Lastnight I wrote about some of my growing pains and I finished the entry with these words:
In love I pull out the bricks and begin to build a new wall
In fear I restrict that which seeks to grow through me
And something inside of me dies.
I'm happy to report that moments after writing that my beloved and I had a long and loving conversation. Without betraying him or the moment, let me simply say that he is showing up in our relationship in an entirely new, healthy, and beautiful way.
He dismantles walls and shows each brick
We examine them together
He scapes a beautiful garden wall
We compost and gently turn the soil
And trust that LOVE grows on.
Sunday, February 28, 2010
Saturday, February 27, 2010
Growing Pains
The more I grow and learn, the more I notice patterns. Today one is really fresh for me. I have long feared that I would grow into something that my family would be unable to love. I suppose in some ways that has already happened at least once.
When I was in my early teens, my parents seemed a little bit akward around the church ladies who would come by and invite them to church. Sure, my parents bought me a bible and paid my way to church camp... it just wasn't their thing. They may have even been relieved when I dropped it at age 16. But then in my phase of deep existential exploration they seemed equally uneasy. I recall one time when I was about 19 and there was some big cult expose' in Texas. I was chatting with my mom about it on the phone and she was asking me odd questions. As if she had a brochure in hand entitled "10 Easy Ways to Tell if your Teen is Trapped in a Freaky Death Cult." I called her on it and she admitted that she was a little worried about me. I thought my response was pretty funny, "Come on mom, you should be more worried about me starting a cult than joining one!" She didn't find it humerous at all.
At some point I learned that my spirituality and my environmental philosophy were simply not to be discussed with my parents. I don't recall that they ever came right out and told me to omit these parts of my self, or whether it was just painfully obvious to me in other ways.
I played along out of respect, love, and a desire to keep the peace. But I was really challenged and felt broken. The problem is that if you try to be a whole person, but you can't be your whole self with certain people, there are walls created within yourself. Sure, I chose to build them... but after a while there were parts of my soul which felt like step children, or East Berliners.
It was not okay to be a witch. It was not okay to be radical or outspoken about anything. It was not okay to think deep thoughts or practice developing higher sense perception. And you gotta know that I was always very open and honest with my parents until that point. So the shift was painful. I didn't know who to be when I was with them, so I just didn't show up there any more; for several years.
It is clear to me that they love me deeply and that they didn't want to hear the things that amplified their worries. But as I drifted further away they worried even more. And I'm highly perceptive, when someone I love is worrying about me I can feel it across space and time.
Well, okay, so I can't be me with my parents. And I can't be my whole self at work. I've always tried to be my whole self with friends, but most of the time I was lucky if I could find one person with which I could be whole, for a few hours or on and off for a few months. And even that was iffy and problematic. I reckon that I'm not alone in this phenomenon. I reckon that there are other people who are perpetually veiwed as weirdos by EVERYONE they know...
And then I met my beloved, and for the first time in my life I could be my whole self. He didn't always agree with my views and theories, but he didn't write me off as crazy either. I really like the fact that we don't agree on everything, it makes for a much interesting conversation. To me the most important factor in falling in love with him was the fact that we could have really DEEP conversations and I could be WHOLE at last.
But I still carry this scar tissue around, this fear that I'll out-grow friends and loved ones. That people who love and understand me now will one day say, "Wow, she really has become a freakin weirdo!"
Because, from time to time, even my beloved gets freaked out by things I do, say, and experience. Every once in a while we pass through a phase where he is uncomfortable with who I am becoming. Conceptually we have discussed what I envision for myself. We've discussed it many times. But discussing abstract concepts of the future and then living through deep learning events are two totally different things.
I live as true to my heart as possible. I believe in a higher force and I have spent my life listening for that still small voice which points me in the right direction. I trust that voice because it has never been wrong. EVERYTHING which has occurred has been a gift.
