I Realized - Two

I realized that the natural world brought me peace and joy, always.

I realized that Goddess worship and Earth-based spirituality, also called paganism by some, was a way forward for me because it used the power of words, the power of vocalized song in the form of chanting, and the beauty and power of the natural world, (the natural world’s frequency I would now say, although I would not have used that word then). I realized that paganism was a great fit for me.

I realized that spellcraft was specifically directed at the self and the self’s experience of the world, rather than being directed at the world which would then conform to the self. Spellcraft, I realized, changes the self and so the self experiences the world as changed.

I realized that I loved the world anew through spellcraft and could do Earth healing, whereby I sent that love out to the world as an energy for the Earth to do with as Earth chose to do.

I realized that spellcraft is healing of past traumas; it is the bringing into wholeness of a fragmented self, a self that has fragmented because the pain or distress were too great to bear, so they were repressed and pushed away. Spellcraft worked actively and consciously to allow awareness of these with compassion and then to release them through rituals of release and transmutation.

I realized that there was a point of presence and a point of power or will inside of me. Again, I wouldn’t have used that phrase ‘point of presence,’ but it fits now; I use it now. That point of presence was big.

I realized - and it blew my circuits - that I could embody the consciousness of Gaia. I ‘aspected’ Gaia, which is what new age wiccans call it when we drop our selfhood down down down through our body, through our feet and then bring in, call in, the aspect of a Goddess or off-world being. I aspected Gaia, and I haven’t been the same since. I was Gaia, in the body of this little human being.

I realized that each of these many Goddesses are aspects of the ONE, which is neither male nor female, neither creator alone, nor destroyer alone, but all things simultaneously.

I realized that I could again begin to use the word God, although both the words God and Goddess are completely inadequate to THAT which we feel as God/Goddess.

I realized that I wanted to feel into the One whom people call Jesus the Christ. I realized that I didn’t want to throw that particular ‘baby’ out with the filthy bath water of Christian dogma, cruelty and dysfunction.

I realized that I didn’t need to do ritual out of doors to achieve that feeling of union with the divine in the world, that feeling of union with the spirit of the world; I could do ritual within my small room and be as big as the world. I also realized that whenever I walked out of doors, whenever I walked the land, I was communing with that spirit of the world.

I realized that psycho-therapy was again a healing and transmutation of past trauma and old wounds and scars from wounds; the methods that worked well for me as a client in psycho-therapy took me into awareness of the trauma, allowed me the time and a safe space to observe it with compassion, and thus to transmute the woundedness, just as witchcraft had done.

I realized that I could do the work of psycho-therapy on my own and I began to do this whenever I was ‘triggered’ by overly dramatic responses within myself to external stimuli. This practice was exceedingly and invariably beneficial to me; I developed the courage to ‘see’ the past trauma, the wound or the scar with compassion and thus to transmute it with, as I now would say, unconditional love, although I would not have used that term then; I would have used the term compassion.

I realized that I didn’t need the external symbols of spellcraft; I had internalized them.

I realized that I didn’t need to ‘protect’ myself by casting a circle. I still loved to call in the directions, the energies and the spirit of the world in the form of Goddess, but more and more it was becoming all one thing, all one calling to and then receiving. I realized that wiccan ritual was no longer appealing to me.

I was about 41 years old by this time.

I Realized - One

Something within me prompted me to recount for myself and for others how I have become the person that I am now. I realized that a series of realizations, a growing awareness, was the path that brought me here. I committed myself to documenting these and since I keep a journal and have done so for many years, this project was not so difficult as it had at first appeared. I intend to share these realizations with you. They comprise many pages and I will offer them one segment at a time. Here is the first such offering. These realizations came to me as I was a child and a young adult. By the age of 25, I had come to the realization which you will find at the end of this segment.

I realized that I kept falling in love with the world. I kept falling in love with feeling, with moments. I kept falling in love with the places where I experienced these feelings, lived these moments.

