"Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage." Anais Nin

Feminism and spirituality were both foreign to me as a child. I have little support within my birth family, so I, as I'm sure many women have had to do, look for support and encouragement and spirit-sisters wherever they can be found. We ask, and it is given. Until now, I have had more historical figures to identify with than real-life sisters but the balance is shifitng.
I was re-reading parts of Enduring Lives today by Carol Lee Flinders and was thinking of my new friend Kat. In referring to her previous book, Enduring Grace which profiled mystic women of old (St Teresa of Avila, Julian of Norwich, St Claire of Assisi and St Catherine of Siena) Flinders describes the form their lives took....

'Each of these women would endure at some point in her life excruciating loss and/or pain.  In one way or another, and usually several, each was pushed to the very edge of what she could bear, and on that edge each became both other and much more than she had ever been, discovering firsthand the death and rebirth Saint Paul had decribed when he cried out, "Not I, not I, but Christ liveth in me. " Emptied of all personal agendas and attachments, each became, herself, a channel of grace.  Catherine of Genoa decribed the process as a long-drawn-out refinement by fire: God binds the soul to Himself "with a fiery love,"and in the process "so transforms the soul in Him that it knows nothing other than God."
She goes on to describe the mystics' view of God transcended Christian beliefs and took on a quality of a 'love flood"  and a force that yearns to be in communion with us....the Beloved.

This rings true with how Kat describes her existence..pain, loss, loss of attachments, loneliness..all of those things that take her away from a settled "comfortable" life and back into the arms of the only thing she knows for sure....the presence of Spirit.

The way these women experience and view God rings true to my heart and encourages me. I cannot say, however, that I have experienced the extremes they have for their path.  That level of devotion and calling scares me. And yet, maybe it is for me on some small scale. I have already learned how to recognize attachment. I won't say I've learned to release it...I know I am still attached to my relationships.  But some things I've released and I know that acknowledging attachment is part of the process...someday I'll be able to stand squarely in Spirit and not resist the flow of change in Life. I also recognize that suffering I have endured in my life seems to carry a magic of wisdom and clear-seeing that appears as the pain fades. I have come to believe that little wisdom comes without suffering.
Ah, but to be a channel of grace. That calls to my heart. To be refined in the fire as gold and not be consumed.

Posted by: brutallycurious at April 29, 2007 23:00 | link | comments (2)

habits

Habit is necessary; it is the habit of having habits, of turning a trail into a rut, that must be incessantly fought against if one is to remain alive.

Edith Wharton
US novelist (1862 - 1937)

Good habits, which bring our lower passions and appetites under automatic control, leave our natures free to explore the larger experiences of life.

Ralph W. Sockman

Creativity can solve almost any problem. The creative act, the defeat of habit by originality, overcomes everything.

George Lois

Where is the balance?
Which ones free me to explore life and which ones have become a rut?   I fall into the...habit, i guess...of thinking that once I figure out what works for me I don't have to do it again. I've got it, right?  But as I said the other day, everything comes back for us to work on again. It's all in the process...I just keep forgetting that and wishing I could coast for a while. But, no, there IS perfection in the process and at the moment that involves examining my habits.

I chafe at it. Walking in consciousness is the way to know if what one is doing is right in this moment. Resisting it usually means to me that life will expand if I'm open and being open is scaring my ego.

Today, I am creating new business cards, painting and writing, but  I am also open to all possibilities before me.

