Monday, May 30, 2016

the truth comes out



I consider myself a very private person.

This is laughable. This has been laughed at recently by some of my closest humans. My laugh is the last thing I keep private...

I am here. Laughing loudly. With a voice whose volume has little to do with loud/quiet and everything to do with impact. With a collection of words strung together into some semblance of an opinion or provocation. I am here with poems that if you follow closely enough you'll know when to ask, as some of those humans have, if I need to ceremonially burn a relationship relic. I am here with eyes that change colour with my mood and play host to the fire that is alive in me. I am here to converse in all of its forms, be it I write and you read, or we swap roles, or we swap stories over tea and both leave knowing that our souls were untangled a bit from our performances--from those ideas we have about ourselves.

I am not private. This is an idea. An idea that for whatever reason I am attracted to and so continue to believe despite acting entirely different. And in that is my understanding of truth.

My truth is different from yours, and neither is right nor wrong, rather it is our individual reservoir of fuel to live from. To come as we are. However, there is an interesting differentiation between the truths we tell ourselves--as with my self-convinced privacy-- and how we are revealed through our actions.

To some extent our actions are a product of what we believe or desire ourselves to be, but when misaligned with our truth they only decompose and in such facilitate the growth of a more rooted sense of self. And what permeates then, through our roots and into our external, behavioural blossoming is a more honest self. Our truths are not changeable, they are uncoverable. And once uncovered they need not be explained, not even understood, certainly not compared--they simply resonate on such a level of intimacy that we embody them with precision, grace even, that we can only be seen as living in potent integrity.

My truth has been diluted by what I have told myself, but is heightened by what is observable in how I live. And by people who see me when I think they can't. Conversations we have had simply through being.

And conversations that are more literal.

I'm understanding the necessity of discourse as much as I once revered privacy, or lately, silence. I believe the way to lift yourself from banality, as Svetlana Alexievech says, is to descend into the depths of yourself, especially through meditation and self inquiry and respect for what you are listening for, but also to allow others to dive with you. What someone asks you or what truth of theirs they offer, perhaps through saying what you weren't able to but oh yes feel the resonation of entirely, are ways they plug into your truths that serve to add light into deeper crevices, providing new angles of perception.

To quote another rad woman with somethings to say, Nayirah Waheed refers to humans as either organs or swords--there are those whom help us pulse, who feed into our vitality and raise our vibrations, and those who slash us open or sever parts of ourselves that must die so that we may live more fully. Persons whom play host to conversations that are unnerving, expansive, and serve to siphon truths from every polluted bit of distrust in ourselves and not need confirmation from anything but our willingness to know more intimately, who we are. Those who, in not judging us, ask us to do the same for ourselves.

That is where I feel most conversations suffer: judgement. Be it the ones you have with others that are subject to vagueties, half truths lacquered in fear and lengthy vocabulary to avoid saying what is directly aching to move from your strangled throat chakra, or in those more quiet ones we have with ourselves. In self-judgement, we take what we hear from our truth centres and taint it by looking for validation or "rightness" from books, professional intuitive diagnoses or predictions, our astrological sign, doctrinarians, like-minded opinions… external reference points for our internal knowings. Judging in the most cyclical of ways what we know by what we don't know. Y'know?

We do not know anything for sure, but we learn so much more purely when we do not question every piece of motivation to do, every inclination or innate sense that evolves us, anything we feel compelled to share, but instead surrender and notice from the place of having arrived instead of seeking arrival. When we look at the way we work against or in harmony with every bit of external information we receive, when we hear not just what is said in conversations, but how what is said lands with us--internally. And we do so with the intention to simply witness our experience. When we are tuned into, and tuned by, what is not said amidst all that is being said. This is where listening occurs at its finest--when the questions you ask are not navigated towards a specific answer, but an actual wonder at what is. When what you hear can occur far more subtly than the decibels that speech reaches. When the experience of conversation is as fascinating as the subject matter, and both allow us to see ourselves more clearly.

