Hip Hip Hooray!

I have a hip permit. After successfully running the medical gauntlet – EKG, labs, upper GI, chest X-ray, consultations – I’ve been cleared for total-left-hip-replacement surgery a week from today. It’s really amusing to me, as a Realtor, that the clearance is called a “permit.” I feel like I’m going to be under construction, and, in a sense, I am. I have the orthopedic surgeon’s laminated business card showing my new hip in all its plastic and titanium glory. This healing journey is definitely a spiritual adventure. It involves much more than mere mechanical installation of a new hip. For that reason, I would like to dedicate this post to Louise Hay for her contributions to health and wholeness in writing and publishing her book You Can Heal Your Life.

Louise Hay healed herself of ovarian cancer after a diagnosis of terminal illness. As a metaphysical counselor, she applied what she learned from her own personal experience to assist others in discovering and using the full potential of their own creative powers to clear away blocks keeping them from robust health and having what they want in life.        

You Can Heal Your Life is the most dog-earred, taped-together book on my bookshelf.  I’ve had it for more than twenty years (published in 1984). In the back of the book, there is an alphabetical table of the “mental equivalents” of dis-ease listing (1) Physical Ailments; (2) their Probable Cause (mental and emotional); and (3) a New Thought Pattern to assist with healing. Louise Hay compiled the list from her own work as a licensed “practitioner,” or affirmative prayer counselor, and the work of others, especially Ernest Holmes. It’s not uncommon to greet these ideas with healthy skepticism. The proof is in the pudding. Look up one of your ailments. See if the “probable cause” fits. Apply the “new thought pattern” with feeling. Verify your own results. Empirical proof. Direct knowledge. It’s a “woo-woo” free zone.

Sample examples from the book include the following:

Problem:  Allergies. Probable Cause:  Who are you allergic to? Denying your own power (belief that something outside you has power over you). New Thought Pattern:  The world is safe and friendly. I am safe. I am at peace with life.

Problem:  Diabetes. Probable Cause:  Longing for what might have been. A great need to control. Deep sorrow. No sweetness left. New Thought Pattern: This moment is filled with joy. I now choose to experience the sweetness of today.

Problem: Hip/Hip Problems. Probable Cause: Carries the body in perfect balance. Major thrust in moving forward. Fear of going forward in major decisions. Nothing to move forward to. New Thought Pattern: Hip Hip Hooray – there is joy in every day. I am in perfect balance. I move forward in life with ease and with joy at every age. That certainly fits my experience of moving from California, where I lived for 65 years, to New Mexico, where I knew no one, had no job, no place to live and had never lived so far away from my son Grant, an only child.

For me, physical health problems are outer evidence of the invisible, inner mental, spiritual and emotional causes of dis-ease. I have found it can take some digging to get down to the root causes. Like weeds, the roots need to be removed, or the problem remains. Recently I’ve spent entire days in my garden doing the things my post-surgical self will not be doing for a while – setting pavers, lifting bags of bark, soil, decorative stones, digging holes, pulling weeds while sitting on the ground (yes, next to my walker!) I’m struck by the tenacity of elm tree seedling volunteers (AKA: “weeds”). As soon as the dime-sized, parchment-like seeds (which the wind ever-so-helpfully scatters by literally millions - large, black trash bags full) take hold, a long, deep, hard-to-remove tap root goes down. Such a metaphor for our deepest thoughts about our health. Establishing a new thought pattern is a spiritual practice. The roots of my hip problem, on the left, or feminine, side of my body, grow down to my relationship with my mother, childhood trauma and creative self-expression. Complete healing means addressing these roots in addition to having a new hip installed. Just a new thought is not enough – the reason affirmations often don’t work. The new thought has to be enlivened with felt, believing emotions in order to take form. This is the power of the mind and heart to heal. This is how Louise Hay healed herself of ovarian cancer.

