Seasoning of a Sea Soul

The Seasoning of a Sea Soul: When we are connected to something as immense as the Sea -- be that Salt-Water Sea of this Earth, or the Star-Sea that holds it all; we don't get tangled in the events, situations, thoughts or feelings of our lives as the only aspect of us. 

We remember through the Seas that we are more than all of that; that the Truth of us goes much deeper, wider and higher than any one event or one relationship--any one episode, chapter or season of our lives.

We remember Who We Are--that we are all a part of the woof and warp of a Sea-soned--Sea Zoned, Sea Sonic Tapestry--greater than any imagining, ever evolving, growing. 

We don't hold ourselves chained to any one event, to any one person's definition of us, not even our own. We set ourselves free, to ride the waves--unafraid of Seachanges. 

"The cure for anything is salt water: sweat, tears or the sea."

Isak Dinesen [Karen Blixen]

Read more at: http://www.azquotes.com/quote/78896

Swimming in Mystery Soup

Following the depths of winter, we all need a breath of fresh air, to relax into the Winds of Change, allowing it to breathe us--bellow our lungs, in and out, in and out: to blow out what no longer applies; freshen in us what still does, renew what has gone dormant in us from lack of use -- that is circling within us, restless to engage us and our world again.

A long ways back, we separated out from trusting our Intuition, the Voice of Mystery--regarding it as an 'unusual,' -- an 'infrequent visitor," rather than as our Partner. Going off on our own, we've become ever hyper-vigilant, unable, for the most part, to enjoy that which is before us, unfurling. We look at sync--being in alignment with things; synchronicity--things coming together, in the right way, at the right time, in the right place--as rare, uncommon, scarce--undependable. Not so.

It only awaits our invitation. And, usually, we don't--invite it. Instead, we struggle, we strain; we plot, we plan, we scheme, we avoid. Any wonder we're tired, exhausted, off-our beam? Invite it! re-Partner with Mystery--not just a few munches--graze on it, swim in it, soak in it.

The three Muses of Mystery--Intuition, Inspiration and Imagination--the bridge to our Creativity awaits our nod, our invite. Open the door of your mind to it, and  Life starts to work in unexpected, delicious, validating ways--ways never imagined, anticipated . . .

God arrives this planet through our hands, our eyes--our wonder; our intrigue--through self-EXPRESSION; through our answering what shivers us with anticipation, shimmers our souls with possibility. Give it breath. Give it LIFE: try out  "I" words:

Intuit, Inspire, Imagine
Imprint new Impressions onto your awareness
Infuse your possibilities with your Impulses
Interior landscape? You are on the Discovery Channel
Innermost depths--Invest in you and your art; dare
Interest your muse with succulent ideas
Investigate possibilities
Invite your Intuition on a date--
[Let it Introduce you to the rest of your self]
Inflame and quench yearnings
Incite surprise--let it Ignite you
Imbibe the Mystery . . . Tip back your head; drink the rain!

Seachange In the Wind

Frustrating as it can be, sometimes a techno issue is the venue of the unasked being unmasked -- and answered: user delight.

  

This past week, my email, via Smartphone became unavailable, even while remaining accessible online.

A call to my phone company's technical support resolved this techno hiccup -- followed by "Do you have any other questions?"

"Yes! How come I can access my blog [I love and live to blog] through email online, but can't access it through email on my phone?"

Easy fix! A free Google Blog app! This old sea dog learned a happy new trick, fog of frustration revealing stars on the water as I realized I now hold in my hand mobile access to the blog dimension.

Tonight after work, solo flight: speaking delight into Bluetooth, spellbound by words; Writer's wine! Mesmerized, incanting enchantings, seeding implantings -- flights of perception; inception--beginning of conception, birthing a flock of words into flight, words that are themselves pregnant with meaning. I am their mother, Mystery their father.

Sea Shivers & Desert Quivers

March 9th, I departed the  2-1/2 year boot camp of heartland Missouri, returning to the high desert, and once again, only 500 miles from the sea. A time of deep turning within, in Missouri, I learned to drink from an Inner well; graze upon Mystery. Altered  & Altar-ed, I now hoist my sails, catching the winds of these next chapters. Aquiver, snuffling, a wash of intrigue breaking over me, I swim with the UNEXPECTED early return: an unanticipated work opportunity, a restored house-share--and, one more time, a closing sense, on the heels of a successful cross-country move, that "I know nothing; am attached to nothing, trust everything--steady as she goes." 

