Disrobe, dismantle, disarm, dissolve. All of nature is turning. Disrobing, dismantling, disarming, dissolving. We are not separate from this process of Life becoming Life. This is the great turning and returning of the Mother. The dance of life, death and rebirth. Our cells know this rhythm and lead us blindly, pulling us directly into the darkness, into the intimate territory of our Soul. We are shedding the skins of worn out lives and exhausted ways of living. We are returning, remembering and revealing the seed of life nestled deep within the contours of our native shape. What was the shape of your face before you were born?
I Am disrobing, taking off the costumes, the masks, the roles. The props used for playing life trail behind me. I Am dismantling structures, stories, carbon copy mechanisms, ancestral garbage. I Am disarming, removing the shields, the braces and the bracing, the body’s armor, dropping the weapons of the disembodied mind, the arsenal of poison used to inject truth with lies. I Am dissolving, dissolving into union, dissolving all separation, dissolving a self that thinks itself other than.
I am exposed. I am naked in the rain, shivering, quivering. White skin, dark night. Hair sopping wet, clinging to my face, my shoulders. Wind whipping my body, water pelting my head. I open my mouth to speak and no sound comes. I am screaming on the inside, I am silent, no one can hear. I am the Divine Feminine rising. I am the Innocent Erotic returning. I am naked. I am exposed. I kneel down on the wet earth. The smell of fallen leaves and damp earth greet me. I lay my belly on the belly of the Goddess, I feel her pulse life into my being, through my navel she enters me this life force, this Christ force She enters me, she enters my soul impregnating me with the seed of life She is sweet ambrosia She is honey wine intoxication She is filling me with life force She is infusing my cells She is taking me to her breast to drink nourishment that will warm me forever. I awake out of my trance, lying naked, wet and sweaty on the dance floor. It is dark and night has come Where are the other dancers? Who was the madman shaman that came and drummed my heart into this frantic shaking? I pull myself to my knees, my eyes squint in the darkness I sense the wildness around me the danger and the delight of naked living lurks around each and every corner, waiting to take me captive, entangling me in the fire until I dissolve into the Lover. She is rising. She is home.
Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide…and even if I could, tonight I don’t want to. I am slowly becoming accustomed to my own nakedness, my own porousness, my availability to life – the deep sorrow and grief, the emptiness, the void, the delight, the joy, the bliss. I am coming into deep union with life, No longer playing games of separation. From Self, God and other. I am becoming a Lover with all Lovers. I am touched and touching. I am breathed and breathing. I am erotic, exotic, ecstatic awakening. I don’t remember the face of yesterday I don’t remember the levers I pulled or the games I played to avoid such rapturous and heart breaking intimacy. I am being pulled, I am being taken. I must have bought a ticket for this ride, yet I don’t recall when. Grace is creating my living now. I pray that I finally and completely let go of all that does not lead me to Love, to God, to Truth. Strip away all that does not serve this silent awakening Strip away all of the lies, Like leaves falling steadily and ever so lightly, I let go, I let go, I let go.
Today I learned again, that we deeply need each other. We need each other to fly, to soar. We need each other to move across the threshold into greater living and greater loving. We need one another to find respite and balance in the chaos of Kali. We need each other to hold us, lift us, relieve us of our internal nightmares — the monkey’s mind unleashed. We need each other to come into joy, to find aliveness, to revel in the moment to moment unfolding of the ruby precious gem of who we really are.
I danced in wild abandon today…I danced naked. I danced with one eye looking outward and one eye looking inward. This is the dance that my Beloved Vinn demanded of me…evoked from me… The mystic in action, the sacred in the real, the soul embodied.
I am the Sacred Feminine Rising. She is rising. She is coming home. I am rising. I am coming home.
I invite you to join me on this magic carpet ride. The price? Your life and your living, your essence unfolding with wild abandon. Destination? Ecstatic heart union, love’s fiery embrace, naked heart living.
Let this be our mantra as we surrender to the turning and returning… disrobe, dismantle, disarm, dissolve.
I didn’t sleep last night, my mind restless, turning cartwheels across the midnight sky. I feel antsy like I am going on a trip, a journey and my plane leaves in the morning and I want to make sure I arrive at the airport on time and don’t oversleep. Every night for the past week I have been roused in the night by the angels plucking me out of bed. I make the pilgrimage to the front room and look out over the river to the lights of St. John’s. What is wanting my attention, my intention?
