I was going to ask you all for some advice, which you are still welcome to share your opinion on, but I got called on my shit today by my girlfriend, and then seconded by my teacher, so I have a lot of contemplating to do.

So today I was having an all-too-rare lunch date with my friend Beth. I was telling her that my Kung Fu master told me to bring in my measurements next time I came to class, and every week after so I would focus on tracking my 'progress'.

The thing is, I didn't join kung fu to lose weight (though that would be a nice side effect). I joined to become stronger so I could hold more light and be of greater service to God and humanity. If I focus on weight/size, and it doesn't start falling away, it will frustrate me and make me feel like a failure and then I will quit. That is the reason I did not go with weight loss in mind, and that is the reason I felt reluctant to report my measurements. I don't need a babysitter constantly reminding me that I could lose some weight. I dress myself every morning, thank you very much.

So what I was going to ask all of you is how you would feel about being asked to report your measurements to your martial arts instructor. I'm curious about this.

So I tell Beth this little story, and she looks me square in the eye and says almost casually, "Didn't you have this same resistance to Joey when you first met him?" I don't know that those were her exact words, but the meaning was clear.

It hit me so hard I actually felt dizzy. OMG! I fought my teacher tooth and nail about EVERYTHING when I met him. And for an embarrassingly long time after. I would get triggered and open my mouth to challenge him first and contemplate later. I have yet to discover anything I actually disagree with my teacher about. We have different viewpoints on a few things, like the value of eating meat or not, but we are both soft in our stand and allow room and support and respect for personal choice. We discuss these things often, sometimes with passionate concern for the other, but mostly like an old couple or siblings poking at one another in playfulness. I'm sure it's a teaching tool for me to learn that I am loved and lovable no matter what. That's what it has become, anyway. There is always a very apparent 'I love you' just beneath the surface of these moments, spoken in many ways.

Anyway, as the conversation with Beth moves on and I'm still reeling with the implication of her words and what they mean I must look at in myself, my phone rings. Already knowing full well who it is, I reach into my bag for it and look at the caller ID for confirmation. It's my Joey, so very tuned in to what is happening with me.

I answered the phone, "Are your ears burning?" I told him of the conversation I was having with Beth and her observation regarding my resistance while she laughed at me (lovingly, of course), and asked his opinion on the matter of the measurements.

As he spoke my body began to shake from within. He wasn't going to give me a casual answer, I could tell by the way the karma was shaking in the body. He was working it. "You already know what I'm going to say. I can't believe you even asked me this."

"Yeah, well I know you will tell me the truth no matter what, even if it's not what I want to hear."

He chuckled at the truth of it.

I hugged Beth and hopped in my car so I could let the tears come without being the freak standing in the parking lot crying during lunch rush.

I could feel this huge fear coming up in me about failing to lose weight. I could feel the ego begin to shake and yell internally about how unfair it was that I should have to work so damned hard to sculpt this body when it comes so easily to so many others. How many times do I have to take the same ground? How hard will I have to work to maintain smaller proportions once I achieve them? I have a life, damn it! I can't spend all my freaking time working out! I don't want it to be hard. It shouldn't be hard!

Some of these things I actually said out loud to Joey, knowing that he would help me see where my excuses didn't hold water (and he did).

At one point I said of my martial arts teacher taking on the task of being my self-appointed weight loss Jiminy Cricket, "I'm not broken! I don't need to be fixed!"

He sounded genuinely surprised by that one and responded, "You are broken, and you do need fixing. It's why you are are human!"

"Oh yeah." I laughed at myself. Of course if I am still in a human form it is because I do not yet remember myself fully as God, which means there is some work to do, some fixing, if you will.

Gotta love the ego's attempts at logic though, right?

So this evening I went to Kung Fu, and I wrote my required measurements on the back of my attendance card. But in defiance, I didn't tell my sifu I'd cooperated.

What can I say? Sometimes it comes in baby steps.

I'm in a place of huge transformation right now, I think. I keep having these profound, unintentional interactions with my teacher where everything shifts. I think I'm serving my teacher and the organization, but then it turns into something I never expected on a moment's notice, and my teacher is serving me, shifting my paradigms seemingly effortlessly in ways that make my service seem like insignificant trifles in comparison. How can one compare a menial task to the kind of service he is doing for my soul? One moment we are hashing out the details of a legal document, and suddenly the conversation has turned to trust and how it is not teachable, and to clients coming and going, and I start crying and I tell him I think I'm too attached because when I see someone heading down a path of pain and there is nothing I can do but watch them go there because it's their choice, it hurts so much. Maybe someday I will learn to be more unattached, like you, I say.

