Navigating the Identity Sea

The stories we tell to ourselves; to others -- are the charts by which we navigate the waters of our lives, storms or calms, bays or open seas. They are what define us and give meaning to the events, people, situations and circumstances in our lives -- not the experiences, in and of themselves.

Aboriginal trackers are the best in the world, able to follow a man even years after he has walked through a dry desert terrain. An anthropologist asked one of these expert trackers how he did it. The tracker explained, “Oh, it’s easy. We walk with him.” He does not look for clues; he enters the time and space where the journey occurred. He knows how to walk in the same world as the event he seeks. – Mikela & Philip Tarlow

Not many of us outside the Australian Aboriginal culture have ever considered that we might be able to track anybody across a barren, dry terrain, years after they passed through, by entering into the time and space of the event. It hasn’t bteen a part of our collective or individual, stories. But -- it could be!

This is the gift of story: from the utterance of another's mouth, scrawl of their pen, tapping of their keyboard, production of a film -- if we're open to it, we can see ourselves, interpret our lives, in new, richly seasoned, deeply meaningful ways -- in contrast to the oft dry, stale, wearied stories we cycle within the loop of our private thoughts -- about who we are and what our lives mean.

Our initial interpretations and the evolving stories we tell about ourselves, as we repeat them, can be stultifying -- that is: numbing, dulling, boring and deadening -- damning us to the slow death of only half-breathing our lives; stealing our sense of self-esteem and effectiveness in living lives peppered with intrigue, curiosity, wonder and adventure. 

Or . . .  with new interpretations and unprecedented considerations, we can revision and rewrite the the stories that loop through our days and nights. Instead of just recycling the non-stop narrative running in our heads, and all the attendant "voices, fastening us to a bone-wearying sameness -- the stories of no hope of change, we can form and evolve stories that, instead, set us free--embolden and empower us, filling us with the hope of new visions and the confidence to act on them, allowing us to live lives free of historical debris, that accurately mirror what matters to us, way down deep in our souls. 

In Patrick O'Brian's novel, Master and Commander, one of the characters, addressing the art of battle, states that he never seeks to fight a person directly, but rather to undermine their confidence -- that is, the story they tell about themselves; their sense of themselves and their capabilities. 

The reason we so often get attached to our old stories, tenaciously cling to them and defend them, often with great vehemences -- is that we don't really believe that there are any new ones for us. Think again:

Have you ever tried out for a play, or a part in a film—or watched someone else give a reading? During a tryout, you can present a character in a myriad of ways: shaky bravado or powerful humility; waspish flippancy or attentive respect; sincere trust or scathing suspicion; despairing frustration or deep determination; raging disgust or ocean-vast compassion . . . just a sampling. You get to choose: you can have a different response, based on a different interpretation. Not only of the event, but of who you think you are within that.

We are NOT our stories. WE ARE the story-tellers; the choice-makers that TELL the stories and give them meaning -- infuse them with Voice. We are the interpreters of events, the ones who blow the breath of meaning into them.

And, we're the actors: we reenact our stories on a daily basis: who am I? What does it all mean? Who are the other players? What is our relationship? Where are we? Where are we going? Why?

We literally spend billions of dollars for others to create stories for us: In 2012, worldwide consumers spent $62.4 billion on movies alone, let alone TV and books!

We are all, wittingly or unwittingly, acting from scripts. What we often miss is that not only are we the writers of our life-scripts -- but that we are also the actors -- and the directors. While we may be the product of our past, we are the authors of our future. If we give ourselves PERMISSION, we can write different scripts, select or toss scripts as the director, and try out different personas and attitudes for our roles as the actors! 

It's always story-time -- from what we'll have for dinner to where we will live and how we will make our money, who the other players will be, and the nature of those relationships. 

For eons we’ve gathered at campfires and water coolers, in bars, and at afternoon teas, to share our stories -- chat them out over the phone, shout them to the Universe, whisper them into the darking of winter. 

Even now we gather at the pale blue fire in our living rooms—TV; fidget in the black velvet of a theater in exquisite anticipation of a good flick—placing our money down to be enchanted, thrilled—teased, lifted, scared or shattered into new awareness—our reticent, hopeful, mysterious spirits smoked out of hiding into something bolder and freer.

