Casting our Nets

Passing the Equinox,  south Florida has slowly released its grip on steamy summer and rain.  In the mornings,  the faint brush of cooler air rises from it's night blanket on the ground, teasing the rising sun,  ready to cast it's bright hot light into the day.  Every runner out there knows perfect temps/conditions are a rare and wonderful boon.  So I ran Saturday morning before clients,  a nice western loop,  and Sunday, geared up for a rendezvous with La Mer at the beach.

I haven't tackled big distance in a long time.  However,  keeping my base and yoga routine has kept me consistent.  Running to the beach is challenge enough: enough distance,  enough effort to push myself short of exhaustion.  As I headed out into the brightening day, I was still lost in the fog of sleep.  It always takes me a while to get my head back to 'reality'- and why my work schedule is so beneficial for me:  having mornings to take care of my body and my business allows me a strong transition, and time for myself. 

Traffic was still light, and the tunes were going in my head.  I floated through the first few benchmarks;  the crossings at Dixie and Federal,  and cruised right through the last hump of overpasses and into the beach. 

As usual,  rewarded by a soft ocean breeze lifting off the sands, while the water gently reflected a sky full of sunlight and soft, white clouds bobbing off an azure horizon.

As the bladers, bikers, runners and walkers dodged each other down the Broadwalk,  I took in the scene from a few different vantage points while taking my pit-stop break,  filling my water bottles,  and reminding myself that access to a beach run, just miles from my own home, is just about as great as it gets!!!  And knowing that I can return home, on my own 2 feet,  made me feel strong and fit. 

Farewell and thanks were said to the spirits which welcome me each time I 'notice',  photograph, appreciate 'them', and the awe-inspiring manifestation of beach life.  And so I turn to head back west.   As I begin my climb up the first overpasses,  I spied a group of Latino folks fishing off the pier.  I rounded out the top of my second climb as I watched one young guy carefully fold then toss his net which billowed up into a perfect square and fell in a quiet whoosh into the water.  Spirit gives us "triggers points";  moments in time that seem to rise up off the canvas of our usual lives and get our attention.   I watched that young man with his net and felt the image of its gentle unfurling zing into my brain.  He doesn't know for sure what's under the surface.  He may have spied the currents, and schools of whatever type of fish he's after-  but everything in water is on the move.   His graceful movement told me this is a practiced effort.  So whatever he caught, long after I passed him,  it seemed he was assured that something would land in that net. 

We are all casting our small, square nets into a vast body of water.  We are being called to practice our skills in bringing up the issues, emotions, changes and aspects of Self which coalesce somewhere close, to be captured in the net of our attention.  Putting ourselves into The Flow of experience,  we allow ourselves to TRUST:  that the waters harbor what lies hidden from view,  that we have the resources to find what we need regardless,  that together with all the elements of Living Life we will bring these to the surface, to feast on and integrate new material, value our accomplishments, and ready ourselves for a new day. 

I bench-marked my way back (a technique for running any long distance- or solving any big problem- break it up into parts), and with the sun at my back,  managed to keep my (turtle's) pace until I finally broke into a walk for the last bits home.  I have cast some formidable nets in my life, and many of them were cumbersome and unruly- or the waters were stormy and full of debris- or the weather in general just so bad I could hardly keep to my feet at all.  Now, as I watched that man cast his net I felt a resonance.  Over the years I have learned to hone my skill.   The water, the weather and my own expectations seem mysteriously in sync.  I cast what feels like the right size or shape, and as it unfurls into the air, for a brief moment it almost looks like a flag, semi-permeable, liable to change, dropping down into the depths of myself searching- and finding for what informs me now, and what will shape my dreams later.

Practice the skills which will allow you to cast your nets into the depths of your dreams.   The results may surprise you;  or maybe you knew all along-  this is my good future....I will fish for the freedom this bounty brings. 

Fall Equinox 2013: Let it Burn

After the frenzy of BARC's 40th anniversary event on Friday, and back to private practice on Saturday, I woke up Sunday ready for a long run to get my head into the Equinox spirit.
This benchmark, like so many others this year,  is full of meaningful layers, not the least of which is the 9 month mark from 12-21-12.  In all these months we have gestated ourselves,  to what are we giving birth??  Great Mother conspired to get me over to Tree Tops with Celeste....just so I could open an altar and ask exactly that.  But first....

