by Yours Truly

Under the night sky
A star tail paints itself across the heavens.

A breeze whispers joyfully to trembling leaves.

The moon exhales,
and soft clouds,
illumined by her breath,
slip silently to the east.

Under the night sky
the tree of life roots down
while stretching starward,
sending the force of life
in opposing directions.

Root down.
Stretch starward.
What rests in between does not effort.

Under the night sky,
while beings dance
and people slumber,
there is an unspoken symphony
composing itself in the shadows.

It sings of love and loss,
and it is all beautiful.

The climax:
The past, present, and future
are all happening now.
We are god.

]]> http://destinationthejourney.com/2010/06/13/under-the-night-sky/feed/ 14 molly http://destinationthejourney.com/2010/05/20/hello-blog/ http://destinationthejourney.com/2010/05/20/hello-blog/#comments Thu, 20 May 2010 22:10:44 +0000 Molly http://destinationthejourney.com/?p=774 ]]> I’m back after an extended absence from the world of blogging. Finally I have the space and inspiration to get back to it, to share my experience, and to hear all about yours. What your heart feels, what you’re learning about yourself, the cobwebs, the crevices, the light and dark. What a journey we’re on. The world would be a very different place if we each had our own planet and we did this thing called life alone. Thank god we get to share  love, that wellspring of goodness.

Since I’ve been away from blogging I’ve had some fabulous experiences. I sat a 20-day Vipassana course in November. It was a doozy but I am incredibly grateful for the experience, for what I gained (or lost…depending on your angle).

I spent 2 weeks in February at the Optimum Health Institute. The Optimum Health Institute is a raw/living food detoxification program. You eat a raw diet designed for detoxification &  drink more wheatgrass than you ever thought humanly possible (you do other things with the wheatgrass as well, but they are better left off the blog). Why would you want to subject yourself to this? Some people go to treat “health opportunities” (that is OHI code for illness or disease, and feels much different when you say it…opportunity implies you can make a difference…this rings really true if you have a health opportunity like I have). Others go simply to clean up. After years of eating things that come from a can or a box and have lists of ingredients that you can’t pronounce, the body becomes a bit of a toxic dump. (Poor, poor temple. What have we done to thou?) At OHI you detox and come away feeling like a shiny temple inside. Truly. When I returned home people couldn’t stop telling me how amazing my skin looked, how amazing I looked. I do not eat an exclusively raw diet now, but 2 meals a day and all of my snacks are raw, and the cooked food I eat is food I’ve made myself so I know what is in it (no more dairy, refined sugar, gluten, caffeine….yes I broke that wicked black tea habit). The experience at OHI was a huge act of self-love.

Lastly, my favorite yoga teacher read a poem in class the other day by Hafiz. It moved me to tears. Of course I am also just really happy to be back at yoga, because status post the development of my health opportunity 3 years ago, it has taken a while for me to get back to her level of class. My gawd does it feel heavenly . The poem:

]]> http://destinationthejourney.com/2010/05/20/hello-blog/feed/ 17 molly http://destinationthejourney.com/2009/07/06/flush/ http://destinationthejourney.com/2009/07/06/flush/#comments Mon, 06 Jul 2009 20:27:38 +0000 Molly http://destinationthejourney.com/?p=757 ]]>

Today is day 2 of a liver/gallbladder flush. Recently I started sensing the need to slow down and do a little cleansing/purging. I’ve heard a dear friend talk about amazing results with this flush for years, and finally the time felt right to do it myself. It isn’t your run-of-the-mill liver cleanse. It is a cleanse on steroids. It culminates in the excretion (that is the pleasant way to say it) of hundreds to thousands of “stones”. I know several people who have done this flush, and they all verify the results. There is no fasting which is really nice. We clean our cars, our homes, our workspace, it only makes sense to give the temple a deep cleanse every so often.

So I’m taking it easy, meditating, reading, and moving slowly. It feels good.

