My Work ~ The Esoteric and The Mundane...

Like Jumping off of a high dive, until you reach bottom you will not ever be able to push off with your feet and swim back up to the surface. This is what I experience every time I meditate. I now meditate for an hour three times a day. I turn the phone off, I do not answer the door. I am at once healing myself, and then slipping back into real life where I struggle like everyone else to find balance, but I continue to work toward living a loving, peaceful, and open-hearted existence where I can reach out and heal others, feeling the tenderness of their hearts and sending them silent loving energy. You cannot see me but I am there...

The Esoteric ~

The Place I Touch Down On In Meditation

You cannot see me, and yet I am very much with you, for when I am meditating I am at one with the Universe, filled with love, and breathing it out into the world around me. I am at the loci where past, present, and future intersect. This is difficult to describe and comes after very deep healing sessions for weeks, working one on one with a teacher who does transformational healing, and preparing for Reiki 1 attunement. A healer must heal herself first, find an inner peace where the past is let go and the present is the Divine. It is there that I reach you, and yet, for now, you cannot see me. You cannot fathom the place that I am, it is hard to verbalize, and yet I will tell you this -- without it you will not walk in this world healed, whole, and spreading the seeds of love in every step you take, through the journey ahead to the end of your days.


The Mundane ~
My Days Are Just Like Yours

Ah, if only I could carry that state of grace with me throughout the day...

I meditate, I pray, and for a time I experience a state of near bliss, calm energy, soft air, silence, but then I open my eyes and come back to the world. Back to the knowledge that there is a sink and counter full of dirty dishes because I have not washed them in 3 days. This is not a spiritual path. I am not in balance. It is not a good thing to meditate so much that you float about distancing yourself from the sacred daily chores. Meditation can be a drug. Balancing spiritual practice with daily life is vitally important. I needed to do all that I have done to get to this place where my life as a healer will continue on on a deeper level. I will cut back to meditating twice a day, morning and evening. I will do the dishes.


I Have Barely Left My House In More Than A Decade,
I Am Beginning To Take My First Steps Out Into The World...

The Way Of The Lotus is the way of unconditional love. It is non-denominational, it speaks to every living being. This is the life I have chosen. This is my work. For a long time I did not speak of this to a single soul because I knew they would not understand. Now I have let go of fear because it does not serve me, and I am here to serve. We are all here on our own path and I trust and love those around me enough to know that they are on their own journey and that does not include them understanding mine. I send them love and bless them on their journey. I pray that they find peace in a way that suits them and their life. There is no one way. I believe this to be true.

The lesson of the lotus is the lesson of our ability to transcend all that came before and bloom, in this lifetime, no matter the outer circumstances. The lotus rises from the muck and the mud and becomes a beautiful flower. Our feet are eternally in the mud, the difficulties of daily life, of relationships that are difficult, of human worries and woes, but spiritual practice, in whatever form it takes, even if you don't call it spiritual practice, even if you never sit in a church but perhaps like I do sit in the garden or with a small innocent animal on my lap and meditate and pray and breathe and smile, or perhaps you just walk down the street and smile at a single human being, changing the whole course of their day, you are practicing kindness, the root of all things. I practice kindness. I try.

Finally the need to serve supersedes the need to hide, and yet I know most of my life will still be lived in solitude and silence. That part of me comes not from fear but from a desire to continue to go deeper so that I have more to give. My writing is a vehicle for healing, and I am with you wherever you are in the world. Sit with me now...

Close your eyes. Take a deep breath, take another, and another, breathing in, and as you breathe out let every bit of tension in your body slide down into the earth. Notice how much lighter you feel. Now as you sit with your eyes closed, breathing in and out, you feel a lightness in your body. Feel a presence sitting opposite you. This is very real. It is the transference of energy from where I am to where you are. Do not open your eyes. Let your senses take over. Keep breathing and feel the warm gentle energy. You are not in this space alone.

I reach my hands out, palms up, and ask you to put your hands above mine, not touching, just barely above. Keep breathing. Feel the heat from my hands. Feel the energy. Feel the warm glow surrounding our hands. That warm vibration is love.

Now allow your hands to rest very softly on top of mine. We are barely touching but we are connected, from where I am, to where you are. In this moment we are not separate, we are not in different places in the world. This is the Oneness that is spoken of. There is an infusion, a transfusion, of gentle, loving harmony flowing out from me, through my hands, into you, through yours. Feel that energy. Feel it flow through your body from the palms of your hands to the soles of your feet, circling round and up your body to the top of your head and beyond.