See what happens when you find yourself just as fascinating, when you find yourself where you left yourself and arrive as a bit more of your self. When you are not looking for anything, but accepting what you are. When you radiate your intentions and worth, founded in a trust in your feelings to be tethered to truth. When your vulnerability not only with others but with your own self is nothing short of fierce, and you take that into the interactions you have, knowing one thing for sure: what is unsaid has as much value as what is said--and you ought to get oh so clear on both in the next conversation you have with yourself, so that you may converse more honestly whether in whom you are being, or whom you are sharing your being with. Whether you're alone or navigating your depths with another; whether you're private or not.



Thank you to those who took the time for tea*, who laughed directly at me and with me, who elevated me and grounded me without saying anything, who scratched a little deeper into my truths and held the space for me to feel those raw feels. I hear you. I love you.





*another half truth to the humans who know me best. It was coffee. Lots of it. 

Wednesday, May 11, 2016

I Imagined our Love {poem}






















I imagined kissing you slowly,
your lips finally finding mine as your hand ran the length of my thigh,
your heat and the safety your shape brings me
as you leaned over me

I imagined meeting your gaze 
in the darkness and from only the light of your eyes 
knowing we chose this together--

falling in love again.

I imagined after so long, 
after all the time and the hope that had collected 
what it would be like to release in to you,
Surrendering

I imagined how after exposing
ourselves openly honest, raw,
how it would feel to lay together again.

To make love.

To choose love.

But it was all just my imagination and illusion is cruel.
My lips are dry and my legs feel weak.
I'm alone in the darkness,
Closing my eyes, falling into a dream of you 
Again. 
Surrendering to sleep and time and 
The truths I laid out for myself.
For in reality,
in letting each other go,
we loved on still.





As published on Elephant Journal: http://www.elephantjournal.com/2016/05/an-imaginary-love-poem/

Tuesday, May 10, 2016

My poem, my prayer {poem}

























I want to live in joy.
In this "i am" of enlightenment I lose my fight, my sight of what I want to do with this life.

I hear you about "being"
I'm with you, I'm agreeing,
mind at ease, I'm receiving,
but wonder if thoughts are really so deceiving...
is it so wrong to be thinking sweetly believing that there is life to be lived?


Can your spirit be driven 
by this love you have found in your true sense of self this freedom, this wealth-- abundant, and oh, isn't it intimate…
what will you do with it?

Let the sun touch your skin and walk blooming lotus.
Plant seeds, kiss the earth,
give thanks cast to the wind.
Give in to the ocean. Give up fleeting emotion--
Feel it and leave it,
Look to your heart to believe it,
Trust what is true
to your sense of you.


Think if you wish,
not to control or convince you,
but with curious freedom,
to listen in and move
from your heart, it's your home,
bring love when you come,
bring love where you go.


This is my joy, my prayer, and my poem.





As published by Elephant Journal: http://www.elephantjournal.com/2016/05/my-joy-poem/



















Thursday, May 5, 2016

the birthing process

"In that place again that I know that I know, but I don't know….for me this is where some of the most raw creativity births out of delicate vulnerability.

The wise and the ancient say that paradox is the nature of Life. That Life is composed of opposites that seemingly contradict. When I can become awake in this stormy place of contradictions, in my highest vision I can see its because something inside is transforming. That it cannot make sense because true sense is a multi-dimensional experience. Therefore to find comfort in any kind of sense my mind seeks is to grasp too tight to the tiny dimension of man made knowns.

I don't know. But I know. But just cannot know. And if i did, if we knew, how could we ever be surprised by the lessons that unfold through the mystery?"





There is still sand in my hair. This could mean that I am a horribly inefficient shower-er, or a testimony to the clinging residue of the fine black sand in Mazunte, or perhaps even a very tangible example of how I am holding on to my time in Mexico.

I am holding on to my time in Mexico.