"There will always be something there," he says very softly, "at least if you are a good teacher. It doesn't go away, but you do become better at coping with it, I think."

And in the shadow of my pain, I can feel him tapping in to where I am and being there with me in that longing for my students not to suffer needlessly. My pain affects him just as my students and clients' pain affects me.

We sit together in silence for a moment, and then he begins to speak, to teach, to show me ways that he has learned from his past experiences, so similar to mine. There are some things he can't stop me from hurting about, and wouldn't, because that compassion makes me who I am, and other hurts he can try with everything he has to help me avoid. My choice.

Service seems to be like that - I think I'm doing something for another, but when I turn around and look back, all I can see are the gifts I've received. Humility overwhelms me and I feel small and insignificant and enormous and expanded all at once.

The other weekend in Denver, Joey said, "I think we affect God as much as God affects us. How can it be any other way?" I think I'm starting to get the tip of the iceberg about what he meant by that. As above, so below. My teacher is affected by me, as I am affected by my beloveds. That also means my beloveds affect my teacher through me (if not directly). In serving my beloved students and clients, I am also serving my teacher, and my teacher's teacher, and so on. We are all one. We are a system, a single organism with various working parts that all affect one another. To serve God in anyone is to serve God in my teacher, and vice versa. Every choice I make affects my whole lineage, and therefore I can see it as a responsibility I have to make the highest choices for myself in service to all those who have served selflessly and tirelessly to bring me here. I affect them as much as they affect me.

Wow, that is huge.

To be witness to the sudden and unexpected experience of my teacher sitting with my ache at the suffering of my student, and knowing he felt my discomfort as his own affected me deeply. It changed me. I mean, I knew it was this way, but wisdom and knowledge are very different things.

Yesterday I became a little wiser.

Where are all the women? Why aren't women making more of a visible impact?

I've been thinking a lot about this because I was thinking about books and authors and wondering why most of the books that are taken very seriously and have the greatest impact on society at large are written by men. I started thinking about bestselling spiritual books that have been taken seriously and the authors that wrote them, and mostly men come to mind, except Marianne Williamson. There is Gary Zukav, Deepak Chopra, Eckhart Tolle, and on and on with the men who have impacted humanity with their contributions. And even with Marianne Williamson, there is great controversy surrounding her writings as does not exist with these others. Gosh, you mention Marianne and Gary Renard gets thrown in your face to discredit her. It's ridiculous. Her books are amazing!

Why is it that women are not doing more or being taken more seriously? Is it because of religion - Pastors, rabbis, preists, monks, gurus and most religous and spirtual leaders being male (traditionally speaking)?

I don't begrudge men their great place in society at all, but what is it about women that make us less visible, less serious? Is it that we tend to be more emotion based instead of logic based? Can we not even take ourselves seriously?

Don't get me wrong - I love my touchy-feely-nurturing nature, and I would not trade my 'burdon' in the world for a man's, but I also wish to be taken seriously and not written off based on my gender. How can women bridge that chasm?

This came up strongly for me just now because I got this email from Sai Maa's organization for an upcoming program Maa is giving (you should all drop everything and go to it, by the way!):




...and I was looking at this image of Maa, soaking up the energy of her presence (even in a photograph in an email) and thinking how beautiful and amazing she is, and wondering how much it has cost her to be a woman in a 'man's world' as a spiritual leader. She is a groundbreaker and is paving the way for all the women who come after her. Just imagining the joy and the frustration makes me want to scream. How bittersweet is each step that it is ground earned, but was so hard to take?

I never ever have heard her complain or speak a word of it, so please know this is all my own projection! I am the one who is experiencing frustration at my own limiting concepts and beliefs. It's ego.

Everytime I think to work on the books I am writing, I immediately feel frustrated and bored because I wonder who will read them, who will take any of it to heart? who will listen to me? I'm no authority on anything. All I have is the value in my own experience. Historically speaking, in my lifetime, at least, women have not even been serious authorities on mothering, let alone pregnancy and birthing! Dr. Spock and Dr. Sears and even Sigmond Freud have been the voices of reason when it comes to these things, so who am I to know anything about anything?

