I choose not to take sleeping pills. Instead, I am finding my own way, and in the process making discoveries, some of them far-reaching, even life-changing.

As a long-time “awareness practitioner,” within the past year I’ve developed the capacity to actually notice, i.e., consciously witness, my mental and/or physical state during or immediately following the moment when I snap awake at night.

These states vary. For example, sometimes I wake up in a body/mind state of internal static, like a radio dial stuck between stations. More often, I wake up in a mental state of anxiety, even panic, with body tensed, poised for fight or flight. And sometimes my body feels paralyzed — by what I can only call dread. Here, panic’s “fight or flight” has withdrawn from the limbs to concentrate in the solar plexus/heart area — where a thousand pound weight seems to be pulling this command central of my nervous system down into a black hole abyss.

Rather than trying to squash or distract myself from these acutely uncomfortable, even painful feelings, I attempt to stay present. Rather than identify with the static, or anxiety, or panic, or dread, I ask that another “I” — the larger awareness that witnesses whatever “I” am going through — remain with the feeling and, in the process, sink below it into spaciousness. In this way, in nearly the same moment as waking from sleep, I also ask to awaken in this larger sense. For when the first shift of state (waking from sleep) yields to the second shift (awakening), then no matter how much the strong and unwelcome emotional state threatens to overwhelm, this larger, impersonal “I” (eye, aye!) of awareness attends the pulsations of strong feeling as surface waves upon the ocean of being.

This capacity for near-immediate double awakening from deep sleep has taken years of practice. Only within the past nine months has it even begun to bear fruit. And it’s still hit and miss! This is no surprise.

Like all incorporated souls undergoing experience from “birth” until “death” as an earthling, my awareness is focused through a dense physical body that utilizes five “outer” senses and a conscious mind formed by and encapsulated into a three-dimensional cultural framework that allows for only certain possibilities as real.

(What a hilarious thought, that the mysterious, open-ended, interdimensional omniverse in which we are immersed as droplets in an infinite ocean of being could or would consent to be captured by the picayune mental gyrations of the grid-seeking, linear-leaning, polarity-bewitched human left brain! And be aware: the dominant culture still equates this left brain capacity of the conscious mind with the self and views this ego-self as the source of all personal value.)

The programmed body/mind ego-self automatically funnels and locks the larger awareness into whatever happens to be the current wave of strong feeling triggered by internal or external events/“causes.” The programmed body/mind ego identifies with — for example, in the case of sudden middle-of-the-night wakefulness — panic, and moves immediately into readiness for action, “fight or flight.” Ego-“I” then instantly and automatically cathects the tension of extreme physical/emotional stress into ideas, “reasons” to “justify” and/or “ignore” the panic.

As a crone with nearly seven decades under my belt, I’ve had plenty of time to witness the near-continuous ebb and flow of feelings, and their ever-arising mental seductions that aim to disguise, deny, interpret, justify, critique, amplify, project them into something other than what they are, feelings! At this point, rather than identify with the contents of mental seduction, the instant ego-mind-“I” pops out one of its endlessly proliferating ideas, this larger I is usually able to — right then! — see through it to the feeling it was an attempt to disguise. The feeling is. I allow the feeling. I honor the feeling, give it permission to expand.

I have learned that if I fully allow a feeling, then, as it expands, it dissipates! Like everything else, feelings are impermanent, they dissolve and let go.

Daytime visitations of fear and panic last momentarily; I can easily invoke witness consciousness to see through them and let go — to remember myself as a spiritual being having an all-too-human physical experience. But these post-menopausl middle of the night visitations are another matter. The immersion into a continuous state of panic can endure for hours, during which the urge to invoke ego mind to squash the panic with “reasons” arises again and again. Again and again, I ask to wake up, allow the feeling in, watch it disappear into spaciousness.

I should say that this is what I do when I am willing to practice awareness, right then and there. If not, I’ll do what many insomniacs do, turn the light on and read (others get up and “do” something). But if, after 20 minutes or so, I’m still not sleepy, I’ll turn the light off and lie on my back, one hand on my heart, the other on my solar plexus — and ask gently for release.

This attitude is new. I used to rail against nightly interruptions, my resistance fueling the frustration of being unable to sleep. Identifying with my nerve-wracked state, left-brained mind would, just as in the daytime, instantly concoct an overlay of “reasons” why I felt that way. Like a wild horse, mind would rear up and gallop off, flinty hoofs sparking ideas one after another, and another, and yet another — endless causal chains of ideas, for or against, this or that.

At this point, my wrestling matches with insomnia remind me of my experience as a Catholic kid during Mass. It was hard to kneel and “pray” without juggling my knee and running off somewhere in my mind; it’s equally hard now lying in bed not to thrash about and wish I were elsewhere.

The difference between then and now is awareness. And with awareness comes the recognition that during these dark nights of outer silence and inner turbulence I am in the presence of the divine This, for me, is key: I have placed the “problem” of insomnia in a sacred context which, in turn, has transformed the meaning of the experience.

Here’s how the shift began.

2 AM, sometime in December, 2009: I snap awake, my entire body hissing. The loud internal shshshshshshsh ignites my body, starts it thrashing. Almost instantly — or is it prior to? simultaneous? — ego-mind clicks on, whines into high gear. Both systems rev up: body “tossing and turning,” throwing itself from one side to the other; mind seesawing between opposites, flashing from what it wants to what it fears.

Inside this cacophony a question arises: “Which comes first, body or mind?” Does the shift in state that wakes me from sleep start with the body’s digestive and nervous system dysfunctioning? Or does the mind’s invisible, culturally conditioned matrix randomly spew polarized pairs of ideas that scissor open the veil of sleep.

In any case, I sense, Descartes had it right. Body and mind do appear as closed systems that occupy different dimensions or frequencies; and moreover, these systems do seem to run parallel. It may be that they arise together at the mysterious interface between form and formlessness, extruding into different densities from a realm beyond. To me, this is an interesting observation, and one that I might not have made were it not for what I am learning to call my partnership with insomnia.

Since that cold December night nine months ago, I’ve discovered that I can focus awareness on either the physical state or the mental state and notice the same tempo. As they arise together, so together, they kaleidoscopically change, yoked to the same rhythm.

I have learned that I can set intention to focus awareness directly into the jaggedy, thrumming nervous system of the physical body, or I can set intention to focus awareness into the mental dynamic that churns out polarized ideas. Either focus works, in that awareness, when I can “hold it,” descends below both physical and mental agitation into spaciousness.

And when I make this my practice, to drop awareness down and remain there, moment by moment into duration, below the wriggling body, below the galloping mind, below even the mysterious rhythm that rules them both; when I thus manage to “lose track of time,” then they click off together.

In other words, when I not only wake up from sleep in a literal sense, but when I can consciously awaken from the nighttime sleep state and fly through (or under) the surface phenomena of agitated body/mind into full presence, then within minutes I automatically fall back, relaxed, into unconsciousness. In this way I am healing my lifelong insomniac tendencies.

And, as usual when I find myself beginning to heal a seemingly intractable “condition,” I begin to realize its gift and sense a kind of exaltation that hovers, tantalizing, just out of reach.

Since I am not the kind of person who practices daily seated meditation (I prefer moving meditation: yoga, tai chi, chi kung), this prone-in-the-middle-of-the-night meditation is precisely my cup of tea — but with a twist. For if one of the dangers of sitting meditation is falling asleep, then the biggest danger of prone meditation is not falling asleep! Like a few nights ago, when I awakened into panic around 1:20 AM, and remained there for three hours, in an agitated state and furious, both for being insomniac, and for identifying with my agitated state! I need at least seven hours of sleep; I got maybe six. In the morning my eyes felt scratchy and my nervous system jagged and raw.

Later that morning, while trying to work on this piece, my ears were fiercely attuned to the low, grinding roar of heavy machinery. A 3.5 mile segment of a two-lane road five houses from mine, slated for “improvement” by the state of Indiana 20 years ago, is now, unfortunately, underway. First, 500 trees are coming down. Next, utilities will move water mains and gas lines. Then, INDOT will begin actual construction, widening this road to four lanes, slicing a wide swath through the precious heart of this university town.

My usual work with insomnia is now challenged and intensified with the introduction of this waking nightmare of chaos, destruction, heavy industry, dust, and the prospect of permanently increased traffic and noise when the two-year project is completed.

That’s what had me riled up and insomniac; I was feeling trapped, heavy-hearted, and longing for the star-studded silence of my twenty years in a yurt in the Tetons. I did manage to notice that I was way too identified with my agitation to move into full presence, and so instead I brought up an image of the Dalai Lama, his hard-won equanimity in the face of Chinese obliteration of his Tibetan homeland. And I conjured up Nelson Mandela, his long years in jail. Both enduring seemingly permanent, and very unpleasant, outer world situations. Learning how to live inside them; practicing awareness in hell.

So this, I realize, is my hell, this road construction project and its aftermath. Right here, right now, in this example of the dominant culture’s hungry industrial maw, I must learn to move below what appears to the vast universe that underlies it. Remember, I tell myself, this is all happening on the surface. It is not real, it is an illusion.

Yeah, try telling that to my ears these days, with the grinding, not-so-far-off noise of giant machines picking up whole trees and swinging them aside . . .

Well, so; this . . . is . . . my practice. And I will have plenty of time to work with it. The rest of my life, if I want to stay in this house. Of course, I could move! Escape! Go back to yurt life in Wyoming! Scuttle off to a little cabin in the forest! Take to the desert in an RV! On and on, these thoughts crowded my brain that night, and even now.

And yet, and yet . . . I know that somehow, yes, this is my practice. To find and hold awareness, no matter how difficult the inner or outer environment! To easily and naturally move through the surface phenomena of body/mind agitation into full presence! To embrace even this road-widening project as a gift.

Though I “think” about this road in terms of its two-year construction and the traffic to follow, these are mental programs that I attach to ever-changing phenomena to understand and somehow control, fix in place, if not what happens, then at least my reaction.

And is that not what I’m doing? Trying to control my imploding fury and despair? Well, yes . . .

And yet, I’ve learned that “awareness,” when I can get it and hold it, offers continuous change as a defining feature. For when I try to grasp “it,” it’s no longer there. And when I can “get there,” the interpretations of phenomena break up into, simply, sensations, one after another, with no cause and no consequence, just . . . they are what they are, and what they are is changing, continually, constantly. Nothing stays the same.

So what does it mean to “get it and hold it” — this awareness that all is change, that any internal or external situation is inherently unstable, impermanent, and therefore not worth either grasping or avoiding — if, when I try to grasp this awareness, it’s gone? Because I do want to grasp it. I want to grasp this place of awareness where it doesn’t matter, where I don’t feel sick at heart, where I am at one with all — even this damn road.

As a friend of mine who practices vipassana meditation, noted, “Even if we can get there [to the point of awareness], it’s very hard to hold it.” So the word “hold” here means something very different from what I have been conditioned to expect. It does not refer to any particular state of awareness, or object of awareness.

