Tuesday, September 23, 2014

Magic

I believe in Magic.

Not the parlor trick kind of magic but real Magic.

The kind of magic that shapes Reality. Causes Reality to open doorways before your very eyes.

Its there whether we see it or not. Whether we choose to believe or not.

We are Creators.

The world is in sync with our minds, our intentions, our wishes, our dreams, our fears.

Creation can go many different ways. It is infinite in potential.

If we live in a world where we don't believe in magic, that same magic will manifest in front of us in such a way to confirm such a belief. Our world will appear more random, more 'fact' based, more sterile. If we believe in our powerlessness, the world will reflect that.

However, if we live in sync with the world, knowing that we are inseparable from the world, it will be like engaging with it in a beautiful dance.

Everything we tell ourselves consciously and unconsciously will reflect in some way in front of our very eyes.

At one point, as a young child, I knew this. Then at some point, as I grew older, I allowed someone to convince me otherwise. The repercussions from this were vast. I became a victim of the outside world. I felt powerless. I built a web of self destruction around myself. The world began to reflect my belief in a disconnected world.

Years later, after I had struggled and wrestled with myself, I must have finally gotten tired. One morning I decided that I was tired of the struggle and I realized somehow that I was creating my own darkness. I was hiding from my own light, afraid of its brilliance. I was creating my own lack of power, of ability.

When I first realized this, (or was it remembering?), my first feeling was complete and utter awe. Awe at the vastness and potential. I screamed in joy at the 'discovery'.

Yet...

The longer I sat with this 'discovery' the more something else, something other than joy, began to fill my mind...

What did I feel?

Fear. Perhaps it was actually more like terror...

Fear of responsibility. Fear of the innate power of my word and my thought. Fear of actually inhabiting the driver's seat. Fear of my own limitlessness. Fear of space, free and unrestrained in any way possible.

The more I explored and sat with this 'discovery' of this realm of magic, the realm I had forgotten, the more I saw the fears of my conscious and unconscious mind reflect outside of me.

I was existing simultaneously in awe and fear. 

It was like I was learning how to drive. Simultaneously liberating and terrifying. 

Then came my driver's test.

A short time after my 'discovery', a person who I will call the 'witch' came into my life. A manifestation and reflection of my deepest insecurity testing me, to see whether or not I really did believe. Testing me to see whether or not I could actually pull off living from that highest place. Testing me to see whether I actually knew how to drive.

The 'spell cast', obstacles arose. My belief wavered. Doubts began to creep into my mind. Life began to reflect that doubt.

It intensified. Everything crumbled. Everything. I fell long and hard. Was it all real? Was magic really true or had I just deluded myself all along?

Dazed and depressed, I lay there at the bottom of the pit for some time. No wait, I was still falling...

I continued to fall, if that was possible.

Then. At the lowest point I looked up. To the highest point I could see. I held my gaze there.

And I remembered.

Who I was. I remembered that Magic was real.

I remembered that it was not the witch who put me there. I remembered that it was me.

It was me all along who had placed these obstacles in my path. Reflections of past choices finally coming to fruition.

I bowed my head in deep gratitude. I realized I was already filled with abundance beyond measure. 

I wrote something on a piece of paper and filled it with my intention. Breathed life into it.

Then I burned the paper. And forgot about it.

A month later, a light opened up in the sky and from that light a brilliant Goddess appeared.

And shattered the walls of the pit in which I stood.

She picked me up and carried me high at incredible speed up into the expanse above me.

Acceleration of Light.

An unending Orgasm of Fire, burning through the spine of the Tree of Life.

A waterfall of Nectar over the Cosmic Mountain.

I stand here now in space. No ground. No ceiling. No walls.

Calm.

Yet...

My mind even now tries to contract in the old ways, to bring back the comfort of that dark hole.

Yes, it can be unnerving in space.

But in space you can see the doorways of lightning opening in the clouds.

A demonstration of the infinite power of Mind and its Light.

Will I forget again? A cloud passes by in the sky.

As I smile in complete awe and wonder, the glorious rainbow that appears shows me colors the like of which I have never before seen...

.........


On this eve of Navaratri 2014, I offer immense thanks to my Guru, fractal in nature and inhabiting the heart of all beings, who are also in reality my teachers and mothers.

I especially offer thanks to the Glorious Goddess, who manifests as Divine Mother, Lover, Witch and far more.

Born from the altar of the Fire of Light, Her form glows with the brilliance of a thousand rising Suns.

The tears in my eyes flow with such joy at her Sight.

Wednesday, September 3, 2014

Some Reflections on the Last Year


            I write mostly because I like writing. Nevertheless with another personal update there is a part of me that hesitates. Revealing processes, thoughts, feelings to the world at large can be both an act of vulnerability and freedom, and on the flip side of that even an act of self-sabotage. I wonder sometimes if my personal posts of the past year were a bit of both.
            Nevertheless, I feel that I started down that road for some reason last year. Writing about myself and my processes that is. Many letters came back to me. Letters of gratitude for my honesty and openness. Some were grateful to have the experience of looking through a window into processes that reflected their own, or showed them a perspective from one who walked in the feet of two genders. And then there were those that threatened my life or said things that don’t bear repeating any more. What a crazy year it has been for me…

