so i went to a recovery sweat lodge last night and it was so completely
metaphoric!!
the lodge is on a couple's land, Charlie and Maria, (both in recovery) and they have built two sweat lodges on their land (charlie's vision quest guided him to do such a thing and the local Navajo elders agreed and helped with construction) and it is another avenue that several 12 step people take in their recovery journey.
so. imagine 11 men and women of recovery crammed into mother earth's womb
with hot rocks and ladels of water upon the rocks to create bursts of steam
and hotness....along with kopal resin, sage, amber and cedar smoke. oh, to be
in heaven and hell in one place at one time just rips me apart!
so i sit in the west corner and begin dying. this is literally what my head is
screaming 'you are dying and you will die and you cannot stand this!"
and i completely resisted...which just made it more and more uncomfortable. so
i had to get out and breathe instead of die. i cried and cried that 10 OTHERS
could stand it...why can't I and why do i give my ego voice such potency in
my life...........and the doors opened back up and humans streamed out between
round 1 and 2....and i was comforted by several men and women on different
techniques to try to get me to sit through the uncomfortable 'pain'.
i went back into round 2 and was able to use the various techniques,
visualizations, postures and sit through round 2, 3 and 4! but see...i could
not have done it alone! i needed to hear others advice and knowledge to help
guide me through my pain and discomfort. all i knew to do was: GET OUT! which
is my old tapes and processing RUN! oh the humanity!
so today, sitting at my computer, it seems impossible that last night i was in
such torture......when i have my cup of coffee, my wolf at my feet and dry
clothing on! but indeed, this too shall pass, eh?

 I was playing with my cell phone and noticed that only the first few words appear on my Sent text messaging screen.  As I was reading through these texts, I thought that they sounded like a poem....a text-flow-abbreviated poetry of sorts. Here goes:

Heya
Gravity pulls
Thanks for my
I call my
Wolf
Yes but
Rising before
Morning sun
Chair lifted
Firey stones
Cross
What are
Pain from
I do not
Beautiful
Once again
Watch the
Morning
What is it
I love how
When I smell
I trust that
Truth that
Why are you
I will work
Guess you're
Heal heal heal
Affirmations
I can assure
I keep entire
Moon lights
Dreams of
Peaceful
Morning
Happy
Thank you on
I am giving
I have
I go outside
Gratitude for
Native
Saguarro
Like the
I love that
Resting in
I was so
Thank you
Tinkeling of
What are
I reach out
Every
I am not
Riding to
Because
Afternoon
You make me
No matter
Holding space
I'm totally
Morning sun
Millions of
Happy day
Nourishing
I'm willing to

but then again I never have really known. It was all illusion, all those times I thought I was in control and Knowing........waking to a new bottom of not-knowing and simply being open and showing up for this one-day-at-a-time deal.
Yesterday I was out walking the mesas and mountains and I stopped, put my arms out like a bird and the wind came rushing all over my body...made me weep for no reason. No reason other than I cannot express how 'free' I felt to just stand and allow that which I cannot see to dance across my entire body. I cried because I didn't have the words to express how I was feeling. How can 'happiness' define such presence of spirit? How can peace nail a moment of freedom?
I have been reading continuously this summer and I am compelled to express self in a manner of great authorness, but I haven't practiced and am demanding these fingers to portray me in a way that I simply cannot do! So I shall sit back and relax and have compassion that I am where I am and I am showing up to the best of my ability today.

is what my soul is doing.
Guarded by twenty eight years of surviving life and using weapons to protect,
         the switch seems impossible....
Switch to learning to live life and transform the weapon to a tool,
because it is how I learned to hold the instrument that makes it a weapon or a tool
and this playing field of good vs. evil seems tilted towards evil,
as in it is easier to do harm than it is to heal.
it is easier to run down the grand canyon than it is to step-by-step climb out.

Relationships cause me to expose my wounds and work through the process of becoming Authentic Alyson. this is the most difficult process I undertake as a human.  I am more not myself than I am myself...so letting go of that which is not mySelf--but have depended on for nearly three decades--is completely terrifying.  And it isn't like oh, a little scary.  It is like I am dying. And in the movie the Peaceful Warrior...it is like I have to let go and allow that EGO to die.

