Doctortayria's Blog

God, whatever we conceive her to be, is often most visible and fully experienced in our four-legged friends. They offer a clear mirror for the innocence, purity, wisdom and barely containable joy of divine nature. And they know how to train humans well. They are demanding teachers, lightning-like jolters of the heart.

I want to express my love and gratitude tonight as one of my teachers, my Mother’s little Shiatsu DarLing, prepares for her journey home tomorrow. All through Mom’s 80’s DarLing has slept with Mom in her bed, sat with her in her chair, and eaten from her plate. Mom turned a blind eye to her every misbehavior, something we her daughters, who were vigilantly trained in manners, marveled at constantly. They have shared one heart these years.

At such times, though sadness and grief are full, gratitude overwhelms the emotions. I miss my friend Coco every single day, and every time I do am flooded with the sweetness of his spirit that never leaves me. Nature has created the different time lines between animals and humans surely for good reason. They teach us in their coming, in their embrace of life, and in their going. Thank heaven for them. Good journey to our beloved DarLing.

I see faces everywhere, do you? I mean faces in the clouds, trees, mountains, bushes, sidewalks, ceilings, walls – everywhere, everywhere, always, always, every day. I want to learn to draw so I can render them. There is so much information in them. Endless stories pour out of them.

I have a little pencil drawing in my office that I made of faces I saw in the patterns in beams of wood above the bed of my friend’s house in Italy where I stayed for 5 weeks a couple of years ago. Since I was there so long, and the patterns stayed so consistent, I was able to actually draw them. Those faces tell me stories all of the time because of my little untrained pencil renderings, continuing unfolding stories. If I could capture the ones that I see fleetingly, like when the sunlight hits the trees in a certain way, or the moonlight on the grass – whole worlds pour out of those faces but then they are gone. Someday I will learn to draw and that is what I want to draw.

Sitting outside the bakery in Weaverville in my car, in the dark and cold, in order to get an internet signal since we don’t have it in our new office yet, all day experiencing the delicate operations my current life changes impose at every level – not just physically but emotionally, psychologically and spiritually in terms of self-concept, world-concept, professional ideas, personal relationship changes, financial operations, caring for the balance of so many responsibilities as things shift – in my sense of overwhelm I can’t help but think about our brothers and sisters in so many nations who have been thrust into radical change without seeking it.

Change being the nature of the universe, and stability actually having very little to do with it since we are moving through space at an incomprehensible velocity, I wonder why it is that I, and we, tend to long so for stability and are inept, so often, at change. Why is change so hard? And why does the idea of stability remain the illusory, yearned for but never achieved goal? Friends have asked me what it is that I want, and I have replied on occasion that I simply want my life’s situation to stabilize. It has been in radical flux since 1994, and I get tired.

Will the people in Japan, Egypt, Libya, Chile, Haiti – just to name some obvious ones – have the luxury of stability anywhere on the horizon? Should any of us expect it in the first place?

Be careful what you wish for. I believe I need to do some conscious work on longing for trust in life’s endless velocity of movement. Digging in my heels and wishing for something other creates a lot of anxiety, problems and not much else, surely I know that.

I offer my brothers and sisters who are living with what feels like too much change, way too abruptly and uninvited, prayers in every way, maybe especially for some measure of release into the motion in their life to see what it holds for them and for all of us. They are our way-showers now. They humble me as I struggle to assimilate my small changes. At some level we are all in this together, though they have taken the great burden for now.

Athena Statue

Along with many in the world, I have watched with a certain numbness and disbelief as America enters yet another war. I am suspicious of how loved and trusted newsmen shape the story, and listened to our President talking about our entry into Libyan affairs tonight with more caution than I usually feel with him. My recent sense of hope and trust feels familiarly battered, and it makes me sad. The whole world is sad right now, we are all feeling it enormously, I’m sure of that.

After Obama’s speech I turned off the TV and stared into the fire burning in my stove. I have a statue of the Goddess Athena who sits over my left shoulder in my little work station in my living room. Her presence felt strong. I said to myself, “Ok, think… what would Athena do?” She is the Goddess of War, who is guided by the owl, wisdom; she only supports war when it is absolutely necessary. On my statue the owl sits on her left shoulder. Athena is complex, an earthy goddess of crafts and agriculture, as well as the goddess who protects and guides heroes in the ancient myths.

What would she do in this case? Anyone’s reflection is as valid as anyone else’s – we are all groping I believe. When our President said he preferred to act before he saw the images of thousands slaughtered, I thought maybe She is guiding him. This is the time. The protection is necessary. I hate war, but have an image of the Goddess of War sitting over my shoulder. She is waking me up to situations in my own life that need a more war-like response, and helping me to understand. Sometimes it takes war-like responses to protect beauty, truth, justice and innocence.

Everything we do in life is about our intentions in doing it, this was one of my earliest inspired guidances. If we enter an argument or a war for any egoistic or materialistic reasons, it is a crime and will reap those consequences. If we do the same thing to protect love and innocence, the universe responds completely differently. It is so in our most trivial and private affairs, as well as in global and international affairs. The Goddess of Wisdom must be the guide.

I have no answers, obviously. only reflections and prayers. I will say that I do trust the heart of this man we have elected, still, and always pray that he will be guided by the most wise sensibilities in himself and universe.

