I’m not talking about the kind found in academic institutions here. Though upon reflection I’ll not rule them out, either. But teachers, really they are everywhere in our lives — whether we like to admit it (or recognize them) or not.
Just the other day there was a human interest sort of story in the news about these kids and their “mentors.” It was a feel-good story of how the adult mentors had made significant differences in the children’s lives. As I read I noticed a deep yearning inside me; it was laced with…
OMG! Jealousy!
This made me sit there and look at myself; I reviewed an old story I’ve been telling myself, and others, for years:
When asked who my mentors and teachers have been I have always shrugged my shoulders and said, “I’ve had none. No one,” thinking of course of the supportive, enthusiastic role-models in formative years who encourage one on. Who say “Good job!”, who bring you roses after your 6th grade play, or arrive on your doorstep with kleenex and chocolate when that first serious relationship ends. I could think of none in my past. No coach, teacher…
But actually there were plenty of role-models and teachers around in my formative years… In my case I was influenced greatly by what not to do. How not to act, or be, or behave. I endeavored to be the opposite of what was being modeled around me. Often, the loudest lessons available to me were cautionary tales. And as an adult, lo those many (these many) years later, I was not thinking that these qualified as the sort of mentors and teachers that I was being asked about.
I was wrong, I realized sitting there. Teachers are everywhere when one is willing to be a student, willing to observe and extract information, integrating it and transforming it into knowledge and, hopefully eventually wisdom. I had been being that student. And, too, in retrospect I must admit I was being overly dramatic. There had been those who gave me encouragement along the way — professors, siblings…
So, I now know/admit/recognize and declare (should anyone ask):
I have had the privilege of being “mentored” by harsh teachers who would rarely give me an inch. By the Great Teachers of Circumstance and Illness that helped me question, helped me discover my limits and the strength of my character. I have been blessed with sweet friendships of long-standing, where we support and learn from one another as the cycles of this life evolve. And I have the joy of being influenced and guided by the presence of natural beauty that is there for me always, every day. So grateful.
I am changing my story. I have changed my story — for myself and for others who may inquire. I have and have had powerful mentors. Thank you to all my teachers…and I look forward to those I have yet to encounter.
Beauty saved me. ~ Mary Oliver, from an interview on PBS
I have been yelling and screaming at the people around me. A veritable temper tantrum. Now I am trying to remain hidden from them all, feeling threatened. I am curled in a ball under a table with some sort of thin netting over me. It is hardly adequate, but I am banking on the fact that they will not come into this room and find me. I know that I have ruined my chances for advancement. All will go forward without me; but I could keep silent no longer. I let my anger and outrage, outrage!, get the better of me. Now I am fearful of the consequences and in hiding. A very large figure comes into the room. His energy is hostile and his tread makes the floor shiver as if an earthquake; I am found. His weapons are words. I remain silent.
Drift away. After a swirling soup of vagrant images, the scene solidifies and…
I am trying to fly a plane upwards and out of a building. Although I know I am a certified pilot, I am having difficulty; I keep using the wrong pedals — for steering, for upward thrust. The wings scrape the curved walls of the interior. I am too low.
Just at the last moment, as I am going to crash, I find the right pedals, the plane soars upward and steers towards open space, up and out of the confinement of that building.
When I wake in the morning and remember the dream I am surprised by the aircraft. Usually in my flying dreams it’s just me in my body –no flying carpet, bird or plane involved. But I have been plagued by uncomfortable dreams recently, since my latest blunder. The earlier dream, the one where I am so angry, just makes me feel sad. I rail and quail nakedly in my dream life.
Ironically, shortly after posting about Harmonic Relationships I mindlessly, certainly not mindfully, offended and annoyed my older brother. He pointed out to me that I do not “practice what I preach” reminding me that I had not responded to a significant email he had sent me two months earlier in which he was requesting we re-open a dialogue.
And he was right. While I had read the communication in question, I had not recognized its significance nor responded to it. This was a mistake, a blunder. I know better. And it has haunted me since he pointed it out. I am not perfect. No one is. In fact:
There is no such thing as “perfect” or “perfection,” really.
