Mountain Top Road

Joy and Sadness

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Sometimes I go into the bathroom to bury my face into the bath towel

So I can sob without being heard

This SADNESS

It’s a strange thing.

Why am I feeling it so strongly?

What is sadness?

Perhaps without sadness we could never really know JOY.

I’ll go with that.

I’ll take the high road.

The gift of knowing real joy.

As hard as it is to swallow that you’re more near death than you were before

the blessing comes in it’s gift of growing closer to God.

And the people in your life.

Who you care so much about.

To know it’s time to tell them how you really feel.

How much you love them.

Regardless of the pain or anguish they may have brought into your lives.

It’s time.

To feel the sadness with all your heart.

So that you can enJOY the experiences you have left with loved ones.

I really know that now.

The angels are hovering over me to help me see it clearly.

It’s the Love God gave You to find within You and joyously share with others

Everything else is really all bullshit.

I pray for the Strength to fully Be that Being of Light.

God’s Voice

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The long ride home

after the news

a knowing arose within me

that I had to finally face life

as it IS

in order to fully face death

was it coincidence our granddaughter arrived for her summer visit

precisely on the day I would learn that my body was failing?

I doubt it

Divine, it’s all divine timing

Her 13-year-old innocence brought a needed distraction

She would sit in the front seat with Papa

so I could sit in the back

(and quietly cry to myself)

Until God spoke to me

Listen to me and open your heart to my Loving Guidance

That’s when His Voice came through

In the songs

on Briana’s I-phone playlist coming through the car speakers

Each song with it’s own profound message for me to hear

WE ARE LIKE DIAMONDS IN THE SKY, SHINE LIKE A DIAMOND

Yes, I know, dear God, I know, but how often I forget

THIS IS WHAT YOU CAME FOR ….. YOU, YOU, YOUUUUU

I guess so, for You to Live through me and teach me how to BE MySelf

WHAT ARE YOU WILLING TO DO?

Oh, I am willing now, to face my life AS IT IS. To stop the trivial nonsense of self judgements and expectations, to end the obsessive desire to control, and to BE HERE for all that arises in my path and offer my full self to IT.

JUST WANNA KEEP CALLING YOUR NAME ‘TIL YOU COME BACK HOME

I hear you, sweet Lord. I am ready when you will have me back.

WE FOUND LOVE IN A HOPELESS PLACE

SHINE A LIGHT THROUGH AN OPEN DOOR

This place is pretty bleak, even among all it’s natural beauty, we humans have fucked it up royally, haven’t we? Yet we still find LOVE when we open our hearts and allow Your Light to shine through

I smiled to myself,

God’s Voice is Everywhere

My Yoke is easy

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Transition states are abundant

I think all of us here on planet earth would agree

For me, the presentation of illness

life-threatening illness

has fast-tracked my perception to a transition state of awareness

an awareness that this body will surely die

maybe sooner than later

and still at times the transition state of the collective world is even more disturbing than the threat of my own body death

SO I LOOK UPWARDS

Always looking up, to a place where my heart seemingly lifts out of my flesh body

Where a Place of Peace really does Exist

I heard this scripture a million times

But never understood

Until now

Now that I’m no longer able to be who I thought I was

The new me

has arrived in the transition state

of a failing flesh suit

In which my habits of old can no longer exist

with less and less reason to hold on to what’s not Good and not True

and to find PEACE

In this scripture I learn to remember that it’s Always there for us

As I finally heard the meaning of the yoke and the burden

True Blue, raspberry tincture

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Medical marijuana ramblings at 2 AM

Is this what it feels like to live in your head? God, get me the Fuck out of here.

This is not my mind, is it? I must be F-ing crazy. I roll over a thousand times pulling the sheets with me, and my darn cat plopped on my legs gets tossed from side to side.

Lord, have Mercy on me. Lord, have mercy on me. Lord, have mercy on me.

What were the best moments?

A million run through me. Like moving pictures.

And then all the faces. Every one of them I’ve ever known or seen.

