Buddha Resolve

December 30th was a warm windy day. 2016 and the finish line with one more stride to step into the last day of the year. 

I was experiencing a pause in the continuation of time and I was wandering into a new realm of existence,one far beyond the everyday reflection mode. I took a breath and stepped back to honor the new physical reality in which I now live, one far different from a year ago today.

 Emotionally, I have analyzed the whys and wherefores of the events of this past year and honor the truth of my conclusions and the healing of the trips to get away and explore other aspects of my existence which are valuable to me.

 Mentally, I honor my grieving heart and never cease to be amazed at my resilience in letting go of any attachments to what should be or I could have done differently. Slowly, I let go of the nagging rehash of events which would really prefer to become habitual should I allow them to continue. 

I can not change the way life is right now. In fact, I am grateful. If it took all of the onslaught of this past year for me to be able to be meandering through this realm where all of life's experiences are a gift, then I wouldn't change a thing about it. (I know! Marilyn Monroe said it first!!)

I know I came into this incarnation with a sacred contract and have been about collecting the shards of my broken life, as life IS broken for us all after all is said and done.  Right speech and action, I am learning, is more than determining and communicating the true facts, the scientific analysis, the acceptance of outcomes beyond stoic resignation,  or the attempts to mend estrangements.

In this realm, which I choose to call Higher Self, Divine Energy holds me, us, in a different mode of responding to human suffering - our own and that which is present everywhere in today's world.

Entering a new way to live, I took time on the 30th to print out, read, and wad up into balls ready to burn, an 82 page document which for me represented all the negative attacks on my character and on the character of all people in this world this past year.  This destructive energy has been available all year for anyone to buy into. Many did. Many did not. 

I took the wads of paper to our newly purchased lot next door, to the center of the lot.  I also took a candle to call in the Buddha Energy always  readily available, too. I lit the candle and set it into a place dug out to hold it erect. Then I lit the wads, one by one, from the candle and monitored their burning until the whole document was nothing but white ashes.

I placed my finger in the ashes The ashes that clung to my finger, I placed on my third eye just as a priest does on Ash Wednesday.

Then I picked up the candle and carried it home. To my amazement, it stayed lit allthe whole way home  - about 100 ft. in real time.

I know this year will be a time of energy spent on visioning the new realities this world needs - which I need, and no energy spent worrying about what negative energies have and will continue to  produce. 

Can you perceive what I am saying about changing a way of responding? The great revolutions of the 60s required awakening a sleeping world to""he times which were a changin'.  

Today, because the world is available through the massive media explosion of the 20th Century atechnological revolution,  I do not believe we are living in a changing world that needs awakening to.  Being alive is perpetual change in and of itself.  Everything has really really really changed. Just as a baby cries when encountering the new reality which is not the womb anymore,  people are crying out in protest to having awakened to this strange world with no skills to function here. 

I will gather Buddha, mindfully focused on a vision for  this reality,  one which isa birthing insight to provide direction into the future.

Where and how will your energy be focused in2017?  How will you be sustained in holding a new vision for your life and for the new patterns that must emerge in social systems everywhere?

2016: The Year of Final Blessings

Chartres Cathedral, France, a night view from our hotel Windows

 This year the obvious appeared in radical fashion.
In May,  I rearranged my home to accommodate one with occasional guests, booked a trip to Europe to heal and do three things I really had wanted to do for a long time, which now was free to do unencumbered by worry about what was happening at home.

I attended an Institute of Cultural Affairs archives sojourn in Chicago. I was about worthless to help in the work because of my waning eyesight, but enjoyed the collegiality of folks I had known my entire adult life, worked with, and now travelled to the basement of our history, encountering the archival treasures still untouched there, and back into the new Greenrise edge of the ICA's work in the world today.

I visited my son, in Germany, who is in the Army. He was on leave during the last two weeks in September. We went to a pumpkin festival at a magnificent castle. We trekked to Weisenfels to explore our German heritage. We walked around Ansbach. We drove to Birkenstock and stocked up on shoes. Most of all we got to know each other as the human beings we really are.

Then we headed for France. First we went to Burgundy, to Taize for a Sunday Eucharist with 600 singing the mass  followed by a drive through the countryside where we ran into a horse show.

Then on to Paris for a cruise on the Seine and a a hop on hop off tour of the city.  Our kaleidoscopic encounter with Paris after a lifetime of learning of all these places in movies, magazines, and the news, was a reminder that we all live on one Earth after all.