This weekend as I’m “flushing” out the stones, I’m going to do the same to my house/closet. There is a huge feeling of satisfaction brewing.

Check it out: The Amazing Liver Gallbladder Flush by Andreas Moritz

I’ll fill you in after this weekend when the “flushing” really takes place.

Performed or occurring without external cause or stimulus; coming naturally or freely, unpremeditated; voluntarily, done of one’s own accord; unconstrained, uninhibited, natural.

I’ve been moving into a new way of being, a new way of conducting myself. And I have found it INCREDIBLY difficult to leave the old habits behind. Here it is: I am NOT a planner. It stresses me out to make plans a week from now or two weeks from now. I don’t want a “phone date” on a Thursday evening. I want to talk on the phone when I feel moved to do so. I realize there are times when planning is necessary, but largely, I don’t like to make plans. I find when I am living from a place of planning I begin to run from one thing to the next, regardless of whether I actually want to be doing that thing in that moment. It begins to feel the opposite of unconstrained, uninhibited, natural.

 What feels MUCH better to me, is to not plan and let things arise naturally. If I am feeling spacious on a given afternoon and I wish to see a friend, then I’ll call and if it works out that we can get together, great. But if I am feeling more like I want to meditate or read or simply sit on the back porch and watch the robins hopping around in the grass on their search for worms, then I want the freedom to choose to do that.

I find that in the moment I’ll know what I really want to do, and not until then. The eternal moment before us contains a vast amount of wisdom. It is from whence we arise. It feels so much more spacious to be able to choose freely how to spend my time from that space. What is difficult about it for me is being that honest with people. In the past I’ve tended not to return phone calls as opposed to calling someone back and saying,” no, sorry, largely I don’t make plans anymore.” It feels like a hard thing to say to people .

But I am going to say it. Practice makes perfect. (or practice makes it easier, anyway)

I’m more interested in staying in alignment with what makes me feel free, spacious, inspired. And if I am there, I’ll actually have far more to give…

It is what has to happen for me to be authentic.

Some years back Lisa was a veteran journalist living on the Western slope of Colorado in Paonia, when she heard about this quadriplegic horse-gentler who leads these amazing clinics in Wyoming.

“I pitched the story to Outside magazine three times,” Lisa said, ” and they just didn’t get it. I was thinking, if you don’t get this, why do I keep asking you. He’s a traditional healer, horse-gentler, quadriplegic, Native American. What’s not to get? Then I pitched the story to Smithsonian magazine. They said, ‘Go there now. Go right now.’ So I went. That’s how I met Stan.”

“The minute I laid eyes on Stan I thought, Oh God. I’m in trouble. Things are going to change. I just knew it–in my body. It wasn’t anything he said or anything mental. It was absolute body knowledge. But it takes a while for those seeds to plant. I didn’t think I’d break a horse and the next thing you know, I’m breaking a horse and flying through the air. I completely trusted him. And that’s not my specialty.”

Me: Completely trusting someone?

“Completely trusting men. Living in Colorado most of my life I’d done alot of scary things like white water kayaking. Men would try to tell me what to do. And it wasn’t very pleasant for me. But here I was like, ‘Whatever, I’ll get back on that horse.’

“You have these amazing experiences and then you go home and write your little article and go back to your regular job. Almost a year later I was like, Oh my God, I’m going back [to the Indian reservation].

Me: You knew you weren’t done?

“It took me many months to realize, I’m so not done. And all of that cultural conditioning of ‘no, it’s so far away, and it’s a little bit scary, and it’s so foreign, and there’s the horrible weight of history everywhere.’ It took me a while to clear those vines away enough to just ask him if I could write a book about him. And he was fine with it.”

Me: In the book you mention that the experience changed you. How does that manifest?

