Gramma and I - Metaphor story

Gramma and I

“I feel soft, like I’m not at my full potential,” I said to myself, thinking I was alone. “I feel … doughy inside, and like no one would ever want me. And why does it have to be so hot in here? It feels like an oven! My skin feels sticky, too.” I shook my head at myself, downcast. “Whatever happened to all my potential? I felt like the most loved and sweetest thing on the earth not too long ago. And now, look at me; alone in the dark.”

I slipped into reverie, my melancholy acting as a slide into deeper, inner darkness. We had been in the kitchen, just the three of us; the little girl, her mother and I. Her mother had let her “help” and, as she had just turned five, the countertop was a mess with broken eggshells, flour on the floor, sticky spoons licked clean. The way the little girl had giggled was just the most delicious sound I had ever heard. She had such light in her eyes! They seemed to reflect not only the very definition of joy but the pink streamers themselves and the cheery “Happy Birthday” that draped the wall. I wished I could go back in time. As much as I had loved that moment, I would love it more if I had only another chance. Just one more chance.

And then I heard her. She spoke in a grandmotherly voice, but stern. If there was compassion behind her words, it might have been undetectable to anyone but me. But I could feel it in spite of what she said.

“Oh, wah, wah, wah… you and your complaining! I’ve been around many years, grandson, and I don’t know that I’ve ever heard such a soliloquy of bull!”

I was startled. I thought I had been alone. But come to think of it, I could feel the warmth of her embrace even as she spoke. But her words still stung. Soliloquy of bull? Ouch!

“Well…” was all I could get out before she started in again.

“’Well’ and two cents will get you a piece of butterscotch,” she interrupted. I frowned. “Look, no one likes being in the oven, but that’s how you come to reach your potential. You think there’s some other way? What could possibly be the way other than what is happening at this particular moment? And what, you’re the first to go through it?”

I knew she was right. I mean, I could sense what was going to have to happen when I was in the kitchen with them, just minutes before. I knew that being held by THE/MY/CHANGE little girl was the sweetest thing that could ever be, but that it could not last. And that even she would eventually be disappointed had I stayed the way I was, had I even been able to do so, had I even had the ability to make that choice. Still… this was so much worse than I had bargained for.

It seemed the grandmother could read my mind. Her tone shifted, sounding like a parent that had been a little too harsh before and, feeling that her earlier scolding words had softened their mark, was ready to deliver a teaching message.

“You don’t get it,” she chuckled, smiling. “You’re soft, yes. But this experience is making you what you need to be, son. If you don’t learn to enjoy it, I mean, truly see the value of the oven, you won’t be what you need to be for this little girl on her birthday. I’ve seen it before; the cakes that fall. You can’t imagine the disappointment you’ll experience if that happens.”

“But it’s so hard,” I ventured, almost to myself.

“Yes,” the grandmother replied. “It really is. I know; I feel it, too, in other ways. After all, getting thrown into a dishwasher is no picnic. But I am right here with you. It’s the only way you can see what you’re really made of.” She paused feeling my thoughts, my self-doubt dissolving like the powdered sugar I had seen simply melt into a mixture of cream cheese and butter. “Oh, sure, you know your ingredients, but you can’t see what you’re really made of, can’t really know your true potential, until you go through the heat you’re going through in this moment. There is no other way to be of the kind of service that you are meant to bring to the world, and to that little girl.”

“Well, do I have to actually enjoy it?” I asked.

“That’s probably not quite the right word, grandson,” she said hopefully, ignoring my hint of sarcasm. And then after pausing, she added, “Maybe ‘appreciate’ is better. You have to appreciate the moment you are in right now, in this very instant, as a snapshot of exactly where you are supposed to be. Exactly where you are supposed to be! Are you as good as you’ll ever be? As able to bring joy, as able to be appreciated? Oh, no! Your potential, when you reach it, will be one of such sweetness, of such warmth and smiling service… oh, you have no idea!” She chucked warmly. “But you can only get there by appreciating the process to get there. The cakes that fall… they are the ones that are unable to withstand the heat. They actually will someone to open the door before they are fully ready, just to get a second’s worth of respite, and it kills their potential. Most fallen cakes don’t even get frosted, they just get eaten straight from the pan; torn, not cut with a shiny knife with the reverence that should have been theirs to experience, had they just been able to appreciate the moment through its discomfort, even for its discomfort.”

I considered this. “So, if I understand you right, I have to be able to appreciate that I am somewhere 

between batter and a cake that can be frosted, even though this is hot and really uncomfortable?”

“That’s the recipe!” she said with a kind sparkle.

I sighed. I felt better, even though it still hurt, this baking process. “Thank you for the pep talk, Gramma Pan. I can tell you’ve been around a while, if you don’t mind me saying. You told me exactly what I needed to hear. This is exactly where I should be, right now.”