Grant dramatically demonstrated the power of the heartmind to affect the body while in the ICU at UCLA being treated for stage-four melanoma. His dad, who previously had bypass surgery, was hospitalized with a large blood clot in his heart. We stopped to visit him on our way to check Grant into the hospital for a week of treatment. Worried about his dad, Grant was torn. He didn’t want to be hospitalized. He told us, “I just can’t lose one of you right now.” As soon as he was admitted and in his assigned bed, he started having the cascade of 20-30 side effects Interleukin-2 treatment produces: chills, fever, vomiting, diarrhea, “rigors” (shaking), high blood pressure, accelerated heart rate. There’s just one thing. The dose of Interleukin-2 had not yet been given. Grant had the side effects of the drug without the drug. During her rounds the following morning, Dr. Lee talked with Grant:

Dr. Lee:  You had all the side effects without the dose. How did you do that?

Grant:  I created it.

Dr. Lee:  Wow. That’s powerful.

They sent Grant home. He didn’t have to be there. He returned for treatment a week later once his dad was out of the hospital. This is the power of the mind and the emotions to affect the body. Hip Hip Hooray, Louise Hay.

Embracing Paradox

In last week’s blog entry about the barfing Cutter moth invasion and Blue, the community cat who likes to come into my house and scratch my new sofa, I wrote, “Not everything that, or everyone who, wants to be in your presence has your best interest in mind.” That’s true. Who wants a cat sharpening his claws on their new sofa or moth barf on their walls? At the same time, the opposite of the statement is equally true. Everything that, and everyone who, wants to be in our presence does have our best interest in mind. It is serving us, often by holding up a mirror so we can see ourselves, make new choices, expand our consciousness and experience greater self-expression and life satisfaction. The moths and cat helped me learn to set appropriate boundaries in close personal relationships. They taught me how to take better care of myself. The moths and cat both served and did not serve my best interests at the same time. A paradox.

“Out of nothing, everything comes,” one of my spiritual teachers told me. The rose grows, buds, blooms out of bare brown winter branches, apparently coming into being from nothing. Books, films, plays, paintings come out of nothing, the creator’s imagination, into form. How did you create your current job, your present home? They didn’t exist. Then they did.

“Embrace paradox,” the spiritual teacher also said. It isn’t always pleasant, or easy, to embrace as true the opposite and apparently contradictory aspects of a paradox at the same time. I believe it deepens us. Being consciously aware of both the positive and negative aspects of the challenging situations in which we find ourselves is one thing. Embracing both is another. It can be a rigorous spiritual practice. It builds spiritual muscle. Ask anyone who is divorced if they know what it is like to both love and hate their former partner. In The Artist’s Way, Julia Cameron gives an additional example of paradox when she writes, “…we must get serious about taking ourselves lightly. We must work at learning to play.” Play is one of the best ways to stimulate creativity. By embracing paradox, we have access to the full spectrum of life’s experiences.

Meister Eckhart said, “Truly, it is in the darkness that one finds the light, so when we are in sorrow, then this light is nearest of all to us.” It is a paradox to find light in darkness, joy in sorrow. To me, Eckhart’s comment about the light being nearest to us in sorrow reflects the loss of a close and loving relationship which brought us great joy. After the death of a close friend, when I spent time in hospice’s poetry for healing group, the close connections between death and life, loss and gain, joy and sorrow became apparent to me. I’ll close with a poem I wrote about that paradox.

Life is Loss

Life is loss.

Each moment

we lose

the previous moment.

We lose

our health.

We lose

our hair.

We lose

our beauty.

We lose

our friends,

our family.

It never ends.

Life is new.

Each moment,

we gain.

We gain

a canvas

for our dreams,

another opportunity

to become,

expand,

experience,

express

who we are.

We gain

another moment

to live,

filled

with profound sorrow,

filled

with exquisite joy.

©2009  Terranda King

Blue

One of the first times I parked my car in front of my new adobe home in the Rio Grande bosque, a resident came to greet me. He jumped up on my car, waltzed across the hood, hiked up the windshield, strolled across the roof and skidded down the back window, leaving paw prints in his wake. If the car door is left open, he will explore the inside. With a thick grey coat and yellow eyes, he is well cared for and has an owner. He likes to enter everyone’s house. Curious, he wants to see and smell everything. He will come to your door when you are unlocking it to be let in. Once he has inspected the interior and noted any changes, he camps out on a high windowsill, looks out, surveys his domain, stays a while, then leaves. He’s the community cat. His name is Blue. I’ve befriended him, petted him, talked with him, offered him tuna (no, thank you) and milk (yes!). He visited several times while I was moving in.

