You Must Die to Live: Good Friday & Forgiveness

The cranes are gone, the field where they gather now disked and fallow. Its hay is baled, stacked in the distance. Tomato plant stalks, desiccated ivy vines, dead leaves, raked from my garden, now fill white, plastic bags leaning against the brown adobe wall. Dried zinnia stalks and a dead rose bush will follow. Death is evident today, Good Friday, as I remember a dear friend who also died on Good Friday five years ago. I contemplate the ways I am dying.  

“You must die to live,” a spiritual mentor told me. Such a beautiful paradox. Allowing my old thoughts, beliefs, habits, experiences, ways of being in the world to die creates the space for new thoughts, beliefs, habits, experiences, ways of being to bring new life. I am always dying. New life is always beginning. Dr. Deepak Chopra says we have a new body every seven years since old cells that die are replaced by new ones. Iris and tulip bulbs have pushed green shoots through the garden’s soil. Bright yellow daffodils are open, new life accompanies death.

Each moment we expand our consciousness, its old form ceases to exist. Since consciousness creates, the person we were also ceases to exist, replaced by a new expression. Talking with a friend about forgiveness this week reminded the Spiritual Adventuress she is not the same person she was thirty years ago when she began forgiveness work on her father. In her dysfunctional family where alcoholism was present, anger and domestic violence were also present. Her father beat his three children. She viscerally hated him. Not his behavior, as a well-meaning listener recently suggested, attempting to spin the truth. She hated him. The spinner didn’t have to live with the father who handcrafted a butcher knife then chased their mother with it, kicked a hole in the front door in the middle of the night, forced his children to watch the bloody butchering of chickens while he smiled sadistically and kicked their pet dog and a cat.

Reading a letter at my father’s graveside after attending a profound personal growth workshop was the first step on a long journey of forgiveness. Over time, as my consciousness expanded, the depth of my understanding and my ability to forgive would ripple outward in concentric circles like pebble-disturbed pond water. Years passed. Layer after layer of understanding and forgiveness arose to be cleared in turn.

Hearing a mentor describe her own transformation, lessons of forgiveness, victimization and abuse, I realized that like her, I chose to take an initiation in the abuse of power. By experiencing how terrible the abuse of power is, how awful it feels, both of us learned how to be women of power and passion who could make a difference in the world without ever abusing that power. At a subsequent workshop, she opened my mind to the possibility that I not only chose the initiation, but also my parents and family. I accept two premises as true. First, each of us has free will, or choice. Second, life is eternal since quantum physics shows energy is indestructible, it simply changes form. Therefore, I could only conclude I am at choice - before I came here, while I am here and when I leave here. I then realized I chose my parents, my family and experiences as part of my soul’s journey. I took responsibility for my soul choices – the initiation and the father I had. Living in a consciousness of increased responsibility and decreased blame lifted me to the next level of forgiveness.

Meditatively walking on the beach in Santa Barbara, contemplating my family, I felt again my deepest wound. While mentally pointing my right index finger at my father, and saying in condemnation, “You didn’t see me for who I really am,” I realized the third, fourth and fifth fingers of the same hand were pointing back at me. I didn’t see my father for who he really was. He too was an expression of God. I acknowledged it’s pretty hard to see someone as an expression of God when they are beating the heck out of you. Waves of peace bathed me in these realizations. Surely I had finally finished forgiving my father. Once you know someone is an expression of God, where do you go after that? When I told this story to a woman at church, she said, “Well, you could love your father.” Oh.

The next ripple occurred during the ayahuasca ceremony when sentient beings asked me if I would like to acknowledge my father. “Yes,” I answered, realizing my father had never been acknowledged for playing his part. “Thank you, Dad,” I said. Surely now the forgiveness process was complete. But, no, there was still more.

When I returned to Peru the following year, I stayed at Willka T’ika (Sacred Flower) Garden Guest House in the Sacred Valley. The magnificent gardens, overflowing with beautiful, fragrant, flowers of every hue and variety, correspond to the chakras, or energy centers, of the body. Meditating in the Heart Garden, I had a clairaudient experience. The garden asked me, “Is your heart big enough to love your father?” “Yes,” I answered, feeling completely at peace in expanded awareness.

