Archived here are the blogs I write about inner life and outer life, inner nature and outer nature. Perhaps my writings on life, as I see it and experience it, may offer you some small insight or different perspective as you take your own journey.
With gratitude for all that life teaches me, I share my experiences.
We have mice, little gray house mice and brown, white-footed field mice. We have big mice and little mice. One day we opened the door leading down to the garage and found two baby mice, blind and shivering, hunched down on the threshold. They were tiny and supple enough to flatten their bodies and squeeze under the tightly fitting doorjamb. As we opened the door, they scrambled back into a tiny hole in the doorframe. Mother mouse was probably out hunting, hunting in our kitchen right next door no doubt.
Evidence of mice greets us every morning in the kitchen, little mouse doots all over the place, in the sink and on the counters. We leave very little food out, but the mice still come. I had three little red chili peppers drying in a small bowl on the counter. One day I noticed that one of the peppers was missing. The next day all three were gone, taken by the mice. I wondered what kind of mice we really had. They like hot chili peppers?
We hear them running up the walls to the attic. We even hear them knocking things over up there, thumps and crashes that make it sound like more than just tiny mice. When our girls are visiting they see mice scurrying across the bathroom floor. I’ve plugged up the most apparent entryways, but the mice still get in. We feel bad about killing any creature, but we made an executive decision to put out traps. We justified this by saying we’d feed the dead mice to the crows, one creature giving its life so another might live. It seemed reasonable.
Every morning we’d find mice in the traps we’d set out. I’d apologize and thank the mice for giving their lives, and then put them out on an altar-like stone ledge in the front yard. Soon crows would arrive and take the mice. It was a system that seemed to be working, at least on the outside. But inside I began to feel bad. I noticed that I had a swollen gland in my neck. I’d notice it when I was reading, my head bent at a particular angle to my book.
A sudden insight…
The other day—the day Hurricane Sandy blew inland and rattled our windows and shook our house with gusts of wind—I had a sudden insight while standing at the kitchen sink. I realized I had to stop killing the mice. It wasn’t right. As the rain pelted the kitchen window over the sink, I suddenly knew that the swollen gland in my neck was due to this killing.
“I have to stop killing the mice,” I said to Chuck. “Even though I’ve justified the killing, saying that it’s necessary and that I’m feeding the crows in turn, it’s still wrong. I’m absorbing the energy of those dead mice. That’s why I have a swollen gland. It may sound pretty farfetched, but it’s been bothering me for a while now, and I knew it had something to do with something that wasn’t quite right, that something was bothering me on a deeper level. Now I see what it is.”
Last night, I didn’t set any traps. My decision felt right. I had forgotten about my swollen gland, but a little while ago I noticed that it’s completely gone. The message that came in on the storm rattled more than my windows. I got a much deeper appreciation for how we are affected by energy, if we care to investigate ourselves on a deeper level. It’s what Jeanne mentioned doing in her message on Monday, and although I didn’t consciously follow her missive, the storm itself led me to investigate and resolve an issue, as the energy of nature, the storm, awakened a deeper unrest inside me.
The empty altar stone.
The mice came into the kitchen last night. I cleaned up their droppings this morning, but I feel no anger or animosity toward them. They are just doing what mice do.
We switched things around this week, so Chuck’s blog appeared on Wednesday and here is mine today. Have a great weekend, I’ll be back on Monday with a message from Jeanne!
Path stone—The only path worth taking is the path of heart…
I’ve been hard at work on the next book in my Recapitulation Diaries series. Today I publish a couple of excerpts from the Prologue. One about an encounter with an ostrich, the other, in keeping with Chuck’s theme, is about an encounter with a coyote. These two animal omens not only predicted events in my life, but also bracketed the fifty-year pact of silence that I unknowingly upheld before beginning my recapitulation—information that remained hidden inside me until I was ready to receive it. I invite you to read on. My intent is that the new book, On The Edge of the Abyss, be published in January. I’ll keep you posted.
