there is a silver lining.

I feel the sting of harsh words from a close family member. Through the hurt, though, I see more closely the things that are bothering me.

I feel alienated that many I lean to do not understand me, that the way I am dealing with things is different from their value systems. Then I get an email from Saras, a new acquaintance who just read this blog and understands where I am coming from, offering soothing "balm" and a friendly ear. I also receive a beautiful and understanding letter from my wise little sister.

I feel the heaviness of heart and whirl of emotions. From all sides, I've been feeling an assault. My dog dies. My mom challenges me. My open heart bleeds profusely (ok, I exaggerate, but it does trickle so). Then, just as I feel I'm hitting a low, Denise Hughes, a beautiful devi from the Universal Shivite Fellowship retreat that I've been attending, waves me down from my car quite out of nowhere to tell me that the chaos in the world (I'm amazed that she had sensed it, I think I seemed calm throughout the retreat) is also a part of God Consciousness too (our topic for today). It made me cry to hear it!

I feel the loss of a love, but am comforted by a friend whom I know will love me forever.

Its not an easy world. Things are not always as I wish they would be. Each up has a down. There is good, there is bad. But thank goodness that there is a balance in the force, even when we think there is none, its there, in the sidelines, waiting to have its impact. And while things aren't exactly even right now, I know that they are trying to be. Sunlight peeks behind each dark cloud. Where there is darkness, there is also this all pervasive light.

heart ache

Spent the early morning on the boardwalk, watching the sky light up on Bellingham, Washington. There, I read a love letter—I want to say an old one, but it was dated only this past July--and a poem, the love from both I wanted to offer up to the sea, hoping that nature would know better how to dispense it.

What I realized is that I don’t have the power to take back what I’d freely given. That love, as much as I’d like to control it, is unwieldy; it doesn’t work like that.

I am perturbed by my own heart, which refuses to stop loving even now when it hurts. All my usual defense mechanisms appear broken. It has been patient and understanding. It has continued to give. It stays, despite it all, open.

So, instead, looking out onto the Puget Sound, I prayed. I prayed to the Sound, to her healing waters, I prayed to God to pacify the hurt and sadness that I can’t help but feel, to flush out the bad feelings and refresh the good ones.

My former beloved turned friend (can change be that swift, really?) was there, holding me as I poured out my hurt feelings, emptying that--for a change--into the sea.

tough love & new discoveries

I watch the sun rise above the hills overlooking Seattle this morning, its rays casting a light onto the waking city, I can’t help but feel that indescribable essence of the dawning of a new day.

I leave Seattle today a different person from when I arrived two weeks ago. I’d come for love, a new one, seemingly brimming with great possibility. I was an explorer, ready to dive into a new adventure, and delve into the new undiscovered continents of my growing heart.

Without going into details, things changed in my absence. Our boy meets girl miracle of a love story takes a twist when boy meets another girl. The plot thickens. The heart coagulates.

And since then, I have been hard at work, trying to keep this rusty tin can of a heart open, to keep love flowing, to keep living in the light of love—which has been one of the true gifts of the connection between said boy and myself.

But the last two weeks has been fraught with struggle, I have been conflicted between my fears, my need for self-preservation, and my commitment to love completely and without condition.

Yet no experience is lost. Love, like water, is constant. It gets channeled into different pools or simply changes form. This has been the hardest thing to get my head wrapped around. That we live in a world of change is easy enough to understand. To accept it is another story altogether.

And while its been tough, I know that I’ve accomplished what I’d set out to do—albeit the ways in which I had hoped to do so and the end results have greatly strayed from my original intention. Challenges are opportunities also.

All this has given me the chance to explore the vastness of my own heart, it has tested my patience and understanding, it has appealed to my need to be compassionate to others and most especially to myself.

Though, I’ve been very sad and very hurt, though I’ve cried a lot, I’ve not been angry—maybe I will be one day, but so far I haven’t felt it. Not real anger anyway. And the absence of it confirms something for me, that when we fill our life with love and other higher frequency emotions, there’s less room for more inferior feelings.

And so what I have discovered is this: that within those deep recesses of my heart (our hearts!) is space and within that space there is more than chunks of land on which we accidentally get moored. Instead, there are whole planets, and planet systems, stars, and star clusters, galaxies glowing brightly, some existing on its last dying embers, and some brilliantly being born into existence. Like the universe, the heart is expanding, continuously growing beyond its limits—if you let it. I will it so, My heart center, the seat of my soul, my connection to the divine, is full of creative light, limitless, and infinite.