Gifted writer Anne Lamott says unforgiveness is ". . .like swallowing rat poison and waiting for the rat to die."  Perhaps resistance to forgiving someone else is actually resistance to forgiving ourselves. “Forgiveness can take place in the twinkling of an eye, unless you're addicted to suffering," says Edwene Gaines. What I know for myself is forgiveness takes place after anger has had its say and whenever it is ready.

My consciousness of forgiveness continues to ripple outward, deeper and deeper into the divine matrix. The people in our lives are reflections of us. We are looking in a mirror. When I asked myself, “How is what I say about my father true about me?” I realized I was not only the abused, but also the abuser, not only the victim, but also the perpetrator – I abused my body with food. When I saw what was in him was in me, all separation melted away. In meditation, the realization came, “I and my father are one.” This seventh expansion in my forgiveness process reminded me of a well-known teaching. Forgiveness is to be done seventy times seven, or until it is complete.

Last week, completing the fourth step of a 12-step program, I forgave myself for being unforgiving of myself. “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do,” is but one of the gifts of Good Friday.

Kissed by a Shaman

“Es un regalo para usted, con un corazon lleno,” I said to the shaman, holding out to him a dark green gift box of loose, pouch tobacco with both hands, bowing as I met him. With spontaneous, childlike delight, the ninety-year-old shaman kissed me on the cheek, the white stubble of his beard scraping my face. I awoke this morning thinking of the ayahuasca ceremony I attended with Don Ignacio, knowing the Spiritual Adventuress needed to write about it this week, still not knowing why. What I said to him in Spanish was, “It is a gift for you, with a full heart.” My heart was filled with gratitude for the spiritual journey he would take us on that evening in the Amazon jungle in Peru. Today’s quotation for the 21-Day Perfect Health Meditation Challenge with Deepak Chopra and Oprah is from Carl Jung: "Your visions will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes."  We were with Don Ignacio to look inside, to see visions, to awake.

Ayahuasca is an herbal tea made from a jungle vine. It is called “the teacher plant” for the knowledge, both personal and cosmic, it brings with visions and expanded consciousness. Also called “la purga” for its purgative nature, it is almost always accompanied by vomiting and diarrhea. An entheogenic, (or hallucinogenic, or psychedelic), it connects participants with the divinity within. It has been used in sacred ceremony by indigenous people for thousands of years, but in the United States, it is a class-one, controlled substance, a serotonin uptake inhibitor that affects brain chemistry. It is to be treated with respect.

Eighteen of us, with our spiritual leader, Edwene Gaines, traveled forty-five minutes by bus into the jungle, over wood-plank bridges and streams, to reach Don Ignacio’s small village. When we climbed the steps of the thatch-roofed building where the ceremony would take place, we were handed a small bowl for purging. I decided I would release through breath instead. Thunder cracked. Lightening flashed. Rain began to fall. “In the Native American tradition, it is said that where spiritual warriors are gathered, thunder and lightening are present,” said Edwene. We would spend the night in the jungle. The bus could not navigate the mud in the dark.

We sat on the floor in a circle. The shaman’s assistant came around with a first, small dose of ayahuasca, and when it wore off, to check our reaction. He then asked if we would like more. “My teacher doesn’t recommend it,” I answered, without saying yes or no. He continued on around the circle, giving me time to process my response. I recalled she also teaches, “You must listen to your guidance.” Mine told me to take the second dose. Watching others receive the drink mindfully, prayerfully and with sacred intention, I touched the cup to each of my chakras and drank from it slowly.

While waiting the twenty to thirty minutes for it to take effect, I kept changing position and location in the circle, trying to relieve pain in my lower back. I ended up sitting in a white, plastic patio chair directly opposite the shaman. A Peruvian woman I met on Kauai selling timeshares told me she had done ayahuasca and recommended I sit up straight after taking it to avoid falling asleep. Her advice was prophetic. Everyone else fell asleep.

A woman in the tour group who was always putting her feet inside roped-off sacred areas at Machu Picchu, or on a shaman’s cloak, which I pointed out to her thinking it disrespectful, wound up at my feet that night complaining and saying she wanted to go home. “What about just being here now?” I asked. “It’s too painful,” she answered. “Embrace the pain,” I told her as a spiritual teacher once told me. Months later I realized it wasn’t disrespect, but great faith, that motivated her to put her feet where she did. She knew if she “touched the hem of the garment,” she would be healed. Feet represent understanding. My judgment needed to die so I could live from the truth of my being. She awakened me to humility, service, divine order.