An Ostrich Bite
As the story goes, I was about a year old when my parents pushed my stroller up to the ostrich exhibit at the Bronx Zoo. Without warning or provocation an ostrich simply poked its head through the bars of its cage and bit me on the arm, only releasing me after being whacked repeatedly over the head. I received a nasty pinch, but other than that little damage was done. This curious tale was told often during my childhood, though the retelling was always brief, the details left to the imagination. “An ostrich bit you!” my parents would say, in the same dumbfounded tone they would have used had a dragon bitten me.
“But why?” I’d ask, seeking deeper meaning. “What does it mean?”
“An ostrich bit you!” they’d simply say.
By the time I was twelve this story no longer intrigued me; in fact, I was rather bored and embarrassed by it. I’d often wish it had been some other bird or noble creature, or that it had happened to some other girl. Why couldn’t a handsome peacock or beautiful swan have bitten me, why the ugly ostrich? And why did this have to be the only story my parents ever told about me as a baby, and why did they have to tell it so often? I was never satisfied by their presumption that it was just a plain and simple fact of my life; I knew there had to be more to it. Now, after all these years, the possible significance of that bite emerges.
Both an omen and a warning, I believe the ostrich was marking me for the journey ahead, for shortly thereafter, by the time I was two, my trials began. Perhaps, with that nip on the arm, the ostrich was saying: this child will be challenged, but this child will also find the means to transcend the ugliness of those challenges. Perhaps the mark of the ostrich signified strength and groundedness in this world, but the severing of all ties to this world as well, for only in having experiences of transcending this world would the innate abilities of the spirit self find reason to emerge.
I believe the bite of the ostrich was preparing me for what was to come, predicting the encounters with the sexual predator and the lessons I would learn during my life. And so began my solo journey, ritually initiated by the ostrich at the zoo, stamped by the keeper at the gate so that I would be recognized in the dark and dreary world I was soon to enter. I believe I was guided as my journey transgressed from the world of protected infancy into the unknown, into the shadows of a forest filled with dangers more fantastical and abhorrent than that meager nip on the arm.
Within a few months of that ostrich bite a new baby brother took my place on the lap of our distant mother, my brief year of maternal tenderness over. I was sent out into the world to play, to explore, to gain sure-footedness, to become self-sufficient and strong, worthy of the bite that had been placed on my arm by that ostrich at the zoo.
A Coyote Tale
I began my life encountering the bite of the ostrich and much later, a few years before beginning my recapitulation journey, I encountered another animal totem, another sign of life’s potential unfolding. I was in the midst of change, having experienced a brief moment of clairvoyance that had precipitated a move the year before. I was living with my then-husband and our two young children in a farmhouse on the edge of ten acres of land, our backyard enclosed by a white wooden fence and a rush of tall pines. One early spring day I walked back to the compost pile in the corner of the fenced area farthest from the house. Surrounded by open fields, I was just about to empty my bucket of compost onto the pile when something caught my eye. Looking up, I saw a coyote standing no more than five feet away on the other side of the fence, an enormous groundhog hanging limply from its mouth. Catching sight of me at the same moment, it dropped the dead animal. Our eyes locked.
Unable to break the intense scrutiny of the coyote’s eyes, the world around me dissolved and I was pulled into a different world by its stare, a world that was timeless, dark and silent. I had the sense the coyote was assessing whether or not I was a threat, while I silently sent it the message that I would not harm it, nor challenge it for its prey. After what felt like several minutes, the coyote shifted its eyes, breaking the spell, and the ancient silence between us dissolved. The world reappeared and I dared to breathe again.
I watched as the coyote slowly bent down and picked up the large furry animal in its powerful jaws, tossing and juggling it to get a good grip, before it slowly turned away. Taking one last look at me over its shoulder, it pranced off through the field at a brisk pace. I stood there for a long time, looking after it, amazed at what I had just encountered. We had stood so close, both surprised to find the other creature intruding upon our private space, our private thoughts, our private experiences, yet we were simultaneously caught in the same state of utter calm knowing, ancient and unthreatening.
So what did this mean? At the time I was uncertain, but I took it as a good omen. My spirit uplifted by the experience, I felt sure it meant something important. A shaman friend told me it was an unusual occurrence. “The coyote rarely shows itself,” he said, “especially rare to see one on a sunny afternoon.” So, why did it show itself to me and what was I supposed to learn?