“Stan fixed the Daddy problem. I had quite a strange father. Not evil, just strange. A weird dude who happened to be a psychiatrist. Not a perfect combination for little girls. I had an impressive house built on a shitty foundation. I was very high-functioning, had alot of friends, a good job, I worked hard, and dated lots of men. And there’s the operative thing–I dated lots of guys. I didn’t stick with one because I thought they were untrustworthy people in general. And Stan has this healing field. No matter what’s wrong with you–whether it’s a serious disease or your Dad is a weird psychiatrist–it’ll shift if you hang out with him long enough.”

“It is so intense on the reservation in every way, every way. I really needed someone I could trust and here’s this man, and that’s my issue right there. It was a scary place. Alot like childhood, maybe, where everything is big and uncontrollable. The reservation is like that. You need someone you can trust and he was that person, and he proved that, again and again. And that almost slipped this whole foundation under me. I learned to stop hating. The faith thing increased enormously. Probably in other ways than with men, but that was the place in my life that it was completely lacking.”

“The minute I met him I was like, he sees me. My first response was fear. I didn’t want him to see me because I’m so flawed. But he saw everything in me. And I got better. He saw me do some less than perfect things, but he sees what he sees. It makes you wonder about God and childhood. What do we need to be a whole human being? I think that as a child, if your Mom and Dad see you–if you feel they really see you–something relaxes and clicks into place. Things can grow normally. If that doesn’t happen you become clenched in a certain way. I was clenched in a certain way. I think that’s almost the same thing with God. If God can see me–everything–then I’m good. I don’t know what the difference is between a little kid and their parent, me and Stan, and someone and God. I don’t know if there is a difference.”

“It was really interesting watching Stan in Jackson Hole the other day [at the reading at the Center for the Arts, a theatre with 500 seats]. Stan absolutely commanded that audience. It was so beautiful to see. Here he is in this afflicted body with his voice, and his amazing sense of humor, and his way of putting everyone else at ease. And here are all these folks from Jackson Hole, and you could just see them falling for him. People need this so badly. The hunger is so deep. And I shouldn’t be surprised by that. I felt it myself when I said, ‘I’m going there now [to write the book about him]. He offers a little bit of a window. What’s coming through him–you want it. It’s like he is a hose, and you want water. You want to be at the end of that hose. I could see people really be affected by him. He is offering himself up.”

To have your name entered in a random drawing to win this book, Broken-A Love Story, e-mail me: molly@destinationthejourney.com, put “Broken” in the subject of the e-mail. The drawing will take place on Monday, July 6. And yes, I’ll ship the book overseas.

My brother–one with a diligent meditation practice but with the occasional doubt in his heart–is one of the most fabulous individuals on the face of the planet. On the eve of his thirty-fourth birthday  last week, he was having a languid afternoon. He gave himself the permission to blow off yoga, and decided he didn’t even want to attempt to go surfing, even though it was a stunning afternoon in Santa Cruz,  the air warm, the water glassy and calm. After succumbing to this torpor and lounging around the house for some time, an internal voice galvanized Matt to put his surfboard in his truck, even though he felt absolutely no desire to be active. With some resistance, he listened to that little voice, got into his truck, and drove twenty miles south to Manresa, a beach that is part of a state park.

When he arrived the waves were not fit for surfing. He sat in his car for a moment, thinking about turning around and leaving. A new sign caught his eye. He opened the door and stepped out of his truck to read it. Just then a teenage girl wearing black and with multiple piercings, approached him and asked if he had a phone she could use.

“Sure,” he said. She spent about ten minutes sitting on a curb, trying to call someone over and over, and not getting through. Eventually she handed him his cell phone, and he could detect that she was uneasy. 

“Is there anything I can do for you?” he asked.

“Are you going back to santa Cruz?” 

“Sure,” he replied. “Do you need a ride?”

“Yeah,” she said. “Can you take me to the bus station?” Matt offered her almonds and water and found out that her Mom was supposed to pick her up at Manresa, but hadn’t shown up. Eventually the girl reached her mother who was in the middle of a drinking binge. 

“You’re an angel,” she told Matt when they arrived at the bus station. She sat for a moment before jumping out. 

