Don't Take the Bait

Fear that we made the wrong choice, such plump and juicy bait

We end up biting the hook, believing the story that we followed our heads instead of our hearts

It's a classic romantic movie tale.

As an audience, we all follow along on the edge of our seat, desperately rooting for the character to work up the courage to leave their boring lives and follow the trail of passion back to their long lost love

The movie ends with the long lost lovers finally reunited, the music commences and the credits begin to roll

Though the movie is over, the underlying story continues playing out in our minds on repeat

And then soon enough we see the remnants of that tale manifesting in our lives

Having built bridges between us made of half truths, and judgments

We find ourselves yearning to leave, because we tell ourselves that what we have isn't good enough

The mind begins to battle between head and heart forgetting there is the Middle Way

I almost fell for it again but then a question, a miraculous question, popped up not from my mind, but from my heart

What if we stop fearing that we made the wrong choice?

What if we began to trust that what has kept us together all these years was not fear, but actually love?

Oh, but my beloved is far too wise because every time I push, he pulls away

Deep down he knows there is still another lesson to be learned because a premature reconciliation would only be sowing the seeds of future resentment

Deep down he knew that somewhere along the way I mistook him as the source of my good which made my need for his love insatiable

Demanding more and more

"No, not like this...like that...no not like that....God you'll never know!"

All this tension and exhaustion between us has finally made it so that I have to choose me

Unfortunately we sometimes find love before we find ourselves

So we must be careful for if we choose the relationship before we've had the chance to accept and love ourselves, we will always seek to possess that which is outside

We'll continue to desperately be clinging on to the outcome of how we think our lives should be

If we choose us first there will always be just one more thing you could have done an endless never enough because I'm asking you to fill a place in me that can only be filled by the Source.

You see the movies have us thinking that the adventure begins when we leave our lives behind, but the real adventure begins by staying

We meet temptation, our strength of character is tested, and we must persevere. This is the true hero's quest!

With incredible patience, awareness, and discernment we are born onto the adventurous path of conscious love either together or a part

The Great Disillusionment

There are moments in time when even the greatest joys and the greatest pains of life, seem to fall short of our expectations.

Trapped in our disappointment when the central character of our lived drama that we call "I", just never gets satisfied

Some will go on seeking every adventure that life could offer...climbing the highest mountains and still coming up short

Because in the moment of living the satisfaction of that arrival that longing comes creeping in leaving us with the taste of disappointment

Is that all there is? We may ask

Oh that moment of our disillusionment we must walk the razor's edge with the carefullest of steps

Because in this moment when we find that life just can't deliver what our hearts yearn to know

We have a choice

We can become disillusioned, depressed, and resigned

or

the Great Disillusionment of this human life can become the source of our awakening

Because what we yearn to know is already there

We simply have to acknowledge who we really are

Beyond the I that we take ourselves to be

We attune to the silent presence of knowing that we already are that which we seek

We live in this place of quiet knowing, where the well of  joy and contentment never runs dry

You see in a sense, we've all been duped.

There is nothing we need to do at all...it's all an undoing

It's a a letting go of the notion that we lack, that there is something that needs to be fixed or obtained

It's simply an allowance to be as we are in this form in acceptance of our utter humanness.

You see there is no prescribed path. It's just a constant unfolding

We don't need to add hurdles disguised as divinity to the struggle of every day living

We don't need to keep on filling the book of our spiritual passport with stamps from many distant lands

We just need come back to the the place where it all began

And to think its been there all along...oh the beauty and the jolly belly laugh we have when we awaken to to the truth that we are the path

 And we must be the ones to welcome ourselves home

So welcome disillusionment, it is good news!

The Source

How can I hold this pen and write these words with the lightest of touches?

With enough force that makes it move across the page 

Yet enough grace that allows and trusts the words will flow

It's as if I want to possess the words I write as mine...ALL MINE!

But how do we write from the source where the well of ink never depletes?

Shed My Skin

I used to be afraid of my own company 

I feared that  perhaps in the quiet of the night I wouldn't like the sound of my own breath

But, I've been on a mission to face my own fears

Shedding layers of selves that I've outgrown

So much effort has gone into keeping the skin that comforts me because I fear the greater possibility 

For with each layer shed surrender gets a little easier

And I become less afraid and more at ease with the idea that one day you will beckon me to shed 

 the only remaining layer that stands between this earthly world and the Great Unknown

This Kind of Love

In this time apart I’ve learned so much…

I learned that I spent many years trying desperately to recreate an intense but fleeting feeing that I had with a past lover…lusting for the high created when two beings fall for the same illusion

The past was that kind of love, the kind of love that overwhelms and consumes you with intensity…It was the kind of love that reminds you of home…but only the best of it and not the worst

The intensity of that love never had its chance to fade naturally and the more

we forced it to go away, the more we exacerbated the power the fantasy lover held over me

I spent so much time in our relationship comparing and judging my feelings….wondering why they weren’t as strong for you as they were for him….years forcing them to be other than what they were…

And us?

