Sleep

If I'm doing chi kung (qiqong) meditation at home, I have a little routine I like to follow. First I do a little chanting. If I need to, I stretch. And then I sit meditation.

When you go into a sitting chi kung session, you often go very deep. Numerous fascinating things happen: you see colours throbbing and pulsing in front of you. Reality goes in and out of focus. Sometimes there are special guest stars: I recently watched as globs of light dripped down from the ceiling of my room, and two sets of luminous footprints laid themselves out in a counterclockwise circle around me.

When you come out again, you have to settle back down into yourself before you can stand up and walk around. You've been in touch with another, higher level of consciousness. Plus in my case, I've been sitting in half lotus, so things are...numb. I usually have to take a minute or two of just sitting with my legs stretched out before the feeling returns, my energy settles, and I can stand and head out into my day.

One of the things I have on hand for this time is Deng Ming-Dao's book 365 Tao: Daily Mediations. This is a cute little book that gives you a word, a Chinese character done in a gorgeous calligraphy, a snippet of verse, and a prose extension of the snippet of verse that tie in with the word for each day of the year. During my wind-down time after sitting, I'll read the entry for that day and think about it.

The word for June 1 is "Sleep". The poem I thought I'd share because it's uncharacteristically horroresque for a book of cute daily meditations:

Sleep is like a swift train
Plunging into long black tunnels,
Slicing day with red and black light,
No worry about the skeleton engineer.
Head to pillow is like head to track,
Listening to the rumble of destiny,
Knowing that the opening will come.
In sleep, as in the tunnels,
The sound seems ever closer.

Spring comes to the woods

Hey, it's spring. Let's take a walk.

Come on!

Come on!

Everywhere, the trees are bursting with life.

Winter's back is broken. The old gives way to the new.

What was frozen flows again.

The trees reach for the sky.

These are trout lily leaves, poking up out of the forest floor. Our friend Wendy showed us that these are edible. They taste a little like sweet peas (the bean, not the flower!). You can eat the roots, too. They're nice in a salad.

Here's a bunch of them, growing at the base of a tree.

They also flower (hence the name, I suppose!). Isn't it beautiful?

These tiny purple flowers started growing everywhere a week ago.

Some of the things that grow here are a little strange. This plant has rust-coloured flowers. I can only imagine the insects that are attracted to this!

Even the slightly nasty plants are growing like crazy.

Look, an alien pod!

There's still the meadow up ahead. Come on!

Come on!

The meadow grass is slowly greening.

It's time to celebrate spring. All the best to everyone this season.

Spider in the Snow

I didn't take this picture:

Wm Jas did, and it's licensed under a CC Attribution Share-Alike License.

But last Wednesday, I saw a spider like this crawling across the five-inch deep snow in the woods. The dog almost trampled her. But as we walked away, she continued her long, slow crawl across the snow.

This month I'm trying to work through some of the lessons I learned by doing NaNoWriMo. November taught me so much about how discipline and regular writing feels (answer: like coming home). How to proceed from here?

Last night I attended a guided meditation class in celebration of the solstice. The woman who runs this group is a powerful healer, well versed in all kinds of different modalities and symbols. She likes to talk about how animals and the natural world can communicate messages that are significant to your path. If you see an animal in an unusual context, or exhibiting behaviour that really makes you take notice (a bird peering in at you through the window; a deer haunting your campsite every evening), she recommends opening to the question of what it means, and paying attention to the first thought that flashes through your mind.

(The next thought, she says, will probably be your ego telling you off for being ridiculous. As usual, pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.)

I love writing, but the question burning in my mind is, do I just keep going in the direction I'm going? (With a certain puslating concern throbbing in the background: what about money? what about my debt? what about money?)

When I saw the spider, the message was this: "The spider weaves a web and waits."

Righto. Patience. And continued work without immediate gratification in exchange for a shot at longterm benefit.

At the meditation last night, I asked about seeing the spider. "Spiders are associated with writing," said our meditation leader.

During the guided meditation, one of the guides who greeted me was a tall and androgynous angel with a beautiful face. I asked hir for clarification on where my focus should be: money (i.e., gainful employment) or writing.

"Don't worry about money," the guide said. "Just keep writing."

I hear ya, and I'm trying to take this advice. I feel at a delicious sort of impass with this life stuff: I know I'll be unhappy unless I write, and any other occupation just won't do to satisfy me. This attitude alone has been a long time coming. But I can't keep going with the income level I'm at; I'm afraid I'll reach the end of February and be unable to find gainful employment, and I'll really be in a jackpot.

The guides can be so harsh sometimes. Why couldn't they give me a complete financial picture for the rest of my life? (Snark.)

Despite fears, I want this dark creative juice more fully and intensely than I've wanted anything.

"In the beginning, there was the dark purple light at the dawn of being. Spider Woman spun a line to form the east, west, north, and south. Breath entered man at the time of the yellow light. At the time of the red light, man proudly faced his creator. Spider Woman used the clay of the earth, red, yellow, white, and black, to create people. To each she attached a thread of her web which came from the doorway at the top of her head. This thread was the gift of creative wisdom. Three times she sent a great flood to destroy those who had forgotten the gift of her thread. Those who remembered floated to the new world and climbed to safety through the Sipapu Pole the womb of Mother Earth."

Stacy Kowtko, Nature and the Environment in Pre-Columbian American Life