update on the rest of my life

In other news, I am now volunteering at Providence Farm three days a week. I help with seniors on Tuesdays, I'm in the greenhouse on Thursdays, and as of last week I am in the Loom Room on Fridays. O my word I must take a picture of the Loom Room, there are at least a dozen looms between table and floor looms. There are spinning wheels and sewing machines and patterns and books and yarn and more yarn and ribbons and buttons and a crafter's paradise! I learned how to weave on a floor loom last Friday and I was absolutely enchanted. Now I want one. Dan promised to build me one.

I love Providence Farm. I wrote about my experiences early on but each time I go my feeling of love for and from the place deepens. I am learning so much about myself and others. I am learning even more patience (who knew that was even possible?), I am learning how volunteers and caregivers dance around people with dementia, I am learning about plants (I discovered Korean Mint!), and that weaving is way faster than knitting. I spend my days around all kinds of people and the love just flows, it is so wonderful. I really hope there are other places like this in the world.

On this note, I wanted to share with you an experience I had there two weeks ago. There is a man who comes every few weeks with leftover bread from a local bakery, given free to St. Ann's Garden Centre (the program I volunteer for on Tuesdays). He is good friends with one of the older volunteers, and that particular day he had some friends with him, members of their church. They sat off at the far end of the room while I was in the kitchen extracting muffins from tins. The man led them through a prayer for one of their fellow congregates who, it sounded like, had recently been the victim of some legal injustice. I didn't hear the whole story, but I felt absolutely compelled to stop what I was doing with the muffins and join them in their prayer. It wasn't the words, because I couldn't really hear them, but the powerful feeling of love I felt coming from 40 feet away. I was filled with awe. I don't know how else to describe it. I was absolutely moved.

There was a time when I would have been irritated by someone praying in my presence. Irritated that they would bring their stupid Bible crap within my earshot. Nothing inspires ire in me more than JW's coming to the door and ambushing you with their cookie-cutter arguments for whatever objections you might have. I abhorred any kind of righteousness and assumed that all those of the Christian persuasion were out to convert the rest of us.

So, some of you know that I identified as Wiccan for ten years. I had no formal religious affiliation before that, though I was baptized Catholic (ha!) and I had been loosely studying Buddhism before I discovered Wicca and Paganism. When I walked away from Wicca, I walked away from religion entirely because, as a scientist (I have a piece of paper that declares me so), I did not believe in a god so religion just made no sense to me. That was in 2009. In the time since then I have had all kinds of realizations and reflections about where I'm at with my spirituality and religion. I stopped any practices or rituals I had previously done and I didn't miss it. I guess it was a time of secular reflection for me while my life was busy with other things.

I know I have mentioned here before, perhaps only in passing, about my experiences in the last six month with a friend who has recently blossomed into her psychic medium skills, about my introduction to A Course in Miracles, about my experiencing meditation as an actual discipline. I have had all kinds of interesting thoughts and conversations about this new-to-me material I have been engaging with and have been processing a lot of emotional baggage. My views about many things have changed, I have become way more forgiving and more patient (though I am not immune to emotional flare-ups from time to time!). I communicate with my cat telepathically and she responds. I visit the chickens when I'm sad and they heal me. I have experienced so many major shifts within in these last six months that even Toni is surprised at how much I have changed, and we spent a LOT of time together! So when I witnessed that prayer for a stranger two weeks ago, I knew that I had arrived at a new level with my spirituality.

I had dinner with some friends in Victoria last week. One of the friends asked me where I was at with my spirituality and religion, as she knew about my walking away from faith a few years ago. In all this transformation I have been going through these past months, I haven't really taken the time to articulate it, at least not in public. I journal about it all the time. Here is what I told her: "I went from having spent most of my life not believing in a God to having a nightly conversation with Him".

 
Just let that settle in for a minute.


So what does that mean? No, I'm not a Born Again anything. I'm not suddenly going to accept or take on a religion because I have (to use a cliche) found God. In fact I was (naturally) loathe to tell anyone about it because I don't want people to think I'm a new age freak. Instead, I will attempt to articulate this further (and I haven't even journaled about this yet, you are getting raw and uncut Stacey!): I think I had better start with my assumptions so you know where I am going.

