In the Flow
I awoke to the news that Ram Das had passed from his physical body. While I wasn’t a devotee, I am a lover of him and his story and life. He tried the quick way of enlightenment through experimentation with hallucinogens yet found beneath the mind-expansion of such substances a vast space that opened through meditation and through love. Or at least that’s my understanding. That’s what titrated out of what I know of him.
When I read the news I searched other related stories and that led me to Krishna Das music, which I enjoy through my yoga practice. And then Girish, who is another favorite. And Sean Johnson…then I pulled out my yoga mat which has had very sporadic use since I moved a month ago.
As I stretched and opened I felt the prayers come forth from deep within. Prayers of love, gratitude, compassion…that’s what yoga is to me. Praying with my body and mind and spirit. Opening. Unfolding. Allowing.
During my asana practice I reflected on the ultimate experience to which I compare all other yoga experiences. I was on a boat anchored 90 miles off the coast of the Dominican Republic surrounded by humpback whales. Magic. Pure Magic.
I arose before sunrise each morning, before putting on the wetsuit and using an underwater camera kit to connect with whales. With yoga mat in hand I climbed to the open deck where stars were brilliant and the moon shimmering on the surface of the ocean. That particular morning as I prayed with my body, mind and spirit the whales came closer…so close that their fishy breath was drifting across me as it glowed in the moonlight.
Affirming the connection to all life, to the stars, the sea, the whales, I felt engulfed in a purple flame and still the humpbacks came closer. We were connected through that spiritual kinship of limitless light.
This morning in the loft I was there, in the ocean with the whales and stars. Gratitude filled me as I sat in stillness. The vision of a white humpback whale swimming in a sky of stars over mountains returned as it has over the past several months preceding the move back to the Appalachians.
The settling in, the anchoring and grounding into my new home progresses and as the final boxes were unpacked this weekend I found myself anxious to deepen my spiritual practice and allow the flow of Universal Laughter to echo through my being.
Go brightly Ram Das. Thank you for reminding me to be here now. Thank you for your dedication to Love. May you dance among the stars surrounded by the essence of Life.
I’ve never been one to give much credence to manifestos. They are sort of like…ooohh, look at me….I have something to say. And I find that most of us have something to say but nobody really pays much attention except to their own voices in their heads. Everything else just goes through their filters of who they accept as okay and who isn’t and they look for everything possible to uphold their belief about themselves and others. Oh, there’s the evidence that she IS crazy.
But this cluster of a house closing and moving has brought up enough fear to shake me to my core and make me wish I was anywhere but here, in this skin and bone experience. Not just regarding my own personal challenges but for the planet. I keep hearing to write my own manifesto. Maybe a last word of an old life that helps open the doorway to the new one. I’m ready for that crossing. That Threshold has been looming for over three years or 59 years or lifetimes. I don’t really know. Regardless, here goes.
I am so freaking angry at humanity and wish I wasn’t a human. The shame I feel from being part of a species that is hell-bent on destroying itself is huge. It isn’t only the miserable leadership of this country (USA) that is taking us backwards at warp speed….racism, environmental lack-of-protection, elitism, corruption…it’s happening in many places on the planet. The gains so many worked for so diligently for so many decades have been lost in nearly three years. Three years. Three years of insanity supported by politicians who don’t have the guts to stand up to a maniac because greed is their guiding light. There is no moral compass in this country where such bigotry, hatred and nihilism is encouraged and fueled by leadership.
There are those in my life that think they know what’s best for me. If I only got a ‘real’ job I’d be just fine. As if me having a job would fix any of the woes of the world…or fix the angst in me.
I worked for six months for an international company and found how insidious their practices are regarding the environment yet they wanted the lowly workers, earning less than $10 an hour, to ‘sell’ how great they were environmentally….while thousands and thousands of plastic hangers get trashed every year at just one store and plastic bags wrap every shirt, pants, hat, coat, vest….plastic that doesn’t get recycled. Yes….by all means let me just get a job to solve my problems. It only opened my eyes wider to the insanity of this world based on greed and profit at any cost.
I’ve never felt like I fit in and have felt I am at least one step off from the rest of humanity. My goal has been to connect people with Nature in an effort to preserve at least some parts of the planet and Her species. While my efforts have been sincere and well-received, they have never supported me financially. So I’m left either selling my soul to corporate America or watching my finances swirl down the drain as I try to make a difference.
There are no regrets about my traveling to other countries such as England and Ireland where in stone circles or other ancient, sacred places I have awakened to deeper levels of my soul and the vast connection to Earth and Stars and Sea. Each journey has gifted me with something priceless. Had I grasped my money in fear, I would have never had those experiences.