In other words, it’s hard to stay in the state of continuous presence no matter what; impossible, really, unless “I” (that is, “awareness”) lives somehow beyond or behind or within the phenomena that runs on forever, sticking out from inside or in from outside, tripping me up so that I forget, and once again, get caught up in “what’s happening.”

Until this road snapped me to attention, more and more, I had been experiencing “what’s happening” as an illusion, the movie I and others have called into play, lived as more or less a thin transparent scrim projected from inside the bottomless fountain of what seems to be “inside me” and where “me” dissolves into the vastness. Just as a movie is less real than reality, so reality (as movie) is less real than the infinite, continuous, still presence of Being from within which all forms are born and pass away.

So I guess I should bless this road, for plunging me, once again, into the turbulence of polarity. I am reminded of LSD and its aftermath: first, the unitive flow, hour after timeless hour. Then, whoosh, the let down, as I crashed back into harsh, cold “reality.”

So this is no small thing, this middle-of-the-night insomniac’s exercise. After all, over what else do I have dominion? As I learn how to transform the internal conditions that lead to violence — the instinctive tendency, when thwarted or afraid, to invoke mind to justify blame, revenge, anger against others, and/or shame or guilt against myself, I gain entrance to . . . what is.

Yet there are nights when the dread I awaken into feels so strong and thick, so very stuck and formidable, that I suspect I have locked into something much larger than my puny self can contain. Rather, I sense dread as a powerful current within the collective consciousness, the zeitgeist, that ubiquitous and continuously mutating world wind that infects us all. There is no way to avoid it. The polarizing dynamics of the dominant culture are constantly programming and reprogramming us even as it begins to spin out of control, unraveling. And somehow, despite continuous corporate media and government assurances to the contrary, we all know it.

At some point our conditioned mental mechanisms of denial also dissolve, and the animal part of us kicks in, instinctively and automatically fighting for its own survival. And, unless we do invoke a larger awareness, Darwin was right, only the fittest will survive.

I imagine I’m not the only crone who has recognized the value of building capacity to move into a state of meditation or contemplation of what is amidst the continuous flux of phenomena, no matter how intense the current drama. Nearly seven decades of full-on living through countless experiences of attachment and release, growth and loss, ecstasy and sorrow have tempered my approach to life and gifted me with a perspective that includes them all and continues to expand over time.

As the infrastructure of our socially constructed, centrally controlled civilizational “reality” implodes, enormous energy is releasing. It’s as if a nuclear shock wave is radiating out in slow motion, and the bright-sunburst mushroom energy that follows is the blinding, solar light of human consciousness and creativity, each of us unleashed to find our own unique way without the old constraints. Jobs, homes, work, retirement, money — all that we took for granted vanishes — poof! — in an action-packed, hard-to-remember slow motion blink of an eye. Matter evaporates — into energy.

The equanimity that attends spaciousness is exactly what is needed to invoke a calming effect within the ongoing turbulence.

The inclusiveness that attends spaciousness is exactly what is needed to offer both connectivity and shelter.

Those of us who have lived a long time and learned from our enormous cache of multi-faceted experiences know — that none of us can find our way alone. We are in this together. What happens to one happens to us all.

Crone as refuge. Whoever comes within our expanded aura feels safe, secure, held, as a living, loving expression of being, and thus of intrinsic, inherent value. Nothing and no one is left out. Not even this ill-conceived nearby road-widening project. Those who designed this project, those who pushed it through, those who work on it now — all are members of my world. All of us together have chosen on a soul level to utilize this road-construction-project illusion as a stage to remember who we really are.

The universe is not a collection of objects but a communion of subjects. — Thomas Berry.

GANG WORKSHOPS 2011

A Project of the Green Acres Neighborhood Association

And an educational project of the Association of Regenerative Culture

At the Green Acres Neighborhood Garden

2601 E. DeKist St.

Workshop space is limited. To pre-register, please contact Ann Kreilkamp

812-334-1987 or arkcrone@gmail.com. Suggested donation per class: $5 to $15.

Shitake Mushroom Workshop

Sunday afternoon, April 17, 1-4 p.m.

This workshop, led by Nathan Harman, will entail a small fee to cover the cost of the mushroom spores which we will learn how to grow on oak logs.

Get Growing, GANG: Start The Garden

Saturday, April 30, 1-5 p.m.

Led by Rhonda Baird and Stephanie Partridge, this workshop will provide an overview of

spring garden tasks. The first half of the workshop will be indoors and the second half,

hands on in the garden. Let’s see how those raised, heavily mulched, lasagna beds we

built last year are coming along. We will cover starting seeds

in flats and direct seeding, transplanting starts, using the cold frame, checking for weeds,

damage and problems, as well as soil analysis and amendment. Snacks and beverages

provided.

Children’s Workshop: Inviting the Little People into the Garden

Saturday, June 25, 2-4 p.m.

Led by Stephanie Partridge and Emily Ginzberg. Tribes all over the world have stories of little people (elves, leprechauns, fairies, spirits, sprites, gnomes, borrowers) and many times they are associated with gardens. Some believe they are peaceful keepers of the plants and help them grow and flourish. Others believe they are tricksters and you must pay homage to them or else they will play with your plants. I believe the little garden spirits, in whatever manifestation, are good in nature and are here to help and have fun. Who better to help invite them to play than children? (We will talk about the fairies, and they hand out supplies to paint rocks bowls, shards. After done we will encourage them to make altars with twigs, leaves, etc.)

SUMMER SOLSTICE COB OVEN PIZZA, POTLUCK AND OPEN HOUSE FOR THE GREEN ACRES NEIGHBORHOOD AND ANYONE ELSE IMMEDIATELY FOLLOWING THIS WORKSHOP.

Summer Assessment, Seed Saving, and Planting the Fall Garden

Sunday, August 7, 9 am – 5 p.m

Led by Nathan Harman and Rhonda Baird. Just as summer crops are planted in spring, fall crops are planted in summer. This workshop will focus on caring for the garden in the high heat of summer,

planting the foods that will be harvested through the coming cool, and seed-saving techniques.

This is the hay-day of the garden and we will hopefully have yields galore. But, the weeds and insects and drying sun are also trying to make their way, so mulch, shade cloth, row cover and other

techniques will be employed as we keep the summer crops vibrant and give our fall crops

a running start. BYO lunch. Snacks and beverages provided.

Harvest and Preservation: Drying, Canning, Freezing, Fermenting

Saturday, August 27, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Led by Jami Scholl and Leea Gauthier. In the midst of summer, it’s easy to think the zucchini and tomato flow will never quit. But cease they shall, and that’s when we turn to the cupboard full of the years stored sunlight in the form of canned, dried, frozen and fermented garden foods. This workshop

will teach a variety of preservation methods useful to the home gardener. We will spend

an hour with slides and handouts and then harvest, process and sample. Learn how to

reduce food costs while increasing nutrition and flavor through the winter. BYO lunch.

Putting the Garden to Bed and Celebration

Sunday, November 6, 2-5 p.m., then celebrate

Led by Rhonda Baird and Stephanie Partridge. Though there are still winter-hardy plants in the ground, this is the time to clean up and

compost any garden wastes, mulch well, tidy up, and put season-extending hoop-houses

and cold frames over more tender greens. Learn what plants require what degree of care

in this risky weather and just how far into winter they can go. We will also spend time

putting our tools to bed, cleaning, sharpening, oiling and storing to be sure they last as

long and work as well as possible. It’s difficult to get excited about spending less time in

the garden and that’s why we’ll enjoy our second annual harvest potluck dinner and

celebration afterwards!

Stephanie and me, January 2011

Wonderful, young, creative, and enthusiastic Stephanie and I spent 2.5 hours on Monday — waiting until the waxing Moon went into nurturing, watery Cancer — mixing soil, and then planting seeds in flats. We planted about half the seeds.  The rest will be seeded directly into the garden on April 30, during the second GANG workshop of 2011:

Get Growing, GANG: Start The Garden

Sunday, April 30, 1-5 p.m.

Led by Rhonda Baird and Stephanie Partridge, this workshop will provide an overview of

spring garden tasks. The first half of the workshop will be indoors and the second half,

hands on in the garden. Let’s see how those raised, heavily mulched, lasagna beds we

built last year are coming along. We will cover starting seeds

in flats and direct seeding, transplanting starts, using the cold frame, checking for weeds,

damage and problems, as well as soil analysis and amendment. Snacks and beverages

provided.

Even though I’ve now taken both the Permaculture Design Course and the Grow Organic Educator Series (put on by the local Parks and Rec Department) I still rely on others for their expertise in the garden. Why? Well, there’s just so damn much to learn! Plus, there are always tips from others as to how to make things easier and more efficient. For example, working with Stephanie, I noticed how she worked with saran wrap (used to cover the seeds until they begin to shoot up their tiny leaves). . .

No way I could explain her technique to you, or my bungled technique that had got me cursing. Just know that she made it look easy, and now it’s easy for me, too, copying her.

So I was very glad that Stephanie volunteered for this seed-planting task. She was able to quickly divide all the seeds into two piles: those that would be planted in containers now, and those to direct seed into the garden.

Meanwhile, I rooted around for a container big enough to mix up the potting soil and did that.

Felt so good to get my hands in the dirt. I always forget how good it feels to be back in my body again — at least for that afternoon! (I’ve been zeroed in on writing for my new exopermaculture website, doing what I most like to do, pioneer new ways of being . . .)

So, to continue: Stephanie and I then cleared the kitchen table of its tablecloth, and went to work:

For salad greens —  lettuces, mesclun, tat soi, bok choi, others — we scattered seeds lightly over moist soil and then scattered a bit more moist soil over them. Sometimes filling an entire flat, sometimes half a flat with one type, half with another type . . .

Other seeds went onto soil in rows (and labeled!) — lots and lots of different herbs, plus chard, arugula, mustard  — again with moist soil over them . . .

Still others — many tomato and pepper varieties, plus cauliflower and eggplant, went into flats divided into tiny pots.

Then Stephanie posed with five of the trays (and Emma, sniffing her armpit).

And here are the other five flats (one of them resting on the dehydrator).

Voila! Done! They’ll stay in the greenhouse until we plant them outside, getting misted daily or more often until it’s safe to water them with a watering can (after seeds have rooted).

Next: Sunday, coming right up, a trip out to get horse manure with Stephanie, Mary, and son Colin. Time to add nitrogen to the soil . . .

.

Emily arrived hauling an armful of donated gunny sacks from the Runcible Spoon restaurant — and a promise of more! (Thanks, Runcible Spoon! We’re going to experiment with using them as recycled soil-filled containers for hanging tomato plants.)

Emily also reported on her initial research into adding animals into the garden system. We’re still looking at some combination of chickens, ducks, guinea pigs — even a small goat, if possible — and she will now research relevant city zoning ordinances. We’re also wondering which species get along, and how both they and the design and location of their cages can most fully enhance garden processes. For example, Stephanie brought with her the idea that wire-mesh floored rabbit cages could be placed directly above a vermicompost bin, to feed it regularly and automatically with poop.

