Friday, 25th of March, 2016

Cam and I went to see Jose Gonzalez last night. I closed my eyes and just listened and at one point my head almost exploded with joy, and then at another point I almost fell asleep. I think that says a lot. There was a New York ensemble accompanying him, and they were so marvelous, their exquisite sounds felt like all the insects in the garden feasting on the rich pollen of summer. I did not know music could feel exactly like that, but the sound the quintet created was really something. It was fresh and contemporary and clever, AND bewilderingly skillful. I knew it was especially good because the visualizations and daydreams in my mind that were going along with it were so wonderful.

First I was dancing – just to be clear, all of this is in my imagination, because actually I was required to sit still. So sat there very still, and since I could not dance, I closed my eyes, and I imagined I was dancing in long silks. Then after a while of dancing in silks, I had a whole other dancing outfit on. It was a rainbow pinafore, with a long skirt. The rainbow went up and over the breast, so that the center panel is a line of purple with an arch of patch work rainbow-color fabrics creating the front shape of the dress. It was in part inspired by the Aboriginal rainbow serpent stories we have been studying in the School of Love. It is made from faded worn linens, dyed with natural pigments. The skirt is long, because I am still coming to  terms with my hairy legs. I saw myself in my mind, wearing this amazing dress and I thought “Oh, I want to make that to wear to the opening ceremony of Spirit Weavers!” Daughter of the Sun will tell you clothes do not matter, and they don’t, but you see, I just love the idea of sewing myself something, that represents my personality.

Anyway, back to the concert, and imaginations… after all the outfit changes and dancing, I started thinking about the moon – My friend the Moon. There were not any vocals to the music at this point and the music was like a key unlocking a cosmic fantasy realm. I sat there, listening and being open to whatever came to mind, related to the frequency the musicians were giving off. That’s when I started thinking about my friend the moon. I started realising that I needed to tell the Moon how grateful I am that she is round, and that I love her shape, and I want to remember to do some breathing together next time we have a date. We have penciled a date into our diaries on the next new moon, because we are both always too busy on the full moon now. The Moon plays the Violin and she is Jewish. I can’t tell you anymore or I will give the Moon’s secrets away. I thought of her a lot on this night, the creativity in her, her brilliance, and how she shines on us all. We have a monthly date, I love waiting for my time with her to come around each month. For the time being. Not forever, nothing lasts forever.

The concert was at Belmont Theater 48th street New York, NY. If you ever get the chance to go to the Belmont Theater, well then do, because it is gloriously grand. There is golden neoclassical  adornment everywhere you look. The walls and ceiling gleam with symbolism and sculptural people dressed in togas sprout from plinths and columns. When you look up there are overflowing fountains and a gilded sun. But the most important thing about the experience is that the music transported me. It woke up my creativity and passion and it helped align me to my best self. It’s a good artist that transmits that energy. It is a good artist that lets you tap into their creativity, and access your own creativity. Jose Gonzales does that for me. He does it for Cam too.

We had such a late night. As I said, I fell asleep at the concert. Only for one second though. I had my eyes closed so I could tap into my own visuals while I listened, and since my eyes were closed and I was in this deep space in my mind, I just fell asleep. Then my head jolted back up and I decided I should keep my eyes open for the rest of the concert.

We left the girls with a friend. It was so nice of her to sit with the girls. When we were walking out the door, Maya gave me a very warm hug. I could feel something more special than usual in her touch and so I said something special back. “I love you Maya, you were my dream come true, my wish and my blessing. You are my Maya girl and I love you so much.” I placed a kiss on the top of her head and she nuzzled into my core. So rare for her, so I cherished it. A little from Maya means so much.

When I woke the next morning I could feel the wonderful effects of the music on my soul. Tired can suit me some days, it can help me balance out all the exciting ideas. If I have too many ideas and too much energy, well I might be too much for myself. But today, there was great balance, physical levels and soul levels were alight and precise, which means, things were just right. I don’t expect this balance every day, no-one should. I am not sure what my golden work/live ratio is yet, but I know I am working it out.

We pulled our car back into our driveway in Jersey a little after 11pm. My friend had a fun time with the girls, I know she really loves them and that she genuinely enjoys their company. The monopoly board was set up on the living room floor. Elle had seen through her evening plans that she had jotted down on a piece of paper:

Play Monopoly
Dog Bingo
Bird Bingo
Hide and seek
Bedtime Stories
Brush teeth
Play Tag

We wondered about the order of the list, but Elle felt playing tag after bedtime stories and teeth would be different, and since having our friend over was also different, why not try it? Not surprisingly, as we all know is the case, the monopoly game took up the whole time. They all had a lot of fun playing. “I whipped the girls at Monopoly.” My friend said with a big grin on her face as we entered. I laughed out loud and gave her a big hug, offering that in barter for child minding I would help her clean out some of the stuff in her house. I think she might have other ideas for me, and I look forward to how she utilizes our time/work exchange. Cam and I chuckled to ourselves as we packed up the monopoly board. “I love her competitive streak!” I said. “Beating the kids at monopoly is great.” I made a mental note that next time I was feeling competitive that I should take it to the monopoly board. 