This morning after a 3 hour nighttime ritual which included eating 20 peanuts, drinking 1 glass of diet Squirt (I know Johnny, not good for me or the rats), 1 glass of water, searching the internet for information on Portland neighborhoods for Jimmy (who may buy a house here so those of us who love Ashland and Portland can co-locate!) and reading the first chapter of Natalie Goldberg’s Thunder and Lightening, I finally hear…
Love wouldn’t wait. Love wouldn’t wait. Love wouldn’t wait.
The truth of those three words resound, reverberate throughout my chest…the sound of truth hitting truth. Something real unveiled…love wouldn’t wait. I exhale in the relief of being out to sea, my boat adrift and all of a sudden hitting something solid. Something to rest in. Some anchor in the cosmic sea.
Love wouldn’t wait. Love wouldn’t wait for touch, for kiss, for embrace, for holding. Love wouldn’t wait to arrive, to show up, to surrender. Love wouldn’t wait for romance, adventure and surprise. Love wouldn’t wait for forgiveness, I’m sorry. Love wouldn’t wait to be cracked open, revealed, spilled forth. Love wouldn’t wait to be on purpose with passion. Love wouldn’t wait to play, to pray, to praise. Love wouldn’t wait for me to arrive on the scene with my outworn excuses, Love would go on stage now and proclaim the word. Love wouldn’t wait to write, to speak, to begin again anew. Love wouldn’t wait to dive into the mystery of you Beloved and discover the secret realms of your heart. Love wouldn’t wait to disrobe, dismantle, dissolve. Love wouldn’t wait to come all the way home to the fires, the burning embers of the breath of Divine passion swirling in the cold night sky.
Love wouldn’t wait to begin. Beloveds, what are we waiting for? Can we begin? Love wouldn’t wait. Love isn’t waiting. Last call… Dive in with Wild Abandon… Now.
Today let us dive in with wild abandon, let us dance with the chaos, let us bring our hearts and our loving and our living fully alive.
I recently listened to Mary Morrissey give a talk on Gratitude. Her invitation was to practice gratitude in the midst of all circumstances and experiences in our lives. This invitation includes a subtle shift from practicing gratitude for things or conditions in our lives to practicing gratitude in all experiences of our lives. This is what I call the “gratitude stretch.”
This morning I received a test message from my dear friend Thunder in Ashland…it said one word “awake?” Yes, I am awake. I am awake this morning to the full spectrum of experiences and emotions in my life and I am practicing gratitude in the midst. In the conversation that followed he asked me, “sad, mad, happy, glad, afraid?” Yes, to all of those. I find as I become more and more present in my body that I experience a range of all those emotions. This morning during my yoga practice, I accessed anger in my buttocks, fear in my thighs, sadness in my heart and happiness in my eyes. All of them participating in this beautiful movement into union, all of them having a place in my experience and in my body temple. I am grateful for this deeply, deeply awake experience of emotion embodied, of life embodied. I breath, I feel, I deepen, I expand and I soften this heart that is opening to love, rising in love, extending and expanding in love.
Today, on the 2nd anniversary of my father’s death I am opening to the great expanse of my heart and practicing gratitude in the midst. I am grateful for his life and his living, his smile and his sparkle. I am grateful for his charisma and his laughter, his courage and his stamina, his sense of adventure and his love for life. I am grateful for his loving and his tenderness, for his fear and for his constriction, for his heartbreak and for his liberation. I am grateful for this man, Edward “Ted” Ellis Coman who’s life force I carry with me now, who guides me to overcome my fear of flying and allow myself to soar. I love you Dad and I am so grateful for my life and your presence in it. Happy Anniversary on this 2nd year of your liberation and your ascent into the arms of the Beloved. Have a blessed day! Amen.
Beloveds, in the midst of the circumstances of your life, I invite you to open to the full range of emotion and experience and practice gratitude.
3:09 a.m., i hear the trains in the distance and the rain beating down on the roof. i am lying on the couch looking out at the lights of st. johns, the screen of my computer glaring at me in the dark. i don’t know if i have anything important or inspired to say, but that is not really why i am writing anyway. i am writing to become naked, i am writing to become intimate with myself, with life, with you, with the divine. i am writing to penetrate separation, i am writing to come into union. i am writing, because that is what i know to do right now. it seems as if nothing and everything is happening in my life. there are subtle signs of magnificence just below the surface. i am reminded of Mitensinging, “there is so much magnificence near the ocean,” on wednesday night. that is my experience right now, there is so much magnificence right in front of me and within me and all around me…how to be in this magnificence, how to direct it for good, how to awaken from inside of it all?