This is real. It is possible. It happened. As you draw your hands away, lying open on your knees, you  feel a cool breeze. I have slipped away but you are filled with a river of love, of golden light, you are shining, shimmering. This healing energy did not come from me, but through me, as a channel for God's peace, love, light, hope, and joy. I pray for this every single day, many times a day. We have touched each other. Now you will carry that beautiful energy with you into your day, if only for a few moments. The moments will stretch out over longer periods of time. But we are human, we are imperfect, we will slip in and out of this state of grace. 

Meditation, prayer, whatever path one follows that takes them to the Divine is all that is needed. Perhaps for you it is at the height, the peak, of making love. I want to make love to the world, through the opening of my heart, and hands, and the spirit that I allow to enter and flow through me. This is my task, and it becomes easier each day. And yet...

I Am Human, I Am Afraid...

We never stop feeling this you know. Even as I write this I think, "They'll think I'm nuts. They will never read anything I write again. They will think I am full of ego and they've had enough." But then I remember. I am releasing fear and following what I know, for myself, to be true. I cannot and do not expect everyone to feel as I do, to think as I think, to accept all that I accept as true and real in my life, and it doesn't matter. I am not responsible for another's thoughts, actions, or opinions. I am only here to offer what I can, and show the love that is in my heart.

Even when I slam my toe in the door and shout obscenities as it bleeds and hurts and I limp down the hall to clean the wound and take care of this human body, too heavy, hidden from the world for the most part, in that second I don't feel a spiritual bone in my body. But then two pugs come down the hall. They look up at me with huge, bulging, perplexed and worried eyes, and I laugh as I bandage my toe, and their innocence and sweetness brings me back. I hug and kiss and squeeze them and limp on into the kitchen to feed them. I am only human, and I will be so all the days of my life, but it is in remembering those moments of grace that lifts me back up again.

I sit, I take up my beads, I begin to breathe, I meditate, I connect to All That Is. This is the balancing point, the teeter-totter we ride in this life. Up and down, up and down, the goal of a spiritual life is to be more up than down, but we have plenty of times that we tumble and fall to remind us of our own fragile flawed nature. Having a practice brings us back. Meditation is a practice for me, as is writing, as is gardening. Sitting here with you, as I did earlier, is a practice. You don't see me, but I am there.

I have written this to share my journey with you. My shape, the shape of my writing and my life are shifting. I have crossed a threshold. The liminal time has passed. I move forward with certainty even though I have a long way to go, even knowing that this path I have chosen will call for daily practice and that I will fall from grace many times over. The goal is not to try to avoid falling from grace, no, the goal is to keep picking myself up and moving forward. That is the ultimate goal. To open more and more, to have more to give, to learn more each day and to infuse my life and teaching and writing and healing with the knowledge gained, grounded in prayer and meditation, in cooking and doing the dishes, of kissing and feeding pugs, of banging my toe and shouting words I will not use here, of cancelling appointments over and over because I am afraid to leave the house, and then sitting down to meditate and starting all over again.

This is real life. The spiritual life is not one that raises one up above flaws and faults and foibles, it is simply a continual reminder to pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and get back on the path. And I am trying.

I love you. I really do. And I am sitting opposite you, hands outstretched, breathing with you and allowing a healing energy that comes from a place beyond me to flow through my hands to you. Close your eyes, keep them closed, keep breathing, relax your body, and stretch your hands out, resting gently on mine. You cannot see me, but I am there...

© 2011 Maitri Libellule

All Rights Reserved

Meditation, Purification, Transformation, Illumination, And A Healing Vision...

When I meditate I connect to my deepest Self.

When I meditate I see God.

When I meditate, I am surrounded by angels...

I am moving through a time of deep healing, cleansing, I am being transformed, the whole world around me is illuminated. It is a state of bliss, I am blessed, and then I wake up to the real world as it is. This is why it is essential to meditate regularly. I always walk away with some gem. I always carry with me a peace and calm, at least for a time. I have touched down on pure grace and seen God, felt angel's wings brush against me, and though I might only carry those visions with me on a subconscious level, they are there, woven into the layers of my being, hidden behind a veil. Thankfully, the veil lifts from time to time throughout the day, and it is enough to keep me going. But it would drift away completely if I did not keep up with my practice.

There is no one way to meditate and I do not meditate, anymore, on a zafu on a cold hard floor, as I did when I began to study Zen meditation more than thirty years ago. We can't all sustain that posture, but it doesn't mean that we can't find a way to meditate in our own lives. In fact, after having been in a head-on collision, having had surgeries on my feet and then breaking them both at the same time, it is only comfortable for me to meditate in a chair, and this does not make the meditation any less potent. We can meditate at any time, anywhere, even if only for five minutes, perhaps it will be a hour. I like to do it for shorter periods many times throughout the day so that I may come back to myself. And I have company when I meditate. They meditate with me...

