Right now, as I type this, we have a lot of volcanic activity going on nearby. I feel it. The earth shakes, the air quality shifts; I am too far away to see the glow in the sky or to witness lava flowing across the road, but it is happening. This quickening of the energetics of the earth, the presence of tutu Pele, is part of my incredible experience living here in Hawaiʻi.
Conflict is growth trying to happen.
We are inspired by the creation of new land, where else is in the world is this happening? Awed by the magnetics of the energetic exchange, we feel major momentum and a collective waking up to focus of what matters most.
That magma which has been boiling underground is coming to the surface in varying capacities. Pele is present. Aʻa lava is chunky and sharp, incredibly hot and noxious. Pahoehoe is smooth and flowing. Fountains are shooting up to tickle the heavens. Peleʻs hair and tears are floating and falling. Ash soars high and spreads wide.
Pele in the relational field is powerful.
Why I am sharing this with you? Perhaps because we need to recall that energy of creation and destruction is within us all.
I ask us each to pause and pay attention.
Where am I creating new boundaries, new terrain, new land?
Where am I destroying existing structures (and is this necessarily a bad thing)?
Moving here from the Mainland, I was willing to leave behind a lot of “things,” destroying some of the existing structures of dominant culture, as I moved more fully into new terrain: simplified, intentional living, sharing resources with my in-laws.
My hair dye, nail polish, and underwire bras stayed behind, my hurriedness and impatience came with me.
The goddess Pele reminds me to slow down. Hustling to yoga on the beach a few years ago, I tripped on lava and cut up my foot and was on crutches for a month. I know, the irony of hustling to yoga… Pele speaks, I listen, humbly. No need hurry.
I am human; sometimes I lose my cool.
Yesterday, I erupted after a build up of pressure and underground rumblings. I recognized that underneath the eruption with my mother-in-law was an intention to be supportive, as well as a smidgen of fear, a dose of righteousness, and a dollop of dismay. (I also was hungry — I hadn’t eaten breaky or had my coffee and I was running late to get my son to the dentist.)
The noxious concoction flowed out of me, aʻa style, like the chunky, hot, sharp aʻa lava, despite my (best) intention to express loving concern. (The storyline is rather irrelevant.)
I raised my voice, cussed, turned away, and dismissed her experience. It was painful to us both. I caused more harm than good in that moment. Pele reminds me to recognize my vapors can be toxic, that I need space and air — and I need to slow down — most noteworthy so I don’t vaporize others or hurt myself.
The vent released built up pressure.
We danced awkwardly toward and away from each other, in a confusing array of fountaining detritus. Maybe we both felt hurt.
Space, breath, prayer, processing and a willingness to clean up my side of the wreckage enabled me to see that perhaps this was new earth being formed–a new boundary set with my relative.
I recall the basics of hoʻoponopono.
I love you. I’m sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you.
In conclusion, I offer this to myself and to my mother-in-love, in my prayers and in an email (even though we live together). Now I offer it to you. Give yourself space. Allow for forgiveness. Remember that conflict is growth trying to happen. See relationships blog for more on this.
The dark time of night breeds quiet and an invitation to restore. When this natural stillness is perturbed, the fear committee rouses, its presence weighs heavy, as a stone.
During my adolescence, phone calls punctuate the hours. No good news phone calls come in the middle of the night. When I answer, an official sounding man says, “three minutes.” Then I hear him, my brother, asking for mom.
Another drunk driving arrest in the family. Four brothers, four DUIs and counting. I quickly pass the phone from my hand to my mom’s but the burden of the news doesn’t leave me; a sense of heaviness remains.
Stones Gathering
In their heaviness, stones stay put unless an external force moves them; stones have a natural and definite steadfast sense of leave me alone. Fear gets wedged in my body like a stone; stubborn, stuck and seemingly solid.
It contracts me from a natural state of being at ease to a tight place of pinch.
Back then, as an innocent child, I didn’t know how to move the fear, to shake the pinch, so it piled up and connected to all the other fears, some inherited; alcoholism included, the stones gathering, forming a mountain of malaise.
Today, unlike my childhood, I choose not to have a bedside phone that can ring in the middle of the night, instead I unplug. Yet even without the phone disruptions, self-generated negativity thunders loudest in the wee hours and this storm waters the fallow fields of fear.
Fear Gives Birth to Doubt
Doubt then invades my internal landscape as an invasive vine, crawling and tightening around the lung trees, constricting my safely nestled heart a little too tightly, quickening my breath, and disrupting my rest and digest slumber.
I feel loved, safe, grateful, and happiest when I am outside; this is the saving grace I learned as a child. Appreciating stones, marveling at tree roots, skipping down the beach, my senses gobbling up all the natural beauty that they could.