deep in the chaos of awakening energy is a beautiful pattern of order, reshaping me. the potter’s hands have taken hold of me, shaping me into something new…new form, new direction, new purpose. i can feel the shaping and the spinning and the turning of the wheel. i am at the mercy of the potter’s touch, no control, losing and loosing control. my practice is to return to devotion, to donation and to desire…a deep longing to become love permeates my days and fills my nights. i am asked to trust the potter and the precision and perfection of her craft. i am being asked to take new shape…formless into form, deep visions of my soul are becoming manifest — slowly…
i feel the slow burn of new life within me tonight. i trust in this slow work of god. no rushing in or frenetic busyness…a slow turning…a slow burn of the fire’s coals heating passion, purpose and bringing me into new relation. yes, tonight i will trust the slow work of god, the slow work of purpose…resurrecting passion, resurrecting all that i feared had been lost.
i have been riding gentle waves of sadness this week…a subtle strumming accompanying me as i move through the world. i watch myself and do my best to love myself through this touchstone time, remembering so vividly the night of my father’s death. i notice how quick i am to judge whether this has been a “productive” week…if i am making progress…and yet, i know that progress for me is staying in deep integrity with my moment to moment experience, sourcing my self and my life from “sat nam” — i am truth. i have been so adept in overriding and pushing through. now it is time for a different dance…a dance of the sacred feminine, she who allows herself to soften and open and become more accessible and more real by allowing waves of loss and sadness move through her. i am becoming this woman.
the night of my father’s death still haunts me and i can see its imprint on my sleeping this week. it is like i am staying up to brace myself for that call, somehow if i could have been more awake i could have been prepared for or even prevented the unfolding of events. i have been vigilant this week, keeping watch in the midnight hours. i remember the sound of the phone ringing in my bedroom that night, and the voice that got me out of bed, urging me to answer. i can hear my mother’s voice saying, “honey, your dad died today.” i remember dropping to my knees, phone flying across the room…i remember the tearing from my soul and the deep wailing that rose up from my belly, sending my roommate running from the other side of the house…fearing i was being hurt. i remember the numbing, frigid feeling that descended that night. i remember the disorientation, confusion and then my decision — i was going to rise above it all and do what my dad would have wanted…to make the best of it, to smile and remember the good. i look back tonight 2 years later and feel compassion for the one who thought she could outrun grief. she didn’t, she couldn’t…she hit the wall…
yes, this is my progress, my process…to be awake and to ride the waves of sadness, allowing them to take me to new places within my heart…cultivating a soft compassion that can be home and hearth to my beloveds. this has been a bittersweet week…experiencing the beauty and the joy of this fall season, delighting in the unfolding mystery of life, all the while being accompanied by the strumming of your guitar, serenading me with songs of love lost…my soul remembers…
beloved, come soon…i long to feel your arms around me in this dark night’s embrace.
the scent of the sacred lingers in my heart tonight love reaching out across the distance between my heart and yours lost and found and lost again the tender words we say to one another are written in heaven forever love’s call waking down the body rising in love another night on the veranda of this life with you intertwined with the beloved i make my way across the ocean to find you and bring you home the lost pearl spinning in an orbit i reach for it’s light it’s beauty showers me a thousand times i have made this journey into the waves of the ocean surfacing with lost treasure tonight i see the treasure this ruby precious heart that beats me into breath into stillness into silence tonight i surrender to the scent of the sacred rising on the lips of love a hunger for the beloved satiated in your arms my invisible lover i am drunk with the divine my heart liberated becomes this fragrant flower i am the scent of the sacred tonight lovers, we celebrate the ecstatic’s embrace and become lost in the mystery tomorrow we rise again in love as love for love love is the only prayer in this silent awakening om shanti shanti shanti om.
I spent the day with Abby and Stella (not their real names), two of the women I spent my “time” with at Coffee Creek. I drove to Salem to meet them for lunch. We all piled into Ruby and made our way to the Chinese restaurant (one of Stella’s favorites) across from the Rite Aid in downtown Salem. Conversation about the details and events of our lives spilled out across the table holding fried rice, steamed vegetables, fried shrimp, teriyaki chicken and chop suey. Three women, three different paths, the same pursuit — liberation from limitations and re-connecting with the fullness of life, love and wisdom that is overflowing inside of each of them.
We talked about recovery, treatment, sweat lodges, silent retreats, trips to Montana and parenting teenagers. Abby grew up on the reservation in Montana. She lost her parents at age 13 and raised her brother and sister on her own. She looked for solace in drugs and crime and then the dam broke and she found herself in prison. She is a mischievous delight with the driest sense of Native humor I’ve ever encountered. “Anakha,” she says, with a sparkle in her eye, “what is it you are doing now, what’s this book you are writing about anyway?” She invites me to come to her talking circle in a couple of weeks to help the women begin their healing journey. “It’s hard to start your healing, Anakha,” she says quietly. Yes Abby, I know, I remember how you began.
