Broom of Awakening

The Morning Flows

I've come to Day 31 of my January Awakenings with Mark Nepo's, The Book of Awakening. It's been a good practice to show up each day to his offerings, to the cards and my journaling of them. And in fact that is the subject of today's entry, Practicing.

Practice makes for experience, pure and simple. The adage about it making for perfection or even better doesn't resonate for me, focused as those qualities are away from the present moment. Mark talks about making the commitment to 'change our ways' but then stalling in the face of old reflexes as new situations arise. It's overwhelming to consider changing our entire approach to life. And I would add that in my experience it's not a useful approach to deepening. But we can become present to our experience, intimate with it which often leads to softening, yielding which in itself is transformative. How do we become intimate with the walls that took twenty or fifty years to erect? Breath by breath is the answer, moment by moment trusting that who or what has done the carrying, if liberated, will continue to carry us with a strength infused with presence.

I asked the question of the cards, what areas of my life need the focus of practice, which is to say, where do I most need to show up?

Horsetail ~ Plant Ally Cards

I used the Plant Ally Cards by Lisa McCoughlin and drew Horsetail ~ Sweep Away the Old. This card invites the celebration of fresh starts by gently releasing the old to enable the new to enter. Sweep away stagnant energy, it suggests.

I have an image of sweeping my kitchen floor with the large, battered broom and as I'm doing so to imagine that I'm creating pathways that allow for stagnant energy to disperse. This is something that I can do as often as the floor needs sweeping and given that we have two dogs it could become a very consistent practice!

The other image that comes to mind is with the breath. In the outbreath the body naturally finds release. It's in the outbreath that we're released from the body upon death, it's with a sigh that we release sadness, exhaustion, bliss. And what is a baby's cry, after that first inbreath, if not the release of intention/effort/joy upon coming into manifestation. It's such a powerful and intentional way to look at and be with the outbreath.

Dropping all the burdens we carry about who we might be, in the eyes of others, in our own eyes, in the eyes of society, dropping all our preconceived ideas and reifications of various states, the secret hurts, the ways we feel we've been wronged, the private sorrows, the cherished burdens of self hatred...dropping each of those one at a time with one meditative outbreath after another allows us to drop right into the bodily experience of our lived truth, away from the mentality of constructs and expectations and right into the pulsing, vibrant heart of the One.

This card feels like such a resonant and relevant way to end my January Awakenings journey and combined with the focus on breath as release, a Sufi song we sing based on some of Rumi's poetry comes to mind ::

Go sweep out the chambers of your heart.
Make it ready, make it ready
to be the dwelling of the Beloved.
When you depart Love will enter
In you, empty of self,
God will display Her beauty.

The Unspoiled Clearing

Soul Cards ~ Deborah Koff-Chapin

Today is Day 29 of my January Awakenings journey with Mark Nepo's, The Book of Awakening. It's hard to believe the month is almost at an end but I've enjoyed the daily focus this book has provided.

Says Rilke:

I am too alone in the world
but not alone enough
to make every moment holy.

What is the moment made up of but our interface with the muscular and evanescent now. For me, what Rilke is really asking is how to view every part of ourselves as holy, every aspect of our own being as sacred. I'm in the thick of some painfully transformative inner work and Rilke's quote touches me deeply. Because I cannot do that, cannot, no matter how I try, see all aspects of my being as holy. And the word 'try' is where all the contraction lies...I sense intuitively that effort is counterproductive. I don't yet have the eyes to see...they open through grit, yes, but ultimately through grace.

Mark goes on to speak of the two ways we feel the fullness of life, both of them arising from the authenticity of our relationships. One being from our love of life, the other from our love of each other. In our solitude we can discover the miracles of life, of breath, of what is simply arising. This is the reward of meditation, prayer and other forms of what I call sacred inwardness. They offer us the opportunity of going deep enough into the thicket of the self to come upon the unspoiled clearing.

That luminous clearing can also be reached by taking the huge risk to be thoroughly with each other. This is the reward of love, of compassion, of receptivity. But so often the obstacle to experiencing the fullness of either of these gifts is resistance, is ambivalence, is hesitancy and ultimately the fear of giving ourselves completely to them. Having one foot in either door, betwixt and between, is the deeply painful experience of loneliness and isolation. We all share it. In the same way we all share the capacity to bless the moment with the authenticity of our unveiled presence, to make it holy.