Yet my dedication to this emerging path of mine creates fear in my beloved. And if I still spoke about it to my parents, it would create fear for them as well. My beloved has even recently asked me to not talk with him about certain things, or even with other people when he is in ear shot.
In love I pull out the bricks and begin to build a new wall
In fear I restrict that which seeks to grow through me
And something inside of me dies.
When I was in my early teens, my parents seemed a little bit akward around the church ladies who would come by and invite them to church. Sure, my parents bought me a bible and paid my way to church camp... it just wasn't their thing. They may have even been relieved when I dropped it at age 16. But then in my phase of deep existential exploration they seemed equally uneasy. I recall one time when I was about 19 and there was some big cult expose' in Texas. I was chatting with my mom about it on the phone and she was asking me odd questions. As if she had a brochure in hand entitled "10 Easy Ways to Tell if your Teen is Trapped in a Freaky Death Cult." I called her on it and she admitted that she was a little worried about me. I thought my response was pretty funny, "Come on mom, you should be more worried about me starting a cult than joining one!" She didn't find it humerous at all.
At some point I learned that my spirituality and my environmental philosophy were simply not to be discussed with my parents. I don't recall that they ever came right out and told me to omit these parts of my self, or whether it was just painfully obvious to me in other ways.
I played along out of respect, love, and a desire to keep the peace. But I was really challenged and felt broken. The problem is that if you try to be a whole person, but you can't be your whole self with certain people, there are walls created within yourself. Sure, I chose to build them... but after a while there were parts of my soul which felt like step children, or East Berliners.
It was not okay to be a witch. It was not okay to be radical or outspoken about anything. It was not okay to think deep thoughts or practice developing higher sense perception. And you gotta know that I was always very open and honest with my parents until that point. So the shift was painful. I didn't know who to be when I was with them, so I just didn't show up there any more; for several years.
It is clear to me that they love me deeply and that they didn't want to hear the things that amplified their worries. But as I drifted further away they worried even more. And I'm highly perceptive, when someone I love is worrying about me I can feel it across space and time.
Well, okay, so I can't be me with my parents. And I can't be my whole self at work. I've always tried to be my whole self with friends, but most of the time I was lucky if I could find one person with which I could be whole, for a few hours or on and off for a few months. And even that was iffy and problematic. I reckon that I'm not alone in this phenomenon. I reckon that there are other people who are perpetually veiwed as weirdos by EVERYONE they know...
And then I met my beloved, and for the first time in my life I could be my whole self. He didn't always agree with my views and theories, but he didn't write me off as crazy either. I really like the fact that we don't agree on everything, it makes for a much interesting conversation. To me the most important factor in falling in love with him was the fact that we could have really DEEP conversations and I could be WHOLE at last.
But I still carry this scar tissue around, this fear that I'll out-grow friends and loved ones. That people who love and understand me now will one day say, "Wow, she really has become a freakin weirdo!"
Because, from time to time, even my beloved gets freaked out by things I do, say, and experience. Every once in a while we pass through a phase where he is uncomfortable with who I am becoming. Conceptually we have discussed what I envision for myself. We've discussed it many times. But discussing abstract concepts of the future and then living through deep learning events are two totally different things.
I live as true to my heart as possible. I believe in a higher force and I have spent my life listening for that still small voice which points me in the right direction. I trust that voice because it has never been wrong. EVERYTHING which has occurred has been a gift.
Yet my dedication to this emerging path of mine creates fear in my beloved. And if I still spoke about it to my parents, it would create fear for them as well. My beloved has even recently asked me to not talk with him about certain things, or even with other people when he is in ear shot.
In love I pull out the bricks and begin to build a new wall
In fear I restrict that which seeks to grow through me
And something inside of me dies.
Thursday, February 25, 2010
Change ~ Gentle or Chaotic?