Even for flexible sorts, not all locales can foster being in resonant residence. Until I departed the West [my sequence of Oregon/Washington, California, Arizona/New Mexico] for the Midwest [Missouri--skipping through Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas], I had never been farther east than Santa Fe--and never knew what it was to be in dissonance with the land under your feet, the air that you're breathing.

Saturated in a soup of spiritual exploration, connecting with others also plumbing their depths--my sense of connection with the earth careened into a down-hill slide: circadian rhythms went askew from night-shift work, emotions flat-lined; my body slipped into allergic malaise. Initially able to prance up three flights of stairs, I faded to half a flight. I struggled, not to inhale air, but to exhale it. In an emerald land of rolling hills and  pockets of dense deciduous forest, I was frozen in winter and sodden with stifling summer humidity. And, from that land of distress, in the pocket of my heart I carry rich new threads in my tapestry, the yet new bonds of friendships just starting to grow as I departed.


We may make peace, for a time, with a place of dissonance--deepening and quickening our intuitive sense, meeting needs of a time that changes the course of our seas; graces us with insights, perceptual powers, a connecting-of-the-dots--that we'd not have arrived had we not gone walk-about--and in which we weren't meant to stay, lest we are too long gone from our motherland, from that which sings in our bones, mirrors the patterns within; mends and restores us.

Life is call and response. Coming up the grade from Tucumcari onto the desert plateau upon approach to Albuquerque, I felt the stars "dropping" into my eyes, mouth and heart from the black velvet sky as a beckoning ivory crescent moon slipped behind the inky black ribbon of mountains on the West. 


On approach to Arizona, I was ambushed by sobs of unprocessed grief at having left. I cried out to the land, "Mother, I'm home." To the Sea, my lover, I whispered, "I am close." Searingly lonely at times in Missouri for desert stars, ocean brine, and my circle of Spirit-Friends, I feel quickened and renewed upon my arrival. And chaos ensues: it takes me awhile to find order--new order in old surroundings, to get my bearings,  to nest, to know whether I'm upside down, or right-side up.


Even as I renew my bond with the desert, the coffee-table book I've been pining, Tall Ships Today, by Nigel Rowe arrives from Amazon.com. I am always sailing a ship--the ship of my life, whether in desert or upon sea. 

Intuition: Unfurling and Skirling

From our relationship with Intuition, we experience its off-spring, synchronicity: things come together; the dots connect; it works! Intuition as premonition gives us far more than present-moment effectiveness, or keen discernment in linear time. It also gives us 'soul-time':--time to prepare, consider, reflect; tread water. It gives us time to pause in the gap--and get directions for what is coming next.


Like a wave, it can even seem to come back on itself, but keeps its integrity, even as overlapping individual waves retain cohesiveness, slip-sliding over and under each other, yet all of the ocean. When we have Intuition, we don’t have to kill, burn, or chase time--we're on time; time becomes elastic rather than rigid. Instead of "killing it," we live into it, breathe into it, vibrate with it. We flow. We ride what is arriving. We instinctively know what to do next, preparing us for the next pulse. We are in right, timely action, before conclusions. We are prompted! 


It’s free, wild and curious. We hop on for the ride as it unfurls. We are not oppressed by it--freed of our usual polarized view of having either too little time, or too much. We are loosed of the swell or dip that preceded; loosed from old definitions/interpretations, fully living in the ripe moment, no longer afraid to be different than we were, riding our arriving; surfer riding skirling, unfurling wave.

This is the way we are designed. We were never meant to assess and navigate our lives only through analysis; we were designed to have Intuition as an ever-present Companion; analysis only a tool. Mystical poet Rabindranath Tagore wrote: "The winds of grace are always blowing, but it is you who must raise your sails." We were meant to be Partners, in co-creation with Intuition. If we are not a participant, Intuition has no one whom to bring synchronicity.


It takes trust to put up our sails--not only trusting the wind, but trusting ourselves. As author Tama Kieves shared in her recent teleconference (www.tamakieves.com), the best predictor of success is how we navigate uncertainty. She points out that many seek first a job, situation, relationship, circumstance to foster peace of mind. She goes on to say, rather, we need first to find peace of mind, then generate from that the job, situation, relationship or circumstance. And, peace of mind comes via our becoming our own ally, by being in our own court, becoming dependable to ourselves, our own consistent supporter--no matter the winds and the tides. We need to become our one dependable thing; rather than fickle, hot-water/cold-water, fly-by-nights.


