Doctortayria's Blog

Say good-bye to old sorrows, conflicts, ways of thinking and being that don’t want to come forward into 2011 with you. Say good-bye to fear, to barriers you have put up to hold out love, to habitual ways of seeing and interpreting loved ones. Say good-bye to limiting self-concepts, to judgment of others, to self-preservation above what serves the greater good. It is hard to say good-bye to familiar ways, but we can do it and this is a good time.

I just know that 2011 wants to bring new frequencies of love and gifts of the spirit. We have to consciously clear the cluttered space to make room.

Earth, moon, sun, stars, angels, ancestors, helpers of every kind, please help us now. We humans have a great work of transformation, healing and love to do.

Thank you for all you have done to bring us to now. And to here. Thank you.

At the core of every bit of the chaos and insanity, violence and hardship we experience as humans I believe that Love is the final, fundamental and only truth. I don’t say this naively. This is not some mystic dogma. It is hard-won for me to know this, say it and believe it with my whole heart. I want to add my voice to those who have said it before, who have experienced it as true and needed to say so.

Holiday times of year, such as this one, Christmas, that Christians and most of the Western world celebrate, often bring with them an instinctive migratory impulse – to brave the difficulties, uncertainties, expenses and rigors of travel so that we can be with the ones who we have known from the beginning. It can be a journey in time, back to origins and things primordial, even pre-verbal, in the psyche. The sights, smells, voices, memories, foods, utensils, patterns of every kind are potent.

These are opportunities to listen deeply into the old stories, personal and familial, to discover which ones can now be retold in a different light, with fresh perspective and maturity, and which ones run so deeply that only generations of ancestors before us hold the clues to unlocking their mystery. The times offer insight into what has shaped us and possibilities for longed for transformation and freedom.

So many humans across our planet are gathered now. I ask blessings for each and every one, that these times will be precious, fruitful, healing and renewing. There are deeper reasons than we can even begin to articulate for why we come together in these ways. Whatever the reasons are in the depths of being, may they be beautifully fulfilled.

Reminders come to me on this Christmas Eve that when Love incarnates in this world, it will be homeless and already sought for destruction. The manger for Christ’s birth is a sweet image, but a harsh reality too. The arrival of the Magi was already intercepted by a king who asked them to betray the child. The slaughter of the innocents was already in the making. Forces come out of the woodwork that are afraid of love and want to utterly destroy it before it can grow.

Whatever precious thing that arrives in our heart or our consciousness at this or any time of year, the stories of the season remind us not only to celebrate it but also to begin protecting it with all of the strength and powers. Ancestral, religious, political agendas are threatened by the insert of love as a central power; it upsets everything.

If something has been born in us recently we should look to it like Mary and Joseph did to their child. Signs had already said this birth was coming, then it did, and now the child must be transported to where he will be safe and can grow. Such is our mandate in responsibility to any love and innocence we give birth to. The road after birth  is fraught with threats and complications. We have to be alert and ready, and remember what we are protecting and why. The stories that surround the entrance of the divine child Jesus are actually very personal. They give us a map for how to navigate the terrain of our own archetypal and personal challenges that lay ahead.

Pay attention. The big adventure begins now.

Love was born at Christmas. This is a common phrase, often felt and experienced in certain ways, but lost to us in general I believe as to its actual truth.

Earth is but a cloak that hides heaven, a thin veil. Because earth seems dense and imperfect, full of trouble and fraught with sorrow heaven seems far away. But heaven is closer than our breath, spinning in our cells, and wants us to see through the veil into its simple glory.

This is what Buddha did under the Bodhi tree, what Mohammed did in his cave, what Jesus did seeing through the veils of the hypocrisies of pious traditions into passionate love for everyone he met, respect for the widow’s mite, pouring out his care upon the poor and the suffering.

I accept this birth in the cave of my heart. Come, sweet lord. I want to see what you see.

For those who don’t follow these things, a total eclipse of the moon happened exactly on the day of the winter solstice this year, yesterday. It was also a full moon. The last time a total eclipse happened on the winter solstice was 456 years ago. This is a big time.

Major shifts are observable in human psyche and affairs during and after eclipses. The shadowing of the light brings up hidden things – old ideas, insecurities, misperceptions, behaviors, issues for review. If well-utilized, this can be a time of clearing out notions and things no longer needed.

I am feeling the power of yesterday’s eclipse in a number of ways. Today I can’t help but think of the story that is at the core of this holiday, the birth of Jesus in a manger because there was no room in the inn. What a clearing out of lofty expectations for how things should go that tale tells! So often we think that if things aren’t going “right” then something must be “wrong.” And that we must be doing something wrong if things aren’t going as planned or hoped for.

Any such anxieties are due for clearing out and becoming eclipsed by new attitudes of trust and gratitude at a time like this. What if those who gave birth to Jesus had thought everything went wrong? The same spark of Christ light is in every atom in creation. What if we stood back and adored it for what it is, no matter how or where it is birthed?

The story at the heart of Christmas  is a simple one even as it seems a deep mystery. It is clear as a bell and yet confounds us. I hope this eclipse darkens old notions about it and brings new ones to light.

