YOUR SOUL IS THE ANGEL INSIDE YOU

Your Soul is the Angel inside you

she sees through your eyes

she comes to experience life in human form

through you, she experiences love

she experiences beauty

When you feed the Soul, you are feeding an Angel

when you feed her, she will serve you well

the angel of the soul thrives on beauty

oceans of water, forests of trees

gardens, parks, and wilderness

Your Soul is the Angel inside you

she sees through your eyes

she loves through your hands

she lives through your heart

feed her well

Star Saint Claire, March 15, 2012, San Diego

Life is Not a Problem!

Lately, with the state of the world, construction noise on our apartment house (and perhaps Uranus retrograde!?), I have been having a harder time keeping my mind from fear and stress.

In answer to my pain my Wise Self says:

LIFE IS NOT A PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED, BUT AN ADVENTURE TO BE LIVED.

What, dear readers, makes you feel more alive, more adventurous?

Self Preservation

One day last spring I walked to Inspiration point to be alone with the birds and trees and view. A man was there. I thought about self defense.

I thought about the part of me that stayed in my marriage. I have always castigated and denigrated her.

Suddenly she rose up. She would kill anyone who tried to hurt me. It was a lie that kept me in my marriage, she said. It was the ego. It was not her, the self I had long blamed.

I left and walked across the bridge as if it were a pilgrimage.

When I arrived home, this self, this strong survivor, wrote down these words:

Extreme self-preservation involves making those choices which most closely align life with the heart's trajectory.

This is the truth I am trying to live in now.

The Meaning of Life

About once a year, one or more of my closest friends will get a call from me in which I say, "I have discovered the meaning of LIFE!" Last year it was simply, "ENJOY LIFE."

This year it was, "THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS IS TO ALLOW ONESELF TO BE HAPPY."

My lovely insights are so true and liberating, and last about a day. Until the inner critic, false self, ego, bad angel, whatever you wish to call it, takes over again in my head to eclipse what is in my heart. Sigh.

The knowledge of evil is what stole Eden from us. The more that we can keep our minds in stillness, and innocence, and the more we focus on the beauty of the earth, rather than the pain of the world, the more we will allow life to bring us enjoyment, happiness and peace.

It's simple. But it's not easy. Could it be that happiness is a spiritual discipline?

The Truth Is

The truth is I never did know the real reason for this journal. It began in a dream, as all my writing does. (The dreamtime is the time before time. The dreamtime provides maps of the soul's landscape.)

Then I told a little of my story, faltering and hesitant - wishing to hide rather than be exposed. (My totem animal is the rabbit - we love to remain hidden and safe in our warm leafy burrows. But we also love the twilight and magic time when mystical fairies are about.)

And now all I wish is to emerge into clear light saying, to all you other writers in the darkness of the dreamtime: Come out! (The world is waiting for you to live and breathe again. To tell us how your soul was saved and what sustains you.)

The truth is you are a testimony to life, an anthem, a poem, a song.
Without you, your unique fingerprint and voice, we can't go on.

Third Poem of Morning (or Mourning)

the devil is a familiar chap
his voice like silk
Christ's voice is wood
and both can warm you
set afire
(siren song, jazz on the radio)

a small boy walks bundled
in a coat toward the well in morning
a fictional town
spun by Wendell Berry
(part nostalgia, part poetry)
if nostalgia is the devil
is poetry the Christ?

when the small boy is me
or a past self
the news comes on, a woman
poised to jump from a bridge
since one-thirty this morning
(seven hours suspended
between her death, our life)

water shines below
yet comes to her the smell of wood-smoke
both ephermeral, both vital
(which to embrace?)

Not Just About Oprah

If you have read from the beginning you know this blog began with a dream about Oprah and how she saved my life.

If you came along recently, you will see that it is, of course, the Spirit, the soul, nature, intuition and dreams, art and poems, that save my life.

So this blog is really not so much about Oprah, as it is about saving graces, the things that come into our lives, remind of us ourselves, and return us to our own souls.

When I was five I peeked over a garden wall outside a green velvet yard in Seattle and saw a beautiful Asian Lady walking up the sidewalk as if floating. She was wearing a silk kimono which flowed around like colored water and had painted sticks in her upswept hair. Her beauty arrested me, and her image imprinted on my heart.

When I was ten I had a beautiful teacher who loved my poems. When I was eleven I wrote my first song. When I was seventeen I started painting. These things have come along over and over, and made me want to live...

Think about your saving graces. What are they?

Want It

I have been trying to eliminate the word "want" from my vocabulary, because to want is to be in want...

At the same time it is dishonest not to admit what we desire in our hearts and lives...

Fierce self-protection involves going for those choices that bring life into alignment with the heart's trajectory.

Perspective

It is the season of Lent in the church calendar. The season of self examination and repentance. Someone once told me we feel it whether we're Catholic or not. Maybe that explains why I've been feeling so much regret lately, and an urge to change my ways.

One thing I realized is that by praying for what I want, I actually create "more want."

Another is that I spend way to much time trying to figure life out (and asking God to help me figure it out) instead of celebrating life (as the Spirit wishes.)

I get trapped in my mind and it's such a small space.

The other day when one of my friends was feeling bad I told her to take a walk and to look as far as she could. (The far view restores the soul.)

From the newly reopened bridge in my neighborhood I can see almost to Mexico. I just have to find the right angle to get the highest view.