Though, not because I long so much for the sun on every inch of my skin and the sound of the ocean to lull me asleep at any hour of my oh so un-agenda'd days, not because of mangos ripening on the trees outside of my door or the kindness of that quirky town and the jungle medicine of the one before it, but for the ease of being that I had. There was an ease of doing, yes, certainly, but that connection to myself, that deeply reverberating sense of truth and integrity, that unshakeable calm despite all that was shaken--it was easy to just be.

What is not so easy, is to take those moments that shatter your paradigms as if breaking ground for your roots to grow sturdier yet and your soul to drink in the Earth and flourish in harmony with life itself, and transition away from the place and time which provided the sanctuary for this gestation. Not easy, but oh so necessary.

So necessary to realize that it was not the place and the time, but the you. The willingness. The readiness. The awakening of your spirit to experience something in the fullness of its intensity. To not shy from discomfort or seek out distraction. To not dilute the potency of your feels, be it the most alive sense of joy, of viva la vida you have ever known, or a sorrow that seems far too palpable to be purely emotion. To not repress. To simply not repress. Ever. Anything….

This is the birthing process. Post gestating in the womb of everything nurturing, shaping, defining, spacious and quiet, and entering into the noise of possibility, creating, expanding, expressing. The time when you are brought to life with an insatiable wonder at all of it.  And yet a distrust. You were once so protected and now so fully vulnerable. All that you feel is new and yet innately natural. Indistinguishable yet refining itself all to its own devices. You are home and you are not. You are you and yet….there is something more. Something that amidst all of the contradictions you can sense that you are only just coming to know, just coming to embrace fully as your archetype, your place, your aliveness. Your self.

It is so much simpler in the womb. It can be that simple out of it. Life can be as simple as surrender. We exist with paradoxes, we exist with truths that exist simultaneously with other truths and it is our objective not to know one from the other and which is "right" but to trust in the option of both. To know we have options. To know that at once all is already decided for you, yet you are only being revealed to that, to yourself, layer by sweetly unique and changing layer. To know that each birth required a death of some kind, a letting go….so let go. Simplify. Trust.

Be born again. Even now. Fully embrace that all that you know only brings you closer to all that you do not; the complexities of change only seem so-- your evolution is simple. Be willing for those bits of you that no longer ring truest of true to die off and the newest of your buds to receive more vital energy. Again, do not repress your feels or your questions, rather trust in those same feels providing you the answers. Again, trust. And believe in magic.

For the birth process is that: magic. A dark and light, white and black magic blend of something inexplicable yet fully liveable for each of us with our own very unique process of integrating into whom we always have been. Mine will look different than yours; right now mine looks like comforting bits of sand in my hair, feels like wading through the sea, consciously moving but more slowly, more aware, and excited in a way that moves my nerves and bones as the relentless sincerity of the waves crashing to the shore did--I may not be able to hear them now, but I remember them, and learn that it is actually myself I am holding onto. And I write these words as much for me as for you. And I hope for us all to continually take opportunity to be in the sweetly mysterious, magical process of growing more alive.

xx

Tuesday, May 3, 2016

I am not afraid to love you {poem}




'
















I'm not afraid to argue,
come--see me.

Confront me.
Disagree.

Let me know you
like you know you,
show that you care to understand me.

Ask me questions
I only seem to have the answers to--
help me get clear.

Dig deeper.
Inquire.

I am not afraid of your
intensity,
get passionate with me.

Be sure,
and not so.

Be vulnerable.
Tell me what happens
to your heart when I smile--

is it so terrifying
to not be able to reason at love,
to let now be enough?

Feel.
Weep.

Let me in on your confusion,
your doubts and debates.
What weighs on your heart?

Ill take it in mine.
I'm here to hold you
as you've held me,

to ease you your suffering.
To look into your eyes
and see the truth

through the fear.
To know that when we conflict
we grow closer in

trust,
a willingness to feel,
working to understand.

Surrender your heart
from your words,
and know

that I am not afraid
of love.




