Tuesday, December 11, 2007

There is something about the days getting shorter that thrills me. The thought of darkness, stillness, and hibernation ruling our psyches and lives gives me full permission to dive deeply into the realm of soul.

Being still enough to hear the small voice that connects us to Source, the infinite, is, for me, the profoundest honor of being a conscious being. We get to stop, listen and commune with God/The Universe/The Cosmos. What a privilege. What a miracle. What a true gift.

Musing on the symbols and ideas of this time of year - miracles, light emerging out of the darkness, giving presents - we are given many opportunities to go within and meet up with the miracle that WE are. The GIFT that we embody. The LIGHT that can only be known because of the darkness.

In the Greek myth of Persephone and Demeter, this time of year is when Demeter is still wandering the earth unsure about where her daughter Persephone has gone. All she knows is that she has lost contact with her, and her heart breaks for it. This can be seen as part of our own journeys - that time when we may have lost contact with our own innocence, full potential and possibility, and all we can see is darkness and confusion. But what Demeter, and our own ego selves don't know is that Persephone is indeed in the Underworld - a place of death, stillness, stasis - and yet in this place she is separating from all of her past ways of being, and being enthroned as a Queen. She has become sovereign over her destiny. Her ability to live with, and stay with Hades (death, stasis, stilness) allows her to remake herself with more power, grace and a new destiny.

As the Level 3 of the human psyche, the wolves and the planet moves into this deepest time of hibernation (Winter Solstice is the 21/22), I want to leave you with an appreciation of the hibernation that we are all living on some level, and with a poem that I wrote last year at this time.

Winter Solstice.

Here comes the light.
Here comes the sun.
Gather your wisdom, your selves, your deepest parts,
Turn toward where you are headed
and know that you have everything you need
to make the journey home.

Spring calls you like a whisper.
Persephone rustles underneath us.
Demeter mournfully wanders still in search of her potential.

Take a moment today, that very same moment that the earth takes to be still,
and ask...
What call still whispers in me?
What rustles underneath my consciousness?
What search is unfinished?

Bury your answers like a bulb in the soil.
Light a candle to show you the way.
Something indeed has been born today.

Wednesday, September 12, 2007

Don't know why, but I felt pulled to show up here this morning. Usually I have something that is just dying to be expressed, something that just won't let me go, and so I come here and share. But this morning, it feels like the space has just invited me in to show up first, and then create from the space it holds.

Just showing up and creating from what is in front of us is something humans have been doing for, well, for ever I guess. I suppose we wouldn't be here, this far along in our evolution, without that ability to create from the here and now. It seems like my ego wants to believe that I need a plan, the right tools and education, and then I can go and make something happen, or make a something. It's just not true is it? I don't know what the end of this sentence is as I type it, I don't know the end of a thought as I think it, and I certainly won't know what the end of this day, month, year, life will look like. And yet I move toward it anyway. I walk into the unknown in every moment. Funny. Funny, because so many times I hear myself and my clients talk about the fear of the unknown and the paralysis that accompanies it. But it really is bullshit isn't it. Without the unknown there is no life, no universe, nor no creativity.

Have fun in the unknown today.

Kelly

Tuesday, August 28, 2007

I was at Staples the other day, and I saw that there were a bunch of people in there buying school supplies. Suddenly, my body ached like it used to in my early thirties when it wanted a baby. A voice appeared, "I want to go back to school. I want to surrender myself to a new semester, a new pile of books, new teachers, promise of new ideas and directions for my mind."

School for me was easy. I loved it. It had boundaries, expectations and rewards that worked for my own particular neurosis - intellectual people pleasing. School made me feel in control of the universe. I knew what it wanted from me, and I knew how to give it. Black and white. Information in, and analysis and information out. Pure bliss.

This fall I am not going back to school. Well, at least not that kind of school. I am jumping into making a documentary, and there certainly is a lot for me to learn. But there is no ONE set of parameters, or rules or hoops to jump through. It is all a bit gray and murky - tone, visual look, approach - no where is there a syllabus telling me how to get an "A" or what is expected of me in my final paper. I am on my own here. Just me and my subject (the American Dream) dancing by ourselves as amazing people and opportunities gather around me to support my journey.

I feel a bit like Frodo. I have a mission and I'm not sure that I am up for it. But I know that I must keep marching forward because no matter what I know that it must happen. I have surrendered myself to something bigger than me, and I feel like I have been chosen.

Now that I have heard the call, maybe I need to go back to Staples and get myself a new notebook, some paper and really cool pens. I have a feeling that new teachers, ideas, directions and books are in my future. I think the real education of Kelly has just begun.

Dream on,
Kelly

Saturday, August 25, 2007

I was watching some TV earlier today, and it was mentioned that it has been ten years since Princess Diana's death. I was immediately transported to that week ten years ago. A week that was the beginning and the end of so many things.