The shaman began by shaking a ritual bundle of dried leaves and singing hypnotic icaros, rhythmic melodies, inviting the medicina to do its work. The visions came, visions of beautifully-patterned, undulating snakes, lush plants, tiny cartoonlike fear thoughts saying, “Tengo miedo” (“I’m afraid”) while peeking out from the folds of my intestines. Disembodied entities spoke with me as the teacher plant revealed insights, allowed me to make choices, create, heal. Jungle animals and birds outside squawked, called, making noises throughout the night. Just before dawn, the energy in the room shifted, like a motor winding down. A bat flew down from the rafters, circled the room three times, brushing the walls with its wings until it extinguished the flame of the candle in a wall sconce on its final pass, throwing the room into complete darkness. Soon, the glowing tip of the assistant shaman’s cigarette provided the only light. “It was good for me,” I said, asking, “Was it good for you?”

A glimmer at the edge of consciousness suggests writing about this now is apropos since the Peru trip was at this time of year, around Easter, a time of death and resurrection. After a guided meditation on another occasion, I told Edwene what I had seen: “I was on the Snow White ride at Disneyland, and the Wicked Witch, who had your face, held out an apple to me saying, ‘Have an apple, dearie.’ I did not understand why I had to eat a poisoned apple.” Edwene replied clearly, “You must die to live.” As I work now during this season of Lent to expand my consciousness through the meditation challenge and 4T programs, what is ready to die, what needs to be purged, is revealed. “4T” stands for Tithing of Time, Talent and Treasure for Prosperity and the Fullness of Life. It is modeled on 12-step programs, and this is the fourth week, the week to take a searching and fearless inventory of yourself.    

Through its wisdom and perfection, my body suspended all elimination and purging needs during the entire night with the shaman. Deepak Chopra said this week that the real secret to lifelong good health is the opposite of the conventional wisdom that we must take care of ourselves: “We must allow our bodies to take care of us.” It was an “aha” moment for me. My job, as I see it now, is to get out of the way, to suspend thoughts and behaviors that interfere with my body taking good care of me. This Lenten season, that is how I will die to live.

Meditation Invitation

Last week, the Spiritual Adventuress used the phrase "peace that passes all understanding" in closing her blog post. Synchronistically, Deepak Chopra, whom she also mentioned in the post, used the same phrase in his "Tips for Meditation" she received by email today to assist her in preparing for the free "21 Day Meditation Challenge - Perfect Health" he and Oprah are starting on Monday. So it seems appropriate to send out this special edition of Spiritual Adventuress to invite you to join me in establishing a new habit of Perfect Health in the next 21 days. You can sign up for free and download a beautiful meditation doorhanger depicting the Buddha at

http://www.oprah.com/own/First-Look-Deepak-Chopras-21-Day-Meditation-Challenge-Video

What is Meditation?

Deepak Defines Meditation – Everyone thinks that the purpose of meditation is to handle stress, to tune out, to get away from it all. While that's partially true, the real purpose of meditation is actually to tune in, not to get away from it all, but to get in touch with it all. Not to just de-stress, but to find that peace within, the peace that spiritual traditions talk about that passes all understanding. So, meditation is a way to get in the space between your thoughts. You have a thought here, a thought here, and there's little space between every thought.

According to wisdom traditions, this space between the thought is the window, is the corridor, is the vortex to the infinite mind – the mystery that some people call the spirit or God. We don't have to use those terms, but it's your core consciousness. And the more we learn about this space between thoughts, we find certain things to be true of it:

• It's a field of infinite possibilities – infinite possibilities, pure potentiality.
• Everything is connected to everything else.
• It's a space of infinite creativity, infinite imagination.
• It is a place where there is something called observer effect, or the power of intention, which means intention is very powerful when brought to this space and it orchestrates its own fulfillment – what people call the law of attraction – so those are wonderful qualities of your own spirit.

In meditation, we get into this space so we find ourselves infinite possibilities, infinite correlation, infinite creativity, infinite imagination, and infinite power of intention. That's what meditation is really about.

Where to Meditate

Since these are guided meditations, you can plug in, close your eyes, and go within in any safe place you choose where you will not be disturbed.