And I know it's all ego because it should not matter to me in the least what the outcome is. There is a proverb that says, "A seed will never see the flower it becomes." I should write because I can't not write, and I should fall on my knees and thank all the powers of the Universe if even one person is touched by all my effort, even if that one person is only me. It's arrogant of me to think that maybe I can serve humanity in a bigger way, isn't it?

I am only one,
But still, I am one.
I cannot do everything,
But still, I can do something;
And because I cannot do everything,
I will not refuse to do the something I can do.
                                                           ~Helen Keller

Is it wrong to want to make a difference, to desire to see humanity stop suffering, to want to be taken seriously so I can more effectively do what I came here to do? Is it arrogant to even entertain the notion that I can help anyone but myself?

How do I make peace with the seeming dichotomy of 'there is nothing to do, just BE,' and how freaking much there obviously is to do?

I need to remember that 'be' is a verb. Love is a verb. Verbs denote action.

All this because I looked into my Maa's eyes in an email, and yet I am crying about how women are not powerful enough??? Am I nuts?!

Perhaps my shift in thinking needs to be such that I see how women are powerful rather than how we are not. Maybe I don't need to 'compete' with men in a man's world. Look at Oprah - she is arguably the most publicly influential woman in the free world, and she does it through an afternoon talk show.

Maybe I need to look at where my own strengths lie, and work with them rather than trying to force them to conform to a standard that is an uphill quest.

Maybe I need to forget everything I think I know.
Maybe I need to drop my bags.
Maybe I need to remember who I am, rather than who I am not.
Maybe I need to remember that there is only one me, and I came here to serve a unique purpose, therefore any concept of competition is pure illusion anyway.
Maybe I need to keep in mind that suffering is an impetus for change, and embrace it.
Maybe I need to remember how far we've come when I feel so frustrated by how far we've yet to go for balance and equality.
Maybe I need to become so intimate with my own inner power that nothing outside of me matters or can shake me.
Maybe I need to keep putting one foot in front of the other.
Maybe carrying a teaspoon of water at a time will eventually fill an ocean.
Maybe.

I realized today that I don't know anything.

I had my phone session with my teacher and talked with him about some things that I've been contemplating ever since he yelled at me after the karma class last October, things that I kinda figured I was still missing the point of, but couldn't seem to get clarity on by myself.

It's funny how you can imagine a conversation for 10 months, and then when the words have emerged that engage you in that conversation past the point of no return, it is only then, even before you say anything meaningful at all, that suddenly all you can see is your own damned ego and there is nothing you can do to escape it.

I wonder if I've disappointed him beyond all reason by showing him how little I understand.

He asked me at the end of our conversation if I understood. I said, "I don't understand anything." He said he hoped that wasn't true, otherwise we wasted an hour.

Never mind the 3 years before that.

I understood what we'd talked about, but I realized that I really didn't understand anything at all anymore. Nothing. So how could I say I got it when I know that in a day, a week, a month, a year,  I will cringe at the very thought of claiming I understood when I look back and realized how little I actually understood?

I was crying through the whole call even though he was speaking very gently. I started crying before he even said anything, just when I was talking. He said (lovingly) that I was a sobby mess, and that I needed to make the emotional body stronger and never be off center, but also not to repress emotion. I told him I thought that this was the place where I was allowed to go and be a sobby mess (with him). He said it is.

So what does that mean? Be strong and never off center (never be a sobby mess). Or - This is where it is safe for you to come and be a sobby mess? I don't always understand the seeming duality of the messages masters give. Someday I'm sure the underlying message will click. For now it's an enigma.

He is glad I'm not teaching classes anymore right now. He thinks I have the potential to become a great teacher, but I'm not ready because the emotional body can still pull me off center. He will tell me when I'm ready to teach. I can never teach for him until nothing can pull me off center. He said he will tell me when I am ready to teach.

I guess he has high hopes for me to make quick progress, because he spoke again of wanting me to teach for him in just a few months. I can't imagine it happening.

He said stuff about needing to live the work before I teach the work so I speak from wisdom rather than just regurgitate information.

Speaking of being thrown off center, that hit me pretty hard. So clearly, based on the statement that I need to live it before I can teach it, I don't know anything.