Each one of us is narrating our lives by crafting stories to help our self understand what is occurring. Most of us believe our stories until something comes along that doesn't fit in with they way we've constructed our personal reality. In the current era, everything is changing at a dramatic and unprecedented rate. Everytime something in the world around you changes, it bumps up against your story.
Your story that spans your entire life. It includes information like your name, the places you've lived, the jobs you've had, the people you've loved, and the things you've learned. It also includes assessments you've made about your self over the years, as well as judgements others have made about you. For example, "I'm motivated and intelligent." or "I'm sloppy and lazy."
In this time of unprecedented change you have many choices. Perhaps the most important choice is whether or not you plan to learn and grow through these changes. If the answer is yes, the next important question is whether you want your changes to feel gentle or chaotic.
I've personally experimented with both throughout my life. In my experience, chaotic change usually has a much higher magnitude. Chaotic change can afford you to change dozens of things about your self all in one fell swoop. This type of change strikes me as very intense. In my younger years I actually enjoyed that intensity. I loved the quantum leap in consciousness which accompanied learning dozens of things about my self all at once. But there's a dark side too. It wasn't that I was always happily improving my self, like picking out new carpeting in a house that has decent flooring already. It is more like having the electricity turned on, looking around at the house and realizing that it's full of rats, mold, and the floor is rotting and falling through! Quite frankly it is both scary and depressing to notice dozens of things about your self that aren't as healthy as you'd like to believe.
Gentle change, on the other hand, is quite subtle and requires patience and perserverence. In gentle change you walk into that fixer-upper with a flash light, you pick one room of the house, and you notice and accept the fact that there are a few rats. Of course it is a much slower process, but it is not nearly as traumatic when you take each little aspect of your self one step at a time.
You always have a choice in how you approach your learning and growth. The trick is noticing that you have been making these choices your whole life! You have already sub-consciously chosen either gentle change or chaotic change, or some blend of both.
Putting off many life lessons over a long period of time is one way to choose chaotic change. By ignoring opportunities to gently edit your story, the queue of lessons can get mighty large and gang up on you all at once. There are some clues and cues to let you know whether you might be cruising toward a very chaotic and painful wake-up call:
Your story that spans your entire life. It includes information like your name, the places you've lived, the jobs you've had, the people you've loved, and the things you've learned. It also includes assessments you've made about your self over the years, as well as judgements others have made about you. For example, "I'm motivated and intelligent." or "I'm sloppy and lazy."
In this time of unprecedented change you have many choices. Perhaps the most important choice is whether or not you plan to learn and grow through these changes. If the answer is yes, the next important question is whether you want your changes to feel gentle or chaotic.
I've personally experimented with both throughout my life. In my experience, chaotic change usually has a much higher magnitude. Chaotic change can afford you to change dozens of things about your self all in one fell swoop. This type of change strikes me as very intense. In my younger years I actually enjoyed that intensity. I loved the quantum leap in consciousness which accompanied learning dozens of things about my self all at once. But there's a dark side too. It wasn't that I was always happily improving my self, like picking out new carpeting in a house that has decent flooring already. It is more like having the electricity turned on, looking around at the house and realizing that it's full of rats, mold, and the floor is rotting and falling through! Quite frankly it is both scary and depressing to notice dozens of things about your self that aren't as healthy as you'd like to believe.
Gentle change, on the other hand, is quite subtle and requires patience and perserverence. In gentle change you walk into that fixer-upper with a flash light, you pick one room of the house, and you notice and accept the fact that there are a few rats. Of course it is a much slower process, but it is not nearly as traumatic when you take each little aspect of your self one step at a time.
You always have a choice in how you approach your learning and growth. The trick is noticing that you have been making these choices your whole life! You have already sub-consciously chosen either gentle change or chaotic change, or some blend of both.
Putting off many life lessons over a long period of time is one way to choose chaotic change. By ignoring opportunities to gently edit your story, the queue of lessons can get mighty large and gang up on you all at once. There are some clues and cues to let you know whether you might be cruising toward a very chaotic and painful wake-up call:
- If something negative happens and you dive into a distraction (food, drinking, sex, games, drugs) rather than processing the emotion, you may be ignoring an opportunity to grow.