When to Meditate

Morning and evening coincide with our body's quieter rhythms. Our body knows how to be still; we just have to give it opportunity. Studies show that routines begun in the morning last the longest, but any time you look forward to meditating is the right time.

Body Position

Being comfortable is most important. It is preferable to sit up straight on the floor or on a chair to help cultivate alertness, but if you are ill or need to lie down, that is fine. The mind has been conditioned to sleep when the body is lying down so you may feel sleepier. Your hands can relax on your lap, palms up or any way that you feel most open.

Thoughts

Thoughts will inevitably drift in and dance around your mind, but that's normal. Don't try to do anything with them – let them be. If you find yourself thinking about what's passing through your mind, just return to focusing your awareness on the mantra or your breath – you will soon slip into the space between thoughts.

Breath Meditation Length

When we pay attention to our breath, we are in the present moment. In an unforced, natural rhythm, allow your breath to flow in and out, easily and effortlessly.

Meditation Length 

The effects of meditation are cumulative, and setting aside as little as 15 minutes a day to retreat and rejuvenate is beneficial. Many schools of meditation prescribe 30 minutes of meditation twice a day, and as your meditation practice evolves, you can extend your time. It's better to spend just a few minutes meditating every day rather than meditating for an hour a week.

The Five Things That Can Happen During Meditation

During meditation, five things can happen:

1. We can experience thoughts.
2. We can mentally repeat the mantra.
3. We can have thoughts and repeat the mantra at the same time. If this happens to you, place greater attention on the mantra.
4. Our thoughts and the mantra can cancel each other out, and we can slip into that place of stillness between our thoughts, the "gap."
5. We can fall asleep. If you fall asleep, when you awaken and if time permits, allow yourself about five or ten minutes to complete your meditation.

Mysterious Ways. . .

At the age of ten, more than fifty years ago, the Spiritual Adventuress lived in Albuquerque, NM for a year. Her father was stationed at Sandia Base. A career Navy man, stationed right in the middle of the desert??? Hmmmm. . . there’s got to be more to that story. A little internet detective work reveals that in the months leading up to successful detonation of the first atomic bomb, J. Robert Oppenheimer, Director of Los Alamos Laboratory, began looking for a new site for continuing weapons development, testing and bomb assembly. At what came to be known as “Sandia Base,” (now part of Kirtland Air Force Base) secure facilities were constructed as a primary campus for the forerunner of Sandia National Laboratories with a second location in Livermore, CA. We also lived in Livermore. Coincidence? It's amazing to discover how little you actually know about your parents. It's amazing to discover how little you actually know about your own life. There's also a lot more to New Mexico than meets the eye. What is the connection? Why am I here? Will it remain a mystery?

Over the Christmas holidays, when my son Grant was visiting from California, we stopped for lunch at the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center on our way to see the “Sky City,” or Acoma, Pueblo built on top of a 367’ high mesa. “Why are you so interested in the Pueblo Indians?” he inquired. Intrigued by his question, I trust my answer will leave him with one less parental mystery. “When I was ten years old. . . (Oh! And living in New Mexico!), I read a book called Chi-Wee, Girl of the Pueblo, the story of a curious, adventurous, courageous girl, who, like me, had long, dark braids, loved her mother and grandmother, longed for a brother and had no father at home. I didn’t fully understand, until more than forty years later, why I loved that book so much. One of my real estate clients in San Clemente, CA, an attorney, mentioned his favorite childhood book was Chi-Wee, Girl of the Pueblo. I was astonished by our shared connection to and love for the book. I requested it from the library and was able to read it again, discovering the deep resonance in our lives. In a way beyond words, Chi-Wee helped me understand my life. After so many years, she was still alive in my heart. She let me feel the power of story. Now I’ve returned to write.”

"There are no accidents. . . there is only some purpose that we haven't yet understood,"  states Deepak Chopra, author of 65 books and one of the TIME 100 (Most Influential People in the World). Personal experience verifies the truth of his statement. It took more than thirty years for the purpose of a car-accident scar on my forehead to reveal itself. It was an integral part of the healing of Grant’s stage-four melanoma and our journey through it together.