Taking that as a given, then, how do we deal with ourselves — and others — as we blunder through life, hurting others, being mindless, causing pain where none was intended. We/I can all intend and try to be “mindful,” “thoughtful,” etc., but…
Many things can be true. One truth does not cancel out another; I do not have to make the other wrong in order to be right — and vice versa. It is, as stated in The Way of Beauty, a both/and universe. My blunders do not cancel out my attempt to live in and cultivate Beauty. And while not attempting to justify my inconsiderate omission in the case of my brother, I was at the time deeply involved with other things. And of course that is a justification; there are always “reasons.” My blunders do make me a “messy human” as Mark Nepo might say. Or to more correctly quote him, “it is messy and magnificent to be human.”
So while my conscience and heart, my eye and hand aspire to create True Beauty — my dreams, my family, my friends, my immediate environment act as my yardsticks. I must (continue to) deal with how I react and respond to my messy and mess-creating blunders. I try to be kind with myself.
I am grateful that at least I have a path I am aspiring to follow, even though too often I lose it in the jumble and jungle of everyday living.
(The following is a continuation of a blog written on March 1. If it is difficult to follow the story below, it might be helpful to read March 1 first…)
Before Women’s History Month 2015 ends, I thought I’d contribute another chapter in the Jogbra story. So often I get asked to tell this tale. And while the whole history is written, it hasn’t yet been published — too many of us are still living! LOL
Early “Jockbra”
Sitting around on my living room floor with Polly at the end of that summer in 1977, I recall brainstorming about what this new invention might mean, what to do next, how to proceed. We dismissed two options right away: sewing the garments ourselves and in effect starting a manufacturing biz (Polly especially was against this, having seen a few such operations in NYC), and selling the product design outright to a bigger company, sure of a difficult/bad deal from double-crossing sharks preying on us naive artsy types. (I was against this, having seen my father go through such a process). Subcontract out the cut & sew part and go into biz ourselves with the sales and marketing end? Then maybe sell it mail-order? Polly was indifferent about this as well. She wanted to design costumes. Business was not her forte. She’d been happy to help me bring the design into reality, but was not prepared to go into a business around it. She was clear.
I was enthusiastic, already marketing in my head — thinking of a new kind of business, a new way of business, a women’s business. Hinda was there for this conversation. Unlike Polly she was as enthusiastic as I was. She had always been athletic; although not a runner, she was into yoga and quite a skier. She got the potential for this product. I looked at her anew. In an aside, I asked Polly if she’d mind if I asked Hinda to join us, officially. She shrugged, saying no, fine, fine.
By women, for women was envisioned as our tag line. We wouldn’t do business like men. We’d be cooperative not competitive, inclusive not exclusive. We weren’t lingerie (said with a sneer), Jock Bra was serious athletic equipment! We’d… we’d… . You can imagine the scene. Naifs.
Earlier in that year, 1977, I had completed my Bachelor’s degree through the University of Vermont’s Evening Division — “Continuing Education” or “Adult Ed” by other names. Also working part-time as an administrator in a not for profit residential treatment program for adolescent drug abusers, “full” time as an artist/artisan (stained glass at that time; it was the 70s after all), taking varied courses at night, and oh yes, I was married. I loved learning/school and was very excited to have been accepted into the University’s Graduate Degree program in Educational Administration. I had started grad classes at the same time Polly and I were designing Jock Bra prototypes.
In retrospect, that period of time was my personal “perfect storm” brewing. By the next summer of 1978 I knew my marriage was over and divorce was on its way. I had no driver’s license. Epilepsy made that difficult at that time. After Polly and Hinda had left Vermont, after the kerfuffle with my brother-in-law, I’d formed a corporation around the Jockbra, and distributed equal shares to Polly and Hinda, too. I figured perhaps my new bra might be a nice little mail-order business on the side to help finance grad school while I found a real job I could walk to, continued with my studies and figured out how to make this new single life work. And frankly, I was frightened. I had been told all my life that if I had a grand mal seizure while alone I could die. Oh, weeeelllll. Stuck up over my desk I had a hand-lettered sign: PERSERVERE
Jockbra-soon-to-become-Jogbra trumped all that, both plans and fears. Well, the fears got suppressed. The plans got re-made. What’s the saying? “Life is what happens while you’re making other plans.”