We spoke briefly on the foundation of the teachings, and he said I didn't understand, and when he said what it was, I realized he was right. It was obvious, but I never realized it. That is the part where I think maybe I disappointed him. I think it may have hit him like a ton of bricks that I could not accurately name step one of the teachings. If I were him, I would have been questioning at that moment if I had wasted my life in teaching.

I should have known it, but instead I had strutted my ignorance arrogantly around like a peacock with its feathers all splayed out. What a disappointment I must have been to him in that moment. What a waste of time. Except that I was willing to be wrong throughout the whole conversation. I think that was my only saving grace. If nothing else, I have learned from him the nature of humility, and I did opt to exercise it. That is progress, right?

So in that I just dropped everything and decided to start all over again. Maybe I can really learn something this time, although I sense that would be missing the point all over again.

Yeah, maybe certifiable as well, but this weekend I was among the first group to be certified as an energy practitioner through my teacher's organization.

Friday during personal sessions, my teacher said to the few of us being certified, "This is truly a momentus occasion. I'm activating in each of you being certified an energy that will change your life. You will never be the same after this." And he explained what the energy is and the purpose and effect of it, if we are able to hold it and anchor it and not lose it.

I knew I'd worked hard and transformed hugely in earning my certification, and I knew it meant a lot to my teacher because he is taking a huge chance on us by alowing us use of his name and reputation, but until he said those words I didn't realize how much it meant to him on any other level. I can be so stubborn and hard headed sometimes (to borrow my teacher's words, haha, what can I say - he knows me well!). I was so touched because I was not expecting any gift or grace to be given to mark the occasion. I did not anticipate any gifts beyond the many I received in doing the work. I would have asked for nothing more.

The activations continued all weekend as well. Bigger and bigger energy, more and more grace and light. I was completely taken by surprise, to be honest. Again, I was not expecting such transformation. I took this program 6 months ago, and worked closely with my teacher in developing it for many months prior to that...but what I realized is that knowing the material is not the same as absorbing the lessons, utilizing the energies- my transformation since the first program a few months ago put me in a whole new place from which to learn and absorb and become. This was an amazing program for me!

My teacher said to me last week that I must never be off center, this is what I need to work on. I didn't understand how this applied to what I was asking him (although I did understand that I was sobbing while I asked, so there was that!). I was telling him that in a given situation I would make the same choice, given the same information, and so I was asking his help in seeing more clearly because I sensed that making the same choice was not the best choice, though I couldn't see why exactly.

So when I asked how being off center applied to this situation, and how he could be so sure I had indeed been off center in that moment so many moons ago, he explained to me that if I had been fully centered I would have seen that there was no choice to make.

That's the concise version. In the real world I didn't get it at first. Why? Because I was off center!

I realized he was right. There was no choice. I made a choice, created choice, where none truly existed, so in trying to do the right thing, the honorable thing, the mama bear thing, I'd made a mess. 

I even saw the pattern of how I always seem to make a bigger mess when I take action to try to protect someone I love from some hurt don't want them to have to suffer, but I convinced myself this time it was different. It wasn't. It was exactly the same, but on a bigger scale.

You know what? Love needs no protection. I still have a concept that pain is a bad thing, but it's not necessarily a bad thing. Great things rise out of pain and suffering. It's not the only way, but it is an effective tool for our souls to bring us lessons we need, and it's often the only signal we will listen to until we learn better. Sometimes, even if I am able to 'protect' a loved one, then I am robbing them of an experience and opportunity for growth. There must be balance and discernment there.

I'm learning so much. I hope I am strong enough and aware enough and wise enough to appropriately apply what I have learned.

I heard these lyrics the other day, really heard them, and they whopped me upside the head:



I realized as I heard this song, that although my fever to 'get there NOW' - wherever that is - has quelled, it has still been in me on some level that there is some place of arrival. I also realize now that that's a form of arrogance.

Does my arrogance never cease??? Sheesh!

I used to have this fire in me that there was someplace I needed to be or something I needed to do, that I needed to hurry up. Urgent for a finish line.

