The View From My Tree House

I have come to realize that my feet are mysteriously linked to my heart, for,whatever my heart desires my feet are sure to follow.  I do believe they are equally responsible for my wanderlust and gypsy nature, for conjuring adventure against reason.

I leave Denver by way of a 17 ft. u-haul trailer, a wing and a prayer.  My daughter Adrienne once gave me a card that read, ‘when you have come to the end of all you know, there will either be ground beneath your feet or you will be given wings to fly.’

I have come to the end of all I know.

I reduce my belongings by two thirds and now live quite simply in 500 sq. ft, my version of monk’s quarters.  However being a bohemian means that it’s hardly austere.  My abode is a 1920′s tree house with a wood burning stove and a deep soaking tub. I am a half a mile from Lake Washington in Seattle, with a commanding view of Mt. Rainier.  The forest surrounding my house is thick and overgrown, the kind of place where small creatures and children like to hide.  This place is reminiscent of my beloved Ireland and all the things I love most about it, the water, the smell of the air, the winding roads and emerald paths…

There is something inside of me that has always been drawn to the unknown and foreign.  My senses and intuition are heightened in unfamiliar places.  I am challenged to let go of my prescribed sense of self, of all the places and people that give structure and meaning to my world. It lends a perspective that is humbling, stripped of  all personal identity save human.  In a city where I know less than a handful of people I have an anonymity I have never experienced before, and it is both unsettling and liberating.  Where I was once a chapter book, I am now a blank page.

Who is this woman who has left all she has ever known?

Who I have been feels remote, like a lover distanced by time and space. Yet I feel the faintest breath of my former self surface when I bathe, right before I awaken and sometimes when my mind gets still.  She is a chrysalis hanging mid-air.

I knew my heart would ache for my children, that I would miss my family and friends beyond the bearable. I knew that I would be challenged to the marrow to create a new world void of streets as mapped in my mind as the lines on my hands. How was I to know that simply knowing whether to turn right or left was so critical to my sense of confidence and comfort, or that I would feel so skinless?

My saving grace is my ability to surrender to the moment, to allow every thought and feeling to evaporate, to relax into my own vulnerability and emotional pain.  Sitting with uncertainty has become my practice.  Beginner’s mind, I allow myself to be the newly born. I am the ‘observer’ in this new life, the perpetual witness. I have the grace of continual connection to the subtleties of my inner experience, to the richness of solitude.  When I travel alone in foreign places I feel a quickening, a deeper level of expansion and a release from all the limitations of my conditioned mind.  Strangely enough I feel most at home when I am not.

The winged part of my nature loves the freedom of spontaneous movement, of the discovery that comes with the unknown.  It is not easy on my human psyche, on the part that needs to feel anchored.  Anchored to what?  My bold move has awakened the primordial fear of my mortal and impermanent existence, of the transiency of my life.  This is what has been lying deep with my unconscious mind and causing such a tsunami on the surface.  Nothing is permanent.  This is the lesson I learn once more.  But there is beauty in the brief, in the unrepeatable moments that come and go, that compose this delicate weave.  I drink my coffee, watch the morning light caress the surface of the lake, and bow to the mysterious forces that flow through my veins…

the mantra forms in my belly, an embryo of it’s own making.

dissolving once again and the soil beneath me slips away.

tethered  to this world only by the beat of my heart.

i am scraped clean, and splayed into the freedom of nothingness.

the gypsy north wind is blowing and my skirt rises to a cloudless sky.

my beloved keeps my pulse steady, and the mystic in my eyes.

no more checking my Self at the door, my elevator world comes to an end.

the smell of the earth, naked skin in the sun, a growing absence of I.

i fear not the losses, a string of

pearls plucked from the sea.

i have grown old into non Self and now there is no mortality that paralyzes my earthly bones.

i  can endure the red, black and white, the fire of the eternal One, but not a moment

without you.

awakened in you i doth not sleep.

feed me your tender kisses my beloved, and lie inside my body this night.

there is no me with you.

santidevi

Get on the elevator, stand in awkward silence with others that seem to be bracing themselves for a day in a box.  It is a monochromatic landscape despite the fuschia colored orchids in the lobby, the kind of environment that one wants to scream in or do something entirely inappropriate just to see if anyone has pulse enough to respond.  Do other people have such thoughts?  The spirit in me feels blindfolded and abducted, and the rebel looks for every opportunity to enter into the revolving door that leads to my other world.  How did I land here?