I have watched an octopus dance with me, had squid explore the dome port on my underwater housing. Had manatees kiss me. Humpback whales, after spending three separate weeks with them, have taught me how intelligent they are and how caring and loving they are to their young…they broke me open to love like I had never known before. And they began calling me when I was only a teen through their song. They have been a guiding force for me and the kinship we share is profound and on the level of soul.
Diving in the veins and life-blood of the planet has been a gift like no other. Being inside Her….within Her beauty changed me, altered my perception of what is truly important.
I have moved through my life with trust in the Universe, even when things were at their worst for me personally. And now, after everything had seemingly come together perfectly for this big leap into the next part of my journey, I stand on a precipice knowing I cannot return to how I was–I won’t unpack the boxes and carry on as if nothing has changed–knowing I might not survive if I leap and fall into the Abyss but knowing that the only way forward is to actually step out in faith over the Abyss trusting that if I fall there will be grace in my passing and peace. And if I make it to the other side, there will be grace as well.
Artists….photographers, writers, painters, dancers, composers…are often troubled because we exist to express and share our experience of the world with others, not for profit but because we must express. Our souls call us to this and to try and cram us into a box, into a job that steals our reason for being is torture. But we live in a society where these gifts are undervalued and profit-at-any cost is the norm.
My manifesto wanted to be written. It’s for no one’s benefit but my own, delving into my own feelings of frustration, fear and love for this planet, for the beauty that seems to be disappearing so fast I can scarcely keep up. My manifesto is one of deep and profound grief. Of fear for an uncertain future personally and planetarily. I don’t want to live in a world without bees and butterflies, without right whales and orcas, without black rhinos and gorillas, without kemp’s ridley sea turtles and orangutans, without love and compassion and common decency. For to live in a world such as this is not to live at all. It’s simply to exist in a living hell.
While cycling yesterday I put my iPod on shuffle of all songs on it. I do that sometimes as a way to let the Universe choose my inspiration for the ride. David Wilcox’s song, Let It Go, really touched me…
“I watched it sinking down…the treasure I’d almost found is gone…I had been holding on so long I had to let it go….I wagered my heart and soul, all of that weight in gold and dreams….the woman I thought I should be, I had to let it go….High above the broken opening I see the light of love is spoken, welcoming me…Now that I remember how this love can be, full of my surrender emptying….Into the deep blue sky when it’s my time to fly away I can release this weight, now I can let it go, now I can let it go….all of this love I’ve saved, I get to let it go.”
This seems so appropriate for the place in which I find myself. Letting go of the woman that I thought I should be. Who was she?
That question is so wrapped in expectations…of family, culture, institutions…my interpretation of what was expected and what I expected of myself.
Today I listened to an interview with a guy who does some truly inspired work and he said he had gone through two major awakenings in his life. One led to his first spiritual opening where he moved more into alignment with his path and was very happy doing the work but eventually he began to feel called to deeper work and wasn’t sure what was happening. He related that his intuition, his guidance that he had grown to trust, disappeared and he felt as if he was stumbling in the dark. It went on for a few years until finally he came through that long period with guidance that was specific about the next phase of his work. He had no idea how it would work out but he listened and the result is simply amazing.
Over the past few months, as I have started to come out of the threshold and begin the first tentative steps to the other side of this transitional period, the meaning has become clearer. There’s a different level of opening that occurs when we take our wholeness into Nature and sit simply with the intention to connect.
For example, if I (personality self) connect with my soul self (higher self) and allow that soul self to expand into its proper ‘size’ I notice an inseparable connection and flow with Nature….complete Oneness. Nature and this expression of life known as Simone exists in the state of Oneness with all life….trees, insects, bats, dogs, cats, grass, stars, you, the homeless woman, the wounded child, the cow in the pasture.
I believe the solution to the problems of the planet begins within each of us. And it seems that recognizing Oneness and experiencing it is the first step. Perhaps our only task is to stand in conscious awareness of Oneness with Nature and all life. What if we all did that? There would be no war, no hate, no pollution or destruction of our planet, no fighting…imagine.
My work is unfolding from this shift in focus, this beautiful place of connection. The animals I have worked with through my photography and travels are encouraging me, from inner guidance, to take the work deeper and share what I’ve learned from them with others. The first stage of this is through a course of study called Deepening with Nature. It’s a thirteen lesson self-study course in which animals guide participants through 28 days each lesson with exercises and meditations to deepen the relationship with Nature and thus the self. Each lesson is guided by a wisdom keeper animal spirit. It begins with a Humpback Whale. Lesson two is a Wolf…three is a Dolphin and four a Bear….and so on.