Once my furniture was delivered, after drinking milk, he went over and sharpened his claws on my new sleeper sofa. When I yelled “HEY! NO!” he ran out the door. Several days later, he wanted in again as I unlocked the front door. I gave him “a severe talking to,” as one of my spiritual teachers likes to say, telling him that if he cannot treat my space and belongings with respect, he cannot come in. He rubbed against my legs. Was he making up? I let him in. We visited, he checked everything out, I gave him milk, then he went over and clawed the sofa again. This time when I yelled, he streaked out the door. I didn’t see him again for around a week.

Interestingly enough, as I sat writing morning pages about a difficult challenge in one of my relationships, Blue jumped over the kitchen patio wall and stood at the French door meowing loudly to be let in. I was concerned he might be trapped in the patio since the stucco wall is 6’ high. I considered letting him in so he could exit by the front door, but I realized if I let him in, there was no way I could prevent him from being destructive again, so I didn’t let him in. I repeated, “NO” loudly until he left. While writing about Blue, I “heard” a message from Spirit: “Don’t let Blue in the house.” Today he ran up to the front door when he saw me outside by my car. I was leaving, not arriving, and only had to say “No” twice before he headed toward the next door neighbor.

Do you have a Blue in your life? Do you keep letting them in? Do you keep thinking their behavior will change? Metaphors and symbolic messages abound when we pay attention, when we listen. At the very moment I’m writing about personal boundaries and destructive behavior, a destructive cat is meowing loudly to be let in again. Hellloooooo…..Terranda, are you paying attention? Yes. Well, just to be sure, see what you think about this.

When I opened my front door this morning, a gazillion medium-sized, tan moths lodged inside my screen door took flight at once. They are everywhere. I opened both the front and back screen doors several times today to let them out. Now, as I look out the window just after sunset, I see them skittering across the sky in silhouette. We need a bat invasion. Finally tired of escorting them outside, I sent the last four fluttering inside my living room window to heaven. While cleaning the window pane, I saw a hand creep up on the outside, matching the movements of mine. My laughing neighbor, Rich, was attached to it. “What’s with the moth invasion?” I asked. “Cutter moths, Rich said, “the worst I’ve seen them in 15 years. They will live two or three days, lay eggs, then die. If they are inside on your walls when they die, they leave barf spots on your walls.”  “Oh great,” I said. “Moth barf, just what everyone needs. Welcome to New Mexico!”

And that’s how the Universe kindly provided me with a second, very personal experience that not everything that, not everyone who, wants to be in your presence has your best interest in mind or is wanted by you. “Saying no can be the ultimate in self-care,” says Claudia Black, as quoted in The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron.

The Seven Deadlies…

It’s Week Nine of Julia Cameron’s twelve-week The Artist’s Way workshop, and we are deep into “it.” Deep into what blocks the expression of our creativity. Deep into owning the yuckiest, darkest, most self-destructive, self-sabotaging parts of ourselves. Ick. “Ick” is definitely the word of the week. So, if you’re not into looking at, and taking responsibility for, the ick in you – it’s there, we all have it – then you might want to stop reading here.

“Oh, but I’m not creative,” you say. I believe you are. I believe we all are whether or not we express our creativity for a living through the arts. I believe we are made in the image and likeness of The Great Creator who creates and is creative. Therefore, so are we. We create our lives, our families, our life experiences. We may be creative gardeners, cooks, handypersons, computer techs, problem solvers, business people or parents.

Julia handed out envelopes labeled “The Seven Deadlies” containing seven slips of paper, each with a different topic. Each participant chose one, wrote it down and returned the slip to the envelope so each time a selection was made all seven topics were available. We chose seven times. The Seven Deadlies are drugs, alcohol, sex, money, food, work, friends/family. The assignment was to write a couple of sentences about how we use the topic to block our creativity (or prevent ourselves from having our dreams come true). The structure of the process made it possible to select “alcohol” three times, “work” four, “money” twice and some topics not at all. We then had the opportunity to look at the significance of that. No topic is inherently bad, in fact, some are quite good! It is when they are abused or used unconsciously to dull pain, avoid fear or hold ourselves back they can cost us our creative self-expression, or making our dreams come true.