- If some corner of your mind is concerned or worried about any of your choices, habits, or routines, but you distract yourself and work hard to ignore it, you may be ignoring an opportunity to grow.
- If several people around you are giving you unpleasant feedback and you think they are all full of shit, you may be ignoring an opportunity to grow.
However, if you periodically stop and notice your emotions, and gently probe into the more unpleasant emotions, you will discover that there are little things about your story which could be edited that would produce entirely different results in your daily life.
I recently noticed that one of my daily activities was triggering a small amount of doubt in a corner of my mind and there was even some feedback coming in from a few other people who also shared this doubt about my choice. This morning while I was waking up I stopped to really consider this activity. I decided that while I really gained much good from this activity, there is no benefit to feeling doubt or experiencing others doubt. This morning I made a small edit to how I conduct that activity. I didn't have to nuke the activity, just shifted the components which were creating doubt. Now I feel much better and I may have even avoided manifesting some loud and painful lesson!
I hope you'll consider the story you are writing for your self each day. I hope you will understand that it is not the distraction or activity which is bad. Only our experience of a thing is good or bad. And doubt is a strong signal that some editing would produce an even better story.
In love and light, Tree
Monday, February 15, 2010
Eyes of the World
Song by the Grateful Dead, Written by Garcia and Hunter
Drawing by Stewart Fuell
Right outisde this lazy summer home
You aint got time to call your soul a critic no.
Right outside the lazy gate of winters summer home,
Wondrin where the nut-thatch winters,
Wings a mile long just carried the bird away.
Wake up to find out that you are the eyes of the world,
The heart has it's beaches, it's homeland and thoughts of it's own.
Wake now, discover that you are the song that the mornin brings
But the heart has it's seasons, it's evenins and songs of it's own.
There comes a redeemer, and he slowly too fades away,
And there follows his wagon behind him that's loaded with clay.
And the seeds that were silent all burst into bloom, and decay,
And night comes so quiet, it's close on the heels of the day.
Wake up to find out that you are the eyes of the world,
The heart has it's beaches, it's homeland and thoughts of it's own.
Wake now, discover that you are the song that the mornin brings,
But the heart has it's seasons, it's evenins and songs of it's own.
The heart has it's beaches, it's homeland and thoughts of it's own.
Wake now, discover that you are the song that the mornin brings,
But the heart has it's seasons, it's evenins and songs of it's own.
Sometimes we live no particular way but our own,
And sometimes we visit your country and live in your home,
Sometimes we ride on your horses, sometimes we walk alone,
Sometimes the songs that we hear are just songs of our own.
Wake up to find out that you are the eyes of the world,
The heart has it's beaches, it's homeland and thoughts of it's own.
Wake now, discover that you are the song that the mornin brings,
But the heart has it's seasons, it's evenins and songs of it's own.
The heart has it's beaches, it's homeland and thoughts of it's own.
Wake now, discover that you are the song that the mornin brings,
But the heart has it's seasons, it's evenins and songs of it's own.
Good News! Apocalyptico Denied!
Eye have long sensed that there was a critical mass of consciousness upon the Earth. Eye have long sensed that the struggles and chaos were co-created by humans and their Angels in order to function like a giant alarm clock in the awakening of consciousness.
Even as recently as December my guides again asked me to prepare for the possibility for up to five years of extreme chaos and isolation from the kinds of services which we have grown accustomed. I grieved and prepared. Then in January, I traveled to the Southwest, where the land is baked dry in the constant Light of the Sun. In this place I witnessed the rapid dissolution of our old assumptions and our old judgements.