The week that Diana died I was in Santa Barbara at my very first Buddhist retreat. I and 900 others were at UCSB spending five days with Thich Nhat Hahn, a Vietnamese Zen Master. It was a miracle of sorts me being there, actually a few miracles. The first being that I had not driven by myself in my car out side of a very small perimeter of Los Angeles for over five years due to a crushing case of Panic Attack Syndrome. And yet, somehow I made it to Santa Barbara without a trace of panic, to learn to meditate and do walking meditation with this Zen Master. The second miracle was that I knew no one, had never done five seconds of any kind of meditation in my life, and I had certainly never just signed up for something like this in my life. I was even sharing a room with a complete stranger. I do not know what had come over me. Well, actually that is a lie. What had come over me was that my mother had died suddenly not three months before that. And I guess that is where the third miracle begins: I was given the gift of life through the horror and unrelenting grief around my mother's death. Suddenly all my fears, all my hesitations, all my reasons for not doing things were gone. There was just me and reality, and only so much time left on this earth to do and be who I knew that I had always wanted to be and do, but had been putting off for a time when it felt safer. Well, nothing was safe now, so now was the time to start being and doing. And that is why the fourth miracle happened.

It was on the third day of the retreat. We were invited to wake up before dawn, and meet Thay (Thich Nhat Hahn's nick name which means teacher) and his sangha (community) on the beach for walking meditation. I hated waking up early, I hated being cold, and I was not sure how to actually do walking mediation, but I was curious and so I dragged my ass out of bed at 5AM. We all gathered as the sun was rising, and slowly as a group, we walked down the beach behind Thay and some of the nuns and monks with him. Walking meditation is an act of being fully present while moving. You feel each step as you take it, staying out of your head, and with your body the whole time. After about ten minutes I looked up and it was quite a sight to see - about four hundred of us moving at the pace of a snail en masse on the beautiful shoreline of Santa Barbara. We were like a slow moving sculpture. The sun began to fill the sky, and I began to feel a level of peace that I had imagined unattainable in my life. I was filled with joy, love and calm. The ocean was glassy, and my mind was glassy too. Thay and the group moved up a trail that lead into the nature reserve on the UCSB campus. We walked slowly, carefully, mindfully along the path. Most were looking down in front of them, which is the proper practice. But, I was looking around at the trees, the birds and then the meadow we were walking through. And that was when I saw this fox. He was about 40 feet away from us. There were hundreds of us on this trail, about two or three people wide. A stream of humanity, and yet there was this fox staring at a hole where his prey was hiding. He never looked up, flinched or even acknowledged our presence. He just did what foxes do. And I realized we had become part of the landscape. Our peace, our calm, our mindful movement blended in perfectly with the meadow. A huge welling of joy leaped into my throat. And tears began falling down my cheeks. The fox, this meadow, my body, these mindful walkers were all one, one body, one mind, one being. I did not know what to make of it all, but I figured that I had just been invited into a new realm of being.

Later that day, I saw CNN announcing Diana's death. I was in a busy lobby of the dorms we were all staying in. Time stopped. Another mother was dead. I pictured the grief of those two young lads. But this time I had the meadow and the fox and that peaceful sea of humanity in my heart. And even though I knew those young lads' hearts had been ripped in half, I also knew that they were now on a journey where miracles can begin to happen too.

Friday, August 17, 2007

Just back from a week away at my Leadership Program I am immersed in, and it seems the world is on fire again - mine collapsing, hurricane pending, earthquake destruction. I sit back and ask it all - what does this have to do with me? Not an easy question to answer because I can't see all the threads here, except one. It is about that mine. Now what I am about to say is not meant to make anyone squirm with guilt, but there is some place inside of me that needs to stand up and own my own part in this, which is that I am a consumer of electricity here in Los Angeles, and here in L.A. we use energy from coal. There is a thread here. In some small way I have colluded with the mining industry that looks the other way when it comes to environmental and safety practices. And like I said, I am not saying this to be a martyr of guilt or a creator of one, but the earth is calling to me, she is saying it IS time to wake up, make a shift, do things differently. There are no more free rides. There is no more sand to put my head into. There is not enough reality TV to distract me from her truth.

And so I sit here in her truth, my truth, the truth and will honor my urges to act, change and rework my life in order that all can have life here on earth. I am scared, excited and a bit overwhelmed, but there is a path here somewhere, and I am determined to find it.

Peace out,
Kelly

Sunday, August 05, 2007

Is it really August 5th? I know I made some sort of vow to be here daily, and yet, it has not happened the last two weeks. Why? Because not all of life is about output. Sometimes, life is about input, mulling, chewing and stewing. There I said it. A flimsy, procrastinating writer's excuse? That's possibly your projection not mine. But a reason that I know in my life is real. Over these last seven years, as I have had a more consistent relationship with my creative production, I have found that all IS cyclical. And I love that.

Pete Seeger, The Byrds and Ecclesiastes were right, there is a season (is Ecclesiastes a guy?). And so for this blog it has been more like winter. And in winter, you don't see a lot of action on the outside, but you can bet that there is a lot going on inside working on things that will blossom in just a few months. My potential blossoming is a project about the American Dream (much more on that later, I'm sure).

So, I am off for 8 days to my leadership retreat in N. Cal. tomorrow, and when I return, I will be here. Until then - good wintering in the height of summer.

Kel

Sunday, July 22, 2007

I have NEVER been the girly girl. I feel like I did not get the proper training from my own mother for that task, and I was not one who got the gene that helps you to know how to just look fab, chic and perfectly put together. I was a tom boy, who grew up in the 70s with counter-culture parents. So,when I was invited to a small and casual gathering at the pool at Shutters for a friend's bridal shower, I was a bit worried. I was told it would be very mellow and laid back, no big deal. Great, that fits my style. No, not great, because there is nothing involving me in a bathing suit and the pool at Shutter's that could possibly be mellow or laid back. When I realized that I would potentially need to expose my white, doughy body to the "Beautiful People" of the Shutter's pool, I went into a Def-con IV alert mode.

