Month: February 2012

 

At my Tarot Card Reading yesterday in Brattleboro, Patti Newton showed me the five elements of life, and I saw in them my choices and challenges, my Dilemma of the Lion, the elements of my life, and its transition from one way of thinking to another. Is this not the path to enlightenment? To inner peace? To a spiritual life? To awakening? I understand now that I am separating myself for good from the way most people think, from what the news says, what political leaders say, what doctors say. I am comfortable with that, or almost. It is where I belong, and I know that. The certainty comes from very deep within.

From Irritability and Rage to Joy.

From Anxiety to Love.

From Grief, Regret and Lament to Clear Thinking, A Life with Understanding and Acceptance, Not Drama.

From Fear to Inner Strength.

From Anger to Wisdom.

Yesterday, someone wrote me that they did not understand why worry is not love. Her father is dying of cancer, and should she not worry?  I thought it is not for me to tell her how to think and whether to worry or not. That is up to her.  My father is gone also, and my mother, too, and many friends and loved ones, including  children. And speaking only for myself,  worry never did any of them any good, or slowed their departure for a second. Or brought them back.

I still feel the grief of their loss sometimes, but this is what binds us, as it is one of the very few experiences we all share. And when I grieve, I stop and realize that every person reading this, reading my books, driving past me, that I see on the street, has lost a mother, or a father, or a dog, or a friend, or a child or loved one. This experience is not mine alone. Grieving and drama will not be my life. This is where we connect as human beings. And I give thanks for the presence of these people in my life, even if they are gone. That acceptance is what I mean by clear thinking for me.

And is this an important part of the message. We are all going to deal with life, one way or the other, again and again, and this can be very sad, but it is also the truth and reality of life, and I am coming to see and accept that.

The story of the Lion and the Lamb.

 

I don’t know anybody quite like Ben Osterhaudt, and that’s too bad, because the world would be a better place if there were more Bens. Ben came over to help us prepare the house for moving, and he climbed up to the top of the Carriage Barn and pulled down the big Christmas Wreath, which has been hanging up there for two years. Ben doesn’t often need a ladder, as he is a monster and can reach things most people can’t quite see. I caught him hauling his ladder and puffing on his ever-present cigarette. I was surprised he wore a hat.  We leave a list of things to do on the kitchen counter and Ben comes in, stares down Frieda, and simply goes down the list. He’s fixing a dryer vent now. We are ready to move, as soon as our buyer appears. Soon.

Ben and I had our first real technology talk this morning.I’ve tried a hundred times, but hit a wall usually. When Ben doesn’t want to do something, he just laughs and walks away.  Ben reluctantly just got a cell phone. He doesn’t go online, have a computer, a website, or e-mail. His favorite recreation is being alone in the woods.  I’ve been plotting to get him an Ipad for some time now, but every time I ask him, he just shrugs. What for, he always asks?

Today, I tried again, showing him my monitor, Apple writing display, Aperture photo program,  and how my Ipad can take photos, be a calendar and could help him order parts and check prices for his restoration work. Hmmm, he said, this is kind of cool. Maybe I should think about it. Maybe it’s time for me to take some photos of my work and do a catalogue or something. Maybe so.  A big ray of light. Since Ben never goes online, I can write about this here.The new Ipad3 is coming out, and that means Ipad2’s and others will be available cheaply. Ipads without wireless connections – Wi-Fi would be fine for him – are not that expensive. I was not planning to get an Ipad3, as I love my Ipad2, but I now hear that Siri the personal assistant will be in the Ipad3, and when Maria heard that, she said, oh-oh, you are getting an Ipad3. No, no. She thinks I am in love with Siri. This is not so. She is just a chip in an Ipad.

 

I stopped to see Rocky on the way to Vermont and give him his apple, but I couldn’t find him for the longest time. I thought he might be gone, and then I turned to see that he was standing close, waiting for me. He had heard the car, and my voice. He wants his apple. I learned this much from the donkeys. Give them an apple a day, and talk softly, and they will love you dearly.

