It’s Not a Box-Check Life
Last night I was talking on the phone with my mother and telling her about going back to Cataloochee Valley this morning to visit the elk. She asked me why in the world I would want to keep going back after seeing them once or twice. As I drove through dense fog in the darkness before dawn this morning, I thought about her question.
Why do I return to see the elk? Or have in-water encounters with humpback whales…three weeks over three different years? Or visit favorite dive destinations over and over again?
As I pondered her question it was like…why do I breathe? Just because I did it once…
First, to share breathing space with a massive bull elk or a sweet baby, still sporting spots in its shaggy fur or be close to a huge cow elk peacefully munching grass reminds me I am part of the whole, not the alpha or the better or wiser. I am part of Oneness. And secondly…it’s just so freaking amazing! To feel…yes, feel!… the eerie bugle call of bull elks echoing through the valley is one of the coolest things ever. And thirdly…how could I possibly get tired of the continuing saga of which bull will keep what cows and who will challenge who and will I get to witness their meeting? Or will that once-in-a-lifetime encounter yield an image that will touch people’s hearts?
The first time I was in the water with a massive humpback whale I wasn’t sure how I would feel because they are wild and huge and I’m a speck compared to them. What I felt was communion, like coming home to myself. My heart opened and my entire being melted into bliss. And it happened every single time, every single year. I even meditated with humpbacks in the water and did yoga under stars while whales surrounded the boat but, that’s for another post. How could I possibly find that boring? Or ho-hum? No matter how many times I did it? When something touches my heart it opens me to a great sense of life…of being alive!
Even the walks at Deep Creek, a part of the Great Smoky Mountain National Park, never feel boring and I walk there three or four times a week. There’s water flowing everywhere, trees, wildflowers, hummingbirds, butterflies, bears, snakes, rocks, rocks and more rocks and waterfalls and trails varying in difficulty from easy to challenging. When I walk in Nature I walk into a living Universe and I always experience these walks with wonder and awe.
As I was walking from the far end of Cataloochee Valley today, loaded down with camera backpack and tripod, I realized I can never be happy working inside for very long. The thought of a full-time, indoor job crushes my joy. As my hiking boots splashed through a creek, through mud and lush grass I had the realization that to honor myself I needed to spend time each day outdoors. It wasn’t a new realization at all but after several days of working indoors, at a part-time job, it was a good reminder.
I’m not ‘me’ in an office. I am most myself when the wind plays with my hair, the frost crunches underfoot, I’m nose-to-nose with a spotted dolphin or fluke to finger with a humpback whale, or when I have my telephoto lens filled with a massive bull elk bugling his powerful voice throughout the valley. Or the dawn shows me how lovely it is to be quiet and observe the mountains enshrouded with fog.
When I open myself to Nature I am at home in my skin; I feel a deep sense of place. For every wild animal that has honored me by allowing me to commune with it, photograph it and write about it…Thank you! You enrich my life with every encounter.
I’m not the kind of person that has a list of things to do in my life and once done move to the next thing. I live my life listening to wild creatures and places that call to my wild heart and will do my best to show up when I hear the call…no matter how many times they whisper my name.
There’s a guy where I bike and hike that walks with his palms facing forward. We usually walk with the back of our hands facing out so this unique difference captured my attention and I began experimenting.
There are reasons we close ourselves. Good reasons. Trauma. Abuse. Emotional overwhelm. Meanness. Fear. We don’t want to walk around totally unprotected from behavior of strangers, friends or family.
We learn to close down to our emotional truths. We are ‘taught’ how to do this our entire lives by how others witness and respond to our emotions. It’s a painful process. And sadly, they teach us how to close down but rarely does anyone teach us how to open back up.
Many year ago I was visiting the Alabama coast while I was residing in the Greensboro, North Carolina area. Things had been really tough for me. Very difficult. I was on the beach and was talking out loud to the Universe: ‘Why do I even bother to heal my life? Nobody cares. Most people never even bother to look inside and try to improve themselves. Why am I putting myself through such misery? Why even bother? Can’t I just forget being conscious and go back to blissful ignorance?’ Suddenly the sunset sky turned lavender and orange and I heard a voice within say very clearly: You clear out the inner blocks to being open so you can really see and experience moments such as this fully.
We have all witnessed ourselves and others say, If it isn’t happening to me, I’m not concerned. When I worked in a retail outdoor clothing store near the Gulf Coast I expressed concern about a hurricane that was heading into the northern Gulf of Mexico to a customer. She said worriedly, “Oh, NO! Where is it going to hit?” I replied, “It’s east of here by about 100 miles.” Her reply, “Then I don’t care. It doesn’t affect me.” That storm was Hurricane Michael. It did horrendous damage but it didn’t touch her life so she didn’t care. But she’s not an exception. Unfortunately this seems to be the norm with far too many.
I sobbed and wailed. From that moment through the following year, I had to shut down emotionally to document what I felt called to witness. The inner voice that called me was so strong I couldn’t look away; but, to be there I had to shut down a feeling response….except for anger. I felt that strongly. It’s like rescue workers who extricate people out of car wrecks or collapsed buildings…they have work to do and later can deal with the trauma of witnessing such horrendous and sad events.
It took me a very long time to reopen to joy and pleasure. The most amazing healers for me have been wildlife…manatees, humpback whales, sea lions, dolphins. Photographing them in their environment became profound sessions of healing and deep connection that opened me to love at a level to which I had never known.
Rumi wrote, “Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all of the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.” Walk open, dear pilgrim. Walk open.
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.
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.
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.
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.