ORIGINAL BLISS

Wake Up Call

 

He whispered in my ear this morning.

The clock read 6:30.

What the eff??? He couldn't wait for a decent hour? I mean, I work nights...I had a 14 hour overtime shift I was trying to rest for!

But nooooooooooo....what does he know about timing?

"I wish people would remember the things I did in my life, the way I acted toward people, the things I said to them, how well, and deeply, I loved and cared for them."

"Uh huh," I mumbled, rolling over, trying to find a cool spot on the sheets.

"People say they understand, yet the words they speak and the way they act, don't reflect that."

"Yeah, I know." I squish the pillow over my ears. "Please please please let me sleep." I say that just to myself, not to him.

"They spend a lot of time pointing their fingers at the very same people I devoted my life to...the poor, the sick, the hungry, the outcasts. Their words ring of judgement, not love. They separate rather than unify."

He was on a rant now.

"They say it's the truth, but it isn't my truth. It is the complete opposite of how I went about fulfilling my life's purpose. 

Yet, they do it in my name!

Which, quite frankly, pisses me off...

even more than that day when I went all hyphee in that temple."

"Jesus!" I half cried, half took his name in vain.

"Yeah."

"Duuuuuude! I'm really trying to sleep here and your getting all deep and philosophical and shit. Does this have to be right now?"

"Well, it is the only time you slow down and shut up long enough to listen."

True that. He got me there.

He was quiet long enough for me to start slipping back into La-La Land.

"I wish people would realize that my second coming was never going to be me descending from the clouds on a golden UFO."

Oh, geez....I'm awake again. That's gonna bum some people out.

"My second coming is every day...

in every heart...

the moment you remember WHO YOU ARE...

that we are one...

and when you take up my mantle and continue the work that I started."

He let me sit with that. I mean, what could I say? He was right. As usual....

I started drifting back to sleep.

"Hey, Shannan."

"Yes, Jesus."

"Could you imagine what kind of world it would be if just one person remembered who they were for just 10 seconds?"

I could imagine that.

"Could you imagine them in that moment being completely full of the love they were created with?"

I imagined that, too, and smiled. 

"And then, what if they passed just a fraction of that love on to one other person? Could you imagine the ripple effect that would create? What your world could be like?"

I imagined that, and it filled me with joy, and peace, and a mass of Christ.

"Hey, Jesus."

"Yeah."

"If I blog this conversation will you let me sleep?"

"Deal."

 

 

Namaste,

Shannan

Chicken Soup for the Cynic's Soles

There is nothing like a walk in the rain; the hushed whisper of the showers through the leaves, the sweet taste of droplets on your tongue, having the sidewalks and the park all to yourself.

As I strolled the rolling walkways of my neighborhood park, I happened upon an old, oak tree. The recent storms had stripped it of most its leaves and the ground was littered with acorns.

Reminded of a story, I stopped to contemplate them.

I am sure it was Jack Canfield who first exposed me to the story, back when Chicken Soup for the Soul first came out. That was before there was a Chicken Soup for Teens, Chicken Soup for African Americans, Chicken Soup for the Canadian, Chicken Soup for the American Idol, Chicken Soup for the Cat Lover, Dog Lover, NASCAR Lover, Beach Lover, or Your Lover's Lover... (these exist)...

...way back before they started making Chicken Soup for the Soul Chicken Noodle Soup. (uh. yeah. no lie. PROOF HERE! )

Way, way back...before Chicken Soup made you puke.

He talked about how within every acorn lies the potential to be the fully realized oak tree. 

He was making a point, that within each of us there is the potential to realize our greatness, our best self.

Very inspiring stuff.

Until I looked down at them on the ground in various states of smushed and felt the hard slap of reality in my face.

Sure, within every acorn there lies the POTENTIAL... but not every acorn becomes a tree. Not very many even become a sprout. The chances of an acorn elevating itself out of smushed is less then 1 in 10,000. (gotta love Google.)

The only other opportunity for the acorn to become something of itself is by being picked up by some passing creature and eaten. That lucky acorn gets to become squirrel shit.

Jack Canfield did not convey all this in his story. Apparently, squirrel shit does not make good Chicken Soup.

It was fucking depressing looking down at the wet dirt at all that wasted potential. I couldn't help but identify with these pathetic useless seeds and worry that I, too, am wasting mine.

Then I realized...

I am not an acorn.

I am a human. And human potential is unlimited. The only thing that inhibits our potential is our inability to see and believe in the infinite possibilities within ourselves.

I decided that these acorns today were not destined to become squirrel shit and I picked them up off the ground, carried them home, placed them in a bowl on my mantel to remind me: 

 

neither am I.

Namaste,

Shannan

 

Photos taken on iTouch with Hipstamatic camera app

...Any Way I Can.