 

For much of my life, I’ve seen searching for my story. I know that we are our stories, but I could never figure out mine.  I’ve driven countless thousands of miles to therapists, spiritual counselors, old colleagues, mystics, siblings to find out who I am, what happened to me, what I might become.  My search has taken me to so many places, including the country and Bedlam Farm, but the visits that touch me, change me, that help me to put the pieces of my story together, that speak to me are all in strange towns, on second floors, in back rooms, unseen alleys or quiet streets.

I went on such a journey yesterday, to Brattleboro, Vt. to see Patti Newton, who runs a shop called Silver Moon Adornments, and who is many things spiritual, including a Tarot Card Reader. I know Patti and we have connected with one another. She has done two readings for Maria and me. We are friends.

Why have you come?, she asked. What are you looking for? I was at ease there, as if I belonged, and I was safe, and I said I wanted to find my story, and I sensed it might be in the cards, there in Brattleboro, at her shop. So we talked a long time, and she took the cards out and her dog Buddy lay on the floor, putting his head on my shoe from time to time.  Patti laid the cards on the table, and she said here is your story. The cards told the story of the “Lion and the Lamb”, sometimes called the Lion’s Dilemma. In the story, a flock of sheep find a lion cub and convince him that he is a lamb. To keep them safe from predators, they conspire to keep him forever, to tie him up, withhold his true identify, keep him from his own life. They teach him only how to be fearful and live a small life, a diminished existence.This is what he sees, what he knows, how they live. He is never comfortable, never at peace but is unaware that there is any other way to be. These were the awful boundaries of life for him, borders of fear and confusion.

One day a lion comes  and is shocked to see him and he tells him who he is, and challenges him to come away from the sheep and live like a lion. This opens up the Lion’s life and triggers a period of great, sometimes terrifying transition for him. He is very fearful – he knows no other way to live. The cards, said Patti,  say that the lion is not naturally fearful, that is not a part of who he really is. Natural fear is not in his cards. But he has learned that other life, the fear woven into his identity, living among the small and fearful creatures who used him selfishly for their own needs and never encouraged him to live his life and know his strength. He knows how to be a sheep, but he does not know how to be a lion. The lion has many choices to make in life. Will he change? Find his strength? Forgive the sheep or kill them? He decides to forego anger, go on a long journey to find himself and his  real strength. He returns to join the lions and to live out his life as a strong creature and slowly sheds his fearful identity.

The lion’s dilemma is that he must decide whether to be a lion or a lamb.

The lion does not seek vengeance, but rather chooses a different passion: to make certain his life is never made small and frightened again, his potential never squelched, his soul never stolen or diminished. Slowly, and over time, his natural self emerges and he lives his life. He finds a partner who was also raised as a sheep, but who is also a lion, and they give one another strength. It is, say the cards, an powerful partnership. Life for him is not perfect, but joyous and full because it is his authentic life.

I left Patti and called Maria. I told her that I thought I had found my story.

 

I’ve finished the first draft of my first E-book original, “The Story Of Rose,” and I’m waiting for my editor to pounce on it. I was pleased with it, and I hope she is also. Today, I’m going on a magical sort of journey, deep into Vermont to have a Tarot Card Reading with my friend Patti Newton. I was much affected by the readings she has done with me, and well aware that I would have jeered at this idea just a short while ago. We talked last week about the Lion and the Lamb. What happens when the fearful lamb recedes and the lion emerges, but he doesn’t really know how to be a lion.

The cards, in Patti’s capable hands, have spoken to me, and Patti, I see, is another of the magical helpers on the hero’s journey. The work is never done and there are messages worth listening to everywhere, if you open yourself up to them. I am going alone – Maria is busy cranking out her beautiful art pieces – and I feel there is something there for me, something that is exciting and important. In a way, many of my ideas about wisdom – health also – have been reversed. I look for wisdom in places I never saw, from people I never heard. And I am learning more all the time. I have a lot of driving to you, and I am pulled very much to go. I will share it all with you.

Look around for magical helpers, they are everywhere, in all the places most of us never look, making sounds that most of us never hear.