LORD, teach me to pray. LORD, teach me to pray. LORD, teach me to pray.

Sitting on my mat I pray, There I am. In my picture mind. In my beauty.

Om namah shivaya, gurave. Sat chit ananda, murtaye. Nichprapanjaya shantaya. Nira lambaya tejase. Ohm. Ohm. Ohm.

Have I gone crazy? Maybe I’ve always been.

Please God, teach me to pray.

Then I see his face.

For who he truly is.

Not God, but my relationships here on earth. All the male ones. And then the female ones too.

And their words replay in my mind’s ear. And I am able to hear through the words.

LORD, let me remember the peace that surpaseth all understanding.

And I realize all that I heard. It was the same calling. From every one of those faces, every one of them.

All saying the same thing:

I WANT TO SHINE AND BE BEAUTIFUL. IF EVEN FOR A MOMENT.

Why?, I ask.

BECAUSE I WANT TO BE LOVED.

and like Angels, one day, they do.

Water

jandvig

I checked my phone for the weather in Lackawaxen.

“No rain for the rest of the day, just cloudy,” I said to my husband. “Let’s take our walk.”

We got about half-way around the big U-shaped dirt road. It started raining. Slow at first, but then real heavy. We laughed and tried to shelter under tree branches.

At least I had my hiking rain jacket with a hood, so I didn’t get as soaked as Frank, who was wearing shorts and a cotton shirt.

Lesson learned …

Maybe we’ve all been programmed to rely too much on technology? (LOL, no kidding!)

Although the science of weather forecast, observing, analyzing and predicting, is one we’ve been able to get better at – it will NEVER suffice to know what’s beyond our control and understanding.

Like the Nature of Creation.

Creation is way beyond our real understanding. We can only use symbols to allude to its unfathomable and infinite BEING.

As I laughed and sang in the rain, I contemplated …

How awesome is this Creation?

How amazing is our Creator?

A Creator Always conspiring to open our hearts to God’s Truth

Everything in Nature is showing us that God is the Only Truth

As I laughed and sang in the rain, I prayed .;..

May we find remembrance and remain hopeful that we’ve not gone so far into forgetfulness that we’re beyond return.

May we remember that Science is about measurement and predictions of matter but that God is the Source of Matter.

May we never forget to honor the Mystery of Divinity in every waking moment of our lives.

May we remember the Divinity of Nature and always be in Awe.

May we remember to laugh and to sing in the rain.

The Spiritual Meaning of Water:

Be the diamond

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The video below is such a beautiful articulation of our relationship to the Creator.

This is not a plug for any particular esoteric belief system, it just happens to speak volumes to what my own experience is when I actually place my attention on “Being the Diamond” or as I’ve stated in my own way as Being Love.

I’m sharing this podcast to extend that shine, and inspire others to practice knowing their own perfection in Connection with the Creator.

There are so many gems to hear if you can listen for 48 minutes. Here are just a few:

Video time around 17:21:

‘“Anything that is not that diamond; that is NOT you”

(i.e.; our egoic self – 5-sense-controlled personal self is NOT that diamond, but instead it is the evil/sinner, false belief in separation from God, the opponent)

“My job is to identify what is NOT the diamond and remove it from my life”

22:24:  “Why do we have shame? Because we forgot the Creator”

26:18 “The process is the purpose.”

On a personal note, tomorrow I start my “first” chemo treatment in 5 months of being on chemo holiday; this comes after a 33 day round of intense proton therapy radiation. I am laughging at the idea of it being my “first” chemo treatment; after all, I’ve had a total of 52 chemo infusions in the past 3-1/2 years.

However, this idea about Being the Diamond has shined a light on this experience that was not visible to me before …

Every moment is “the first” and potentially “the last” in which we have a choice … how will I learn/experience/grow/give/love and recognize my infinite potential of becoming the diamond?