Stephanie researched the feasibility of utilizing the existing pond to grow and harvest edible fish. She reports that the biggest concern is that the water contain enough oxygen for the fish. We might think about some kind of a pump (a solar powered pump?), and/or nutrient-fixing algae that won’t take over the pond. Bass and bluegill live well together, as do catfish and trout, though different species flourish best at different temperatures. We also need to figure out the number of gallons this pond holds.

Stephanie highly recommends a Readers’ Digest book, Back to Basics, for anyone interested in simple, sustainable systems for survival. From this book she gleaned that crushed eggshells give necessary calcium to broccoli and cabbage, and that coffee grounds repel root maggot in carrots. She suggested that we ask neighbors for their eggshells and coffee grounds, while telling them what they can be used for. This feeds into another suggestion (she arrived full of them!):

to make rain-proof note cards for each plant in the garden with its name and bullet points about why we plant it in this location and its nutritional value. Yes! let us make just coming into the garden an educational experience, especially for children.

To this, Emily had a bright idea: to ask her bio professor about organizing field trips to the garden with MCCSC schools.

Adding fuel to the creative fire, Stephanie trotted out another of her ideas, one instantly dear to my heart: host a Children’s Workshop this spring, for making fairy altars and charms that invite the Little People in. We might do this while an adult workshop is taking place. Both Stephanie and Emily eagerly signed on to teach this workshop, and I am thrilled to be doing it, as it builds in a multidimensional aspect to the garden, being both metaphysical (meta-physical = invisible!) and aesthetic. She also showed us a design that would incorporate my stubborn idea for an art-class project to sculpt a totem pole into a round table design (the pole fitting through a hole in the table). At the top of the totem pole she envisages a tee-pee like structure for hanging and climbing plants. (Let me note that Mary Wheeler had a similar idea last year; that meme is gaining traction!)

At this point Stephanie, who, I’m very happy to say, has a lot of experience with gardening, showed us her initial draft design for this year’s planting, focusing on companion planting to both cut down on weeding and enhance healthy plants. For example, she told us, tomatoes, basil and cucumbers all grow well together, because they like acidic soil.(Last year, one of our teachers, Nathan Harman, had instructed us to plant basil between the tomato plant, but I hadn’t realized why.)

Her design had been made off the map from last year’s garden, and we have made new beds since then. So the next step was to go into the garden and correct and refine the map, plus deciding what other things to plant, and where.

Her planting ideas also got us excited:

• grow herbs for a Tea Garden in front of my house, including: pineapple sage, cinnamon basil, mints (pepper, chocolate, apple. . .) lemon grass (or lemon thyme or lemon balm), mullen, echinacea, chamomile, and lavender.

• Make one of the beds a “night garden” (for flowers that bloom at night), and place it near the picnic area, possibly even outside the fence.

While in the garden, we wondered what do with kale and chard (kale, especially, was very successful last year, but needs a new place to bed), and what plants like to grow with them. We decided to plant a large variety of greens, again in the shaded areas behind the trellises, and add both artichokes and an asparagus bed (can be part shade). We decided to experiment, not only with tomatoes, but also with hanging mint and cucumber plants. And we may plant some tomatoes in the same place they were in last year (the jury is out on whether or not tomatoes are the exception to the usual rule of rotating plants to new beds so that they go back to the original bed only after three years). We’ll also add peas along the fence.

After our adventure dreaming in the dormant garden, Colin joined us in time for our final task, ordering seeds.

But first, Colin wanted to talk about water, and the fact that the city was going to charge 50% more for water this year, and how much water we used last year, watering three times weekly during the drought. Not only that, but our watering was shallow, and thus did not inspire the roots to grow deeper. He wants to find a way to conserve water and have it reach deeply into the root zone. Not sure how yet. Swales down the middle of each bed? Some kind of modified drip irrigation system? Stay tuned, he’s an inventor.

Back to the seed catalogs. We had just opened the new Johnny’s Selected Seeds catalog (a good one, employee-owned, and identifies some of its seeds as organic),

when Colin threw down the gauntlet. Why are we buying from a catalog? How about buying seeds locally? Oops! Of course, assuming we can get them all here.

So we ended our energy-filled afternoon there and then. Stephanie said she’d look up local seed companies, and finish the design, incorporating not only what we planted last year, but also add the herbs basil, lavender, tarragon, oregano, dill, cilantro and parsley into the beds. Plus these flowers: jasmine, nasturtium, sweet cicely (attracts butterflies and roots taste like anise), amaranth, wisteria, and evening primrose.

The day after we met, Stephanie reported back in: Here are the local seed companies from which we will order our seeds when we meet two weeks hence, again on a Sunday, February 13, at 4 p.m.: Nature’s Crossroads and Wiley House. If they don’t have all that we need, we’ll go back to Johnny’s. (Even better, would be a seed-sharing party among permaculturists, but I’m not the one to organize it. Any takers?) Meanwhile, we plan to do a seed-saving workshop this year. It’s about time we added this obvious function into the GANG’s slowly-developing sustainable permaculture system.

Preface

January, 2011. Here we are, already in the second decade of the new century, new millennium, and I, for one, feel astonished to still be here — and waiting. Waiting for the Apocalypse? Waiting for Ascension? In any case, uneasy, and wondering. When will “it” come? And how will I prepare?

In the midst of sensing ourselves in the eye of a collective and telluric and even cosmic storm, most of us are still dealing with old issues that we know intuitively, we simply must release in order to move forward. Especially now, when time is accelerating so dramatically, events piling like dominos, and security systems of all kinds — personal, interpersonal, social and collective — thinning to the point of dissolution.

As an astrologer, I have been aware of the ongoing geometric pile-up of enormous systemic tensions amongst the planets in our solar system and how they impact Earth. I’ve known for years that beginning in 2008, civilizational infrastructures would undergo tectonic shifts that could collapse the entire house of cards.  (And that’s just our local system. Then there’s all the talk of the Mayan Calendar, with its unimaginably long cycles, all said to be ending either in October of 2011 or December of 2012.)

My own response to this prior recognition has been to focus on centering myself to the point of being able to maintain continuous internal balance. In order to do this I need to clear my own biological system to the point where the energy of the universe can flow smoothly through without impediment. As I work to shift my own personal frequency, so that all traces of fear are eliminated as they arise, I ask that I be allowed to serve as a vessel of love spreading equally to all.

It is from within this larger, intensely private context of personal work that I feel impelled to tell this story now. I pray that it may assist others still saddled with seemingly intractable addictions and other habit patterns that appear to disconnect us from the inherent flow of love.

At the heart of my tale is the heartening news that there do seem to be moments when light suddenly, inexplicably, cracks through the thick walls of our old, stuck habit patterns. These moments of grace feel miraculous, undeserved; and yet, when we look back, we recognize that we have been, consciously or not, preparing ourselves all along. So much so, that when grace does, suddenly, illuminate, we are poised to follow through with its astonishing promise.

The Scene

October, 1982. I am 39 years old and my life has, slowly, inexorably, ground down to dust.

Everything I’ve worked for has whirled into the abyss. Three marriages, two children, career as a college professor, several utopian experiments in community — all gone. Vanished. Poof!

Last month, I loaded my little car and moved — to yet another new town, to launch yet another idealistic project with no money, and — tried, yet again, to “stop smoking.”

Each time I try, and fail, the ancient physiological/psychological pattern that grips me tightens. Repeated failure has exposed my essential worthlessness. “You think you can do this? HA! We’ll show you,” snarl the demon dogs of defeat while digging yet more dirt from my already deep grave.

My chronic inability to “quit smoking” has undermind every attempt to jumpstart my life, ignite my original nature, and unfold my unique destiny.

I know all this.

I also know that I can’t quit. That I just don’t have it in me to quit. As my brother-in-law, a few months ago, casually pronounced: “You have the personality of a smoker. You won’t quit. You can’t quit. You’ll never quit.” He said this as a statement of fact. I took it as a terminal insult. And yet, he was right. I had reached the end of my rope. I had to change, and I couldn’t.

The Shift

And here’s where this narrative suddenly accelerates, blasts through the usual three-dimensional matrix. For when I finally admitted to myself that I, my ego, was powerless in the face of this all-powerful addiction, the universe opened to admit the light. Not obviously, and not all at once. Others would never have known. In fact, from the outside it looked like the exact opposite: all of a sudden I started smoking more than usual! Voraciously. With a vengeance.

And yet, here’s what happened internally: at the precise moment when I fully realized that I couldn’t quit, that my ego was just not strong enough to control this horrid habit, I gave up. I stopped struggling and surrendered, handing the responsibility for releasing this addiction to what I called my “Higher Self.”

Looking back, I now recognize that during all those years as a smoker, I was also gradually acknowledging and incorporating this subtle, larger, mysterious aspect of my being within my smoke-ravaged body. In a stealth move, the diaphanous “higher self” had, apparently, burrowed into my body even deeper than the stink of addiction.

Or perhaps the Self had been present all along; and perhaps my conscious confession that I had no way out of the abyss of my despicable addiction was the price of admission. For the abyss, it turned out, was not the abyss! For it was not endless; I did not fall forever. To my utter astonishment, by consciously letting myself be totally sucked in to my smoking habit — with no further attempts to curb it and no time wasted in denial or guilt — I ended up landing on, or in, the Self.

And the Self knew the future; knew that even though “I” — my ego — was still addicted, when that part of me was ready, it would let smoking go. And that moreover, releasing it would be easy.

So that’s where my ruminations ended on that day when I first confessed, and then surrendered, to what seemed, at first, to be a terrifying void. Unbeknownst to me, I had landed in this Self that knew the future. The Self that knew  the ego would wake up,  that it was only a matter of time. Indeed, the awakening process had already ignited, given that my awareness, in the act of knowing, absorbed the ego as a mere point within the seemingly boundless space of its being. This larger, deeper Self didn’t have to be told, or to check with others. External validation, that game played by the ego in the drama of 3-D illusion, was irrelevant. The Self just knew, with a serene, quiet assurance, that all was well.

From that moment on, I, that is, the Self, knew that the job of letting go of cigarettes wasn’t up to me, my ego. That this was a job only the Self could accomplish. So ego-I didn’t have to worry about it anymore, or hate myself anymore. I could smoke as much as I liked, for as long as I liked, while awaiting the miracle, when releasing cigarettes would be easy, a piece of cake, like falling off a log.

I didn’t know how long I would have to wait. It might be three days, or three weeks or three years, or three lifetimes, — and it didn’t matter because, in any case, at some point the larger me knew that the smaller me would jettison this foul habit as way too small for the being that was unfolding, the person I was becoming.

Though validation was neither sought or required, had I been more in touch with the culture at large I would have realized that in my own intensely private, personal process I had stumbled upon the first two steps of Alcoholics Anonymous: 1) admit that you are powerless, and 2) give the problem to a higher power. At the time I was not familiar with this organization’s credo.