I haven't written for half a year here.  I am confronting completely new 'issues' and have new awarenesses about me and what a healthy and loving relationship is.  Let me just note that I am still on the journey of defining/experiencing this relationship...it is not like it is attained.  In fact, I do not know if it will ever be attained or if it is a fluid concept that shifts and flows right along with me and my identifications. See, what I define as healthy and loving in 2006 has shifted...along with me...into 2007. It is kind of like the twelve steps. They are fluid and can be applied to any 'harmful development'. Just like the third step prayer...it can move from outside of me issues to inside of me and be another vessel of transformation and turning it over.
So.
The summer of 2007, heck this entire year...has been and is one of the most challenging time periods of my life.  I am grateful that my home, Flagstaff, meets my needs in my support systems....offers opportunities to connect with nature, and other women on the soccer fields....this place is my home and I am so entirely grateful that I have a foundation of HOME to be in as I unravel these threads and heal these wounds that are exposed.  Some moments I think "ignorance is bliss" so just get off this path and survive life. But then I get these affirmations that "awareness does not forget" and this journey of self discovery is Exactly where I am and 'need' to be...and this too shall pass (referring to the incredible pain of change and not being in control).  Trust is the main topic in many relationships, which is quite halarious of timing considering my awareness has to do with lying and identification of why I 'appease' people instead of courage to speak the Truth.  argh.

Dharma sister called yesterday and it is Gods humor that the issues in her relationship are the issues in mine...but I am the 'problem' and she is the one affected....and it is hard to hear how lying and breaking boundaries causes harm to the humans I love.  So I did communicate from the perspective of her partner and she communicated from the perspective of mine and it just got me like an arrow in the soul.  How steadfast and diligent I Must be in communications and boundaries and accountability and my own recovery. Saying I am sorry just does not cut it as an amends.  I need to own my part and speak from  love and heal these wounds and relationships.  But I AM SORRY. I just do not know how to say it out of love and what my part in it is yet. I just know that I feel pain and loss and am uncomfortable and I have been a liar. And it causes everyone, even me, harm....not healing. And I want to scream because Healing is my intent...but my actions are the opposite.
argh.

I could remember how to say Om without thinking critically about how I utter Om.
I am lost without words,
but on a page like this, what else is there?
I walk in the woods, along trails of boulders against the edge of a mountain,
hoping to be in peace during the last rays of the sun dipping past the horizon....
for the horizon is an illusion because its line recedes farther and farther away the closer I get to IT.......
and I wail against stone and call out people's names that have influenced me....and I cry deep and wholly about my relationship with self in relationships with others....
I am lost in my voice as an individual,
I forget about the sound that ten thousand make when living individually.....
because when I listen the winds blows Om along with rattling dog tags, passing trains, cars and leaves crunching....for a moment, Om.............

and I call out peoples names to evoke emotions....each one brings flashes of memories and I do this all while I walk upon paths of dirt at seven thousand feet in the sky upon the edge of mountains, nestled within trees and rocks and snow and shadow and sunlight....

and I need to stop saying and.

yeah, I am a hypocrite. and I am lost between dualities, not found.

to my wolf while I was cross-country skiing through the woods, upon white blankets of snow crystals....
and Shakti caught the stick and took off running through the forest guided only by intuition and leaping body across the earth.
My thoughts wandered for awhile as my body rhythmically moved on top of snow, and suddenly I saw Shakti with a much larger object. She dropped it on the ground and I gave her a treat for bringing me a gift......the gift was a leg of an elk.  Part of the bone was exposed, but hair still clung onto the bone....it was the hoof to knee bone bone.  I noticed how the hoof print reminds me of a female....and I began having an entire conversation in my head about this meat and body part and life of this creature.
See, at first I was thinking about taking it home and drawing it or bringing it to my classroom and allowing others to draw this leg.....
and then I began thinking about the life of the elk that once was,
but is no more,
and it struck me that I wished for the elk to have a safe journey....and that the elk gets the gift of enlightenment, and not have to live again.......
and I wondered why I thought that THAT was the ultimate gift.....to not have to live on this planet again......because of the suffering that exists here, too much feeling.......

and I knew I did not want to hang onto this elk leg, but I had to 'dispose' of it in the most respectful way I could........do I toss it? Do I bury it?
I chose to put it in a tree, nestled between branches and pray for peace, for freedom from prison, for gratitude of the journey.....even when it takes the skin off and exposes the bone.