Meditation

Sit and let a point of loneliness that you carry rise to your awareness.

Breathe into it and feel which way you need to lean with it: into yourself or into the world.

As you lean towards one or the place your hand on your heart. Breathe with the tenderness of your humanity.

Touching What Is

Today's entry from Mark Nepo's, The Book of Awakening, focuses on the embodiment that results from responding to the still, small voice within...what I have come to know as 'the call to prayer'. He shares the story of a young divinity student who was stricken with a bout of diptheria that left him paralyzed and extremely weakened and how from somewhere deep within him came the surprising voice calling him to dance. With a lot of difficulty he quit divinity school and began to dance and slowly and miraculously he began to gain the use of his legs again and went on to become of the fathers of modern dance, Ted Shawn. Such a wonderful expression of Dance as divinity lived.

When I read stories like this I'm reminded again and again of the power and grace that comes from listening, from being still enough to catch that small whispered wisdom-voice that contains within it seeds of our embodiment, of the glorious potential of our lived experience. The voice is inescapable but the rising up to meet it and receive it is where the choice lies. Like each of us I have my own relationship with the God within...sometimes I listen, sometimes I ignore, sometimes I flip it the bird and send it packing, sometimes I sit with it. Whatever my response it continues to speak to me, loyal creature that it is, devoted to my unfolding. Each time I allow it an embodied breath in my being I am reborn ever so slightly anew, I take shape around possibility rather than premise, dancing with God rather than 'thinking about' dancing with God.

What is beneath that impulse is the loam of spaciousness...and the willingness to dive deeply into embodiment. It's not always easy when the voice feels uncomfortable and Mark talks about it as 'the secret of loving whatever is in the way until it ceases to become an obstacle.' I experience it as touching what is. I pulled two cards today, hearing the call and embodying it...

Plant Ally Cards ~ Lumina Tarot

These two cards have a perfectly gritty realism when seen through the lens of this exercise...Shadows and the Five of Cups. What do I do when it's the Shadow making the call to prayer? I do what I always do when any sacred body comes calling...bow first and then decided how I feel.

In this instance what I feel moved to do is sit down beside it, take the position of witness, the corvid in the Five of Cups. He's holding in his beak a red thread that is entwined around the stem of each of the cups...the good experiences linked with the challenging ones. And he's holding it in such a way that one could see him as wanting to untie it, to loosen the thread that holds them together, that allows for perspective, inclusion.

The Shadows card, from Lisa McCoughlin's Plant Ally deck, gives a feeling of the womb, of a cave and it asks us to shed the light of awareness on the triggers of our lives. It is represented by the plant Wall Pennywort whose latin name is umbilicus rupestris. Rupestris is latin for 'lives on the cliffs or rocks'. Seeing the figure curled up in the fetal position in a womb-like shape beneath the earth brings to mind images of gestation and germination in the loam. Live with integrity, the card calls us to do, embrace all aspects of your being.

That's a tall order but I can begin somatically...taking up a position close to the earth similar to that of the figure in the card and then gradually unfold feeling what it's like in my body to do so and watching where the breath goes with it. What cups does it flow towards naturally, the full ones or the empty ones? I can allow them all in,  say Yes to them with my whole being, the empty and the full, in this way giving my interest and attention, which is to say my love, to all parts of my life. I can respond to their call to prayer.

The Earthed Moon

Tarot of Plants

Yesterday I spent some time getting acquainted with a recent acquisition, The Tarot of Plants by Heather Enders. It's a minimalist black and white deck using plants as archetypes. Nary an animal or human appears. The suit assignments are similar to those used in the Victorian Fairy Tarot...Spring for Wands, Summer for Cups, Autumn for Pentacles and Winter for Swords.

With all this earthy energy being exuded in such a refined way it felt perfect to use for this Capricorn New Moon. The house was quiet and everyone was asleep. It was late but the cards were calling so I responded to their call to prayer. Beneath the darkness of this earthy New Moon I was initiated into the wisdom and mystery of both of these decks.