Chartres may have been the high point of our tour together. The Cathedral was full of mystery and history and I suspect we took it all in, including a climb to the top of the bell tower (by my son) and a guided tour of the catacombs which took us back to the year 1000. AND I got to stand at the center of the dromenon made famous by Jean Houston's work.

Our final day together, we spent at the Louvre in Paris. Again, I am pretty sure we didn't miss much. I was exhausted as proof of a full and art filled day. We parted ways then.

My son went back to Germany and I went on to Southern France, to Plum Village for a two week Buddhist retreat - a final opportunity to reflect and make new decisions about the trauma of the first five months of this year. By this process I felt joy and peace and acceptance of my journey to Self.

Finally back in Germany, we did as little as possible for my son's 50th birthday (per his request). We did some Christmas ornament shopping at Rothenburg outlet, and on the final day drove to  Stuttgart to head home to Crescent City.

The whole 38 days was rich and full of love and adventurous encounters.

Healing was complete and wholly purifying

. (I almost forgot to add two healing visits where I felt really cared for - one to Venice, FL to spend a few days with old time ICA colleagues; the other in Burlington, VT to celebrate a dear Psychosynthesis colleague's 65th and retirement.)

(The first annual Scarecrow Festival was a huge success - the planning group met in my living room even while I was gone.)

(My niece, her husband and two sons came for Thanksgiving. Christmas is promising to be filled with good tidings and family gathering. Does it get any better?)

I am grateful for the journey, too, Maya Angelou. In every encounter, I breathe in the newness of the future I am stepping into gently and mindfully.

Returning to the turmoil of a hurricane aftermath and totally absurd election campaign, and getting sucked in on occasion to a sense of hopelessness about the future of this nation, I nevertheless find my self searching for the future building significance of it all.  For my own life, this year, this has been the situation, with a heart breaking ending and resolute new beginning. For this nation, I have glimpses of the final blessing innately present in false allegations of  epic psychotic proportions.

If my life since my return to Crescent City is any indication of an inviting future, then it can happen in this nation. As has been the case all this year, whatever the situation, I have learn ed to accept it as gift of exactly the stuff needed for creating a new and beautiful art form of life as it really is.

Many have experienced this year as being one of radical change accompanied by a dread assault on routine and secure patterns. Have you experienced it - other than the campaign fiasco this year?

A Walk With Thay

During my sojourn in Plum Village, one part of the day was a walking meditation. We followed a leader through nature's presence together, breathing mindfully as we proceeded.

On the third gathering of the three hamlets (Upper Hamlet for males, New Hamlet for females, and Lower Hamlet for females and couples) everyone came to New Hamlet, where I stayed. As we just began our walk, a car pulled in where we were passing by. In it was Thich Nhat Hanh, escorted by monks who assisted him in his wheelchai., making it possible for him to take the lead in our walk.

If you haven't heard of him, please google him. He is the most well known Buddhist teacher in the world today. In Plum Village we energize Buddha energy  -mindfulness, concentration, and insight, with sitting, walking, eating, and working meditation. Although a very relaxed atmosphere, the journey is intense. 

We headed up the steep hill, through the plum trees which were rich with ripe fruit to harvest. When I attempted to climb the hill earlier in the sojourn, I was the last one to reach the top, lagging far behind.

This walk was slow and calming while breathing and being aware that we were breathing, so I was able to keep up with the crowd of 300 monks, nuns, and sojourners.

Part way up the hill, Thay, as he is informally called, had everyone stop.  He can not physically talk, but his presence and arms guided us to contemplate the hill we were climbing. The pause occasioned reflections within my soul, mythic in their essence. I breathed in this refreshing perspective on a physically arduous task.

A little while later, we stopped. The attending monks turned him around, and he invited us to contemplate a small yellow flower similar to a dandelion. He marched the flower  from left to right and back, occasionally  patting the shaven head of a monk sitting beside him. He moved his hands as if giving a dharma talk, and radiated a playfulness from his presence.

We continued this walk up the hill for awhile longer. Thay, in the lead, had the attending  monks turn his wheel chair around again. Focused on the walkers, he waved his hand across the span of  men , women,  and a few children, inviting us to contemplate the community gathered. I was further down the hill looking up the hill. There was an opening from where I sat to where Thay was and he seemed to be looking straight at me.  Others mentioned later that they had the same experience.