As time has gone on, I've experienced more and more peace with the pace the Universe has set for me. I can speed up or slow down to some small degree, but I've had to learn patience for the seeds I've planted to have time to manifest and unfold. The less I push, the more growth occurs because it's the ego that's pushing and telling me I'm not where I need to be, when the truth is that so long as I am aware and conscious and doing everything I can to strive for my best life, I am right where I need to be. And I have been missing the rapture this whole time of being forever incomplete.

There is no destination. It is in the journey that the destination unfolds itself. What have I been missing by not fully honoring wherever I am at any given moment? Ever unfolding; Ever expanding; Ever adventurous; And torturous; And never done.

Forever incomplete.
And never done.
I choose to find the rapture in that.
I am right where I need to be in this moment.
Everything is as it should be.

After I wrote that blog post last night, I wached a movie with my daughter (Martian Child - the name of the movie, not my daughter - though sometimes I wonder...). The movie ended about 3am, and my daughter gathered her things and left my room. As she did, I realized that in just a short little month she will be moving into a college dorm. I left the moment and went to the future - how few opportunities I have left to sit with my daughter and watch a movie together late into the night and the gap that will be left in my life and in our home with her absence. We do almost everything together. We travel to see Joey and Sai Maa together, we work together, we shop together, we volunteer together, we talk all the time, she paints my nails...

I quickly shut down the electronics and cried in the dark. I am so proud of her, so joyful for her...I know there is little left for her to learn from me and that there is a grand adventure called life awaiting her, but there is also a deep grief in me for the end of this era. My baby is, for all intent and purposes, a grown up.

I would not change things. She belongs in college and expanding her world and her mind. I would not want her not to go. She would stagnate here if I kept her longer. She is ready for more than I can offer. She has wings. It's time to fly.

So, in honor of last night's post about being forever incomplete and honoring where I am, even if painful, I just sat there and cried in the dark until I was ready to acknowledge that although my human self was experiencing emotional pain in that moment, that is not who I am.

Today I took her shopping for dorm supplies, and in the middle of Target's back-to-school display, I cried some more. This is the first time we've ever bought school supplies with the intention of someone going to school to use them (we homeschool). Buying sheets and towels and a phone for her dorm room made it all too real that we are setting up a new home.

When she gets to school, I hope she doesn't even have time to miss me/us. We will be a mere 20 minutes from her (I am so glad she is staying close to home!), and I'm sure we will see her often. It will just be so strange to not have her right here after 17 years and 11 months of having her with me all the time.

One era is ending, but a new one is beginning.
Not a death, but a new birth.
My little girl is making her transition into womanhood, gearing up to make her mark upon this earth. It really is a beautiful thing, isn't it? So why does it have to be so hard?

Something so very interesting is taking place, but I'm not sure what to make of it...

A few weeks ago I discovered that Master Nan Lu is giving a conference at the end of October about healing and Traditional Chinese Medicine and the like. I saw Master Lu speak at Sai Maa's event in Vail, and I fell in love with him instantly. He was an amazing speaker, and so wise. He said things in a way that I'd not really considered before. For example, he asked who took vitamins, and why. Then he said, "Don't you trust your body?"  It really made me think about things in a different light. If I listen to my body, it will tell me what it needs to be in balance. There is much more to it, of course, but the point is that it opened my eyes to a new way of seeing things. Most people take vitamins because they don't trust their body, and therefore each time they take a vitamin, they are doing so with the message that the mind knows better, or that there is something wrong with the body, so what good is taking a vitamin if you are swallowing poison with it in the form of your underlying thought or belief structure?

So I discovered this conference, and while contemplating going, and looking over the menu of speakers, Sai Maa's face is suddenly before me on the page - she is giving workshops at this event. Wow! Double prizes! :) How good can it get? And if I signed up before mid-July, the price was very reasonable also.

I talked it over with my husband, and we decided that he and the children would come as well and tool around in DC doing touristy things while I attended the conference. We were all very joyful about this plan - for about 18 hours.

The next morning, everything started falling apart. Our air conditioning went out and will cost about $3200 to replace. Right now it's 99 degrees with nearly 100% humidity, making the actual temperature in the 120's +. My husband works at home. My kids school at home. I don't see clients here, but I do my work for my teacher's organization from home. It's so hot that our computer peripherals are failing from overheating.

That a/c is the biggest ticket item, but all at once there is money due from every direction and I don't know where it's going to come from. Dental bills and taxes and fundamental home repair - I'm not out driving a new BMW with my Gucci handbag or anything. 