I realized that poetry could potentially express this love. I realized that some prose, a sort of poetic prose, could potentially express this love and so I began to explore words and the power of words to express this love for moments, this rapturous love for feeling states.

I realized that movement could express also, that joy could be expressed through movement, through dance, more easily and directly than through any words.

I realized that vocalizations of song and vocal harmonies could express so much. It didn’t matter what words were being sung - well, it did matter, but not nearly so much as people thought it did. And my love for words and the power of words and my love for the vocalization of song, the singing in the choir of over one hundred voices, came together and I began to recreate the words of the Anglican church services. I began to use their words differently and to change their words within my own consciousness.

I realized that I could not negotiate Christianity’s teachings and beliefs, that they were fundamentally opposed to my feeling and innate knowing about self and society and world. I realized that I would need to create another path to God for myself because I wanted to know God and to have God in my life, but not on Christianity's terms.

Humanity Grows Wise

Humanity is changing. Actually, humanity is evolving to become something far more wise, kind and honourable than we have ever been. We can do this. We are, in fact, doing this now.

Because of our internet technology, we are becoming more and more aware of ourselves as a global community. We are becoming therefore, more politically aware and more compassionate.

We have integrated the wisdom traditions of people all over the world, from the Eastern philosophies and religions to the paradigm of the native peoples of the Americas. We have integrated the wisdom of the indigenous peoples of Africa and the Australian continent as well.

We are evolving our ability to hold two opposing viewpoints at the same time. We are literally growing our brains, beginning to use the front of our brains as never before. See the work of Joseph Chilton Pearce for more information about this.

We have an ever-growing environmental awareness, which sometimes causes us to feel distress at the state of our world's environment and biological systems, ecological systems today. The same is true of our growing awareness of animal rights. We are exploring right action on a global scale. We are deciding together, as a collective human society, what kind of world we choose to live in.

This is tied irrevocably to the growing understanding among us that we make the world, and that we are the agents of change that we have been looking for. Thus do we develop our sense of stewardship and responsibility.

We have the Declaration of Human Rights. We have a global anti-war movement. And in fact, we have less war in the world now than at any time in the past 1000 years or more. This is something to think about profoundly as we move through our days now.

We've never before been who and what and how we are now. This time is unprecedented. So breathe deeply, and as you breathe, cast away from yourself all of your pre-conceived notions of what we are as a world and of what we are capable. The image of our planet seen from space totally changed us and we have continued to change and will continue to change since then.

People say that the world is in crisis. Crisis is both danger and opportunity. In many ways, we are a world in crisis, surrounded by danger, surrounded by opportunity. And this is global. For the first time in human history, we can and MUST do this together. And we are together now, through the internet, through technology, we are together.

We are continuously deepening our awareness, our knowledge and our consciousness. Our awareness has been broadened WAY beyond the awareness of people thirty or forty years ago. Most of our problems - political and environmental - originated in the late 1700's and through the 1800's. We don't think that way anymore. We can and will transcend those problems. Racism, religious intolerance, competition for resources, exploitation of lands and peoples. We are doing this now, albeit slowly and beginning here and there. This change in our world is happening daily now.

We are, individually, becoming wise in our personal choices, wise in our communal lives, open-minded, tolerant of differences, non-judgmental. We are becoming wise in our development of political structures that truly serve our highest selves. We move from the small to the large and we do this organically and through our emerging wisdom. All that we envision for our planet will come as we realize our ability to make this world as we will have it be.

Everywhere I look, all over the internet, all over the planet, in all the hearts and minds, I see humanity grow wise.

And thus do we change the world and create it anew.

Lu's Awfully Big Adventure

As some of you know, we have been having very tempestuous weather lately. 

At the end of May, to have rain is quite normal. However, we had five days of rain, with three or four of them involving steady and heavy rain. There were high winds from the cold north as well. On the day before the end of the great storm, we had snow. The snow was thick and heavy. There was much damage to many trees and plants. 

