Glen Velez will take you Open to God Now......

OHMYGOD!

A Goddess Remembered

I'm an independent student of David Deida's, and I must say: it's rockin' my world!!!!
Through his brilliant, comprehensive understanding of the function, form and *glow* of the masculine-feminine essence, I have come to clarify and integrate deeper stratas of my own core nature.

Being a feminine woman, I naturally expand my Light, my Radiance and my Love into the depths of masculine consciousness when I am seen, praised and blossomed 'open to God' by the unwavering heart-presence of the masculine. This may happen in many ways, from the mundane to the sublime....

Because my emerging feminine light wasn't consistently exalted and praised by a healthy, masculine heart-presence when I was growing up, I developed a pseudo-masculine shell to guard the vulnerabilities and the wounds of my sensitive, feminine nature. Because my feminine light had been violated sexually in different ways at different times, this shell became rigid and was reinforced by embodied archetypes such as *solitary warrior*, *kick-ass feminist*, and *angry, don't-fuck-with-me radical*.

My extraordinarily soulful feminine essence temporarily retreated into deeper realms of light within the Sacred Mysteries of my inner imaginative worlds. Through poetry, dance, theatre, and sensual expression I learned to keep my secret Goddess twirling ecstatically in my private inner Temples. I walked amongst PJ Peeps as a Priestess in disguise, camouflaged by a pseudo-masculine shell, hiding the richness of my feminine loves in well-established defense mechanisms, androgynous aesthetics and pseudo masculine pursuits and character traits.

My epic high school sweetie, *J*, was the first man to fully blossom me open to God with his unwavering consciousness, his noble and majestic heart, his honour and praise of my feminine gifts. He lovingly penetrated, protected and awakened my feminine light back into a healthy, luminous state. It was *J* who re empowered my feminine in the most respectful, caring and powerful way as he continued to open me to receive the masculine safely, lovingly, powerfully.
(Thank you, *J*....I love you eternally.)

Spiritually, I was blossomed open to God by my grade 12 English teacher Mr. Wells, who perceived my vibrant feminine heart in exile and hiding, stuck within layers of the crusty, lifeless religious dogmas that denied me my divine power. So, as a Catholic School Board certified teacher, Mr. Wells deliberately and strategically blossomed my feminine light with his masculine consciousness.

He listened, unwaveringly, to my free-form poems which exalted the silvery light of the full moon, which spoke of dancing forms in the branches of the trees, and haunting whispers in the night wind. Mr. Wells lovingly encouraged me to keep writing the streams-of-consciousness which flowed from my heart, and I did, fervently. I quickly discovered an inner well-spring of potent images and archetypal forces. Hidden feminine treasures, sensations, and dreamy Goddess musings all revealed the core truth of who I REALLY was and came spiraling out into the unwavering presence of Mr.Wells' masculine attention and guided mentorship.

Toward the end of the final semester, Mr. Wells took action in a way which still utterly astounds me to this day. By surprise, he wheeled a VCR into the room and told us we would be watching a documentary film for most of the class. Before he turned out the lights he looked at me and held my gaze for a moment with a power and strength I will always remember.

The film we watched that fateful day was 'The Goddess Remembered', an NFB documentary about the modern Neo-Pagan Movement of North America. Mr. Wells risked a courageous and brave act by showing this film in a Catholic High School in the late 80's. He clearly did this to blossom me open to God, and to spiritually praise my inner feminine radiance in a way that had never occurred for me in all my life. As a Wiccan Elder later shared with me, it is a long-standing ancestral tradition for a Male Priest to initiate a Female Priestess into the Knowledge of the Mysteries, and vice-versa.

Never has a film had such a direct impact on my awakening and my life path. I sat, mesmerized and awed and shuddering with tears in the back of the room. I had finally returned Home. This was my Tribe, these were my People and my radiant feminine heart was once again reclaimed by the Old Gods...glowing and radiant and finally, after a lonely walk along alienating religious paths, remembered and truly seen.

When the film was over, Mr. Wells turned on the light, and again, met my eyes. They were puffy, mascara-smeared and full of timeless, ancestral tears. And once again, Mr. Wells risked something radical by giving us a unique creative writing assignment. He asked us all to write a short fictional story on Paganism using the film we had just watched as reference and recommended further resources such as The White Goddess by Robert Graves.

This writing assignment was a 360* paradigm shift for me. It forever altered the state of my Beingness. It was then that I began to access Ancestral Memory. Perhaps it was even past-life recall, for the names, the places, the images and the story emerged with such great awareness, I felt I was walking 'between the worlds'. I was a conduit for the story I was writing which I called 'My Soul Dances On'.

I began having lucid dreams at this time. In one dream I encountered an Old Welsh God named Bran the Blessed whose fiery masculine gaze penetrated my bones and lay bare everything I thought myself to be. I discovered Ogham and learned about the shamanic power of entheogens. I typed feverishly until the wee hours of the morning until a most magical story, three times the length of the original assignment, catalyzed and crystallized into the poetic words I birthed from the very breath of my soul.

Mr. Wells awoke the Sacred Feminine in me, and he knew it. Only weeks before the end of the year he and I stood together in the hall, his hands returning my completed story, his powerful gaze penetrating me. With a slight tremble in his voice he spoke of how he had read my story over and over again with great attention and appreciation. He openly praised me as his eyes glistened. Apparently no other student had approached writing about Paganism with any real depth or sensitivity. The breath of vision I had written with had moved him with magnificence. I looked down and saw he had given me a 98% final mark. (2% had been deducted due to lateness.)

At this powerful spiritual crossroads I did not yet know that I would find myself later that year standing with arms outstretched to the wind at Stonehenge, remembering, opening, being activated by timeless portals. Wearing my vintage black velvet opera cloak, long hair wild in the open wind and weathered sarsen stones in the background, my mother took a picture of me. Looking through the lens at her freshly awakened daughter, my mother said: "You look..... ancient."

Smiling, eyes aglow with radiance and love, I silently responded, 'Yes I am ancient, mum. I am a Goddess Remembered...............'

And I have since vowed never to forget.

May the Great Dream of our Ancestors

Inspire Heartful Action
Guiding us ever onward
as the Living Embodiment of their Eternal Light
~Amaya O'Duir~

10/22/09

The day the sun moved into Scorpio, I partially witnessed a terrible accident. An SUV struck a man on a scooter in the middle of an intersection. After hearing a most dreadful sound I turned around to see the man splayed in front of the wheels of the car, face down on the concrete, unmoving.

I don't know if he is alive or dead, comatose or recovering. I may never know. It was a bad impact, and I was deeply traumatized and shocked by it all.

All I knew to do was stand on the sidewalk with my arms extended, beaming Reiki, praying aloud. When I reluctantly decided to leave and return home, I trembled with shock and frozen tears.

The poem below I wrote in honour of this tragic happening which deeply moved me, and has forever changed me. I am going to create a shrine near the scene of the accident and will include this poem.

these are simple words
human words
compassion words
words humble
and so careful not to disappear as tears

these words i shape for you
are what i have to give
and i give them to your freely
the brother i never knew

it was here i heard that dreadful sound
saw you crudely spilled on concrete
face-down, unmoving
in the middle of this road

yes you could have been my lover
could have been my friend
a cousin or even my son
you could have been my father
or my uncle too

nameless brother without face
into the circle of your tragedy
my heart cracked open wide
wider into the circle of this life
i gift these words to you

the sacred act of witness
is a precious and vulnerable thing
so fragile so blessed is this human life
such a gift
to have these words
this moment
this heart

I am you, and you are me and together we are three

sOuL mAtEs

Phew! It's a mighty catch phrase which holds a great deal of electrical charge and expectancy, a phrase which rivets and wrenches any mundane and over-domesticated heart into romantic contortions, standing what's bland and randy completely on it's head. Sometimes the very notion of a 'soul mate' is altogether dismissed as an embroidered modicum of wishful-thinking, or existentially downplayed as mere yearning best fulfilled as spiritual or religious practice.