“You’re very welcome, Cake-Becoming!” she said as I felt her edges press into my corners. “And look, you have a visitor!”

Looking up, I could see the little girl, the little girl that I loved and that loved me, peering through the oven door as her mother spoke a warning not to touch it or even make too much noise. I smiled, a vanilla cake in the making. With happiness spreading inside me, filling me, I could see just past the little girl, her mother mixing what looked like the most delicious concoction of candied decorations to sprinkle on a birthday cake; a cake that would be done to perfection in due time, and that at the same time was perfect right Now.

The doorbell rang. Her mother said, “Monica, your guests are here!”

Monica bolted like a cat for the door, her pink dress laughing behind her as she ran. Smiling to myself I could hear around the corner a chorus of five year old effusion:

“Happy birthday, Monica!”

A Shamanic Kind of Healing - essay prose thing

Now! Stop it now. It is enough.

That fear, that withering fire inside you that quenches your peace was caused by blunt life trauma and the way you hold it, it spins nothing but drama. Quit masticating your bruises. Your replaying of that painful moment is illness, when all your soul desires is stillness. It is time to move away from your incessant replay of the memory and create something worthy of You from it. How? I am going to take you through this sacred alchemy and then you can use it whenever your Soul is willing.

Are you ready? 

First, feel only the pain the memory has caused. Feel it all, acknowledging the pain independent of the memory. Now, as difficult as it may be, thank the pain you feel, for it's potential to provide a softness that will allow Compassion From Experience to grow as you do the work of ages. Thank your body too, for serving you so stalwartly in this way, telling you where the pain from the event wishes to live. See that pain again now, in greater detail. Does it have a color? Does it pulse? Most importantly, see it's edges and encapsulate it for this defines it and makes it less than the eternal state it may tell you it is. Make certain you make a note of its physical characteristics, because in the next few days the Universe will give you clues about why it was important that you did so. If you see it as red, that color, or its associated direction, or an animal of the same hue, or a person wearing red will approach you with a message related to your healing... something will happen, because the Universe always supports you, always assists you exactly when and where it is most needed and in the amounts you allow. Continue to observe the pain for a moment more without fear or anger, but in perfect equanimity, without judgment. The pain itself neither hates nor loves, is neither good nor bad - it just wishes to remain forever, for that is it's nature. But Your actions decide what effect it will have to your soul: deep compassion and budding love... or dark, cancerous illness of soul and body. It is entirely up to you.

Now turn your attention from that bundle of emotion and cause in your minds eye a field or forest of your creation or memory to come into view. Make it beautiful because you will visit it often from this time forth. See it now in detail. What plants are there? Are there mushrooms? Ferns? Flowers? Is there a garden? Berries? Fruit trees? Are there animals or insects? A body of water? Acknowledge as many Beings as you can and thank them for making this place beautiful. Do you have it? This is your garden place, a sanctuary as real and as sacred to you as any temple created by hands. It's ok if some aspects change from time to time, but this is your Home, so keep its boundaries apart from hell. 

Since it is your soul's nature to prefer health to illness, spaciousness to infarction, focus on the little package of pain again and take a deep breath in, hold it for a few seconds and release it. Do it again. Why? Because your soul is a breezy, breathy atmosphere surrounding the earth of your physical body, and you are causing a wind to gently carry away that energy away to your sacred and healthful garden.Why would you carry a something consisting of pain to such a beautiful place? It's a worthy question, and it will be answered soon.

Laying that question aside for now, in a section of the garden of your choice, dig a hole large enough to hold that sacred pod of encapsulated anguish, and then watch the wind of your soul, your true self, bury it gently in moist earth and cover it with kindness, patting it home. Earth can now mulch it into dark, homely, fertile soil for you, and you alone (although this benefits all of mankind). Now, as you are a being of nature, you must obey Nature's laws. Here is one that is applicable to you at this point: Nature will not tolerate a vacuum. So in the same amount of feeling that encapsulated the pain, cause another wind to bring that much light to the part of your body that felt restricted. Replace the dark void with exactly as much healthy light. See it beaming love and acceptance and health and beauty into every once-constricted veins of that area. Repeat this as often as you must while I speak to you further.

This may be hard to hear, but know that I say it by way of instruction rather than censure. You've made it a habit to forget that you've journeyed the width of forever stretching both ways to get here to this place and plane. You are not an insignificant God, yet at at times you play as if you are. Do you know that the ache in your heart is only manifested and magnified by the way you choose to hold the memory associated with it? And that the emotion surrounding it is keeping that event on replay throughout eternity, causing a kind of chaotic karma to bounce and spin throughout the serpentine fabric of time? Giving your pain in the Earth does two things. First, it allows the governing Goddess of the material world to mulch it, creating fertile soil for the beautiful seeds you choose to plant in your Being. Secondly, giving it to Her prevents the germ from continuing it's chaotic journey since it is planted in Mother's sacred womb. She alone in this place knows how to mulch it into something useful to you.  