I used a spread designed by Ethony with my own variation thrown in, substituting an Oracle deck for that first card. I wanted this to be the hub around which the reading to evolved.

Celtic Tree Oracle ~ Ioho ~ Yew

I began with the Celtic Tree Oracle by Liz and Colin Murray. What a lovely tree to draw, the Yew, Tree of rebirth and regeneration. It occupied the central focus of the reading answering the question, what energies are abundant for me with this New Moon? From the guidebook...

'The easiest place to find the Yew tree is within the ancient cemeteries...The capacity for age is given the Yew by its peculiar form of growth...in which its branches grow down into the ground to form new stems, which grow to become trunks of separate but linked growth.'

Its Gaelic name, Ioho, is associated with the island of Iona and apparently a mistake in a fifth-century manuscript resulted in its current name, Ioho. And there on the north of the island one can watch the clouds that pass by Iona to fall upon the mainland as rain and be reminded of the strength of the soul and its ability to be reborn, continually.

Pulling the Yew tree places one in direct contact with one's past. There is a renewal of spiritual strength, life is reinvigorated and wisdom midwifes understanding into the body in new and flourishing ways. For me this rings true in a way that I attribute to our recent retreat. The qualities ascribed to the Yew feel vibrantly alive in me right now and I'm doing my best to continue to open to their gifts. Interestingly the trees at the retreat spoke deeply to me and I took many pictures of them, entranced by their beauty and hearing their call to be witnessed. As I write I feel their blessings and gratitude in the drawing of this card. I feel them lingering in my heart.

Tarot of Plants ~ Celtic Tree Oracle

I pulled all Majors for this reading. And this after sorting, shuffling, shuffling, shuffling, cutting and shuffling again. But looking at it feels spot on coming on the heels of the retreat.

Card Two ~ What can I do to aid this energy? 

Wheel of Fortune represented by Tumbleweed.  My mental image of tumbleweed is one of constant movement, rolling over and over the dusty earth, stopping only for a moment here and there until the next wind carries it forwards. As such I sense that movement itself will be key in supporting the gifts of rebirth and regeneration offered by Ioho. That it disperses its seeds as it rolls along is a lovely metaphor for the seeding of my own intentions and aspirations...with movement, with the spiraling dance of responding to the moment I am also planting something deeper.

 Card Three ~ What goals might I set for this New Moon? 

The Lovers represented by the Trillium is such a gentle and encouraging message. It is a flower used frequently in homeopathic remedies and Bach Flower remedies addressing the root chakra, the places where one can get stuck either through excess or deficiency in that area. From the Flower Essence Magazine...

Imbalances in this process of becoming a fully embodied spiritual being are of two main types. If the focus is on the upper chakras, leaving out the lower ones, there's a sense of not being connected with the body and the material world, as though you feel out of place or not at home in the physical world.

Raising hand...this is an ongoing theme in my life though much less so as I've walked a little in the world, partnering and raising a child. But yes, it is a realm I continue to grow into with both ambivalence and delight. The three-petaled nature of the Trillium inspires connections to body, mind, spirit and how the synthesis of these is in many ways the perfection of Love. For this New Moon cycle I'm planning to take this as a flower essence as a way to realize in my body this 'goal' of The Lovers.

Card Four ~ What might I release from this last New Moon phase?

Judgement represented by the Tulip is a bold and direct statement. In fact this was one aspect of the retreat that contributed to the fullness of my experience there and I shall continue to nourish the release of this unhelpful perspective. Curious as to the choosing of Tulip for Judgement I did a little googling and came up with the recurrent theme of perfection. There are other meanings but this one came up most often and it fits with the Judgement card for it's that ideal of perfection from which judgement waterfalls and causes us to contract, to shrink from the richness of our whole-spectrumed selves. Breathing out I release perfection, breathing in I embrace Perfection.

Card Five ~ What advice do my spirit guides have for me?