Okay, so we bench the Chinese Medicine conference and the trip to DC. No problem. But here's the thing - My teacher says to go after what you want, what will serve your soul, and do not give up. And he also says one must use discernment to know what will serve their soul. But what if I don't know how to decipher the messages here?

I hear people skip out on their soul all the time and use money as an excuse. I think it's bullshit. In my own experience, the Universe has always provided for me to go where I needed to be for my soul. When I started working with my teacher, I didn't know if I was going to lose my home because things were tough. I didn't know how I could pay for his events. Somehow I just said yes and made a commitment and the Universe responded.

I don't have that clarity or drive with Master Lu's event though...I have a teacher, and going to my teacher's events is my priority. My guiding priciple in these matters is that if I have to miss a Joey event to afford or make time for another master, then I am off my path in that. Even when I go to be with Maa, Joey is there. It wouldn't feel right to me if he weren't.

So with this Master Lu event, am I just giving up and being a whiner when I should really be on it like a pit bull and letting the Universe know that I am serious about this? No matter, there is a bigger issue afoot....

Sai Maa's program in Vail is in early October. I haven't paid for that or even been able to afford a deposit, and the price is going to go up at the end of this week.

I contemplated if I should or should not go, only because I feel conflicted about spending nearly the cost to replace the air conditioning, which is for my whole family, just on my own spiritual journey. Am I dishonoring my family? Am I not taking care of them as I should? Should a/c come before my spiritual training? My spiritual training is also directly influential to my practice, so wouldn't it be dumb to miss it?

I've been meditating on this and asking for some guidance, but if it's coming, I'm not recognizing it. I can't help but feel this is a test and I'm on my own. I think maybe I've been seeking outside myself. Or maybe it's that I know the answer already, so my beloveds will not waste their time coming to tell me what I already know for sure.

So in a meditation a couple of days ago, I felt a sudden clarity that I absolutely must go to Vail, and that everything will work out just fine. How could I not go? I recently asked Sai Maa for her assistance with something that means very much to me (and she is supporting me in that), and on top of that, she looked me in the eye the last time I saw her and made a vow to me. If I don't show up to the very next event, what message will I be sending Maa and the Universe in that? What opportunity might I be throwing away? How many lifetimes might I have to wait for this opportunity to come around again? I would think that the message looks like something to the effect that perhaps I'm not quite ready or not quite commited enough, that I don't even have faith to take the leap into the unknown, even after it's been proven to me time and time again that God will not let me fall. I can't send that message! I won't! I dare not.

So I've been waiting for the weekend to pass so I can call HIU and register for Maa's workshop, to at least leave a deposit. We are really strapped for cash right now, but I can manage a deposit, I thought. So Monday comes and I find out that our new insurance company (we had no choice in changing) won't pay for my husband's medication - that is more than $250 for one month of ONE medication. That was the money I was going to use for my deposit.

WTF?

What am I supposed to be learning from this? What action am I supposed to take? Is this one of those things where I am still supposed to take that leap?

Dear God, I don't know how I'm going to feed my kids anything but beans for the rest of the month, or how we will faire in August without a/c, but I'm going to put a deposit for a program that will feed my soul. You've got my back, right? 

The thing is, I know - I KNOW! - that everything is going to be okay and that the money won't really be an issue beyond the end of this month. I feel it in every aspect of my being. So why am I being a sissy about this? I either trust God or I don't.

I do though. I do.

You know how I got that bolt of clarity in my meditation? Everything was blank, just space, and then I saw an image of an email Sai Maa sent to me in response to what I asked her for help with. The email said simply, "I Love You Soooooooooo..." When I saw that again, just as the first time my eyes fell upon her words, only my heart could respond, and it knew the answer that neither thought nor emotion could wrap itself around. I have to trust that.

The ego didn't stop setting up situations for me to use as excuses to not go (arguably good ones even, for any sane person), but I have to see beyond those to what is real. Call me insane, but I am going.