Through narrative power we can change ourselves, and our world. "In the beginning was the Word," -- and every step along the way. What will your story be?

Living By the Tides, Patterns, Rhythms, Present Tense

Living by the Tides . . . Patterns, Rhythms, Present Tense 

Each chapter of our lives has a rhythmic formula underlying out of which longer passages are developed. Finding peace and pace with these natural rhythms, the tides, within and without, is where we grow our edges into a sense of confident efficacy ,within the sea and seasons of our lives. 

On the flanks of the Olympic Mountains and bordering the saltwater are the Grandmother and Grandfather Trees, millions of them, infusing the oxygen-rich air with their exhale. Elders in their own right, their toes are in the soil of mountains that are teenagers: the Red Rocks of Sedona, AZ --buttes, pillars and mesas--the erosional remains of the southern edge of the Colorado Plateau range in age from 300 to 340 million years ago--the plateau itself, out of which the Grand Canyon is carved, 6 million years old, then this compared to Mingus Mountain,  across the Verde Valley, erupting under the sea, when  what we now know as Sedona, was at the "South Pole, 1.8 billion years ago. So, on that scale, the Olympic Mountains are teenagers, the oldest rock material ranging between 55 to 65 million years ago--which compares to Sedona' youngest rock. These 'young' Olympic Mountains have their  feet in the Straight of Juan de Fuca.  

“Despite the sea being wild and the waves rolling away from the shore, the tide always returns.” 
― Katherine McIntyre, By the Sea

Anne Morrow-Lindbergh [Wikipedia] was an acclaimed author whose books and articles spanned the genres of poetry to nonfiction, touching upon topics as diverse as youth and age, love and marriage, peace, solitude and contentment, and the role of women in the 20th century.^[ Lindbergh's Gift from the Sea is an essay-style work, taking shells on the beach for inspiration , reflecting on the lives of American women.

She writes: 

“This is what one thirsts for, I realize, after the smallness of the day, of work, of details, of intimacy - even of communication, one thirsts for the magnitude and universality of a night full of stars, pouring into one like a fresh tide.” 

and:

“When you love someone, you do not love them all the time, in exactly the same way, from moment to moment. It is an impossibility. It is even a lie to pretend to. And yet this is exactly what most of us demand. We have so little faith in the ebb and flow of life, of love, of relationships. We leap at the flow of the tide and resist in terror its ebb. We are afraid it will never return. We insist on permanency, on duration, on continuity; when the only continuity possible, in life as in love, is in growth, in fluidity - in freedom, in the sense that the dancers are free, barely touching as they pass, but partners in the same pattern.

The only real security is not in owning or possessing, not in demanding or expecting, not in hoping, even. Security in a relationship lies neither in looking back to what was in nostalgia, nor forward to what it might be in dread or anticipation, but living in the present relationship and accepting it as it is now. Relationships must be like islands, one must accept them for what they are here and now, within their limits - islands, surrounded and interrupted by the sea, and continually visited and abandoned by the tides.” 

Time Tides: This Time

Time Tide--This Time: This November 12, 2016


This time, I pack my sailing gear to include the Sea-Souling, Sea-Changing, Gypsy-Wandering heart of me--the hated she, that I secretly wanted to be, lacked the confidence to be--because I kept locking her in the closet, or banging her butt with the back door every time someone rang the doorbell at the front of the house.

This time her luggage, her cargo, await boarding right along side of mine. I even left some of mine behind to fit hers in. And now, standing in front of me, vixen embers burn in her eyes. Her voice a waterfall, laughter peels from her. Tossing her hair she starts dancing, bare feet escaping wharf splinters as she scampers over the boards. Then, sly grin stealing across her face, we step to the luggage in stereo, gather up what I packed and balance ourselves up the gang plank, none of me, none of she, left behind. 

Never fully tamed, she has things to teach me. No longer orphaned by the fear in me, wandering is no longer her only option. She has replaced the fear inside of me, the hole inside of me now the whole inside of me. She's the depths of richness, the sense of Magic, that I always yearned beyond me, outside of me, could never count on, because I kept pushing her out the door, bolting it behind her. But, she always got in through the window.

