Allowing

My golden is my spiritual teacher, inspiring me to be ecstatically alive in each golden moment life effortlessly offers.

***

Sunday. I awake to a day free of plans. I adore this delicious stretch of time liberated from a to-do list, schedules, commitments. The only guiding intention is to allow myself to receive the sweet pleasure and joyful restoration emerging from simply being.

Allowing is a curious challenge. My ego-mind is quick to attack days purposefully protected to hold rich space for non-doing: contemplation, feeling, musing, daydreaming. The ego-mind looms in hissing critique, comparing and scrutinizing my worth based on completed accomplishments and ideas ushered into fruition. The practice is to notice -- not be belittled and reprimanded, not to fight back – notice and come home to the vividness of the present moment.

I’m learning to trust my feelings and my intuitive guidance as the compass to necessary action. If I’m not feeling the inspiration to take action, then the energy that is essential to attain the envisioned results almost certainly will be absent and the course riddled with setbacks, miscommunication and unnecessary difficulty. The desperation, the force, the clouded perspective will be what’s transferred – through the email, the phone call, the text, the piece of writing, the yoga lesson.

“You don’t have to try so hard,” she tells me, and her words invite ease.

I don’t have to try to so hard at my job, my teaching, my writing, my relationships. When there is an allowing to be where I am, to be who I am, there’s an instant surrendering and softening into the moment, strengthening my trust to greet whatever arises from the situation at hand.

Trust the cycles. Trust the waves of feeling, of giving, and receiving. Do the work intentionally, wholeheartedly, and then, enjoy the harvest.

Sunday, I allow myself to sleep in. I wake early, am tempted by the inclination to rise and greet the day, but my body is tired, my head aches, and my eyes sting. I’m thirsty for sleep and daydreaming. I curl back into the folds of sleep. 

I float in the in-between space of pastel-colored daydreams and vivid sweeps of morning dreams. I rest in the flickering morning shadows, listening to the mischievous wind catching and pulling crimson leaves from the branches outside my window. Bursts of criticism listing all the things I need to do, all the plans I need to set into action interrupt this languorous state, and I follow these thoughts into the projected future, circling back into perceived failures of the past, and then like those leaves outside my window, I let go, or just let be. I sink a bit more into a fetal position and allow myself to go to back to sleep.

This is the practice: to continually return (kindly and again and again) back to the moment, reuniting with the breath and with myself.

Hours later I slip off onto the back porch to bask in this rare autumn weather. I honor a craving for a baked potato for breakfast and sit on bare floorboards and eat the plump baked potato with my hands. Butter coats my fingertips, and crystals of pink-hued Himalayan salt dimly sparkle in the afternoon light.

I indulge in big bites and savor. I watch the passing voyage of a hawk. Hear the leaves rustling as the wind blows. See my golden retriever surveying the yard, pausing to tilt his elegant snout into the breeze, to sniff and gather information and stories carried in the invisible world of scents, perfumes, and the language of the almost Halloween eve wind.

There is the quiet epiphany illuminating my contentment, and a deepening that allows me to open to the stillness, the simplicity, the raw beauty of the present moment.

Sometimes the practice is allowing the moment to be good, to be peaceful, and to lean wholeheartedly forward -- to receive and breathe in the wonder of simply being alive.  

Moon Swoon

The moon blooms bright on an October night. 

***

Tonight, the moon interrupts my stream of chattering thoughts. Resplendent in soft yellow, a circle of perfection, she rises like a dignified queen above the skyline of trees and homes. My busy mind falls silent, bowing in astounded awe to her graceful ascent into the deepening night sky.  

“Oh!” I exclaim into the emptiness of the car, “Look at the moon!”

And the moon seems to unwaveringly look back at me. A gaze embracing the entirety of my being; a gaze reminding me of my first love, and how his eyes could hold me in gentle full acceptance and fill me up with ease.

This lunar glance strikes like the lightening recognition of meeting a soul mate, propelling me back into my body, where I release the restless stirrings of the mind and relish the comforting weight of gravity. And I breathe out, a cascading sweep of emptying out and opening up to be bathed in the stunning light of the moon.

My lunar love affair begins here, and the inspired words from poets and writers sharing this sacred admiration arise in brightened understanding.

I see the moon in a whole new light. The personal emotional pain from the past few months has matured my heart: I no longer fear the dark; I no longer race toward the sun away from pain. This summer I fell and curled up on the bottom of my being. I struggled. I openly struggled to friends and family, and weathered severe emotional storms.

The ones who braved my depression are like the moon tonight. They are my moon tribe, who exuded and extended love and unconditional support when I journeyed through my darkest night. This tribe saw my light when I was clouded in despair, and kept the faith while I floundered, consistent and constant in listening and holding me in safety and acceptance.

My moon tribe didn’t flee from my pain. They encircled me with tenderness as I ebbed and flowed into the different shapes the cycle of grief takes. My moon tribe expressed love through letters, phone calls, homemade dinners, the sending of poems and soothing quotes.

The tribe is comprised of creative spirits, daring romantics and enchanted adventurers, and though we look up at the night sky from different patches of cityscapes and rolling hills, like the nights when the lunar goddess reigns invisible to the human eye, I still feel the energetic presence tightly weaving and connecting us as we text, talk, turn upward to gaze at stars and wink at the moon.

My tribe continues to expand and includes Victoria Erickson, a poet inspiring me to be awake and amazed at the surrounding wonder of life. She teaches me to look up at the moon, to bask in its beauty, to be bathed in its soft shine. She and the wildly gifted writers I meet in a writing workshop out west are my tribe who witness and applaud a creative unleash catalyzing a new phase of my being.

Like the moon tonight, I am acquainted with my own soft radiance because of the familiarity now with darkness. The moon is an alchemist, teaching me to transmute and transcend the pain into golden depths of wisdom and compassion. Lessons from the dark weave into the fabric of my being, not dimming my shine, but informing me on how to be an even more effervescent human being.

A mere mortal in love with the moon, I watch in astonishment. Blankets of stars rush around her as she gradually climbs higher onto her destined throne. As she makes her voyage, she sheds the yellow-hue and blooms into a luminous glow of white pearl. The ink-black night cocoons around her, only enhancing her innate shine.