If It Be Your Will

If it be your will
That I speak no more
And my voice be still
As it was before
I will speak no more
I shall abide until
I am spoken for
If it be your will

If it be your will
That there is a voice be true
From this broken hill
I will sing to you
From this broken hill
All your praises they shall ring
If it be your will
To let me sing
From this broken hill
All your praises they shall ring
If it be your will
To let me sing

If it be your will
If there is a choice
Let the rivers fill
Let the hills rejoice
Let your mercy spill
On all these burning hearts in hell
If it be your will
To make us well

And draw us near
And bind us tight
All your children here
In their rags of light
In our rags of light
All dressed to kill
And end this night
If it be your will

If it be your will.

 

Leonard Cohen 

“Dance Me To The End Of Love”

Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin
Dance me through the panic til I’m gathered safely in
Lift me like an olive branch and be my homeward dove
Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to the end of love

Oh let me see your beauty when the witnesses are gone
Let me feel you moving like they do in Babylon
Show me slowly what I only know the limits of
Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to the end of love

Dance me to the wedding now, dance me on and on
Dance me very tenderly and dance me very long
Were both of us beneath our love, were both of us above
Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to the end of love

Dance me to the children who are asking to be born
Dance me through the curtains that our kisses have outworn
Raise a tent of shelter now, though every thread is torn
Dance me to the end of love

Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin
Dance me through the panic till I’m gathered safely in
Touch me with your naked hand or touch me with your glove
Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to the end of love

Leonard Cohen

Lovin’ Halloween

I love Halloween…it is  sheer delight. As a child my Aunt Bev threw the best Halloween parties, including scavenger hunts and ghostly spooky delights. We trekked the neighborhoods with pillowcases in hand and a list of all the things we must gather before the stroke of midnight and the “witching hour”. We feasted on her homemade popcorn balls, cinnamon candied apples, apple fritters and donuts. We bobbed for apples until we were drenched and squealed with giggles waiting to see who would find the apple with the worm. Over the years I have been a ghost, a princess, little Orphan Annie, various types of witches, a gypsy, an old woman, a fortune teller, a wood nymph, a ballerina…and the list goes on. This year both of my adult daughters are cats. One will be masquerading in Rome, Italy and the other in Eugene. My oldest son is Pan, complete with horns and wool chaps. I am heading into my closet and cupboards to find something to celebrate the thinning between the worlds, when the veil is a mist and all which has come before and all which will come after appear side by side…and await the witching hour; the delight of magic and the brewing of mystery.

The Impact of Awakening

Excerpts from theTeachings of Adyashanti:

“The door to God is the insecurity of not knowing anything.

Bear the grace of that insecurity,

and all wisdom will be yours.”

“Love is a flame that burns everything other than itself.

It is the destruction of all that is false

and the fulfillment of all that is true.”

“Keep questioning right down to the marrow,

until the question dissolves ~~

leaving only a passing draft

where there was once a solid illusion called self.”

K~K~K~Karma

“That’s my karma…that’s not my karma…instant karma…bad karma…good karma…karma”. The good, the bad and the ugly; karma eventually finds its way, showing up on everyone’s doorstep, saying “yes it’s me”. The “fruits of our labor” carrying us further down the path of awareness and responsibility. Cause and effect, everything which goes around comes around and no matter what our course karma will always bring us back to ourselves.

Every once in awhile, we come head on into a karma whose time has come and we cannot derail. It is like a fast train moving down the track and for the life of us all we can do is hold on and hope to recognize the scenery. I recently found myself stepping into a particular karma to be met and released; oh, some mighty scary territory; not the current story itself, as it was only the vehicle on which we would travel upon, but in the recognition of the karma and its previous landscape.

It is a powerful and humbling thing to recognize one’s karma; to know without a shadow of a doubt what is standing before us and say okay…OKAY…let’s go. Like a whirlwind, it caught me up and off off off it went; a momentum of its own, moving according to the currents of its nature. It required everything of me, stripped down and bare. For months I gave it my focus and attention. It was with me when I woke in the morning and the last awareness of the day as I lay my head to my pillow. Working through karma is warrior work. Hard task, constant awareness, alert, daunting, disciplined and the necessity of demand without regard for the ego. And this I found to be the absolute surrender, releasing the ego and all arguments, for it serves no purpose. I found I had to get out of my own way over and over again. I prayed. I prayed. I spent some much time with my face to the floor, “Let me meet this. Let me not falter. Let me not be ruled by my fear, weakness, resistance, doubts. Let me navigate by the truth of my heart and let me surrender it all.” At times the pain was so great it gripped my heart, piercing and wretched…and my mind, it arrived to cast doubt and second guess as many aspects as could get my attention. My mind accusational; questioning, demanding voice and validity, arguing for sound reason and rationale. A task in and of itself, to continually bring it back to a neutral space and move onward and forward again. And so it went day by day a deeper quickening in my awareness. I found as time passed not only the profound revealed itself, but the subtle as well in the quiet spaces between. A comprehension of the depth and breadth of what was transpiring bloomed…bloomed and I stood in a place of awe…as this process, this movement was leaving no stone unturned. I considered the magnitude, the timing, the capacity; the love, the sacredness and the devotion.

The day arrived when I knew it was done. This travail had reached its end; a burden was released, falling back in the wake behind me. A sense of being purified permeated my awareness and a pleasure; a pleasure so deep and profound in knowing I had met the task and its requirements, seen it through to completion; I ran the good race and victory…victory. Are there riches enough to compare? Is there a beauty greater to behold? Is there a desire or yearning more pressing to the soul? These are the miracles of life in the awareness of being. Sometimes we are given the opportunity to move through and release something so great within our own soul process and the territory it will cover envelopes the soul path in such a comprehensive fashion in ripples out and out and out, bringing us back to the core of pure existence. Through it all the dimensions of love are opened wide and wider still, showing the deeper presence of the Divine and the Face we seek. In the remembering abides love. In the discovery abides love, in the travails abides love and in the awakening abides the utmost.