Indoors, my senses quickly cramp and I become irritable. I notice when someone has been home; a pair of glasses moved, a dirty glass of milk forgotten, my favorite cookies eaten. Minor irritants eating away at the foundation of peace, I feel existential anxiety so I clean to titrate it. The warm sudsy water wiping away the residue of neglect, temporarily. After a very short while, I get cabin fevered, no amount of cleaning is enough.
A state of loneliness creeps into my heart, naturally.
Return to Ease
Then, just as a breath of fresh air works wonders for my psyche, I open the door, step outside and life begins anew again. Beyond the bars of my mental imprisonment of fears and anxieties, I am free to explore the natural state of great beauty around me. It penetrates me. Skin and sun mingling. Warmth within. Return to ease.
Communing with the water element enlivens me. I frolic on the beach, the act of jumping foamy waves curling to the shore fills me with delight. This is the place where consciousness, symbolized by the land, and unconsciousness, the sea, mingle.
It is one of my favorite places on the planet. Paddling on the rivers, the lessons of going with the flow and contemplating the journey come easier here. I also notice the muck and the mire that gets caught in the eddies. Swimming in the lakes, the eyes of the world, and allows my perspective to shift as the lens widens.
I live close to the bone. I sense the energies of the world around me. These wake up calls to beauty save me from myself.
Psychic Sponge
Me, a psychic sponge of sorts, readily saturated with grace and beauty or conversely, with fear and doubt, I must be willing and able to squeeze out the toxins which flood the space between my thoughts. If I donʻt release the pinch, fear and doubt fester into a soup of shame, and that shame clogs my nervous system to the point of overwhelm.
Everything changes. I used to wear all black as a teenager. Now I adore wearing all white. I even tolerate grey, in my wardrobe, in my hair, in my chain of thought. Adopting a fresh perspective free from polarities allows me a better chance of hanging out in the sweet spot of life.
My troubles, then, are not so different from the present, it is just in the subtleties, the gradations of the experiences. Today, the rage is not so ragy. The disagreements are not so disagreeable. The dread is not so dreadful. I know how to move the fear.
Sunrise
Everything swirling and changing around me, the one thing throughout my life that is constant is the sunrise. It rises, every single day of my life. Not once in awhile or when it was summer, but every day. The sun comes up behind a veil of clouds or as a glowing orange orb on the clear cut of the horizon, shimmering off the ocean’s waves.
Wherever I am, it rises. The sun continues to rise, no matter what. It is not up to me whether this happens or not, which is a huge relief. I can rely on it. Sunrise is trustworthy and I surrender to this.
I wake early, earlier than usual, 4 a.m. Instead of wrestling with my worries, did I get enough sleep, how will I pay the bills, is my mother okay, will my son be alcoholic, why politics and environmental degradation polarize us, I go out to my lanai for prayer and yoga and look up to the sky.
Nature is a Salve
Stars pierce the darkness, some swimming in a milky way, the big dipper pouring in the east. I am putting my mental energies to a different task, learning to tell time based on the seasons and the constellations. Nature is a salve for my soul, I feel its restorative power immediately.
I am living a continual leap of faith and I jumped so high, it really is just one long free fall.
I have moments of feeling grounded but perhaps I am merely resting on a cloud, temporarily. The weather shifts, the clouds dissipate, there is no such thing as solid ground. Feeling the ground under my feet somehow reminds me of groundlessness. The sun kiss my skin reminds me of boundlessness. Pulling me this way and that, the winds of this passing moment remind me of impermanence.
My life begins when I leave my house and allow my senses to play.
My favorite game is what is the most glorious thing I see in this moment, now? The new shoots on the fern? The turkey turd from the neighboring wild turkey we call Tina though I think she is a Tom? The lei of clouds ringing Mauna Kea?
Healing the Planet
I will remain active in the pursuit of my purpose, to heal the planet one relationship at a time. I am humbled to know there are some relationships I cannot heal, even within my own home, my own family. Now one brother is sober, one is drunk and has no license due to multiple DUIs, yet he tells me he doesn’t drive because his truck is broken down, the two other brothers are still figuring it out, and it is not up to me.
The one relationship I can and do heal is the relationship with myself, dismounting the mountain of malaise.
From there, all things are possible.
Tonight, I will put my head to my pillow in gratitude: that this being here is enough.
I am in a natural state of calm abiding when I can unlock the pinch. Letting go of fear, doubt and shame are essential to living in a place of relaxed pulsation, breathing with the wind, giving my exhale to the trees, receiving nourishment from the ʻaina, and surrendering to the flow of ʻwai. Puʻu wai, the hill of water, my heart center, hums in the heartbeat of space.
I am restored as the dark night breeds quiet. Tomorrow, I will rise again, like the sunrise, and do what must be done.