But how can we so easily disembody and deny an ancient human desire to manifest the emanation of our heart's love in a significant other? And further deny our desire to express this affection toward a mate through our devotional senses? Yes, perhaps a longing for a soul mate is indeed a yearning to be ignited by God's Fire.......Perhaps we SHOULD first seek our alignment with Source before we search the planet far and wide for our human Beloved, our 'mavourneen daelish'.

However, we are clearly here to RELATE together, to learn valuable, intimate lessons through our diverse interconnections, to evolve our consciousness through our relationships with others. This may suggest that as we evolve, we set the inner and outer stages for more powerful alliances, and we become increasingly magnetic to the kind of relationships which magnify our Soul. And if you believe, as I do, that our Souls reincarnate throughout time, space and dimension then it is likely that we will eventually encounter more than a few folks who just 'know' and 'remember' us in our current incarnation.

Perhaps it is my potent astrological blend of Sun conjunct Venus in the 8th, with Scorpio Rising, and a birthday which falls on the Summer Solstice, because I have been blessed to have met, mated, mixed and mingled with folks I consider nothing less than Mates of My Soul. And yet every time it happens, (usually quite unexpectedly) it is so damn EPIC, fantastic, powerful, earthshaking and transformational that interactions on the mundane, daily-grind-level feel cumbersome and weighty in comparison.

Presently, I'm smack-dab in the middle of channel 99, Soul-Mate Drama. Yes folks, drama! Soooooo, YOU think soul mates just magically effervesce into our lives from celestial realms singing angelic arias in impossible octave ranges, bearing the equivalent of frankincense and myrrh after having followed your personal star back to you for eons? Think again! Your soul mate will wrench you......mirroring back to you every disowned fear, every misaligned fragment of yourself you left out in the dark, every forgotten dream, every discordant note of you that needs to come back to God/dess.......while triggering you to remember this and that which needs to be karmically resolved, and of course, all while loving you deeply, fully and magically.

You can't HIDE from a soul-mate, it's futile to even try. You'll have long, engaging conversations on the telep-o-phone, and you'll feel they're walking beside you, sometimes within you, when in linear reality they are geographical miles away. Time will dissolve. You will feel yourself more lucid and alive as though you're getting a cosmic vitamin-rush from deep space, all those trace vitamins and minerals your life has lacked for far too long. Soul-mates give you a wicked contact-high of upper frequencies because together you vibrate more Light.

You might at times feel as if you're going to super nova together when your circuitry gets so overloaded with refined electrical frequency that you start to see strobe lights pulsing in your third eye. Yet soul-mates also challenge your status quo, your prejudices, your self-limitations and anything else you've stubbornly embedded inside yourself to keep you reciting the monotone narrative you call your life. (which your soul mate may call your habit, your comfort zone, your personal hide-away grove)

Soul mates always open new doors of perception to you, forge in you new pathways. They kick your freakin' ass into gear while sending you into elated ecstasies. They sober you up with karmic buzz-kills when needed. I actually don't necessarily recommend that you make it your art to hunt your soul mate unless you've done enough inner homework to prepare for potential catharsis. Unless you are more than ready to take responsibility to align your life to it's Mission and it's Purpose. Because soul mates ALWAYS bring you a mission and a purpose for mutual growth, and the searing Truths that soul-mates activate in you might radically juxtapose your quaint version of reality.

And there isn't just one out there who can do all this, ya know. There might be 4 or 5 (your soul group) Sometimes less, sometimes more..........We tend to romantically idealize the ONE, and surely we are blessed if we encounter that ONE. Yet there are potentially many. We are linked together in a cosmic weave of synchronicity which is sometimes pretty freaky, man.

You'll definitely know exactly what I'm talking about if you've ever been on the adventurous, white-knuckle, roller-coaster ride of soul-mate-dom. If you are prepared to do the homework, or the 'om'work which is required of you in such an association, a Soul Mate relationship can ignite wondrous blisses and ecstasies beyond imagining. A soul-mate is your closer-to-god ally who is a true cosmic gift from the high-heart of above-LOVE.

When you're ready, a soul mate will come.

light bright, making things with light, what a sight makin' things with light bright

Times are a changin', honey, whether we like it or not.!Very soO o o O on we may come to realize that the time-space orientation of our bio-bodies is not just a 3-D landing pad for "mind" but is rather a multi-dimensional conduit for cosmic expression (always has been). Oh yesyes, we are quite attached to our reasoning faculties, to our 'gimme the proof, you poof' emphasis on the empirical evidence and the left-brain-heavy structures which define our man-made linear glories. However, if the real purpose of 'science' is to acknowledge and reveal the existence of a pattern or phenomenon which can't be observed directly, then we really don't need a dry and heartless approach to show us the things our eyes can't see. Follow the Heart!

We gotta get down and FEEL it folks, and I mean REALLY feel it deeply. We got some serious collective numb-bum going on with all this sitting in front of televisions and computers, in cars, at office desks. The distorted twists-of-tale (or tail??) that we call our media continually bombard our psyches with over-stimulating sensory input which further desensitizes us. Add on to that chronic sleep deprivation (from overworking in order to make modern ends meet......the stress of the mortgage, the credit interest, the car payments, the insurance bills...etc.) , malnutrition (from the consumption of over-processed, chemically induced, GMO'ed, de-natured junk foods) and dehydration (from over consumption of caffeine-based products which drug us into a false sense of liquid power, as well as refined sugars and the lack of healthy drinking water because our corporate elite has bought and sold our clean rivers for bottled export) and then suddenly, you have a very muddled and very confused human mess in serious need of rehabilitation.

Just try and run some vital energy directly from Source into THAT discombobulation of parts, and you hardly know how to distinguish fact from fiction.

The TRUTH volume has been cranked up in a serious way these days! We need to get aligned with our hearts N-O-W (actually, the deadline was quite a number of yesterday's ago but..... better late than never) unless we really do want to continue being a clan of walking zombies remotely controlled by corporate agendas.

Has your life changed dramatically in the last year? New relationships, new jobs, serious health issues, or major life passages? GOOD! This means you're aligning with Spirit as expressed through Heart, which is precisely the "scientific' observation we need to be making at present. I hypothesize that if we're not living our lives authentically and truthfully we'll be taken out of the *light-bright* game somehow as a 'wake up call'. We might our jobs, or our finances will dry up, or our girlfriend will leave us. This is like a serious spinal adjustment from the cosmic chiro, everyone. If you snooze it-you loose it, so love it or leave it.

And the light bright game is super fun to play: brighten up the light of your heart's truth and follow it's lead to your highest destiny.

It sure looks pretty in the dark too..........

Freedom and Justice For All

PROCLAMATION
OF THE SOVEREIGN
REPUBLIC OF KANATA

For more info, click here

my heart beats rhythms into vowels and consonants

There's something potent about grief that strips you naked to the core, lays bare-the-bone everything you have previously defined as your personality, your self-identity and your attachment to Self. Grief is like a little death, depending on the magnitude of your loss, because of it's capacity to radically transform your perceived reality almost instantaneously.

And yet, there is also a certain sweetness in the marrow which urges you to find rebirth through your vital channels and discover creative expression in the unpretentious realms of your sadness, longing and disappointment. After all, grief desires to be heard, to be held, and to be understood.

Perhaps this is where an embedded consolation rests; in the undulating flow of ancient tears shed by the ancestors who link us through time with a very real, and a very human, shared emotional resonance. Maybe it's the Celtic ancestral blood in me, but the bitter-sweetness of my heart's lament inevitably morphs into an archetypal force seeking song or poetry or an elemental connection to powers of change far greater than lil' ol me and my heartache.