As published on Elephant Journal: http://www.elephantjournal.com/2016/05/i-am-not-afraid-to-love-you-poem/

Sunday, May 1, 2016

Gestation

The neem tree scatters sun and shadow across my skin, My legs hang painted gold, rooted, sure, knowing Mother Earth's fertility. Take it's medicine, take my time. Gestation, growth. I reach out in wonder, touch it's leaves and blossom alongside, wise. I can still touch the sound of the ocean with my heart. The echoes are the same there. The echoes are the same there.




I have never been more naked than I was in Mazunte.

I have never, either, been more quiet about it.

Never have I been more honest, done more letting go, found more ease/acceptance/value, got cozy in my heart, been eaten by more bugs, eaten more tortilla chips, digested, lived out paradoxes without being torn between two equally true truths, listened to the same song on repeat, listened to myself…. If Yelapa was womb-like, then Mazunte was where I released fully into a period of gestation, growth.

And here is the thing about growth: we can plant as many seeds as we like, offer water and sun, sing to them the sweetest of melodies, but if the soil is not richly fertile, those seeds will starve. In other words, we cannot learn our lessons unless the willingness to do so provides the most fecund environment to nourish what we need to know--or rather, what we already do.

You know all that you need to know. None of what you feel you need to learn comes from anyone else's information for you, whether that be in conversation, written in books, broadcast from an alter/stage/podcast--those are the sun and the rain. And let them feed into your growth, let them provoke you, move you, resonate with you, but understand that the resonation comes because they are touching a piece of truth that already exists within you…and then seek to understand this truth as intimately as you can. You become oh so fertile, oh so prepared to flourish when you get oh so clear on your very own version of the world and understanding of yourself within it. The spirit that courses through you is in everything you touch and see and exist in harmony with, every serendipitous connection with creation--get to know it, your spiritual awakening will birth your human awakening.

But before birth there must be a gestation time; digestion, or as was described in the silent retreat I participated in in Mazunte, a process of deconditioning. After having a pure experience, it is necessary to allow an awakened moment to set in, to keep it from the conditioned mind's patterns so that it might settle more deeply, more purely yet, closer to the divine knowing of the heart. When we feel something rock our beings on a soul level, we cannot ignore that that vibration needs to settle, otherwise the excess energy of it simply gets flung out into an abyss, robbing us of the nutrients it contains that grow us incrementally. Example: falling in love. Ooh lala, delightful. Trance like, a vortex that one can quickly lose oneself in and start to compromise ones own identity for how something feels or the illusion that attraction, lust, desire, hope can persuade us with. We forget that love takes work, constant choosing, commitment, and requires a coaxing from the romance of it all into the great significance of what it can effortfully be; and so it goes for the level of intimacy we have with ourselves. Ultimately, we need time to steep in our lessons, revelations, remembrances, and self love, so that they might concentrate richly and as a developed part of us, so that when they are questioned we know if we are meant to hold steady, grounded in our roots, or bloom further, continue to expand, versify, die and be born again….

And when you do birth again after a proper, potent gestation, there is an urgency to living now, as you are meant to. Awake. In tune. Enraptured and rapturous. Provoked and provocative. Spacious and open. Continuously stoking your own fire so that you might do so for others--you are not meant to please everyone, but ask them to know themselves by how they are stirred by you. You are not meant to doubt or rush our own process, but to take your time in reverence of your epic formation. Aware of your worth. Trusting. Faithful to yourself and all that can only exist uniquely within you makes you indispensable, alive, present. We are not meant to experience this world in any other way but through the intelligent absorption of our minds and bodies and wondrous experience of our hearts. And in fact we do not need to know, at all, but to settle into experience contentedly, intuitive, feeling, uncompromisingly trusting in every bit of your being.

You do not have to spend six weeks under a Spanish sun, ten days in silence, or hours listening to words that sound just as medicine heals….you just have to listen to you.

xx