Dear God, help me to remember to Be the Diamond. This prayer will be with me all day tomorrow. And I pray, to be with me in each and every moment ….

being love

jandvig

“One of the best definitions which I have come across is that which defines evolution as “the unfolding of a continually increasing power to respond.”
― Alice A. Bailey, The Consciousness of the Atom

Finding myself in a place that feels like I’ve grown/evolved/changed in so many ways. Yet there’s an awareness that knows it’s somehow happening for reasons I can’t possibly understand. My neighbor, who was recently diagnosed with leukemia takes long walks with me when she’s home from her treatments. She is very religious, and during our walk today she shared something with me.

She said, “Sometimes our suffering is for someone else’s sake.”

I may have heard this before, but today it resonated more deeply. Not in a religious way. But in a way that affirmed that this Life Experience is beyond our limited knowledge of human existence.

Recently, I’ve had strong feelings/intuitions/awareness of my choice in every situation/relationship/communication with others of how to respond/behave/communicate.

It is NOT for my own sake. Because there is no my own.

I AM an expression of God’s Love. God is radiant, and It’s power is in the expansion of It’s Infinite Potentiality to show it’s True Nature.

I am Here to Be that (Love) for the other. In turn, it will expand and reflect Itself back to me. And how beautifully peaceful it feels when one recognizes that Truth and experiences it’s manifestations in the material world.

That means even through pain and illness and suffering, I am Here to Be that (Love) for the other.

I wish I had a more eloquent way of expressing this idea. But more importantly, I hope to remember to respond as if I know it is my purpose in life.

ethereal

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Ethereal: extremely delicate and light in a way that seems too perfect for this world.

dictionary

A lightness of seeing occurred today while walking outside in the sunshine.

Perhaps its the effect of the Proton Therapy radiation beams building in the tissues of my body.

Or perhaps it was just Divine timing to allow an experience (imagining?) of something out of the ordinary.

Something within me knows I’ve always had an affinity to recognize other portals of consciousness.

Being away from home and living in a hotel for a month opens the senses to new sights and sounds … then adding to the equation daily radiation treatment for a tumor engulfed in my brachial plexus nerves, serving as a constant reminder of the vulnerability of this flesh and bone bodysuit.

Taking a pre-sunset walk outdoors, I felt beckoned to take a route down an unknown pathway. A sidewalk leading downhill along a road I had once known a few decades ago. I worked there – Stryker – a huge international corporate entity – makers of robotic medical devices.

God, how I hated that job.

It was a time of being in-between careers when I got kind of lost and ended up as a temp admin for a Stryker team working on the Oracle countdown (the company-wide data transfer to a new IT system – Oracle). Each morning sitting in the parking lot pre-workday I’d recite a prayer from Psalms, always ending with Please grant me the strength and grace to make it through another day at Stryker. It was a cold building – mentally and physically- robotic in nature – and I sensed it oozing through the cold slabs of the concrete walls.

And yet this evening’s walk took me down the pathway to the same Stryker building, but this time the view was from a surreal, perfectly manicured landscaped pathway. Every tree perfectly placed along shrub-lined islands blooming with spring color.

Is this the place I despised so much? It looked like paradise.

Memories flashed …. the myriad of feelings resurfaced in my psyche.

I walked … and remembered … and mentally revisited.

And on the way back up the winding pathway through paradise, I had a revelation of sorts.

Could this be Spirit’s way of showing me what the ethereal Life is like?

A Life Review from an other-worldly place that feels like paradise?

The feeling sense literally stopped me in my tracks.

Am I really here?

Or am I seeing this from an ethereal Life Review?

I began walking again focusing on the peripheral neuropathy in my feet and allowing myself to feel the way the earth touched my sneakered feet.

I began to see another serendipity. My daily visits to east Harlem for treatment. Another life review. This is the place I worked in my thirties. Now I’m seeing the same Harlem neighborhood through my 61-year-old eyes. The place I grew to know as a young vibrant woman viewed through the eyes of a middle-aged cancer patient.

Back in the physical now, the ethereal moment becomes a memory.

But it served a knowing I will carry through on this journey.