Reading: Secret History of the World by Mark Booth

Listening: Zen Garden, OK Go, Ed Sheeran, not an Airplane

Eating: Mediterranean Chicken and Orzo microwave dinner from Target 

ON MY MIND: Getting a massage, working out, blogging on Original Bliss again, finding my Muse again (I lost him somewhere...he was feeling neglected and ran off), and....

LOVE.

It had become a bad word, love...the worst four-letter word EVER. When 'fuck' has more appeal, you know you have a serious problem.

But, unfortunately, it really had become that way, and for so long I haven't thought I would find my way out of that mindset...or heartset, rather.

By nature I am a lover. Put the balls-to-the-wall attitude and risque mouth aside, I am one who always moves to seek and find and give love in the world. It is the bottom line for me, of singular importance. If love is off, nothing else fits. When love is right, everything falls into place.

Every day I try to find a way to be an expression of love in the world, with my children, with my friends, with the strangers I meet, with nature, and when I have one, with my lover. At the end of the day, the final question I ask myself is: "Did I love well today?"

If, in some way, I did not, then I try to remedy the situation. I apologize as soon as possible. "I'm sorry" is one of the best expressions of love~right after "I love you."

But what happens when another has hurt you, has made you feel unloved and uncared for? What then?

See...that is the kicker...right in the jimmy.

It is especially bad when the unloving act(s) are harsh: abandonment, dishonesty, unfaithfulness, physical harm, emotional abuse...those create wounds that take so much time to heal. And sometimes they never really do. 

Unhealed wounds ooze bitterness. You know those people. We all have them in our lives; hateful, bitter and hard, the evidence of the unloved.

See, I was really proud of myself. I had overcome my totally devastated heart...sewn her right back up with some leftover thread I found around here and ventured back out in the world. She was a scraggly-ass mess, though. Her rage was still too present in every encounter.

So I pulled back, gave her a little time to put a scab on. Then I put a little cover up on 'er and hit the bars with her again.

To be honest, I was really only looking for the three-letter "f" word (fun), hopefully with a little four-letter "f" word on the side.

That worked out a lot better. I found them both! In one guy!!!! It was great!!!! I was smiling again. The fancy was tickled.

But then...after a time...the 8-letter "f" word came along.

Feelings.

That wasn't supposed to happen.

And that is when scabby-ass heart didn't hold up so well. She got a little weird. Well, in my case weird is normal...so she got a little weirder than usual.

See, half-healed wounds are not much better. They weep mistrust and keep the heart tight. The half-healed heart, while not spewing hate, still cannot create real love in the world, let alone with a partner. Every thing it touches with its love-attempts is tainted; with fear and with negative expectations.

So the scabs started to itch and scabby-ass heart started to scratch. She became afraid. She wants to pull. She wants to push.

She wants to hide herself away again until the scar tissue takes. "It would be for the best," she says. "So no one gets hurt."

But then she doesn't. She wants to move into it. "He has a scabby-ass heart, too," she says. "You both are kinda fucked up."

"If you just roll with it, and are honest, it will be what it is. And that will be fine."

So that is really where we are today, me and my scabby-ass heart.

If you've ever been there, holla.

Namaste,

Shannan

A Temper Tantrum in Blue and Gray

Hello old friends and readers. It has been a very long time. Way too long for me, that's for sure. 

The goal was to stop everything else and just focus on writing my book. I thought it would be a good diversion - to keep my head engaged as I maneuvered my way through the wreckage of my life. But now I do not think that was a wise choice. By sticking my head into the fiction of my novel, I lost touch with the reality of my heart. I ignored my emotional voice.

Blogging, art journaling, and journal writing have always helped me keep my inner space spruced up. It forces me to look at the emotional clutter and make decisions about what to do with it. What is this about? Can I get rid of this now? Can I move on? Can I transform it into something beautiful?

Needless to say, without that outlet, my innards are lookin' like holy hell.

I thought it would be so nice just to shut out all the pain and suffering... to come down with an amnesia that blocks out the memories. But if they aren't really dealt with - YOU ARE DOOMED TO REPEAT THEM!!!!

Ah yes... and that was the inspiration for my posting today. I was tootling along on cloud 9, really happy about the progress I have been making in my recovery from a disastrous relationship. Thrilled to be meeting new people and doing new things. EXCITED about the possibilities and the future.

But underneath that glam and glittery surface.... eee gads! It is dark and murky and slimy. EW.

And all that denial, grief, anger, and confusion - feeds a monster. And then when I least expect it, it surfaces and spews that nasty crap out her blow hole.

Yeah... she's an ugly bitch.

So, in order to slay the monster, I have to starve her out. I have to, like really, get to work. Stop denying the pain and grief and anger. Stop trying to hide it all in the closet and under the bed, so I can look "pretty" all the time.

And while I do that, I am going to start balancing my novel writing with a little play - some finger painting, some scribbling, and some temper tantrums in blues and gray.