So Friday morning came around and it was not just any Friday morning, it was Good Friday. We have good Friday traditions and at first I was not very inspired, until a new improved plan popped up. “I am going to dye Easter eggs and make hot cross buns and then we are going to go the daffodil bowl, and I will hide the eggs in the daffodils and you two can find them!” The girls actually moaned out loud about this idea. “Really Girls? You don’t think that sounds fun?”

We were all sitting in Maya’s room. I was on Maya’s bed, and Elle was laying over a wooden chair, like it she was a sack of potatoes, and Maya was sitting on the floor cross-legged trying to read a book. “I like finding the eggs in our back yard.” Elle protested. “That is how we normally do it.” she added. I understood her resistance, and so I said “Well, we will still have the hunt in the back yard like we always do on Easter.” I said, “But can’t you just imagine how lovely it would be to find eggs in the daffodils?” The enthusiasm was not rising in the way I had hopped, and so I started on with a little spiel, “You know girls, it is all about your energy, and what you make it.” Maya looked up from her book and became a little exasperated. “Energy, energy energy!” She repeated three times. I was a little taken back. Have I been using the word energy too often? Then I turned into a goose mother. “Well, as I was saying, if my children, children children, want to have fun, fun, fun, well then it will depend on their energy, energy, energy, wont it now?” My eyebrows were raised, and I must have looked very annoying. Maya resigned to the fact that ENEGRY was a life truth, but she gave it one last shot. “I just want to read.” Maya has started reading that You Know Who Wizard Series and she has her head in a book as much as possible. “You want to spend the whole of this beautiful spring day sitting in your room reading?” Maya gave it some more thought, and I could see she would be flexible. “Well, you can read for the next two hours while I am in the kitchen getting ready, and then we will go.”

There is something about wheatgrass, it begs to be touched. As I kneaded the bread dough to make hot cross buns, everyone came and went from the kitchen.  I noticed that they all made their way over to the bench to where the wheatgrass was growing in the morning sun. Bouncing his flat hand up and down on the thicket of green sprigs, Cam was feeling the wheatgrass. “Wheat grass is so cool. It is like spiky green hair. Imagine if you could wear it on your head.” I choose not to reply, and kept kneading quietly. I have had the exact same thought myself, it would make a great clown’s wigs. I am pretty sure I could make one. I will be able to add that to my report card. “Wheatgrass Wig maker.”

I estimated we would leave for the daffodil bowl at 2pm, but the bread dough took a little longer to rise because I used wholemeal flour. Life was feeling colorful and full and as I peered out the window I said. “It looks like a rainbow day!”

When the rain passed and the sun returned we hopped in the car and drove to the daffodil bowl. The flowers were almost in full bloom. Another week and they would peak, but as it was, there were thousands of jubilant golden horns tooting Spring melodies. I went right to work hiding the dyed eggs amongst them.  It did not take me long to hide the 10 eggs I had brought and despite the girls previously not being interested in this outing, they were excited to find the eggs after all. With baskets in hand, they tip toed through the daffodils. That was until we heard the gardener calling out to us from the top of the hill.

“Everyone wants to enjoy the daffodils, please keep to the path Ma’am!” He said it in a very kind manner, and I apologised right away and skipped back to the path. I was a bit sad that now we had been told this rule and that now we would have to listen. All times previously we have wandered in and around the flowers, which we love to do, and now there is a rule! Oh dear. With hot cross buns eaten, and eggs hunts in daffodils over, good Friday slipped by in a splendid manner.

Saturday morning rolled around and my friend came over again. I wanted to give her some wheatgrasss and some naturally dyed eggs to give to her mother. I really like her mother who  is a very sprite 88-year-old Dr, that has great appreciation for the School Of Love. Sometimes she comes to visit us, and we send each other notes and gifts through my friend. When my friend arrived at the door her arm was in a sling and we organised that I would help her rake the leaves from her garden beds as exchange for her watching the girls.

Elle came into my room on Easter morning before the sun rose. It was still dark and she really should have been asleep, but she was too excited. “There is a fairy in my Easter basket!” she said with all the beauty of a precious child. It felt too early to even to look at the time, and so I pulled back the covers and said “Do you want to get in?” She climbed into my bed and snuggled up to my face. Her little voice was whispering in my ear about a fairy. “I didn’t know the Easter bunny brought fairies?” She said. It was the first time this had happened, and it was making Easter feel special. We cuddled up for a good while and without a word, she decided to get up and go back to sleep in her own bed. It was a few more hours until the sun would come up and I was glad she would have another block of solid sleep before the Easter festivities would begin.

Sleep however was over for me and I began my morning visualizations. They were particularly powerful on this day. I needed this expansion and it was none too soon. As I lay with my eyes closed, and my heart and conscious open, I knew I was in a large frame of mind. A few things were circulating in the spire: our aboriginal studies in our Sacred Sites and Symbols book, and the power of place, and then just like that, I was in Australia…

Standing on red sand soil. I was with an indigenous Aunty and she took my iphone and she dug a hole, and she buried it in the sand. It was such a simple act of kindness and nurturing, I said thank you to her. Now if you did this, I might get upset, but this Aunty was in her power. I knew she was helping my soul, and I felt no attachment to my phone, it was a distraction, that need to go underground. It was dead to me, and so we put it in the earth, so something new could grow. It was the first time I had met this Aunty, and I was so glad to meet her. I want you to understand of course, that my body was still in my bed, but in my mind, I had transcended and all the beauty of this exchange was filling me with my life purpose.