We only truly get to that when we give up the blame game: blaming others, because we first blamed ourselves, and are then seeking alleviation of that through pointing the finger at someone else. Rather, when we are willing to become conscious of our continual inner narrative, in all its grace and vulgarity, we truly step up to the plate of being our own best friend. When we are that, this is when we can arrive ready to what is arriving to us, with bells on!

 

SEA BECKON, Sea-ing the possibilities

Leaning ‘gainst the port railing, arms akimbo: I rise up, a beckoning teasing the edges of my hearing—my eyes scanning the Mesmer-flicker mirror of the sea, searching . . . what? Mysteries, possibilities, becoming-s . . . the urge to inform myself (to form myself within) through forming myself into something new becomes paramount, priority.

There is a saying:

God can only do for us what God can do through us.

      — author unknown

Another saying:

Let go, and allow in.

—author unknown

So--question is: Will we allow ourselves to be amazing? To step out of bounds—out of outdated, limiting, restrictive, land-locked perceptions of how, and who, we are--can be; allow fresh briny breezes to blow into our scent-ual awareness , tantalizing scents, of what we’re becoming; in spite of ourselves; our own resistances.

Author Alan Cohen, narrates in his book, A Daily Dose of Sanity, that student, George Dantzig, upon arriving late to his U.C. Berkley math class, copied down the two problems on the board, assuming they were homework. Solving them, he turned them in to the professor at his next class and, the next morning George’s professor was pounding on his door: George had solved two classically unsolvable math problems!

Alan’s point, of that day’s reading, February 17^th, was that at times ignorance of what is “impossible” allows us to step right through walls of time-honored restriction, through waves of cultural resistance, breaching a strictly adhered limitation.

The harder limitations to shake are our own self-defined restrictions: we live in our own soup, most often convinced that it’s just the way things are. A second layer of this can come from familial assumptions: unlike many, I don’t have this familial layer to undo if I become a new me;—my family of origin dissolving years ago.

I’ve been blessed to live in several states, and, one of the blessings of new territories is that they don’t have you “pegged,” they don’t have any images of what you’re like from ‘way-back-when’—so, you don’t get any “That isn’t like you,” flack. Change in familial units can often feel threatening to the individual members who have developed emotional charges and attachments to having other family members filling a certain slot, being defined a certain way. That can happen even if they’re no longer in your life, if you still roll the same “film-strips” in your mind and heart.

So how do we get our own permission to change; into something we haven’t been before. Some of it comes from the inspiration of others: we become enchanted or intrigued by someone: sometimes it can be difficult to sort out if we’re really attracted to someone because we like them, or because we want to be them!

However, we also have an organic unfolding of soul-silk, the unfurling of a satin wave. We feel that Siren call from out across the seas of our awareness. We long, yearn to go to it. Question is, will we allow it.

Allow vs. permission: hmmm. Looking at the words: allow, I initiate; permission, I seek. So, there are two stages to it. First I seek my own permission to change, or grow, and then I allow it. I let it in. I try it on for size; I become it.

My creative energy tends to be organic, wild, sometimes messy, in a nest of basic order. Like the tides, the visual mediums around me surge and recede—natural objects; images of the sea or high desert, people’s faces, structural features of ships, homes, or a fan of clothing and textile images, featuring rich organic textures and color palettes.

And then, every so often, I need to bring it all down to a clean white slate, to clear the decks. Think: unmarked sand, un-trodden snow; or painting words on water. It usually arrives me because I've been praying for it. Something in me has been wishing that something would force me to pare down; that would require me to initiate a 'thinning.' I need that fluidity, the flexibility; the freedom to go with my own flow, to swim out to what is unfolding in me, to the surprise of me—the part that I don’t know yet: I’ve shucked down to undies, slipped through the railing, over the side, stroking out to what I’m becoming—drenched in curiosity; a sea-soup of greater possibilities.

Salient Saline Ponderings

Back in 2010, in one of our Photoshop class assignments, we were furnished a gray-scale image of the sea, to "shop." As I worked with this, the mystique of living in a universe that offers us the distinct lenses of day and night presented in the imagery.


As this imagaic metaphor unfurled, I was impressed with how incredibly lush it is that we live in a world that provides daily seachanges: internally, externally; echoed in the pulsing of tides, the rhythm of our breath, illumined by the sky-lanterns: sun, moon, stars, and the mirror of the sea.