I spent years thinking I chose with my head instead of my heart, but I’m starting to think it is something else all together

All those times I stopped myself from running….maybe it wasn’t the chatter of a freaked out mind..but a soul that knew what lessons it needed in this life

What we have is a different kind of love it’s not as intense nor does it fully consume and our small selves can stomp their feet and demand that love be the way we see it in the movies, but real love is different and we are being given an opportunity to allow it to be the way it is and not the way we think it should be

So we may never dance till 3am and tell ourselves we lived a lifetime in a single night

Because our love is not one in which we can pretend to lose the self in the other

What we have is the kind of love that reminds us of the solitude of living

It’s the kind that reminds us that love is more than just the mind’s preferences

It’s the kind of love that teaches you to give without the expectation of receiving

 It’s the kind of love that shows you what it really means to fully accept another as they are and not as how you wish them to be

It’s the kind of love that hurts because our differences make us collide

But with all that friction, I think it smooths us out

Our relationship has shown me that as much as we yearn to join, to merge, to be more than what we are alone, there will always remain an empty space

And this world that we live in gives us so much for us to try to fill it with…..lovers, products, homes, and pretty things

And it is that fear of emptiness that keeps us running and chasing and running and chasing ….and consuming and looking for the next best thing

That emptiness feels unquenchable, but only as long we keep on trying to fill it with things, or people outside of ourselves

But, what if we saw that emptiness as the womb of receptivity where creativity is born?

This emptiness that is not filled by the other begs of us to take responsibility and to make the way in which we live our lives our art

How might we paint this blank and spacious canvas?

How might the way in which we lead our lives become our art?

So yes…our love is unlike the one I had before

It’s a different kind of love….It has the potential to be real love if we choose it.

This is My Happy Ending

I've avoided this blog entry for awhile, hoping that eventually I'd know what words to put down where and the way I'd  go about organizing the mess of my heart into nice neat paragraphs, giving some structure and ground to the groundlessness of my present condition.

Joe and I have separated. 

That seems so dramatic that line standing out all on its own.....It doesn't feel like I'm writing those words but as if they are being written for me. Like I'm somehow watching my life take place on a movie screen or in a book...but its not...its being lived right now and there is no back cover to read and find out how it ends.

As I look at those five words above, that float about this page like a lonely island, I am struck by the starkness of them. They say, "Yes Dina..this is where you are. You are at this chapter of your life. The one where all that seemed solid and secure is no longer that way"

That's a hard reality to accept...I find I vacillate between the poles of worry and fantasy and get lost in weaving stories spun of hope and fear about how it will all work out in the end.

But what end? And what does "it working out" even mean? Do things "work out" only when reality matches the picture we created in our minds? Does it "work out" only when we get what we want, or when there is a certain amount of money in the bank, or when the house is painted the right shade of yellow, or the next project is complete, or when we have enough accolades hung on the wall?

But then we find ourselves tightening our grip on the people, places, and situations that we perceive  the  foundation of our lives to be built upon and that sense of peace and ease which we so desperately seek becomes even more elusive.

The truth is this journey of love and life is ever unfolding and we never fully arrive.

I guess that's the secret beauty that is revealed when the illusion of stability and solidity breaks down. When the picture of the way we imagined our lives buts up sharply against reality.  It strong arms us into living in the present.

In this moment, Joe and I are separated that's all I know..We don't know what comes next....if this leads to greater distance or if this leads to reunification...But If I can let go of living today in fear or in hope of the outcome of tomorrow, then I might see that this is in fact my happy ending. It exists in this moment exactly as it is...Happily ever after exists in my acceptance of the uncertainty and groundlessness of life.

I write these words in our home that we dreamed of for so long together...I write these words in the same spot that we sat on our first night here when we contemplated all the memories that this house would come to hold...

I slip into thinking about the future and if one day many years from now we will sit in this same spot with a glass of wine, as husband and wife or as friends, and recollect this moment when life urged us to move beyond our comfort zones.

It seems that in order to grow we must be willing to let things die...to jump off of the edge of the cliff knowing that there is something below to catch us...

This is what true courage and warriorship mean..to walk with our hearts exposed to the world to not avoid our pain and mask uncertainly but to sit in it..with a deep and knowing trust in the ebb and flow of life.

Tend My Fire

Tend to me like you do the fire 

Keep a watchful eye

Nurture me 

Keep the embers of my soul aglow

 long 

into 

night