Now I generally consider myself a rather grounded, down to earth sort who doesn't bother with most of the bullshit that goes on in this town around image, fashion, fitness, all the things that The Beautiful People seem to live for. So I was rather shocked to find myself in quite a miasmic tailspin the day before this shindig. I realized that I was in deep shit because there was no way that a. I could lose 25 pound b. cram six months of Pilates, Tai Bo and aerobic training and c. buy new sun glasses, bathing suit, hair color and $30,000 worth of lipo suction in the next 24 hours. I had only what I had, and I was not going to transform myself into Demi Moore by 12 noon tomorrow. The fact that I was having these obsessive thoughts shocked me a bit because I was suddeenly seeing and feeling the severity and harshness of the nature of my fear and struggle with all of this. I didn't think I really had this amount of "body" issues. Because I am the bohemian laid back, down to earth one and not the exercise addicted, bulimic, Botoxed kind, I assumed I was in the healthy zone of body/self image stuff. But no. Can't say that now. I have clearly found myself out.

So what did I do? Well, when I was with my husband and my guy friends (god forbid I might talk to women in this moment who I suddenly saw as only perfectly waxed, groomed and weighted in my mind and therefore not even wanting to be in the same room with me), I mentioned that I was dreadeing the whole bathing suit thing and was just going to wear a cute dress and a great hat. All the boys grunted and nodded that this sounded like a great plan - God bless all my male friends who really do love me and get me - and so I breathed a sigh of relief because my plan seemed good and grounded in reality. I don't need to be like all the rest, I thought. I still get to just be me and I will be fine.

So the next morning, I get up and begin to prep. I wash, shave, pluck and paint every square inch of my body that needs such treatment. I am in a whirlwind of fear that I will be seen as the most unkempt, ratty, unladylike women who has ever walked the earth. If I can't show up in a string bikini, I will at least have clean hair, smooth legs and color on all my toes and fingers. I will make my mother proud (not that she for even a minute would have given a shit about any of this crap). Once I am done primping, I decide to try on my most ambitious outfit - an actual two piece bathing suit. I figure, I'll start there, and move my way through the outfits until I feel good. So the two piece was a good try, but not something I would want others to have to endure. And so I moved to the black one piece, and lo and behold, it hid the right stuff and showed off the goods enough that I know that I would not make too many heads turn, but I know that no one would turn away in disgust either. And so I donned my newwest cutest skirt and peasant's blouse, and my fab new hat, and off I went to Shutters.

I make my way through the lobby, to the elevator, up to the pool. I look around looking for the ladies, and see them in the distance. They wave and I move through the gate toward them in the far corner. And as I approach, I see that six out of the eight ladies there are all wearing shorts, skirts and t shirts, and clearly are not interested in taking any of these layers off. Almost all are thin, fit and firm, and yet here they are hiding a body that I know I would be showing off if I had it. And yet, here they were ashamed and unsure and uncomfortable needing to hide what ever flaws they deemed unworthy. And suddenly, instead of feeling like the odd girl, the one who doesn't do the feminine girly thing so well, I was suddenly just one of the gals, one of the neurotically body-obsessed self-loathing girls, but God damn it, I was one of the girls none the less.

Wednesday, July 18, 2007

Last night I nestled into my couch to turn on the TV to one of my favorite films, Like Water for Chocolate. Here is a moment that made me sit up and really listen. It is when Tita has gone crazy from the death of her nephew, and Doctor John Brown has taken her into his home to give her time and space to heal. He is working with some kind of experiment and says to Tita,
"In 1669, Brandt a chemist from Hamburg, while searching for the 'Philosopher's Stone,' discovered phosphorous. My grandmother, Morning Star, she was a Kikapu indian, she used to say we are all born with a box of matches inside. We can't light them by ourselves. Just like in this experiment we need oxygen and the help of a candle, except in our case the oxygen has to come, for example, from a lover's breath. The candle can be anything: a melody, a word, a caress, a sound. Anything that pulls the trigger and sets off one of the matches. Every person has to discover what will pull his trigger to enable him to live. Because it the explsive flare of the match that fees our souls. If there's nothing to trigger the explosion, our box of matches becomes damp, and then we'll never be able to light any of them. There are many ways to dry a damp matchbox. You can rest assured there is a cure."

I believe it is each of our jobs to discover what is the trigger that enables us to live, enables our match to light, and to connect with it daily.

And on another note, here is a quote from my dad that just makes me smile: "I knew a transsexual guy whose only ambition is to eat, drink, and be Mary." - GC

Ah the joys of the polymind.

Tuesday, July 17, 2007

I realize now that I have been pouting in the corner about finishing the Elizabeth Gilbert Book Eat, Pray, Love, because I well I just haven't felt like writing since then. Her voice inspired my voice. I have been strugging with and searching for that feeling I had those few weeks ever since, and I realize now that all this struggle and all this searching for THAT thing just is not the point. I see that there is a possibility that I am allowed to show up in the world how ever I am in THIS moment. NOW. And now again. And yes even now. I have put my experience on a pedestal, and worshipped it for all the love and glow I was feeling, and the power of my voice coming through. So I ask myself now, what was inspiring me? And it was her impeccable commitment to showing up with all of herself, no matter how it looked. And so when the book was over, and my inner voice felt like it had lost its GPS system, I was afraid to show up here. I felt vulnerable, and messy and like I wasnt' on my best game. And God knows, one thing I must do at any cost is protect my precious fucking reputation. And then I hear the voice in my head say, "What reputation dahling, no one knows who you are." Yeah, that is the rub. I am protecting a reputation I do not have, and I am protecting one that does not even reflect really how others see me - as the gal who is willing to show up real and without make up on.