Bolding, this time, I've invited this ruffian soul of me forward, front, and center. Oh my!
Cat-footed she joins me from the shadows of even-fall. Together, we stare out through the dark toward port, both os uf softly joyed that I failed to chase her off , this deeper wilder royalty of me. "I used to walk inside your shadow with you," she answers my unspoken thoughts, Gypsy music lacing the stars.  Pivoting to face me, she finishes, “Now I walk as you.”

Ensouling Sea: Retrieving my Soul Skin

Immersed in blue: blue sky, blue mountains, blue saltwater -- I stand in the surf, slaking soul-thirst: It's been 28 years since I wandered off out of the Pacific Northwest into the golden hills of California, then the towering red rocks of Sedona, and a brief time in the Mid-West, soaked in prayer for our world. Having returned to Arizona this past March, this September I returned to my homeland, the Wet Coast. Wet Coast describes the the coastline of the U.S. Pacific Northwest and Canada's British Columbia during the long, damp winter--and is also a play on West Coast. 

Standing in surf-lap, Ediz Hook, Port Angeles, Straight of Juan de Fuca, I recover my sea-tail, stashed amongst the rocks and trees at ocean's edge. "It's time for you to come home," say the Thunder Beings--the Thunder Mother and Father, "to recover your mer-tail, your saltiness, crown of sparkling sea-spray; that which has gone empty to fill, sea-lonely inner spaces mated once again to the shoreline. Lightning zippers the sky of my soul.

Wikipedia describes Selkies, also spelled Silkies, as mythological creatures found in Irish, Scottish and Faroese folklore. Similar creatures are described in the Icelandic traditions. Selkies are said to live as seals in the sea but shed their skin to become human on land; this legend being most common in Orkney and Shetland. 

Seal Skin, Soul Skin (originally from the Inuit Nation) is a fable told by Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes, in her book, Women Who Run With the Wolves, a fable of our deep need to be true to our own nature, preventing the loss of our soul as we forge bonds with 'other,' reminding us that the greatest loneliness comes from loss of contact with our inherent, native depths.

Journeying into the California Anza-Borrego and Arizona Sonoran desert-scapes 28 years ago, I wooed the wild dryness; stark vision, bare-bones discernment; cooked-down, the wind-stripped sacred parching that would scour clean the debris of my years.

Now I venture home to the Wet Coast, and the jewel within--the Sunshine Coast; renewing myself to my seal-skin/soul skin, re-fleshing my spirit with this lush, raw, undulating wet wildness: the richness of past exploring and the breathing, velvet, evolving tide of my future marry, becoming my present. Sea shanty arises in me, rhythms pulse my blood, tides call forth what is to be, rendering me to primal yearnings: soaking in sea-soup, fulfillment, recovery of my seal skin, soul skin. 

For a time, I was graced to have a real seal skin gifted me by an Alaskan Native--and, as in the fable, the seal skin is gone from me, and now, I've come to retrieve my inner seal skin, soul skin. I stand at the threshold of coming into Full Presence of my deepest currents. 

Navigating the TINGLE-SEA

Goose-bumps arrive: TINGLE; deep resonance, bones sing . . . Alert, attuned, tuned-in: we're paying attention. We're focused, buoyed, renewed, intrigued. We're INTERESTED. We're in touch with Life--with that which brings life, vibrancy to our very being, zest to our breathing, clarity to our awareness. We fill with impetus to continue, move on, move forward, embrace, engage; verve, vivacity, vigor. We are a verb, as well as awareness.

Noted to me, by several friends, even since a young girl, I was always the action person: If we talked of, yearned something--an experience or an event, I was the one that wanted to take action on it, make it happen, make it real--discontent to leave it only in the ether.

As an adult? If you can't apply it, what use is it? We are animated, active creatures. We're responsive. We have hinges, not by accident, but for movement, action, expressing. We've got knees and elbows. We are God in expression; we're the hands and feet of God--we're God, exploring God in action.

However, there is another kind of action, internal expression that permeates not only all of outer events, but the larger sea of our inner experience; actually, the larger part of our life-experience, our Inner Sea.