Sure, I could use EFT, take flower essences, do some EssentialEnergyBalancingReikiQuantumsomething-or-other, or stand on my head for long enough to have a paradigm shift just to transform it all but sometimes I rather like to revel in my ability to feel so deeeeeeeeeeeeeply. Okay, maybe I'm addicted to the endorphins but sometimes I just let it be. I let it course through me in torrential downpours so I can touch vulnerability as the natural polarity to my questing invincibility. There's something illicitly delicious about an impossible longing for an unattainable desire. It's what has historically spurred on the artistic brilliance of romantic poets, and dreamy painters, after all.

*****************************************************************************************************************

I have long wondered if this unrequited longing is but a fibre of the essential longing for Divine Union with God/dess All That Is. And having been diluted into a less potent elixir called human relating, it invariably tires in over-domesticity, bringing stale disappointments while roaming the inner realms in search of the 'Kingdom of Heaven', the sacred lands of our Creator.

Our vertical connection with Source is indeed much different than our horizontal relations on the earth plane. Perhaps a marriage of the two, the ultimate union of Divine Spirit and Will, can exalt our relationships beyond their habitual, sometimes pedestrian entanglements of fear. To elevate our connections beyond the limitations of our love.

Traditional Healer Sobonfu Some spoke once of the Spirit present in each relationship, and the importance of directly acknowledging this Spirit as having been the original guiding element bringing two people together. In her Dagara tradition, this Spirit is actively "fed" through ceremony, prayer and sacred offerings as an honest plea to keep the relationship strong. Everyone you love has been brought to you by a Spirit who plays a vital role in the health and maintenance of your relationship. Everyone who loves you has come to you directly from God.

In the Living World, one plus one equals three, and the 'third' presence between two people is this Spirit, this higher link with our Creator. When we find our relationships becoming unhealthy in any way, the Spirit of Our Relationship can help us reconnect to the Universe and restore the living light to us. This requires conscious prayer and some simple offerings from the Heart toward Spirit. It can be this beautifully simple to restore the well-being of our relationships and to rediscover the higher purpose of all our relations.

**************************************************************************************

"I sleep, but my heart waketh: it is the voice of my beloved that knocketh, saying, Open to me, my sister, my love, my dove, my undefiled: for my head is filled with dew, and my locks with the drops of the night. "

-excerpt from the Song of Solomon-

Quantum K

Fantastic Quantum Healing though the Zero-Point Energy Field!

Access the Divine Potential of your own latent healing through this amazing cosmic development of Kinesiologist Andrew Kemp. And the best part is, he is gifting it to anyone and everyone free of charge. If you love it as much as I do, please pass it on!

http://www.quantumk.co.uk/quantumk_video.htm

For a new spin on the term *HOLY COW!*

A big dose of cosmic yumminess!

Crop Circle Formations of 2009:

http://www.colinandrews.net/Crop-Circles-2009.html

Divas of the Divine

Some of the most profound people I have ever encountered are the most quiet, unassuming, modest and humble folks imaginable. You can often feel their vibrant profundity like a 'contact-hit' of power ricocheting into your own being. For these kinds of evolved souls, there is nothing to "prove" in the outer world. The inner realms are already the archetypal conquests for this kind of spiritual-warrior and the mark and measure of their achievements are the very reverberations their soul casts out in alignment with Source (leaving all else to follow in that wake). The resulting expression which emerges from such a place of attunement may be artistic, musical, poetic or prayerful, yet it is rarely ego-driven or in search of any kind of 'bigness' or 'profit'.

It is unfortunate that many people in the western world have been conditioned out of their true expression to engage in a over-masculinized display of task, action and accomplishment based on tangible results and/ or material acquisition. This sadly dilutes any transpersonal and altruistic manifestations of our very humanness. When the quest for personal power is inextricably connected to external measures of gain, recognition, and the living legacies measurable on the 'outside', the innate potential for the sustaining of a universal truth-in-form becomes reduced to a fleeting 3-D apparition which will eventually fade in relevance.

I happen to know alot of people who are walking resumes of themselves. Constantly 'blowing their own horn' and dwelling in historical accomplishments which may not even be relevant to who they have become over the morphing course of time. These peoples often feel the need for constant validation through external achievement and tend to gravitate toward the people who will effectively amplify the proportions of their own personal aura of power.

I personally find this modern-day hunt approach to inter-relating tiresome, imbalanced and rather self-indulgent. I tend to drift out to the intuitive perimeters, or the fringe zones, to wait for the divine synchronicities to effectively align my core-connections. Based on the attraction of similars, I can explore being 'well-met' in my relationships with heart-minded others. The resulting collaboration is therefore greater than the sum total of it's individual parts.

Yes, sometimes this is a lonely path to take. I don't much mind though. I know that everyone is coming into their own balance of the inner polarities in their own time, in their own way, and I cherish the resonance I have with those who vibrate my soul as they do.

When we are authentic, when WE ARE WHO WE ARE without pretense, we naturally magnetize what is needed to further balance our realities toward divine expression. Yes, I do believe we are here to be Divas of the Divine!

So, what do Divas of the Divine Do?

DIVINE DIVAS:

*unabashedly express their creative authenticity even in the face of adversity*

*learn to walk away gracefully, to say NO! and take a detour when overlooked, degraded, diminished or unappreciated*

*feel comfortable being a non-conformist and openly take risks in the name of L O V E*

*dissolve attachments to personal history by embracing the infinite creative potential of the Now & Beyond*

*aren't afraid to say: "that story ain't MINE, honey, it's YOURS!*

*listen to the inner voice of truth who whispers in bodily sensation, dreams, intuitive hunches and unshakable curiosities*

*neutralise competitive and exclusive behaviour by modelling co-operation, compassion and inclusivity*

*freely express gratitude for self and others*

*laugh openly*

*follow their own blisses and kisses*

*aren't afraid to radically change the course of their lives for the sake of deeper fulfillment*

*know that Spirit walks with them, through them and beyond them*

*regularly purify the body-temple through detoxification, fasting, meditation, exercise and prayer*

*engage in subtle communications with sentient life-forms*

*forgive self and others*

*trust in the perfection of everything*

*consider the 7 generation impact of their actions on the cellular memory of their future ancestry*

*respect and honour the natural laws of harmony by walking gently with the earth and Her life forms*

*cease to make comparative observations of self or others and learn to openly accept WHAT IS as a bountiful expression of diversity*

*celebrate the joyful pleasures of the senses as a form of ecstatic prayer*

*collaborate with others on openly negotiable, equal terms which further benefit the greater good*

*spend more time thinking about what they DO want than what they DON'T*

*invite the zero-point energy field to actively participate in their highest evolutionary path of service to humanity and the planet*

*believe that anything is possible*

*learn to affect change from the abundant love in their hearts*

*openly express affection and appreciation for others*

*surrender the need to "prove" .....and instead groOooOOOove to life's wondrous rhythms!*

DANCE ON, DEAR DIVAS!

Sprouting Me: Pass the Happy, please!

During these last moons, while my blog has regrettably lain dormant in the sleepy recesses of my daily preponderances and scorpionic cataclysms, I have (yet again!) been catapulted into an unprecedented personal metamorphosis. Having finally recapitulated myself from some mighty rigorous underworld turbulence during my Pluto Square Pluto which included yet another radical residence change, the sudden dissolution of a few meaningful, yet unhealthy relationships which no longer aligned with me and further resulted in complex social politics, character assassination, and slanderous gossip, I am back in my 'Holy Flow'. Ready, eager and lucid.

THIS time, I am navigating from the inside out, rather than from the outside in. Hence the long, drawn-out silences. Hence the 'dreamtime' manner with which I trust what is unfolding in my day-to-day is perfect for me NOW. And from this graceful opening springs a curious, freshly inspired groovy-grove within me, where a vibrant seed of regeneration has sprouted:
THE LIVE FOODS PATH.

