Hello Darkness, Hello Light

Dear Earthlings,

I was alone in the house organizing a few of my boxes of things, when everything went dark and silent. I stepped out of the bedroom and felt along the wall to the living room where I knew I had a candle and lighter. The wind was howling outside and it must have blown the power out. I stepped out on the deck and could see swirls of snow spin on the golf course like mini tornadoes. I was aware that it was getting colder inside the house. I found other candles and lit them. Eventually, I found a flashlight.

The strangest thing was that as I was going through a box of my writing, I found a loose piece of paper with a dream written on it about the end of the world. Every night I've been dreaming these dreams again. I see buildings falling down and water flooding streets. Somehow I'm able to just observe it all, as if I'm watching a movie. I see it happening, but I'm strangely not affected by it. Instead of jumping into the swirl of chaos and panic with everyone else, I stand a distance back and observe. Somehow, in my observing of the chaos, I get answers and solutions, but they hard to put into words because they come from the dream realm.

I know that I'm meant to be out here. In the dark last night, I felt I should be scared, but I wasn't. Instead, I felt a kind of returning. We have lost connection to the darkness. We depend so much on light. Without electricity to fuel our devices and appliances, we are lost.

In the darkness, with just a candle, I felt a deep connection to the wild world outside. Just before dawn, before the power went out, five deer walked in a single-file line past my bedroom window. They seemed to glide with extreme grace, ears twitching with alertness.

These animals bring me to the answers. This is native land. What's the point of being out here if I don't take time to tune in.

I could not walk yesterday in the blizzard-like winds. I watched the snow rapidly accumulate outside the living room window. By the late afternoon, the snow was blowing sideways towards the window and then the wind would shift and it would blow in another direction. After the power went out, I gathered candles, a flash light, warm clothes, a down comforter and hunkered down in the living room near the gas fireplace.

Around 11pm, the power was restored and I returned to the bedroom.

I awoke when light began to stream in through the blinds. It was quiet outside. I did not hear wind. I got up and made myself some tea and returned to the bedroom to get dressed. I bundled up in a long down jacket, scarf, hat and gloves before leaving the house.

I walked along the property line of Graysmarsh farm towards Graysmarsh Beach. All of a sudden I began to hear trumpets. I thought I was going crazy. The sun was hitting the snow and making everything extremely bright. Through a gap in the trees that created a boundary around the farm, I saw huge white swans, that I later learned were trumpeter swans, flying in circles above the fields of snow on the farm. They literally sounded like trumpets.

It was beautiful and heavenly. The image of huge white swans above bright, white snow making the most angelic sound touched me to my core and opened my heart. I don't know the language of these animals I see, but I often times I feel like I do. They all call me to slow down and tune in. Maybe that is the answer.

People talk of darkness and it is there. I don't watch the news out here and I've stopped Facebook for awhile. I want my media to come from nature. It's been speaking for a long time.

I feel every moment I'm able to step lightly on the Earth and listen, it's another moment of awakening to a world that has always been there for us and only asks us to listen.

Crashing and Burning at The End of The World

Dear fellow Earthlings,

While I sit on a log on Dungeness Spit in the Pacific Northwest, with 40 mile an hour winds whipping at my face and waves crashing on the shore, I'm thinking about Australia burning. Just the other day a friend said on a blog post she shared with me said,
"THE WORLD IS GOING CRAZY!"

It's a very strange feeling to be way out here where nearly a dozen deer come to my window and graze on the grass each day. These docile, gentle beings remind me that there is still softness in the world, while in other parts there is FIRE burning all around!

As I see my Australian friends' pictures from their backyards of air that is thick with gray smoke and hear them speak about itchy throats and teary eyes, I feel hopeless. I am here in the Pacific Northwest in winter where it mostly rains. However, I have strong memories of the fires that blazed through our own forests all the way down to the California coast the past several summers. I remember sitting at Carkeek Park looking at a couple sitting on a log in the haze and a man in the distance wading up to his waist in Puget Sound. He looked like he was baptizing himself for the end of times.

What are we to do?

And now there is talk of war. Facebook, news and social media sites are buzzing with opinions and theories and fear and anger and...

I have to turn it off.

Throwing my own energy into the fire will only stir it up even more.

The way inside is very subtle. I find it in the forest next to two huge cedar trees with bark graying from the dampness of the air. They are like very old, wise grandfathers. They must be more than 200 years old. Their top branches sway in the wind, but they are grounded with deep roots that I imagine reach the core of he Earth. They call me to stand still and listen. I breathe in the air and raise my hands over head for a minute and then bring them down to hold my heart in gratitude for being with these elders.

I tread further down the moist, pine-needled path to the ocean that roars with tsunami-like waves. They crash through my chest and blow me wide open so that all of the molecules that make up who I am are now blowing in the wind across the Sound and when I sit down on a log with the wind whipping at my face, those same molecules come back into place as if the log were a buoy pulling everything back to its center.

Crashing, Crashing....the waves are relentless in their fury. Fallen trees that are now logs riding the waves come barreling on to the shore. Even the seagulls hunker down behind old stumps and sticks in the sand. Walking down the spit was easy, but when I turn around to walk back to the forest, every inch of me has to fight the wind. I cover my face with my scarf and pull my hat down so I only have a tiny window for my eyes which are shut tight and wet with salty tears.

