Traversing Midlife Territory

Carl Jung identified 5 main phases of midlife:

*Accommodation (meeting others' expectations - actually, this takes place in the first part of life, but is the context in which midlife processes take place)
*Separation (rejecting the accommodated self)
*Liminality (a period of uncertainty, where life seems directionless and meanders)
*Reintegration (working out 'who I am' and becoming comfortable with that identity)
*Individuation (facing up to and accepting the undesirable aspects of our own character)

I work with folks in their 80s, 90s, & 100s. They have surrendered and come through this midlife journey. They are my role models; they are my life line as I traverse through this midlife territory. They are incredibly beautiful people. Their bodies may be unpleasant to look at sometimes, but their souls are intact and they are the most loving group of people I have worked with thus far in my career. There is a peaceful endlife waiting for us, and it can be seen in our elders.

What's Calling You?

What are you called to do with your life's energies going forward? I sat with this question thinking I would find something profound like a new career or something. Instead I found something much more pleasing. What came to me was that I am being called to cultivate a sense of being and turn more away from that sense of "doing". I am being called to transmute the pattern of compensating and striving for some imagined prize or feeling that will meet my unmet needs. I am being called to focus my life energies towards simple beingness and to experience and live in peace, joy, love, and freedom. This sure takes the pressure off. I don't have to "do" anything except listen, stay awake as much as I can. What do you think about that? grin...

Joe Cocker

Hafiz, the Poet

JUST SIT THERE RIGHT NOW

Just
Sit there right now.
Don’t do a thing. Just rest.

For your
Separation from God
Is the hardest work in this world.

Let me bring you trays of food and something
That you like to
Drink.

You can use my soft words
As a cushion
For your
Head.
~Hafiz

In the Meadow

"Love of beauty is taste. The creation of beauty is art." Ralph Waldo Emerson

This was the music I was listening to this morning. The Creator was wearing the meadow and oak trees with such beauty.

Green Smoothies

These are the latest thing in my kitchen. mmm...yum...

Apple-Kale-Lemon
4 Apples
1/2 lemon juice
5 leaves Kale
2C water
Blend to smooth

Strawberry-banana-romain

1C strawberries2 bananas

1/2 bunch romaine

2C water


Peach-Spinach
6 peaches
2 handfuls spinach leaves
2 Cups water

Mango-Weeds
2 Mangos
1 handful edible wild weeds
(lambsquarters, stinging nettles, purslane, dandelion, etc.)
2C water

Pear-kale-mint
4 ripr pears
5 leaves kale
1/2 bunch mint
2C water

In Joy!

Control of My Thoughts?

I heard a beautiful woman speak this morning and the one phrase that I have been contemplating is her statement: "Control your thoughts." I can no more control my thoughts than I can control the weather or the passing clouds. I can choose to witness them with awareness; I can choose to descriminate whether they are in Truth or something based in illusion. I can make up my own thoughts and release them into the flow of things; I can even have a conversation in my head about the thoughts that arise there. I enjoy the pastime of following them to see where the source of a particular thought came from. I pray I never fall into trying to control my thoughts because I would miss some very unusual, inspiring, divinely ordained, spontaneous thought forms. I would be inviting trouble. The key is to not attach, or identify with thoughts, but to simply observe & discriminate. Practice mindfulness, keen observation and practice being awake. And transcendant of all of this is Peace, Stillness, a quiet Joy, a stirring in soul, a marriage of the divine with the mundane. Holy communion. Praise the One! Amen.

The Sun

Have you ever seen

anything

in your life

more wonderful

than the way the sun,

every evening,

relaxed and easy,

floats toward the horizon

and into the clouds or the hills,

or the rumpled sea,

and is gone--

and how it slides again

out of the blackness,

every morning,

on the other side of the world,

like a red flower

streaming upward on its heavenly oils,

say, on a morning in early summer,

at its perfect imperial distance--

and have you ever felt for anything

such wild love--

do you think there is anywhere, in any language,

a word billowing enough for the pleasure

that fills you,

as the sun

reaches out,

as it warms you

as you stand there,

empty-handed--

or have you too

turned from this world--

or have you too

gone crazy

for power,

for things?

~Mary Oliver

The only thing that I have seen as wonderful as the sun, are my two children rising into their own, into adulthood, proud and free, forging their way through time, evolving into greater expressions of themselves, their rays warming me & the world. Today it is too hot, the sun too intense, and so I must remember the joy and the pleasure of a sunset or a sunrise & a glass of homemade lemonade. Thank you sun for making lemons possible. Thank you sun for Life and my beautiful children. Amen.

Limbic Resonance

"We're familiar with the traditional senses, like your eyes give you information about electromagnetic radiation, your ears give you information about changes in sound waves. Well, there's another sensory system in the brain, which is designed to give you informatiin about the emotional state inside someone else's brain, and that sensory experience is limbic resonance. It is a two-way path, you can sense the inside of someone else's brain, they can sense the inside of yours, and each person influences the other. It's a two-way sensory experience of emotion."