For me personally, as surgery looms closer and closer, we dig deeper and deeper with Julia and I feel more and more vulnerable, challenging issues are arising to be faced. My whole life I’ve taken to heart Socrates’ comment, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” I always examine. I don’t always like what I find, but it is always liberating when I take responsibility for what I see. And I don’t always see it in myself first. I see it first in the people in my life. It can take a heartbeat or two, sometimes longer (tongue-in-cheek), to realize what I see in them is true about me, especially when I don’t like it. Think of it as holding up your two hands, palms facing, so they are mirror images of one another; one is you, one the other person. Looking in the mirror of others, we can see ourselves. It’s great when positive qualities are reflected back but “ick” when we don’t like what we see. Author, and metaphysical minister, Terry Cole-Whittaker summarized this experience by saying “All is projection.” Whatever we see in, and say about, others is true about us. The way they treat us is the way we treat ourselves. They serve us by holding up the mirror for us. Understanding and accepting this as true is about step 293 in the process. First come disbelief, denial, indignance, annoyance, outrage, disappointment . . . and blaming the mirror holder. It’s about them. It’s not about us. But it’s always about us because there’s only one energy field. Everyone and everything are part if it.

This week a person who has been very close to me served me by mirroring how I treat my inner artist – with disregard, disrespect, domination, sabotage, lack of empathy, compassion or love. Her survival need to feel powerful and be in control meant meeting her needs only and excluding those of others. While it’s not pleasant being treated that way, it’s even less pleasant to acknowledge “That’s the way I’ve been treating myself, the inner artist in me.” Recognition is the first step in shifting awareness, and, ultimately, in shifting behavior. I’m grateful the mirror was held up. I’m grateful I looked. I’m grateful I’m taking responsibility for what I saw. For me, this is the most challenging part of my ongoing spiritual practice. It is also, for me, the most rewarding, since I believe “The unexamined life is not worth living.”

Time for a SmART Phone?

The carrots are getting bigger, maybe even large enough a stick won’t be necessary to entice me forward into the 21st century. A reluctant-not-an-early adapter, I’m actually thinking of getting an iphone. I have a brochure (I just haven’t read it yet). My son has an iphone. So does my brother. And a friend my age inherited her son-in-law’s 3G for Christmas when he upgraded to a 4G. However, none of that is pushing me to the tipping point. Nor has just finishing Steve Jobs’ fascinating biography. What has captured my interest is an article titled “SmART Phone,” by Blake Driver, in this week’s Alibi, Albuquerque’s free arts and entertainment weekly.

Driver describes a new application, or app, for the Museum Without Walls, how you can hit the “search using current location" button, and immediately have a list of nearby works of public art that will make your heart flutter. An artistic heart palpitates when it can visit a 4’ x 10’ tapestry of colcha embroidery depicting the life and culture of the historic Barelas (Hispanic) neighborhood right down the street and see nearby an oil painting called “Coronado’s First Visit to New Mexico.” There’s even a background description of the conquistadors’ visit. With a jaunt downtown to the transportation center, you can check out a steel-and-tile sculpture, “A Stop on the Rio Grande.” A video podcast shows how it was made. I want it.

I continue to be impressed with Duke City’s commitment to the arts. The Public Art Urban Enhancement Program is responsible for overseeing the 678 works in the city’s public art collection. Sculptures, paintings, murals and multimedia installations funded through Albuquerque’s 1% for Art program will soon be viewable on the app which uses a Google map and GPS to locate nearby works of art which tax dollars helped finance. In 1978 Albuquerque became one of the first cities in the country to approve the Percent for Art program requiring a portion of voter-approved bonds for improvement projects be set aside for the creation of new, publicly accessible artwork. Over the past four years, the Public Art Program has spent an estimated $600,000 annually on new projects. It is anticipated the same amount will be spent this fiscal year to complete 27 works in progress.