How could a car accident before Grant’s birth prepare me for his illness? Only in an astonishing way. Bill King, yet to become Grant’s father, was driving me to teach school one morning in our metallic-green Oldsmobile Toronado, a large, 4,496 pound, front-wheel-drive car. The day was clear and sunny, the sky blue. We were stopped at a red light, when WHAM!! A school bus from the district I taught in, fortunately empty at the time, rear-ended us, crushing the back half of our car. My eyeglasses flew off my face into the back seat. My head hit the windshield, my forehead split open and blood ruined my brown suede coat. After the impact, I only remember sitting on the curb with my hand on my forehead. From the police report, I later learned the school bus knocked our car one hundred and seventy feet from a dead stop. The car was totaled. I had a concussion accompanied by a terrible headache with a metallic smell. The doctor had me lie flat on my back for nine days. The headache eventually went away, but the inch-long scar on my right forehead remained.

Thirty-five years later, Grant and I met at our favorite breakfast place in downtown Santa Barbara, The Cajun Kitchen. We slid across brown naugahyde bench seats on opposite sides of the booth, a dark-brown formica table top between us. Ice tea and coffee arrived immediately in this place for locals where everyone knows your name and your order. The conversation turned to Grant’s health and treatment. I told him about the car accident and the following story.

“Recently, I noticed an irregular mole growing on my right forehead next to the car-accident scar. It was dark and rough in texture. It began to change size, shape, color. I knew I needed to have it checked. Before I could make an appointment, it disappeared. Disappeared. Not only the mole disappeared, the scar disappeared too. I asked Janet, my writing partner who is a breast cancer survivor, to pray for your healing. She is a devout Catholic, very involved in her church, a person of deep faith. She even takes the eucharist, or communion, to shut-ins in her parish. Janet said she prayed for you to be healed. She told me, ‘I asked the Blessed Mother to give you a sign you could not mistake.’ ”

Reaching across the restaurant table, I took Grant’s hand in mine. Lifting my hair back away from my face, I rubbed his fingers back and forth across my smooth forehead. “It’s gone,” I said to him. “Gone.” And that possibility became a tangible reality for him.

Life works in mysterious ways. Sometimes we have the privilege of seeing its perfection and realizing nothing happens by accident. From our own direct experience, we can learn to trust that everything is always in divine order. . . and to receive a gift of grace, the peace that passes all understanding. 

Sherman Alexie Is Eating My Bulbs

"Something is eating my bulbs," the Spiritual Adventuress emergency emailed her Garden Guru neighbor Betsy. "What do I use to ward them off? Lion urine? Wing of bat?” Many fall hours were spent planting 200 individual daffodil, tulip and hyacinth bulbs in holes lined with bone meal anticipating glorious yellow, pink, purple and blue spring blooms. Another neighbor walking her dogs said, “Squirrels do that,” and I knew there was at least one grey one with a plumed tail around. I’d heard him romping on my roof, watched him running up stucco walls, seen him nibbling pyracantha berries through my front window and noticed the neighbor’s cat stalking him on her roof.

Greeting me over our now-dormant, morning-glory fence, Betsy told me, “I think Sherman Alexie is doing it.” She was referring to an earlier conversation we had during which a grey squirrel ran across the yard and stopped to stare at us. When we finished talking about a local book signing I attended with the award-winning, Native American short story writer, I went inside to finish reading TIME magazine. The Q&A feature was about. . . Sherman Alexie. In a blurb at the top of the page, Alexie said his power animal was. . . the squirrel, because everyone else chooses a predator for their power animal. TIME called Alexie “mordantly funny.” From her comment, I could see Betsy is mordantly funny too. Should I write Alexie, or, better yet, have an attorney write Alexie a cease-and-desist letter about eating my bulbs? Or follow Betsy’s first suggestion? Google “What’s eating my bulbs?” then consult the pull-down menu for solutions.

Following her first suggestion led to an entertaining online conversation thread and creative potential solutions. If you have ever felt alone, you will learn you are not. Everything is connected. Someone, somewhere has faced your challenge before and done their best to cope with it by using crushed oyster shells, hot sauce, hot pepper flakes, chicken wire, blood meal, mothballs, bulb cages, cats, mesh hardware cloth, a trap, sling shot, pellet gun, human urine, or just planting deeper and feeding squirrels at the birdfeeder. The give and take, like a call-and-response, was enlightening:

“My husband has some hot sauce he bought at the Renaissance Faire called Satan’s Blood, and you have to sign something just to buy this stuff. I have wondered about putting some on a bulb just for them. You are supposed to use just a drop in a whole pot of chili.  Don't do the hot pepper. They get it on their paws, they rub their eyes. Not good. So don't do that.”

