my head nods forward
my senses return
my loving partner exactly where he was
by my side
the one who vowed to love me
till death do us part
his comforting hold when I fall apart in pain.
I feel blessed to be so loved by another
knowing he’ll be there by my side
when I close my eyes on this world
and gently release from his embrace
into God’s loving hands.
I love you, so, Frank
husband, friend, lover of mine
when I gently release from your embrace
you’ll be there in my heart forever.
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.
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
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
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.
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:
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 ….
“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: 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.
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.
Infinite Unfolding 