Feeling The Divine

4/26/11

Spring

Spring is here and I feel a little behind. I feel more like winter, a time of germination under the frozen earth, a time of dead things from which, undoubtedly, new things spring. But on my walks I take great solace from the profusion of bursting cherry blossoms and tulips in glowing hues of reds and yellows and purples .

News

Sunday I started a practice run for video blogging. If it goes well and I get a little more comfortable I’ll start posting video blogs.

Still Recovering

I feel I am having a hard time gathering focus (writing challenges, platform building challenges, how to balance it all). The workshop triggered so many negative neural networks. While I was there, I kept to my commitment to stay present and find the "gold." Alas, I didn't find it. It only caused me pain as my "illusions" (my sense of being divinely guided) collided with publishing "reality," (what it takes to sell) which, as crises are wont to do, might lead to gold :)

Disconnected from the divine

The more time goes by, the more it sinks in how awful an experience it was. What it led to in me is a sense of disconnection from the divine, from my sense of being God manifested as India. I haven't yet understood why this happened and I'm recovering the sense of divinity slowly. This rediscovery is not helped by the fact that we are going through foreclosure and have to move, and all that entails. (Full plate.)

Cultivating an attitude of “all is well”

In my video trial runs I am discussing the cultivation of an attitude of all is well. Each of the last three days in which I committed to doing so myself, I have felt a little better, a little more myself.

Feeling the Divine

I’m so used to getting my strength and confidence from my spirituality. And now that I feel so disconnected, I am suffering quite a bit. But that does not change my fundamental belief that, indeed, all is well. I just can’t feel it because it’s drowned out by my anxieties over all I have to manage and some other much subtler factors that I'm still discovering.
I feel it’s a process and each day gets better. It’s good for me to have this experience of not quite feeling life’s divinity. I know that this is true for a lot of people and my experience can only help me to become more insightful and helpful in the long run. This experience also shows me the unbelievably powerful effect feeling my divinity has. I'm pretty wowed by it right now. When I feel this way, when I feel like everything is God and holy, I take that utterly for granted, like it's a thing that is present in my life because it's so obvious. Perhaps this is a good time to develop gratitude toward this amazing way of being in life.

Visiting the Spiritual Demi-Dark-Embracing my Inner Atheist

4/18/11

It really has been a while. In re-reading my old blog posts from 2006 and 7, I see that I had a level of spiritual trust in God, or the Universe, then that got subverted during ensuing years by the many difficulties that arose along the way.

Even though I had a profound mystical and spiritual experience in February of 2010 in which I revisited the "Luminous Darkness," I am still leagues away from where I once was.

This March, during my retreat, I was slowly returning to the refined spirit, to being thoroughly re-enlivened in my awareness of the divine in me and in everything. But my subsequent experience of the Hay House workshop and the illustrated requirements of making a success of my message, frightened me again into a state of atheism. A strange atheism as I am continuing to be aware that I am God on an adventure. It seems now that this viewpoint lends itself to atheism, i.e. if I am god, then there is no God. This is a difficulty with my belief and, hence, my message. When I am viscerally aware of my divinity, there is no problem. The sensations and feelings in my being convey the meaning cleanly. But when I am viscerally unaware, this message leaves me feeling bereft, rather than holy and connected and burdened, rather than safely cradled.

Right now my mind understands God but my heart is in, at least, the demi-dark. I am willing to be here and go through this. I have no doubt at all that on the other side lay beauty, connection, all-encompassing love and holiness. I've spent much more of my life in that place and I accept with humility this experience of emptiness and fear, trusting that it will serve me and everyone with whom I come in contact.

Difficulty with Being Self-Disclosing

4/17/11

Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit. Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck…..it’s 4am. A hot flash just woke me up and I’m thinking about my publishing circle task for the week: Go to the book store, find my section. I already know it’s self help and spirituality. Look at all the titles and pick the ones similar to mine. Do research for the marketing and promotion part of my book proposal. How will I know if one is similar to mine? Do I even know what my book is about? Shit, shit, shit…..I’m so in trouble. The last four years spent on not-finishing-my-book. I have nothing to show for. It’s been all a waste. I’ve just sponged off Steven and he, in his infinite patience, continues to be encouraging. He’s a saint.

I think about my book, try to get some hold on it, some handle. What is it about? It’s about so many things. No, it’s just all over the place. It has no center.

Later at breakfast, Steven says “Right now, your book is everything and nothing.”

He is right.

And in the light of day it doesn’t all seem lost. I have a working title “You’re an adventure on the cutting-edge of yourself – a guide to cultivating an attitude of all is well.” Is that not what my book is about? Isn’t it about us being adventurers? Yes.
Isn’t it about “All is well?” Yes.
Isn’t it about that each of us is always on our own cutting-edge, perfect as we are and as we are not? Yes
Isn’t it about letting ourselves off the hook, practicing kindness towards ourselves? Yes
Isn’t it about disengaging from what doesn’t work and on concentrating on what we can envision? Yes
Aren’t these last two point the path toward cultivating an attitude of all is well? Yes.

So, I know what my book is about. Why do I still feel so incapacitated?

As I lay in bed I think about Heather’s suggestion that I journal about this process of freak-out around trying to write a proposal (not that I’ve written even a sentence). I’m all talk, well not anymore. I hate talking about it, or, really, I hate analyzing what’s happening, my favorite mode of the past. That’s such a waste of time. I can’t even bring myself to do it. It’s all blah blah blah.