I file leases into perfect numerical order, according to range and township.  My mind adjusts to a new environment to work repetitive and numbing.  The copy machine, a marvel of technological wonder creates one perfect duplicate after another that I staple and stack into manila folders.  Time seems to move in slow motion, nine to five.  Stacks of paper, each one a lesson in Latin look pale under fluorescent lighting. My mind tires, my body longs to move, I wrestle with boredom and tedium in equal measure.  The more I wish I were anywhere else the more misery I create for myself. While I am here pondering my new existence, earthquakes shake the planet, people die in a swift moment without warning, pain and suffering erupts globally.  Impermanence, it is the one certainty.

Admittedly my most recent employment has felt imposed not organic, foreign not familiar, contrary to my nature not nourishing. I  have struggled to find meaning and purpose in this twist of fate. Every imaginable emotion has surged through my body, anger, frustration, relief, failure, immeasurable gratitude, and even despair. Was I ‘selling out’, giving up on the most passionate work of my life, was accepting this position a sign of resignation and defeat, or simply an act of self preservation?  My mind in it’s ‘fight or flight mode’ was fatalistically preoccupied with trying to interpret my latest set of circumstances. Self inquiry.  Who is creating this suffering, who feels defeated and valueless?  EGO. I wake up, and all of the noise of my fretful chaotic mind dissolves.  Simple awareness.

For the past three decades I have served the world through a livelihood that is consistent with who I am and what I value; serving humanity by awakening consciousness.  My path has allowed me to express my innate skills and abilities and has nourished my heart and soul.  I have never seen work as a ‘means to an end,’ as something one does simply to get from one day to the next.  I think of work as vocation, a true calling.  This calling comes from deep within our being, from a ‘knowing’ and longing that seeks to fulfill itself. My commitment to this inner knowing has been absolute, my faith and dedication unwavering. There has been no greater singular priority in my life than to honor that internal truth and to integrate it into my life.

‘Knowing’ has not led me to my current position, necessity has.  Perhaps this is the real reason behind my rebellion, on some level I felt I had no other choice.  After months of trying to find work I was more financially desperate than I have ever been. Normally I would consider having work when I needed it grace, but given the nature of the work it has felt more like penance.  For years I have had the luxury of determining the choreography of my days, of  choosing how I would spend my time and focus my energy.  There was an organic and natural flow that was completely  influenced by my own internal rhythm and directive.  There was space for spontaneity, freedom and magic.  Is there now?

Making peace with where I am has proven to be a greater challenge than I could have ever imagined. Embracing my situation has taken conscious effort, time, and a willingness to suspend my perception of how things should be. Apparently my work isn’t limited to specific environments, to spiritual communities, yoga studio’s, satsang audiences, and private students. Experience tells me that nothing in life is without purpose, value or meaning. I am where I am for a reason and rejecting ‘what is,’ only deepens the chasm between myself and the truth that is emerging. When I wake up, settle into the present, into my body, it’s enough, more than enough to be exactly where I am.

As soon as I let go of my judgement, my resistance and rebellion a beautiful thing happened… I was able to help one of my co-worker’s with his fear of flying, lend an open heart to someone who needed to cry, and offer a ‘listening presence’ to someone in need. I may have the opportunity to offer meditation in my workplace as part of a well being initiative. I get out of the way, I let go. I free fall into surrender, to the magnetic pull of the compass that lies at the center of my Soul.  I let go of my critical mind, of my attachment, and I bow once again to the mystery that propels my life and keeps me ever on my toes.

still evolving,

Santidevi

It is early spring and I feel the earth begin to awaken.  There is a quickening, like the first felt movements of a fetus in the womb.  The past several nights I have listened in my deep sleep to my own heart beating… its rhythm a constant fidelity.  By what miracle have I been kept alive?

My heart pulls me into a landslide of emotion, missing the home of my belonging.  I ache with a desire that steals the breath, as if parted from a lover against all will and reason. The touch, the smell, the softness of place, I am inconsolable. I drive deep, past the abyss of loss, the tempest of yearning. My rapture, united with the power of my soul, and the holy grace of the Divine, will take me back.  There is never distance between myself, and what I love.  Time and space is an illusion, this is the truth. Where there is faith there is no need of hope, where there is no expectation, no need of patience.  I return to the sanctum of my own knowing.  Stay awake santidevi, the moment is now!