I believe in reincarnation.
I believe in spirit guides, that we can communicate with our beloved dead, and we can communicate telepathically.
As of recently, I believe in angels.
I accept the teachings of A Course in Miracles which says that time and space are not real things, that what we are perceiving as our experience is not in fact real (I don't feel qualified to expand on that point to do it justice, at least not yet). The Course also teaches that there is only fear and love, and that fear is the absence of love, so when you are experiencing fear what you really need is love. (There are many good teachers who simplify the labyrinthine material of the Course, should you care to dabble).
I even believe in Jesus.
And now, I also believe in God.

So to fill in that frame a bit, if love is what we strive for, then every thing we do must be in pursuit of love. Love of self, love of others, love of all. In this view, we are all One, not separate, and that you are a reflection of a part of me that I need to engage with right now. I realize I am getting metaphysical here, but honestly this is where my mind has been in these last months. It has been amazing to turn a number of experiences in my life that I had formerly perceived as negative and see them now as gifts or opportunities for growth. If I believe that I have chosen this life for myself (and I do believe that), then I can blame no one for my suffering, and that I chose to experience suffering in order to learn... what? Well, each experience has something different to teach us. Just like we'll keep dating the same type of jerk until we learn to respect ourselves, at which point the Right Man will come along (it happened to me!)(Gosh I hope none of my ex-'s are reading this). I digress.

This is how I was able to go from "O no! I will be terribly inconvenienced by having to go to Montreal for my visa appointment" to "I have always wanted to go to Montreal and this will be a great opportunity! Maybe I will have some interesting experiences while I'm there!" In a way, it's re-framing or re-perceiving my experience in a positive way that has gotten me through this year of being without my husband. There have clearly been a bundle of things I needed to learn in this time that we've been apart that I probably would not have had the chance to if we were together.

WHEW. That was a lot to get out, a lot to tell you, dear reader, but I figured it was time I came out of the (what do you call it when you out yourself spiritually?) cave? (Ha - I accidentally typed 'cafe' instead of 'cave', which also makes an interesting metaphor ;-)) This is how I view my world now.

Oh! I just remembered the other big thing that has been occupying my brain for the last couple of weeks but it's getting late and I want to wrap up this blog post. Toni and I have been talking a lot about climate change, peak oil, permaculture, and the collapse of oil-based society as we know it. I have had my mind clamped on developing post-apocalyptic survival skills. I'm not going to get into it here but it sure has had me thinking lately. I embrace learning new skills and I am now really motivated to learn how to make a fire without matches or a lighter. I'll probably have a few posts about this, possibly several on the weekend (I'll have the house to myself!), so maybe we can start some interesting conversations about disaster preparedness.

One last thing: I will direct you to Toni's most recent post for an update about what's been happening around here. As of today Hen has hatched out five more chicks with a few more eggs to go. The flock is changing and CHICKS ARE SO CUTE OMG.

unbounded joy

I have spent much of this morning feeling happy. Not for any particular reason, as in we are still waiting for news of my immigration and I'm still waiting for a big chunk of money to fall into my lap, but I feel good. Jubilant. Full of joy.

I'm on to Day 11 of the Chopra Meditation challenge. I have started reading the works of Doreen Virtue who is the leading expert on angels, who also writes about crystals and chakras. Yesterday I finally encountered Louise Hay, whose book You Can Heal Your Life has passed through my hands hundreds of times when I worked at the library but that I had not encountered until I watched it in DVD form yesterday.

I started working my way through A Course in Miracles earlier this year and have been enjoying the videos of Earl Purdy as a guide to the Course.

My mind is exploding.