Just yesterday we all were gathered, Heather, Peggy and me to help each other with getting our proposals done. I said “I feel useful. I went to the workshops, I have the information.” A piece of that information is “be self-disclosing.” I think Fugard said that. I think about this at around 4:30am. Be self-disclosing. Write about your process. I think, I can’t write. I’m not a writer. I have no skills. There’s a clever way to write a blog, an essay. I don’t know what that clever way is, but I read other people’s blogs. They know. I have nothing to say. I have nothing to say. I can’t think about anything to say. What is there to say? It’s just all blah blah blah.

Over breakfast, Steven asks me “What’s going on?” My leg is bouncing, I’m rubbing across the top of the chair back, back and forth, back and forth. It’s obvious I’m in a state. I tell him about my night time tribulations. He is sympathetic. “I’m in a crisis, I say.” I tell him why. I can’t write about anything self-disclosing. He looks at me compassionately. I say, “Okay, I’ll write now.

Right now, I am not Embodying my Spiritual Message

4/16/2011

Good coaching session today. I finally had the presence of mind to face and verbalize that my book (written under the influence of inspiration) was a window on a possibility. The possibility to practice an attitude of all is well and the possibility of understanding ourselves as god on an adventure.

I am facing the truth about myself: I am not an embodiment of these concepts right now. I wrote these things and believed them at the time of my writing the first draft. Even for perhaps another year afterwards. But somewhere since then, I am no longer practicing what I wrote. I’m pessimistic, I’m lazy, I’m so fearful. The term “Clutching my heart in fear” springs to mind. So melodramatic. I read somewhere recently that emotional pain actually is real pain. I feel such pain in my stomach. Of course. I feel powerless, overwhelmed, overcome. It’s no accident that my solar-plexus chakra is freaking out.

Heather is a god-sent. Even though I feel that I am under such extreme duress, I don’t believe that we can go all the way down to where the origin of my pain is. I don’t feel she could hold space for wailing and screaming. (I’m probably wrong about that.) And I don’t want to embarrass myself.

I think about the prospect of journaling this journey. I’m already thinking about the end where “she redeems herself,” where the process comes to a good end. I am annoyed by my calculatedness. I want to be in the moment. I think, What if I don’t make it? I might just go on and on, a waste, a lost opportunity, amounting to nothing. Is there a book in that? I guess if it doesn’t end well, it won’t be self-help, will it? It can always be a memoir. Yuk! That’s how that makes me feel. I love to write. Love it. But my passion is teaching, helping people. Even now, I can still be of assistance. I coach and teach my class. I do make a difference in the life of a small group of people. The inner critic “So what?” I have global ambition and local terrifying fear. I’ve begun to feel self-loathing. I’m a bigmouth. I can talk. But where are my actions?

Lovely revisit

The gift of resurrecting my music website was to find a link there to the lovely memories here.
I am grateful to my two-year-ago self for posting them.

A Poem for my Love

Countries

With each extinguished light
the house contracts.
The Japanese lamp
with the purple Indian scarf
draped over it-
the fireplace, the 1910 French upright,
the whole living room-turned-
office -gone.
The bare bulb in the tiny hall
across from our pantry,
dining room and Thomas’
miniature jewel paintings -gone.
In the kitchen the red swag lamp
and the white (on one switch),
the window box with Lily
of the Peace, the little ficus
and African Violet Christie brought
along with her guitar -gone.
The stove still stands in light,
shed by the hood bulb, but there’s no need
for it to keep vigil, though you often
leave it on -gone. A hall door closes,
separating beds and bath from
the daytime spaces. A nightlight
shines above the sink, keeping
the bathroom with its Polynesian
wood-framed mirror with us
as we leave for our respective rooms.

This morning, I noticed the dark nothing
beyond the hallway door and understood:
You don’t want your first task to be
retrieving the kitchen for us from the night.
You’d rather it wait through to morning,
ready to give its space for breakfast
at the wooden table we bought at Paradise Garage-
Organic cereal with fresh blueberries,
marion berries, golden grapes and
apricots you cut into small pieces
before dropping them into my bowl.

©2007 Brol Gemmer. All right reserved.

The Magic of Life is in the Details even more so than in the Grand Events.

Half an hour northeast of Colville, Washington, on a Sunday in January after you've climbed out of an afternoon-pink-tinted valley and arrived at the house. The snow lays piled three feet high and it's sticky. This you will find out after you've made a snow angel and it won't come out of your hair, or off the socks, sticking out of the tops of your boots.

The snow's under-surface, where it rests on the tin roof has grown a layer of ice at the end of each day of the slightest thawing (this from the warming from within the building), and each day it has slid until it's formed a beautiful fold, like a succulent silk-satin cloth, draping itself over the edge of the roof. It looks mellow, but is hard and harsh when it meets with a tall man's forehead and nose bridge.

And then there are the endless pines heaped with winter goodness, looking so cliche, yet irresistibly beautiful. But nothing compares in beauty to the moment when you stand, after the dog has finally succumbed to its need and tinkled in the snow, making a perfect little hole that looks as if she's just peed a yellow dot, and you become suddenly aware of silence.

You notice it has been years during which you've forgotten the existence of such silence, of the absence of sound, and you wish you could have this always, this sense that the world is a cathedral, awing and immensely blessed.