The Fool represented by the Dandelion evoked a smile of delight. Leap! I'm being invited to step into the unknown with a sense of curiosity and wildness. The Dandelion with its lovely warm yellow head evokes such sweet childhood memories. Holding it up to each others' chins to see if we liked butter or not, making dandelion chains to wear, breaking a stem to watch the white milk spill out, coming across a perfectly round one gone to seed, plucking it and making a wish before offering it our breath, our benediction, our hopes. All these are part of childhood, part of the innocence that the Fool embodies. That I'm being advised to embrace this aspect of myself is such a lovely way to seal the reading.

What Goddess, this!

It was a magical night in my study as the cards unfolded their story for me. I received both practical advice and the nourishing ephemera of dreams to work with for this New Moon cycle. Wishing you all good things as it unfolds.

Going Nowhere But Into Ourselves

Today's entry from Mark Nepos, The Book of Awakening, focuses on what he calls 'life in the tank'. He shares the story of a friend who set about to clean his fish tank and put his fish in the bathtub while he went about scrubbing film from the glass, cleaning the rocks and the filter, changing out the water. He returned to the tub astonished to find that the fish, though they had the whole bathtub to swim in, were huddled in a small area of the tub about the same size as their tank. Nothing was containing them, nothing held them back from being able to dart about freely...nothing visible, but clearly they had internalized the parameters of their daily living space. And so it is with us.

Having just come off a week of silence and song at our annual Sufi retreat, I'm very aware of the feeling of expansion at my edges and borders, aware of how the tank has enlarged considerably as it so often does when we give ourselves the opportunity to return to Source. I sense myself darting and swimming into the lovely reaches of my greening heart. And I'm also aware of how quickly this feeling evaporates. This morning's meditation was full and wide, juicy and resonant as a result of those widened borders. It won't always be that way because...mutability and all that...but for now the tank is large. I'm curious as to what it is precisely that has softened, what contraction has been loosened, what identity has dissolved ever so slightly. I want to know so I can be present to the ways in which it gets reified again, to better understand the process in which the idea of a self gets built.

The poet Robert Browning's words have been floating around in the background here as I've ruminated on this entry...gender changed for resonance...'oh, that a woman's reach should exceed her grasp, or what's a Heaven for?' With this poetic question in mind I drew two cards, the reach and the grasp, the everywhere and the somewhere.

Lumina Tarot

Well! This is a near perfect evocation of my own reach/grasp dialogue. The High Priestess, she of the boundless state, traveler of borders, edges and beyond, at home in the liminal, embodiment of binary consciousness...my reach. And what I'm grasping, what I'm holding close, taking shape around? The contraction and stasis of the Two of Swords. In this depiction of it I'm given the sense that this kind of inability to act is literally heartbreaking, seeing the blood on the swords dripping from the 'thing with feathers', from that which soars and ranges easily over the landscape of the soul, the body.

And here I come to a parting of ways with Mr. Browning...as I experience our reach itself to be Heaven. We touch the ineffable in our moving towards it. In that luminous, quivering moment of reaching there She is found.


 My hands moving towards what they love, it is the Body that allows me to do this, the beauty and grace of bones and sinew...flesh meeting flesh, my palms gathering in the folds of baby belly, husband belly, furred paws, rough bark, salt-drenched waves, tear-stained cheeks, soft lips...how can this not be Heaven...the everywhere named by the somewhere, Love spilling into and as Beloved.

...Your body is a Heaven 

arising as the ellipse 

of its own Earth, a celestial

bending of light. You are

your deepest intention.

The Work of Being Together

We must take turns,

diving into all there is

and counting the time.

This verse opens Day Seven of Mark Nepo's, The Book of Awakening. He explores the gifts and responsibilities inherent in relationships and how we must take turns for each other, sometimes dishes must be washed and laundry done so the other can dive deeply for God without worrying about cooking and cleaning. And vice versa. He likens it to the partnering that occurs in deep sea diving wherein one walks the bottom searching for pearls and the partner remains at sea level tending the line of the one below and watching for the oxygen levels.

I am blessed to be supported in this way by a wonderful husband, he sees my light and encourages me to shine, particularly when it's clouded over with a lack of self-confidence or general negativity. He urges me to take time for myself (often suggesting it before I realize I need it myself) and supports my various inner pursuits. Conversely I take on the home front so he can continue to write his book, attend to his teaching and students. We mostly work together and when we're at odds the pearls are still there for the finding, waiting for us to notice their luminous sheen as they catch the light of our awareness. I asked the cards, how can I support my husband...