“Do you need bus fare?” Matt asked. She nodded and he handed her some money.

“Thanks for everything,” she said. And before she jumped out, he said, “I’m Matt. What’s your name?”

“Faith,” she said, and with that she hopped out and disappeared into the bus station.

It gave my brother goose bumps and actually brought tears to my eyes when I heard it.

My brother, Matt

Axinia, the lovely blogger behind 1000petals, wrote a post on evolution recently.  Her discussion juxtaposed evolution of the human race with evolution of the individual–that is evolution of the individual in a spiritual sense. A growth sense.

Her post really got me thinking. I’ve heard it said, by the wisest of the wise in my opinion, that as it is above, so it is below. For example, in nature we see transition, and we’ve come to know that really, that is all we are doing here. Transitioning. 

We see cycles repeat themselves. Fall gives way to winter, to spring, to summer. The moon’s phases. The tides. A woman’s menstrual cycle. It all seems to work in cycles. On a very macroscopic scale it has become apparent that the universe is expanding. This behavior is quantified and observed. In general it seems that the overwhelming feeling in science is that it is expanding eternally. But there are prominent scientists who have come up with a theory, backed by mathematical equations, that the universe will not do so eternally. That it will eventually begin to contract again, and eventually another big-bang will happen, and so-on and so-forth. Kind of like eternal seasons. Cycles. Without understanding the science behind any of it, I’m on board with the latter theory. But I digress.

The evolution piece: if we observe the macroscopic evolve (humanity, nature), and we see the microscopic evolve (the soul, well, sometimes), would it be fair to assume that eternity–the divine– is also evolving? 

I realize that we can only deliberate about that (at least from where I stand). Maybe the perfectly enlightened individual gets it because they are, well, enlightened. 

What are your thoughts? 

The false summit phenomenon happens when you’ve been hiking all day, and hungry, thirsty, and borderline headache from the altitude looming, you think you’re about to summit. It looks like the peak is right before you and you’re going to bag it and merrily make your way down the mountain. But just as you reach the so-called peak, you realize it is not actually the summit. Rather it is a false summit, and behind it looms the actual peak and it always seems a bit bigger and more daunting than the first. Not to mention you now have that headache from the altitude.

The options are to employ your (in the words of Liz Rosenberg) divine stubborness and climb that second peak. Or turn around and go home because you’re a bit disappointed and feel, well, a little deflated.

After spending several days steeped in the realities of the New York publishing industry at the Backspace Writer’s Conference,  I realize that what I had my sights set on was a false summit. I’ve been working on a book for two years entitled “Learning to Walk in India.” Finishing the book is the easy part. The false summit. And I pause, with merely a hint of deflation left as I tighten the pack (that’s backpack for us Coloradans), take a long sip of water (that’s meditate for us sitters), and keep pressing on with a resolve as mighty as the task at hand.  There is no turning back here. Only one foot slowly in front of the other as I look toward the second peak. 

After all, the journey is the destination.

I was really moved to return and see all of your comments on that last post, What is happiness. You guys make me happy. Well, you rock, really.

Alice, I would have loved to have met you in NYC. Just logged on this morning. Perhaps next time when my book is being published…  :)

Barry, thanks for the link to Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche’s song: What About Me. I listened to it this morning. It was just what I needed to hear. If anyone has a few moments, I recommend checking it out. We first encountered it on Alice’s blog and then Barry reminded me of it, saying that the video clip makes it clear that “happiness-the heart being free-comes when we turn away from “What about me?” and turn toward “How can I help you?”. Thanks, all of you.

What About Me:

                Though it bring us to our knees

Respect the individual journey 

The unfurling, the drinking in

of what is true, what is real,

Silent hope,

       bounced lithely from a petal by a humming bee,

                        that each life,

                                     however big or small,

                                                  is an exquisite, productive symphony

That we may each stand,

satiated,

in our own curved and crooked form,

and breathe the breath of life,

unified. 

