Picking Up Leaves in the Wind

Once you wash your dishes, do they stay clean? Your clothes? Do your refrigerator and pantry stay full of food? Your car full of gas? I think you know the answers. I do too. So you won’t think I’m silly, or insane, for picking up the leaves in my garden each morning and each evening before watering. The garden doesn’t stay watered either. And with weeks of 90-degree-plus New Mexico temperatures, not watering isn’t conducive to growth and beauty in a garden. So I pick up the leaves. And I water the garden. Even in the wind while giant cottonwoods continue to gift me with yet more leaves.

My meditation practice, sporadic or not, is never done. If spiritual guidance can’t reach me that way because I’m not sitting in the chair, it finds another way to make its presence known – as toads in the garden. As lucid dreams. Up until now, I have not been a person who remembers dreams. A shift in dream remembering has occurred. How do I know? Three toads told me. They showed up in the garden. The moist, damp environment invited them. Sitting outside, enjoying the garden one night, I noticed a flicker of movement from the corner of my eye. It was a good-sized, well-camouflaged toad that matched the brown bark mulch. I greeted and welcomed him. Later, I noticed two additional, smaller toads. My neighbor, Betsy, the children’s book author with a geologist father and biologist mother, told me two other gardens already have visiting toads. “They like the damp, and cats don’t because they don’t like muddy paws,” she explained, wiggling her fingers. “If you keep your garden damp, neighborhood cats won’t use it as a litter box.” Works for me.

Aware that everything in my life has meaning and happens for a reason, I looked up toads in Animal Speak by Ted Andrews, a reference book on animal symbolism. Toads are amphibians, able to thrive in two worlds, both in water and on land (“amphi” = “double” and “bios” = “life”). Andrews states that from a symbolic aspect, amphibians are “often the keeper of dreams,” associated with lucid dreaming. A lucid dream is any dream in which one is aware that one is dreaming; the term was coined by the Dutch psychiatrist and writer Frederik (Willem) van Eeden. I decided I would like to learn to access spiritual guidance and information from the universe by remembering my dreams. I set a pen and notebook on my nightstand to affirm my decision and to be prepared to capture etheric information before it quickly dissipated back into the nothingness from which it came. Hints started. The first day, I was aware I was dreaming just before I awoke and noticed some details of the dream, but I couldn’t recall them to write them down. The next time, I captured a detail in writing. Today, it took four pages to record the dream. It was about learning, growing and my meditation practice. Lucid dreaming, and writing about it, may become a new spiritual practice for me. The lucid dream took place on the UCLA campus where I was trying to find the room for a final exam in my meditation class. Am I through with meditation? I encountered two other students looking for the same room and expressed my concern that the professor might not let me take the exam since I missed several classes. “What did the class cost you?” they asked. “Worst case is you take it again.”

Are we ever finished? Are the dishes ever permanently clean? Is the gas tank eternally full? Or do we have to keep doing laundry to have clean clothes? An elementary teacher friend came to mind. I remember how incredibly disappointed she was when she realized she would never graduate from her life course in spiritual growth, and it would continue even after her death. If, like everything else, we are indestructible energy, which may change form but continues to exist, then the possibility of ongoing expansion, like that of the universe, exists for us too. The title of the book Chop Wood, Carry Water captures the idea perfectly. Its main thesis is that we chop wood and carry water (do our personal growth work), then we become enlightened (learn who we are), and after that, we chop wood and carry water. Work remains to be done. There are dishes to wash, clothes to clean, an eternal supply of leaves to be picked up, one at a time, in the garden.

Blurbs from the Burque:

•  “New Mexico leads the nation in per capita deaths due to lightning.” (Information posted in the Cibola National Forest exhibit at the top of the Sandia Peak tram). The city of Albuquerque closes public swimming pools as soon as thunderstorms begin. Lifeguards blow a whistle, warning, “Everyone out of the pool!”
• “Lightning activity in New Mexico peaks in July and August (monsoon season) and occurs most commonly between 2 p.m. and 7 p.m.” (from energyworks, a brochure from PNM, provider of NM electrical service).

No Mud, No Lotus.

Unlike Humpty Dumpty, one month ago I was, literally, glued back together again by my orthopedic surgeon after total hip replacement surgery. The eight-inch incision runs across my left backside like a railroad track with steri-strip, instead of wooden, ties. Just twenty-four hours after surgery I was up walking on the “operated leg” with less pain than before surgery. After four days in the hospital, two weeks of skilled nursing care at a spa-like rehabilitation facility, and two more weeks of home care by my dear friend Joanne then my son, Grant, I can manage on my own. Not yet released for full activity by the surgeon, whom I see tomorrow, I did drive Grant to the airport, myself to the store and then to church yesterday for the first time in months.

Father’s Day was the perfect day to be at church. One of the ministers shared the quotation, “No mud, no lotus.” Buddhist monk and author Thich Nhat Hanh explains the interdependent nature of the mud and the lotus - how a lotus cannot grow without the mud. He likens the mud to the suffering in our lives. The growth and blooming of the lotus represent the transformation of our suffering into happiness and love. The lotus symbolizes the expansion of the soul into a living enlightenment.

A month before surgery, I received a loving note of support and a healing CD from the husband-and-wife ministerial team at my church. I listened to it for 30 days. The CD encouraged healing not only physically, but also mentally, spiritually and emotionally. I became aware of previously unrecognized connections between living in Albuquerque for a year when I was ten years old and living here again now. I was able to descend into the mud of painful childhood memories to understand the root causes of my hip disease. Amazing insights came about family wounds that occurred here and my return to heal them 58 years later, which was not arranged on a conscious level. I was startled to realize my mother could not manifest her dream of becoming a registered nurse here for lack of childcare, and I am here to manifest my writing dreams. I was stunned to remember my mother’s sweet peas and morning glories climbing white cotton strings in front of our Navy housing as morning glories now germinate in my own garden from seeds my neighbor gave me. My Santa Barbara Reiki instructor was eerily prescient when he shared with me his experience of living in New Mexico for three years. He mentioned that in ancient times, New Mexico was the bottom of a huge inland sea (witness marine formations and fossils at the 10,000’ summit of the Sandia Peak tram) and carries feminine energies associated with emotional healing. My hip was that.

Understanding my own childhood suffering, I can understand my brother’s suffering growing up fatherless in a home with four women – two sisters, a mother and grandmother. His commitment to being there for his own children has caused him great pain. The lotus can only grow from the mud of suffering into soul-expanding enlightenment. With my heart open in compassion, I admire the many ways in which my brother has expressed his love for his children, appreciated or not. Grant’s father, my former husband, also grew up in the mud of an absent father, suffering in the presence of a critical, disapproving mother. He made sure his inheritance skipped his generation and was left in trust as an annuity for our son. The mud of his suffering allowed him to bloom into a loving, supportive provider for our son, who plans to invest part of the funds in himself to obtain an MBA.

Thich Naht Hanh says that getting in touch with our own suffering, recognizing it rather than avoiding it, helps us see another person’s suffering and helps compassion be born in our heart. “A majority of us do not like to get into touch with our suffering,” he says, "but when we do, and try to understand it, we suffer less and can help others do that too." In that spirit, I called the men in my life who are important to me yesterday, including my brother and ex-husband, to acknowledge and honor the lotus in them and wish them a Happy Father’s Day.

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.