I had also stumbled upon the truth of Einstein’s famous maxim: “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” Or, in the language I dressed it in later: “We cannot solve a problem until we put that problem in a larger context — where the problem is not solved but dissolved.” The Higher Self, in my lingo, was that larger context. I would hand over my addiction to this larger being and know that when the larger “I” had fully prepared the smaller “ego,” then the ego-self would easily release the addiction as a garment that no longer fit. How that would happen, I had no idea. From my ego’s jaded, weary, thoroughly cynical perspective, it would clearly take a miracle, something so radical and shocking as to cleave my life in two.

Meanwhile, I would smoke as much as my ego-self wanted — hell, even more than usual. Rather than trying to hold myself on a tight rein, I would let go of all constraints and all the guilt, and just indulge. So I did.

Meanwhile, and simultaneously, from that moment on, the mysterious event that had propelled this narrative through the 3-D veil continued its work of preparing little ego-me. At first, the process was so subtle that I hardly noticed it. Over the next weeks it gradually strengthened. Without consciously deciding to do so, I began to visualize myself as a snake shedding its skin. Over and over again, conjuring and holding this image, of being a snake, about to shed its skin.

Two months went by. At Christmastime, I traveled to Ketchum, Idaho for the usual strained visit with family. (I had been the first of eight children, the perfect, model child — until I turned 26, when I rebelled against my doctor father’s Catholic ideology and morphed into the black sheep.)

Picture this: Ann, curled into a tense ball on the couch in the parental living room, pretending to read a book. Internally she is counting the days until she can leave. Not smoking in the house (her father forbade it), hasn’t helped her contentious mood.

Shift Again

But then, again, for the second time, this narrative bursts through three-dimensional constraints to materialize an encounter so unexpected and remarkable that it shocked me further into aliveness. Even then I knew: this was the miracle I had been waiting for, the sudden, unexpected event that would cleave reality in two and set me on an entirely new course.

My father walked up to me with the current issue of the Journal of American Medical Association. He handed it to me, opened to a certain page, and said, in a voice unlike his own, “Here. You might want to read this.” Rather than with his usual judgmental tone, my father had approached me seriously but casually; as if I were an equal, a colleague who would appreciate what he had to share.

The article claimed that the process of making cigarettes was radioactive! If this first-ever sensing of camaraderie with my father had already softened my habitual contentiousness, now I was galvanized. For if what the author claimed was true, then continuing to smoke cigarettes would make a mockery of my work as an anti-nuclear peace activist. Instantly, my perspective shifted. I could not tolerate hypocrisy. Either I would no longer smoke, or I would stop being an activist.

It’s hard to describe how liberated I felt in that moment. All of a sudden, I had been yanked from sodden darkness into brilliant light, all senses switched on, heart thrumming and eager. Immediately, I knew exactly what I would do.

A good friend of mine and her husband owned a beautiful house on the north rim of the Snake River canyon, two hours away. The house was for sale, and empty. She had offered to let me stay there anytime. I arranged to be there until driving to Sun Valley for a previously scheduled weekend date.

During those five days I would fast on fresh vegetable and fruit juices, take long walks into the magical canyon, soak in the luxurious hot tub, write in my beloved journal, and listen to soul-stirring music.

I’ll never forget the ritual of smoking that last cigarette, sitting on the beautiful couch in the floor-to-ceiling windowed living room while absorbing surround-sound stereo and watching a pair of eagles swoop over the canyon rim.

And that was it. That truly was it. I haven’t touched a cigarette since.

I followed that last cigarette with the blessed five-day interlude of fasting, walking, soaking, writing, listening, and, just as I had known in advance, releasing cigarettes was easy. A piece of cake. Like falling off a log. For the first time I wasn’t even tempted to furtively scour wastebaskets and street curbs for butts; nor did I need to talk myself out of hopping in the car and going to the 7-Eleven for one more pack. Reality had cleaved in two. That was before. This was after. I was done.

Or was I?

Oops! Should I cancel my Sun Valley date? The man smoked. Of course he smoked. All my friends smoked. That’s the outer environment I had attracted to mirror my inner state. Would I be able to spend an entire weekend with a man who still smoked and not smoke myself?

I decided I would keep the date. For if not now, when? I would have to learn how to hold this inner transformation. Indeed, this was the crucial test. Which would hold value no matter what the external environment, the new me, or the old? Which would prove more uncomfortable, to profoundly disappoint my Self or to create a temporary disruption in the atmosphere with my date? I was about to find out.

The third shift

Sitting down to dinner at the restaurant that Friday evening, we ordered drinks; graciously, he pulled out a cigarette pack and offered me one. That moment when he reached across the table was the third time this narrative suddenly burst through the usual 3-D dynamics. For not only did I refuse, but I, surprised myself for doing so with a grace equal to his offer. Moreover, I did not judge him for smoking.

From that moment on, I intuitively knew that if I did judge him, or anyone for smoking, then I myself would start smoking again. Moreover, I knew that I would be required to continue living in an environment where people smoked for one full year, and not judge them for it. At the end of that year, my circumstances would change. Either those around me would also release smoking or I would find myself in an entirely new situation.

And that’s exactly what happened. All my housemates smoked, and I lived among them, not smoking, and letting go of judgment each time it came up. Moreover, I noticed that judgment was gradually transforming into compassion. As a former smoker myself, I knew that my judgments were nothing compared to theirs against themselves. That like me, they were secretly riddled with guilt and self-hatred.

At the end of that year I was invited to move into a rural yurt community, where no one smoked.

An unusual twist

Meanwhile, it turned out that my higher self had to intervene one more time to help me thread my way through that year’s 3-D cauldron. And this is the part of the story which, quite frankly, I find brilliant! Nor have I seen any other account of redemption from addiction which mentions the technique that my higher Self utilized to assist the shift.

This technique stemmed from an understanding that I had begun to integrate around this same time — that of the “inner child,” as elucidated in The Drama of the Gifted Child, Alice Miller’s extraordinary book about the psychological and spiritual consequences of strict, even cruel German child-rearing methods. This book introduced me to the idea that a part of me, the inner child, whom I named “Orphan Annie,” did not get her oral needs met at the appropriate age. (On the day my father left for World War II, my mother weaned me from the breast to a cup. I was nine months old.) The book helped me to recognize that my craving for cigarettes was an unconscious — and consistently, desperately unsatisfying — substitute for that original unmet need.

Recognizing the source of the craving didn’t stop it, but it did help me to understand that the part of me that was addicted was this inner child. And that in order to truly let go of this vicious habit I would need to find something to distract her for awhile. Otherwise she would eventually rebel, insist on getting her way and march right back to cigarettes. It was important that Orphan Annie not feel bereft and ignored; to keep her from feeling abandoned, I would reward her for her sacrifice.

I would allow her to develop another addiction, and keep it for a full year, a habit that would be a welcome substitute for cigarettes and yet (hopefully!) not as addictive. Further, the second addiction couldn’t cost any more than the original one, since at the time I was living on very little money.

So here’s what I came up with: twice a week I would reward my inner child for “good behavior” by taking her out to breakfast, spending the same amount of money that I had spent on pack-a-day cigarettes on a sweet roll. I would allow the new addiction, to sugar. I knew it wouldn’t be that difficult to let go of, since I did so after each Christmas holiday. So now, I would allow the addiction to sugar until the end of the first full year post-cigarettes.

The experiment worked. At the end of that year I easily released the sugar habit.

Looking Back

I still view the release of cigarettes as the biggest accomplishment of my entire life; for it set the foundation. By letting that addiction go I released the continuous undermining of my own self-esteem that had prevented me from unfolding the wonders of my original nature and expanding into oneness with all that is.

Yet the year-long release of cigarettes was just the beginning. I knew I would need to begin to uncover the emotional roots that had crystallized into the physical addiction. And in order to do that, I would have to go back to the beginning, and begin again. I would have to do that “inner child” work mentioned above, to “face, embrace and erase” the deep emotional patterns that had structured my so-called life into a tight little locked box with no key.

Being a perennial optimist, I thought the inner child work might take me six months. Instead, it took seven years — and even now, 30 years later, once in a while I detect traces, tendrils, of fear and constriction that I have learned to breathe my way through . . .

How I did all that is a story for another time. Suffice it to say that I did not go into therapy. I did it myself, with the help of my journal, my dreams, a heightened alertness to the presence of synchronicities, periodic co-counseling with a few close female friends, and my overall commitment to waking up in the present moment, over and over again, to a larger awareness.

Meanwhile, I now recognize that once an addict, always an addict. The structure of my personality in this life is that of an addict. So I have a choice: I can choose “good” (life-maintaining or enhancing) addictions or I can choose “bad” (life-denying or destroying) ones.

I spend two hours in what I call “physical culture” each day: one hour walking with my little dog, and another hour doing a combination of yoga, chi kung and tai chi. I indulge and encourage these “addictions,” plus one more: the continuous strong and prayerful intention to practice awareness of the present moment. Of the now, as it opens into space, the quantum field holding endless potential.

As a result of all this work over the decades, I can truly say that I feel stronger, more flexible, attuned and integrated, than at any time in my long life. Life truly does get better and better, as our awareness widens to encompass more and more of the loving generosity of being.

Luckily, I am one of many who have pioneered this work to clear the body/mind/spirit of  life-denying addictions. As a result, the template for releasing what no longer serves us is in place; this makes it much easier for others to do the same work. It helps to know that the mysterious subtle, sacred realms that lie just on the other side of our usual third-dimensional experience of life can be called upon to aid us at any moment.

Just ask, and ye shall receive.

Note: I tried to finish this post yesterday in time to post it on January 22, when giant Jupiter entered fast Aries, but just wasn’t fast enough. Reality keeps slipping behind . . .

This story begins January 4^th, with the first New Moon and solar eclipse of 2011. January 4^th also happened to fall within the aura of the third and final Jupiter/Uranus conjunction of its 13-year cycle, a fact significant to me, as you will see.

So, to begin.

After two full years of not doing ceremony, when I woke up on January 4^th I was surprised to find myself strongly impelled to dust off my tiny, handmade Peruvian rug, unfold and center it on the living room floor, and carefully arrange upon it candle, crystals and other sacred objects. Then, bowing to my impromptu altar, I sat on the floor to meditate.

Nearly three weeks have gone by since that little ceremony.

And now, today, January 22, after one full year during which Jupiter and Uranus both slogged their way through watery Pisces, Jupiter enters Aries.

Jupiter will race through Aries in less than five months, igniting both chaos and high, high creativity. Then Jupiter will settle down in June to ground the new initiatives in Taurus for one full year .

Meanwhile, in March, Promethean Uranus will also slam into fiery Aries, just as the Mayan Calendar enters its final, culminating cycle. What took billions of years, then millions of years, then thousands, hundreds, decades, mere years, will compress into just 260 days — in a yet again 20-fold time acceleration.