Albuquerque’s is one of more than 60 public art collections being uploaded to nonprofit cultureNOW’s database of art and architecture publicly viewable or paid for by public funds. So far, Albuquerque is second only to New York City for the number of listings uploaded to the database.

Not only does the Burque enjoy general public support of the arts, individuals are enthusiastic, committed supporters too. My artist neighbor, who is a painter, invited me to the “Master Works of New Mexico” art opening Friday night. It included oil paintings, pastels and watercolors. She had several miniatures on display and was involved in organizing the event. When she called me later to thank me for coming to the show, I told her how happy I was to see so many people there supporting it. Assigned to an entry table with a clicker to track attendance, she told me over 600 people attended. When I set an intention for my new life in New Mexico, I declared that it would be filled with culture – art, music, theater and writing. I am pleased to see that it’s true. The new mobile app puts the power of curating individualized, free art tours back in the hands of the people. For $1.99, it’s less than the cost of a museum ticket. I want it. I just need to be willing to join the 21st century.

From Competence to Incompetence

Driving along Rio Grande Boulevard Sunday morning, I see signs of spring everywhere. Trees are clouds of pink, white, lavender and yellow blossoms. Fields of dark brown earth have been plowed, turned over, prepared for seeding and growth. The air is soft, hinting of the 78-degree day yet to come. I’m pleased to have this time of forced slowness. The speed limits in both Los Ranchos de Albuquerque, near where I live, and Los Corrales, the equestrian community on the other side of the river where I’m going, are 15-30 miles per hour. The large cement mixer lumbering along the road in front of me reinforces the pace. I breathe in the day, admiring the trees, homes, fields, Sandia Mountains. “Thank you, mama,” I say aloud to Mother Earth, acknowledging her beauty.

I’m on my way to the third day of the first annual Spring Writers’ Retreat of the Albuquerque Writers Co-operative. I feel like I’ve been plowed, turned over, prepared for seeding and growth. I spent a restless night, filled with insecurities and critical self-assessments. Seven women writers gather with two instructors to focus on their craft. Their professions range from psychoanalyst to speech therapist, photographer to book editor and government technical writer. Several have taught at colleges or universities and have PhDs. I am a beginning writer. At one point, I sit there quietly as they have an extended conversation about why they don’t choose to work with beginning writers. I can only conclude they don’t consider me one. I decide I am at the writers’ retreat by “right of consciousness.” My intention has created my participation. I am meant to be there, to be teachable, to learn. It is a divine appointment.

Authors’ names and book titles salt and pepper the instruction and discussion. My reading list grows so long it could take a year to get through it. I feel out of my league even though I understand intellectually that changing from one field to another requires the adjustment of moving from being competent at what you do to being incompetent. Maybe this is why people don’t change careers more often. When I managed a real estate office in San Clemente, I saw people struggle with this all the time. Former engineers and school teachers who were extremely competent in their chosen fields became real estate agents who didn’t know what they were doing. They found themselves in a steep learning curve. The shift from being competent to incompetent was challenging for most.

Each writing retreat participant is scheduled for an individual consultation with one of the leaders about the manuscript she submitted two weeks before. The transformation in the room after the consultations is palpable. It grows quieter and quieter as each person turns within, examining the challenges of her own writing and how the teaching applies to it. I learn I’m not the only one who had a restless night and an early morning. When the re-vision of each writer’s work is read, it is apparent how much more powerful application of the teaching has made it. The teachers are thrilled what they taught has been learned. The students are excited by their successful application of the teaching. The river of life has carried me to the retreat to share this part of the journey with these serious, dedicated writers. I leave with an increased sense of awareness, skill and competence. And I am grateful.

Biking in the Bosque

Julia Cameron, author of The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity, is personally facilitating a twelve-week workshop on her book Sunday afternoons in Santa Fe, where she now lives. It is a course on discovering and recovering your creative self. Along with forty other painters, poets, graphic designers, musicians, photographers and writers, I am privileged and honored to be participating. Julia has expressed her creativity as an award-winning journalist writing for the Washington Post, New York Times, Rolling Stone and Vogue. She has been a film and television writer, director and producer of independent features and documentaries, a novelist, playwright, songwriter and poet. She has published over thirty books.