Although its message evaded me, the magic of the moment stayed with me, and I gradually allowed myself to envision positive change coming my way. Within a few years the fragile world I was attempting to uphold would crumble, not through anyone’s fault, it was simply done. There was nothing left to be gained by staying there. Similar to my experience of moving on from infancy, after receiving the ostrich bite and being released from my mother’s lap, it was simply time. Moving on this time meant discovering that it was time to recapitulate my childhood, to rediscover the world I had lost, the world I had blocked out, the secret world of the predator and its prey.
Coyote howling at the moon, awakening what lies within…
In recalling the encounter with the coyote, I began to wonder what it was hinting at, for I knew our encounter was deeply and personally meaningful, even more so as time went on and change did happen, much as I had dared to foresee. Was the coyote hinting that I had once been locked in a battle with a predator like itself and that I would only rediscover this by going into the dark past and reliving it? This seems likely to me now, though at the time it would have been a far-fetched idea. At the time, I had only a vague awareness of the shaman’s world, and yet I was deeply struck by the encounter with the coyote, a significant shamanic symbol, and I could not let it pass as mere coincidence. I had learned a long time ago that everything was meaningful in some way, though that meaning could be as illusive as the memories that lay hidden in my inner darkness. Or was I just a fool, tricked into thinking I was being offered something by the wily coyote? Only time and hindsight would tell.
Indeed, what I could not have imagined then has transpired. Warning of what was to come, what was to be reawakened, the coyote signaled that I had the strength to go back into the predator’s world, telling me not to be afraid, not to flinch at what I would see and experience. It was telling me not to fear or back down when I went back into the past and looked the predator in the eyes. It was telling me to use my own adult eyes to gain clarity about what happened to me in that world and to pay attention to everything I encountered along the way. In utter silence, the coyote told me these things.
Though these two tales bracketed the first fifty years of my life, I made the choice to remove the brackets, to let in memories and experiences that would transform my entire world, and me along with it. My books are about taking such a journey, about finding meaning and purpose in even the most dire of circumstances and discovering a direct connection to that ancient self that the coyote briefly reconnected me with. It became my job to allow that knowledge to fester, to remain in my awareness, and then to elect to go inside, taking the inner journey of self-discovery, reawakening it more fully. Glimpses of meaning must be taken seriously and allowed to fester, for they are what lead us to real change and transformation.
“We are not human beings having a spiritual experience; we are spiritual beings having a human experience.” So said Pierre de Chardin the French Jesuit priest and philosopher. The first time I read this quote, I knew that he was right. It explained everything to me; my very existence suddenly made sense. I was here on earth to have a human experience, but I really was that spiritual being that I always sensed I was. I felt I no longer had to apologize for being gentle and loving, for wanting peace and love in the world, for my so called naiveté or simplistic views of how to solve the world’s problems. I knew that only such idealistic views embodied the real nature of reality and that only they would work to resolve conflict and achieve worldwide peace.
De Chardin also said these words when the Nazis were fast advancing in Europe during World War II: “Peace cannot mean anything but a HIGHER PROCESS OF CONQUEST…The world is bound to belong to its most active elements…But no spiritual aims or energy will ever succeed, or even deserve to succeed, unless it is able to spread and keep spreading a fifth column.” In essence, he was letting the world know that the Nazis were the “most active element” at the time, the kind of energy that had the potential to spread like a wildfire, and it was imperative that the spiritual rise to the occasion and conquer it. It was a dire warning that we too, in our time, must pay heed to.
John Lennon once noted that Gandhi and Martin Luther King, both proponents of peace and nonviolence, had been assassinated for their efforts. He didn’t understand why people wouldn’t “just give peace a chance,” and then he too was assassinated.
Yeah…
We are at a point in our lives, in the life of our planet, when the imperative to give peace a chance is at its most crucial, and for spiritual consciousness to dominate and spread like wildfire. For that is the only way that real change will happen, by good once again becoming the dominant force, the HIGHER PROCESS, as de Chardin suggests. De Chardin also spoke elegantly about love being the most powerful of all forces that we as human beings could employ for ourselves and our planet, the same love that John Lennon, Gandhi, and Martin Luther King embraced.