Can we do it? Are we prepared internally to process experience so quickly it will be as if we must pivot from one paradigm-shattering event to the next, on and on, and on? Are we resilient? Have we moved into equanimity no matter what the shock that shudders through, with no let up, no breaks, and no time to leisurely assess import?

Way back in the summer of 2010, the first conjunction between Jupiter and Uranus paralleled the Gulf Oil catastrophe and we were confronted with our sudden, drastic, empathic communion with all of life — plant, animal, and human — in, on, and around the Gulf of Mexico, its air and water currents spiraling out to contaminate the globe.

During the third and final Jupiter/Uranus conjunction, again in watery Pisces early this month of January 2011, we were confronted and confounded by the start of still ongoing bird, fish, and now even large animal kills in various locations around the globe.

Pisces symbolizes (among other things) the fluid media within which all creatures on earth are immersed. Jupiter (large) and Uranus (sudden change) together in Pisces: sudden, drastic changes of state in fluids, whether that be water, or air, or our feelings. Who knows, maybe even the composition of our blood and lymph and spinal fluids are altering . . .

(Various theories try to account for the ongoing kills. I intuitively favor the theory that an gradual pole shift is causing Earth’s magnetics to create sudden, powerful disturbances in seemingly random telluric and atmospheric pockets.)

Besides its larger, collective import, the Jupiter/Uranus conjunction in late Pisces squared (occurred 90° from) my 27° Sagittarian Sun. So I knew that I needed to expect the unexpected in my own life.

During the meditation part of my January 4, New Moon/New Year 2011 ceremony, I cleared my mind into spaciousness and waited for a message. Within a very short while an inner voice whispered a single word: respond. That’s it! Just “respond,” soft, strong, and clear.

I had to admit that I was “expecting” more, even something profound. But, no. Respond? Huh?

Yet I must have unconsciously absorbed the message, because on January 12, only eight days later, I noticed that the creator of a website that I deeply admire was inviting people with writing skills and interest in the topic of extra- and interdimensional phenomena relating to the 2012 Ascension Process to join him. Instantly, with no hesitation, I responded.

His call and my response then launched a short, intense cycle of experience with this man which then, suddenly and unexpectedly, closed! — on the day of the Full Moon! — thus fulfilling the promise of the ritual.

Our partnership had seemed full of high promise. Both of us “expected” it to continue. I felt excited about the prospect of co-creating with this new partner for his website’s audience on a subject dear to my heart.

Instead, to our surprise, within one week our partnership was over.

Did I feel shocked? Yes. Surprised? Yes. Disappointed? Not really. Instead, it felt as if I had learned to pivot precisely around a single point and emerge, not only intact, but refreshed.

I had gone through that experience with enthusiasm, and apparently no attachment. Had I not gotten excited, had I remained “detached” to protect myself  “in case it didn’t work out,” I wouldn’t have experienced shock; nor would I have undergone the transformation that the shock ignited.

That short cycle felt like my 2011 initiation, into a series of who knows how many other shocks, unexpected surprises, about-face reversals, during what soothsayers of all kinds predict will be a year of massive, unsettling change. The ocean of humanity’s collective unconscious is roiling with gigantic, colliding currents, and we must learn how to surf.

It helps to view experiences in terms of their cycles — and consciously appreciate each one throughout its entire process — beginning, middle and end. Usually the length of the cycle is not known beforehand. I have learned to commit to each cycle on trust, to immerse myself fully for the duration — be it three minutes, three days, three weeks, three lifetimes — who knows? It’s all good. It’s all alive.

For I have learned that only when a cycle has closed can I stop to breathe in the full flavor. For its gestalt or pattern does not click into place until the circle closes. And even then, of course, as time goes on any experiential cycle embeds within larger and larger experiential cycles, all of which continuously morph in meaning. Nothing stays still. The frameworks that we use to order experiences pop, and pop again.

During that one very engaging week I learned that I am to help forge a conscious bridge between certain individuals and groups, both of whom are at the leading edge of human consciousness, but whose fields of awareness have, so far, been polarized. Let’s call these fields, for short, “above” and “below.”

The above: I include here those who are aware that we are not alone, that Earth is being constantly visited by extra-terrestrial and interdimensional visitors, most of whom are waiting an invitation to help, and in fact are already helping to ameliorate the damage we have done, and to ultimately transform this planet into a veritable Garden of Eden.

The below: I include here those who work to understand and practice the principles of permaculture as applied to both earth and human communities (including the Transition movement), and who assume that we humans are alone in a mighty and valiant struggle for survival on a planet that we have ruined.

Many of the “above” people, with their heads in the clouds, want to think that ETs will save us, if we can just be patient and trusting, and hold out until formal disclosure of their presence.

Many of the permaculture people “below” keep their noses to the ground, while focusing with unusual energy and creativity in concert with nature to ensure that at least a remnant of humanity survives.

Both “above” people and “below” people realize our planetary situation is drastic, and both experience fear. Those who are aware of their own inner processes (and that includes the more evolved in both “above” and “below” groups) work to transform this fear internally, lest they become part of the problem. They know that fear constricts, and that when fear recedes, love abides. They know that the alternatives are stark: separation, or oneness.

To create a bridge between the “above” and the “below” in this context is to shift from separation to oneness.

The “above” people see Earth in her cosmic context, and long to commune with the stars and our galactic visitors (or to observe and hear about others doing so), all while waiting for Ascension that supposedly arrives in either October 2011 or December 2012. The “below” people don’t have time for such absurd nonsense; they argue that only hard, unrelenting, creative, intelligent work, on the ground and in our communities, might turn the situation around — if its not already too late!

For years now, I’ve focused in both directions, feeling internally split. On the one hand, I was attending UFO congresses and devouring channeled and ET material on the internet; on the other hand I was busy doing, organizing, and promoting permaculture.

Though my inner work — especially via daily tai chi and yogic practices — has resulted in a sense of my body/mind/spirit as an antenna linking heaven and earth, I had yet to translate that vertical hook-up into “real world” activities. Instead, while talking out loud about permaculture, I have been privately preoccupied with the cosmos.

So now, all that changes. Thanks to a week-long cycle with a wonderful fellow to whom I responded, I became highly aware of this split within myself, and vowed to bridge it, heal it.

Jupiter entered Aries today, January 22, to be joined by Uranus in that sign on March 13, four days past the beginning of the final 20-times-faster, only 260-day Mayan cycle on March 9 that ends in October 28, this year. These shifts ultimately auger the brilliant ignition of a creative fire that will fuel humanity until Uranus leaves Aries, in 2018.

Many new initiatives begin roll out. Here’s one:

www.exopermaculture.com. Stay tuned.

Today son Colin and I sat down with Emily and Stephanie, two IU students who want to help this season with the garden. (Damn! Forgot to take pictures!) Both are recruits from the Fall semester E400 SPEA class, and the four of us had a terrific time talking about what we want to do and dividing up tasks.

The overall goal is to continue utilizing the garden not only to grow food, but to serve as a demonstration and education site for permaculture as well as an inspiration for community in this neighborhood and beyond. To our great surprise and excitement, Stephanie has a lot of experience as an urban gardener, and if another position doesn’t pan out, she will be able to serve as the actual Director for the GANG garden this year. Even if not, we are thrilled to have her expertise, as well as the enthusiasm of both Stephanie and Emily in our garden gang for this year’s season. Though we won’t decide on what workshops to present until February (one of our teachers is out of town and out of touch), here’s what we have in mind for this year in the garden.

For the various parts of the garden, here are our plans:

For the pond:

• Terraform and contain all overflow from the garden.

• Direct water from the SW roof corner of my house into the pond.

• Stephanie — or was it Emily? — will research the possibility of growing fish for food: what kind and how many for this volume and what do they need.

For the garden beds

• Colin will create a hanging plant apparatus along the south wall of the fence to demonstrate hanging plants utilizing recycled materials (used coffee bean burlap bags and old tee shirts?). We will grow tomatoes and possibly beans (and what else? Emily will research) as hanging plants this summer that can also trail down the fence.

• We will extend old beds and create new beds.

• Stephanie knows several sources for manure and will see that we get some to get more nitrogen on the beds soon.

• Stephanie will research companion plants, nitrogen-fixing plants, and plants that attract predator bugs and bees to incorporate into an initial draft design of the garden that she will bring to the next meeting.

• We will utilize one bed for the experiment of scattering various kinds of seeds and just seeing what wants to grow there and then.

Garden Improvements

• We will put together a wooden cart to hold extra produce that will be chained to the outside of the fence during harvest season, with a sign asking that those who take the produce give us their veggie scraps and leaves in exchange to help grow our compost.

* We will expand the vermiculture process by deconstructing the existing compost barrels (they don’t work fast enough), enlarge the holes in them, and bury them, for vermiculture; we will also place pvc pipes with holes in them in different spots in the garden that will vermiculture in place (again with worms, newspapers or leaves and food scraps).

• Emily will research the idea of creating a raised tank for holding water that courses along the culvert along Overhill to gravity feed the garden. She will also research how to filter this street water.

• The cob oven project is unfinished; Colin and Nathan will complete it in the spring; we will then hold a bake-out in the garden for the SPEA class that built it in the Fall of 2010.

* Animals

• Emily will research: ducks, chickens, and rabbits (for their eggs, manure and meat), rabbits and large peruvian guinea pigs (meat and manure). Which ones can co-habit, and how? What does each species need? What will the coop that holds them all look like?

Longer-range:

• Fall 2011: E400 SPEA class will focus on designing a building a greenhouse for the west half of the south wall of the DeKist house, with a self-watering system from the roof.

• Another SPEA project for the future is a vertical garden for the west side of the DeKist house.

The four of us, and anyone else who is interested, will meet again, January 30, 2 p.m., to decide the final design for the garden beds, look through seed catalogs and order seeds.

After our meeting we all went into the garden to sprinkle Alyce the rabbit’s poop on the beds and harvest the kale, still hearty after the bitter cold and snow, protected only by row cover and black bags of leaves on west and north side. Amazing! We each got a bag for our dinner tonight. Also the little Asian greens are still okay under their row cover and protected by leaf bags; but the plants in the cold frame have not done nearly as well in the bitter cold.

Live and learn . . .

Prelude

In love, again, a novel by Doris Lessing, the subject is a woman my age, mid-sixties, who, inexplicably, finds herself “in love” after twenty dry years in which her work had provided both purpose and fulfillment. Then, after that first shocking flutter of the heart, she found herself, over the next few months, falling in love again and again and again—with different men in turn, most of them wildly inappropriate—to the point where she had to realize that whatever “in love” meant, it had nothing to do with the men that she desired. She then fell into a leaden, depressed state where she experienced her actual physical heart as ponderously heavy, burdened with mysterious, utterly unbearable pain and desolation—and a thirst, a hunger, a longing for the Other so extreme as to make her consider suicide. As her awakening to love had astonished and embarrassed her, so the subsequent descent into an unimaginably deep dark-night-of-the-soul overwhelmed and frightened her.