Blog pages have remained empty and silent as my outer life has been in transition and creative chaos. This weekend I spoke with an association of M.D.s and Integrative Health Practioners about the effects of the psyche on the body’s ability to heal, to balance hormones, absorb nutrients, achieve the goals of wellness. I experienced these doctors as refreshingly receptive, open and interested, not so usual in my experience. Afterward those of us who are renting offices in a new, charming facility in Weaverville – so far ayurvedic practioners, an RN and nutritionist and myself – met and decided to begin our work there under the umbrella name of Weaverville Natural Health Center. It was a positive and profound meeting. That evening I spent the first night in my new town and bedroom in that newly refurbished house turned healing center. I began the deep acquaintance with space and spirits who dwell there – people, trees, ancestors, all life. Coming down from the mountain into town in such a way is stretching me, stretching my sense of self and home.

Today, back home on the mountain, she felt a bit like a jealous god to me. Psychologists would call this a projection of my own feelings and anxieties onto the mountain, certainly true, but I also feel there is truth in the notion that when one becomes a familiar resident in the psychodynamic field of a place, to pull out in any way has consequences that effect that field and cause responses. Places are living spirits, with living energies not so unlike those of the human. We are a product of them and reflect them more than we know.

I was not unaware of this when I left to begin my day in my new place in town. I sat for the morning and spoke to this land and the spirit of my house, explaining what was going on, my intentions for creating a bridge and a way to support the work here on the mountain. I didn’t feel I was crazy. This felt normal, considerate and polite.

After returning, however, I felt a backlash, like my new towny rhythm is unfamiliar here, not yet welcome. I felt the mountain with icy claws in me today. She was covered the entire day with clouds and cold, without break. My spirit was tormented with demons. I laid low. It is Sunday, a day of rest – a biblical imperative even – so I tried to just listen to all of the demons and not fight them.

As humans we are not the separate entities that we often imagine ourselves to be, who can just go here and there without consideration for the spirits of the places we move through, and the need to maintain relationships with them that can be as demanding and important as our human ones. I am stretching myself across space now, and into new territories, asking for permission and assistance to make my home bigger and more diverse as a consequence.

This is a good journey. I’m on the home stretch.

There are moments in life when golden opportunities arrive that, if we were to hesitate one moment, could vanish. A door opens suddenly out of the blue, and the personal guidance system says “Yes.” These answers come from a deeper place than the mind can catch up with.

It requires courage and vision to take the leap, but it gives the universe has something to work with. I remember reading a beautiful statement by Dag Hammarskjold that I can’t quote exactly. He said that somewhere along the way someone or something posed a question to him, and his answer was Yes. I know what he means. Once you say Yes to this unfathomable, unknowable question your course is set.

And Goethe has a wonderful writing:

“Until one is committed there is hesitancy, the choice to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation) there is one elementary truth the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits onceslf, the providence moves too.

“All sorts of things occur to help one that would never have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from teh decision, raising in one’s faovr all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no one could have dreamed would come their way.

“Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it, boldness has genius, power and magic in it.

Begin it now.”

I just stepped into a bold move, renting an office and part-time living space in town that must begin paying for itself immediately. But I feel the forces lining up, the Yes, the magic, the lack of hesitancy, the commitment. I’m coming down from the mountain into town. Shift happens.

When I went through a breakdown many years ago my entire life and identity shattered to pieces, I went on a 10-day vision quest, alone in the woods by myself in an effort to recover and reclaim myself. Many things happened for me in those days, but I believe the most key and core experience was that I realized the simplest truth of all. I am a mother. That seemed to be all I needed to know about myself, the most fundamental thing. It was, maybe like a Zen statement, the most simple and obvious fact but also unutterably profound. An enlightenment. Impossible to transmit in words. Perhaps I arrived at this because my two daughters are the most profound beings of grace, goodness, intelligence, humor, talent, joy and beauty.

Today I got a call from Eli, the much loved partner of my daughter Josi, asking for my blessing to marry her. I had no idea how to express how thrilled I felt. After giving my blessing with all of my heart, Josi got on the telephone. My rosebud. She was smiling so hugely that I could feel the energy of that smile pulsing all the way from Ithaca, New York, to North Carolina.

I am weeping now as I try to put this into words. As a mother, the happiness and well-being of your child is the most profoundly hoped for thing in all of the universe, nothing compares. My gorgeous daughter Josi has found the love of her life, and Eli has found his. He told me once he wants to live his life figuring out how to be good to her every day. What more could a mother want? I feel fulfilled on this day. The fine gift of this great love has moved into a new dimension of stabilization, blessing this wild and wonderful world with itself.

Rejoice! I hear angels singing.

A body cleanse, I am discovering, is a shake-up for every other aspect of being. Of course, why wouldn’t it be? I know in my mind all of our systems are one whole, each obviously affecting all of the others, I still find myself surprised and fascinated.

Today I kept losing my train of thought. In the middle of a sentence writing an e-mail I would forget who I was writing to and what about, then have to re-explain to myself what I was doing. So went the day.

I considered the words “train of thought.” Very interesting term. The days can go like this, often unreflective thought carrying us like a train. We barrel on through, until it dumps us into bed. Then we jump on the train again after morning coffee.

This not being on the train, barely being able to find the track, is tricky when I have so much to do. But I trust it. I want to take this cleansing opportunity to figure out which habitual train I am taking, to where, and why. This is good.