A Modern Day Cave Journey

I am entering the Spring of my Soul

In my soul, I believe that all answers lie within me.  Every question that I have ever asked has the answer within me. The problem is that modern day society with its internet,  newspapers, news, TV, is constantly bombarding me with junk so that it is virtually impossible to get to those answers.  God has given me and everyone else the knowledge that we need.  And the path to that knowledge is lighted at this time in my life.

Every day I promise to write…maybe not on here everyday, but at least every day in my journal.  This is the only way that I can see to tie together all of the loose ends, purge the unattached strings of information, and burn the false ideas that I have exposed my soul to.

To my God, I am so very grateful for all that you have sent my way, to those that have a lifelong commitment to share their health information, I am grateful, and to those that believe that what they are sharing will help mankind,  I am grateful.  But to those that are out for pure profit, I cast you out of my soul this instant, never to partake again.

I’m not totally sure how I’m going to get there but I am going to seal myself up in a modern day cave, for a yet  undetermined amount of time where I can commune with my soul and purge the things that are not helping me and meditate on the things that are, to uncover the answers to my soul’s questions.

Even as I speak of  this I have a quickening of the heart, like an alcoholic contemplating a day without a drink.  This information society is an addiction, a complete way of life and I am right in the eye of the hurricane of information.  Just the internet itself is a huge part of my life where I am signed up for every health newsletter that I come across, some contradicting the others, creating more garbage for my soul to filter through.  I truly believe that I can find it, I truly believe that I can begin this journey starting now.

My first step is to unsubscribe from every newsletter, every advertisement and every email that comes without a personal note written to me.  The things running through my mind at this minute are what ifs….what if I need that information in the future…what if there is something in there that is the magic pill for my obesity, my diabetes, my fear of cancer, my high blood pressure.  What if….and I all I can say to that is that God will provide the knowledge that I need, without the internet, without all of the books, and publications.  If I just have the patience to listen to what He is telling me by listening to messages from other people, by watching the animals that come into my path, by listening, watching, smelling, tasting and feeling nature.  By meditating and writing, and emptying my mind, the gold will be uncovered.

~♥~

*Wishing you heaven in your heart,

starlight in your soul,

and miracles in your life….*

Forever Change

The sand drifts endlessly across the Sahara, whipping and blending and creating waves just as though it was the vast and giant ocean.  Every minute the sand changes its shape moving with living grace.  The same with the clouds and the wind…they all endlessly change.  That it is with human beings.  Even though it hurts less to do the same thing day after day, life is always in flux, always changing, if not on the outside but deep inside like Spring.  The seeds begin to emerge deep in the soil way before the soil becomes warm.  They have the natural knowledge, from God.

God has given every living thing the knowledge that it needs to thrive and yet we hard headed people believe that we can do better.  We can make better food, we can breath better air, we can add to and subtract from the life force water to make it ‘better’.  Nothing is better than what God created in his ultimate wisdom.  Everything is planned out down to the very last, smallest, infinitecimal atom to link with all living thing to carry out the living plan.  And yet we fight.

We have the power of ‘free will’ and we exercise that power every day.  We do things that we know are not the right thing to do, and yet we do them anyway.  Then we shake our fist at God and ask WHY, Why hast thou forsaken me.  If God were to answer, He might say, you made your bed and now you have to lay in it.  But He doesn’t say that at all.  He looks down at us in Love and Forgiveness and understands the way that we are, because He made us exactly like we are, and every moment of our life is planned out at the minute that we are conceived.  We are in the exact place that we are supposed to be right now, the exact right circumstances and the exact right time.  So lift your chin and praise God for His mighty wisdom, His endless unconditional Love, and His forever forgiveness.

The Reason for the Season

Romans 8:38-39 For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

THE ALCHEMY OF LOVE

You come to us
from another world

From beyond the stars
and void of space.
Transcendent, Pure,
Of unimaginable beauty,
Bringing with you
the essence of love

You transform all
who are touched by you.
Mundane concerns,
troubles, and sorrows
dissolve in your presence,
Bringing joy
to ruler and ruled
To peasant and king

You bewilder us
with your grace.
All evils
transform into
goodness.

You are the master alchemist.

You light the fire of love
in earth and sky
in heart and soul
of every being.

Through your love
existence and nonexistence merge.
All opposites unite.
All that is profane
becomes sacred again.