This is your work in this world, above all else; the sacred alchemy and divine partnership of turning sacred pain into Sacred Soil. Pain, the product of the interaction of a pure soul with a world that chooses to disregard it, and deep, dark soil, the product of pain's release and eventual disintegration. All Life Masters are expert at this process. Their pain and their ability to dis-identify with it are what makes them masterful in their selves, and they serve from there.  

You are a Life Master in seed form yourself, in this place that is foreign to your soul. As you come to embrace your True Identity, the seeds of pain will produce a garden of such beauty that you will not want to leave it.

Bring your pain to the Mother, dear Soul... let her bear you as she has from the beginning. 

Unification - essay

Unification is it. It's the answer to most of our so-called problems, particularly those of a cultural nature. A heart lens infused with this paradigm is decreasingly able to tolerate power driven ills such as war. It is a Oneness that stares back at such currently accepted mores with blessed, organic wisdom, light and compassion. Unity is not homogeneity. Far from it. True unification not only recognizes individuality but treasures it, seeing it for what it is; an illusion on the level of form that is respected as a bond-fide manifestation of Creative Will. True unification occurs underneath the level of observable form, obviously. Those who are committed to the idea acknowledge that all that is form, then, is a type of illusion, a temporary clothing of the unified body in a partial separate-hood that is definitely, and by definition, finite. It is important to note that those who are committed to this idea understand it, not at the level of a mental or emotional construct but on a level that starts at the mythic seat of the soul, the heart. Furthermore, the understanding of unification, when embraced, transcends words because it leaps from the heart and simultaneously self-informs and receives instruction from a level above heart, that of spirit, the very source from which we all spring. Again, this realization is not of the mind. The mind scoffs at it until the experiencer has sensed it time and time and time again and accepts that, while it is inexplicable and even incomprehensible to the mind in this place, it is nonetheless a reality. This knowledge, which settles on the soul rather than is foisted upon it, creates a space of deep, soulful knowledge, the presence of which makes it apparent that there is a reality that far dwarfs anything we can see or experience in this place. This results in the Experiencer feeling a vital disconnect from mores that do not agree with it, whether they be religious, political, social or otherwise. Even the concept of time as we understand it is on the proverbial chopping block. If this were again merely a mental idea, it would have limitation as belief, but belief is the realm of dogma. Those that experience the settling of the reality of unification upon their souls via heart and spirit have little patience for a dogma that can be explained, other than the recognition of it and the natural allowances and compassion for the processes in this place and plane of the (temporary) individual. Natural compassion, then, is one of the great hallmarks of those that sense this bond, and they share it with all the great sages, prophets, holy and medicine women and men that the world has ever known. They sense the eternal and inexplicable nature of Creator and the common thread that runs through all Creation, and the musical note common in us all.

Feminine Moses, for Heather - Poem

Feminine Moses

I can feel my toes again

And I can see the trees

For I can hear him -

Mother Earth’s servant

The Great Communicator

Gravity

His gravelly voice

Is finally loud enough

To cut through the barbed wire

Telecommunications lines

Between my many minds

But I know

Gravity did not raise his voice.

Like Mother

He whispers

Stone-like

Solemn

Staid, he stays

Constant

Indifferent

When my many

Riotous

Selves

Dance the golden calf
As my soul’s wooden staff

Disappears around stony bend

To Sinai once again

No… the congealed breath

Of gravity and Goddess Earth

Rebirthed

The moment

I looked

Into your eyes

Those dreamtime sighs

Through morning dew

And you sighed a new

Day into being

My selves obey you

Instant silent reposes

As you, a feminine Moses

Come back into view

You hurl no commands

As men are wont to do

But whisper instead

“I love you”

And planets skate across the sky

A zephyr blows across the sage

A mouse burrows soulful soil

An old woman at mute memories smiles

And my million selves

Catch their breath and...

I can feel my toes again

And I can see the trees.   

--Eric Marley

for Heather Dawn Marley

April 2015

Bliss and Pain - Short Essay

Bliss and Pain

A deeply spiritual person, meaning a person ruled more by the eternal part of them than their body, has learned to feel bliss or joy simultaneously with pain, sometimes in tremendous amounts. They understand the temporary dual nature of their condition – an eternal part clothed in a temporary part – and they live from that paradigm. They feel pain the same as the rest of us, they just don’t suffer because of it. This is because they have trained themselves to not create a “poor me” story around pain. They know the eternal “me” does NOT suffer; only the body/mind suffers when a story creates emotion around a painful event or circumstance. This is the lesson of the great teachers over time. Jesus said that when we are fasting we should not appear to others that we are fasting. This wise counsel disables our flighty egos in two ways. First, it disallows ego to feed off others' opinions of us. Others don’t see the “pain of the fast” on our faces so they can’t say how wonderful we are for doing it. Secondly, it discourages a story behind our fast because it is less satisfying to the ego to create one around it when there is no one else to support it. Victor Frankl learned this lesson in a brutal concentration camp. The Buddha knew it, as did the self-immolated Buddhist monks protesting the Vietnam War. Every mystic, sage and shaman the world over has known it as well. The lesson is this: “Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.”