So, what does this have to do with biking in the bosque (forest along the banks of the Rio Grande)? This is the way women often talk, think and write, spiraling around the topic, exploring adjunct nuances, instead of just making their point. My topic this week is guidance, and I’m getting there.

Julia assigns homework each week including two twenty-minute walks on your own without a dog. Forty minutes of weekly walking isn’t the best match for a person using a walker and scheduled for hip replacement surgery May 14th. I substituted feeding blue corn to the cranes for several weeks until they migrated north ten days ago. This week I decided to substitute biking in the bosque. That may sound simple until one realizes one side of my body is not working as well as the other, and I haven’t been on a bicycle in 40 or 50 years. A bit daunting. My painter neighbor loaned me her bike since she isn’t using it. She fell off it, broke her hand and had surgery in December. Even more daunting. She is quick to point out that didn’t stop her from laying down a 6’ x 12’ brick paver patio this week. “You’ve got to push yourself,” she said. “Not bad for someone in her sixties.”

Mindful of her biking experience, I wondered about my own. Could I do it? Could I do it safely? Could I do it without injuring myself? So I asked for guidance, which some people call knowing or intuition, to provide the answers. Whom did I ask? Universal Mind, Spirit, the Force, God, whatever you want to call it. How? By muscle checking for a yes or no answer to my questions. Muscle checking can be done several ways.* The body doesn’t lie. It tells the truth. I have friends whose guidance comes as goosebumps in the presence of truth, or the hair on the back of their arms standing up, a warm feeling in the chest, tingling along the neck, spine, shoulders. Signs of guidance are probably as varied as people. I have been listening to guidance for 25-30 years now. I distinguish between hearing and listening to guidance. To me, hearing it means receiving the information. It can actually come in the form of internally “hearing” an answer (clairaudience), which I have experienced. But listening to guidance not only involves receiving the information, it involves acting on it. This can require courage since it may not seem the logical thing to do. Counterintuitive at times, acting on information received can require trust or faith, at least initially, until one is confident with the validity of the process. Faith and trust can be built. Confidence comes from direct, personal experience. Start small.

Some people start with a pendulum. It can be as simple as a washer on a string or as fancy as a crystal on a chain purchased at a metaphysical bookstore. The first step is establishing the movement that determines a “yes” or “no” response. The pendulum may move north/south for a “yes” and east/west for a “no.” Ask it which is which. My response is a circle to the left for “no” and to the right for “yes.” If you are worried you are making the pendulum move by not holding it perfectly still, hang it up so you are not touching it. In either case, focus your intention on receiving a response to your question.

It can be a long way from a washer on a string to trusting your body to tell you whether or not to firewalk across coals hot enough to melt the metal poured to form the engine of your car. On different occasions, I’ve been guided to walk or not walk, and I listened (acted on the guidance) each time. My firewalk experiences were part of sacred spiritual ceremony with Unity minister Edwene Gaines. She has walked on fire countless times and was burned only once – when she didn’t listen to guidance. She received second-degree burns when she willfully decided to walk, listening to her ego rather than her guidance. She emphasized to us, “You MUST listen to your guidance, for your own safety and that of others.”

Start small. I received bike riding guidance to take my time, go slowly, stop as needed, use the street by the nature preserve with very little traffic, put my left foot (bad hip foot) on a pedal first. I received guidance I could do it safely without injuring myself. So I did. I plan to continue practicing on the street until I can realize my dream of riding on the bike path along the Rio Grande. Guidance will let me know when I’m ready. And I will listen to it.

Synchronistically, Rob Brezsny’s recent Free Will Astrology column just featured a fascinating description of an ancient form of guidance: “How did the Vikings navigate their ships through rough northern seas on cloudy and foggy days? Medieval texts speak of the mysterious ‘sunstone,’ a ‘Viking compass’ used to detect the hidden sun. Modern theories suggest that this technology may have been Iceland spar, a mineral that polarizes light, making it useful in plotting a course under overcast skies. Do you have anything like that, Libra? A navigational aid that guides your decisions when the sun’s not out, metaphorically speaking? Now would be an excellent time to enhance your connection with whatever it is that can provide such power.” I’m glad to say I do have my own navigational aid.

*(See google)