Okay.... and maybe some pink, and green, and bright golden yellow!

Namaste,

CHEZ

 

 

 

Shannan's Prayer For Today

Dear Divine Alpha/Omega, All That Is, Whatever That Is,

I am contacting you today to thank you ~

for my anger ~ for the rational, slow burn of outrage I hold within me.

Anger really gets a bad rap down here in the second, lowest dimension from Hell. It's labeled as "bad" and forsaken for a fake, happy-go-luckiness even though we are miserable.

Recently, I have discovered anger to be a glorious thing - indeed, a gift! For it has provided me with the fuel I need for change. It has mobilized me past the constraints of fear and into action.

Thank you for every reminder: for every stupid, crazy, aggravating thing that makes me want to slap him upside the head. Each moment of insanity reassures me that I am doing the right thing.

And thank you further still for restraining my hand ~ because I sure as hell don't need that kind of drama - though he so righteously deserves it.

If you could also please help me in keeping my tongue to myself. Though it would be gratifying to cut him to the quick with some well phrased jabs, that would only keep me engaged with him and diminish me. May my talking, and blogging, about him behind his back bring satisfaction enough.

Thank you, too, for showing me that "Til death do us part" meant when the relationship kicked the bucket.... not when I did. Though I performed every lifesaving measure known to relationships, nothing could resuscitate it. Thank you for telling me to bury the damn thing already, because its putrid carcass was starting to stink up the place.

Please let me hold on to resentment as long as I need ~ to stave off regret. Allow the resentments to remind me that I never, ever, ever, ever, ad infinitum (ever) want to go back into a relationship that was that destructive.

BUT when it is time - when it is no longer useful - help me to release it, because I don't want to end up a bitter, old bitch, either.

And I shout HellYeah!Lujah! Thou hast provided me with a sense of humor. Although others may find my wit irreverent or inappropriate, it surely saves me. And I am so grateful!

Namaste,

C H E Z

 

Kairos

I keep feeling an urge to stop.

I have labeled this slow down, my suppressed energy, as "depression".

I feel like I am dancing a very, very slow dance... like the last dance of the prom... a barely moving sway.

This is not my normal tune. I think of myself as more 80's pop; Erasure, Howard Jones, ABC, and B52's... lots of hip shaking and the Carlton goin' on.

This current tempo feels off to me. I automatically judge it as "something is wrong" and have been trying to push myself out of it. I am trying to boogie to a drone.

The syncopation makes me feel even worse.

We expect the ebbs and flows of our lives to be coordinated. We try to force the ebbs into our schedule. Why can't I feel slow and melancholy on a Sunday? And really... I can only afford to give that feeling about 10 minutes, cause I have a lot of shit to do and some goals to achieve.

God laughs.

"To every thing there is a season, and a time for every purpose."

The sun rises and then sets. Tides are high and low. The moon waxes and wanes. Seeds sprout, bear fruit, then wither. The Universe has its own cadence.

If I fall into time with the Universe, allowing myself the inhale... a long, deep breath... maybe it is all just fine.

The Greeks had two words for time. Chronos, chronological, sequential time... and kairos, the supreme moment, an undetermined period of time in which something special happens, a time of destiny.

If I am always trying to tap and jig, I could be missing out on the turning point of my destiny.

This could be my special moment.

I do not have to DO anything. In fact, anything I do in this moment may screw up the symphony.

I can slow down.

Better yet, I CAN stop.

And that could be just what the Universe ordered.

Namaste,

C H E Z

 

 

This Dark Night

"In the middle of our life journey I found myself in a dark wood.

I had wandered from the straight path.

It isn't easy to talk about it:

it was such a thick, wild, and rough forest that when I think of it,

my fear returns...

I can't offer any good explanation for how I entered it.

I was so sleepy at that point that I strayed from the right path."

Dante, Inferno, Canto I

We all have our dark nights. We don't talk about them much. People don't know what to do with darkness. It makes them uncomfortable.

So we traverse them alone... which can be a mean journey.

But it is important to remember ~ it is a journey.

During my current wanderings in the rough forest, I happened across a copy of Thomas Moore's "The Dark Nights of the Soul ~ A Guide to Finding Your Way Through Life's Ordeals". Sweet serendipity finding this luminescent spark.

The dark night is a space we shun. We must be emotionally deformed to ever traverse here. Why else do they make Prozac and Paxil and Ativan and Xanax???? It is a wrong state that must be corrected. But not according to Friar Moore.

The dark night is natural. Organic. The minor keys amidst the symphony of bright majors.

"The dark night serves the spirit by forcing you to rely on something beyond human capacity. It pushes you to the edge of what is familiar and reliable, stretching your imagination about how life works and who or what controls it."