I give my time, my life’s blood to another. Earning a living, paying the bills.  I can resist this, or surrender. That is always the choice. How present can I be regardless of my circumstances? There is a part that wants to flee, to escape the monotony of routine and subservience.  Every moment, practice. Another sadhana designed to refine my consciousness, to deepen my awareness, and fulfill my dharma. I watch the conditioned mind  mistake “my experience”, as the totality of my existence. I come back to the breath, to my beloved.  I relax into the spaciousness of being and I let go.  I accept “what is” with equanimity, and watch the resistance dissolve into ether.  Becoming water, there is no obstacle. There is no box that can contain me, no four walls that I cannot transcend.  I become peace in the midst of continual chaos, ever free…

I was born on March 14th, 1960 at 6:38 pm at a small hospital in Cozad Nebraska. The date, time, and place, of my appearance on this earth.  I have lived for 50 years much to my amazement, as I never expected to live to be 30.  We can never predict the duration of our lives, the events that will shape, influence and to a degree define our course. What a blessing to have lived this long, to have been given the opportunity to know a deeper level of truth, of spiritual awakening and liberation.  I give thanks this day, for the love that has nurtured me whole, for the unseen world that has revealed itself time and time again in luminous and inspiring ways, and for the Divine within this sacred body that continues to carry me forth.  When I disappear, I will take this with me…

love,

santidevi

P.S.  My sheela arrived from Ireland.

I begin to find my feet.  Nothing feels entirely familiar at the moment.  I was internal for so long that engaging in the world seems utterly foreign.  It is as though I am here for the first time. The solitude and silence that characterized the duration of my fast, has lent a simplicity to my life.  There is a natural, slow rhythm that defines my movements, the tempo of my mind.  My consciousness has become more flexible, more fluid… less contracted, unattached.  When one is completely emptied, the truth becomes self-evident. Being stripped to the bone, I was left with the “so ham” of my breath, and it was enough.  The extraneous was shed without any sense of personal loss… What is intrinsic endures, the immortal is without end.

It is as though my body, for the first time in my life has “embodied” the vastness of my Soul, and has submitted completely to it’s sovereignty.  The two are now as One. Synchronized as it were.  I FEEL the innate and indwelling intelligence directing my experience.  I FEEL its Presence. There is a new-found acuity that illuminates my Being, a softness that has penetrated my heart.  It was as if I was never born, or will never die.  There is a sense of being ETERNAL, here in this moment.  So grateful for the forces that tirelessly shook me loose.

I listen to the leaves fly, as the wind carries them in dust devil spirals into the air. People scatter in the high desert tsunami… winter has arrived.  I watch the snow fall.  Snow has a silence that intrigues me.  I watch it accumulate in fragile impermanence.  The trees bow to the seasons arrival. Non-resistance. What I know, I have learned through observing natural phenomenon, it has proven to be a master teacher.  It has taught me that every act is purposeful, every experience, in its essence, benevolent.  It has shown me that there is a field where all things manifest and take form, return and dissolve, in an endless unfolding. The miraculous, being no more then its humble expression.

The retreat is cancelled.  I bow.  I wonder how I will make my living?  I arrived home from India exactly a year ago to an economy that was breathing its last, my income evaporated over night.  By the grace of a dear friend and student I have been kept afloat while I have tried to resurrect my livelihood. It is incredibly humbling to be dependent on someone else’s generosity, to need financial help for the most basic of necessities.  The ego will always surface when our very survival is at risk.  I have watched the parade of emotions in response to my circumstances, deep uncertainty, underlying anxiety, sheer terror!  Moments of genuine clarity, unrelenting faith and invincible trust. Navigating unchartered waters that have challenged me to practice what I know to be true, to abide in that, despite the hell storm of an ego that felt suddenly extinguished.  Staying the course, persevering in the face of seemingly insurmountable obstacles is the only difference between success and failure, between the heroines journey, and the refusal to heed the call. When we give up on what we know we are to do in this world, there is a loss of Soul that is more dismembering then any earthly trial could ever be.

I remain true to the one thing that I must… my Self.  I do not know How I will continue to fulfill this dharma that has shaped my life.  The beauty is I don’t have to know How.  I am still learning how to discern when it is time to wait & when it is time to act.  When we are anxious about our uncertain lives, it is human nature to want to Make something happen!  This is reactive and fear based.  Understandable yet not wise.  I am here to serve, to awaken those who are ripened and willing.  The form that takes is truly irrelevant.  I am reminded of this today.  My blessed Shannon, a light in the tyranny of darkness, illuminated my heart from the throes of a discouragement that had taken hold of me. In her presence I found my Self again.  Thank you Shannon, for bringing me to the sanctity and sanity of the present.  This is what we do, this is who we are.

I have always found my way, even in the dark.  Resources have quite magically appeared and by grace, allowed me to continue my work.  Nothing has changed, everything has changed. The mind both binds and liberates, I choose liberation.

santidevi

Surrender requires humility, humility requires surrender.  When we stop resisting and judging what “is” we begin to experience the divine intelligence inherent in the phenomenal world. This same intelligence reveals itself within our own nature.  Contrary to what one might theorize this revelation does not inspire arrogance or self importance but true humility.  For there is an immediate transcendental awareness that this power does not originate from the individual “I”.  It eclipses it.  

I invite you to surrender.

Santi Devi