I had been holding the intention of hiking up Mount Echo to see the Lady Slipper Orchids in bloom. It is their time now. 

It is a hike of about 45 minutes to reach the one spot where these wild flowers bloom in our area. 

My friend Eva accompanied me on this epic journey through the devastated landscape and the wreckage of the storm's aftermath yesterday. 

We were almost forced to turn back near the beginning of our adventure, because the streams and brooks are running so fast that we had no hope of spanning the small stream that blocked our way without ending up with soaking wet feet. And since the temperature was close to the freezing mark, we couldn't afford to have wet feet. So, we ranged upstream, looking for a way to cross. 

Eva was so resourceful! She found a fallen sapling that was strong enough to bear our weight if we crossed one at a time. She hauled it to the stream's edge and with my help, slung it across the raging stream. With the help of my hiking poles and a friendly tree branch above us, we made it across!

Another heavy flowing stream awaited us a little further along the trail. We were able to span that stream using the rocks that were just above the water's rush. 

Heavy mud and many fallen trees and tree branches made our progress slow. But helping each other as we went along, and speaking of such important matters as the heavenly music of J.S. Bach, we eventually approached the site of the orchids. 

I didn't know what to hope for, to be honest. All along we had seen terrible damage to the trout lilies and the Clintonia borealis (Blue Bead Lily) which luckily are plentiful in those woods. There was rain wash out damage, snow damage and wind damage. Many plants had their leaves broken and torn by the storm's fury. 

As we approached the place where I knew the orchids had been growing well last year, my heart beat fast and I became a big anxious. 

They were hard pressed by fallen branches from a huge dead tree just there where they were growing. They were growing so bravely through the snow!

What I have found, time and time again, is that those things that we love will always survive the storms and trials of life here on Earth. That which we treasure, will endure. The challenges of extreme weather and constant change are not enough to break the orchids or to break us. We, and all that is beautiful, will endure, will grow and will evolve.

Bowed down somewhat, perhaps, but unbroken and still so precious!

Breakfast by the orchids, photo opportunities, and then the careful trek back down the mountainside made our adventure complete.

Eva was a wonderful companion on my adventure and we both hope to have more such in the days to come.

I hope that you who read this will also enjoy your experiences, be they calm and peaceful, or challenging through storm and strife. This is life!

We Won't Wait Any Longer

"We won't wait any longer, we are stronger." This is part of a song by Ian Corrigan. I heard it many years ago.

It came into my consciousness this morning, as I thought about the world today and how we are in the world, how I am.

Ever since I was very young, I have loved. I have loved sweetly and gently and without reservation or conditions. I have loved the world with all my heart.

And I am not alone in this. Many people have felt this love in their hearts. Many people have felt this sweet communion with the world.

We were taught that we should not love. We were taught that loving hurts and is dangerous. We were taught to hide our love away. We were taught that loving in this way was foolish and silly.

But we loved anyway. Quietly, secretly, sometimes ashamedly, we loved anyway.

We loved the world when the bombs fell in distant countries. We, some of us, loved the world when the bombs fell on our own countries. May we all send our deepest honouring to those of us who have lived through that and love still.

We loved the world when the lies were told to us, over and over again.

We loved the world while the rich got richer, while the liars and cheats stole millions and billions and trillions from the poor and the disenfranchised of the world.

We loved even as hypocrisy seemed to triumph. Even when hypocrisy, greed and corruption sounded their winnings from the rooftops, still we loved deep in our hearts. Our love never wavered, not in that deep place within us. It did not hesitate. It was not diminished.

We loved the world whenever we saw some small corner of it, untouched by greed, unsullied.

We loved to see the innocence in the young child's eyes.

We loved the sweet purity of a wild flower.

We loved all those parts of the world that cannot ever be owned or fenced - the sky, the oceans, the clouds.