The message I'm getting from all of this is that I can change my mind. And once I change my mind, the reality that I am experiencing changes with it. I can look at my present situation as being stuck in Canada without my husband, or I can look at it as a gift of time to heal, recover, rediscover and learn more about myself while I have this time of solitude. And a gift of time it is. Every night when I go to bed, I go through my daily 'gratefuls'. I am grateful for my husband. I am grateful for my cat. I am grateful that I get to spend so much time with my beloved friends in their house. I am grateful for the food in my belly, the roof over my head, a warm bed, clean air, safe drinking water, my awesome truck (I love my truck!), knitting, literacy, for my health, etc. The list can go on and on, depending on how soon I actually want to fall asleep. The point is that I count my blessings to the Universe every night and don't dwell on the lack. If I dwell on the lack, the Universe will manifest further lack.

So.... I am changing the way I think and the way I speak. I am trying to speak only in positives, and eliminate negatives. I would like to be free from saying or thinking 'should', which is not a very helpful or loving word. Also, I am speaking what are called affirmations. One of the messages from the material I encountered yesterday was that if you pray and wish for something, telling the Universe that you want or would like something, then it will perpetuate your want, rather than helping to manifest the thing you want into your present reality. Therefore, I drew some pictures of things that will manifest soon in my life:

This is me and Dan and Sam, driving in my red truck to North Carolina. I normally would have redrawn this picture in ink, but I was just too excited and left it as is, in pencil. So what is not really visible here is me knitting, or how unthrilled Sam looks while we're driving. Also of note: I need to knit some seat belt cosies for the truck!

This is the important one. This is me and Dan and Sam, all together in North Carolina. I think I will actually redraw this one, make it larger, and post it somewhere visible in my current location.

While writing my morning pages this morning, it occurred to me that I could also draw pictures of what it would look like for me to not have any worries about money. What would I be doing with my time here (while waiting for immigration) if I wasn't worried about money? To be honest, I wouldn't really go too crazy with spending, since I want to keep the amount of stuff I move to the US to be minimal - I can buy things when I get there. But what would I buy while I'm still here? I would be able to contribute more to the family food budget here at Backyard Feast. I would buy a few more art supplies. I would buy some exercise clothing and equipment. Really though, I would be just happy to pay off my debts. I would love to cross the border debt-free. Then, when I start earning an income in North Carolina, I can put that money towards buying a house and replenishing my yarn stash and wardrobe. See? These are all things I have to be drawing pictures of. As I am imagining my life in North Carolina, I am going to get really good at drawing the map of the state. That can only be a good thing.

the four needs of the heart

I have to blog about this right now while it's fresh in my mind. Normally I would just write in my journal about it but I think it is profound enough to share with you.

As I mentioned, I am working my way through the Chopra Center's 21-day meditation challenge. Today was Day 9. The meditations are getting more and more intense, and each day I find more resonant than the previous day.

I am in a head space right now where my mind is tingling with learning. I have always believed that everything happens for a reason and that when we are meant to receive messages, all we need to do is pay attention. I have started praying recently, and have asked for all kinds of help, and my prayers have started being answered. The message that came through in the Chopra meditation today was exactly what I needed to hear. 

Davidji led today's meditation and in it he discusses the four needs of the heart: Attention, Affection, Appreciation, Acceptance. We were invited to chant these four words as mantras, either silently or out loud. As I was chanting these mantras, I flood of realizations came into my head. I may have these needs, but so does everyone else! I can apply this to the stressful family situation at hand. This will help me to have a more peaceful and loving response when and if the phone call comes. I can be mindful of their need for attention, affection, appreciation, acceptance. All negative emotion comes from fear, and that fear is a call for love. I can offer love. I can be loving to my relatives who are expressing these negative emotions.

Now I must tell you something. I have started working my way through A Course in Miracles. Since I have made this decision and begun this study, lots of interesting changes have been happening in my mind and in my life. I was introduced to the videos of Earl Purdy, who teaches the Course. I spent ten years being a Pagan and have never felt so close to the Divine as I do now, and this coming after two years of rejecting religion and spirituality outright. This is the reason I have come to accept why I am delayed in immigration - because I have a lot of learning to do right now. I am praying for the processing of my green card (and hopefully you are too - if so, thanks!), but in the mean time I have made peace with my situation.