Rumi

Merry Christmas…with Love and Joy

Vicki

Emptying the Mind in Meditation…A New Way

December 18, 2010

Whidbey Island at Sunset

I heard someone say, the other day, that meditation for him was like walking into the stock market room where they are all physically running around, yelling for different prices and there are hundreds of them all doing it at the same time….total chaos.

And I had never thought about meditation like that before.  When I try to meditate I have a million things happen that distract me from what I ‘believe’ I should be doing.  For instance, the position is never correct and either my ankle hurts, or my bum bones are pressing into the floor, or my back hurts, or my stomach is too full of water.  You name it, every physical excuse I can come up with, happens when I sit down to meditate.  And if I can get past the physical complaints, then comes the mind twister where all of the stuff that I had been stuffing all day, fly about inside my head one after another until I give up and say ‘MEDITATION DOESN’T WORK FOR ME!”…and then I leave…I give up on meditation that day, only to try another time with the same result.

When that person said that, I totally understood what he was saying and I realized that I was running away from the process itself.  The process of meditation is ‘emptying the mind’ as I had learned but I was putting the cart before the horse.  In order to empty the mind, the mind has to be full.  And mine is very full most of the time.  I thought that I could sit down and instantly I would have an empty mind and I could fly off into the Universe and learn truths that I didn’t know before and it would be Grand.

Synchronistically, after I had thought about that for awhile, I went to see a shaman.  She suggested that I sit down and empty my head every day for one hour by writing whatever came into my head.  In doing this, I would be in a sort of meditation in its own right.  Not the typical ‘sit cross legged with your eyes closed and your finger and thumb touching’ but emptying the mind as meditation should do.

Now this seemed like a huge task for me…one hour is a long time, and a long time to sit in one place.  I love to write, and I keep a food diary every day, a regular diary, I write poetry occasionally, I have a partially written fiction book in the works, and sometimes, as most people know, I do my blog (which hasn’t been very often lately).  So committing to another hour was a huge task but a task I was intrigued by.

I started doing it one week ago and I was amazed at the results.  Not only had I emptied my head to nothingness by the time the hour was over but thoughts that had been swirling around in my head, unattached and random, now began to be connected to other thoughts, like building a spider’s web.  Each strand was somehow connected to the next strand and made the previous strand make more sense.  I’m so excited about this new meditation practice.  I’ve come to many new realizations about myself, one being that I am very linear, which makes total sense in that I feel like I’ve come home with this type of meditation.

I am now looking at meditation like cleaning out a closet.  Before you start to clean, the room that the closet is in is clean and neat and everything has its place.  But when you start to clean out the closet, everything has to come out of it.  And in order to go through it and organize it, you have to get rid of what isn’t needed anymore and organize what you want to keep.  In doing this, the neat and organized room becomes temporarily cluttered and messy and total chaos.  But then, as you start to get rid of unneeded stuff, the room shifts back to the way it was and the closet becomes clean, clear and organized.

And after I do this one hour practice my mind is empty and organized and clear for at least a few hours.  It feels awesome and it makes going to work so much more enjoyable, it makes everything more enjoyable because I can be in the Now instead of in my head all of the time with the random thoughts that swirl around every day.

And even after the few hours of repose that I have, when my mind starts to get filled up again, the thoughts are new thoughts instead of the same old thoughts that had always been swirling about.  Its like every time that I do it, I remove a layer of chaos and I get a little bit closer to truth and authenticity.  It really is amazing.

“As human beings, our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world – that is the myth of the ‘atomic age’ – as in being able to remake ourselves.”
- Gandhi

Love, Peace and Blessings to the Beautiful Universe and Gobs of Gratitude to God!

Vicki

The Dark Night

The dark night of the soul blisters the senses and strips heaven from earth.  The emotional roller coaster is fast and furious and it doesn’t stop on its own.  The only thing to do is to ride with it, to ride through it and hope to come out ok in the end.

Santana has a song called Corizon Espinado which means needles or pokes in my heart.  This is where my heart is.. protected with needles and sharps surrounding it and not letting a single soul in, lest they get lanced and bleed.

I beg to understand what I am going through and why…the black anger is surrounding me like a morning fog and fades all color from my life as if the color has been sitting in a sunny window for years on end.  Joy is 10,000 miles away and unreachable from the place that I sit.  You can’t get there from here, so I wait, I feel, and I release what I am able to let go of and I try to understand what I can’t.

In the morning…God will let the light in…the Universe will sing in all of His glory and I will sing with it.