 She is a poet, a DJ on KGNU, Boulder’s revered public radio station, a lover-of-life, and a creator of things beautiful. Celeste goes to the fertile soil of the ground of pure potential, and from it, her garden springs forth. I met with her last week at the Walnut Cafe’ in Boulder.

Who is Celeste Labadie?

“I don’t live to work, I work so that I can live.”  That describes me. I have done a nine-to-five job. I will probably never do that again. I’m a morning person. I love to wake up and look at the dew on the leaves and just stare. I can be sitting on the couch, admiring the space, thinking about friends, and my partner Michael will walk in and say, “What are you doing?” As if I need to be doing something. And I’m thinking, I am doing something.

I think one of the biggest things for me are the synchronicities and magical moments. Like thinking about my friend Molly Brown, and suddenly the phone rings, and I go, “Oh, it’s Molly.” And sure enough, it is. If we all start attuning ourselves to those moments it can be very magical. We can see that there is more potential than the simple drudgery of life.

I like to bring joy to people, bring a different perspective. Listening. I think listening is the biggest skill that I can give to people.

Could you say anything else about synchronicity, Celeste?

I could write a book. In fact, it’s in me. I was thinking this morning about the Horsetheif Canyon in Utah, where the Grand Gallery is. In this Grand Gallery are petroglyphs that are a thousand-plus years old. I went there six years ago with a friend of mine. It’s a decent hike in, maybe an hour down to where there are these vessel-type creatures, they almost look outer-space-like, and here I am, in front of this amazing artwork from these people who were on the land before us, and all I can do is look up. I’m looking up at this little hole-in-the-wall on top of this cliff. It has caught my eye and I don’t know why. I’m thinking “Who lives there?”  ”What is that?”

Two or three minutes go by and all I can hear is the wind, and  a few little tweeting birds. And then I hear a cawww cawww of a raven. The raven circles above me. I look up and it is looking at me and it flies right into the hole that I’d been looking at, and just continues to stare. And so we’re staring at each other and I’m like, “Okay, I knew that was someone’s home. Didn’t know it was your home. Thanks for showing me.”

So that is what I mean by synchronicity. I clued into something. I put my attention there. Did I cause the raven to show up? There is the cause and effect…cluing into something unconscious. There’s the thinking about a friend and them calling. I was in sync. I was in the flow.

So it sounds like magic happens if you’re in the flow?

Yes. My mom is planning a trip to Spain and she is busy making plans–plans, plans, plans. I think if you stop making plans, life will take care of it for you. When your airplane has been deferred or canceled, don’t look at it as “Poor me,”  look at it as “What magic is about to happen?” “Who do I get to sit next to now?”  

I was in the Denver airport waiting for my little puddle jumper plane to Grand Junction, Colorado–I lived in Grand Junction for twelve years. I see this trio of musicians and they’re speaking in Italian. They are taking out their guitars, fumbling around–they’re looking at me, I’m looking at them. I can tell we’re sort-of in the same tribe. I’m resonating with these people. So I strike up a conversation.

I say, “Why are you going to Grand Junction?”  They say, “Oh, we’re part of an Italian-American festival and we’ve been flown in from Italy to play. Yeah, we’re going to be on the radio station tomorrow morning,” and named the public radio station I was then DJing for in Grand Junction. I said, “Really, what time are you on tomorrow?” They said, “Nine o’ clock.”  I said, “Oh, that’s my program. I’ll be interviewing you tomorrow morning.”

It sounds like it’s almost a matter of perspective?

Totally. And I think alot of people don’t follow those intuitions. They go, “PoohPooh,” I don’t have time, or whatever. 

Celeste, could you tell us a little about your creations–the ones you most love?

Well, there is the Feast of Fools.

What is the Feast of fools?