You can continue to meditate even if a puppy wakes up and kisses you on the nose, or an old fella burrows back into you to feel closer to you and get more comfortable. We are always meditating in sync with real life. Opening our heart and breathing our way over and under, around and through helps us sustain that peaceful calm of meditation when we move out of this state into the reality of our day. We meditate with the world and it carries us along on the tide of the minutes and hours before us. It is a life raft as we bob up and down through the stormy seas of life, and a raft to lay back on and bask in the sun. It is the core of my life, and further, it's what keeps me sane.

I often have visions when I meditate and this past week I had one so profound I shared it with a woman who has breast cancer. I told her in addition to whatever healing therapies she was doing, this could be a tool to strengthen her spirit, and her healing process, as she moved through her days. I believe it will work for her. I believe it will work for me. I have several issues that need to be healed, in body, mind, and spirit. I am working with this meditation now and I can't tell you what it is doing for me. It is already in the book that I am writing, and just rereading what I've written takes me back to this state, reminds me, and I pick it up and carry it with me once again after it has slipped away from me. I encourage you to try it, in whatever way you are comfortable, with eyes closed, relaxing your body, breathing in and out regularly, easy, easy, gently, you feel your whole body slip down into a very soft place. You are ready.

 

Breathe In, Breathe Out, continue gently with your breathing. While you are relaxed and breathing, eyes closed, visualize your self as the radiant golden being that you are, surrounded by a beautiful radiant aura, all around you, of shimmering gold. This is the healing light it brings. See yourself breathing in this golden light and filling your body with it, breathing out allow the darkness, the illness, or pain in your body or mind, to leave your body, blow it out and away. Breathe in the golden healing light, breathe out the darkness which may also come from your heart, mind or soul. Cleansing, clearing your body, can speed your healing and uplift your mind and heart. These things are known to speed up the healing process.
 

Keep breathing in this golden light, and as you do feel the rivers of darkness flow out of your body with the outbreath. An amazing healing is taking place. Purification, transformation, illumination. Continue with this meditation until it feels as though it has come to a natural end. Repeat at least daily, or many times throughout the day. Sometimes just closing your eyes for a few moments and breathing that golden light in and releasing negativity, pain, illness,  anything that holds you back from your true and perfect Self is a perfect way to keep the energy flowing. Some can do this instead of any outside therapies. Some will be under a medical doctor's care. Some will be working with holistic practitioners. This practice works in perfect tandem with them all, it makes no judgment about other areas of your life or the mode of healing you have chosen. If you are not working with a healing issue, it will enhance and brighten your day and everything that you do will be done with a greater feeling of peace inside, a warm spreading of grace inside of your body. 

We heal on many levels, some unseen and unknown by us, but with faith in yourself, in the meditation, with the process, you will be amazed at the results. I will go so far as to say that you don't have to believe in any specific outcome. You don't have to even believe that it works. If you are open and willing to experience whatever may come, even if you don't know what that is, you will be blessed beyond your wildest imaginings. Miracles occur every single moment of every single day. You are now able to see with a golden eye...

So I sit in my chair, pugs sleeping at my side, I close my eyes and breathe, I breathe in the golden light, I release whatever is troubling me that day, and I feel far more things leaving my body as I do, and in the reverse, feel more and more golden light coming in. This is my meditation. I call it "Breathing In The Golden Light." It is the name of the book that I am writing. Even writing about it puts me in touch with these feelings, and for a time the world around me shimmers with that healing light, and I smile, and it transforms my day.

My work these days is very intense. I am having amazing healing sessions with a Reiki Master, Transformational Healing Sessions with an incredible practitioner, and studying privately with a man who channels angel's messages -- and yes, it is very real and I was astounded -- and does one on one work with students with healing the soul and helping prepare you for your life's work. This is one of the most amazing things that I have ever experienced in my life. 

Also, next Sunday I go to my first Reiki attunement session so that I will begin the process of become a Reiki Master myself, although I see all of this work that I am doing as something that I will bring to my writing, to be able to reach out and touch people through my words, and I pray that my work will be of value to the world.

My days and nights are now full with healing work, study, meditation and writing. I work with crystals as I always have, healing essential oils, prayer and guidance from spiritual teachers, and students are already coming to me. For now I practice a combination of Deep Listening, Calming Energy, Meditation, Healing Journal Writing Guidance designed anew for each specific student. This comes out of thirty years of teaching journal classes and working one on one, and with groups, in hospitals, healing centers of all sorts, with ministers and counselors, in colleges and women centers, and much, much more. I have taught thousands of students and they have blessed me and enriched my life. Our students are always some of our greatest teachers.

And so I offer you The Meditation of the Golden Light. Try it, gently, regularly, and allow feelings to arise with no judgment. The healing process is different for every individual, no two alike, and just right for the person doing the work. I believe in you. I have faith in you. No matter what you are doing, or who you are, inside you there is a flame that can never be extinguished. Breathe in the light. Watch it grow.