And yes, we cried sometimes. Sometimes, when the darkness of hatred and anger, of greed and me versus you and us versus them became too much for us in our love, in our sweet, golden unconditional love, sometimes then we wept. Sometimes then we cried out for help.

We need not cry anymore. We need not hide our love away ever again. No, not ever again.

We are so much stronger now, in our love, in our light. We dwell now in the first sweet rays of exultation, for the world is changing and it is we ourselves who have wrought this change, who have worked this miracle.

We love openly now, filling the world with golden light, even more than it already is, even more every day.

We don't wait any longer. We don't hide anymore.
We don't wait any longer. We are stronger.

We are free now.

All the ways that we can love the world are ours now to enjoy.

We are safe now.

We are in a new world of love and light for all.

And all the times that I have felt silenced, that I have felt judged for being what I am - a beacon of love and light in the world - all the times that I have felt that I must be a crazy fool to love the world as I did, all of those times, are wiped clean now, are released from my being, as just a bad dream.

We are free now to love the world and to heal it and free it and make of it all that it can be - a place of love and light and freedom for all.

Feel it. Love and light and freedom for all.

The tide has turned.

And our love is now the way of the world. I know this to be true, as I know that the sun rises and the grasses grow.

I love the world. This has always been true, but now, when I say it, it is very different for me than all the other times that I have said it. For now, I say it without apology, without that self-deprecating shrug of the shoulders.

Now, shoulders back, head held high, I say with all my voice,

I love the world. And I am mighty in this. I am exultant in this. I am joyous in this. I am vast and powerful in this. I am triumphant in this. Yes. I dare to say it. I am triumphant in this.

We won't wait any longer. We are stronger.

Poems and Photographs

If you enjoy the poetry and photographs that you see in various posts on this blog, please consider exploring my other blog, http://hereandnowwithyou.blogspot.com


That is where I am posting all of my poetry and photography for people to enjoy.

A Gift More Precious than Gold

I have wondered why we value the metal gold so highly. I believe that we do so because golden light is associated with the energy of unconditional love and peace. This is the energy of Yeshua, of the Christ that lives within our hearts.

If you would like to give this gift of love and peace to the world, you might like to try this beautiful meditation which I have been doing for some time now in the early mornings.

Quiet yourself in a place of peace. Breathe deeply to center yourself in your heart space.

Imagine the planet Earth as a sacred sphere small enough to fit in the joined palms of your hands. As if you were holding gold dust, imagine the planet Earth to be sitting in the joined palms of your hands.

It is actually hovering just above your hands, as golden light surrounds the sphere. This golden light is like a loving embrace that supports the planet Earth as it rests just above the palms of your hands.

Now, send more and more golden light to this sphere. Send golden light of compassion, of love, of peace and of healing energy to every part of this sphere that is our beloved planet Earth. Surround and bathe and wash the planet with golden light.

Send golden light without worrying for even an instant about where it goes and whom it touches.

The golden light awakens all of humanity to the love of God which is in each human heart. By whatever name you know this Supreme Being and Becoming, that is what pulses and thrills and sighs and knows within your heart and within all human hearts.

The golden light flows to every part of the planet, to the cities and the countryside, to the open pit mines and the clear cut forests, to the wetlands and the deserts. The soothing, loving golden light flows to the young mother, the old soldier, the rapist and the murderer, the doctor, the lawyer - yes, even these. It flows to the victim and the perpetrator, the healer and the one so in need of healing.

The divine golden light goes everywhere as you hold the world in the palms of your hands and send that light forth from your own divine love, your own divine heart of God.

This is something that we can do right now, as planet Earth and all of humanity move together through a time of amazing transitions and new becoming. It is a wonderful time. It is a challenging time. By sending this light out to all, you help all to become that which they have, in the deepest places within them, known themselves to be.

This gift, which takes only a few minutes each morning, will fill your own heart with joy and peace. It is a gift more precious than all the gold in the world. It is the golden light of unconditional love, peace on Earth and goodwill to all who dwell upon this sphere.