Category Archives: Reflections

Operational Holy Grail

Grail

I've been exploring a dynamic that my Spirit Allies call our "operational Holy Grail."   The concept here is that, on a day-to-day operational level, each of us has a key quality or condition we are seeking.  When that condition is met,  we find ourselves in the sweet spot, optimized for functioning.  We experience ease and a sense of right alignment. Things flow.

When Spirit brought this information through a few years ago, it carried a ring of Truth, which has inspired me to learn more. With the help of Spirit, I've been deepening my understanding and helping myself and others to explore our personal operational Holy Grails. I have a strong sense that identifying our operational Holy Grail and learning how to attain it is a vital key to harmony-in-living and effectively bringing our medicine in the world.

Discovering and cultivating our personal operational Holy Grail, empowers us.  What is your operational Holy Grail?

My operational Holy Grail is clarity. When my mind is lucid, I am in the sweet spot.  My entire system hums. I am cleared for action. When my mind is muddled, it slows my roll. Confusion creates a micro-chaos, which stymies momentum and sends my creative energy spiraling into unfruitful back eddies.  For me personally, it is the most miserable state I know. Of course, no one likes to be confused, but for me clarity is a core organizing dynamic. Without it, nothing good can happen.  Operationally, clarity empowers me to be at peace and to act in alignment.

This awareness has made cultivating clarity an even greater priority.  Through energy work, ceremony, spirit alliance and prayer, I continue to welcome and nurture clarity. When I am unclear, I am not myself.  In this moment, I am reminded that whenever I feel confused, I need to step back, insert a liminal pause and reconnect to my authentic core, which is always clear and aligned with Truth. Confusion is simply evidence that I am coming from Ego, rather than Spirit - a timely reminder.

Of course, the operational Holy Grail is simply that: something we seek in order to optimize our ability to function. Beyond this operational level, there is a deeper dynamic: the spiritual Holy Grail that inspires our evolution and drives our destiny.  Ultimately, the spiritual Holy Grail is Love. We are called to our own unique pathways of experiencing and expressing Love and the creative synergy that arises when we collaborate from Love.  Understanding our personal operating system, helps us to answer the call of destiny.

article by Ananaia R O'Leary

Remember, Man, That Thou Art Dust

Ash Wednesday

ash-wednesday

I was never impressed with the whole idea of Lent, a 6-week season of deprivation in the name of spiritual growth.  But growing up Catholic, there was always something just a lil bit badass about having ashes smudged onto my forehead with the forbidding admonishment: Remember, Man, that thou art dust and to dust thou shalt return.  

I remember other kids would rub their foreheads clean in the bus on the way home, embarrassed. Me? Well, even then, I guess, I had an appreciation for symbolism and ritual.  I took it in stride.  It didn't seem to bother me that I'd been marked for inevitable death.  I felt that something special had happened to me that day and I wanted it to linger.

I never associated that smudge with sin. I associated it with mortality.  The ash was death-stuff, not a mark on my soul. I couldn't have articulated it then, but looking back I recognize that I felt the truth of that inexorable cycle as the organic thing it is.  For the living, death is a required course. It didn't weigh heavily upon me.  For the first time writing this, it occurs to me that they were trying to frighten me into good behavior. At the end of life comes judgment and sinners face the flames.  Except I've never believed in the whole lake-of-fire thing.  Ha! the tactic was wasted on me.

From the first time I read it in 4th grade, I knew that "God is Love" is the most powerful statement in the bible.  By middle school, I had realized that hell is a separation from God or Love (same thing) - a state we can experience right here on Earth.  I've never feared hell. I've never feared God. Love is not something to be feared. There was a time when I did fear death.  As I passed from my 20's to my 30's, I felt the acceleration of time that comes with age.  I became acutely aware that my life was not on track with my destiny.  I was not really afraid of dying, but rather the unlived life.

Now, very much aligned with my Spirit's calling, I am down with Death.  It doesn't frighten me.  I happen to love the idea of mortality. Don't get me wrong: I'm no middle-aged Goth-Girl, brooding on the morbid and the morose. I'm certainly not welcoming my demise, but I'm not resisting it either.  I trust that it will come in its perfect time.  Until then, I want to live.

The crisp awareness that this too shall pass brings life into focus.  The finite gives life its contour.  Limitations of time, energy, resources and awareness shape our choices.  Choices shape our life journey.  In the end, these outlines form the boundaries of our lives. Within those boundaries, lie our accomplishments, our contributions, our creations, our joys, our love received and expressed and the markers for continued evolution in our next incarnation.  These boundaries beget the magic and the measure of our lives.  Mine will be a life well-lived.

