I awake from the nightmare with a sudden breath clutching to life. The eternal quest for escape from death.

Sleep, soothsayer or truth sayer? What if I was to not fear the unknown? Look out at disaster from my glass tower. Let tsunamis consume me and fires burn me.

See my face reflected in the window before it breaks. A glimpse of my soul, left in the waves wake. What would be my last thoughts in life? Fear, prayer or awe of the eternal? The final moments before death, my translucent image smiles to me with the soundless words, I Love You. I release, I let go, I surrender to the dream of life and understand in this moment called Now, that there was never anything to hold onto in the first place.

This time off and recovery period from Covid has afforded me the time to really look at my impulse of doing. Where does it come from? The old program of ‘should do’ versus ‘feel like’. I choose the word ‘feel’ over ‘want‘ because for me the impulse comes from feeling into my body and noticing physical sensation in terms of desire or lack of desire. Of course we all have things on our list of to do’s but if our life becomes a continual list we fall into monotony and discontent. Before the Covid illness there really was not much balance in my life. I rarely did things out of the impulse of what I really felt like doing.

The friendships of women hold hands around the world. Extra sensing beings, the subtle mixture of pain and delight. Oh how heavy is the load that we carry; a mother, a wife, a lover, a daughter, a friend. We birth creation, we move mountains for our children, we lose sleep with our worries, we sway the tides. Yet the biggest gift we give is feeling the pin drop on the world. The processing of energies for humanity and the planet alive. We revel in the glorious nature of the sky and stars yet remember always that we came from the earth and her waters.

You thrill my senses, bristling life at the sea. Your wind thunders in my ears as I tread your cracked fossil rock beds and barnacles homes. The moistened thick air, the perfect ride for the winded wings of the crows.

A good beach combing pulls up fine hairs of tickling seaweed. Cross crabs scraping under rocks. The smell of oyster stew brewing for the evening dinner of champions of seals.

As I ease my way back into the land of the living one of the insights that arose early on after my battle with Covid was the desire to find more joy in my life. It’s true that when you come close to the edge of death, life and it’s sacredness becomes more evident. I’m still in process, but there certainly feels like there is already a before the Covid and after the Covid as a turning point in my life. The reflection of my lack of joy in life, in its simplicity became a new goal that I wished to address. And as I started to try to implement that new learning I realized I just wasn’t in that place. I was sick. I felt sick and I was grieving the loss of my body and health. I needed to embrace that painful experience fully to learn the beautiful lesson of letting go and true presence.

Life can be painful when we expect life to give us our desires. Most of us put out your intentions in life and either receive and are glad or don’t receive and feel disappointment.

When I shifted my expectations of life to one more of service by asking each day what life and spirit wants from me or for me? Everything changed. I ask, how can I serve the divine? How can have it flow though me in the way that I speak, move and interact with people and life? How can I show my devotion to to the Sacred?

Shifting your awareness in life from one of expectation to one of devotion can shift you deeply in ineffable ways. Live your life like a prayer.

Words, pictures of thought. Plucked from the sky or handed down from above, I do not know. They come like silent whispers. Life forms of their own. An invisible pen in motion. Steering feelings and ideas, winding them down their pure path to mysterious worlds.
Like skipping rocks on the stillness of your being; words and thoughts jump and travel yet always dissipate. So close your eyes and let the universe download it’s knowledge and remember they were never your words in the first place.

We’ve seen the world in much upheaval over the last few years. Groups of people talking about us versus them, and on and on. A lot of anger at the inequities in life. And while I value the new paradigms that are starting to emerge from these fights against injustices, I have to wonder if perhaps as humans we should not look at ourselves first. Start making these changes on the simplest level. On yourself, in your own home. The hatred we express is only an expression of the hatred that we are feeling within. And if we were to look deeper we would understand and have compassion, for it is almost certain that that hatred comes from deep hurt and inner wounding.

We tell our children to be kind to others, but children learn by example. We are kind to others, but why don’t we first start with being kind to ourselves?… By healing our inner wounds we heal ourselves. We heal the next generation and the next generation and so on. We heal the world.

Now I can donate, stand up for a worthy cause or support someone in their plight, but if I don’t truly understand what compassion is by the experience of having compassion within myself, for myself, then can I truly have compassion for another soul? In actuality my giving becomes mere rhetoric. This is not an energy that can change the world.

Loving oneself is not easy. It requires inner observation, honesty and diligence in each moment. But when we can live in the state of inner peace and self-love, we carry this vibration and put out into our lives. I believe that self-love can be one of the greatest gift we can give the world. The ripple effect of this blessing into humanity is truly sacred.

Naked nighttime nature stumblings are a quiet soulful comfort. Awoken by the cool light of the moon, my silent shadow leads the way. Brilliance of stars inviting us to their party. The music; rustling leaves and whispering waters. And of course a crazy cricket. Me, a night owl dancing with the night owls. Tree tops and clouds closing their curtains on the show. A cup of moon milk and we, my shadow and I, are ready to fall back into the mysteries of dreams where we are held so softly by the yin of life.