Doris Lessing’s character had not enjoyed/endured my kind of experimental, peripatetic life wherein gradually, over a period of decades and a number of intense relationships, I learned, over and over again, and more and more quickly, to detach from the ecstasy and agony that love threw my way. Rather, she experienced the lover’s wild leap and devastating fall all at once, in a sort of Midsummer Night’s Dream phantasmagoria, during a year that she considered the gateway to her life’s finale. And though she did find that powerful experience instructive, in that it demonstrated her own vulnerability to what she had considered human foolishness, the novel ends almost where it began, with a stoicism now tinged with bewilderment and regret.

This essay is driven by an effort to understand and describe the door that can open when we move through the bitterness that attends our discovery of the heart’s terrible longing.

Introduction

One woman’s remark, decades ago, still reverberates in memory. We were on a ski tour at the base of the Tetons. She was dressed in parka, muffler, gloves, headband, and—earrings! I asked her, why earrings?

“Because I’m still the huntress,” she replied, very matter of fact.

She was single at the time. I was married.

She’s right. The state of “being single” does seem to be accompanied by its own set of accessories, not to mention states of mind. I wince to remember years of being seized awake in the middle of the night by fixations on men that sparked feelings in various shades of seeking, keeping, coveting, letting go, regretting, wondering, wishing, longing, pretending, hoping, and obsessing.

These internal states accompany any woman still “on the hunt.” And, since I worked as a professional astrologer, while lying there at 2 A.M. tensed with desire, frustration, hurt, regret and/or bitterness I would also flip men’s charts up on the insides of my eyelids and compare them to my own chart, one after another. Unlike counting sheep, this intricate analysis would jerk me into hyper-alertness. I’d bound out of bed, grab the astrological ephemeris, look again for clues. Who is Mr. Right? Who is The One? Will I ever find him? Or, how did I let him get away? How could he have left me?

You know the drill.

I’m so glad it’s over.

My family is glad it’s over too. Yet one of my nieces tells me that her mother, a devout Catholic, still keeps my picture on her bedside table and prays for me nightly.

But what, exactly, is “over”? Intimate relationships with men? At sixty-four, do I now I head into old age with head bowed, forever widowed? Somehow, I doubt it. I remain an exquisitely alive and sensuous human, wildly attracted to other humans. And I remain dedicated to both experience and understanding of male/female relationships as primary fuel for the human evolutionary thrust.

My family looks upon my peripatetic path with curiosity and alarm. I, in turn, view their long-term partnerships with curiosity and bemusement. What would my life have been like had I followed this path? And what would I have learned from such a life—not to mention, when would I have known I learned it? Not until my deathbed, I suspect. Who knows what goes on inside our deepest being while we still move through time; and inside the common core of a couple may reside what I have come to revere as the holy of holies—a mystery I don’t ever expect to fathom.

I realize that last statement is ambiguous.

Do I mean that I don’t pretend to understand what goes on inside the heart of long-term couples? Yes. I certainly do mean that. And though I don’t understand them, I’ve observed some marriages over the decades, including those of my parents, my seven siblings and one of my sons.

I have learned to respect their commitments, and to rejoice in their capacity for longevity, for I can sense how each person has deepened, over time, as an individual. In this chaotic era of fractured families, mine is unusual in that, for most of its members, marriage does apparently serve as an alchemical vessel for personal and interpersonal transformation.

I bless them. Though I do not fathom what they have, I sense it well worth having.

But the other implication unsettles me. For it could mean that I don’t expect to ever engage in another long-term male/female relationship in this life. Is this true? And if so, why? Because it’s too late, I’m too old at 64? Well, certainly, too old to ever celebrate a 60-year anniversary, like my parents did a few years ago. But not too old for say, 10-, or 20-, or maybe even a 30-year run.

Would I want that? I’m not sure. First of all, the obvious: most men my age, and some years younger, not only look and act, but actually are physiologically older than I, sinking into decrepitude. They did not institute healthful food and exercise patterns when younger, and now bulge with bellies, varicosities, and florid, swollen faces. Their backs hurt, they take medication, their shoulders hunch, they limp, they’re probably impotent—all turnoffs, and not just from a standpoint of physical attraction. I can see the writing on the wall: sooner or later, and most likely sooner, I’d have to sacrifice my own life and needs as a caregiver.

So, from a purely selfish perspective, why would I want to nurse a man with whom I had no history through old age, illness, death?

On the other hand, I imagine that if we had schlepped comfortably through morning and evening routines for decades, we would hardly have noticed when our skin lost its luster and our hands started to shake; our rich and detailed memories—of children, crises overcome, trips taken, mutual friendships, homes and careers lived in and let go—all food for thought and endless stories—would have cemented a shared reality. Moreover, any friction in our early years would have sloughed off the dross; we’d be reduced to a bright clear flame, a singularity long fed by the encouragement of the one other who knows and cherishes us, warts and all.

In such a context, of a loving, long-term companionship, I imagine that by the time one of us grew more frail than the other, or got sick or disabled, the stronger, healthier one would naturally surrender to the other’s increasing need, no matter what the sacrifice required, or for how long.

But meeting a man when he’s old? Getting the downside with none of the goodies?

How crass this sounds. Makes me want to issue a challenge to the Other who would dare to greet me, soul to soul. Hey you! Surprise me! Shine your full self through that decaying bag of bones!

In actuality, I don’t even know if I’d like surprises. Not now. Not anymore. Or, is this just a crone’s time-out?

Individuation

I’m astonished to recognize that for the first time in my life I feel complete, whole; that I no longer seem to need to project parts of myself onto men.

I’ve enjoyed this new sense of internal integration for perhaps the past six months, and I must say it feels strange, alien, as if a different person occupies this body.

I’m not used to the sense that there’s nothing left to “do” in the arena of relationships, that just to “be” on my own, in company with others on occasion but more often alone, is enough. Indeed, I dare say that this new status feels fine; indeed, luxurious, immensely satisfying.

Jung would call my new sense of internal wholeness “individuation,” since I have apparently succeeded—at least for now!—in letting go of projections onto men, which means, in psychoanalytic terms, that I’ve internally integrated the various animus figures that I so desperately sought in the outside world. Rather than needing to magnetize a man with this or that set of qualities as my companion, I seem to have uncovered these qualities in myself and feel quite content.

I have yet to find a woman with whom I can discuss this still new internal state-change. Most of my female friends are either married, still on the hunt or trying to land a skittish partner, or they are done with relationships—not because they feel internally whole, but because either they feel they’re too old and/or their so-called “failed relationships” have left them bitter and cynical.

I don’t fit into any of those categories. For, despite my “newly integrated” condition and my apparent “time-out,” I still find myself in mutual frisson with men. I do not pursue these attractions, but I do enjoy them.

So, What is love?

When we meet another for whom we feel a romantic attraction, we tend to describe our initial hook-up as “falling in love.” Within six months to two years, the intensity of the initial attraction normally fades, or at least ratchets way down. The great light that seemed to emanate from the Other has been turned off, stripping them of beauty, brains, sensitivity, range of interests, talents, animal magnetism, experience, and so on—whatever it was that drew us to them in the first place. This on/off switch is so remarkable that sooner or later the more psychologically-minded cannot help but realize that the phrase “in love” actually means “in projection”—an illusion produced by the intensely creative power of our own needs, hopes and expectations.

For the Doris Lessing character this discovery came as a shock. Or it may steal in gradually, as the initial magical state of complete immersion in the other fades to the day-to-day reality of two very different people “trying to get along.” If the relationship weathers our disappointment, then we usually describe the reason we stayed together as “we love each other.”

But what does this really mean? As the song says, “What is this thing called love?”

It seems that we all experience “love” as the greatest value in human life, what we long for and can never get enough of. And of course, on a more exalted level, all religions speak of Love as the underlying reality of God.

But I have noticed that, here on Earth, “once the honeymoon is over” then “I love you” segues into something much more prosaic.

Our lives are now joined. Children, mortgages, money, work struggles, our different dreams—all clamor for attention. We cope with various addictions and insecurities. How we move together through the constant interruptions, complexities and difficulties of sheer dailiness says a lot about our willingness to lay down personal agendas and blend with our partner to forge a common life. Some do this more easily than others, and not necessarily because they are more “loving.” Each of us comes in with a unique, original nature, with some more suited to the adjustments that partnership requires.

In the 20^th century, up through the 1950s we could pretty much take for granted male/female behavior in primary relationships as based on “roles” thought to be traditional and biological, not to mention theological: the man leads, the woman follows; the man works to provide economically for the woman whose place is in the home with their children. This thoroughly pragmatic arrangement secured stability in both family and society.

Then all hell broke loose. Starry-eyed hippies determined to bust out of all roles and bring “Love,” conceived as spontaneity and authenticity, back into the world. “Peace, love, dope” utopian idealism soon wrestled with another, equally strong trend, that of angry feminists demanding male/female power redistribution. The fallout from this glaringly contradictory set of influences was, as we now realize, both extremely potent and decidedly mixed.

Forty years later, when we look at the psychological dynamics of most male/female relationships today, they seem to fit into one or more of the following categories:

In some relationships, one naturally leads and the other follows. In others, partners take turns, or each leads in certain areas. Or they don’t. Instead, one dominates and the other obeys—or appears to. Sometimes the submissive one is actually passive/aggressive, gets what he or she wants through surreptitious means.

Any of these relationships might call themselves “loving;” I would rather describe them as, just as in the ‘50s, thoroughly practical: though society has relaxed its ideas as to which gender fits into which role, and though sometimes roles may overlap or reverse, the partners still play roles and still make it their main business as a couple to negotiate their separate needs, giving (or giving in) in exchange for getting.

In some cases, of course, one person refuses to give in, despite what the other wishes, and must then either tolerate complete subjugation, or leave. Or, the two compete for dominance. Though these kinds of unions usually end badly, others seem to live for the struggle and are addicted to drama.

Like me. I needed total control, so I had to fall and gnash my teeth over and over again in subtle or blatant battles with lovers. And when I wasn’t embattled I was licking my wounds, obsessing on what went wrong and how to make it right again. Like a lightning bolt streaking in slow motion through time, my life jerked between exalted highs and despairing lows. I identified aliveness with intensity.

Loss

Now, after more than forty years of relationship experience as an adult, I would say that the crucial test of what we glibly call “love” comes when we endure some kind of sustained loss. When the beloved dies or leaves or betrays us, reveals him- or herself to be utterly “Other,” not at all what we had imagined in our “in love” phase. Or, for those like Doris Lessing’s character who live at a more self-aware level, when we realize that the qualities we had ascribed to our lover were actually projections of our own unconscious needs. In either case, our discovery hurls us from the heights of “love” into the abyss. We slog through bewilderment, abandonment, disillusionment, grief.

But then what?

How do we respond to our suffering?

When in pain, it is natural for warm-blooded critters to shut down, curl into a fetal position, and wait to either die or get better. Our gut instinct is to close our hearts and build a defensive wall against further hurt.

