In Another World

Aloha Beloveds. I'm sitting at my desk looking out into a beautiful clear blue Hawaii sky, surrounded by green and yellow, bright and shiny. The coconut trees are blooming again. Cacao branches are waving hello as the palms dance and sway with the tradewinds. Geckos chirp and chase each other. My eyes are a little funny feeling today, soft and a little fuzzy. A headache is slowly receding from my attention.

As I sit here I am drawn to the picture I've chosen for this sharing. It is a picture of a simple silk painting I did a long time ago. Simple, and it stills speaks to me. "Come to the center," it says. I remember taking the photograph outside in the fall in North Carolina. I can see the leaves through the silk.

I live in a land now where, to most eyes, it is always summer, a year round sunny and warm paradise. Life is rich in beauty here and dynamically alive. This fall, while temperatures are very warm and I swim in the ocean often, I have felt a powerful pull inward. I have felt the drawing down deep in my bones, my heart, my thoughts. I have experienced a deep dark night of the soul. And joy. And beauty. And gratitude. And gut wrenching tears, releasing of old trauma, anger and peace. I have felt the winter tides swelling, the internal storms, the cold and rebuke and am weathering them as I've climbed into my own cave of solitude.

How blessed I am to be alive and to have such a full human experience. Sometimes I say that "I feel like I'm in another land." like I am living in multiple dimensions at the same time. I feel my feelings, and I witness myself from many places at once. In the midst of Mercury's last retrograde of the year, I am emptying out what no longer serves, what has withered on my vine, the seed that has fallen in rot. I am beginning to see my own value and choosing to actively learn to love myself. I am watching when I say I'm sorry (somehow I got in a groove again with this habit) and looking to see if I am being lazy about communicating my real feelings.

A week ago I took a trip into the underworld, my own Hades land. I played the tapes of frustration, hurt, exasperation, desperation until the rot of my fallen and neglected self burst open. Spirit was guiding me inward, down, down in, into the center of myself. The beauty in this perfect chaotic journey (which might have looked pretty crazy) is found in me making space for all of me. I needed to burst. I needed the open space of life to shatter my container. Like overipe fruit left to fall and splatter to the ground, ahhhhhh, I am given peaceful perspective, dissolving and held by the earth.

Today, I am in "another land again", and I am grateful. I'm a bit off feeling. I am slow. I am healing. I am listening. When I center myself in this moment, I am able to tune in and engage my heart. From this place I am able to nourish myself and see clearly how I feel, where I can let go, what parts of me need ease, need space, need love and expression. I am learning to love myself and put myself first in little big ways. I highly recommend it.

Greatest blessings, Beloveds!