Follow Your Knows...

What do you make of this? The whole thing began last summer. A vacant-ish lot in the neighborhood has become a yard of iniquity with teenagers getting high, whooping and hollering, coughing and spitting, shouting into their cell phones, playing obnoxious tunes on their hand-held security blankets and yelling fluently in Obsenities, their native tongue.

As I write and work from home, I remind myself to view this daily interruption as my “spiritual practice,” meaning I try to convince myself that I don’t need them to be different for me to be at peace.

I had another opportunity to hone my mad Zen skills while passing through the City of Trees, otherwise known as Boise. Driving through the desert in summer from Park City, Utah, I wanted an air-conditioned break. A movie was just the ticket and the elegant Egyptian Theater was hosting a cool matinee. Walking in the grand foyer and even more glorious auditorium, the place was entirely mine. Empty, I had the choice of any seat. Aah, the darkened theater, the smell of freshly popped corn, the dramatic raising of the curtain provided just what I was looking for.

Until they came in.

A group of unruly teenagers. Yep, a gaggle of hypernoids, whispering in loud voices, roamed the aisles in search of seats. Can you guess? With every seat in the theater unoccupied save two, this murder of crows decided to sit directly behind me. They squawked and laughed and pecked the back of my seat. When I turned around and asked them to be quiet, one girl jumped up and came back a few minutes later with more teenage spawn. Their obnoxious behavior increased.

I could think of only three options as I sat fuming, engaged in a battle of wills, while the movie I came to see played on without me. One, I could move, but I was here first, so why should I have to find a different seat?

Two, I could snitch to the management, but if the person in charge was the pimply faced boy who took my money and serviced the concession stand, then he was not going to be of any assistance, and besides, tattling grates my sensibilities. Three, I could get up and sit right behind them and kick their seats and make rude and loud comments, but that fantasy rated zero on the satisfaction scale.

I wanted to see the movie more than stay connected to that juvenile scene, so I went with option number one and moved. The new location was a vast improvement. I didn’t realize I’d been sitting in a funky acoustical pocket and the balcony railing had been partially blocking my view until I had this new seat. The movie reabsorbed my attention and the puerile dysfunction faded from memory.

Until Half Moon Bay.…

With the sun barely up, I took a walk on the crescent shaped beach, enjoying the crash of waves and the expanse before me. Desiring to write, I chose a picnic table overlooking the bluff, a peaceful office in nature. A few sentences in, I heard them.

You have got to be freakin’ kidding me.

I wasn’t going to look. Head down, pen to paper, I continued to write. I whispered to myself, “Spiritual practice, spiritual practice.” But there were too many of them. I glanced up and to my dismay, a troop of mustachioed monkeys and lip glossed beavers were slamming car doors, beeping their alarms off and on, yelling into their cell phones, lighting up cigarettes, playing cacophonous ring tones and swearing their customary greetings to one another.

What the…? It was a Friday morning, shouldn’t they be in school? Out of the entire empty beach, why did they have to descend upon the adjoining picnic table and congregate next to me? I turned to my faithful companion and said, “This is too much to be a coincidence. This makes three States now — next door in Oregon, a movie theater in Idaho, and a beach in California. Wherever we go, there they are. What’s going on?”

Just as I asked that, the wind shifted. Words cannot describe the putrid odor that gutted my nostrils and boxed my gag reflex. I could not grab my writing utensils and move quickly enough. While in flight, we saw the offending culprit, a bloated sea lion baking in the morning sun.

Prior to the nasal felony, I was in a defensive mental posture. Why should we have to move to gain our peace? We were here first, why do I always have to give in? Why should a lounge of lizards be able to have the run of the place, huh?

The scent of decaying flesh, wafting on the generous air, served as an excellent motivator. I didn’t think twice about moving when the vomitous smell invaded our space. There was no pride or stubbornness, no arrogance or contest, just a speedy relocation.

Catching my breath, I asked Companion what was being reflected back to us with all the teenage energy? What images/symbols were popping up in our immediate vicinity, waiting to be interpreted? Something was definitely trying to get our attention.

I know you know what happened next. Yes, I called Chakra Girl. She’s one of my Go-To, energy-interpreting friends. I needed her help reading the smelly, obnoxious energy field. What was the message?