Stella is quiet today not as exuberant as usual, humbled I sense, by surrendering to her life as it is right now and walking in moment to moment awareness as she moves forward towards the fullness and promise of her future. Her vivaciousness and charisma shine through with a gentleness I haven’t witnessed in her before. We wander through the isles at Rite Aid laughing and talking together, in search of chocolate for Anakha. Where are those Hershey kisses…they have to be here somewhere. We end up at the counter with a bag of Laffy Taffy, a liter of Pepsi, two bottles of Dasani water, one pair of size M leopard-print slippers for Abby and a bag of Hershey’s kisses. We pile back into the car and head for Bush’s Park. We sprawl out on the grass in the sunshine with our party supplies and continue to share and enjoy just being together again — unencumbered by prison rules and the watchful eyes of the officers.
They tell me that their time in class with me was the best recovery they have ever had. They tell me about not going deep enough in their recovery programs on the “outside” and how they now know that you have to touch the wound, open it and expose it to the Light for true healing to begin. They know the dive, they know the submersion and they know how to surface again.
I love these women. They are my teachers. They are my soul sisters. They connect me to what is real. They strip me of my self-importance and connect me to humility and to gratitude. They connect me to the universality of the human experience and how we are all really the same, just different packaging. They remind me of the extraordinary in the ordinary. My heart is full, supple and open and I have been deeply nourished by our connection today. I hope that in some way my belief in them and my love for them nourished them too.
I stop at the mailbox on my way up the hill and find a letter from Anahata, another one of “my girls” who is still at Coffee Creek. After 7 1/2 years in prison, she will be releasing on October 11th at the age of 26. We took her measurements last week for an outfit for her to parole in. She is excited and anxious. In just a 2 weeks she will be entering a whole new world, a brand new chapter — a radical departure from the life she has lived within the prison walls. She has used her time well and has a full Buddhist mediation practice, yoga practice and has completed treatment among many other things. She is one of the most amazing and loving and powerful women I know on the planet today. She sends me this Rumi poem written on the outside of the envelope:
If the beloved is everywhere the lover is a veil, but when living itself becomes the friend, lovers disappear.
These women, their stories, their courage and their perseverance are a guiding light, a flaming torch in my life. I am forever in awe of their grace and their grit and their ability to live and to thrive amidst challenge. Words cannot express my gratitude for their presence in my life.
Their story is my story. Their salvation is my salvation. We are woven into one another’s souls. And for this blessing, I bow down and kiss the ground of the One who directs and orders these holy assignments to free ourselves by freeing another.
I love you Abby, Stella, Anahata and all of you (and yes, this includes you too, “the one who found her voice and uses it.”) who remind me by your living and your thriving that my life has been worth living.
My soul is in motion, spiraling in my belly and leaving me breathless. An alien energy has been unleashed in my body and in my life and it has me in trance tonight staring beyond the walls of this room seeing beyond…seeing with eyes behind my eyes, where eagles fly. I am trancing in the land of enchantment, a mysterious turning of events and ordering of supplies for the deep winter’s call. Packing my bags one by one, the bare essentials for naked living. The plane on the runway de-fogging and my glasses steamy with love breath. I drive for hours in the night down a deserted highway following a yellow-orange haze hovering in the distance. I am driving to Minnesota or New Orleans or somewhere I have never been before. My car rolls along, window is down and I am listening to big band music on the radio. Dorthy’s red shoes, shiny, sparkly sit next to me on the bench seat just waiting for me to decide to travel lightly. I want to go home, I want to go home…Auntie ‘Em and Uncle Henry…whoa, wait a minute…this story took a curve.
The pearl is in the seeing beyond the eyes of seeing…seeing with the eyes of vision, where eagles fly. I can see beyond the walls, I can see Johnny up in Port Angeles sipping his Pinot and eating the apple pie with crushed pecan crust that his wife baked for him earlier today. I can see him sitting back in his chair, legs up, pretending like he is reading…but really his mind is elsewhere, imagining, flying where eagles soar.
I am feeling motion sick from the rush of movement within me. A radical re-calibration occurring, of my life, of my soul…I am spinning in the alchemy of love revealing love…I am on the ride, I am both the rider and the ride, spinning in and out of time.
Hang on baby, this rocket is taking flight, and I don’t know and I don’t care where it’s going…I surrender, I surrender my life to You.
The Great Mystery is for Lovers…Dive, dive, dive into the Mystery all you Lovers. Write gibberish, nonsensical stories that confuse your mind and stir your soul.
Dream the wild, crazy nonsense dreams tonight Lovers, Anakha