So I am really tired of feeling like I have to be brilliant to show up in the world. And I am daring to show up unkempt, without make up and let my heart break in front of you. I can hear Rumi now, "Sell your cleverness, purchase wonder." God all of this is hard.

Wednesday, July 11, 2007

What I really wanted to write about was how all my bitter, droopy, and very unshiny parts have come out to play the last week, and how I don’t want any one to see them, so I am hiding them. So many things precipitated all of this, and most don’t matter, but the one I want to whine about the most is being finished with that damn Eat, Pray,Love. When I was reading it, a part of me had been given full access to myself. And it is a part that I love frolicking in. It is real, true and easy to be with. It knows who I am, and is not afraid of anything. It just shows up no matter how it is dressed, and becomes the life of the party.

When I put down that book, it felt like I didn’t have a daily dose of something to invite that in. And so I bought a small early book by Annie Dillard hoping that it might do it for me. Her book The Writing Life, had done it for me in the past, but this new one did not. I began to panic. Where will I find my muse? Do I order another Elizabeth Gilbert book? No, I couldn’t do that. I felt like a desperate teenager chasing after the guy who keeps rebuffing her. No. I don’t want to look that desperate. So, I picked up Eat, Pray, Love and began reading it again. But it’s not working for me. None of the surprise and discovery is there. Yes, EG is still there, and the freshness of her words and her openness and her true and her real are all still there, but alas, no magic. And thus, my magic feels gone too.

Then add on top of that uber-stress about my dad’s mortality (oh, it comes and goes now that he is 70), and a critique about some work I did a few weeks ago, and some kind of mid-cycle hormonal shit, and well, I don’t know where to get my magic from. So I went for a bike ride today. I haven’t done that in like, well, never. And it was great. I moved my legs, I traveled at the speed of human propulsion, and what was great was that I had an urge to do it, and so I just did it. I could have, and almost did, talk myself out of it ten times. But I stuck with it, and now I can say to myself – I went for a bike ride today. Of course, I had a glass of wine and a cookie this evening, so any caloric benefit I might have gotten, I quickly found a way to undo. But God damn it, I did it, and looking back on it now, well it seems a bit magical to me.
shame shame shame

That is what my mind kept circling around these four days because I did not connect to this space. Instead of owning this space as mine, I turned it over to the largest nun in the world who has the biggest stick in the world, and all she wants to do is use it on me. Her name is Helga. She has been a resident of my psyche for decades and she is all about keeping me small. But even though she occasionally moves back into my inner world, I no longer let her unpack. I have asked her to leave.

Hopefully, there will me more tomorrow.

Saturday, July 07, 2007

So it is 7-7-07 today. Never will it be this again. That sounds a bit dramatic, but there is something to say about really acknowledging the weight of any one moment. I don’t know if I could sustain doing that 24/7, but as a slightly regular practice it could be a good thing.

I remember being around 7 or 8 years old and standing in front of a full-length mirror looking at myself, and the something in the moment just washed over me and hit me. I stood there looking, really looking at myself, and a voice inside me said, “This is really it. This is not a dream. This is really my life, and it is real, I am real, and I am living it.” A whoosh of a breeze moved through the inside of me, a hard reality settled in, yet I was suddenly free of something that had confined me before. I was at the same moment both more outside and inside my own life.

I still have moments like this every once and a while. But I must admit, I fear them on some level because when I have them, there is some kind of harsh reality that does blow through me, and my ego/persona/personality gets exposed as the mask it is, and I see into the bigger reality of what is and what could be if I just let go of it. I am both attracted and repelled by this reality. I know ultimately it is what I really am, and yet, here I am, living this life, the life of Kelly Carlin-McCall. Both are true, and yet both are not.

So today, with this one day that is here and now, I am going to live it as present as I can be. I will stay connected to the BIG Reality while I watch hours of Live Earth concerts coming into my living room from seven continents, and celebrate the beginning of the Tour de France’s 94th start .

So, enjoy this 7-7-07, and remember, never will it be this again. Think green and go Discovery Team!

Tuesday, July 03, 2007

I thought on this day of Independence I would evoke a conversation about what it all means. This is an excerpt from The American Soul by Jacob Needleman.

The Declaration of Independence

‘When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds, which have connected them with another, and to assume, among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station, to which the laws of nature and nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect for the Opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men and created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness (The Declaration of Independence).’

Again, we are searching for the philosophical assumptions of our form of democracy. Whenever we see the idea of rights, we must realize that something is also being said about the structure and makeup of the self. We are being told by Jefferson that we human beings have within us, as part of our intrinsic makeup, the capacity to intuit the good and the power to will the good. We are capable of guiding our own lives toward an authentic and purposive end. Such assumptions about the intrinsic capacities of human nature contradict the basic thrust of the Calvinistic Protestantism that played such a dominant role in the settling of the New England colonies. The Jeffersonian view of human nature is diametrically opposed to the Calvinistic doctrine of man’s essential corruption and incapacity, and accords great powers and capacities to the human soul. Since every right implies a power, to grant man so many rights can only be based on an exalted vision of human powers. And to say this is to come directly in front of the question of whether democracy is based on an accurate assessment of our actual capacities. We are confronted with the age-old but eternally challenging question of what man is as opposed to what he can become. What may have seemed questions of only external, political relevance – questions that one can safely think about without reference to deep metaphysical or psycho-spiritual issues – now draw us irrevocably into the heart of spiritual philosophy
(pp.144-145).”