I’ve had to let go of the direction I thought life would unfold and allow it to organically blossom into a deeper expression of my heart’s profound love of this planet. Years ago I made the commitment to be a bridge between humans and nature and envisioned it would be through me connecting with Nature and then sharing photographs, videos and writing and that would be it. Now I see the depth of the work I am called to and it’s quite humbling. I’m being asked to go much deeper in helping people connect to Nature, not just from a superficial level but to the real core of it all.
It’s a relief to give up hope. Then I can focus on the here and now. I think Catherine Ingram wrote this in her article, Facing Extinction. Or maybe that’s what I thought while reading it. Or perhaps it was Dahr Jamail in his book, The End of Ice. It felt as if I was finally letting go of something very heavy and when I gave myself permission, it was freeing.
Nearly ten years ago, after documenting the BP Deepwater Horizon for a year, I was emotionally spent, exhausted and had no ability to allow joy or pleasure into my life…how could I while Nature was suffering so? I spent a week with Joanna Macy which helped me heal the deep wounds generated by what I witnessed.
While my eyes and throat burned with the smell of hot diesel fumes erupting from the Gulf of Mexico, people living only a few blocks off the beaches refused to believe the beaches were heavily oiled. That taught me how denial works in the human psyche. Something so unimaginable and painful is perhaps simply unacceptable in the human mind. As soon as the well was sealed, the attention of the masses was off to the next media circus leaving me angry and in disbelief. How did this not wake up the entire world, I fretted.
Since that time of photographing, writing and videoing seven areas along the Alabama and Florida Gulf Coast for a year, I have struggled with trying to maintain hope…that people will wake up and care and do something!
One of my mentors told me during the year I worked at the Gulf that there was a reason I was being asked to witness such devastation. I knew then I had never witnessed anything so traumatic. Watching sea creatures die on a daily basis, birds suffering, beaches heavily oiled while humans walked in bathing suits or frolicked in oiled waters was a living nightmare where reality was warped. Two worlds collided every day as cleanup workers dodged beach-goers and families let their children run and play in the toxic water.
So yes, I know crazy. I know denial. I know grief.
Why am I here? Why did I come to the planet at this time? I suspect, if we have a choice, it was intentional. The deep love I feel for this water planet and all life here is worth being here as a witness to the beauty and kindness and compassion….the capacity of humans for greatness. And yet with that capacity comes the other side of human behaviors that are selfish and plow through life with the profit-at-any-cost mindset.
Over the past couple of years a major shift in my work has been taking place. I have had clear guidance that one phase is ending and another is beginning. It feels like a bell is ringing in my soul, calling me to step forward and begin. It’s like the first 59 years of my life was about laying the foundation and now, the deeper work begins.
My own inner work has taken me into deeper relationship with Nature. Without a doubt, the healthy way forward is to expand our individual and collective connection with Nature. As part of my work I will be offering opportunities for individuals and groups. There will be multiple opportunities for Deepening with Nature…a regular, outdoor circle to build community; day retreats; weekend retreats; sacred travels and individual consultations. This will be enhanced by my move back to the mountains of North Carolina.
We must re-learn how to listen to Nature and slow down to fine-tune our ability to hear our own heart’s voice. Dahr Jamail wrote it perfectly, “Grief is something I move through, to territory on the other side. This means falling in love with the Earth in a way I never thought possible. it also means opening to the innate intelligence of the heart. I am grieving and yet I have never felt more alive.”
I am releasing the dark visions of the future so I can remain present and be of service to this planet and those wishing to deepen their relationship to Her. I will use every talent I have to be present with all life here, whether it is connecting with a whale in the ocean or holding space for someone to feel their grief.
Dahr poses this question that I pass along: “How shall I use this precious time?”
“The spirit of Walter Anderson thanks you.” This comment, while I was documenting the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill in 2010, meant more than any other. It fueled me to keep going when the fumes, death and poisoning of sea creatures weighed me down with unbearable grief.
That shot now hangs in the Water, Water exhibit at Walter Anderson Museum of Art (WAMA).
Another new exhibit at WAMA focuses on Walter as Artist, Naturalist & Mystic. Yes! was the only word that came to mind as I reflected on my own life.
Who knows how this life journey works. Something guided a friend (can’t remember who) to send me information on the exhibit. And the entire process brought me full circle to a place where I felt the spirit of Walter Anderson saying, “Well done.”