It’s an evening once a year where you can make fun of the king and queen, or the President of the United States, or your neighbor. This whole thing came about with the tradition of the fool. And the fool doesn’t get their head cut off. The fool is supposed to make people laugh. And you’re supposed to just take it if you’re the one who is the butt of the joke. I moved here from Paonia, a small community of 1000 people on Colorado’s western slope, almost 4 years ago now. There was a tradition that had been going on for twenty-five years. The towns-folk would gather and do skits or monologues or play music, and just make fun of themselves

A new hot yoga studio came into Paonia. There was a skit with people with headsets on, microphones, he had devil-horns on, a pitch-fork, and he was getting everyone in the class in scandalous positions, and hitting them on the ass, basically making fun of the hot yoga. And the teacher was sitting in the audience, and his job was to laugh. Not to become pissed-off.

We can take things personally in a bad way, or we can take things personally in a good way. When synchronicity happens, take it personally. I think that is the opposite of what Don Miguel Ruiz was talking about in The Four Agreements. He was talking about not taking things personally when someone calls and says, “I can’t see you this morning.” Just take it as, “They’re taking care of themself.” And move on with your life. It is not a personal thing.

So I picked the date for the Feast of Fools about two months in advance. Paonia hadn’t picked their date yet. We never talked, and sure enough, they picked the same night that I’d picked here in Boulder. So I found out and called the organizer. We organized to hook up over a PA system during the Feast of Fools. So it came as a total surprise to the Boulder audience when the Paonia audience was cheering-on whoever was on stage. It was a beautiful moment. That was a beautiful act of creativity. It was perfect. 

Celeste, what motivates you?

The moment. The creative moment. I like making something beautiful out of nothing. My latest thing is that I had some orange rounds and I layed them on a rack to dry. I hung them from the pole-beam in the back garden. They are beautiful and the light shines through them. It is something I could have composted. But instead I made a little bit of artwork from it. 

Back to the moment, huh?

Yeah.

How have these economic times affected you personally?

I happened to have quit my job in November. I thought, “Well, that’s kind of dumb.” For a moment I thought that. But then I realized I could no longer work that job anymore. I often have had this sudden–”I can’t work here anymore.”  And I just quit. And inevitably my employer says, “I was wondering when this was going to happen. I knew it was coming.” And I think, “You’re not surprised either.” So I quit, and I was without alot of income for two months.

I work part-time. It is what I like to do. I am a creative person. Full-time jobs don’t allow me alot of creative time, or time for walks with friends, or yoga. I live a very lovely life, but I don’t have alot of jewels, a big expensive car. I don’t have debt. It allows me alot of freedom. I have a friend who is my age and has alot of money, partly because both of her parents have died. She said to me one day, very stressed out, “I have to write up all of my assets because I’m doing all this stuff  with my money right now, and it is stressing me out.” She said, “How much money do you have in the bank?” I said, “I don’t know, three hundred dollars.” She said, “Well how much in savings?” I said, “What savings?” She looked at me, aghast, and said, “Aren’t you stressed?” And I said, “No, you’re stressed.” The less I have, the less stress. The more she has, the more stress.

However, the right job has come my way because I did quit my job during the worst time. I was checking Craigslist and saw the perfect job, sent my resume’ and a query letter, a photo, all within the same hour, and they told me out of  50 resume’s that came in, mine rose to the top. I was the right person for that job.

Celeste, if you were going to leave the planet tomorrow, and you had to leave behind some words, what would those words be?

I’m always in the current moment. Michael and I just went to see the poet David Whyte at The Boulder Bookstore last week–it was packed. One of David Whyte’s poems, the last part of it, says “Anything or anyone that doesn’t make you feel alive,  is too small for you.” And I think that that’s where I am. Why do something, why hang around with someone, why do anything if it doesn’t bring you alive or bring you joy? Move on. It’s not a hateful thing, it is just you taking care of yourself. Mother’s Day was yesterday, and I was thinking–how are we all taking time to Mother ourselves? It is our job. It is not our Mother’s job anymore–we’re grown adults. It is our turn to dig in the garden, take a bath–how are we mothering ourselves?