The Crossroads

November 29, 2010

I’ve struggled over this blog for the past month.  I’ve been trying to think what direction I want to take it.  Before I went on the juice feast it was a blog about going raw which really helped me to be accountable with myself.  Then it turned in to the 40 day juice feast and it was exciting for me to do that and every symptom and emotion was important enough for me to talk about because it was all part of the process of the juice feast.

I looked at the juice feast as an end-all but it really wasn’t that at all.  It was just a mountain in the middle of the journey and I still have many mountains to travel over, as well as valleys to travel across, rivers to forge, and camps to rest when I just can’t continue on.

I’ve been ‘camping’ for the past month.  I’m at a crossroads and I think today I found the path to take for now.  I’ve decided that I just can’t go 100% raw in the winter.  It’s been cold since I went 100% raw in September.  It doesn’t feel right to be eating fresh vegetables in the winter.  Caveman wouldn’t have done it that way because raw food wasn’t available, it seems unnatural and COLD.  And that is just my opinion based on my body, that doesn’t mean someone else couldn’t feel great 100% raw in the cold of winter.  It’s easy when you’re in Ecuador or Hawaii or Florida where the weather is always warm and fruit and vegetables are readily available year round.

So I look forward to brown rice in my salad, broiled wild salmon once or twice per month, occasional steamed vegetables like squash or broccoli and lots and lots of soup.  I can’t get enough vegetable soup lately and I think that is what my body wants.  I’m listening…

Love Tidings to all,

Vicki

Dreams

November 14, 2010

Disconnected, lazy, insecure, cold, hungry, lost, looking up into the sky I realize that I Am.  What I am not I also realize. Hungry but not starved, disconnected but not loose, lazy but introspective, lost but definitely found.

Dreams dance through my consciousness as a butterfly lights upon each flower, never staying long but continually tasting the sweet nectar of each flower.  The beauty of the dream is now and it quickly fades as the beauty of the next dream is realized.

I’m walking tall, above the trees, looking down upon the beautiful earth.  She sees me and smiles, he waves and I continue on.  She knows, he doesn’t.  My hair floats high above my head and the silk of my gown flows down toward the treeline.  The white folds of fabric wave and bob with the warm breeze.  I have balance high in the sky, I have not here on the earth.  I understand more than I know, by this I realize how much I do not know.

The eagle flies near to enfold my body into its wings.  We sore ever higher with freedom and peace.  The peace is of IAM.  The loneliness is of the earth and its souls.  The eagle feels my doubt and lets go of me as I plunge into the ocean of tears.  The water feels like a brick wall, shattered by my bones, turning to cotton as I break the surface.  It envelops my body, then my mind and finally my soul.

My hair and gown are exactly as they were in the sky, I contemplate this, losing sight of falling deep into the ocean.  The dolphin catches my attention and we lock eyes.  All at once I am a dolphin and I can see and remember thousands of years of dolphin lives.  I swim alongside him, savoring the peace of the ocean, the quietness, the beauty.  My once awkward body now glides through the emptiness, becoming a part of the water, becoming each molecule.  The dolphin guides me back to shore where I realize I need to go.  The shore is angry for wanting something more than I can give.  I practice forgiveness and grace.

Once again, I can try to connect.  Once again I bring myself to the mercy of the souls.  Only He knows this time and she winks, knowing that they both knew all along.

11/14 Menu

• 16 oz. juice made with 3 kale leaves, 4 celery stalks, 2 golden beets, 1 lime, 1 green apple, and parsley
• olives
• sprouted dried sunflower seeds
• 2 pumpkin stuffed pasta
• A large salad made with lettuce, spinach, artichokes, beets, carrots, quinoa, radish, onion, mushrooms, olives, broccoli, tomatoes, feta cheese, raisins, olive oil, and lemon juice
• Butternut squash soup
• kale chips
• acorn squash baked with ghee and maple syrup
• gingerberry kombucha

Body

The soreness of volleyball has faded some but the soreness of hot yoga is at its height.  The pains of a purist are apparent.

Mind

The light has also faded into dark, mysterious thoughts and dreams.

Spirit

He is there, I know He is.  I can feel His presence even in the dark.

Things I am Grateful for

Life

Love

Happiness

Family

Friends

Dreams

Reflections

"Sometimes we know who we want to be and what we want to do long...
long before we know how to get there."
 —        Patti Callahan Henry (Between The Tides)

Final Thought for the Day

Thank you for a long, wonderful day!

With much love, forgiveness, and peace,

Vicki