-- Eric Marley

April 2015  

A Driver, My Soul and a Car - Parable

A Driver, My Soul and a Car

This is the body I have. This body, this vehicle which looks to me like a cherry ’65 Buick Riviera convertible, comes equipped in this place with a driver. The driver is an odd character with many heads, endless opinions and “endless –squared” stories. He does not consistently display any one trait; not kindness, mean-spiritedness, sweetness, wisdom or foolishness. The many-headed driver is merely insane. Not in an overt manner, but insane nonetheless. He can display any trait at any given moment and then change to its opposite in the blink of an eye if another head has the desire to be heard.

My soul inhabits the same vehicle. It is soft, white, radiant, full of childlike joy and sage-like wisdom. It is an explorer above all else, seeking experience for the experience sake - and it has had a lot of it. It happily agreed to climb into this car with the lunatic. My soul, apparently, knows no fear. It understands that in the end, the lunatic in the drivers’ seat is unable to hurt it. And to be sure, the driver is entertaining as hell , even charming usually, a non-stop talker. My soul listens with an amused half-smile as the heads all take their turns telling noisy stories above the rushing wind of the convertible about the scenery outside, about their lives, opinions, fantasies and especially complaints.

My soul often thinks to itself, “What an interesting character, this driver. He knows relatively little, but speaks incessantly. However,” my soul smiles, “sometimes we agree. And I would never have seen so much lonely highway, so many thunder and lightning storms, great canyons, vast oceans and white-tipped mountains without him. Or... them.” And then he chuckles.

Days, months and years speed by with my soul as the passenger. On angry days the many-headed
driver challenges my soul to a dual of sorts. He’ll very surreptitiously reach his left hand into the drivers’ side door pocket and bring out a bottle. He sneaks a sip, then two. My soul will often pretend he doesn’t see the driver sipping an intoxicant as they wildly barrel down the lonely desert highway. But he does see it. In the early days of the journey the driver could actually fool my soul. But my soul now knows him so well that very little the driver does can get past him.

What’s in the bottle, you ask? It can be any number of things. Sugar, overeating and sex are among the drivers’ favorites, although rage and music have had their days. Sometimes what the driver drinks is wholesome enough. But in the quantities he wants to consume, they become intoxicating.

When the intoxication starts, the lunatic may stop on his own. If it surfaces through the haze, his concern is not for his passenger, but for himself. After all, he can be injured or killed. He is not immortal, as my soul is. But at other times he turns to my soul and, slurring his words in an obnoxious challenge, he tells my soul that they are unloved and alone in an impossible land. He says the world is a scary, dangerous place. And then he’ll tell how he came to those conclusions from the vast experience of his many heads. Oh, the stories he tells as long as my soul is there to listen!

At some point my soul has a decision to make; one of three choices. He can allow the lunatic to continue to drive, either listening intently to his dark pontifications, or try to ignore him as he gets louder and louder, or he can move into the drivers’ seat. It is entirely within his power to do so. He just melts over and gently displaces the sullen, frightened, intoxicated driver. He takes the wheel, decreases the speed of the car and turns off the radio while the angry, smelly tour guide sleeps his fear off in the passenger seat. This has been happening for many, many years.

Over the years, however, a subtle change has taken place in the driver. There are fewer heads. My soul was surprised to see this phenomenon when it first occurred, but one morning there were simply fewer. Speeding down the highway in the morning cactus bloom, my soul was hesitant to ask, but it
said, “Mr. Driver,” he’s so respectful, my soul, “there seem to be fewer of you this morning.”

The driver just nodded so my soul continued. “As you so often put it…what gives?”  

My soul watched the driver shrink a little in his seat, and a couple heads briefly reappeared, seemingly with more stories to tell, and then inexplicably sunk away again. Shrugging, he said, “I guess I just don’t have that much to say right now.”

And then…silence. More than silence, it was stillness. The wind rushing by seemed to sing the songs of springtime swallows and the desert blooms cheered their fragrant souls into the open air under a sky so fair and grand and blue that it defies appropriate description. My soul smiled. The driver too allowed a smile – an amused half smile – to come across his lips. And to his surprise, there was only one pair of them.

With a sense and expression of peace that he had borrowed, however briefly, from his passenger, the driver turned to my soul and asked for the first time, “So, tell me about you.”   

This was the beginning of all growth.

--Eric Marley

April 2015