We did not go to the top of the hill. Rather, we turned around and headed back down the hill through the plum trees and into the fields next to it, arriving at the huge gong hanging under its oriental canopy in the center of the compound.


I am not one to be an adoring follower of anybody or anything. But, there is something special about a man who has been mindfully living for so many years. The week of this walk was the week of his 90th birthday - or in the Vietnamese tradition  - Continuation Day,

I was doing this sojourn to jump start my neglected daily spiritual practice. The goal has been reached. I am very grateful to be breathing mindfully again. I am reaping the benefits of a quieted mind concentratimg on the fullness oft his present moment, as it continually changes.  I am at peace and have a multitude of images of people living mindfully, to sustain me, including the presence of Thich Nhat Hanh.

My journey to the East has been an art form creating its Self as myself continues its Soul synthesis.

How do you sustain your daily spiritual practice and renew it when needed?

Post Trauma: The Joyous Journey

Every morning as I began my daily walk, I would take in the beauty of this prolific wall of blue and green. The sight always took my breath away. These plumbago were able to grow this year and were full like this for twenty-five more feet along this west side of the garden space.

Recently, I hired the same  gardener we always used to clear the garden of weeds and plants which dried up after the harvest.  This would be replaced with a mulch covered  sacred space.

I left the gardener and her son alone to clear the garden. When I came out to check if they were finished, they had already trimmed all of the thirty-five feet of lush plumbago almost to nothing. She was surprised at my reaction - an astonished gasp - because this is how she has always cared for the yard.

As time passes on, green leaves are beginning to fill in the grey-brown barren spaces, and new clusters of flowers are beginning to bloom across the span of a well trimmed hedge.

O My!! That event was so like the trauma of the past nine months of my life. In the same way, the devastation, angst, and violation are behind me now. The verdicts of the false allegations confirmed the truth and I have once again been reminded that the system, corrupt as it may be, still stands for the truth, the best interests and the highest good. I am actually relieved that there will be no garden now. I am relieved that there will be no more of many intrusions on  a peaceful existence. The cats and I are adjusting to the joyous newness of  the journey into the future.

In honor of a joyous journey into the future, I have deleted the last twelve posts, two of which I never published. I wrote the truth in all of them. On the other hand, I intend to never have to experience their content or their cause ever again. I printed them out and put them in a folder called "Final Blessings  - or Inana's House of Heaven Relived".

As a final event, just before this new moon solar eclipse, storms are passing through and the rain is falling intermitently all the time and will be for most of the week. The rains are washing away all that has happened, refreshing the plants - especially the grass which is allowed to grow again, healing all its wounds caused by the merciless summer sun.

This new moon solar eclipse will not be visible in North or South America, but it will BE, nevertheless.  It will create a ring of fire, signaling radical decisions to change and to  manifest what has positive meaning and purpose. I sense it happening right now.

Relax and just let it Be.

What new decisions are you wanting to make and what are the dreams you are going to make real?

Leap Year Day

Well,  I asked him and he has  declined.

Here in leap year when traditionally I have society's blessing to ask him, I did, with no reason to believe, given our life together for so many years, he would not agree that the time is now.

So I ask myself, "Is this  declining my proposal in fact a  blessing ?".

He had assured me that he is happy where he is, just does not want to be married legally. In being true to my own desire, I do not really want to be married legally either. All was well between us until he was hospitalized and his family members challenged my care giving ability.

Many elder couples around here are not married legally and that fact goes unnoticed. They agree on how to handle hospitalizations and get their wills in order. They have the support of their families for their life choices.

I have had to reflect on what it is I wanted to gain by being married. While watching a movie with a similar plot, I had an insight about this. I saw, heard, felt, even tasted and smelled the truth of the matter.

(1)  I was feeling alone, unprotected, vulnerable,  even betrayed. (2) I deserve to feel loved, safe and welcome in this relationship. (3) I want the love I give to be received with open arms and a big hug.

Call me selfish and I will not agree. Everyone has these needs. When these basic human needs go unmet, disease happens.  Having the confidence to state one's needs in a relationship is a dialogue, one that cements the foundation of a healthy coexistence.

So, if this Leap Year Day's proposal occasioned nothing else (like a wedding in the near future), it has been a LEAP in my own commitment to wholeness and health and  a desire to deeply love a life partner in a way that no one will ever challenge our right to be who we are together.

Reflect on a time you have risked the possibility of rejection and abandonment and discovered Divine's blessing in the really real?