Headed out into what serves as fall in south Florida- a warm rising sun and the coolish air rising from the earth met with me in the middle as I took the overpass and headed up 29th.  The dream themes of constant renovations swirled around in my head with the images of hope, change and expecting the unexpected.  Without too much trouble I rounded out onto Ravenswood and enjoyed that lovely straight stretch tucked along a nearly empty road, feeling my body relax into the rhythm.  Regardless of any form of anticipation about the day,  the run gives me that structured regularity that grounds me to Mother Earth even as it frees my concerns from their cages of the every-day.  Cruising down 35th,  meandering through Emerald Hills, it was a glorious morning spent with Nature.

I sorted through and packed my altar gear, meeting up with Cel at Tree Tops.  We navigated through our initial 'process' of figuring out where to go by leading with our gut instinct after all,  finding the Perfect Place along a bridle path, just off a hiking trail.  As the prep and opening commenced, and the smoke from the sage began to rise,  it swirled on puffs of wind and danced around us.  I 'saw' a building burning, as red as fire can be....and myself standing a ways back while the 'message' sounded:  'the building must burn, let it;  don't feel you need to run in to save it- the New needs to be built on the ashes of the Old.'

We placed many personal and planetary things into that fire bowl.  Things to let go.  Things to call in.  On this balance point, this birthing point for something beyond our scope of comprehension,  trust is asked of us as we watch our belief systems,  our governing and world systems, even our interpersonal constructs take to the flames of transformation.  I sat in the wafting of that sweet smoke and felt myself come Full Circle,  as we 'sat' with Mello and Vitae,  the rest of the Sun Temple brothers and sisters and all those others who were doing their ceremonies and conducting their own sacred circles everywhere around the world.  I felt a sense of peace about my own path and asked Great Mother to continue to let me serve Her, give Her voice, bring Her Presence into these times. 

We are too consumed with the negative imagery of destruction.  We forget this is just one facet of Her face.   The Old must go to make room for what we all are bringing in to this world.  Don't hang on to it.  Honor the lessons learned.  Now, it is time to stand back,  let it all burn....and - rebuild our New World.

Beyond Dark and Light

In all medicine/indigenous cultures, there is a recognition of the experience of 'dying to the self' in order to move forward, or be 'reborn' into a new life.  Only in the neurotic west, and only because Freud 'won' the psychiatric worldview over Jung,  do we equate 'dark' with 'bad', even evil.  Jung's voice of integration,  taken as it was right off the ancient world's page, joined the other, underground impulses, where the broader spiritual worldview of 'many parts' as One,  was embraced. 

The East is closer to a sense of harmony between Forces,  and under even that is the millennium of Knowledge, when Mother Earth as Mystery School was a designated assignment - to uplift, to educate, to redeem.  No matter what 'side' you were on,  what gender(s),  what script to run, lessons to learn, what comrades and loved ones to work with, what geopolitical stressors to bear....no matter what,  every one comes with every aspect of life bundled into seed packets.... with our potential to grow.

Growth is not dark or light.  Growth is the constant in this process we call Life.  Whether my growth looks good to you,  or not,  my growth is a product of the complex interaction of many many aspects of things,  with much of it is now happening in our global devolution, and our corner of the universal neighborhood.  I have had to wrap my head around what the internet community is circulating about cosmic events of all kinds.  Meanwhile our own geopolitical stakes raise ridiculously higher all the time.  In my time off work,  I felt myself falling under the pressure of so much which seems imminent....just as all Big Change feels...like the birth of a baby,  its the last bits that are indeed the hardest.

I always liked the term 'shamanic descent'.  Just as the medicine people know how to create and conjoin in major initiations, which prompt and feed the psyche with liminal material and build the bridge to the 'new life',  my little vision quest is giving me the incredibly rare space and time to empty myself out- in order to fill myself up.  Depression is an emptying out;  or rather the recognition and fear of emptying.  Week 1 of staycay was an emptying.....

it was emotional tsunamis and lost dreams...it was a curving in on myself seeking solace and safety within The Mother's womb.  And then it was loving that part.   The part that hurts, that hides.  We judge a lot of things that deserve our scrutiny.  But too much we judge the lost and hurt parts of ourselves.  We enforce the PC of the spiritual world; we forget that we play all the parts,  we seek these experiences,  we need to understand.

Once I let someone listen,  it all began to make sense again.  The 'sisterhood' of remembering brought me back to all the good things in my life, not the least of which is the long friendship that gave me that lifeline.

 The pressure finally began to ease a bit, and my excursions into running, or finding good farmer's markets or breathing into the space of simple rest has been fortuitous, timed to the High Holy days on the Jewish calendar.  So many of us are breathing peace back into the picture...., the wars and rumors of wars feel unhinged again from their timeline.... Like those last few pushes,  we work with all our might to bring our Good future into the world.  And very often that Work is so deep within,  it takes an intrepid soul to find the precious light, to find the courage, the stamina...to find the insight, to find the way through.