So here are my Polymind questions:
What is it to declare independence in your life?
Who and what are you declaring this to?
What are you becoming independent of?
What is the relationship of independence and interdependence?
What is it about rights, power and responsibility that comes with declaring this for yourself in your life and as a citizen of this country.

Happy 4th and eat a hot dog for me.

Monday, July 02, 2007

Been gone a few days, and finding it hard to reconnect to my words. I spent the weekend preparing for, unrolling and recovering from a workshop that I lead (not alone but with my fabulous partner Ginny), and now I am feeling far away from myself. It’s like my psyche put its sites on something out there, and now I am having a hard time, coming home, regrouping and finding myself, my voice. This is not a new experience for me. Transitions are challenging. Moving from role to role, no actually moving from a more public, leadership role – workshop leader – back to me as vulnerable, questioning human – THAT is the challenge. It is like once I am in a position for people to see me, interpret me as strong, smart and wise (which happens the minute you stand in front of people and hold your power), I start to believe that this is how I must always show up. I feel like that if I don’t show up as that “enlightened being”, then I will disappoint or even worse, I will damage. How fucking sick and arrogant is that? And how fucking sick and tired of this bullshit I do!

I am amused by this whole scenario because I desperately want to be able to do both, and yet it is quite uncomfortable for me to do just that. Maybe I want the impossible. Is it impossible to become a person who stands in front of others and inspire them while at the very same time being human and vulnerable? No, of course not. But for me, it feels strange, dangerous and wrong. Clearly, I have made some BIG shit up about all of this. And yet I know that this is my life’s work. I am fascinated by collapsing hierarchies, and clearly I have one to collapse over and over again within myself.

More to come later. Oh, and BTW, I have begun Eat, Pray, Love again to help me regroup and reconnect to me. Crazy - maybe.

Thursday, June 28, 2007

I have finished Eat, Pray, Love and am mourning this ending. There is something in Gilbert’s writing that has fed me these last two weeks. If I could eat the pages, the very words she wrote in order to assimilate what it is she is for me, I would do it. But I can’t, and so I steady myself by focusing how my body feels when in the presence of her willingness to be real and human in front of all of us. Real and human, that is what it is, and that is what I want for my expression of myself. She does not hide, she keeps tearing off the layers that ego constructs everyday. She diligently tears them off and then shows up on the page. This is what I aim for – stripping off the stories and lies I want to construct to feel better, to look better, to perform better. Fuck that. No more competition. No more better/worse. I’m done with that. There is just me here, now. And I thank Elizabeth Gilbert for being my Virgil into the realm of my own authenticity this week.

That is it for now.

Wednesday, June 27, 2007

Yesterday I read this line of Rumi's, "Sell your cleverness, purchase wonder." If I ever need a reminder of how to get out of my head and back into my heart, I do believe that line will forever do it for me.

It is funny, or maybe not, how attached I have been to my cleverness over the years. I have hung onto it like a life preserver throughout my life, believing that without it I will drown. Even in this moment I worry, "will this post be clever enough to keep their attention?" I give up. I'm going for wonder.

In Iran, there are people who roam the streets peddling Hafiz poems (another Sufi poet). You pay them some money, and they pick one from the pile, and read it aloud. The one they pick IS the exact one meant for you.

Here is the one I just picked for you (swear I just picked it at random):

The Mule Got Drunk and Lost in Heaven


The mind is ever a tourist
Wanting to touch and buy new things
Then toss them into an already
Full closet.

So I craft my words into those guides
That will offer you something fresh
From the Hidden's Tavern.

Few things are stronger than
The mind's need for diverse experience.

I am glad
Not many men or women can remain
Faithful lovers to the unreal.

There is a kind of adultery
That God encourages:

Your spirit needs to leave the bed
Of fear.

The gross, subtle, the mental worlds
Become as a worthless husband.

Women need
To utilize their superior intelligence
About love

So that their hour's legacy
Can make us all stronger and more clement.

Sometimes a poem happens like this one:

The mule I sit on while I recite
Starts off in one direction
But then gets drunk

And lost in
Heaven.

from The Gift: Poems by Hafiz The Great Sufi Master; translated by Daniel Ladinsky

Wonderfully,
Kelly

Tuesday, June 26, 2007

One of those mornings where I woke at sunrise. This has happened now twice in the last week. It’s like the sun has something to say to me. And this is not like my normal self. My normal self normally likes the winter, the gray, the darkness or late night (I am the woman who wrote her master’s thesis about the Greek goddess Persephone – Queen of the Underworld). The gloomier days have been when I have felt most connected to my soulful and deepest parts. I have not seen myself as a Sun worshipper too often. But, part of the reason I awoke this morning was my literary agent popped into my head. I thought, “I’ve been blogging, I should let her know. Maybe she’ll like what I’ve been writing.” And boom suddenly there was an evaporation of myself, and in came marching in my strategic mind with all his cronies, wanting to suss (sp?) out every option and opportunity I may have to become famous. I picture them with their cigars, jackets off, rolled up sleeves and suspenders, like some kind of Wall Street bankers, looking for ways to carve up the world some more for their private use and profit.