I have been vegetarian for over 15 years. Some of those years were vehemently vegan with occasions of seasonal wild salmon-eating, while ever leaning towards a fuller embodiment of the wise oracle:
Y O U A R E W H A T Y O U E A T.

I've seen this adage manifest in and on my body again and again. Too much mozzarella cheese brings me extra middle-age 'love handle' pounds, too much refined chocolate products, reoccurring spots on the face. Stimulants like Yerba Mate dehydrate me while wheat products seem to create midnight episodes of acid-reflux.

I'd certainly heard of fruitarians, breatharians, and raw foodists before but always seemed to consciously divert any meandering attention away from these more extremist life-style choices, justifying my detour back into my standardized veggie diet as a certain myopic aversion to clique-y and cultish radicalism coupled with a repulsion toward eating 'dogmas on a plate'. I was happy with smoked tofu, kamut noodles, soy cheese and nutritional yeast.

Then I ate a sprouted peanut.

Seriously!
A SPROUTED PEANUT while on Salt Spring Island and something radical happened, though a subtle, gentle and slow revolution. Now, have YOU ever eaten a fresh, sprouted peanut? Man, it was amazing!

Suddenly the synchronicities abounded, one after another, all while exploring the exquisite natural world of the Pacific Gulf Islands...swimming in small lakes, touching purple starfish bellies, watching a sky full of twinkling stars, flickering dragonflies, hummingbirds humming and orca whales curling up upon the ocean's placid surface. At R.'s yurt, I read about a magical recluse in the remote Siberian taiga who sends her 'ray' out into the world for healing, I learned about ormus and how to 'activate a seed' with the saliva before planting it in your garden.

One thing lead to another and for weeks it has been divinely interwoven. By way of the gentle deer munching on their morning grasses a mere arms length from my awed gaze, by way of the waxing and waning moon, and solar eclipse, by way of my mercurial brother R. and the wonders of Google, I have discovered that the peanut seed has planted a lush garden in my belly.

So, here I am: A 100% RAW FOODIE! (Yes, that means I'm not eating anything "cooked")
WOWeeeeeee! Do I ever feeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeel goooooooooooooooooood!

Brian Clement:
"In raw, vegan, living food – uncooked food – you have hormones from the plant and those hormones literally help to activate and increase endorphins, dopamines, and seratonin, which, in great part, are made in the stomach. They’re all happy juices and they allow you to have more elation and less “glass half empty.” And this is what we’re all trying to do because happy people do nice things for themselves and everyone else."
-excerpt from Common Ground Magazine Aug. '09

And I'm all about getting my happy on, and KEEPING it on!
Naturally.
:)

Receive and Transmit

How stingy we can be with our Love, and our Compassion, reserving it specially for life's feverish melodramas which cajole such vital elements from us as a compromise for what, in essence, wants to be truly unconditional. Our Love could be the greatest gift we ever bestow the world. Even in the most mundane of moments, Love.

Love fiercely, especially within the forgotten dimensions of the Self, for LOVE is the only true treasure whose worth multiplies as it subtracts.

And remember this: hidden in every adversity is the desperate cry for more love.
Give it freely, despite yourself.

-amaya, Salt Spring Island '09-

la la lala la la ......

cOmE cHeCk oUt mY bEadWovEn jEweLry!

@

BEADSHINE DESIGN!

Yesssssssss, I've been a busy queen bee (much to the neglect of my stale blog!)

murky-murkury mucks with me AGAIN!

hEY AlL!

My beloved PC died during this last kicker of a Mercury in Retrograde, so my already spartan blogging further receded into lotus-flower-remote-viewing vacation mode. I must say, motherboard death is certainly a funky thing to watch happen....oozing fonts in psychedelic colours and everything going super huge like it was in safe-mode for the legally blind. At first I thought we had contracted some weird internet virus suddenly let loose on truth-seeking folks like us who like our information real, but low and behold, our '97 'puter was declared an arthritic dinosaur seeking to be an organ donor at Free Geeks.

Soooooooooooooooooooooo. I'm not really back from the Retrograde phase yet. I'm trying...... but holyschmoly, does that trickster god ever like to mess with my mercurial head.

Dolphins Love You When You Go Green

Simple, natural and inexpensive ingredients can be effectively used to keep domestic environments clean and eco-happy.

Here are some homemade household cleaner recipes:

• All-Purpose Cleanser – Mix a ½ cup of pure soap (or soap flakes) with a ¼ cup of lemon juice and 1 gallon of hot water.
  
• Carpet Cleaner – Lightly sprinkle cornstarch and/or baking soda over the carpet, rub it in and then vacuum after one hour. Another suggestion is to combine a ½ cup of dish detergent with 1 pint of boiling water, cool, whip into stiff foam and apply with a damp cloth. For tough stains try using cold soda water or blot the area with vinegar and soapy water.
  
• Disinfectant – Mix 1 teaspoon of borax with 2 tablespoons of vinegar and a ¼ cup of soap with 2 cups of hot water. Adding a few drops of Tea-Tree Oil to warm water works wonders as well.
  
• Drain Cleaner – Pour ¼ cup of baking soda and ¼ cup of salt down the drain. Add ½ cup of vinegar and cover the drain with the stopper. Wait 15 minutes, then flush the drain with boiling water.
  
• Dusting Spray – Mix 1 teaspoon of olive oil with ½ cup of vinegar and apply with a soft cloth.
  
• Fabric Softener – Add ¼ cup of vinegar in the final rinse cycle.
  
• Floor Cleaner – Combine ½ cup of hydrogen peroxide with ¼ cup of vinegar and ¼ cup of washing soda with 1 gallon of warm water. Or try just ½ a cup of vinegar with 1 gallon of water.
  
• Furniture Polish - Dissolve 1 teaspoon of lemon oil in 1 cup of vegetable oil and apply with a clean rag.
  
• Glass Cleaner – Mix ½ cup of white vinegar with 1 gallon of warm water and use newspaper to clean the surface (it won't leave streaks)
  
• Laundry Detergent – Combine 1 part borax with ¼ part washing soda.
  
• Oven Cleaner - Apply a paste of baking soda and water, let it sit overnight and then remove with a soapy cloth.
  
• Porcelain Stain Remover – Mix borax and lemon juice into a paste. Let the mixture sit for 2 hours and then scrub the object.
  
• Starch – Mix 1 tablespoon of cornstarch with 1 pint of cold water.
  
• Tub & Tile Cleaner - Use a firm bristle brush with baking soda and an all-purpose cleanser. For cleaning grout you can use 3 parts baking soda mixed with 1 part water.
  
• Upholstery Cleaner – Combine ¼ cup of liquid soap with 3 tablespoons of water. Rub the soap mix on the furniture and then rinse with a sponge

blogging in my head instead

Alright!
You caught me slacking on my blogging!

Yes, it's true, I've been tossing in a lot of fillers these days, as I've had many dramatic shifts and changes to accommodate over the last few moons which makes it more of a challenge to take the delicious time I need to write.

Phew!
It's been soooooooooo intense!!!

Yet, I ultimately know these recent tumultuous inner and outer events are all about a deeper alignment. And like a pop-crack-pow-wow! chiropractic adjustment, it can feel kinda raw and sore for awhile, like I'm walking around more crooked than before because I'm integrating a subterranean healing and have sorta forgotten what it feels like to be in alignment with my higher self.

I'm:

Integrating.
Grounding.
Healing.
Adjusting to the New.
Eating dark chocolate whenever I can.
Sleeping more.
Saying no with more vigour.

So, if you too have been dealing with cosmic constipation these days, you might wish to check out this "sight" for the vision it so heartfully offers. She rocks the free world!
http://www.emergingearthangels.com/

hApPy
fOoLs
dAy!