I have written in the last couple of weeks about recent experiences and reflections about those on the other side of the veil living in the world of the dead. These events have convinced me that the dead are close, present and actually quite alive . In the last two days some stories, dreams and occurrences seem to be showing me clearly that one of the persons on the other side has moved to a new place, has possibly been freed and healed of some binding conditions. I hadn’t been thinking directly of this as a result or intention of the work I was doing to honor and acknowledge the presences of the dead, so this came as a surprise and revelation.

Indigenous people absolutely knew and talked about how the departed need our help to move through to the next places, and often they cannot do it without our help. It was common knowledge. This knowledge has been known in such articulations as Catholics speaking of our obligation to “helping the souls in purgatory.” That notion became a scandalous cause for indulgences paid to the church, so the baby of the knowledge got thrown out with the bath water largely.

It is a good time to revise modern conceptions of the dead as gone; it simply isn’t so. Our responsibilities to them continue beyond their departure. They then need us more than ever possibly. Instinctively we know this. I think our innate understanding has been suppressed by fears and paranoias about death and dying only recently developed, in the course of human history.

Certain experiences that the universe has to offer cannot be had unless a person is willing to surrender, utterly let go and let the experience happen. The deepest spaces of joy, of grief, of love, sorrow or ecstasy often are never allowed for in human nature, are maybe never even really felt in a whole lifetime, as we seem to be trained to hold on to ourselves rather than surrender. “I don’t want to lose myself,” I remember hearing one person say coming up to such a border. That person denied the experience. This is surely not uncommon; in fact it is most common. May we need to ask ourselves, what or who is this “self” that we are protecting, that we don’t want to lose? Is it a real self, or a false or limited construction of self that we fear will be lost or dissolved in such an event? If the surrender is allowed, might we finally meet our true nature?

The perceived danger is real. The self that we are afraid to let go of will most likely be lost in such a fire.

Coming upon such a dangerous precipice yesterday I suddenly found myself breathing, not through my nose and lungs as usual, but instead through my feet and the crown of my head, a vertical breath going through the body and chakra system. I have never heard of such a thing, and it seemed odd, but as I worked with it a strength began infusing me. I felt – I can hold on and surrender at the same time. I may be able to really let go, let the wildness of the big energies consume and even annihilate me and at the same time I will not be lost; in fact I might be found. This felt new; like a whole new sense of how to live, a new power being discovered.

Life has been generous with her lessons of late that educate the side of me who thinks she does and should have control over personal, nonnegotiable standards for excellence, responsibility, presence and reliability. I have lived by these standards for most of my adult life and have taken them extremely seriously, without fail. Lately my brain has malfunctioned in a couple of instances – erased data that had just been there. These incidents seem to come in the turmoil of big changes presenting themselves which have the effect of adjusting schedules and scrambling attention.

I remember well learning from C.G. Jung that he believes that perfection is the masculine desideratum, while wholeness is that of the feminine. In the East the Divine Mother is often pictured with a veil over her eyes, as she does not look upon the flaws of her children, but rather sees and loves them just as they are.

Learning to work with inevitable mistakes and imperfections as expression and embrace of our humanity, even as honest revelations and signals regarding flaws in nature and human nature as divine revelations of how things actually are in the universe; this would be the feminine approach to wisdom. Wholeness, holding equally together all the parts of the efforts, including those that fail or screw up badly, have a place in the complete expression of our efforts and our learning. To split off impefection and jump only to the perceived perfection is to miss a LOT of what the teaching pieces are.

“There is a crack in everything. That is how the light gets in.” – Leonard Cohen

Last night I had a dream, a dream I have been having for night after night for the last 5 or more nights in a row. Each felt like I was in an operating room being operating on, with many spirits and intelligences extremely focused upon me. In the mornings I awakened with words and and images of having been “worked on, worked on, worked on, worked on,” as I wrote in my dream journal. Arriving to full to awakeness in the mornings the closing dream words would fade immediately. But, thankfully, this morning I caught them, and I knew they were the same words I had been waking up to every day for several in a row: “There is a crack in everything.” All morning I rolled this phrase around in my mind, thinking it an odd phrase and felt very curious why the dreams would end such. It took me some hours to remember and realize that these are words from a Leonard Cohen song. This man is such an exquisite poet, I am honored that my dream spoke in language he articulated. I am curious to see how this unfolds, as my operations in the dreamtime have been very intensive for several nights running. Here are the words to his song

“Anthem”

The birds they sang
at the break of day
Start again
I heard them say
Don’t dwell on what
has passed away
or what is yet to be.
Ah the wars they will
be fought again
The holy dove
She will be caught again
bought and sold
and bought again
the dove is never free.

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.

We asked for signs
the signs were sent:
the birth betrayed
the marriage spent
Yeah the widowhood
of every government —
signs for all to see.

I can’t run no more
with that lawless crowd
while the killers in high places
say their prayers out loud.
But they’ve summoned, they’ve summoned up
a thundercloud
and they’re going to hear from me.

Ring the bells that still can ring …

You can add up the parts
but you won’t have the sum
You can strike up the march,
there is no drum
Every heart, every heart
to love will come
but like a refugee.

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.
That’s how the light gets in.
That’s how the light gets in.