And this is why I have been ignoring my literary agent for a while. It is not personal. She’s actually smart, fun, generous, and a huge fan of mine. It just seems that I have made her into someone who serves my greediness, and therefore I must please to the ends of this earth. Because if I don’t I will die alone, penniless and undistinguished. And so dipping into my creative self under those conditions is not very fruitful. When I create that kind of situation, I creatively run dry, which is what I would not hope to be around her, since she is the one who might be able to help me actually share my work with the world. So in order to find my creativity, my voice, my fertility, I have not spoken with her for a few months.

When she first met me, she was my dream come true. She saw me at a spoken word event and loved my work. She really got me, heard me, and did I mention that she loved me. I see now how this was the hook for me. I have been known to have the Desperately Seeking Love and Approval radar on most of the time, and here she was, not only loving and approving of me, but a road to the fame that had alluded me for so long! She was perfect. Yes, perfect for the those parts of me that were running on empty, trying to get every last inch out of my childish, archaic needs to desperately mean something and matter to the world. For about a year and a half I strung myself along with fantasies of writing my memoir (this will be done, I swear), and then a book where I would save the world by sharing all my wisdom and insights about what is so wrong with it all. But because it was all rooted in this “Love me, Need me” place, none of it got off the ground. Funny how that works, huh? It is all there: the subject matter, the pieces of my life, the stories, and I suppose my talent, but my heart wasn’t’ in it.

Here’s another thing about all of this that came to me this morning: this is not the universe’s fault – this “when will I be famous and significant” shit. It is mine. I have been blaming many things on why I have not written my book yet, why no one in the world knows who I am or what I am about. Of course, my mother and father come into that picture often, and then lately I have added God to that list. But I now see that my invisibility has been my choice. All along I really believed that I wanted fame, attention and recognition. But I see now that has not been the case. I have chosen oblivion, silence and invisibility by not taking certain steps, by staying small when I could step up and be bigger, by staying quiet when I could have been loud. I have been afraid to speak up and speak out. I have made myself insignificant. Not my literary agent, not my parents, not God. And a part of me is happy about that. Have you seen the shit that Paris Hilton has to put up with?

I don’t have anything brilliant to conclude here. This revelation is new and I feel that I must sit with it. You know, work it like a loose tooth until it frees itself and I can spit it out and put it under my pillow. And then, maybe finally then, I will be able to transform it into a shiny new coin that I can take out into the world and exchange it for something that I really want.

Monday, June 25, 2007

Today I have realized that I have gotten on the other side of a few things that have, in the past, eluded my understanding or grasp (I wanted to use the verb ‘Mastered” in the last sentence in place of gotten on the other side of, but I just know that if I were to do that I would be 1) kidding myself – I am getting that I master nothing AND 2) setting myself up for some kind of karmic suicide – the universe licking its lips at my arrogance - did she say Mastered?).

Anyway, the few things I have gotten closer to are: transitions, comparing myself to others and fruits and vegetables.

Today I made a hell of a transition. After spending my morning on the computer, going through piles of paper and reconciling my business’ bank accounts, I got up, walked out of the office, shut the door and went outside and finished my book. Now before you deem me some kind of retard, let me explain. I am not good at these left brain/right brain transitions normally. Once my high and mighty left brain (analytical, way too good at math and other solving adventures) normally gets going, I begin to spread my sights on things like solving the world in a numerical equation, or planning some fantastic (as in fantasy) marketing scheme for my many business ideas. My mind/body normally gets so wrapped up in all of this that I forget to eat, dress and brush my teeth. I am once again a coke addict, but without the fun numb gums part. But today at 2PM, I faced myself and said, “Stop.” And I did. I closed the door as a literal and metaphorical way of cutting myself off from a way back into my left brain frenzy, and put on my sun worshipping clothes, big hat, XM channel 862 – the Loft, and picked up Eat, Pray, Love and immersed myself in all things gloriously right brained. (Yes, I know that my reading and languaging is coming from the left brain partly, but I am reading for PLEASURE which for me is all about the feminine right brain.)

Next on the list: comparing myself - oh, I believe this is the bane of all of humanity. If I could ban it, I know we would all be a happier planet. Since I have returned from Scotland some part of me has just been done with this. I see the little comparing bugger coming from a thousand miles away now, and just shoo him off before he is even within a mile of me. He showed up today as I was reading the blurbs on the back of Eat, Pray, Love, and there was one that said that there couldn’t be a more enjoyable writer right now, and I could see that little bugger starting to ramp up, “well, what about me, I could be as enjoyable as she…” STOP. It’s not important. Just keep reading. Just keep living. Just keep writing. All that other stuff means nothing. And then there it is, a resting back into myself, a warmth and groundedness, a truth of the now. I open up the book and keep reading and smiling and crying my way through it.

And last but not least fruits and vegetables. Oh, you laugh. For me, I have been a meat and potatoes kind of girl my whole life – I’m Irish/English for Christ sake. My DNA demands it of me. But lately, I have found that I am craving, falling in love with and actually choosing to EAT fruits and vegetables at random times of the day. They call to me. Oh, there is a banana, YES. Oh, spinach salad, YES. MANGO!! Don’t know how or why, and I don’t care to ask my big fat nosy left brain to solve this one. I just am doing it. And loving it. I feel like I love my body, myself more when I eat them. Like they are life, I am life and I need them for my life. Novel, huh?