She had no difficulty piecing our puzzle together. “Teenagers, groups of them. Hmmm, represents 3rd chakra fire energy. Rebellion, power, trying to figure out where they fit into the world, but still needing the safety of home and their own private room for retreat. Experimentation, expansion, taking over a space with their energy (noise, laughter, smoking, drugs, music, cell phones, text messaging, posturing, attitude, etc.).

“With the sudden onslaught of odor, you are being encouraged to step fully into your power, to MOVE to a better place. Your stubbornness is keeping you stuck. What you’ve known, what’s worked before, all that familiar stuff will decay and rot if you ignore the energetic message and refuse to move forward, clinging to the old way. You may not know what the new looks like yet, but apparently you’re about to find out.”

She went on to say that I was engaged in a bit of teenage energy myself, which was being reflected back to me. I was trying to figure out where I fit into the world and it was time to quit clinging to the past and open my heart.

Faithful companion wisely noted that when uncomfortable or toxic energy takes over a space, we waffle in our decisions, unsure if we should move, yet when an icky smell comes a knocking, we know exactly what to do. If we accidentally tasted something nasty, we wouldn’t hesitate to spit it out. Why is it then, if we are suddenly exposed to a blast of energy that is counter-productive, we act inconvenienced in the midst of being directed to a better place? Why do we obey our bodily senses immediately, yet hesitate to listen to our intuitive senses?

I shouldn’t have to – I don’t want to – sometimes we get stuck in old patterns and refuse to accept the new and improved situation that reading the reflected energy would gift us. The kids have their text messaging, but we have our energetic messaging if we’d just monitor our guidance system and stay as connected to Spirit as they do their phones.

Beep, gotta go, incoming message.

Watching the Garden Grow

Ni hao. That's Chinese for hello in honor the of the Chinese New Year. Knowing I’m a cheerful member of the joy luck coincidence club, Happy Friend from last week’s installment sent me a link to a website about synchronicity. Did you know there are “two symptoms of enlightenment?”

Fascinated with the energy body and the chakra system, I’m always on the lookout for symptoms that could portend a major domo insight. So, what’s the word for a hypochondriac in the spiritual realm? I’m keenly interested in discovering any indications that a transformation is taking place within me toward a higher level of consciousness.

Well, the first symptom is that “you stop worrying.” The fine print states that people and events no longer bother you. Drats! I’m certainly not afflicted with that one yet. The second symptom of enlightenment is that you begin to notice an increase in the number of coincidences that are lining up around you. And of course, the more you notice them, the more you get.

Rumor has it that synchronicities can escalate to the point where we begin to experience the miraculous. What is a miracle anyway? How about an absence of time between a desire and its fulfillment?

I may not suffer from the first warning sign of enlightenment (no worries), but I’m definitely experiencing the indicator behind door number two, the following examples are lifted straight from this week.

Riveted by the idea of coincidences and miracles, check out this line from “Frida a novel” by Barbara Mujica. “A brightly colored miniature parasol caught Frida’s eye, and Alex bought it for her. ‘It’s for a doll,’ he told her, ‘and since you’re a little doll, I’ll buy it for you!’”

I’d just read this passage when my partner in the Frida-capades, Frida Rosarita, returned home from a whirlwind trip to Hangzhou, China. She’s quite the poetic photographer, as you can see, and look what she brought me - a charming parasol! When I told a friend how charming the blue and white parasol was she asked if it was a drink umbrella. Huh? Never mind, the point is there was no time between the desire inspired by the novel and the manifestation.

This one is even harder to ignore. Thursday, I went to bread night at the Axe & Fiddle with Chakra Girl. While enjoying the community gathering in Cottage Grove, a display of ceramics caught my eye. In that moment, I imagined how fun it would be to incorporate clay into my work, but then I realized I would need a kiln. I let the thought go, content with the feeling it evoked.

That was Thursday evening. A day an a half later, I received an email asking if I had any need for a “starter kiln.” What?! By Sunday it was delivered and positioned in my basement, including a professional grade extension cord. My heart does a little jig every time I see it.

