09.29.09
Posted in The Wild Sky, Thoughts and Reflections at 7:39 am by Shefyt
Yesterday afternoon was very dark, and then on the drive home from work it rained, but at the end there was a strange sunset light, the sky like champagne, pale gold where the clouds broke. Like that, clarity emerges, a glimpse, a snatch of music, a fleeting instant that clutches at the heart.
What is my intention? Do my actions support it or undercut it? What have I forgotten in the busyness of the day? The light breaks through, and suddenly I feel it again, that call, that promise of delight, almost near enough to touch. And I pledge myself once more.
Last night I lit candles and poured water for my Beloveds, for my Akhu, and for Djehuty, the God of the Year, even though I was tired and resistant — “I have too much to do” — but then, what more important than this? Right now, Djehuty affirms, I need two things that intertwine with each other: discipline, to settle myself to my work; and coolness, to soothe my agitation so that I can find focus and calm. It comes back to holding that energy within myself, containing it so that I can make good and appropriate use of it. So this week I work on loosening the grip of my two addictions, both of which make me restless and “hot”: caffeine and Internet surfing. And although I’ve addressed this issue before, and “forgotten” with passage of time, I haven’t given up on it, and that counts for something — a reaching for the light, however fumbling; a link in the chain of effort; a repeated opening to the brilliance of the sun.
I dreamed once of a yellow bird that was also a prayer, released to skim upward toward the sky, and of a quiet man who told me, “Keep sending it up.”
Again and again, a return to the center, to intention, to the still point of meditation, to the heart’s sweet, piercing longing.
Keep sending it up.
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09.25.09
Posted in Parks and Rivers, Thoughts and Reflections at 9:47 am by Shefyt
I went down to the lake at lunchtime yesterday, to sit and watch the reflections of the willows, the sun, and the passing clouds, to drop leaves into the water and watch them turn in the slow, eddying currents.
Sometimes patience is so hard. Taking time is so hard. It seems as if it should be easy, just living, just letting things come. I know that there are ways to rest, even while in motion, but somehow, far too often, I don’t.
This week has been about finding that rest: playing with the new kittens, sitting and reading in the evenings (more pleasure reading than I’ve done all summer!), doing the one thing that just has to be done each day. This week has been about kindness to myself. And I think I’m starting to feel the fruits of that kindness: a little more clarity, the feeling that I might be able to start writing in earnest again.
Tonight I’ll pour water for Khonsu, beneath the waxing moon, and for the Seven Arrows of Bast, in thanks and in prayer.
Dua Khonsu! O Shining One, Great Healer, may You watch over me.
Dua Bast! Beautiful Mother, may I rest peacefully in Your embrace.
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09.23.09
Posted in Festivals, The Wild Sky, Thoughts and Reflections at 12:34 pm by Shefyt
Out of the overcast day, a moment of sun — brilliant white clouds pull together like slow Symplegades, thin swirls of cirrus curling between them like the spray of waves against stone. They kiss, and gray shadow falls again.
We’re in the midst of Opet, the festival of the Theban triad, celebrating the union of Amun and Mut, the bright promise of Their son Khonsu, and the renewal of the sacred kingship. Where the Lord of Thrones meets the Lady of the Crowns, where the hidden meets the manifest, where the Divine and the human worlds touch, we are in neheh, cyclical time, the spiral of becoming. The play of light waxes and wanes. But there will always be healing.
Dua Amun! Dua Mut! Dua Khonsu! Nekhtet!
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09.17.09
Posted in Stalking Beauty, The Wild Sky, Thoughts and Reflections at 9:37 pm by Shefyt
Wep Ronpet is well past, and the season of the Inundation is underway. The golden rain trees around the fountain plaza are starting to turn, shedding their first delicate yellow leaves, living up to their name. This morning was wrapped in gray, a promise of drizzle, a heavy overcast that intensified even the smallest spots of color: blue chicory by the roadside, a fiery clump of tickseed sunflowers, one prematurely red maple branch. The rumor of autumn is in the wind, breath of coolness and change, ready to sweep everything clean before it, opening the way for all possibility.
Over the last few years, I’ve spent a lot of time caught up in a looping pattern of anxiety, one of the most frequent manifestations of which has been a circular inner monologue: “I want something. What do I want? I don’t know what I want! But I want something….” This week I was finally able to put on the brakes by means of a very simple, basic affirmation technique: taking the negative statement at the heart of that distress, turning it into a positive one, and repeating it with intention, like a mantra.
I know what I want.
I know what I want.
I know what I want.
And the answers came.
I want to be strong.
What does it mean to be strong?
To be whole and sound. To be effective in the world.
I want to move through life with grace.
What does it mean to be graceful?
To be centered in myself. To be conscious, as I move, of my relationship with all that’s around me.
I want to live in beauty.
What does it mean to live in beauty?
To be aware. To discover richness and sweetness with all of my senses, every day, everywhere. To choose always the beautiful and the true.
I want to create beauty.
What does it mean to create beauty?
To use all my talents to write, to sing, to make things that are lovely and satisfying. To “share your lapis,” as I was told once in an inner journey. To make the world a little brighter, to make life a little easier and happier for everyone around me. To reflect all of the beauty that I see and experience and imagine.
Everything else? All the passing flickers of interests, obsessions, the one-true-goals, the seemed-like-a-good-idea-at-the-times? It’s all window dressing, all veils and curtains, all outward forms that come and go. The essence is what’s deep and true. So if I can stay with and follow that essence, and worry less about the particulars, then I’ll find my way out of that endless loop at last.
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And then, having realized that, today I went out for a walk at lunchtime and sat for a while on a set of abandoned steps, watching the cloud-blown sky. And all at once the next key came to me: part of the urgency that lies behind my anxiety is this feeling I sometimes get of being filled with a tremendous energy and having no idea what to do with it. There’s a desperation to find something big and important and most of all right, the perfect thing that I’m “meant” to do, at which I can hurl all of this gathered tension and force. (Thus the almost frantic need to answer that question of “what do I want,” to find some kind — any kind — of direction and purpose.) And what the wind and my Mother told me is — that it’s all right to hold this energy. To contain it, as the bas jar contains the secret of its perfume. And to let it find its own expression when it’s needed, when I can see what it’s really good for — as not a single outpouring flood but a thousand subtle uses, the virtue of a thousand different resins and flowers.
Two hawks swept by overhead, flying against the wind, and the sun came out.
Dua Bast! Dua Heru-hekenu! Nekhtet!
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