“You know, for years I taught Absurdiveness Training, and at the end everyone received Absurdification from the Swami. Well, I have decided to reinstitute that policy. If you’ve ever been struck by enlightening and became fooly-aware, committed a random act of comedy that contributed to someone else’s fool-realization, or otherwise added to the laugh force on the planet -- you are absurdifiable!”
-Swami Beyondananda-

And so,
the sacred Light of rebirth shines yet again,
in a seed of Truth taking root in the Heart!
Earth awakens from the long night of Winter,
to become Pollen, Blossom and the Quickening Bud.

The dew drops in the glow of Dawn,
the sustenance of tomorrow's Harvest,
the rising fertility of the rich, Green Earth,
all rejoice the ancient Sun King's return.

-Amaya-

Happy Spring Equinox!

The Spring (Vernal) Equinox, also known as Ostara, or the Astrological New Year, marks a special time when the Tropical Zodiac Sun begins to transit the first astrological sign of Aries. It is also a time when we are confidently re-emerging into the waxing solar year, the day being of equal length to the night. It is a time of sacred balance, of wholeness, integration and rebirth.

And as sPriNg brings the promise of renewal, fresh beginnings and awakening creative drives, so this is a time to plant the metaphorical seeds of our own becoming. This is a magical power-portal of the year, as it integrates the very blueprint for our entire solar year. The affirmations, visualizations and personal wishes which we bring forth at this time will have a lasting, and far-reaching influence. We can empower our dreams and visions of the future-NOW!

I encourage you to take the time to reflect and meditate on what you wish to symbolically birth, manifest and actualize. Some creative ways to do so may be:

-making a manifestation collage
-writing a poem to yourself
-writing down a comprehensive list of wishes
-making a dream pillow: combine dried lavender with whole flax seeds, and fill it with little pieces of paper in which you write down specific attributes you wish to strengthen in the coming moons

-going outside and wishing upon 10 stars
-praying
-creating your own abundance ritual
-creating a sacred space/ altar in which to place symbols of your emerging dreams, hopes and wishes
-painting your wishes all over your body with a fine brush and water-colour pastels, and then taking a ylang-ylang bath
-making a wish tree out of green pipe-cleaners and attaching paper leaves unto which you have written all of your special wishes. Use real soil to "plant" your tree into a clay pot which you have also painted yourself
-writing a letter to yourself (which you put a stamp on and mail) boldly exclaiming all of the things you are going to accomplish this year
-taking three shiny pennies and going to a nearby stream to cast your wishes into the water
-taking apart a little stitch on one of your favourite stufties. Slip a small piece of paper into it with all of your wishes written on it. Sew it back up, and hug your stuftie every night!

Play, imagine, risk, dare, acknowledge, create!
The creative possibilities for creating your own Ostara magic are only limited by your own imagination, and we all know that imagination is
I N F I N I T E !

Echoing the Echoes of Sisterhood: Moving Toward Healing and Solidarity

As children newly forming the root-systems of our individual ego identity, we carry an essential base of core-needs which we naturally seek in the sustaining love, care, protection and nourishment of our mother. Yes, father's matter too...yet our 'birther' is an undeniably profound connection which I'm deliberately wishing to emphasize here.

We all need to be supported in fundamental ways so that our growth is not prematurely interrupted or stunted. Only then can we forge a healthy interdependence and transcend the original and necessary function of the ego. A healthy and integrated ego enables us as children to have safe boundaries from the outside world. We need to self-actualize from the ground up-from the healthy establishment of a sound ego which matures and evolves with us into a more generous, altruistic, loving expression of a well-nourished, adult selfhood .

Encouragement, support, trust, safety, affection.....many of these very important life-qualities and expressions were sadly lacking in our early parent-child relationships. After all, we all-too-often model what we learn from our parents, and there have been successive generations of dysfunctional parenting styles passed down in over-sized suitcases through the (dark?) ages. Such chronic deficiencies may subsequently lead us to counter-develop supplementary habits which we then project into warped power-dynamics and negative attention-seeking behaviours. If we are chronically deficient and in deep pain about the lack of love and support in our early life, we may learn manipulative and cunning tactics as a means of 'stealing' that which we weren't freely given yet so desperately needed. To establish a thriving and fulfilled identity, we all need a certain quotient of love.

We are free-will empowered, autonomous beings fulfilling our soul's destiny and purpose in individual accordance and alignment with Source, God/ess, All-That-Is. We may or may not directly relate to our parents in this equation at all. However, the mysterious cosmic design of our souls, in so merging with the fused dna housed in the womb of our mothers, seems to activate a sacred process beyond the bio-scientific, beyond the learned vs. innate debate.

What I'm speaking of, esoterically, is how the souls of our mothers transmit subtle-energy information to our own soul via psychic imprints while we are growing in the womb. This is a fateful (some say deeply karmic) communication, one which I believe we have somehow "chosen" in order to help us actualize the very Life Path and Life Lessons our souls most need to grow by.

Now, this ineutero communication may activate many aspects of our emergent personalities. The psychic bridging which took place in the womb may be a spiritual means of triggering necessary mother-child healing processes later, or a way of highlighting ancestral patterning and firming up psychic contracts and shared agreements while teaching one-another important life lessons. We may also receive hidden messages ineutero via mum's deepest desires and secret dreams, which may unconsciously end up fusing with our own, later emerging as some actualized endeavour we invariably 'play' out. Who we become as children and as adults may, in part, be a forgotten echo of our mother's reverberations deep within us, now expressed in action.

If our mothers have an opportunity to meet such a mirrored reflection in us, there may be a profound psycho-spiritual, cellular/ subconscious (or conscious!) recognition, a lucid thread woven through and between us. Such a "remembrance" may trigger feelings such as elation, pride, compassion, and inspiration. In these emotional responses we are sent the clear message of "approval", "permission" and "support". This may be reinforced over and over again repeatedly over the course of one's lifetime in various ways.

However, if our mothers have not integrated their own healthy ego within a self-fulfilled life, (often due to an early lack of love and support from their mothers) the emotions triggered by a profound remembrance may be polarized as resentment, jealousy, hostility and fear. Such responses are a message of "disapproval", "trespassing" and "rejection", and again may play on automatic and repeat continuously. These varied and complex messages may be subtle, yet are received and internalized by us none-the-less, sculpting our psyches, tweaking our behaviours. The impact of our mother's messages upon us as women is sub-terraneanly deep and confounding.

From this hidden or overt dialogue which first originated in the womb, we shape and instill our impressions of woman-to-woman relations, and carry their phantoms and ghosts into the complex stratas of the sisterhood. We play them out in various hide-and-seek scenarios of an emotional nature, giving, taking, surrendering, fighting. Looking for approval, giving disapproval, hoping for acceptance, giving rejection.

Often the social "diva complexes", "bitch-slaps" "cat-scratches" and other unhealthy "women waging war against women" behaviours are conveying a secondary message: a fear of rejection, the need for approval, the desire for kinship and solidarity, the craving for love and support.

While it may be difficult to sincerely extend our openness and interest toward women who appear edgy and hardened, closed to any manner of shared warmth, it is worth any and all efforts to find an in-road toward soothing her. Seeing beyond her frayed edges, her defensive stances, her evil, territorial glares and judgemental stings. Instead of creating further separation and alienation by 'reacting to the reaction', it can be incredibly liberating to gently open in observance of the defensive/ offensive behaviour sometimes displayed in women. For it is AN OPPORTUNITY TO GIFT THE SISTERHOOD WITH COMPASSION.