When you are in a room of peaceful people you notice how peaceful and calm the atmosphere is. When you are in a room of happy people, you notice happiness. When you are in a room of angry people you notice anger, you feel anger, it takes over. When you are in the midst of evil you can smell it. Which kind of room would you like to be in?
As simple as it sounds, the only way to make change happen for the better, is to change the way we think, act, and react, the way we treat each other, the way we treat the planet. To become a peaceful Self is the first step in enacting change outside of the self, to learn to take responsibility in the world and inside the self, to really be the spiritual beings we are, to stop blaming and judging each other, to realize we are all the same.
Flower power…
If I set an even greater intent than usual to be peaceful, gentle, loving and kind for the rest of my life, toward myself and others, I will be part of a new spiritual consciousness. The more who are engaged in this new peaceful and loving consciousness, the more powerful grows a movement of real change, soon a spreading wildfire. Many of us are children of the 60s, still idealists at heart, gentle souls still hopeful of peace in our life.
I support the movements started by Gandhi, King, and Lennon—among the many others I have not named, men and women of peace and real caring—who knew that we are all indeed spiritual beings having a human experience. A new peaceful and loving existence requires taking both a personal journey and a badly needed universal journey, each day being different as we go out into the world and interact with others, as well as in our innermost thoughts. If we all decided that love of each other and love of the planet was the most important aspect of our human existence, how quickly change could happen and perhaps a new national mood would prevail and spread like wildfires around the world.
I am with a person who is angry, her anger like a brittle encrusted shell. I note how grumpy she is, having overslept, and now she is angry at the world. Nothing is right. In everyone there is something to criticize. In every situation there is something to be angry about. In every idea there is something to condescend to. Every attempt to be positive is negatively dismissed.
During my time with her, I wonder if I should say something, as her anger becomes increasingly uncomfortable to those around her. The Buddhists say that one should not interfere with another’s process in life, that everything they encounter is necessary for them to encounter, even if one sees the foreshadowing of great difficulty or even death. It is not right to alter another’s path. I also know that we cannot tell another what is so clear to us, for they will not get it until they are ready and, as the Buddhists point out, this may take many lifetimes. I encountered my own states of anger, denial, and unawareness, during my recapitulation, as I wondered over and over again why I had never been able before to understand my own psyche and what it was trying to tell me. It was only then that I understood what it means to be ready to face ourselves and our deeper issues. And so I elect to study this angry woman instead of saying anything to her.
I see how she holds her anger back, keeps it under her hard shell, but there comes a point when she just can’t retain it any longer. Suddenly, she lets loose a barrage of angry words, stunningly harsh and mean, directed at a person whom has asked a simple caring question. Again, I want to point out to this angry woman that she is being inappropriate, that she is hurting the other person, yet I hold back, for I know that my pointing out her mood will have no effect, and may perhaps incite yet more anger. I also know that there is something to be learned in such a situation, for all involved.
As I observe this angry woman, it becomes very clear that her anger has nothing to do with the person she spews it at, but that it has only to do with what is brewing and stewing inside her. Projection is clearly illustrated here. This woman woke up angry. Perhaps she went to bed angry too. Perhaps she has always been angry. But what is so clear to me, as I observe her, is that she is blaming people and situations outside of her. They are making her angry! She even says this to me later: how angry such people make her, how angry such ideas make her, how angry certain platitudes make her.
The fire within…
Later, as I ponder my time with this woman, as I again feel her anger boiling inside her, I wonder how long she will allow herself to be controlled by this fire within. For I saw how it consumed her, as she was unable to enjoy a moment of reality. Encased in it, everything just made her angrier. She fed this fire within constantly, giving it enough fuel to last a long time, and yet she confessed to me how tired she was.