Gorgon's Tarot ~ Four of Swords

Well, I wasn't expecting that at all. This card with its themes of sanctuary and retreat, restoration and healing speaks to tending to my own needs as a way to support my dh, that by making sure I'm balanced and rejuvenated I'm also contributing to his well-being. It's a lovely message, really. And as I look at the image with its decidedly feminine imagery of lilies and snakes, lotuses and moons, water and plants I can't help but feel that regular time at our local Japanese-inspired women's spa might be something to make a more regular occurrence in my life. There in that silent, watery, replenishing realm is intentional time for me to let down, to draw inwards, to restore and let the mental clutter give way to deeper breaths, softer edges and the community of sisters...such a gentle and encouraging message from the cards, one that speaks directly to honoring the Source.

Expanding on Mark's meditation for the day....Sit quietly and feel into a significant relationship you are in with a friend, lover, family member. Breathe steadily and meditate on the times you dive deep and the times you stay at the surface keeping watch. Feel the back and forth of that in your body, the give and take of being together, as a current of energy. Notice where there is contraction and where there is space. Bow to yourself with reverence for showing up, for being the witness who has just held space for your soul to dive deep.

The Spoked Wheel

'What we reach for might be different,

 but what makes us reach is the same.' 

Today's entry, Day 6 from Mark Nepo's The Book of Awakening, is a lovely exploration of the place our uniqueness intersects with our commonality--that place of paradox, where the spokes join the hub, where your individuality meets mine as the blessing of our shared humanity, receivers of breath, body, birth.

Questions to consider...how does our uniqueness contribute to a sense of loneliness? How does our sameness contribute to a sense of connection? Is there crossover?

I drew two Tarot cards for this entry, one from the Lumina and one from the Wild Unknown--two decks that blur the lines between similar and unique. What is uniquely mine in relation to others, what do we share? 

Lumina Tarot ~ Wild Unknown Tarot

Unified field theory...the felt, but as yet unarticulated, sense that duality is a belief system not a reality...the tempering of what appears to be a polarized I/Thou view. This is what fills my heart, this is my refuge, its realization my healing. And apparently my uniqueness. It is paired so beautifully with the nascent, trusting unblemished heart within each of us, Daughter of Cups.

We all come in as her, rainbow-hued with love, and trust and vulnerability. I share that with you, the way you do with me. And how we find our way back to her is how we discover the thrum and throb of our own unique note.

Our Green Hair

You are famous with God

Angeles Arrien shares this, 'My grandmother told me, Never hide your green hair--they can see it anyway.' Today's entry from Mark Nepos, The Book of Awakening, focuses on the beauty of our 'green hair' and how, through no fault of our own, the quiet conspiracy and culture of homogeneity begins to name us within and without.

But wherever you find yourself today there is always a moment, a breath or two to be present to the glorious 'aberration' of your green-haired self. Amidst all the messages telling us otherwise we can offer ourselves this one gift...

Sit quietly, with your eyes closed, and consider each inbreath as a transmission ushering you into a well-kept secret, never doubted by God, that who you are in this moment is complete, enough.

Between Peace and Joy

So begins today's entry in Mark Nepo's, The Book of Awakening. It's a lovely entry beginning with the story of a woman who found a dried-up sponge in her purse, took it out to the ocean, submerged it in the water and watched it not only expand and come to life but also witnessed a little fish emerge from the folds of the sponge and swim away to inhabit the gilled palace of its life somewhere amidst the vastness of wave and depth. All that time it had been sleeping between the compressed layers of the sponge. If that isn't a perfect metaphor for awakening then what is...

To look at all the places in our being where things are hard and compressed, where we're sleeping between folds of resistance and shadow, between the known and the known. What riddles we need to solve to stay alive, to stay afloat, to swim always come down to plunging our hearts tenderly into the embodied life we are living, right down to the tiny, finned tremors wanting a voice in the waters of the heart. As  I write I"m reminded of the first time I felt my son swimming inside me...far too early according to the books but I knew that the gentle, shimmerings of movement were his soul parting the waters of the moment to establish his presence in my awareness. As subtle as the minnows that used to glean by my legs in the lake when I was a child, so too did his soul announce itself with joy and delight and the wonder of a world submerged in mystery. What lies between peace and joy, I asked the cards...