When I reach the upward slope back to the forest from the Sound, I lift my gaze past the waves and I almost detect a calm smoothness out between the Spit and the land mass on the other side. And then my mind imagines sitting on the bottom of the ocean with the sea creatures there. All of the bottom fish barely moving while so much activity happens on the surface.

 If it is the end of the world as we know it, I don't want to be crashing and burning and fighting and fearing. I don't want to add fuel to the fire. I don't want to predict, judge, criticize, hypothesize  or even proselytize.

The only thing I can do now is look up when I hear the piercing shrill of an eagle overhead. He swoops down and lands right on a high branch of a cedar tree above me. When he lands, he does not move, but stares with that all-knowing gaze that actually brings me a deep peace for the moment.

Maui Musings Day 9: The Last Day on Earth

Dear fellow Earthlings,

If this were your last day in this current incarnation on the planet, what would you do? How would you feel to know you only have a day left to live? Have you been living each day as if it were your last? Have you been appreciating your life? Is there something that needs to change?

It seemed like just another day on Maui. I awoke, once again, to the sound of birds singing together in a grand symphony as the sun rose over the ocean casting a pink and red glow across the horizon.

I rubbed my eyes and thought about my boyfriend. I've been away from him for about a week and I still have another 25 days or so to go until I see him. I posted a video of us  and a few photos of the last few days in Maui on Facebook. Then I sat there in complete gratitude in my bed, in my dome with nature surrounding me.

And then this happened:

It flashed across my screen in an instant. It read:

Emergency Alert:
BALLISTIC MISSILE THREAT INBOUND TO HAWAII. SEEK IMMEDIATE SHELTER. THIS IS NOT A DRILL.

Holy shit! This was not a joke. In that moment, everything stopped and I froze. And then thoughts started to flood back in. I thought, How long is it going to take the missile to reach Hawaii? and What am I going to do with the short time I have left?

I went over to the owner's main house and talked to them about it and my friend's husband was pretty confident that it was not going to happen. Still, those words on my phone and everyone's phone were clear and we had not received another message yet to let us know that it was not going to happen, so I had to treat it like it was true.

Up on the mountain, we are fully exposed. There is no shelter. At least no shelter underground. If we were going out, we'd surely go out with a bang. I paced the property and then decided to FaceTime my boyfriend. He was shocked to hear the news, but he also did not believe it would happen and reassured me that when he looked at it psychically, all looked well. And, he was angry that this message had gone out to the entire population of Hawaii, scaring the pants off so many people. He made me feel calm and reassured and it felt good to talk to him and see his face.

The next thing I did was find the most succulent piece of tropical fruit I could eat. In this case, it was a tangerine that had grown on the property. I wanted to get a taste of this good earth in me, if I was going to leave it.

I sat on a patch of grass near the Plumeria tree and felt the pulp of the tangerine squirt in my mouth. I sucked the juices in like sweet nectar. I appreciated each bite. As I was eating this fruit and talking to my boyfriend, I felt a deep sense of love and gratitude for my life. I felt my guides all around me. One of my guides is Pele, goddess of volcanoes. I felt her power to repel any negative forces affecting these sacred islands, even missiles.

All of these things calmed me down and allowed me to sit in the beauty of nature with confidence.

 If I were to leave the planet today, I know I can say that I had a wonderful life with lots of love, adventure, happiness, fun and joy. I can also say that I am so appreciative of my family and each person who has crossed my path.

I felt happy that I could honestly say that at this point in my life. And once I felt this, I knew I would be okay. I know that I have a divine purpose on this planet. I know that it involves writing and sharing my journey with others. I can feel a book in me. I know it is bubbling deep down at the core of my being. I know it wants to be born and I feel much of it will get written on this trip, especially now that the ballistic missile was a false alarm. It is strange how a threat like that puts all things into perspective.

Even though I was completely shaking in my slippahs when that message flashed across my screen, a deeper part of me said, "Feel the love (aloha) around you. Tune in to THAT!" It was a very good lesson. I could be afraid, but I could still feel love and gratitude for my life. We don't like to think about our last day on earth being near, but it is a good thing to ponder. Personally, I believe that we come back again in one form or another. We are here to learn as much as we can and live out our divine purpose. Life presents us with lessons and challenges, but ultimately I feel we all go back to the same source we came from. We all go back to the same light and each one of us are sparks of that great light. Knowing this, I feel calm. No matter what happens, we return to the same place.

Sometimes I  wonder what my life is for. I can't know the complete path. None of us can. Yet, often times, I feel I'm being guided. My intuition tells me strongly, "Do THIS!" Coming to Maui was one of those things. I was determined to make it happen because I felt deeply drawn to immerse myself in this land. I felt deep healing would happen. I felt my spirit call me back to these islands for a reason.
If this were my last day on earth, I can honestly say that I followed my heart here. I can also say that I feel gratitude for everything in my life, even the challenging, unpleasant parts. Those parts got me here. What a blessing!

What would you do if it were your last day on earth? Is there anything you would change right now if you knew that your days were numbered?