Eye observed New Man and New Woman and New Co-Creative Governance occupying space in both the third dimensional reality and the fifth dimensional reality. Eye observed the giddyness of my children returning to Love and Light, and the healing of those who'd presenced Love and Light in the 1960s and 1970s, only to have been scarred and scared by resurgence of darkness in subsequent decades.
I felt afraid and unworthy.
Eye felt ALIVE and ALL-ONE!
Now, the voices of LIGHT/LOVE have confirmed it. Now Eye can say with certainty - we don't have a population problem, or an apocalypse on our hands. Eye see that the compassion of humans and the Council of Dreaming Souls have chosen to transform together, sans planetary catastrophe. You will all go home together, not one will be lost!
ArchAngel Michael has confirmed it: http://www.youtube.com/user/komurosan?blend=1&ob=4#p/a/u/0/1AKUhqUvEag
Eye am Gaia, and Eye am available to any and all of you because you are a part of my body.
And I am Tree of Terrapin Hollow, one of Gaia's many humble servants.
Even as recently as December my guides again asked me to prepare for the possibility for up to five years of extreme chaos and isolation from the kinds of services which we have grown accustomed. I grieved and prepared. Then in January, I traveled to the Southwest, where the land is baked dry in the constant Light of the Sun. In this place I witnessed the rapid dissolution of our old assumptions and our old judgements.
Eye observed New Man and New Woman and New Co-Creative Governance occupying space in both the third dimensional reality and the fifth dimensional reality. Eye observed the giddyness of my children returning to Love and Light, and the healing of those who'd presenced Love and Light in the 1960s and 1970s, only to have been scarred and scared by resurgence of darkness in subsequent decades.
I felt afraid and unworthy.
Eye felt ALIVE and ALL-ONE!
Now, the voices of LIGHT/LOVE have confirmed it. Now Eye can say with certainty - we don't have a population problem, or an apocalypse on our hands. Eye see that the compassion of humans and the Council of Dreaming Souls have chosen to transform together, sans planetary catastrophe. You will all go home together, not one will be lost!
ArchAngel Michael has confirmed it: http://www.youtube.com/user/komurosan?blend=1&ob=4#p/a/u/0/1AKUhqUvEag
Eye am Gaia, and Eye am available to any and all of you because you are a part of my body.
And I am Tree of Terrapin Hollow, one of Gaia's many humble servants.
Saturday, February 13, 2010
Emergent Understandings on Reincarnation
I don't claim to know any more on a subject than anyone else. I consider myself to be an action researcher, meaning that my whole life and all of my beliefs are experimental. I love to dabble in ancient mysteries. When I find a new angle on an age old question, I share it with friends and as many as will listen and then I watch to see how the idea morphs based on input.
My bottom line for what is "real" or "true" is this: "If I am still walking in the flesh I am certainly not correct about all my assumptions. Only when I've left this body and merged with God could I understand what is true."
Recently I had a deep experience while using hemispheric synchronization. During that time I came to see reincarnation and past life experiences in a new light. I'd love to dangle this idea before you and see how it sits with you.
There are more people alive on the earth right now than there are dead people in the history of the earth. For a number of years I took that to mean that there are "new souls" and "old souls". The idea worked for a time, but I frequently got hung up on that because it was yet another way to rate, rank and discriminate between people. It seemed there was no easy way to use this mental model in conversation without finding myself sounding judgemental and superior. And whether or not there is any truth in that construct doesn't really matter to me because if an idea leads toward judgment and superiority then it is not an idea which serves any of us.
Einstein and the Law of Thermodynamics showed us that energy is neither created nor destroyed, it is simply recycled thoughout the system. For some years I've been playing with the idea that there is some fixed quantity of soul energy and that if there are many more people alive in the current era then there must be a smaller quantity of soul matter per person. If together we are all ONE Great Soul, then with this high population we are all only tiny fragments of the oversoul.