“Feed them. That helps. I have a birdfeeder that the squirrels eat from, and they have not bothered my bulbs yet. Maybe it is just in our yard, but when I have tried feeding the squirrels, they descend upon the yard in droves. Once the feeder is emptied of peanuts, they come into the yard and begin to dig. So feeding actually made the original digging problem worse. Perhaps our squirrels are special : ) Maybe mine are just lazy! They dig so well they should be helping me plant. They can have a share if they do some of the work.”

The most creative answer (although I question its veracity!) was fried squirrel, or move: “I bought a live trap at the hardware store designed for rabbits or squirrels. I set it out in my garden and baited it. When I caught a squirrel, I took it on the back porch, dispatched it, skinned, gutted, cut into pieces. Inside for a good wash and soak, coat in flour, salt, cook in hot oil until done. Yummy! I took out about a dozen squirrels that way before they quit coming around. It handled the situation for the year, but then I moved to a neighborhood that doesn't have squirrels (very new area, no established trees). So I'll have to go out hunting if I want squirrel dinner, rather than letting the little fellows come to me.”

My solution was to tamp down the disturbed garden soil and water down the flower bed thinking this cat-litter-box solution might also be a squirrel-bulb-eating solution. Keep the soil damp since they don’t like muddy paws. There’s been no further digging. Enjoying the whole experience just as it is, is a spiritual practice. Let it be. Choose peace. Recognizing the universality of the experience, how everything, everyone, is connected, is a spiritual experience. Enjoying the humor of incredible synchronicities, confirms cosmic playfulness and divine order. All these illustrate the following pronouncements of essential truth from Deepak Chopra, author of 65 books, and one of the TIME 100 (Most Influential People in the World):

“The healthiest response to life is joy.”

“The purpose of life is the expansion of happiness.”

“According to Vedanta, there are only two symptoms of enlightenment, just two indications that a transformation is taking place within you toward a higher consciousness. The first symptom is that you stop worrying. Things don't bother you anymore. You become light-hearted and full of joy. The second symptom is that you encounter more and more meaningful coincidences in your life, more and more synchronicities. And this accelerates to the point where you actually experience the miraculous.”

The 11th Commandment

What if? What if you could write the 11^th commandment? What would it be? What would make the most difference in your life? In the lives of others? What if you lived by it?

Is it heresy? Is it presumptuous to think of adding to the original ten covenants between the Hebrew people and their Creator? Don’t lie, don’t steal, don’t kill, honor your father and mother - for many, these are part of the collective consciousness. If consciousness, like the Universe, is continually expanding, perhaps an 11^th is an inherent part of natural growth and change.

The opportunity to expand on the ten was recently presented to a spiritual community of which I am a part. Interactive. That’s the key word. Co-creation is another. It’s no longer enough to watch CNN News, we have to Facebook and Twitter about it during the broadcast, becoming part of the news with others, co-creating it. During the past month, community members submitted their ideas for an 11^th commandment. There were thirty submissions, fourteen finalists, votes for top three, one final choice.

Some had fun with it. . .

• You shall eat chocolate in any form.
• You shall not upgrade to the latest electronic gear, even if it is shiny, just because you want it.

From 8-10 year olds. . .

• Be good. Be helpful.
• Love and respect each other.

Some were familiar. . .

• Be kind and gentle.
• Breathe before you speak.
• Don’t believe everything you think.

Among the finalists were. . .

• You shall not abuse or ignore your physical temple.
• You shall create peace in your heart, in your life and in your world.
• You shall not take things personally.
• You shall honor the earth; protect and preserve her flora, fauna and natural resources.
• You shall always remember that you are Love. Love everyone – no exceptions.