This earthly dimension is so misunderstood, mysterious, miraculous. Everything we’ve been taught is most likely false. This body-suit is simply a belief; at any moment – woooosh – it’s gone. But its Ethereal Source is Eternal.

sun light

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Something about the day

the way the chilly air was warmed

by bright sun

my clothing’s violet color

the alignment of the stars and planets

A memory surfaced

just one of the many spiritual oddities I’ve experienced over the years

A spectacular moment

imprinted in my psyche

reappeared on my memory screen today …

It was probably around 2008 – a silent retreat weekend at Garrison Institute with Adyashanti. The weekend was held in complete silence throughout it’s entirety with a rigid schedule of 5 or 6 daily seated meditation sessions that were held in a spectacularly sunlit meditation hall (formerly the chapel). In the evening, Adyashanti would present a spiritual dharma talk on the chosen topic of the weekend (which I can’t remember).

However, what I do remember was The Moment … so brief that it seems ridiculous it would have had left such a deep impression.

In the midst of my practice, my eyes opened to observe my surroundings … the backs of the heads of hundreds of meditators – their spines held upright from their wooden pew – rows and rows of serious meditators

then it happened

I recognized the nature of reality in a brief second – in a way no words could describe. But my response was an overwhelming desire to burst into hysterical laughter. Before the laughter began to erupt from my belly, I became aware of the need to suppress it. But still, the inner laughter revealed to me what I needed to know. It freed me from the suffering of my own mind (and everyone else’s mind in that room) for the most ecstatic, orgasmic moment I have ever experienced in my lifetime. There were no words or ideas or beliefs associated with the laughter – only freedom – and a sense of seeing through all of the silliness of the serious work we were all pretending to do.

In that moment, I knew without a doubt, that EVERYTHING was as it was and should BE … no matter how many hours we meditated … no matter how much we wanted to know God and be enlightened … there was an underlying meaninglessness to the solidity of our form in the most light-hearted way – as if I could suddenly see through matter and know that the Spirit world was the only thing that was True about this Life.

I was FREE. For the briefest moment. The sunlight was real and the rest was only shadow.

Perhaps, then, the sunlight faded, and I returned to my solidity as Janet.

But today I was graced to remember.

natural

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NATURAL

A picture memory appears in my mind…

The movie Mrs. Doubtfire. When the bus driver notices her hairy knee and says, “Natural, healthy, just the way God made ya.”

As I take my morning bath, I observe the soft hairs growing on my shins.

I’ve lost ALL of my body hair so many times through endless chemotherapy infusions. But after a deliberate 2-month chemo holiday my hair is finally growing back.  I’m grateful to see my body’s ability to grow hair again! I sense a feeling of natural health, just the way God made me.

(Simultaneously, I know that my well being is not dependent upon the state of my physical body).

After a few deep breaths I contemplate the question,

What is NATURAL?

And I notice my mind’s tendency to want to find an answer; but I know from a deeper level that the answer doesn’t exist through my thinking process.

In fact, I also know from a deeper level that NO ANSWERS exist through the thinking processes. So why do I keep going there?

A few more deep breaths. I contemplate the deeper knowing that shows up as an intuitive feeling, and I simply open my heart to listen …

Something informs me … IT Says,

You are a sacred Being.

Every part of your body, even the cells that your human eye cannot observe.

And there is no separation from what is within to what appears to be outside.

This sacredness is the Only quality that comes close to an accurate understanding of the word Natural.

And when you remember and feel and honor and acknowledge that sacredness – down to the last hair on your body  – you are in a state of connection with God as you are made to BE.

Why would you want to alter/change/improve upon/fix/intellectualize this Natural and sacred state of Being that you are?

What could you possibly Know more than this unfathomable Force of Creation that Made you?

That is the question I want you to ask yourself every time you get lost in thought and indecision.

Remember and recognize that through your intellect you have the ability to control and manipulate and profit and alter Life to your preferences  – but you also have the ability to seek action based on the higher purpose of what is Sacred and Natural, to serve something other than your own personal mind’s agenda.

Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed? for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things. But seek ye first the kingdom of God.

Matthew 6:32-34