"During the dark night there is no choice but to surrender control, give in to unknowing, and stop and listen to whatever signals of wisdom might come along."

A valuable lesson for this particular control freak. Me thinks that the current sadness, trial, loss, frustration that I am experiencing is divinely ordained to break me of my unfortunate control addiction.

Moore asks us to imagine that our dark mood, or the external source of our suffering, is like a large living container in which we are held captive.

You are in the belly of the whale. The beast may be an illness, unemployment, financial difficulties, divorce, grief over the loss of a loved one, or a mixed bag combo of any of them. It has swallowed you whole and you are submerged into the depths.

In your isolation you do not realize, that the beast still swims. It is moving, carrying you somewhere, most likely to where you really need to go.

I hesitate to share my dispatches from the belly. It is always a challenge to hit "publish" on these posts. But Spirit tells me it is important. Because someone ~ or many ~ are wandering in their forests, or journeying through the night sea, and this could be their match.

Namaste,

C H E Z

Kindness from Strangers

 

LoveFellDown

 

Press Play to hear "Love Fell Down" by Gavin Creel

Bad times bring out the worst in people. The combination of distractions, stress, and fear create a cocktail that distorts our perceptions and leads to impulsive choices.

When you find yourself buried in avalanche of insurmountable problems... when your vision tunnels, squeezing out the proverbial light at its end... stop. Do what ever it takes to reach out... to say something... to express your distress.

OR

If you see someone struggling ~ we are not hard to find these days ~ rather than think to yourself, "Oh, they are strong, they can handle all that"... stop. Even if they seem like they may be able to handle it, your offer of compassion or to listen will ease their burden. You have no idea what one caring word of encouragement can do to shift someone's perception and preserve their soul.

Pay especially close attention to those you truly love. Your care, concern and love means more coming from you than when it comes from strangers.

Namaste,

C H E Z

 

A Simple Spark of Joy

A much needed spark of joy and inspiration awaited me on my kitchen counter when I arrived home from work at 4 a.m.

The new Somerset Studio's Art Journaling magazine has hit the stands! While my feature and article will not be published until January 2011, three of my pages and several of my hints and answers to questions are published in this issue.

Yay!

I was so happy to see one of my favorite journal artists from Flickr, Erin Kenepp, published in this issue! I also discovered an artist I had not run across before, Christine Mason Miller. Her spread "Where is God?" was my favorite in the whole magazine!

Namaste,

C H E Z

The Faint Fragrance

 "All day I think about it, 

then at night I say it.

Where did I come from, 

and what am I supposed to be doing?

My soul is from elsewhere,

I am sure of that,

and I intend to end up there.

This drunkenness began in some other tavern.

When I get back to that place,

I'll be completely sober.

Meanwhile,

I am like a bird from another continent,

sitting in this aviary.

The day is coming when I fly off,

but who is it now in my ear,

who hears my voice?

Who says words with my mouth?

Who looks out with my eyes?

What is the soul?

I cannot stop asking.

If I could taste one sip of an answer, 

I could break out of this prison for drunks.

I didn't come here of my own accord,

and I can't leave that way.

Whoever brought me here,

will have to take me home."

R U M I

This is how the divine speaks:

When I journal, I never have a plan. 

Usually, I am pent up and frustrated when I approach my journal. I have something to say ~ to myself and to the world ~ but words and ideas are knotted within me.

With these pages I started with some leftover pink, gift tissue. It was sitting there on the table. I was sick of looking at it, but didn't want to find a place to put it away. So I ripped it and pasted it to the page. 

Then I squirted some gesso on it and smeared it with my fingers.

After it dried, I felt an urge to write.

I was remembering a dream I had not very long ago, where I went off on a boat into the universe and spoke with a presence I have known from the beginning of time. I didn't want to leave, but the presence made me, telling me that the perfect connection and balance and love I was experiencing in that moment... I had to bring it back into the world with me. 

I wept.

The boat left again, without me, and I woke up.

I have wanted that experience back.

On the pages I wrote to that presence. 

"Where are you?"

"You told me to be that love in the world, but I don't know how."

"Once you were gone, I felt empty."

I wrote them in soft pink, so they couldn't really be read by anybody, lest they think me mad.

Then I was stuck and frustrated again. I didn't know what next to do with the page.

So I went for a walk.

It was just before sunset. The heat of the day had cooled. There was laughter and splashing water in the park. There was a breeze. There was the faint fragrance of that presence laced softly upon that breeze. I felt embraced. A country songbird fluttered along beside me. 

Yes! A bird! A bird goes on that page!

I walked home and finished the page.

I take my photos of the page, upload them to the computer, open up TypePad, and think, "What do I say about this? How do I convey this message?"

Again, I do not even know where to begin.

Something moved me to my book of Rumi. I opened the book right to the page with this poem on it.

And that was exactly what I was trying to say all along!

Namaste,

C H E Z