Author, and member of the TIME 100 (Most Influential People in the World), Deepak Chopra says, “When you make a choice, you change the future.” Choosing to live by a commandment has that impact. What about the commandments we, consciously or unconsciously, give ourselves? Some of the choices we make occur before the age of five. Those decisions can have the impact of commandments. The Spiritual Adventuress gave herself a commandment at age two, when startled awake in the middle of the night by the wailing siren of a New York City fire engine. While crying, when no one came to pick her up and comfort her, she commanded herself, “You’re on your own,” changing her future. She became an independent contractor as a real estate agent – working on her own. Her marriage ended in divorce, leaving her on her own. She became a single parent, raising her son on her own. After many years of personal growth work, the impact of that hidden commandment became apparent. And with it, came a gift - the power to choose a new commandment, and with it, the future. What commandment have you given yourself? If it is an unconscious one, it can be detected and deduced by observing life patterns which may no longer serve you. As its final choice, the spiritual community decided on its 11^th commandment, changing its future: “You shall remember always that you are an expression of the Divine; you shall know your own divinity and live from it.”

Follow the Drinking Gourd

In honor of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day, a beautiful baritone voice sang “Follow the Drinking Gourd,” the song of slaves making their way north to freedom along the Underground Railroad by following the Big Dipper constellation, or “drinking gourd,” which points to the North Star.

A drinking gourd was part of the daily physical reality of slaves who drank water from it. In stellar form, it was a spiritual reality from which they could drink hope, guidance and freedom. Symbolically, water, necessary for life, represents spirit. The Big Dipper consists of seven stars. Metaphysically, seven is the number of completion. The slaves could complete not only their physical journey to freedom guided by the North Star, but also their spiritual journey into an awareness of themselves as whole, equal and complete expressions of Spirit. The North Star trued them up, kept them on course, both physically and spiritually.

It is interesting to note that not only is the North Star the brightest star in the Ursa Minor constellation, it is 2.5 times brighter today than when Ptolemy observed it according to research reported in Science magazine. Astronomer Edward Guinan considers this to be a remarkable rate of change. He says, "If they are real, these changes are 100 times larger than [those] predicted by current theories of stellar evolution." Change. A remarkable rate of change. Increasing brightness of a guiding light. Certainly these are relevant themes in our lives today, both individually and collectively.  

The inaugural speech addressed rapid changes taking place in our country and our world. It set a course still in alignment with the North Star of the Drinking Gourd, weaving together the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the inauguration of a new legacy on the same day: “We, the people, declare today that the most evident of truths – that all of us are created equal – is the star that guides us still; just as it guided our forebears through Seneca Falls, and Selma, and Stonewall; just as it guided all those men and women, sung and unsung, who left footprints along this great Mall, to hear a preacher say that we cannot walk alone; to hear a King proclaim that our individual freedom is inextricably bound to the freedom of every soul on Earth.” For the first time, women’s rights, African-American rights, gay and lesbian rights were combined as civil rights in an inaugural speech – the increasing brightness of a guiding light.

For the first time in several years, the Spiritual Adventuress found the usual, year-end rituals to release the past and intend the future held no energy or inspiration, but asking herself some questions about her North Star did.  What is your North Star this year? How will you emancipate yourself? What path takes you to freedom? What star will guide you to your destination? Reflecting on the inauguration contributed too. What are you inaugurating, beginning, starting, creating in your life? Choosing touchstone values as a guiding North Star for the year can be energizing and inspiring. This approach was fulfilling and successful once before when the Spiritual Adventuress used darshan, or an audience, with Mother Meera to determine her North Star while editing a book.

Mother Meera, born Kamala Reddy in 1960, is believed by her devotees to be an embodiment (Avatar) of the Divine Mother (Shakti or Devi). Several years ago, there was an opportunity to see her face-to-face at UCLA. The audience was conducted completely in meditative silence. When it was time for the Spiritual Adventuress to edit a friend’s book about energy gardens she created in Peru’s Sacred Valley (Chakra Gardens: Opening the Senses of the Soul), determining the editor’s role was essential. Clearly it was to keep the book in the writer’s voice, not the editor’s. Clearly it was to assure the book channeled the highest light or spoke the greatest truth. Additional guidance for the editing process came from extracting the essential qualities of the darshan experience with Mother Meera: Surrender, Devotion, Humility, Compassion and Service. These qualities became the North Star that guided the way whenever a decision had to be made about how to proceed. The book was selected as Best Metaphysical Book of 2010 by Writer’s Digest. The guiding light showed the way. When we are open and receptive, guidance can appear in a variety of ways, even as a drinking gourd pointing to a star and freedom.