Wahe Guru Ji Ki Khalsa – Wahe Guru Ji Ki Fateh

Crooked Little House

The Khalsa Singing Milkmaid

My youngest daughter, Amrit Sadhana, started milking at a local dairy during high school. She has been raised around animals, mostly sheep, since a baby, so farm life is natural for her and she quickly fell in love with her work. Rising early in the morning, during the amrit vela, she heads out to the dairy and in the pre-dawn hours rounds up the cows, bringing them into the barn for their morning milking. At about 5’ 2” tall, Amrit Sadhana is entirely dwarfed by the cows; 150 Holsteins filled to bursting, ready to be hooked up and milked. And so begins the milkmaids’ sadhana, as she chants while the cows placidly stand in their stanchions and give beautiful creamy white milk. Sometimes a sadhana cd plays throughout the milk barn, at other times it is purely the sound of her voice rising above the moos of the cows and the steady sounds of the milk machines. 

 

Amrit Sadhana loves “the girls” and brings home stories of births and deaths, illnesses and recoveries. She knows them all and their histories, personalities, markings and temperament; who are mother and daughter, who is sweet, who is grouchy, who needs extra care. She has her favorites and lovingly dotes on the baby calves.

 

After graduating high school and heading off to university she continues to come home during breaks and summer months to don her wellies and barn clothes. Heading out to the barn, sometimes twice a day, to tend to morning and afternoon milkings; bringing home the smell of cows and the milk barn.

 

There are two independent dairies left in our county. The cows feed on fresh green grass during the summer and alfalfa during the winter, under the beautiful blue skies of the high desert, tended to by the herdsman and his family. Amrit Sadhana feels this job is such a great gift of love. It grounds her and keeps her connected to the land and the animals. When life is stressful, demanding or painful, working with the cows is good medicine, like a calming tincture bringing her back to her sensory self and an utter simplicity.

 

Amrit Sadhana is off in Italy these days continuing her studies as a vocal performance major and studying Italian. Her milking clothes sit in a bin in the garage ready for when she returns back home, pulls on her wellies and heads down the road to “visit with the girls” singing them into the parlor, in the amrit vela…happy cows, happy girl, happy milk.

Come Forth

Come forth O Soul.

Come forth and be the true Light

Of my Being.

Walk forth with me,

Stand tall within my spine,

Breathe the depth of breath into my lungs.

Reach into the Heart of the Divine.

Be my cup.

Fill me to overflow.

Baptize me in the waters

Of the mysteries of thy spirit.

Be my imprint, my skin,

My Truth and Totality

Within the realm of God.

Be my Mother, my Father.

My honor, my frailty, my humanness.

Be my companion on the road.

Hold me to my Truth,

Do not separate.

Come forth with me into every

Note of my radiant song.

The eternal melody that trills the

Dawn of Love.

O Soul come forth.

Draw me close, enter as a lover.

Whisper soul sonnets in my ear.

Caress and sing me the

Song of the lost traveler

Too long from home.

I shall never leave… I shall never leave.

Bliss lies within the Breath of my Soul.

Sadh Bakshish Kaur

Khalsa Ladies Camp ~ 2007

I am back from Khalsa Ladies Camp and my annual trek to Vancouver B.C. and the Sunshine Coast. (I will post photos soon). We met upon a new land in a new way. Further up the coastline than our old meeting place, deeper in the forest; this land is beautiful. The wildflowers, dragonflies, eagles and hawks, bees, squirrels, bears, spiders and snakes; fairies, ancestors, nature spirits, keepers; all were present; seen and revealed. There wasn’t a veil between the dimension and planes. Everyone and everything shared meals together, bowed to the Guru, met for sadhana, moved through the land and showed their faces in photographs.

This year brought a merging of women’s camps. We had women present from KWTC New Mexico, Khalsa Ladies Camp Mexico and Khalsa Ladies Camp – India Yatra, Anandpur Sahib. Bringing together technology, teachings, lineage – concentrated, consolidated.

As women we walked the new land, moving from tent and shelter to gatka field, open-air kitchen, amazingly beautiful outdoor (cold!!) showers (a huge thank you and shout-out to the men of Khalsa Men’s Camp and Raj Yog Nivas for creating the most awesome showers!!!), dark starlit treks to sadhana, relaxation upon the grass, swims in the ocean…from Sat Nam Valley to the Young Adi Shakti’s gathering gazebo. Even though camp schedules at a pace of classes, meals, free time, etc., there was a sense of all being done in a meandering; softly and easily moving (floating) from one thing to the next; Dreamy, yet consciously aware and present in the here and now at the same time.

Tents up, tents down – 5 days in the open air, breathing deep the salty sea scents mingled with the deep aroma of mountains, trees, flowers and wafting down the path – cardamom, mung beans and rice, early morning chai and never ending yogi tea.

To the Punjabi women – Manorma, Surinder, Picku and Neelu, who prepared the most wonderful Indian meal, while they stood upon stools stirring huge pots with wooden paddles almost as tall as themselves, laughing and collaborating, tasting this and adjusting that till they were satisfied ~~ Thank you, thank you, thank you…

And to all the women past, present and future of Khalsa Ladies Camp, I hold you near and dear in the comings and goings; in the greeting, the missing, in the leaving and the arriving; we are all held in the sacredness of this space. In the ethers and upon the land we carry the power of the sword merged deep in the Primal Feminine ~ Sisters ~ Onward and Forward ~ Strong as Steel, Steady as Stone.

California ~ The Land of Milk and Honey