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."

Yesterday was my birthday, my personal new year. A good time to restart the broken Gong and to learn the lessons from having it break.

The Internet hasn't been available when I've needed it in recent days. An opportunity to go inward and let what's needed for this next phase bubble up spontaneously.

What does that mean for the blog? I'll tell you, and then I'll show you with the first post in the series, tomorrow..

I'll be continuing with the "cycles within cycles" format, including three blog posts in each nine-day period. This one, the introduction, is extra. But now, each of these nine-day periods will have a theme. Each nine-day period will SPELL something.

This afternoon, finally, I was writing. It felt so good. My own thoughts and ideas were emerging and sharpening, and I could see how they would be interesting and useful to other people. I was giving myself the gift of being in flow.

And I was so absorbed in the process, I didn't notice the laptop battery running down, and the computer shut down and I lost every dot of what I'd written!

Things have been kind of like that around here lately. Perhaps it's fitting that something like this happened just as I came clear that I've failed at my Gong and need to start it over. Certain voices are telling me I'm a failure and a disaster magnet. But let's see if there's some phoenix energy to be found here, some seeds that need another spell of sleep in the ground before they venture to sprout.

Last tangent from the Gem Show:

As a person drawn to bright shiny objects and who picks up rocks, it's easy for me to think the word "touchstone," and to think it as a stone that you touch, and so a talisman, a symbol of go(o)d luck, a reminder. And of course it is all those things.

But there's more to it--more to it literally, and therefore more to it metaphorically--in a way that calls me, at least, to level up, up!

The spectacle of the Gem Show--the enormous, the ancient, the dazzlingly polished, the uniquely colored, and all the buying and selling--is the ultimate celebration of bright and shiny objects.

Literally.

Of course, a bright and shiny object can be anything that catches your eye, holds your attention, and comes to represent something else. The "something else" could be simply beauty (is that why magpies hoard tinsel and aluminum foil in their nests?), or prestige ("I want people to see me wearing this expensive diamond"), or commitment to a practice or community or relationship ("I wear this shawl because I'm of this religion"/"This crystal will clear my psychic space"/"With this ring I thee wed").

Acquiring the bright shiny object is a dopamine hit--excitement of taking possession of the item, significance of time and place and intention. The more symbolic the object, the more of a "hit" you get when acquiring it. Symbolic could just mean "more expensive," but it could be a gift that cost no money. Some of my very favorite "gems" I picked up hiking beaches and hills.

So, how do we keep our bright shiny objects shiny?

Today for me is day 51 of the 100-day Gong.  Can you believe we've come that far from Winter Solstice already?

Essentially, we're halfway between solstice and equinox. We've moved out of the still point of midwinter but we're not all the way over to plowing the fields yet. It's time to ask groundhogs for their predictions. In the Celtic calendar, it's Imbolc, where old crone energy is replaced by maiden energy. And in the Jewish calendar, originating farther south, it's Tu b'Shvat (was just last week), which is the New Year of trees!

So, what does it mean to be halfway through a 100-day discipline, halfway between midwinter and spring?

Eighty-eight years ago today Hazrat Inayat Khan died--inspired musician, messenger of the divine, and bringer of the Sufi message to the West.  It's a day of celebration, called Urs, which is nothing to do with bears but literally means "wedding anniversary."

The death of a Sufi saint is understood as the transmutation of their physical existence into union with the Divine. (It's interesting that early Christianity had this metaphor also, although in that case Christ was the bridegroom and the Church, the collected body of worshippers, was beloved bride.)

What I appreciate about the metaphor of marriage between departed saint and God, aside from the gender-neutral conception of marriage contained therein, is its reciprocity. By means of the marriage--a union--not only is the saint taken closer to God, but God is brought closer to the world of the saint--whatever God means, whatever the world means to you. You are "this" close to the divine--and to death.