Shut down, armored against our agony, there seem to be three alternative ways to proceed: we “make do” with our situation, though cynical, with greatly diminished expectations; we engage in a campaign to try to change the other; or, we leave, and quickly or eventually cast about for another with whom to enter the same song and dance.

The first choice drops us into the land of the living dead. Since we have squelched our life force, nothing new can happen. The hardening of our heart accelerates the march towards death of the physical body and meanwhile, we cannot help but leak or spew negativity, contaminating our environment.

The second choice is the one I have jumped into, time after time, though I’ve long known better. And of course, it never works, just creates polarity and conflict as the Other fights for his own life. All along, this choice is fraught with delusion: I inflate, seeing what I do as “helping” or “serving,” and so feel heroic; then, when the Other refuses, I deflate into victimization and martyrhood, not to mention frustration, resentment, bitterness, depression.

More rarely, we take this mode to the extreme—turn violent, try to force the other, dominate, or, if necessary, crush the Other.

The third alternative, “cut and run”—is more often the man’s choice. Women are likely to try the second alternative—for years—always with the hope that that “if I love him enough, he will learn to love me.” Finally, conceding defeat, but still assuming the grass is always greener, we leave one partner, blame him for what went wrong, re-enter the hunt and wonder why the next partner resembles the first!

A Fourth Alternative

In the past few years I have discovered a fourth alternative. And that is to remain open and vulnerable—no matter what, no matter how much it hurts. In fact, I have discovered that if I do what seems counter-intuitive at the time, if I truly surrender to the pain of loss, then it is as if I come upon a secret door that I did not even know existed. And this door, I soon realize, opens into a room filled with what I have been seeking all along: love’s gold, love’s treasure.

What I suggest here may sound both absurd (who wants to be a masochist?) and absurdly simple (it can’t be that easy!)—but don’t get me wrong. Though it may seem stupid and simplistic to ordinary consciousness, in my experience such surrender is extremely difficult in practice. Not only my instincts, but the conditioning of my entire life militates against it.

To intentionally touch into my own terrible emotional wound defies both instinct and common-sense.

I do it anyway.

In this exercise, I deliberately and voluntarily move awareness into the place in my body where the pain is centered. In my 40s, I would feel as if someone had kicked me in the solar plexus with a boot; in my 60s, I feel pain more in my heart, as if an elephant stands on my chest.

Now I can look upon the difference between the two locations and note my own progress. For my center of gravity does seem to have shifted from the solar plexus chakra (the power center, where I learn the limits of my own power) to the heart chakra (where I allow the heart to open and attune to others with no expectations).

Up through my 40s, whenever emotional/physical pain threatened to take me under I would instantly cathect into my mind, my ego—and stay there—so that I would not double up in agony, not stay in bed all day. Desperately, my ego mind would make up ideas as to why I was feeling so terrible and dwell there—on someone in the outside or inside world (present, past, or imagined future) who had “caused” me to recoil. My obsession with the Other as cause of my pain was an unconscious attempt to distract me from my body’s painful feelings and served to justify them so that I could feel better, or superior, to the Other.

Like everyone else in a culture inherited from Rene Descartes who coined the phrase “I think, therefore I am,” and who labeled the body a machine, completely separate from the mind, my mind was me and my body an inconvenient encumbrance that I had to drag along behind.

This process, of reflexively slipping out of my body into my mind, continues. Patterns, imprinted from birth, cling.

And yet, strong as this pattern is, from my early 20s on I have also felt intermittently driven by a very strong conscious need to let it go.

Self-Remembering

As a young wife and mother in a life in which I felt increasingly trapped, forlorn and desperate, I would take long daily walks, bumping the stroller down cobblestone streets to Harvard Square on a quest, but for what, what? Then came the life-changing day in which the proverbial book fell off the shelf into my hand, opened to a page in which its author, Immanuel Ouspensky, a disciple of the Russian mystic and mathematician Gurdjieff, threw down the gauntlet that ignited my inner fire.

Most humans, he said, have no free will. Rather than being awake, we sleep-walk through life as mechanical beings, caught in a vicious round of conditioned patterns. We think we make conscious choices, when actually we react automatically to inside or outside stimuli.

Those who do have free will, he claimed, are very, very rare, since free will is a difficult accomplishment that takes many years. Ouspensky said that in order to even begin to develop free will, Gurdjieff advocated a practice called “self-remembering.”

Even at that early age I recognized instantly that he was right, I was clicking through my life like a robot. Yet to actually face the fact that I was unconsciously being pulled by strings over which I had no control infuriated me. I decided to get a grip on myself. To develop my own free will. To “wake up.”

In order to begin to interrupt unconscious patterns of behavior I instructed myself to be able to stop in the midst of any activity and say “I’m here!” Simply that. “I am here.” So, while brushing my teeth, or changing my child’s diapers, or walking down the street, or writing a paper, I began to practice this method of suddenly stopping whatever I was doing simply to acknowledge my own presence in the midst of the buzzing confusion of my life with husband, children, graduate school in philosophy, and, of course, my hyperactive, judging, chattering brain.

It was not long before I found myself astonished to discover that self-remembering actually worked, that it did help me to “wake up”—momentarily; but then, like an automaton, I would slip back into oblivion. Intuitively, I knew that only if I learned how to consistently “wake up” as if out of a dream in the middle of any point in my day, and then eventually, to actually stay awake during any and all circumstances, no matter how dire or exciting, would I be able to take full charge of my life.

I can look back now and say that an enormous gulf separates the capacity to wake up momentarily and the infinitely more difficult goal of being able to hold a larger awareness over time. Luckily, I didn’t know that then, or I might have grown discouraged.

Though I didn’t realize it then, “self-remembering” was my initiation into the practice of conscious awareness. Awareness is the holy  grail, always on the horizon, luring me on. Forty years later, I’m still on automatic much of the time, and yet more and more I can stay awake for minutes, even hours. More rarely, most of a whole day. At this point I wake up (and fall back) hundreds of times each day, as monkey mind once again lures me into its seductive snares. Little by little I stitch together those moments of awareness so that the current of the flow becomes (almost!) continuous—an exquisitely alive sense of being here, right here, right now, in this body, at this time, in these surroundings, all senses attuned, at one with the whole.

And each time I do, everything changes. I find myself awake and aware, steady and serene in the midst of the daily flux.

Conscious Suffering

By the time I reached my 40s, it was easy for me to wake up momentarily; but I could not stay awake, since I had not yet learned to move awareness into the body. As a typical Cartesian, I had been conditioned to despise my body and force it to obey my will. So learning how to deliberately move my mind into my body has been huge deal.

Of course what shoots us out of our bodies in the first place is our experience of pain. From the time we are tiny we are admonished: “don’t cry, be brave.” We gradually learn to suppress the tears and howls of our natural response to pain so that we may “fit” into society.

In the past few years, in order to undo all this conditioning, in order to move into my own pain and stay there I now attempt to catch my mind at the instant it tries to take over with “reasons” for why I feel so bad. Each time, to notice justifications as they arise and let them go. Let the ideas go, whatever they are, true or false, right or wrong, doesn’t matter. What matters that I climb down under my mind and surrender to the feelings that have been triggered once again, by some situation in the outer or inner world that has re-stimulated an old, original, childhood(?) wound.

Whatever the original wound is, doesn’t matter either. Causes upon cause, an infinity of causes! Perhaps there is no root cause, just simply the suffering that attends incarnation. In any case, as incorporated beings we humans are conditioned to develop minds that separate out from our bodies and try to squash, or squeeze or stuff them into some kind of shape that meets with the mind’s (and the culture’s) version of what the body is supposed to feel and to look like.

Conscious Suffering and Presence

This second, more advanced stage of the practice of “waking up,” that of conscious suffering, of deliberately and intentionally centering awareness directly into the place in my body that corresponds to my emotional pain—opens another door to the unexpected. Rather than intensify suffering, such focused awareness of suffering sooner or later disperses it to the point where it disappears inside a further heart-opening into what I can only describe as an all-pervasive Presence that steals in as a calm, detached, but joyfully alive awareness lying just below all my judgments and resentments and woundedness—and in fact all the mind-stuff that I then no longer need to rely on!

As a result of this practice, my need for intense drama in relationship has mutated into a near-continuous feeling of immense gratitude. Such a privilege—to be alive in a body on this beautiful earth at this critical time in history! Gratitude is continually fueled by periodic experiences of consciously allowing in the suffering that attends loss, for the practice of awareness has begun to drop me into this larger reality on a more regular and extended basis. The awareness of Presence—of the all-pervasive Love that unites and breathes through all creation—may be what mystics have hinted at for centuries.

As I continue to open further, the realization dawns that unlike “being in love,” the big Love does not require another person as its “object.” Rather, I am immersed in an ocean of Love that has no beginning and no end and includes us all as aspects of its singular Being. And Love is a fountain, it fuels my every move, showers blessings on one and all.

Presence in Relationship

I imagine that this experience of Presence is similar to the experience of those in a committed relationship where, when they disagree, both partners surrender their personal wills. Time after time, they dare to release control and jump, blindfolded and holding hands, into the void. These refined humans realize that their relationship itself is a third entity, a real energetic substance, the child or fruit of their dissolved egos. And they recognize that their relationship has needs that sometimes supercede the desires of either individual.

Surrender to relationship opens the heart—to what is, rather than what we wish it to be, to the reality of the present moment, to the Presence that undergirds us all—and requires radical trust on both individuals’ parts. Both are vulnerable, since either could, if desired, trounce the other, manipulate the situation to get what they want.

The widow of one such rare couple told me that it was two years before she could let go of her own needs and attend to his, two years before, she said, the moment came when she just let go, finally, of her life-long self-centered pattern in relationship. “I remember the moment,” she said, “the single moment which changed my life.” I asked her if the moment came in response to him. “Yes,” she replied. “Suddenly something he said made me realize that he wanted the very best for me, that he would dedicate his life to my happiness.” And with his surrender, came her own. From then on, she would do anything for him to be happy. From that moment on, love was the center of their union, and when he developed a brain tumor, she dedicated herself to his needs for their final two years. “My attitude was, whatever he wanted, he got,” she tells me with a smile. When he died, consciously breathing his last in her presence, their 12-year union was complete and they could let each other go.

We might call this kind of emotional/spiritual surrender to Presence in relationship an evolved form of love-making.

For those who have begun this journey into the open heart, the words “I love you” become almost irrelevant. Though an insecure partner may still want to hear those magic three words, for the other, love is a given. “Of course, I love you. Doesn’t everything I do show it?”

And yet, just as on the world stage nations still compete for dominance, so loving surrender in personal relationships still seems rare. Most of still pursue our own agendas and trivialize the phrase “I love you” by giving it lip service. We mouth the words, while our hearts lie elsewhere.

We say “I love you,” to convince ourselves, or to satisfy the other’s need or demand for reassurance. “I love you” turns into shorthand for “we’re still together, don’t worry, I’m not going anywhere anytime soon.” And this remark can mask the desolation of deep denial, wherein fear of loss trumps our secret resentment of the one we pretend to still “love.”