Within that b*#!@-y sister who pouts her lip at your unsuspecting boyfriend and then struts her insecure superiority around in superficial displays of glistening cleavage, stockinged thigh, neatly plucked eyebrow, shining collagen lip, there is almost always a hurt little girl guarding a hidden need which is calling out for heartful attention. Maybe she's insecure! Maybe she lost her "mama-roots" early on in life, or never had them at all, and now she just wants to know she's worthy in the world, she wants to believe she's 'looked out for', even if it's in the lower form of 'looked at'.

As her sister, you have something special to give of your feminine essence which can help soothe her. Perhaps you can offer her the safe haven of your non-judgement, without playing into any manipulative games she may have mastered in her loneliness and pain. Perhaps you can offer something gently maternal, something comforting and compassionate.

Pop-culture media has distorted and over-exploited our feminine value-system of true worth, painfully reducing women's value to their physical sex-appeal while sending forth the garbled message that the attention we seek isn't really about meaningful intimacy and true affection, it's all about outward appearances and allure, or it's about over-emphasizing heterosexual ideals and being 'bait' for our man, or our sister's man (if the power-dynamics have become that manipulated and corrupt)

Yet, if we can reach beyond the external 'packaging' into the core need we may delightfully discover common ground as sisters. Sisters who want to trust again, sisters who want to care about each other, sisters who have each other's backs and seek each other out as comfort when we most need it.....

In the quest for peaceful meeting places beyond the cat-walk politics, one of the most effective ways I have discovered to reach for this need (after many near-fatal falls on the bitch battlefield!) is to be genuinely C-U-R-I-O-U-S about my sisters. To drop my own ego at the door of any event, party, social gathering or outing. To be self-assured with the manner in which I strive to embody true feminism: I navigate with integrity and in true SOLIDARITY WITH MY SISTERS.

When I decidedly enter into a social dynamic with absolutely nothing to prove, nothing to guard and protect, covet or steal, I leave adequate room for my mercurial curiosity to emerge with a sensual grace. And it always does!! In my curiosity, I have more energy and generosity to extend to my sisterkin. I can ask her questions about herself, offer my listening heart to her, create a safe place for and with her so she can comfortably drop her exhausted social masks and well-rehearsed antics if she so chooses. I openly offer an invitation for her to be real with with me-sister to sister.

This almost always works in taking the edge off those compulsive, competitive behaviours so often entrained in women at a frighteningly early age. If I focus on the 'togetherness' of the sisterhood, I'm more inclined to foster intimacy, trust and safety in my actions because I'm not seen as a threat to a more intimidated, insecure woman.

I also find that women can all too often over-masculinize their social status by immediately measuring their sexual rank like an alpha wolf seeks to establish it's immediate dominance. Sexual qualifiers are frequently rooted in male fantasy projections. Stiletto heels, glossy coloured lips, hairless bodies....... If I simply ground myself be somewhat sexually neutral within the more charged and defensive/ offensive of environments, without deferring to or dominating another, I find a soft harmony begins to infuse my more volitile sister-connections. I've discovered that equality is a natural bi-product of women embodying their feminine qualities together, and can be the gift we offer to one another.

Also, when we choose to honour and prioritize the emotional importance of establishing our vital bonds to other women, as opposed to exaggerating the supplementary need to be exclusively loved by the men in our lives, we further strengthen the sisterhood. I have noticed that hetero women who elevate their relationship to their man above their friendships with other women, are often the most wounded in regards to their early relationship with their bio-mothers.

It helps to adopt an inner attitude of generosity toward difficult women, or toward the difficult woman inside ourselves! Women who are "control freaks" are often women who suffered a loss of control in their early life, perhaps in the form of physical/ emotional abuse and ,having swung to it's opposite polarity, hope to restore their lost power. "Jealous" women often feel painfully "less than" while "dominant" women are often the most insecure. "Alpha" women are often afraid of being seen as not good enough, as unaccomplished or not successful enough. Their inner worth is often precariously hinged on the specific measurements of their internal critic and the approval of others .

Remember that there is almost always a story within a story. Try to offer empathy. Listen to what isn't being said. Sometimes, in the silence of the in-between, there are meaningful things spoken at volumes.

With the spirit of giving we are strategically poised to highlight the many ways we can support the healing of our early wounds, especially as it relates to our mothers. We can offer real substance to the unmet needs of our sisters too. And sometimes, it can simply come down to this:

"When in doubt, give more L-O-V-E, and remember: DON'T take it personally, it's not all about... you."

sorry to break your cinnamon heart

It is indeed an interesting herding phenomenon when a specific date on the gregorian calendar becomes a commercialized holiday so ingrained in popular iconography that we overlook its very roots of origin. Instead, we run on automatic to the nearest theme store. Hearts, flowers, chocolates, lingerie and candle light dinners on the eve of the14th of February all characterize our amorous and sensual expressions as 'Valentine's day' tributes to a lover, whether secret or claimed, imaginary or real. And really, it is rather timely for con$umer culture to be inundated with various objects of eros considering the commercial lull between capitalist christmas and the next big hallmark holiday, easter. Gotta keep the spending happening, after all!

Valentine's day is the perfect capitalist bridge between these two money-generating holidays, ensuring continued profit, sales and product turn-over. Credit card companies gloat along with those expensive lover's suite hotels and 5 star seafood (aphrodisiac!) restaurants. The National Retail Federation’s (NRF) 2007 Valentine's Day Consumer Intentions and Actions Survey, (conducted by BIGresearch for NRF), claimed the average consumer spent $119.67 on Valentine's day that year, up from $100.89 in 2006. With 63.4 percent of consumers celebrating the holiday in 2007, the total Valentine's day spending that year reached about $16.90 billion.

Obviously, we have been gullible enough to take the valentine bait hook line and sinker, believing that somehow we too must buysellandspend with aerobic, root-chakra vigour!. We splurge on heart-shaped novelties as victory trophies of our love. We're conditioned to believe that hallmark can say it better than we can, and so we shelve our own spark of creativity for the neatly packaged mono-products which say it all. We buy pounds of slave-labour chocolates from 3rd world countries along with pesticide-poisoned flowers from still poorer nations. The pressure to conform combined with the powerful effects of all the subliminal advertising which arouse our nostalgic sensations all drive the buying impulse toward this end. Whether we like it or not, we start to think in *red and white.

Until 1969, the Vatican formally recognized 11 different Valentine's days. The only two associated with the 14th of February were Valentine of Rome and Valentine of Terni, both between AD 269 and 197 and likely because one of them was BURIED on the Via Flaminia on that day. Neither one of these men, though both were officially martyred, were EVER associated with poetic romanticism or tender love. By the time the 14th century began to attach such sentimentality to a 'Saint Valentine' whatever distinctions previously existed between these two catholic martyrs was entirely lost.

The church decided to revise their calender of saints in 1969 and had these Valentine dudes dropped from the general Roman calender because of the lack of any known history about them. There is, however, a medieval writing by Bede called Legenda Aurea which revealed just a little more about a 'Saint' Valentine. Apparently one of these two Valentine's was executed for refusing to be converted to Roman paganism by Emperor Claudius II. This devout Valentine had instead attempted to convert Claudius II to christianity and was in turn sentenced to death.

While in prison awaiting his execution, Valentine apparently befriended the blind daughter of his jailer and performed some kind of remarkable christian healing on her. There is still no reference in this historical document of any romantic love or passion being expressed by Valentine's character, by nature or even as a displayed affection toward his female prison-friend.

So, as such cold fact morphed into embellished fiction, modern lore began to embroider this original (and tragic, and boring) tale of Valentine into a much different kind of historical myth. Now we see Valentine as a heart-hero, a renegade priest marrying couples in secret because of the Roman ban on marriage, as it was believed that single men made better soldiers of war. In this *bs* version, Emperor Claudius II discovers Valentine's marriage scandal and throws Valentine in jail. As further distortion of the Legenda Aurea goes, Valentine now writes a final note to the jailer's daughter (who has been so fictionalized as to have become his 'beloved')

And this manipulation ultimately becomes the first imaginary "valentine".