It was clear that she desperately needed something to shift her out of this fire zone that she had parked herself in, yet I knew I could offer nothing. I am sure she was receiving many signs that might help in that shift, yet so consumed by the flames was she that she could not see. She could not see offers of kindness, she could not hear words of concern, she could not accept gentleness. Nothing that was offered was going to change how she interpreted the world, or how she projected her inadequacies onto the world, and the people she encountered there. Until she was ready…
She has to be ready to withdraw her projections from the world and face the angry fires within, and find out why she is being consumed in this manner. She has to ask herself why she is so angry all the time, why so rude and condescending, why so unhappy. Just as we all must do, at some point in our earthly existence, she too has to ask herself when she is going to stop blaming everyone else for her misery and face the reasons for it within. When she is ready…
And so, I too, must ask myself to find that angry woman inside myself and find out what she has to tell me. I do a little inner work around this angry woman as I go about the rest of my day. I find that my angry inner woman is pretty well known at this point. I’ve dealt with her many times over the years, dismantled her bonfires over and over again, put out the flames, and taken her aside to have a chat. I could only do that when I was ready, when I no longer wanted to be ruled by her, when I no longer wanted the world to be a place of fear and misery. And when I was finally ready to take back my projections, the world did change.
And so yesterday, as I did my angry woman inner work, I discovered that she has softened to a mere inkling of her old self. She carries very little fuel these days, for she has learned over the years of deep inner work that anger is nothing, that it only exists when fueled. Instead, I have learned to face the fires of anger as they flare up and question them on a deeply personal level. Is this anger justified? Does it help me? Is it worthwhile, does it help my evolution as a spiritual being? Is anger ever appropriate?
In the past I have used anger, a good friend to me at one time. It often helped to shift out of a bad situation, as I would get angry at myself for staying stuck. And so I can truly say that anger can be useful, but only if utilized on the self in a positive fashion, not to remain stuck in blame, but to catapult to a new place along the path of life. If directed outwardly, in projection, as the angry woman in my encounter used it, it does nothing positive, for anger burns up good energy, keeps the focus on blaming others rather than asking the self to be a fully responsible evolutionary being.
What I finally found out about myself yesterday, as I faced that old angry woman inside me, now shrunk to the size of a teeny tiny specimen of her old self, was that she has very little to complain about these days. In fact, I turned to her and told her that I didn’t need her anymore at all, that I only want to live and embrace the life that she held me back from fully living and enjoying for so long.
Now I live!
As I took back my projections and used my energy to learn how to live the life I had decided could never happen—because I was too angry at the world to engage it—I changed, life changed, the world outside of me changed, inner and outer reality changed. Now my energy is my own, and freed of old issues, such as anger, that energy just wants to live! I am no longer willing to be held back. This is what I encourage my children and those closest to me: Don’t let your fears or your anger hold you back. You are alive now and there is so much to explore and experience. Find out who you are and don’t ever hold that true self back. Live!
I see anger rising across America, falsely taking its place in the minds of so many. As we go into the next month of preparation for big changes in our country, and the world, perhaps we should all look within and find out what makes us so angry without. In so using our anger and our energy differently, we may impact the results of the election.
As the Buddhists say, all energy is interconnected and every decision we make about how we use our energy affects everything and everyone else around us. If our energy is directed at changing ourselves, we change our reality—our personal present life and that of our world. I did it—in recapitulating my childhood—and it worked and continues to work for me.
Now I intend that my inner work energetically impact the world outside of me as well. I may not be able to directly influence every angry person I meet, but I sure as heck can rev up my energetic intent to do so!
I’ve set my intent to live totally unafraid, open to life in a different way, energetically connected.
Love,
Jan
The other day, as Chuck and I walked in the early morning, a strange sight greeted us. We had just arrived at a “T” intersection when to our left a commotion arose.
Out of the treetops a strange creature appeared. Squawking and flapping, it came towards us, a phoenix or some other mythical beast. On second glance it appeared to be some manmade object, whirring and clunking along in the sky, much like a Leonardo da Vinci flying machine. As it drew nearer it changed again, into a hawk with two small birds clutched in its claws, the birds flapping and shrieking wildly in an attempt to free themselves from the clutches of this, indeed, mythical beast.