When the TINGLE arrives, we are in TRUE RESONANCE. For that moment, we are fully alive, freed of our habit of judging, ourselves or others, free of fault-finding and blaming. We just ARE. TINGLE is a direct hit, with no filters. For just that moment, there is no doubt, no self-recrimination. There ain't no debate. We're in an ecstatic point of FULL PRESENCE to the greater part of what we are and its resonant expressions. We're in ALIGNMENT.

Alright. Well that felt great. So--are we to do anything with that? Anything beyond flashing a quick smile and brief narrative of the event to the friend standing beside us?

This from: www.asknature.org --The wings of carpenter bees cause pink gentian flowers to release their pollen by beating at a frequency that causes the anthers to vibrate. "It [the bee] arrives at the flower making a high-pitched buzzing noise with its wings as most bees do. As it alights on an anther, it continues beating its wings but lowers the frequency so that the note of its buzz suddenly falls to approximate middle C. This causes the anther to vibrate at just the right frequency needed to release the pollen and thre grains spout out of the hole at the top in a yellow fountain." (Attenborough 1995: 100)

When we get that rush, the TINGLE, we're in resonance with our deepest reality, the greater part of who we are; we're in alignment with it, within and without. Our inner tuning-forks are sounding. We TINGLE all over.
It can't be manufactured, but it can be cultivated, received. The bee can't manufacture the pollen, but it can open the channel, the anther, with resonance.

Many spend their lives trying to recapture these moments, these points of high, of natural joy--distressed by their return to self and other judgment, of finding fault, of finding there lives less than these moments of high. What they often miss in this is not only the sense of resonance, but the lack of negative judgment, traded in, just for those moments, for however long it lasts, for true discernment, observation, seeing.

True joy is not over-indulgence; over-immersion; rather it is being in resonance with this deeper Truth as it presents, the wave crest, and not being in fear, worry or an attitude of lack or self/other disdain in the trough between the wave crests.

To help keep ourselves in a state of trust and appreciation, a fortuitous state for resonance, many of us keep a gratitude journal as a way to retain an appreciative perspective of our life-blessings, a sense of balance in the fluctuations of our inner and outer weather--our attitudes and beliefs, our filters on perception about both our inner and outer conditions/situations of our lives. What about a TINGLE journal, serving as a narrative compass, guiding our ship in confidence to our True North.

This is not to eschew common sense or reasoning power. However, we make choices based on what we are conscious of, what we focus on: not just the facts, but what we think/feel about the facts. We make choices based on our beliefs about ourselves and our world. If we pay attention to the TINGLE, we may create a completely different trajectory in the navigation of our Life-Sea--both inner and outer. To navigate is to plan and direct the route or course of a ship or other form of transportation, especially by using instruments or maps.

A very small percentage of our experience is the actual events; rather, the most of our experience is our interpretation of those events, the other people, and ourselves and the relationships. It is our interpretation of these events that causes our internal experience--happy, sad, mad; curious/inquisitive, delighted, joyed, sense of mischief and play, grateful relief, confidence of trust in life--or fear, anger, resistance, resentment, mistrust, self-doubt, finding blame with ourselves/others. These interpretive factors are our rudders and also the wind in our sails, the ocean and wind currents that carry us not only to our outer experiences, but out inner weather, the weather conditions of our inner seas.

Daily, most of us make some sort of loose plan--if not for the day, then for the next day, next week, next month, next year: some kind of activity map. Infrequently we consider plans or maps for our inner sea/see--the way we perceive or frame our outer experiences, and the the internal and external results of those inner filters/interpretive lenses/maps that we reference.

We can choose our thoughts! The auto-pilot voice in our heads, which is often some kind of non-credentialed running-stream narrative--usually at one end of two poles: ego vaunting or self-bashing, about who we, and the other people in our lives, are; whether we/they/it are good or bad; to be praised or berated--and is NOT who we are! Rather, we are the CHOOSER. And beyond the thoughts, feelings, attitudes and beliefs, is that resonant recognition when we TINGLE. Doubt flees into the night. There's not time for self-condemnation or blasting others with scathing reviews. We're too busy, too engaged with that which brings joy, focus, energy, delight.