Yes, an unadorned note that never really existed from a brave christian man who was about to be executed by Roman pagans for defying the Emperor's orders.

This note-which-never-was simply read:
'F r o m
Y o u r
V a l e n t i n e.'

*the colours red and white are strongly associated with an ancient, traditional pagan celebration which happens 12 days earlier on the calender, at the cross-quarter day between the winter solstice and the spring equinox. It is called Imbolc or Brigid's Day, named after the Goddess Brigit (Breed) who is associated with the hearth fire, poetry, inspiration, and protection. The colours red and white relate to the emerging fertility, power, sexuality and the purity of light in the Goddess and the re-awakening earth.

The Quality of Light

this
starknaked shine
is merciless to the eye

(staring)

this
lightdirect exclamation
finds density penetrable
infusing hot murmurs
into every hidden molecule

(I am ancient and glory and moment the reign of light)

reaching
I hold sunbeams beyond fists
and dance

for I have listened to the dreamy creep
rooting itself in all I have nourished
and I have sourced
the rising, illuminated fruit
of vision
full

and reveal in starknaked shine
mercy in eyes

(staring)

beholding you
beholding me

-Amaya Dana O'Duir-

Happy I M B O L C

"O Brigid, spread above my head
Your mantle bright to guard me"

disillusionment and all those names with vowels you orally fixate on

I have decided: Romance and Realism are NOT a compatible blend.

This constitutional mix invariably results in an intolerable state of indigestion and acid reflux which, over time, scars the insides and debilitates the swallow reflex. I can tell you this: I found this out via private overindulgence in those all-you-can-eat buffets of the heart. In a failed attempt to constrain my ravaging emotional hunger with fantastical, heroic and epic narratives of love impossible and unattainable, I have roused the ancient lover’s muse within me with sometimes wild, miscalculated abandon. I have pursued my want of relational mystery in a multitude of “fateful destinies” and have suffered a venusian insomnia which has, at crucial times, compromised the simple joys of mundane life in all it's comfort-food subtly and grounded glory. I have since come to the (tentative) conclusion that:

Romance is just another intangible, extended sense-perception which inextricably alters reality like a drug and leaves a smudged blur over the reasoning faculties.
Therefore: Romance is not real.

Sometimes I court the myriad fascinations of my physical senses in a rather hedonistic manner: I do, at times secretly devour sultry and erotic public-domain offerings. The musty scent discreetly tucked away in a circus of bus-ride pheromones, doing intoxicating twirls in my anonymous head. Clandestine. Unattached. Romance's fleeting apparition when the moon frosts her silvery luna-light over watery quivers of ocean and pale skin. Longing. Unrequited. A musical voice playing hide and seek with my playful curiosity, enchanting me with visions of ancient gypsy caravans and entwining kundalini snakes. Seductive. Cosmic. It's in capoeira hodas and graceful fingertips with tans, strong jawlines and guitar harmonics. It's in the richly dark eyes of a perplexing and enigmatic Latino and in the lucid memories I hold precious and dear.

Yet ultimately romance’s allure is something of a biochemical elixir, one I elaborately concoct like a crazed chemist with bad hair and then throw a cocktail pajama party whenever I need a mental PMS vacation. Romance is like an invisible satellite dish on my head doing a 5436-channel frenzy of possibility. It's a multi-syllabic run-on sentence suffused with my own liberated fancies, with my secret, inner projections and over-dramatized wishes for a love still yet to come true. Yes, much like a good novel (one I’ve written, unpublished, myself) this kind of romance describes endless and naked scenarios of the imagination in so hypnotizing and seductive a manner I willing plunge head-first into a rippling sidewalk mirage, splaying my foolery for all to conclude:she is not the first, nor will she be the last.

Romance is a satiny, melt-in-your-mouth chocolate fondue for skinny dipping erogenous zones, its decadent indulgence a deeper need to satiate that lurking, undefined, something "else” we so crave. To make tangible that which has ultimately alluded poet, thespian, musician and the like for centuries, despite notable, valiant attempts to elevate it's sensual affections beyond the average reach.

Romance is a wily and crafty impostor which masks that "something" neglected or ignored and parades it around as the "too good to be true", as the "wishes (finally) granted", as the lucky fortune found in the pot of gold at the end of our own personal rainbow. It is a want of an emotional, spiritual gratification, misdirected. It is something I have spent (too) much time dancing with in my (sky-bound) head, chasing it into the erratic course of nature like an invisible butterfly-one I describe so vividly to myself that I can almost watch it kiss noses with the shedding buttercups and wilting daisies of my myriad unfulfilled hopes for epic romance.

I indulge romantic notions when reality is something I’d rather redefine and fictionalize. And being a creative, imaginative visionary in a world more crudely carved while O.D.-ing on la-la-land filled bon-bons is like choosing to blind perfectly lucid eyes by watching fuzzy television in the dark. My no-name brand of wallet-size romance is a renegade harlequin gone bad-ass, a juicy lucid-dream in virtual technicolour after too many episodes of channel five in black and white.

Oh, the dry soils of inertia and boredom, of restlessness and barren landscapes spanning life's unbearable disappointments and persistent cravings for a love exalted (not to mention the perils of aging skin, aching bones and long-term monogamy) These are all fertile breeding grounds for the wild weed of distraction to root itself, with or without the promise of bearing the edible fruit of eden, that very life-sustaining fruit so intoxicating, yet still so forbidden and taboo.

I will birth the ideal romance within my own dreaming deep down in the stratas of my colourful powerheart.....just seed that little kernel of magic right down in this here richrich earth of mine and I’ll water you and sun you and protect you and sing to you... I will conjure you alive, conjure and immortalize us both in the radiance of the impossible, in the expansive alternate realities of bliss and joy and endless rumi-esque poetry lest you retreat into darker, more isolate soils without first branching, without first reaching, multi-limbed for the embrace of my loving vastness………

Romance shlo-mo-mance.

I so intensely want romance to be of my own crafting, to infuse it with things I have no right calling mystery because its linear names are far too verbal, a language of limits. I will flood my escapist notions, these romantic distractions with oceans of abandoned sensuality, sun it with fires so bold and impassioned as to create entirely new and animated universes of lust, love and blissful levitation. I will want it to be mine-all mine. And yours too (of course we can share).

So fierce this distorted possession of desire that any real semblance of true romance will die of saturation before it is even born, making a poetic assassin out of yet another hopeless romantic.

P.S.
Yes, this one is for you.

'Invocation': the Incredible String Band

you that create the diversity of the forms
open to my words
you that divide and multiply it
hear my sounds
I make yield league to you
ancient associates
and fellow wanderers
you that move the heart
in fur and scale
I join with you
you that sing bright and subtle
making shapes that my throat cannot tell
you that harden the horn
and make quick the eye
you that run the fast fox and the zigzag fly
you sizeless makers of the mole and of the whale
aid me and I will aid you

I make a blood pact with you
you that lift the blossom and the green branch
you who make symmetries more true
you who consider the angle of your limbs
who dance in slower time
who watch the patterns
you rough coated who eat water
who stretch deep and high
with your green blood
my red blood let it be mingled
aid me and I will aid you

I call upon you
you who are unconfined
who have no shape
who are not seen
but only in your action
I will call upon you
you who have no depth
but choose direction
who bring what is willed
that you blow love upon the summers of my loved ones
that you blow summers upon those loves of my love
aid me and I will aid you

I make a pact with you
you who are the liquidness of the waters
and the spark of the flame
I call upon you
you who make fertile the soft earth
and guard the growth of the growing things
I make peace with you

you who are the blueness of the blue sky
and the wrath of the storm
I take the cup of deepness with you
earthshakers
and with you the sharp and the hollow hills
I make reverence to you
round wakefulness we
call the earth
I make wide eyes to you
you who are awake
every created thing both solid and sleepy
or airy light
I weave colours round you
you who will come with me
I will consider it beauty

Winter Self-Care

sleep more
dream lucid
eat root veggies
journal in the morning
spoon your primary other
wear fuzzy slippers
drink warm chai
take more vitamin C and D
reflect
enchant
reach out to someone you miss
stay warm
believe
trust
hug naked trees
go for walks in the dark
wish upon a star
stir your inner cauldron
call the light back in
love yourself

Sun Gods, 19.47 and matte froth and still I can walk and chew bubble gum at the same time

Ancient Peruvian skull for one gynormous cerebral mass!