(Excerpt from If I Live to Be a Hundred)

So, here is the challenge for someone sensitized to this limbic resonance. When I walk into a room and the emotional state of someone is repressed, or the people I am interacting with carry charged, negative emotions I am deeply affected by them. Sometimes I have to leave the environment to clear this sensory overload. My family and friends sometimes give me advice based on their fear about what my life looks like to them. I end up not hearing their words but instead experience incredible fear that is not based within me. Projections can be quite the sticky wicket when charged emotions are sensed by the receiving party resulting in "What the heck do I do with this?" The first step in my experience is developing the discrimination to know what emotions are mine and what emotions I am sensing from my environment. I can't always do this. I have witnessed repressing this experience of this limbic resonance, projecting the emotions outward--like a reflex, or acting out the emotions as a way of discharging the experience. The question is: who is responsible for these emotions that seem to bounce from one person to another? How on earth do we claim ownership of emotions that show up within us and do not originate or belong to us? Living life as an empath or telepath heightens this experience and has it own set of challenges. I believe we all have this capacity as stated in the beginning. How conscious are you of this dynamic? When you feel fear, anger, or irritability is it yours? I enjoy this sensitivity when I am with someone who has cultivated unconditional love, has tapped into a deep peace and divine understanding emotionally. This is a real treat--like tasting candy....The spiritual practice of meditation, and affirmations are tools that are invaluable for me because they assist me in rooting my awareness in a strength that withstands what feels like an onslaught of emotional experience from the world and roots me in divine peace, divine love. I wonder how this limbic resonance works with the roses. Plants and animals are emotional entities themselves. No wonder I spend so much of my time in nature, where God wears itself in such beauty and peace.

Faith

To tread the sharp edge of a sword
To run on smooth-frozen ice,
One needs no footsteps to follow.
Walk over the cliffs with hands free.

When Jesus explained to his disciples that they had failed to heal because of lack of faith, they protested that they did have faith in God. Jesus explained to them that this was insufficient; they must have the faith of God. The faith of God is very different from a faith in God. The faith of God IS God . . . .

How easy is that? Not too easy. For to know, to realize this truth is to know God thoroughly as that which I am. It is not easy to realize that right where I am God Is, that my thoughts are God's thoughts. How can little ole me be Godlike? And then I behold the eye of a songbird, the purr of one of those feral kittens, my reflection in the mirror, my aunt's quiet smile, and then the innocence and purity that is God reveals itself to me, again. Such Peace in this knowing. Such comfort in Its Presence. Faith comes, faith serves little ole me, and the day is beautiful. Look in the mirror today and look into those eyes, into the pool of God within. Its there...Its everywhere. Amen.

(That's my Aunt Lorine 106 years on earth.)

Meet the three black boys. Buddy, Buster and Coco. Coco is the shy one hiding at the door. I attract cats like a magnet attracts iron shavings. These pals are feral and are gradually allowing me to touch them gently while they are eating. (Except for Coco.) The colorful one is my Jackie who runs me and the house. I wake up in the morning when she jumps on me--I sometimes call her a snit, because she is very insistent, and she will use her teeth to make a point. We have our little tiffs. Silent conversation is a beautiful thing. We see that power within each other and rest in Its glorious comraderie. mmmm....

Hip Hop as an Art Form

This is a video of my son Joseph (or Joe) with his dance company, "Shadow Optics", performing this Spring. He is quite the entrpreneur and I am quite the proud Mama. I have come to see this art form as an expression of the Sprirtual Law of Unity & Oneness. I see the wholeness of God as the hearbeat of the music inspires these dancers to move as one. They move to the heartbeat of the One, they breathe the breath of teh divine as It demonstrates harmony as individual dancers become one dance. It's quite beautiful. Enjoy.

Opening Day

Hello Friends & Family, My intuition has been urging me to do something new that I have never done before, and well, this is very new. Welcome to my garden variety of on line journaling. Do you know of the "Altissimo Rose"? It's characteristic is the gorgeous red petals, of which there are approximately five or so in each flower. It's simplicity takes my breath away. This rose is outside the window at my desk and computer.

The Parable of the Rose

Ages ago the rose was but a simple flower in a primal world. Then some person admired it and set a plant near the entrance of their cave. they cared for it, nourished it and cultivated it; and the more they cultivated it, the more beautiful it grew--and out of their love and care for the rose, man began to learn the science of rose culture. The more men used the sciece of rose culture they knew, the more they learned of that same science, and all the while the rose grew more beautiful. Comparing the rose of five thousand years ago with that of today, who can describe the roses of two thousand years hence? All of this is but the symbol and pledge of what miracles can come into the life of each of us when we cutlivate our lives as intelligently and faithfully by the love and will of God as we grow roses in obedience to the laws of Nature. This is the Parable of the Rose--a parable God repeats ten thousand times through the whole world that we may never overlook it, nor for a day forget it. Everything a rose will ever need for absolute perfection, God has provided in air, earth and possible nurture, and God put somewhere into the seed the possbibility of its becoming. So God sets in our world the simple beauty of the wild rose and the glory of the cultivated rose, that we may come to realize that our own souls, and our own lives are designed for equal transformation. As we work among our roses, let us never rest content until we know in our own selves some such transofmration as that of the rose. Rev. Milton S. Kanaga