I send you my love, and blessings, from my little cottage to where you are in the world. 

God Bless You and Keep You,

Believe in Yourself, 

And Love, Always Love...

© 2011 Maitri Libellule

All Rights Reserved

Standing On My Tippy Toes ~ Divine Confidence... Toe Lessons, Day Two.

Once upon a time I could...

Dear Ones...

Toes have dreams too...

When I was young I took 15 years of ballet. I was a dance minor in college. If you read the last entry you will know that my feet are now so damaged that I will now see toe shoes only in my dreams.

It's not that I was destined to be a ballerina. I wasn't that good. I got by and I just continued because I loved it. I love that I had the determination even when I knew that I didn't really have the talent. When I was in college I minored in dance just to keep up. Tap, modern, jazz, and yes, ballet. I had one of those little jewelry boxes that when you opened the top a little ballerina popped up and danced to the music. I think fondly of that little ballerina box and wonder whatever happened to it. Another one of those things lost in childhood, like my dancing, and my perfect toes. But...

The thing that we learn, in life, is that the past was full of many things, as the future will be, and even my feet as they went through their lumps and bumps and surgeries have been great teachers. I can no longer wear toe shoes and the world didn't lose a great dancer but I remember being on point and my toes are on point about a lot of things now. I forget, they remind me.

I think the thing I miss most is yoga and I hope to be able to do it again some day. I was taking yoga regularly until I broke both feet, shattered them as the doctor said. The thing is, though they healed, albeit lopsided and cattywompus, I still could have done yoga, maybe a little wobbly but it would have been doable, but my wonderful yoga teacher worked very hard with me and it just wasn't possible. You see my left big toe will not bend at all. It is rather alarming and strangely fascinating to look at the x-rays. The bone broke so badly that the bones in my big toe look like a cross. It was excruciating for a long time and now it just won't bend. If you know yoga you know that your toes just have to bend. Any posture where you have to go up on your toes, bend your toes, or get in any position wherein you have to get up without crawling across the floor to grab something to pull yourself up, disrupting the class nevermind being incredibly embarrassed, its just not doable. I once took a yoga class with a man who had lost both legs to the knees. He had to sit in a chair for some of the postures, but by gosh he could get through the class just fine.

For awhile I could only think of how much I lost when I lost my "normal" feet. And I gained a lot of weight. I couldn't walk almost at all for the better part of two years, can no longer walk for exercise because if I go a little too far and my feet start hurting badly I can't get back. This too is frustrating. But someone gave me a treadmill and I'm starting to use it. When my feet hurt I can get off of it and walk out of my studio into my cozy room and put my feet up and tuck in with the pugs. I'm very excited about this prospect.

Here's the thing... one day I just got a grip and started thinking of all the things I could do that weren't toe related, and it was an amazingly long list. And my toes were proud of me and cheered me on. They told me that I still had pretty feet and that I could tuck flowers between them and they would take me where I needed to go. And I have gone many places, and I will go many more, and I have ten happy toes cheering me on. My toes have given me Divine Confidence even if they can't get in toe shoes anymore.

 

Flowery toes are very cheerful.
Even toes that can't bend can hold
flowers. I'm not sure toe shoes could
top that. Maybe some day I can do 
yoga with flowers between my toes...

The thing is, we all have dreams, not just toes. And it is easy to hold onto early dreams, or dreams before an accident of some sort that change everything we thought we knew, everything we thought was possible, everything we planned to do, but maybe, just maybe, losing one thing makes way for another. Maybe we had a bright shining thing in our lives for awhile to love and be passionate about and celebrate and be proud of. But we are none the less for shifting our focus and dreaming new dreams. This is why mindfulness is one of the most important things in my life.

 Ram Dass said "Be Here Now." And really, where else can we be? And now is full of so many rich and wonderful things. My feet carry me out into the garden to plant my heirloom roses, and through the house to do my work, and I can pick flowers and pick up pugs and cook and hug and kiss and laugh and love and dream thousands of new dreams with my funny toes. And I love them. I love them dearly. How could I not?

Right now my toes are going to take the rest of me to meditate. I make beautiful places to meditate, with flowers and candles and incense and fragrant oils, and when I meditate I am completely at peace. You can do some of the most sublime things in life with funny toes, meditation is only one of them.

Love your toes, love your life, love yourself, just as you are. You are a divine human being. You have many gifts. Don't get so stuck on one or two and think you have nothing else to offer. You have the sun, the moon, and the stars. And you will get everything you need, and go everywhere you want to go. Believe it. I do. It's true.

You can have sassy toes even if your toes don't bend....