I lay with the feelings of the Aunty a little longer and was thinking about my important place on earth, my sacred place, and then my heart hurt. I had such a pain in my heart I could not bear it and anger flared up. Then suddenly, I was out of my body again, the neuro-passage ways opened and I was standing in my sacred space, and the Aunty who had buried my phone was standing by the tree of life with me, holding my hand.

With deep empathy, she had taken me to stand by the tree and hold my hand. I have some root fears that my tree of life will be taken away from me, and when I found myself standing at the tree on our family farm, all that fear and anger rose up. The Aunty knew all of this, and so she took my hand, and she made me feel better. No words were exchanged between us, we just held hands, and her thoughts and touch made me feel safe.

It was then that I realized she was a Bundjalung Aunty, the first people’s of my land, and that it was her tree of life too. She shared her visions with me and I could see her as a girl, swinging on the elephant trunk tree branches, walking along the thick above ground roots, and eating the tiny figs. The tree was as big then as it was now, but it was long before the land was fenced and made into grazing land, and owned by my Grandparents. I learnt then that we had both been born to the same place, the same land, but at different times, and that it was her sacred place too. It felt so good to stand there together, in our sacred place holding hands.
I looked down at our hands, and everything else fell away, we were spirits, and I knew then, like her, I would always be able to visit the tree.

When I surfaced from the cosmic pathway, my emotions were so strong. Firstly became very excited that I might meet this ancestral Aunty when next in Australia. I could see her so clearly, and I took a photo in my mind, of us standing and holding hands. He hair is white, and short, and she has some white whiskers on her dark wrinkled chin. She wears a cotton shift dress, down to her knees, and I was wearing the same. We stood side by side, bare feet in red soil. Sitting in bed I marveled at the vibrancy of my spirit to visualise, but then, like a crashing wave, the great ramifications hit me.

My heart beat, boom, boom, boom. Then I cried, for all the people who have had their sacred sites taken away from them because of greed. Their birth right, fenced off, owned and controlled by someone else. Perfect tears ran down the centers of my cheeks. Three, four, five, heavy drops. I am part of that greed I thought. Oh humankind. What is to become of us?

When great sadness and great joy mingle in such a powerful way, the yin yang symbol appears.

The visualizations did not stop. I was deeply in the imaginarium. This Aunty had a lot of lessons for me.

Next we were walking along a wooden pier, out over the ocean. When we reached the end of the pier, the water was choppy, alive with sharks. So many sharks, all swimming in mangle of conflict, like a cesspool. The Aunty gestured to them indicating in a very rudimentary way that I needed to be aware of the sharks. “They are sad, they are full of sadness.” She said to me. My immediate thought was that the sharks were sad because of the pollution in the ocean, and the shark finning. Then something very profound happened, much more symbolic than I expected. “The sharks are hungry for ideas, and they feed off you. And they do it because they are sad.” I felt my heart sink. I did not want that lesson. That I had to be aware of rapacious people hungry for the next new idea to bring them energy, and that it was their internal sadness that stops them having new ideas themselves. My psyche need this message so that disrespectful people could not draw from me. The Aunty was pleased I could understand, and then she took me back to the camp fire.

It was then that the most helpful thing happened. As I stood by the fire, I had a book in my hand. I was holding this book very tightly, perhaps I had been carrying it with me the whole time? The Aunty took the book from my hands, and she through it into the fire. It had been a big day, first my iphone was buried, and now my book was going up in flames. Once again, just like with the iphone, I had no attachment but a calm sentience as I watched my book burn.

We were back to where this whole experience had started, in the outback, in Arnhem land, and the Aunty told me to lay down on the red soil. The soil is fine dusty sand, and so warm and soft I was so glad to lay down. While laying there still, she covered my body from head to toe with large pieces of bark. As my eyes drifted off to sleep I could see the fire blazing, and my Aunty was walking around me while I lay under the bark blanket, swishing some kind of a feathered herbal branch, singing a song.

When I woke up, I felt beautifully rested. I sat up, removing the bark, and then Aunty handed me another book. It appeared to be born from the ashes of the old book. This book was different though, this book was lighter and it flew out of my hands like it was a butterfly. It’s pages flapped like wings and rather than having to hold onto this one so tightly, this book flew off into the sky. I watched the book fly away, and I looked at my Aunty. “Oh, I am supposed to follow this book?” I said a little perplexed. I was relived for this awakening and realization. But then I became confused. “Is it that I am not supposed to have a book at all and my book is flying away because it does not belong to me? Or is it that this book flies effortlessly on its own, and I just follow along?”

My Aunty looked at me and without clarifying, she said the most grave thing of all… “Don’t say nothin about this to no-one.”