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Articles tagged with: synchronicity

Birthday Check-in From the Other Side

perhaps a monster no longer

Birthday Check-in From the Other Side

From the other side of the world, from the other side of thirty-nine years, I salute my then-new mother on the other side of her hard labor.

From the other side of the screen, you--dear reader--come to this blog to see what's new. Sometimes there's a new post every time you check; other times, all is static for a month at a time. Perhaps that unchanged front-page post each time is no less fresh/novel/new than the parade of new posts.

From the other other side, I am still here, I am working hard, I am in material precarity but trusting in divine guidance.

So, what else is new?

Is There Such a Thing as a Missed Opportunity?

on dream jobs and the ocean of possibility

Is There Such a Thing as a Missed Opportunity?

A couple of weeks ago I learned that what I had considered a dream job--an assistant editorship at The Georgia Review, where I had the honor and delight to intern a couple years ago--had come up, been advertised, and been filled. And I hadn't been paying attention in the appropriate direction and had known nothing about it.

The very next day, a friend forwarded me a link advertising that the Tree of Life health retreat center is hiring for a raw chef. Cheffing at "The Tree" was another of my dream jobs. And I'm not even thinking of applying--now is not remotely the time, and now is the only time.

What does this say about the quality of my "dreams" when it comes to jobs?

Of Inner and Outer Awareness; Sorting the Words

awareness is a responsibility

Of Inner and Outer Awareness; Sorting the Words

In my new home, my tiny monastic cell, I practice silence. But words join hands and dance the walls like cut-out paper-lady chains. Words cram the pages of books stacked two rows deep on the solitary bookcase left from the three I used to have--books crammed up against each other, words pressing outward.

I bounce on my rebounder, carefully positioned away from the ceiling light/fan which I could easily hit my head on, trying to shake loose all the lint litanies and junk judgments, and words move through the air, Brownian motion, visible crystals.

Used to be that a shaman was only responsible for/responsive to a few hundred souls at most. How do we manage now, when the urgent messages we receive turn out to refer to terrorism on the other side of the Atlantic?

Monarda and Movement

plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose

Monarda and Movement

^I think I've used that phrase as subtitle once before. Which makes it QED.

So much to write about! I promised monarda, so let's start there. Actually, monarda is a perfect place to start, for as Michael Cottingham put it so succinctly, "monarda is movement."

I'm moving. Again. And yet feeling some stickiness on certain levels too, and currently in the entropic state where objects waiting to be packed seem to multiply and magnify. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

Breaking the Spell to Break the Spell

paradox, retrograde, feedback loop

Breaking the Spell to Break the Spell

Until not too long ago, this blog comprised weekly "spells" formed of three posts showcasing a concept from my three angles of obsession and fascination. Of course, this wasn't saving the world or necessarily accomplishing anything important--or was it? At least it was some sort of momentum and shape.

Sometimes what looks like a finger-twirling dance is actually a planetary fecundation. I've witnessed conversations where the conversants were actually engaged in a jedi light-saber battle, which you'd only notice if you knew how to look. What looks like a plummet into oblivion might in fact be one erect wing of a beautiful bird, the low point its back, sending your eye running up the other wing. Sometimes the tail does wag the dog, or rather, sometimes if you smile and engage the smile muscles, the parts of your neurochemistry associated with things smileable start to kindle.

This post is my tail attempting to wag my dog.

Word of the Spell: Apprentice

catching hold, holding on

Word of the Spell: Apprentice

It seems appropriate that this spell's word should be

apprentice

since we're talking about undertaking an herbal apprenticeship, and about apprenticing to the plants. There's a nice parallelism, word-wise, event-wise, life-wise, with my recent initiation into the Sufi order--both are part of my "spell" nexus, and both involve setting aside my own judgments, preconceptions, and stories, and opening my ears and heart to guidance.

The "surrender" piece is so important, but let's take a look at the etymology of "apprentice" and see how there's another side to the story.

Starting to Spell: Forget in order to Remember

and, of course, synchronicity

Starting to Spell: Forget in order to Remember

So! Here goes with the new blog format--three posts per nine-day period:  a mindfulness post, an herb post, and a word post, adding up to a spell. And what's another way to say "nine-day period"?  "Nine-day spell"! Ah, synchronicity.

Synchronicity also underlies today's post. This time, I'm starting off with a mindfulness post, but the order will vary.

I've been having issues around boundaries lately, specifically around persistently acting out a behavior pattern that belongs to someone else, a pattern that crossed my boundaries and I was having trouble expelling. My problem went back to "don't think about monkeys."

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