Sunday, June 24, 2007

Sunday. I suppose it is ironic that it is Sunday when I am having this particular revelation: I am finally getting more comfortable with, accepting that for me the life of the soul is everything. For the last ten years, I have been struggling with this notion as my life has walked further and further into practices, inquiries and vocations that take me into the depth of my depths.

But something has hit me this morning, well maybe it is more like a lifting, a lifting of shame and embarrassment about my need and love of all things soulful. I have struggled within my own heart with skepticism, doubt, and rational analysis that has come in many voices within me that see my infatuation with all things beyond the material as some kind of Freudian delusion. But at some point I have become tired of my internal eye rolling, and have woken up willing to acknowledge that being human means living on two planes. There is no denying it anymore. Even if one has no relation with the metaphysical in its most familiar form – God, there is still a need to read verse poetry, be stunned by a sunset, brought to tears by witnessing an act of kindness. And for me, this is the realm of soul. The human heart wants certain things, cannot always contain itself within level-headed hypotheses and this is the realm that I wish to get lost in, explore and I find my true self in.

So it is Sunday, and actually now that I think about it, there is no irony here, only what must be on this Sunday - one woman no longer making excuses for her heart and for her soul.

Friday, June 22, 2007

Zen Mind

Reading about killing the Buddha today. "If you meet the Buddha along the road, kill him", they say - they being the Buddhist masters. When I first read this many years ago I was aghast. What? Kill the very thing that will finally solve it all for me? What would I be left with then? A dead Buddha? How the hell is this going to work?

What I have come to understand is this: that we all must kill the thought, the idea, the notion that there is a supreme and enlightened being and it/he/she is separate. We must get over this false belief that we are here and God is there, and that our job is to find ways to close the gap between us.

What is reality is that there is no gap, there is no here, there is no there.

What would your life look like if you took me seriously right now, and let this reality BE real?

I’ll say it again: There is no gap, there is no here, there is no there.

There is nothing to strive toward, there is nothing to compare against, there is nothing to be different from. It is the striving, the comparing,and the differencing that is killing you. STOP IT.

You are not separate, you are the AND, you are the YES, you are the everything and you are the nothing RIGHT NOW.

Now go out there, get some ice cream and be kind to you/all.

p.s. And if you see a Buddha, make sure it really is a Buddha before you go killing it. God knows I don't want to be responsible for some kind of mystical manslaughtering.

Wednesday, June 20, 2007

So, my clamoring self seems to have settled down a bit today. Some kind of perspective returning; I no longer feel like I am submerged in a muddy hell. And so feeling a bit clearer this morning, I begin to read a newsletter from Carolyn Myss with an essay by Robert Ohotto that got me thinking about what I have been writing about these last few days. Robert seems to have an astrological/archetypal take on this whole, "I don't want to grow up!" thing that I struggle with. His take is that this is not just a personal struggle, but a generational/cosmological one. Whew. I thought maybe I was just stunted.

Robert writes, "...if we are going to collectively begin rebirth ourselves as mature adults. This requires that we begin parenting ourselves such that we rise from the ashes of the generational shadow that the Baby Boomers are negotiating: the Ego-centric Child that seeks constant affirmation, attention, and importance to the detriment of collective resources and the greater good.

...Yet, The Child Archetype and its shadow are something that each individual must face in their development creatively. The Child Archetype is, in part, the source of our creative genius when it comes to being spontaneous and free to express our inner sense of divinity through what we do in life. But unless you are able to make your child inside feel safe and nurtured, how is that part of you going to come out and play?

...In July of 2005, having just spent two and a half years in the sign Cancer making sure we take increased responsibility for mothering ourselves to secure greater emotional security and belonging in our lives (while restructuring our so called ‘family values’); Saturn entered into the astrological sign Leo (a sign resonate with the Child Archetype) and issued a new task for us all in terms of fathering ourselves so that we can bring out more of our inner creative authenticity.

...Thus, when Saturn is moving through the heavens, He begins to search out the fissures in our ego structure that are not supportive to housing a new level of our true potential: a new facet of our Soul. I like to call this alchemical process the dark night of the ego because it forces us to reorient our relationship to how much of us is in unconscious allegiance to our past conditioning—meaning that some part of our ego/past must die.

...On an individual level, since Saturn entered into Leo in July of 2005, I have worked with many clients that have experienced this new alchemy as a call to grow up more, paradoxically, so that they can be a child again and embody their unlived creativity!

...Saturn in Leo demands that we become Kings and Queens of our inner domain, Sovereigns unto ourselves through an authentic connection to our inner star quality, you game?

...Many Baby Boomers are becoming increasingly vested in a new model of thought: It is no longer the collective that is responsible for the individual, but the individual that is responsible for the collective. Something that I think the next generation will be making even more of a reality. That’s what I’m talkin’ about! And so it goes………"


I am not a Baby Boomer. I was born in 1963. But my parent's were, and we all inherit some of our parent's pathologies and shadows. And so I struggle too with all of this.

And so this leads me to a question that seems to be haunting me, one that has been following me around and won't leave my poor soul alone - how do we as a collective, get beyond our narcissistic ego needs to do the real work we need to do this next century? How do we let our child energy play, and face the enormity or what only an adult can face in these crazy times?

More to come, I assure you.