As far as Master Lu's event later the same month, well I'll place that in the hands of the Universe, just as I did before the first time I went to see my beloved Maa. That's a good story...My teacher told me I was going to see his teacher and I said, "No, you must be thinking of someone else." I didn't get it at first, so he reassured me that I was in fact going, and that he was not thinking of someone else. "No, I already have a teacher. I know who my teacher is. I'm not going." We talked some more, and finally I said, "Okay, well I have no money and the program is just a few weeks from now. If I am supposed to go, then the Universe is going to have to give me an unmistakable sign, and then it will have to drop $2500 on me so I can pay for it all. I don't use credit cards." My teacher said, "Okay. No problem." And here we are. :)

I love this.

Yesterday I signed up for Sai Maa's event in Vail, CO in October. I made a deposit on the program, and within 5 minutes I got news of another unexpected financial upset. But I wasn't upset. Not even a little. I did not question or regret my decision for even a moment.

I was applying my mascara a few minutes later, readying myself to go take care of this financial issue, when suddenly my heart was overcome with a love and openness that brought tears to my eyes. Suddenly I knew that if this was a test, I passed.

When all else is stripped away, my word is all I have. I have said many times to both my teacher and Sai Maa that I wish to be in my mastery, I wish to know myself as God in a body, I wish to serve God and humanity (also God) in that, and nothing less is acceptable for myself. And when I find out what the next step beyond mastery is, nothing will be acceptible but that. I know that mastery is not an end-point, not even a stopping point, and definitely not a resting point. Maybe when I reach some level of mastery I can then call myself a beginner. Maybe. Probably not. I feel like a fetus awaiting birth. Not yet a beginner. Before beginning. I know less and less all the time. I am more and more careful with my words and my thoughts, for I have seen the discord that can be caused in a moment of unconsciousness.

So in that request of my beloveds to serve me in knowing Who I Am, it seems I was given a choice, a chance to opt out. I was even supported in that direction with all of these sudden financial obligations. I was being given an easy out with lots of great excuses, as if my teachers and the Universe were asking me, "Are you sure?" and "How bad do you want it?"  "How commited are you?," and maybe even, "Can you see through all this to what is real and true?" If they can run me off so easily as just observing my response to a little financial hiccup, then why would they want me as a student to begin with? Life can be much harder than living without air conditioning in August. Bills are always going to come. Spiritual awakening does not lessen one's load of responsibility, it increases it exponentially.

Also, if I didn't go to this event with the thought that next spring I will be ready and it will be much easier financially, I think the Universe would make it that much harder for me to go, not easier, because if I gave up once, it has to be known if I would give up again. My resolve would have to be even greater because the hurdle to jump would be even higher.

Why put myself through that?

Everything is transient but this connection to my own soul, to God. If I cannot put my full faith and trust in my own soul, then perhaps it would be best not to go. I think that was the choice I was facing.

I read a story recently about a Tibetan teacher, Chogyam Trungpa, who was always late to his own events. He offered a refund to those who did not want to stay, and to those who did, he warned that a true spiritual path is arduous and demanding, involving "one insult after another." He suggested that those with doubts about a spiritual path not embark. He said, "If you haven't started, it's best not to begin." He looked steadily around the room and finished, "But if you have begun, it is best to finish." (Taken from After the Ecstasy, the Laundry by Jack Kornfield - an excellent book, BTW!)

My teachers have never ever said this path would be easy, only that it would be worth the effort and discomfort in getting there. In fact, my Joey has flat out said on many occasions that this path is the narrow and difficult path and is not for the feint of heart. This is the path for warriors, he says. Spiritual warriors.

I have also learned that the times I've had the most significant shifts in consciousness were often the times I've had to move through the greatest resistance to get there. Not always. I don't think it has to be that way. I just think that for those with such stubborn tendencies as myself, that is often the case. So I see these financial matters as just another form of resistance. I've learned, for the most part, to keep putting one foot in front of the other. If you have an empty hole, and you take a teaspoon of water and drop it in, and you continue to do this, one day you will have an ocean. Each spoonful seems insignificant, but over time they amass to something great. Such is the spiritual journey. My beloveds offer me oceans, and yet at times I seem to be so attached to using that dang spoon. Soooo stubborn sometimes.

I'll get there. :)

I'm reading a great book called After the Ecstasy, the Laundry by Jack Kornfield. It's about what happens when we eventually must take our mystical experiences and apply them to life. For example, we can meditate or pray, but eventually we are going to have to get up and eat, or pee, or take the kids to do something, or whatever.We are going to have to rejoin life and bring the message down from the mountaintop.

