Enter the Cave; Embrace the Panther

This photo is the entrance to a black rock cave in West Virginia, a short climb from the bank of a wild river. The setting is evocative of life this week. We've been talking quietly in groups about world changes, unusual sensation, but last week, stunningly, the chaos got personal. One day delivered a windstorm of terrible events for loved ones. We feel helpless, confused, heart heavy. My neighbor offered a tape (she follows a channeler she used to visit in California) that unravels what is happening in a clear voice, even as we sense the occurrences and feel the pains. The old negatives are rising to the top to be confronted, and life-changing experiences are forcing new skills. Stories we invented about ourselves no longer hold truth. We need to let go, to submerge, to emerge with new knowledge. My ability to protect the ones I love is false; a comic book fantasy. I can only offer love. My shields are down. I feel exposed, scared, but as my friend Susan asked "don't you feel a little excited, too?" Messages have arrived for a couple years that I need to embrace the panther ("No way" I hollered when I flipped that card over again.) The Hero's Journey requires us to enter the cave. The cave here has red graffiti and green graffiti - mere tick marks, like a prisoner to be released; a visitor who enters and leaves. My personal cave showed up this week, and I cannot avoid entering it. Only after several more trials can I grab the sacred sword, the elixir, the sorcerer's stone and emerge at last. George Abbott advised how to write a play: 1) Get your hero up a tree. 2) Throw rocks at her. 3) Get her down. It feels more than serendipitous that the cave I photographed is just above Calamity Rock in the Cheat River. We can't cheat calamity, but we can learn how to live through it with grace.

2011, A Fresh Start

Rob Brezsny horoscoped Pisces this week quoting Bertrand Russell. Anything you're good at contributes to happiness. Okay. Is that my happiness or everyone's? Nitpicking! Not this year! No. So. I'm good at this stuff on a diminishing scale of goodliness. I left out all those depressing skills, like being good at finding fault, pinpointing blame, getting in the slowest aisle at the market, saying the wrong thing at the worst time...blah blah. If I can figure out a way to leverage my assets (ow! that hurts) and maximize my value-added doowanitty, I'll be happier this year. All I have to do is not do math while sleeping to start and bundle the middle whenever possible. That I can do.