When I shuffle off this sweet mortality, my body will indeed return to dust.  I hope that some beloved someone will take that burnt ash and spread it on the winds over Canyon de Chelly.  Let my dust return to to dust, replenishing the Mother.  My spirit will fly!

 

 

Honing In

Consciousness, Reflections

When I sit down to blog, I step into a kaleidoscope.  My mind widens out and theme-streams begin to flow in, each one carrying currents of nuanced, complex content. There’s a juicy over-abundance of data. So much so, that in a matter of seconds, I’ve gone from inspired to swirling in a storm surge of possibilities.

Kaleidescope by Aaron Flick

Don’t misconstrue.  I’m not complaining about the connectivity. It’s simply that, awash in this vast sea, it becomes hard to choose a direction. I need a way to hone in. When I’m responding to someone or something that is arising in real-time, honing in is seldom a problem. Inspiration and intuition seem to easily calibrate to what is needed in that context.

Blog writing is more abstract.  Sometimes inspiration is sparked by something immediate: something I’ve seen or read or a recent conversation or experience. If I can strike while the iron is hot, my focus stays keenly contextualized and cogent clarity flows out. But often inspiration arises in a class, a session, a roadtrip, during my morning ablutions or in the midst of chores. Everything coalesces, words and awareness dovetail, and I can easily articulate what is emerging out loud or in my mind. Of course, it’s not always possible – or optimal – to drop everything and head to my keyboard. When I do seek to recollect these notions in tranquility, I find myself a-whirl in the kaleidoscope.  What is happening here?

This is not merely an inability to recall or concentrate.  I’ve made mental tags, jotted down crib notes and taped sessions and classes for later playback.  When I sit down to write, I reference these sources then tune back in to re-acquire the inspirational stream. The kaleidoscope-vista opens and I seek the tip of the tagged thread surfacing in the dynamic landscape on my inner screen.  It’s almost always there, hazy at first, then coming clearer as I edge in for a closer look.  As I touch the tip of the thread, its content activates.

I am on the live-wire of this strand of Truth, vibrating and dancing in the Gnosis of the Beloved.  I am poised, present, ready to be informed.  I open to receive; the edges of the thread suffuses and expands. Exquisitely complex, related content pours into this thread from every direction until it is no longer the neatly sequenced filament that had coalesced earlier in class, session or personal brainstorm. It is a vast moving field: multi-dimensional, incoming and eager to be comprehended.  My mind floods. As my current capacity to process maxes, my mind fades to featureless white. I breathe and must mentally regroup. My blog entry and my inner screen – both blank. Impasse.

From the time of original inspiration to the time I sit down to write, something has clearly changed. Just now as I was writing this, I flashed on an insight, which is at least one piece of this puzzle: Curiosity is key!

Curiosity, yes, but not just idle curiosity – purposeful curiosity.  Clarity coalesces for me when I engage my curiosity in the pursuit of that which will uplift and transform.  It is this intention which summons each decipherable thread of insight from the wider field. Like a living strand of DNA, each thread contains the necessary data, in the necessary sequence, to activate evolutionary growth in those it touches.  This specific data was singled out and sequenced by the needs of the receiver(s) – myself included.

When I am effective in Truth-tracking, I am doing so in a specific context, in which unknown, but particular, insights are needed to help those involved to advance. We are not dealing with infinite generalities, but a finite set of variables.  These variables cannot all be cataloged by the intellect, but can be encompassed intuitively. My intuition, with the support of Spirit and the collaborative consciousness of all present, calibrates precisely what is essential in that moment and calls it forward to be explicated from the deep field of Truth.

I am often able to comprehend and convey a good portion of this essential data through words, energy and action in such a way that it creates an opening for healing or growth. I am hopeful the insights emerging here will help me develop these capacities further.

When I draw a blank while sitting at my keyboard, I am operating in reference to a much broader data set than usual. I am thinking globally, rather than locally — this is the worldwide web, after all. Without fully realizing it, I’ve been attempting to track and then write something which has the potential to uplift and transform all who read it.  No wonder, what was once a finely calibrated river of wisdom, suddenly floods out into a vast and amorphous sea. Now the data being summoned forth is not the specific set of data needed in this precise moment by one person or a small group of people. Instead, I am unwittingly attempting to coalesce precise, detailed insight on a particular topic for a nearly universal group of people who could be accessing this post at anytime in the future.  The variables exponentially expand!  I currently don’t have the capacity or methodology to process information on this scale, but I’m up for the challenge of expanding my capacity in whatever way is in harmony.

Lots to contemplate here … and even more to explore.  My purposeful curiosity has definitively been piqued!