As if that wasn’t enough for one week, after last Wednesday’s inspiration to “get me a new song,” the receptacle for the paper shredder needed emptying. As the cross-cut confetti spilled into the recycling, three random single words from oodles of paperwork survived the decimation. Ready? “Your. New. Story.” Ooooh, this makes me so happy.

Which was a change in mood from my pity party. I may not be the perfect hostess when it comes to dinner, just ask our latest guests (they didn’t like our salad dressing, we served the wrong wine, they had to ask for water and their coats at the end of the evening. Oops), but I excel at throwing lavish pity parties for myself. I never forget a detail, I attend to my every complaint and always serve the right whine.

What was the occasion for my latest episode? Oh, the usual victimization of unfairness. If everything is energy and if I don’t like the results, that is, the boomerang effect from my personal energy field, then I must be doing something wrong. Confession, I feel like I’m energetically disabled. I would have said retarded, but that word is a red hot trigger and we wouldn’t want to be offensive even if what I do feel is that constant low grade fever of frustration from the knowledge I should be able to understand something but my development is just so damn slow. What I need is feels beyond my grasp.

What is effortless for others requires tremendous exertion on my part, as if I have partial paralysis. Frida Kahlo, the artist, suffered this kind of pain in her legs to the point of amputation. Perhaps I feel the kinship in my energy body. Grasping, clutching, needy. Uh-oh, needy is creepy.

I mentioned earlier today that I’m keenly interested in discovering any indications that a transformation is taking place within me toward a higher level of consciousness. I view my life as a garden, the fruit proof that I’m doing it correctly. I have this metaphorical little plot of earth and I have consulted volumes of gardening books written by the experts and I’m trying to do everything according to wisdom, planting with the rhythms of the moon, nurturing the seedlings with love and attention, attacking every weed with a vengeance.

But my little plot of earth remains barren regardless of the multi-vitamined watering system, the perfect balance of sun to shade ratio and the enthusiastic affirmations I coo to the fertilized soil.

I was lamenting my failure as a gardener when my sister crashed my pity party. I offered her my tears in fine bone china teacups. She said they tasted bitter. She also had the audacity to tell me “expectation was the opposite of acceptance.” You can’t force things to be, you allow them to be. What?

“And besides,” she said, gearing up for a doozy, “you’re blocking the sun with your body all hunched over your little plot of ground like that. I bet you even dig up the fresh seeds just to see what they’re doing if they don’t grow after the first fifteen minutes you’ve planted them.”

Gasp! How did she know? Was that not the right thing to do?

“Stand up, take a look around. That small patch of land is not your life. This,” she said using grand sweeping gestures with her arms outstretched wide, “is your life. You want to live off everything you produce - one seed in, one vegetable out. Your work, your effort, your payoff. Woman, look around. It’s the delight of allowing and appreciating everything in your world that yields a crop. You have an all-season garden, even if it does not grow straight from this heap of dirt.”

She was getting wound up now. “You are completely ignoring the person who brought you a jar of preserves for the winter, or the wheelbarrow full of zucchini for baking bread.” She was running with my garden-is-life metaphor. “You think the only value comes from something you have directly planted yourself. If you’re nice to this person, then you expect (grrr, there’s that word again) them to be nice back to you in direct equal proportions. There, now your energy equation fits. You give them this, they give you that, a perfect reflection of this energy mirror you keep going on about. Yes, scripture says we reap what we sow, but it doesn’t say we get tit for tat. Ever hear of the idea of paying it forward?”

Her words snapped me out of my funk and similar to the special effects in a movie, my worldview rapidly elongated while I stood still. Trippy. In that instant I saw myself planting and nurturing a seed, but instead of it coming straight up from that square footage of soil I’ve been obsessed with, the roots have gone deep and sprouted up all around me. I’m blessed with towering shady trees, luscious fruit, and a variety of flowers blooming all year long. Hey, I’ve got an all season garden and I didn’t even know it.

I’m giving a shout-out to my sister who transformed my pity party into a bountiful harvest of gratitude. Today, January 28, is coincidentally, her birthday, so everyone join me in wishing her a Happy Birthday.

P.S. - On a gossipy note, she’s currently in Las Vegas celebrating her third wedding to her 2nd, 3rd and 4th husband. I’ve now decided to call her Mrs. Harris the III.