Two and a half weeks ago this idea took on some new depth for me. Let us, for the sake of example, pick out a random and somewhat minor character from history, like John Donne. Donne was a 17th Century Brittish Poet. Suppose that there are half a dozen people in the current era who have a deeply powerful connection to Donne's poetry. Suppose those six people have transformative and life altering experiences when reading his work. Perhaps a few of them even begin to feel as if they were Donne himself. Under some of our old concepts this could produce a conflict. They couldn't all be Donne. Or could they?
Perhaps there was one soul in the 17th Century which inhabited John Donne's body. But as the population went up each soul became more fragmented and in this era there could actually be some number of people who together were Donne? Another way to put this is that there is not a 1:1 ratio between a past soul and a present soul.
Let us, for the moment, assume this is how it works. The older the historical character, the more fragmentation would have occurred and thus, the greater the number of present day souls who could make a claim on having had a past life as Socrates or Cleopatra. The number of people who claim to have had a big and powerful life like Cleopatra has always been a sticking point in reincarnation doctrine. I've seen it explained away in several ways:
My bottom line for what is "real" or "true" is this: "If I am still walking in the flesh I am certainly not correct about all my assumptions. Only when I've left this body and merged with God could I understand what is true."
Recently I had a deep experience while using hemispheric synchronization. During that time I came to see reincarnation and past life experiences in a new light. I'd love to dangle this idea before you and see how it sits with you.
There are more people alive on the earth right now than there are dead people in the history of the earth. For a number of years I took that to mean that there are "new souls" and "old souls". The idea worked for a time, but I frequently got hung up on that because it was yet another way to rate, rank and discriminate between people. It seemed there was no easy way to use this mental model in conversation without finding myself sounding judgemental and superior. And whether or not there is any truth in that construct doesn't really matter to me because if an idea leads toward judgment and superiority then it is not an idea which serves any of us.
Einstein and the Law of Thermodynamics showed us that energy is neither created nor destroyed, it is simply recycled thoughout the system. For some years I've been playing with the idea that there is some fixed quantity of soul energy and that if there are many more people alive in the current era then there must be a smaller quantity of soul matter per person. If together we are all ONE Great Soul, then with this high population we are all only tiny fragments of the oversoul.
Two and a half weeks ago this idea took on some new depth for me. Let us, for the sake of example, pick out a random and somewhat minor character from history, like John Donne. Donne was a 17th Century Brittish Poet. Suppose that there are half a dozen people in the current era who have a deeply powerful connection to Donne's poetry. Suppose those six people have transformative and life altering experiences when reading his work. Perhaps a few of them even begin to feel as if they were Donne himself. Under some of our old concepts this could produce a conflict. They couldn't all be Donne. Or could they?
Perhaps there was one soul in the 17th Century which inhabited John Donne's body. But as the population went up each soul became more fragmented and in this era there could actually be some number of people who together were Donne? Another way to put this is that there is not a 1:1 ratio between a past soul and a present soul.
Let us, for the moment, assume this is how it works. The older the historical character, the more fragmentation would have occurred and thus, the greater the number of present day souls who could make a claim on having had a past life as Socrates or Cleopatra. The number of people who claim to have had a big and powerful life like Cleopatra has always been a sticking point in reincarnation doctrine. I've seen it explained away in several ways:
- Perhaps these people (who claimed to be her) were actually servants and slaves of Cleopatra
- Perhaps these people read alot about her and then forgot about it, and are now delusional
- Perhaps these people are attuned in some way to a universal archetype going by the name of Cleopatra
None of these arguments ever got any of us very far. So, for the time being, I'm sticking with the notion that a number of present day people could have together comprised one past life.
For myself, I've had a couple of very vivid past life regressions. I think that it is a gift to the present day being to gain deeper understanding of previous lives. I wouldn't want anyone to lose the gifts of their own deeply personal spiritual experiences because of the conflict of competing with another person who also as a stake on some historical figure.
And if we go back far enough... we are ALL ONE anyway.
In love and light,
Tree of Terrapin Hollow
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