Maharishi Mahesh Yogi used to compare meditation with pulling the arrow back on the bow:  pulling the arrow in the  opposite direction prepared it for stronger, more focused action later.   My time in San Francisco was like that.  There was time spent with my powerful (and beloved!) daughter, Sophia, being an integral part of her life and budding art career (www.sacredmuse.com), but, other than that, it was time spent pulling the arrow back on the bow:  not much looked like it was happening.

Now, back in Washington, called back by the siren’s song of Seattle and, indeed, the entire Puget Sound (it’s quite a chorus!), I see the results of the apparent “nothing” I was doing in San Francisco.  During my last night there, spent in Sophia’s tiny studio apartment, I hardly slept. Blissful, divine energy pumped through me and a renewed life-focus strongly resurfaced, clarified and intense.  The frustration of San Francisco, the backward-seeming time spent there had resulted in a strenghtening of my resolve to be free, to spread freedom - - and to become a stronger beacon of darshan, which required a deeper surrender.  I gave it.  I gave it my all, and cried in bliss and gratitude.

Everything had been increasing in “juice”, in flow, as I had approached my return to Washington state.  The wind was perfectly positioned at my back; suddenly every move I made resulted in three steps forward instead of just one. The “backward” steps I’d been taking in SF, where every forward attempt resulted in the reverse direction, was suddenly paying off.

So - Don’t assume you know what is happening.  …And when you want to lock into judgement of what is - or is not - occuring, remember those times when, with the broader perspective of time and experience, you’ve been grateful for what, at the time, seemed like cold, hard knocks! God invented tough love!!

A couple of my friends impressed me today. One of them was 845 miles away, yet managed to send me a Skype message by thinking about me.  Didn’t touch her Skype account, yet a message came in from her account! Okay, the “voice message” was very short, and had no voice, but she wasn’t even trying to send me a psychic message, or anything of the sort - just merely thinking about me. Interesting - and impressive.

The second friend called me as the bus I was on was at the stop at 9th and Mission (in SF), asking me if I wanted to go to the Asian Art Museum, saying that she had an extra ticket.  When she asked where I was, she said, “Get off!  Get off!”  So, trusting her, I did, and proceeded to call the Muni information number when I got off the bus at the next stop, 7th and Mission.

Muni said, “Walk up to 9th St. and turn right. It’s two blocks from that intersection.” She’d suddenly had a strong feeling that she should call me and ask if I wanted to go, and she did so JUST AS I WAS AT THE RIGHT BUS STOP.

From my side, I’d left the Zen Center (having never been there, and heading from there to an unfamiliar part of town), turned my phone on, and gotten on the very first bus I saw!  Then I called Muni info to ask if I was heading in the right direction… 

- And, as we have seen, I was!

We talked, then, about synchronicity, and her view is the same as mine:  That, if you’re in the moment, following the flow of the present moment, you are in the right place at the right time, you are the thread properly placed in the cloth on the loom, not the thread twisting around, running at cross purposes with the whole.

Like many of you, I’d felt that I’d lost this connectedness for a while. It was delightful and reassuring for it to begin all over again. THIS is the way I know Life to be.

Fathers play with their children and their dogs, and talk with their neighbors’ children, all on a beautiful oval loop of large, rather grand, identical brick duplexes. Their wives share maids and baby sitters, one of whom is a lovely married neighbor, pregnant with her first child - she merely walks past one matching two-doored home to get to work.

Everything is peaceful and rather homogenous. The homes are strangely familiar to me, military brat that I am. I feel like I’m in a time warp, like I’ve gone back to the 50s and early 60s, a very disturbing and unsafe time for me.

So though it appears to be a lot like a 2008 version of Mayberry, I keep wondering about the Stepford Wives (and sons and husbands)…

It’s a good opportunity to be present with my thoughts, to watch my projections. And the environment, physically at least, is idyllic!

Sometimes I find myself being too accepting of whatever wants to come down the pike. Rather than taking the reins, I’ve recently been a little too busy listening, too busy waiting for guidance…. I guess it’s like trying to help someone who seems to be okay with everything - - it’d be easier to help them if you had a clear idea of what they did and didn’t want!

So I’ve been a little too acquiescent. There’s surrender, but there’s also a definite need for co-creation. This week I grabbed the reins and set about to make a bit more structure in my free-wheeling life. And incredible and rather instant results is what I’ve gotten in return. So now I’ll dance!

I heard an interesting herbal talk on the radio a few days ago, naming herbs it would be good to take during this time of stress for all of us here amongst the wildfires of northern California. The speaker mentioned not just the damage to our lungs, but also the emotional and mental stress involved: Our senses are receiving the message, non-stop, that danger is present.

I heard this when the sky was finally beginning to show a little blue after weeks of the odd, unhealthy grey of distant wildfires, and when the stagnation I and those close to me had been experiencing for several weeks (all during the burning) had begun to lift, to shift. The sun was again visible, and my dreams had become very strong and clear. A gentle mist arrived, and it seemed to lift with it our life-gridlock. Decisions suddenly became obvious, seemed to nearly “make” themselves.

We forget, sometimes, to consider how external influences affect our day-to-day experiences emotionally. The ancients knew that they were intimately connected to their environment. In another place, another time, we would have had no question of whether it was “just me”, or whether it was the weather, the environment; there would have been no illusion of distinction or separation between the two!

And now, care to join me in a cup? Licorice root? Mullein, anyone?

The first time I heard Mariachi music, it seemed embarrassingly exuberant. (It just couldn’t have been more different than my upper-middle-class, WASPy, military upbringing. Mariachi is happy music, made by happy people; I simply couldn’t relate.)

I was surrounded by it today, at a repair shop in San Rafael, where I didn’t need an appointment, yet was attended to right away. I think of the average mechanic as being not exceptionally high in people skills, yet Luis and Ben (and later, his brother, Fernando) were exceptionally friendly and charming. And Mariachi music played the whole time I was there. I have a new perspective now on Mariachi.  I’ll now associate it with a pleasant, trusting experience.
Perhaps Mariachi was the reason I left smiling, planning the next time I’d  be in San Rafael.

Last Fall, I flew. I hadn’t flown since 9/11.

The removal of shoes was a first for me, as was being pulled aside for a small bit of organic dried tomato pesto, enough to spread on my rice cracker while I waited for the flight. Even when newly packaged, it was in no way a liquid, so I hadn’t thought it would be a problem. I showed the anxious agent how it would not slide when the little glass jar was tipped. He eventually let me keep it, carefully pointing out that there were explosives of just such a consistency.

The others in line, equally humiliated, were friendly. It was Seattle; no one thought such regulations were a good idea, and sharing the nonsense seemed to bond us.

Prior to 9/11 I didn’t own a laptop, which now made the wait more interesting (though taking my heavy laptop in and out of its case while also shoeless did not). I sat on a comfortable black seat and plugged myself in to the post-9/11 United States.