Alchemist's Oracle ~ Pleasure and Pain

Pleasure and Pain...key to our humanity, to our hearts and yet I'm convinced that something lies beyond or beneath these two seeming and ornate polarities, each fashioned according to the door they open. And because we are the door, we are also the key...the key being nothing less than our wholeness, our embodied attention articulated around the arising moment...truth as the somatic interface with Now, each according to our own understanding. Mark's exercise for today...

With your eyes closed, meditate on the image of a hardened sponge unfolding like a flower underwater.

As you breathe practice seeing your heart as such a sponge.

The next time you do the dishes, pause, hold the sponge in the water, and feel your heart unfold.


Setting aside all the intellectual explorations and possibilities, this I can do...quietly inhabiting the gilled palace of my own watery depths as I feel my heart expand around the life that is arising in the ordinary astonishment of any given moment.

Becoming the Question

 

New Year's Day Sunrise over the Bay ~ Angels and Elementals Abound

The coming to consciousness is not a discovery of some new thing; it is a long and painful return to that which has always been. These words by Helen Luke open the entry for January 3rd, entitled Unlearning Back to God, of Mark Nepo's The Book of Awakening'. I'm writing this post from deep within hundreds of acres of rolling hills on the edge of the country where my family is participating in an annual week-long sufi retreat co-led by my dh. It is indeed a time for folks to unravel back to God, a time to cultivate the space to touch the tender umbilicus, mystery of our separate lives, echo and intimation of our interdependence.

There are many names for this Source...Atman, Inwardness, Ishq, Soul...for every lineage and lens there is a naming of this, a need to say...I am part of this...for to name is to claim. Our journey is to refind this luminous flower of Grace not by the external markers of identity, work, clothing, body size, socio-economic status, family role and so on but by feeling into our relationship with Mystery, with the Boundless and embodying it, by becoming the question, by living in service to the unknown.

I captured this poem last night...this tree with her stories of transience and vulnerability, and the profound gift of bearing witness to both light and to shadow and the compelling place where those two merge as a visceral and widening truth. More and more I'm being shown, not without difficulty, that beauty and pain and love share an ongoing and clandestine relationship, one always holding hands with the other at any given moment, each necessary to complete the other. And I'm coming to feel this relationship as an integral detail of God, fraught and tender and replete with Grace all in the same breath. The veil that obscures this realization is any number of filaments...culture, trauma, religious training, sophistication, sarcasm...and what dance will allow it to fall from your body? I drew a card...

Two of Crystals ~ Starchild Tarot

I'm struck by how similar it looks to the first photograph...the seeing of patterns is part of our innate desire to belong to something larger than ourselves, to feel ourselves as woven into the expansive tapestry of Love. And this card, traditionally the Two of Pentacles, often represents The Dance for me, a way of being the balancing point within any number of foci.

Here the large crystal at the top speaks to me of Source, of Grace, the womb of generosity, with the two smaller crystals being iterations of that abundance, that life force...no less magnificent, no less beautiful. Embrace it all, this card tells me, become the dance of inclusion in the midst of overwhelm.

The Sufis have a practice called zikr...which translates roughly as the perfection of remembrance and the remembrance of perfection. It is a returning, again and again, to the Source...in the same way each breath is a return. Conscious or not, we are always being carried on a wave of Grace...Mark Nepo calls it unlearning, I call it unfurling...either way we are a cellular longing bound up in remembrance, perfection is inside the seeking of itself. We want it because we've tasted it already. Here is his brief and lovely exercise for this day's theme...

Close your eyes and breathe your way beneath your troubles the way a diver slips beneath the waves. Now consider two things you love doing. Feel into what it is in each of these that makes you feel alive. Hold what they have in common before you and breathe into them feeling the grace spot that these dear things mirror within you.

Wishing you all good things, each of us holding a mirror up to God.