From my observations, and from my one experience with a relatively long-term relationship, I suspect that even the most conscious committed relationships are based at least in part on a sometimes little-noticed and habitual co-dependency that deftly and subtly worms its way into the interstices of daily life. For example, I recently had lunch with a friend who is going through a quite-uncharacteristic hard time. She tells me that her companion of thirty years has been “great,” but that he “hates it when I become vulnerable.” I sensed that she viewed this as evidence of his love, and could not resist the remark: “That’s because he’s the one that’s used to being vulnerable, with you as his mother. It scares him when his mother leaves.” She looked at me in amazement. Far from taking offense, it was as if I had struck a match in the cave of her mind.

And what is long-term co-dependency but a stabilized form of projection, a remnant of, a left-over crystallization from the “in love” phase?

Knights on White Horses

When I was a child, our common human longing took mythical form that girls in my generation translated literally: the “knight on the white horse,” the “one and only” soul-mate who would whisk us away from ordinary life to “life happily ever after.”

We set ourselves up for disappointment. And, as ever, personal crises, when collectively enacted, describe cultural shifts.

In the past fifty years, as more and more marriages break and new ones form, as some people live together without marriage and others remain single, either in solitude or to “play the field,” the more metaphysical among us have begun to speak of “soul-mates,” a whole tribe of beings that we “came in with,” any number of whom can serve as karmic-mates at different points on our individual journeys.

Despite the blare of corporate, national, tribal and media wars, on a more personal level our way of considering relationships seems to be growing more relaxed and inclusive, less polarized. Now, at holiday tables, extended families reach beyond blood-ties to include former lovers, husbands, in-laws and step-children. Clint Eastwood’s two celebrated war movies, back to back, empathize with first American, then Japanese experiences at Iwo Jima in World War II. Many of us are as concerned with Iraqi casualties as we are with American ones, and Benetton’s colors not only advertise fashion, but also the beauty in ethnic variation.

From our growing acceptance of inclusion, it is only a short step to realize that, special and unique as our love for one special and unique Other may feel to us at the time, this state of being is actually a first step into an extended transition zone that links the surface phenomenon of “being in love” to the transcendent heights and immanent depths of cosmic Love.

Most of us have had experience of the first kind of love—the “puppy love” of projection. Far fewer experience a long-term relationship that helps each partner efface the membrane that divides her or him from the universe. And those individuals who actually do evolve into the greater Love that requires no object, but shines from the inside out, equally, over all—Jesus, Buddha, Gandhi—though so rare as to seem iconic, are actually way-showers for the Oneness into which I sense we are all, sooner or later, destined to enter.

Divine Love

Various philosophers and spiritual teachers speak of “Love” as the most powerful force known, the glue that holds the universe together, the substratum of all imaginings, all daily events; “Love” as constant, serene, joyful generosity, the deep oceanic depths below the surface currents of desire and suffering.

I doubt that when we say we “love” someone, we usually refer to this sacred numinous reality. Because if we did truly have the capacity to enter the divinity of Love, why would we remain with one person rather than another?

Both Gandhi and Buddha left their wives behind in their quest for the larger Love. And if the Magdalene was the wife of Jesus, she wasn’t an acknowledged part of his mission to spread Love to all humankind. Presumably, once we have opened our hearts to the larger all-pervasive power of Love, we remain open and loving, no matter who our companion. Like saints and avatars, we love all equally.

Embodied Love

So this, for me, brings up a question. As one who does seem to have integrated at least my former projections, now what? Is a personal relationship possible or necessary? Or do I turn my gaze to the stars.

And yet, I am an embodied being. As long as I work in time and space, my intimate relations with others are limited, or seemingly limited, to one at a time. I imagine it would be easier to channel divine Love through the sexual/sensual/spiritual connection with a single Other whom I have learned, over time, to trust. I would have left the preliminaries behind, no longer slogging through the projection stage with a series of possible partners. Instead, like the rare couple mentioned above, I would have magnetized one with whom, in a single moment of grace, each of us would drop our selfishness and dedicate our lives to the other’s welfare. Together, we would weather the hard stuff.

And it would all be worth it! For on the other side of that hard stuff would come the mystical payoff: our interpersonal interaction would serve as a conduit through which divine love channels into the world.

At this point, I speak theoretically, since I have never had the experience that I point to above, at least in this life. But I do sense its reality. Just as I sensed the possibility of internal integration before it was gifted to me, also like grace. And I do sense that sexual/sensual/spiritual union with the Other might be the surest access into Oneness, since sexual lovemaking is its physical expression, the petit mort wherein we momentarily die to ourselves and are transported into a larger universe. But of course, it doesn’t last. Ecstasy fades, and we fall back, wrapped in separate skin and bone scaffolding.

Towards the One

In recent years, I have noticed that my relationships of whatever kind—even the split second, consciously enacted, deep eye-to-eye with a stranger as we pass by on the street— can startle me to the point of dissolving that seeming separation. And if this is so, then physical love-making, though it symbolizes Oneness, is not necessary. Ultimately not even personal, one-to-one connections with others are necessary, since on an interior level, we are all connected, and always have been. The meditative solitary awareness of the monk in a cave expands to include all sentient beings.

I now view any surrender in relationship, large or small, momentary or extended, as grist for the divine mill. Each time I let go of my own personal will, I am invited to further efface the membrane that separates me from others, and enter the abiding presence.

I sense that, though we tend to think that what holds a long-term monogamous relationship together beyond the honeymoon phase, beyond the child-rearing phase, beyond and within any particular phase, is on an outer level, some combination of economics, tradition, security, shared interests and companionship, on an inner level, the level of the Real, of the One what holds a relationship together may be quite different: this universal soul-longing for reunion with the all-pervading essence of life.

And, from this higher point of view, our universal fascination with the magnetic projection of “falling in love” and “being in love” may be but symptom and symbol of the mystical oceanic Love that shimmers through space and melts all forms into Oneness.

Conclusion

Most of us think of our love for our long-term mates as “special and unique.” Instead, it may behoove us to see both our dance with the other and our eventual loss of the other as an extended transition zone. At first, we experience mere flashes, then, if we are fortunate and grace descends, longer and periods when we do actually surrender to the actual suchness of our beloved, no matter who he is, nor how much the Other disappointed or infuriated us in the days when had expectations of who he or she should be.

No expectations. Not even as to whether our Beloved will stay or go. For though our bodies and minds suffer the pain of letting go, our spirits ultimately soar. As we practice surrender in love and to Love over and over again, we begin to become aware of the larger Presence that holds the universe together.

The key seems to be to recognize that our emotional state in relationship with “a certain someone,” though at the time important and special and wonderful and/or terrible, on another level is merely the latest trigger for the Love that resides inside us always and the discovery of which is the larger purpose of which we are born. It appears that no matter what specific dramas we choose to enact, the direction is always towards the eventual full activation of this greatest of all powers.

I end with selections from two poems of the Sufi poet, Rumi:

I am so small I can barely be seen.

How can this great love be inside me?

Look  at your eyes, they are small but they

see enormous things.

Gamble everything for love . . . Don’t  wait any longer.  Silent, absent, walking an empty road, all praise.

All my life I have been working to evolve my Sagittarian nature out of fundamentalism into relativism. Not the usual “nothing counts, so I can do anything I want” version, but the more difficult relativism of recognizing that the left brain cannot access Truth, that all it can do is process information. That Truth, big Sagittarian truth, is accessed through the right brain, and that this Truth, in turn, is linked to the heart.

The left brain analyzes and divides, judging this or that, yes or no, true or false. The right brain includes, accepts, embraces, allows. The right brain puts humpty-dumpty back together again from his fall from the wall that divides us — from our bodies, from each other, from the earth, from the cosmos.

The problem for us fundamentalists, is that the right brain isn’t logical; nor are its ideas clear and distinct. When I judge the truths of the right brain by the standards of the left, then I think that all my wondering is mere confusion. Dreams, visions, images, synchronicities, vague hunches — all these nourish the right brain, and yet are hard to interpret in a clear and distinct manner, not to mention logically explain or justify.

What helps me is to recognize that the left brain, when it runs unchecked, ends up rigid and sterile, endlessly repeating dogmas which lost their relevance a long time ago. When I allow my beliefs to rule me, they do, automatically filtering out any experience that contradicts the reigning dogma. In this way, I never even have to know what I am missing! Nothing has to change. No matter how much I experience, I never learn, never grow.

Though I didn’t realize it, this was my position when I decided, seemingly on a whim, to attend the annual Laramie UFO conference in June 2000. I would go as a detached observer, a sociologist. I wanted to see just who these people were who participated in such a gathering. My smugness was short-lived; within hours I was “hooked.” Objectivity flew out the window and I found myself listening with jaw-dropped amazement to the stories of UFO and ET experiencers, contactees and abductees, as they are variously known.

But although my jaw dropped immediately, the rest of me soon began to squirm. For I noticed that the reality implied by many of the stories contradicted each other. This made me uneasy.

Looking at that experience now, I would say that of course it bothered me, since my fundamentalist self couldn’t stand contradiction. I wanted to know the truth! Who was telling the truth, who was lying, who was misguided, imagining things, insane, blinded by fear, etc. I was riveted by the stories, and even more riveted by my need to figure out who was who, what was what. My fundamentalist, left-brain dominated self sought to ferret out one story which was more credible than all the others, latch on to it, i.e., treat it as my new true belief, and then judge all the others as falling off more or less from that one standard.

That was 2000. In 2001, I looked forward to the conference. This time, rather than going as a sociologist, I would go as a depth psychologist. I wanted to investigate the evolution of my own psyche. Having chewed over the meaning of my response to the first event for a year and especially having dared to take what might be a first really good look at my own fundamentalism, I wanted to see what my own process would be this time around.

And do you know, despite my dogmatic German temperament, I actually appear to have learned something? Not about what is true and what isn’t, but rather about how to make room for all the various stories (and their truths or not) inside myself at once without having to know which are true and which are governmental disinformation, illusions, lies, misinterpretations, etc.

And I discovered something very exciting in the process. I discovered that I felt much lighter and more spacious as a result of this new way of working with information, no matter how strange or bizarre, how out of kilter some or most of it might be with my usual world-view.

I discovered that if I truly did hold all these seemingly contradictory stories and beliefs about extraterrestrials and the various dimensions and star systems they occupy, not to mention all the various interpretations of them involving a secret and unaccountable aspect of the US government — that if I really did make room for them all internally without judgment, that I became “enlightened” — that is, my being became lighter. The framework that defined my world-view, and with it my separative “ego” self, dissolved — into space. Rather than narrow and limited, I now felt spacious and free, suffused with light.  At the same time, the loss of the ego blew open the heart, its every beat now pulsing in concert with all of creation.

That was the revelation I was seeking all along, and I now realize it was what impelled me to attend my first two UFO conferences. To break down this strong, culturally conditioned taboo was to break through to the universe.