            My divorce finalized today. Here's how it went...
Standing in front of the ‘commissioner’ with my lawyer. I answer a bunch of questions. I am supposed to say yes to them all and yet I’ve taken a vow with my hand raised to tell the truth. But part of me lies when I say yes to every question. I forgive myself for it anyway. It would have cost too much, both in money and emotion to do otherwise…
            I didn’t want it. Or did I? Is the outside world really a reflection of what I have been asking for? Perhaps. Yet I still feel anger. Frustration. Sadness and tears. A world fallen apart and dismantled that I had so obsessively tried to maintain for so many years. I have many words. And yet I almost feel that the words don't really communicate truth. Not really. I really don’t feel that I have all the answers right now. Most of the time I feel the call to just surrender to the quiet and just know that I can’t really know the whys as much as I would like to. My feelings in the matter almost feel irrelevant. A part of me a hopeless romantic, loyal to the end, still in love… I struggle sometimes to understand it. Like making a square fit through a circle, maybe my perspective has not opened wide enough yet. I have struggled so much this year wrapping my head around what I could have done different. Can we ever do anything other than our best at the time? That I suppose is the most frustrating thing. Looking back and knowing it couldn’t have been any different.
            To say that I haven’t had my moments of peace with the changes would be a lie though. There are moments. Possibilities. Things I haven’t considered that continue to dawn in this strange new sky. These windows in the sky beckon me. I know in my heart the door has to close and despite the pain I'm choosing to walk through it. Anger, sadness, possibility... It is all of the above.
            My gender. Oh what a roller coaster ride I have been on this year! There is a term in the trans community called genderfluid. This term seems to resonate with me more and more even as I'm hesitant to even use any terms anymore... Genderfluid? Because I don’t feel myself or my gender to be the same from day to day… Gender is a strange thing. Much struggle occurred with me over the year when I resisted myself. I didn’t want to be female. I didn’t want to be male. Oscillation occurred. Then a strange thing happened. I know. I use this word strange a lot. Sometimes I feel that I want to call myself ‘gender-strange’. :) Well, I started to just feel more comfortable. This began to happen as I realized the more important underlying factor. That for years, literally most of my life, I have not loved myself. When that began to happen, in other words, I began to love myself, through a lot of force and effort mind you, I began to feel more comfortable inside. I began to not rebel so much against myself. I began to relax into me.
            Then a huge wave of relief hit me. I didn’t want to ‘transition’. I didn’t have to transition. And yet, I felt the freedom that if that need hit me strongly that it would also be ok. Whatever it was, it was ok. I feel freer in the world now, not really caring what people think so much about that anymore. Well, maybe I still don’t entirely feel comfortable with stares if I go outside in a skirt, but I do feel more comfortable breaking traditional boundaries for the most part and just living more fully as I am. Genderqueer, genderfluid, genderstrange, two-spirit. And I do have moments where I feel more one than the other... Call it what you will. I guess I’ll go back to mostly just calling it me. I can’t honestly tell you what tomorrow or even the next moment will bring though… Do we ever know?
            Depression. Depression is an interesting thing. I have found that the more I am depressed, the more it seems I welcome more depression into my life. Sometimes it can take a monumental amount of faith, energy, motivation, and force to cause that track to shift. Where does the energy come from? The energy required to shift it? I think sometimes in those moments that in the call, the true wanting to be free from it, that grace dawns. Personally, I’ve already started climbing. I’m sick of sitting at the bottom of the well. Joy is my birthright and I’m ready to claim it.
            Gratitude. I’ve learned a lot by observing those who are grateful. I watch what happens in their lives. Their lives become more prosperous. They bring more into the world of what they are grateful for. I was reluctant at first. Cynical. I’ve harbored so much bitterness and blame over the years. I’d like to say that it was because of such and such or so and so but the truth is that I accept the responsibility for my own bitterness and blame. I forced myself to start keeping a journal every morning. Writing down every little thing I was grateful for. Not publicly. To myself. I began to notice things. More things. I began to see more and more the things I was grateful for. I also began to see magic again. For that, I am grateful. I've decided to keep writing in that journal...
            Public and private life. I came out to the world last year as trans/gender-strange mostly to break down the wall that I saw growing thicker around myself. It was suffocating me. I felt trapped by my own guilt, shame, and fear. Was 'coming out' necessary? I suppose so. That particular wall did have to come down. However, it did simultaneously at times feel self-sabotaging. Both from a personal and a public perspective. I attacked myself and opened myself up to attack. I can only speak from my own perspective but I think it felt this way on a personal level because I still clung to this idea of the ‘right way to be in the world’. I’m not sure what that right way is so much anymore. To react, to rebel in a strong way to fight that ‘right way’  can be simultaneously an act of freedom and an act of self-sabotage. And I do acknowledge that I have felt both in the process. I’m grateful for the lovely mirrors that have shown me the multiple facets of this. Maybe its all about finding balance anyway. And being comfortable with what my good friend calls 'the power of and'. Despite the complexities, I do feel that sometimes stories have to be told. Even if they are just stories…  And... I do believe that some things, some stories, are best left unsaid, some things still kept close. All of our lives are far more complex than any of us ever let on I think…
            Stories. Oh the stories we tell. I’m coming more and more to the place that it isn’t so much that the stories themselves are the problem. Oh the guilt that I have felt over the years about that, feeling like I was supposed to be fucking Zen or something (sorry Zenners). I think it’s really just more that it is important to pick the right stories that work for us. The ones that will feed us. The stories that resonate with our heart. The ones that help us evolve and grow. Expand. Even as we let some stories go, knowing they are just stories, we cannot entirely escape their lessons. They mold and shape new stories. Our human life is a story. A story of wonder, pain, joy, love, loss, growth, evolution and much more. And with that said, onward to the next chapter…
            Much love to you all.