With my name on it,
and I don't know why I visit the tombstone sometimes.
But that tombstone, it has my name on it, and I visit it
more than sometimes.

It is one of those time periods that I am getting slammed by the waves and forgetting how I ever rode them.....I feel like I am drowning in change or the resistance to change, really.
But then the phone rings and people write messages to me full of support and listening ears....and I am grateful that I have surrounded myself with humans that can hold their own while I flail and grasp at sand....streaming through fingertips.

I don't know how I got here, or how to get out, or even if that is what I am to be doing.
I called in to work today to just be in bed and watch the sun shift across my bed.
It is hard to feel,
especially the perception of loss and not getting what I want,
but when I walked in the woods and smelled the Earth,
once again I was reminded to fill my entire being with breath,
instead of shallow gasps.....small intakes barely audible.

I am missing her incredibly.

Here I am, living in the twentifirst century, and these are the first moments of being utterly me....because I no longer have a partner to transfer my part onto...my reflections are now purely ME and I am so scared, excited, frustrated and nervous about New Beginnings.
My soul feels devestated about my relationships changing,
I am desperate and searching for one thousand voices to scream over my inner voice....
so I am learning to leave my cell phone behind when I walk in the woods,

cuz today the voice is speaking clearly and part of me wants to hear what is being said.
the other part fears what is spoken,
because it means awareness and change,
and these blankets of comfort I am grasping onto are so comfortable and warm and nurturing...
and the voice is telling me that my blankets are really suffocating my soul.

New beginnings.
I am scared and sad and shaken to the core.
I am so sad.
I was delusioned believing that We were permanent....til death do us part.....
and now I am learning that changing Is the Reality,
not being stuck....not these blankets....not false happiness....
it is transforming to the Affirmative.....
being love........becoming the woman I am.......living Truth and sharing Experience, strength and Hope.
I have a glimmer of Hope, amongst this intense sadness.

and this causes much stress in one of my relationships with a fellow human,
because it signals that I am speaking without thinking and simply saying "Sweet" because I have nothing else to say.
It is like I am frightened of silence, so I utter nonsense just to be heard. To say something. And it becomes Sweet and I can no longer differentiate between sour thinking and reality.
Because sweet is an affirmative and I do not know what else to do sometimes.
Besides affirm and take up space but not really get: when I boil water and pour it in a cup, sipping from the Chamomile liquid immediately will cause the lip to burn upon the boiling edge of glass.
I live without knowing, yet I hang onto ideas and thinking I KNOW WHAT IS BEST FOR ME, when clearly I live in the fog of fantasy and illusion,
because my parents nicknamed me Princess and I was destined to be brilliant and energetic....

and all I have to travel is another 10,000 miles because (according to my most recent musical calculations) ten thousand miles is the distance I travelled to get here, to Planet Earth, from 'outer space' where the soul exists infinitely.  and we all came from this place ten thousand miles away....and we are all headed back to it....but sometimes I can find this place within, me 
and this is what I long for. 

 I read that wild animals can smell fear. I believe the same is true for love. 
Love can be smelled. I have smelled love.
And its scent is sweet, and makes the adrenlyn pump and course, it makes the ears hear more perceptively, so as to be more in tune with that small, little voice inside.
 Love can be felt by outsiders, humans can sense the connection..... and this outsider perspective is the dilemma of all of our struggles.... until Ferrick rapped "Dance as though no one is watching you, Love as though you have never been hurt"
and my eyes weep because the soul can no longer contain the waves.
And I learned that this life is like the ocean, I cannot control the waves... but I can learn to surf.