As we watched, one of the birds did free itself. Somehow able to wriggle out of the grip of the sharp claws, it quickly flew off into the woods with nary a backward glance. The hawk flew over us, and though its tasty meal still struggled frantically, it seemed that its fate was sealed.
Much startled by this sight, we turned to the right and continued our walk, our thoughts and discussion turning too. We had been talking about our deepening practice as spiritual beings on a journey in this world, of constantly having to balance the magic of other worlds with the duties and needs of this world. And thus, we could not help but wonder what this sighting could possibly mean.
Our kind hearts immediately projected onto the poor little birds. And two of them! We thought in terms of loved ones. Who was at risk; who would be confronted with some terrible trauma today or in the near future? What did it signify for us, the first thing to catch our attention on this day, and so early in the morning? What did it portend in our own lives?
As we watched the hawk fly off down the road ahead of us, the siren cries of blue jays—the birds I interpret as the police force of the skies—alerted other creatures to be aware that a predator was in their midst. But there was really nothing to be concerned about, for the hawk had gotten what it wanted; its only intent now was to consume it.
Who’s the predator?
My thoughts turned away from my projections and fears, for self and others, and instead began to look at the reality of what had occurred. The hawk began to lose its predatory role and take on the role of life itself, doing what it needed to survive in this world, much as we all do in our own lives, consuming and taking what we need. The two birds lost their roles as poor creatures of circumstance and instead became the choices we all make each day: the choice to live one way or another, the choice to do one thing or another, the choice to come into this world at all.
“You know,” I said to Chuck, “one bird is going to live and it looks like the other will die, but who’s to judge which one got the better deal. Do I feel sorry for the one that’s facing death? Perhaps it’s being given the opportunity to go deeper into its evolutionary experience? The very thing we seek all the time.”
As I pondered the significance of the event, I realized that we all get carried away by predators in our own lives, by our compulsions, addictions, attachments, our fears, our psychological makeup, by our very nature, and by the very energy of life that is as unstoppable as the predatory hawk simply searching for sustenance to survive. We are all both the hawk and the two birds. Often enough, we are caught unaware, taken from our perch and thrown into turmoil, forced to fight for our lives, to make a choice that will take us on a new journey. Even in the most mundane of circumstances our choices matter. As we plod along in our daily lives it becomes increasingly necessary to train our awareness to stay upon the path of growth, intent upon a life of meaning and evolution, no matter what our circumstances.
I could not judge the outcome of the event, for I saw the potential for growth in both life and death. I see the potential for growth, for going deeper into the life we are in, no matter where we end up. I cannot judge another for where they are in their life, just as I do not wish to be judged for the choices I’ve made in my own.
We all have the same choice to make: How are we going to deal with where we are now? Are we going to be the evolutionary beings we are meant to be, conserve our energy for our journey and go deeper into our experience, no matter what it is? Or are we going to succumb to the predator, our energy consumed by another, by everything from worry and fear to mental illness and disease?
As the shamans of Ancient Mexico point out, we are beings who are going to die. I see death as offering as much choice as life. As I saw what was happening to the two birds, I knew that one chose life and the other chose death, but also that both were worthy choices, both presenting evolutionary opportunities. The opportunity—and this is what we are training ourselves for as we recapitulate, and as we seek connection with our deeper spiritual selves—is to remain aware of our evolutionary potential at all times.
The journey matters…
Recapitulation offers us the opportunity to practice the skills necessary to maintain our awareness. Each time we recapitulate we experience a little death, a loss of our perceived self, while we simultaneously regain a part of our lost energetic self. This involves remaining aware that we are in two worlds at once, both in the energy of the predator and simultaneously the victim of our circumstances, like the two birds in the claws of the hawk that flew over Chuck and I the other morning. Recapitulation is as much practice for how to live this life as it is practice for facing the moment of death from this life, two evolutionary paths of equal value and potential.
We all stand at a “T” intersection every day of our lives—we have choices to make, and those choices matter. No matter what our fate, whether we are the little bird that gets away or the little bird that goes to its death, we always have the opportunity to go deeper, or not.