Tuesday, June 19, 2007

My voice is still here. It has not been replaced. This is the thought, or actually the voice that I heard while driving to the market earlier today. I was thinking about the book I am reading, Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert, and how she is writing like I would, and writing how I would be writing, and I thought a familiar thought which I have after reading Anne Lammott, “Oh, well, she has done it, there is no room for me.” And then the voice clearly said, “Your voice has not been replaced.” And a gush of relief and space opened inside of me, and I knew that I have a right to not only occupy the space that is Kelly, but that what comes out of me is, not matter what, unique. It’s like getting that we are all part of the interdependent ecosystem of life, and that whether we are a blade of grass, an oak tree, or a 10,000 foot mountain, none of it would exist without the presence of the other.

Having a voice is one thing, using it is different. When I go to use it is when the questions, anxiety and imaginary demons pop up and the whole approval thing begins again. But as my dear friends say, “that’s my old story.” The new one begins now, and now, and yes even now. Every moment is now an opportunity to start again, start fresh and new, with a voice, using my voice, risking it all in service of who knows what.

Monday, June 18, 2007

I am a whore. I cannot think of anything I want to pursue in my life without thinking about how it might make me more noticeable to the masses. Now I must be frank with you that I may even be writing these very words for this very reason right now. But I can’t help myself, and therefore you must have compassion for me(okay, you don't need to do anything here but hopefully listen with an open mind). And the saddest thing is that there are no masses really to make myself more noticeable to - I have no mass audience, no following, no cronies or minions. I have a few friends and loved ones who are willing to listen to me, and most smile and enjoy what it is I have to say. And I can't tell you how appreciative I am of them.

But, I don’t think that my confession is much different than what we all do anyway. Aren’t we all looking for some love and attention? Is there anything we do from a pure place of just wanting to be doing it? I do not know anymore. I suppose there are some things that I do for this reason, but I can’t think of any right now, except for maybe I pursue getting noticed because I love doing that? Can’t this be pure too?

What is this chasing after your attention all about anyway? Why do I believe that I am not really living my life if potentially thousands of people aren’t turning their loving gaze my way? Okay, so my dad is famous and psychologically that all makes sense, and yes I’ve done A LOT of work in therapy already to get me to what I consider a much more balanced relationship with all of this. But the reality is that wherever I go, there I am and so this issue just keeps circling around and around me like a newly abandoned jet ski. I would love to jump on it and move on to somewhere else, but it is here in this circle I keep finding myself, and finding myself is what I am looking for. So no more avoidance, no more excuses. This is what I must talk about, until it just doesn’t pull me around anymore.

Sunday, June 17, 2007

It has become clear to me that I am not too thrilled with this whole growing up, being an adult thing. I am finding there is a lot to be desired here - like some one to pay my rent, some way to deal with the endless stream of paper that comes in the mail, and I won't even begin to mention the fact that my body no longer cooperates with my every wish.

I suppose being 44 and just coming to this conclusion may seem a bit unusual. No doubt. But unusual and me, well we just seem to go together often and repeatedly. You see, this whole adulthood thing has really just hit me. Especially in the last week - since I turned 44. What I have been doing for the last 24 - 26 years that most would consider adulthood, I don't think was adulthood. I think it was a feigning, an imitation of, or maybe even an impression of adulthood. But not an actual adulthood. Part of it had to do with money and my father. He gave it to me, and I spent it. Like I said, I did my best impression of adulthood, I did use the money for things like rent, utilities, health insurance for the most part. I was not shoving it up my nose, or buying euro trash bottles of Crystal at least. (Well, okay in my twenties I did a lot of shoving up my nose, but I was mostly using my first husband's inheritance for that, I at least was the one who knew not to squander away MY father's money on that crap!)

So here I am now, stuck, managing, groping my way through being an adult in a life that might not have prepared me for it all as much as I would have liked. But I bet, I just would put a little bet on a hunch that I am not alone.

More from the front later. Much love and don't take it all too seriously.
Kelly

Saturday, June 16, 2007

I guess it's been a year since I blogged here. It's been so hard to figure out how to do this blogging thing. Do I do it on a web site, do I do it with my coaching site, do I not bother at all?


Part of my resistance has been an assumption I make constantly, that I need to hide my true self from those that I may be working with as a life coach. I get sucked into this thing that believes that I must maintain some kind of all wise, all knowing stance, and that if I don't I will lose my clients. What is so fucked up about that is that my training and perspective about coaching is that I have little to do with what and where my clients go - they are the ones doing all the work. But I get my self sucked into the land of reputation and approval and screw myself every time. So what has happened to me is that I have censored and stifled myself this last year, and not come forward with my thoughts and things about my life, the world and anything else.



And who am I kidding, it's not just about my life coaching, it's really about fear of disappointing everyone by revealing my thoughts, ideas and feelings about life and the world around me.

Well, I turned 44 yesterday, and I think it is high time I got over this bullshit approval seeking crap. The self-betrayal I create by living silently is becoming too much to bear. Confusingly, I grew up watching my dad being a person who did not silence himself, and followed his urges to express all that was on his mind. But I think that he did not have to live under a shadow of that kind of parent. Growing up in the shadow of a George Carlin, my dad, is a different kind of life than he had. He had some kind of permission that I have never given myself.

But as I said, that is no longer working for me. I'm tired of this shadow, I'm tired of my fear, I'm tired of worrying about how it will all look.