For many, probably a vast majority, after a great mystical experience, an awakening of some sort to the divine and miraculous nature of our being, there comes a period of great suffering. Maybe not right away, as the ecstasy of a brush with God can sustain one for quite some time, but eventually we have to balance our accounts. We cannot sustain a state of grace while we insist on holding onto a bag of dung (by that I mean our attachments, our dysfunctions, our wounds).

Eventually we must come out of the ashram, church, mosque, or temple, out of our safe place with God, and we must face the unknown of the formerly known. And in a single moment of unawareness, one can go from elation to misery.

This 'fall', so to speak, has happened to me many times. I expect it now even. I go to spend time with my spiritual teachers, and I am in an environment where I have not a care in the world. I can let go and...and...and nothing. I can let go. I can Be.

But after that, I go back out into the world in my elation or pain (depending on the work we did and whatnot), and I have to figure out how to adjust the places in my life that are out of alignment. I don't even have to look for them. The Universe shows me. It comes loud and clear, and without effort!

Cartographers, mapmakers, in the old days, when there were lands unknown, would write on the maps, "Here there be dragons." That's what it's like to go back to the old when the old no longer suits. It's like a shoe that used to be really comfy, but suddenly no longer fits and you don't know why.Dragons.

I go on, both forward and back, searching for dragons to befriend. I jump off the cliff to see if I can fly. Sometimes I can. And sometimes I fall on my face. Sometimes the space I tread is completely unknown to me because I've never been there, and other times it is unknown because I have tucked it so neatly away.

I fall down and cry, and then I get up and stubbornly move forward again, step, step, step.

At first on my spiritual path, I didn't really know how to get back up. My teacher helped me up each time. And then as I became stronger, I was forced to get up on my own or stay stuck in the mire of self-pity. My choice. Eventually I got a 'bring it on' sort of attitude. I dared God to take its best shot, and I even learned to enjoy the knocks. I looked forward to them. I'd grit my teeth and growl as I plunged headlong into the dark places in me. I tapped into my inner Pat Benetar - Hit me with your best shot, fire away! Knock me down, it's all in vain, I'll get right back up on my feet again. I thought for sure I could be just as stubborn as God. After all, that's the stuff I'm made of, right? :)

Some people can learn softly, but I wasn't one of them, not then at least. I'm getting better. I think. Maybe. Or not. I'm not sure. Mmm, you'd have to ask my teacher, come to think of it. He'd tell the truth about it for sure. If anyone has suffered my stubbornness as much as me, it would be my teacher. I owe him one for his dedication to this soul.

I feel my consciousness being drawn into a new realm of the unknown. I can't help but wonder what dragons may await me when I emerge. I hope they're friendly.

I had such a strange dream this morning. It woke me up...

I was at an event with Sai Maa, but it was very much like a party rather than an intensive workshop. And I never actually saw Sai Maa...and it wasn't particularly fun, the parties. Mostly I was just waiting for it to be over so I could help clean up.

I got on an elevator after the session/party with 2 teenaged girls (who'd also helped with clean-up) who pushed the 6th floor button, the highest number available, but the elevator went to the 9th floor. They giggled and got off there. I pushed 2, but went to a basement level instead, where there was a roller coaster.

I rode the roller coaster, and at the end, it shot me out a bay door in my little ride-car, across a very busy boulevard, where I almost got creamed by a blue, convertible Aston-Martin with white racing stripes.

The thing was, though, that I had no fear of being hit or hurt.

I took my ride-car and went back in and asked the workers to fix the ride so no one got hurt. They looked at me with complete indifference, and asked for the ride-car back. I told them I would not give it back unless they agreed to fix the ride, and I told them I'd go tell Sai Maa if I had to. They looked at one another, taking my threat seriously, but then I woke up.

I felt like a little kid having a he said, she said conversation, what with the threat of telling on them and all. I think that is why I woke up. It felt so immature.

It's a dumb dream, but I feel like I'm supposed to get something out of it. I don't remember many dreams, and the ones I do are usually not dreams, but teachings, and that sort of thing. Mostly, when I am lucky enough to remember anything, I have been with my teacher or Sai Maa, learning or working.

Maybe I'm supposed to know that I can go higher than I think I can (spiritually), and that there are still clowns in my basement (sub- or unconscious mind) trying to sabotage me. ;)