Posted by: brutallycurious at April 25, 2007 14:19 | link | comments

the world-between-worlds

I met a fascinating woman yesterday named Kat, one I feel will be a friend and confidante for a long time to come. She met  my friend T. at a bar and the two hit it off.  When she came to help out at T's business,  I met her when I dropped by. The three of us went out for drinks last night, and then T went home to bed. Kat and I stayed out and talked for nearly two hours.
Kat is an intensely spiritual woman, and she would say not by choice. She feels the presence of Spirit intensely and feels the connection of all beings.  Some people claim to see spirits...she FEELS the spirit world all around her in it's interconnectedness.  She says she experiences unconditional love for all beings regardless of their observable actions.  The effect of this in her existence in the physical world is nearly devastating.  She says she does not feel or  understand her own boundaries  thus she feels unable to prevent being taken advantage of.  She relates many stories of pain and suffering at the hands of others her entire life.
We clicked with each other on many levels. We both experience life intensely and find a way to channel it through art.  We have both searched for our own  spiritual path and understand how important it is to be authentic and follow our passion.  She understood my spiritual approach to art, I could understand the kind of feeling she was experiencing....almost.   If one takes her stories at face value, and I did because clearly this is how she experiences Life, regardless of what the observable facts may be, it is nearly impossible to comprehend the scale of her experience.
She got me thinking about the experience of mystics and saints who report the same existence...great spiritual gifts are often attended with great pain and suffering. To whom much is given, much is required.
And, just in case at this point you have concluded she must be crazy, what highly intuitive spiritual person isn't sometimes perceived as crazy or evil by some?

How do we know? How do we know that one's experience is "authentic" ? What is a real mystic anyway? How do you know someone isn't just delusional?
The last thing I want to do is approach this with a logical mind...I use my mind in service to my heart. My heart tells me she is truly gifted, and yet currently suffering under it instead of knowing how to manage it. It is beyond my logical understanding, that is for sure. 
I felt like the right person at the right time for her. My open mind and the willingness to listen and be completely non-judgemental proved to be helpful for her to share and not feel so alone. She was the right person at the right time for me to encourage my path and offer her validation of my spiritual gifts. It was an amazing conversation that i am still processing.

It got me thinking about the realm of the mystical/spiritual experience. I've been reading a lot today (can you tell?) and ran across this passage in my old standby, Women Who Run With the Wolves....


"..the optimal attitude for experiencing the deep unconscious is one of neither too much fascination nor too little, one of not too much awe but niether too much cynicism, bravery yes, but not recklessness....

..these deep layers of psyche can become a rapture-trap from which people return unsteady, with wobbly ideas and airy presentments. This is not how it is meant to be. How one is meant to return is wholly washed or  dipped in a revivifying and informing water, something which impresses upon our flesh the odor of the sacred.

A woman arrives in this world-between-worlds through yearning and by seeking something she can see just out of the corner of her eye. She arrives there by deeply creative acts, through intentional solitude, and by practice of any of the arts."

Posted by: brutallycurious at April 23, 2007 22:54 | link | comments
art , crazy, kat

Life is not linear....although we attempt to make it so.  Life is a series of circles. The same ideas, problems, sufferings visit us over and over in slighty different incarnations. This year they may be a little easier or a little more painful.  The latest disappointment looks like your spouse, when it looked ike your mother years ago.

But the beauty and growth revisit us too, reminding us yet again of what it is important for us to learn. Today I am steeped in the words of Sue Monk Kidd's memoir.  She is an eloquent voice of my evolution from asleep to awake, from conformity to authenticity.  I feel acutely today that old friend of emptiness. I am empty of who I was and not quite sure what is ahead, but I understand now more than ever before the need to embrace where I am right now. Now is the time to just be, and to wrap my arms around myself and allow whatever is forming to come.

I feel myself descending in to the depths of my own wounds...not painfully, not surrounded by hurt, but more of an exploration to see what they are made of.  Knowing what I know now, how can I bring pieces of light and love to these bandaged places? I may not have anything to "do"...maybe I just am to show up and be open to what happens.

It is frightening, but I know now that the fear is the illusion...it feels real, but it's purpose is to remind me of how to love myself.  I step into the scary places (the only thing we have to fear is fear itself!) knowing that on the other side is wisdom and power and peace.

It feels good to write again....

Posted by: brutallycurious at April 23, 2007 15:03 | link | comments
authenticity, sue monk kidd

My nephew is at Virginia Tech and was close to the shooting. He is okay, but i mourn for the families who have lost children and feel for the community of young men and women there who will learn the hard lessons of loss and innocence shattered.

Posted by: brutallycurious at April 16, 2007 16:12 | link | comments (1)