Do you have confidence that our history books are telling us the truth? Have you ever tirelessly pondered the amazing, unsolved mysteries of our planet evident in living legacies such as those erected of stone and placed with precise geometry in Egypt, Mexico and China..etc.? Do you ever feel as though there is a significant link conveniently missing about our ancient human origins?

Just when we thought we'd finally figured out how that froth settles so perfectly on our morning matte, along comes Nassim Haramein with skulls twice the size of humans (excavated in Peru and Mexico) pointing cursors at black holes in the sun. Those hypnotizing, status-quo dogmas which long held our periphery fixed to a severe and clean-cut line of linear and rational thinking all suddenly vortex into a radical paradigm-shifting kerfuffle. Yes, there is a disturbance in the force, Jedi's, and it's not an 'us against them' thing.
It is more like:
Are we us, are we them or are they us and we them combined?

Hmmm.........time will tell and reveal it's core mysteries.
And an open, curious and inquiring mind and heart will always know truth.
Yes, 8 hours of SERIOUS mind-morphing courtesy of Google Mystery School.
Cyber-initiations for modern times!
woah.

Free Your Emotions (and the rest will follow)

"Getting too close to the unconscious is not quite the danger we thought it was; in fact, one of the greatest problems today is that people are too far from their dreaming! That is why many illnesses develop. That is partially why many therapists still look at Aboriginal people as “primitive”. In fact, fear of emotions, is one of the core reasons behind the inadvertent racism which is rampant in white cultures, not just in your time, but in mine as well. You understand me, I am sure; psychology is not just science! It is politics as well. If you fear emotions, you fear altered states of consciousness, and marginalize cultures whose spirituality is based upon these states."

Excerpt from 'A Letter to Carl Jung'
-Arnold Mindell-

Why has our simple adult curiosity toward our fellow human gone into hiding? And why the apparent pop-culture prevalence of cool and flat vacancy, suspicious remoteness, and competitive animosity toward public "strangers"? In its opposite extreme to innocent curiosity, our stifled interest in each-other has become an exploitative and hungry “spectator sport” which objectifies the other at safe arms-length, devoid of innocent warmth, open acceptance and heart-full inquiry. When we draw mistrustful lines in the sand between us, placing unreasonably high values upon how we materialize in the physical world, (like yet another product to be marketed to our capitalist senses) we create hurtful separations and cultivate unnecessary alienation. We assert self-important individualism and keep to ourselves like a personality in quarantine.

Sure, we all want to feel our “specialness” in the public eye. But the aesthetic presentation of ourselves is often initially valued above our noble character traits. We carefully select the very colours, textures and styles which help define our fashionable sense of worth. We want to define the first impressions we leave in the eyes of others. This in and of itself can be a healthy and authentic form of self-expression when motivated by a desire to find true connection in our social spheres. However, being a fashion "untouchable" can set us apart from others and one's style can become a class-oriented measure of privilege and materialism, like in the need to display expensive labels on our clothing. This creates lonely divisions and shallow hierarchies between us.

Whether the motivation be to conform or compel, we often feel it necessary to define something of our physical specialness to others, to seek the approval, the magnetism of desire, and the various social responses we feel we need to be complete. Our self-images are often so wrapped up in our need to be superficially validated in a defined way, to be seen and socially regarded that we externalize this process, over-emphasizing the “aesthetic” or “expressed” display of our inner journeys. In our attempt to prove to others what our aesthetic power and worth is, we often neglect to "be" the totality of our worth in an integrated, wholistic and grounded way.

We can be too caught up with trying to assert our own specialness. We inadvertently repel others with the psychological separation it creates, unwittingly arousing another’s antagonism. It can be a delicately fine-line between true authenticity and varying degrees of self-absorption. We can become so dazzled by this "specialness" about ourselves or another that we forget how our uniqueness is what we all have in common, how our relationships can bridge this connection to our shared diversity. Authenticity is not a "special" club for VIP members only. It is our birth right.

When we measure ourselves against others based on polarities and dichotomies: good/ bad…..out-going/ shy……attractive/ ugly…….unhealthy/ fit….and so on, we create an "otherness" which compromises our sense of UNITY. Over-exalting or over-representing ourselves or others can create specific recipes (even antiquated ones passed down from generation to generation) for this “specialness”. We then further alienate the true value of those who do not have these very same ingredients we have so deemed important for success, spiritual insight, or acceptance within a particular group structure.

When we over-personalize, instead of universalize what we value, we neglect the collective diversity present in our communities. We then form hyper-inclusive cliques and networks which are bound to have limitations if established out of zealous pride and ego-centered choices and definitions. Homogenizing our rich diversity, we close doors best left open. If we truly wish our human systems to represent and include the interests of the greatest number of us, we must celebrate our DIVERSITY. When we rigidly conform and then forget to accept our authentic differences, we feel threatened by what shows up in the periphery of our delineated status quo. Stoically guarding our own self-interests, we reject the potentials that "difference" offers because it doesn’t fit our preconceived and long-held definitions.

When we accept the truth about our true selves, when we are humble, modest and mature about our skills, abilities and talents without need to establish rank, authority, and place of importance, when we are free of the need to prove our worth and personal power to others, we are much more creative and receptive. We can dwell in the middle place of unity where we all meet. Feeling whole within ourselves, we naturally see our similarities and our shared common interests as unique humans. Our relationships can emerge and meet within the heart of universal principles like compassion, respect, honesty and integrity, irregardless of the myriad ways we may manifest physically, mentally or emotionally. It becomes less important what we look like and increasingly more important how we ARE-together.

When our self-image is founded upon self-love, we radiate an open acceptance of another's ways. We feel no encroaching threat to our own identity. We understand how being true to ourselves, however differently or similarly that may manifest in another, is a universal truth we all share. When we love and accept ourselves, we awaken innocent curiosities and find we are asking more questions of those around us instead of making quick assumptions or bold value judgments based on criticism and misinterpretation.

Our curiosity has more room to discover the deliciousness of another because we are no longer so concerned about taking up all the space for our own ego gratification. Instead we can discover and celebrate what is real, authentic and true in another, free of pretenses and airs, enlivening, deepening and enriching our intimate TOGETHERNESS.

Sounds good, eh?

Begin it now.

pO-etiCs

Who Are You (now)

to Me?

maybe you are a rock,

gravity-bound to an adorned past

to which I send stealthy echoes

of firm, pressing waters

and time-drenched persistence

that slowly reshapes your original form

and holds you, immovable,

to a tide-crested heart.

maybe you are a shadowed and mossed

stump of nameless tree

in a singing and sequestered garden with no fences

and I offer you electric pollens

which only memories make fertile,

as lipless kisses glisten there,

too near to be forgotten.

Because no outer eye ever visions

where only our breath remembers

the falling of the jade dews.

maybe you are a cavern of cloud and mist,

succumbing to angles and geometries

which become you now,

as you fade and merge

into landscapes

I could never sculpt barehanded

and I send you a moment

in which I know you better as mystery

than I ever did before.

-Amaya O'Duir-