Alan Cohen, in his 365 book: A Daily Dose of Sanity, writes on the August 29th entry: ". . . you will act and create results according to the identity you assume."  Can we imagine an identity not tangled in the noose of self-doubt and fear of the Universe's intention toward us? Can we see ourselves as more than our small-scale thoughts about what we are/are capable of? Can we let ourselves out of the box? Tango with Intuition?

Luminescent Sea

Illumined See

Indigo LEDS belly-dance wings.

Turning inward to our depths; plumbing the depths of others, we discover new seas--uncharted waters within; promise here--surprises within--soul oxygen. There is direct encounter: without checks and filters: symphony of nuances, orchestration of our soul's unfolding--our birthing into flight.

Often, we avoid a regular meditative practice because we're more than a little scared of what we might be--beyond the old definitions: We see Spirit-houses, shrines, out in the desert, up in the mountains, floating on water. Our bodies are Spirit Houses. God is shining out from within. We are God, expressing as us.

We tend to treat the unknown as against us, something to be feared. Wonder if it is our friend; a greater friend that we imagine? The caterpillar that becomes a butterfly is a blueprint of our own process--if we don't slip back into a caterpillar husk.

The caterpillar caries out the engineering of the cocoon on deep instinct--unafraid of going to sleep to the old established ways--and in so doing is graced with flight it could never imagine. Let the unknown grace and wisdom within you court you. Give it time; give it space. Slow down; pause. Be still--in spite of any dis-ease with it; be graced by the spiritual bioluminescence within.

When you're 'hunting'--when you're 'hungry'--you are not hunting something without, but rather something within that wants to get out; out into the world--to express. Surprise is not always the boogeyman in the night; you might find something tender, vibrant and patient--something to sustain, guide and inspire you.  It takes two to Tango. Dare to dance with it; dive over the railing with it into your unexplored deeps. Get bold! Get beautiful. Let your Soul-Wings be the stars of your night.

Swimming in the TINGLE-SEA

I've got the TINGLE. Tingle-say; tingle-speak. What is that?

We've all stood rapt, at a point, with a resonance that brings goose-bumps to our skin, tingle to our bones: a sense of knowing -- a knowing outside of time and space when something "is for us"--something is right for us -- AND, it is also about timing.

We can know, deep in our bones, that something is "real" for us--something calls out to us--but for some reason or another, it doesn't gel; doesn't come together. We can push at it, plot, plan--and nada--"not at all; nothingness--nothing comes of it. Fizzle.

When that happens, two common, deeply ingrained, acculturated responses to that are either to self-reject, or to blame someone, or something else. We judge ourselves; judge others; the Universe.

However, there's another way of looking at it. Often we have to grow into something--ripen into it; delay isn't that it is not for us; rather that the timing isn't right.

And, it isn't just about us! In any endeavor, their are other players, other sources, juxtapositions of opportunity, that have to be in place. There are other players on our stage of life, and in any particular scene, for us to carry out our role, we are in interdependence with those other players, that might have a different timing than we do before we can come together to carry out into form what TINGLES us.

When something is not the right timing for us, it is not a comment on our worth, our value; does not mean we are unworthy of success, support, God's Grace or things coming together for us. 

Our greatest blocks to success, to following the call of our TINGLE, is our own filters. The jaundiced eye, the view of our tinglings as being not trust-able, undependable. AND in so doing, we shut ourselves down into a mediocrity; or a pattern of trying to substitute what we don't really want in place of what we really want, and we perpetuate ourselves into a series of non-fulfillment.

Instead, we can have a different response to that; we can take that temporary "No" not as a slap of dismissal, but rather as "Prep" time; as an opportunity to prepare deeply for what resonates in our bones, for what TINGLES us--that which makes us glad we are alive; that fills us with a sense of gratitude that we are on the earth. That makes us want to be aware and alert instead of numb and dumb.

We can learn to stop filtering out Our Good! -- rather dive into, immerse ourselves, in that which brings pleasure, that which makes our bones sing.

The Universe, a holographic spiritual Internet, is a TINGLE-SEA. All-That-Is, can put any manner of things together for us, to bring us joy, that we wouldn't even know to consider, let alone be able to manipulate into place! LET IT! ALLOW IT!

Allow yourself to TINGLE-SEE into, to swim in the TINGLE-SEA.