Hinda was stuck in South Carolina the summer of ’78, so I mailed her the precious prototype. (I was worried that in my chaotic divorcing state it might get lost in the proverbial shuffle, and frankly she had not yet “earned her shares” so to speak). On a bicycle ride one day she noticed a sign for a start-up cut & sew operation. She took them our prototype bra and asked how such a garment might be mass-produced, and what it might cost. Changing the original design somewhat (me going “Yikes! What?”when I found out) they came up with a garment that could be manufactured for a reasonable cost. Hinda’s Dad generously fronted the money for the initial production “run” of the first athletic supporter for women and I opened us up a corporate bank account in Vermont. We were moving forward.
But it seemed in some areas of the country, South Carolina in 1978 among them, “jock” wasn’t such a nice word; and so Jogbra was born. I think 12 dozen were manufactured and sent to me in my Vermont apartment. My living room became the warehouse, my tiny dining room the office. A small ad in a running magazine of the time showed the product and listed my address as the contact point. Let’s remember: this was before computers and websites. The orders started rolling in. OMG. (It is interesting to note that we used that factory for years and, in fact, built our businesses together.)
Meanwhile Hinda’s stay in South Carolina was over. She drove to NYC and stopped in to visit Polly, where she bought the majority of the shares I had issued to Polly. When I learned of this I was surprised. I knew Polly did not want to be active in the company. But sell her shares to Hinda? Later she said Hinda inferred that I was not going forward with the biz, and that cinched it for Pol; she certainly wasn’t going to do it if I wasn’t. But I was. It was not a good way to start our partnership. I wondered what had happened to the “for women by women” and the attendant ethos we had espoused the summer before.
One of the first orders was from Macy’s department store. Only a “sample order” (what was that?”)….How are they packaged the buyer asked. I scrambled to figure out packaging with our new help, an advertising and marketing agency. But this order, among other things, reinforced my thinking re our marketplace: we did not want to sell into department stores. We were athletic equipment, not lingerie; and the sort of game they wanted to play was beyond our ken in those early days. Brilliantly, we had chosen to sell into the independent athletic stores that were springing up everywhere. Many fun and funny stories there about trying to sell a bra to the proverbial jocks who ran those stores. But that’s for later because…
First, of course came financing. Financing? Yikes again. Money for packaging, more fabric, a bit of communication to let the world know we existed — advertising and some p.r. maybe. Somehow I knew to go the Small Business Administration. One thing to be said about the two of us: we weren’t shy about asking questions. Hinda decided that I should write the business plan the SBA said we must have before they could help us get a loan from a bank. “Why me?” I asked. “Because you’re in school and used to writing papers. Just think of this as another paper.” I looked at her to see if she was joking. She wasn’t. The truth was that neither of us had a clue, and she wanted no part of it. At least I had taken an accounting class once. The SBA sent me a many-paged form to fill out and I began. Privately I titled it “Financial Fairytales” because, really, how the hell did I know how many bras we were going to sell in Year 1, Year 2 and Year 3? Or what the production costs would be each year. Or what percentage of sales we’d spend on marketing and advertising? Hell, I’d never even heard the term “CGS” before. So, I made it all up. “Educated guesses?” Maybe. I liked to think.
It was a damn good “paper” and got us our loan. Really, writing a business plan with financials was just an exercise and a test. An exercise to make us think through many aspects that we otherwise might not have, and a test of our intention, sincerity and dedication to our proposal. Pretty smart hoop, actually. (And years later I found myself teaching aspiring entrepreneurs how to write a business plan. Of course.).
Can you believe it? Two inexperienced women with a bra, in Vermont — and the loan officer said yes. I think he was just aghast by our ardent hutzpah. It didn’t hurt that the Vermont SBA had minority quotas to fill for their loan applications, Vermont had very few minorities at the time, and (drum roll) women constituted a minority. Really. Who knew?
A “perfect storm.” Facing a major life change, from a marital partner to a biz partner. Confronting mythical and real fears. So many of my assumptions were being challenged, my life was changing radically, I had to choose between pursuing graduate school and this nascent-but-wildly-growing business. I had to move. I spent one lunch hour finalizing a divorce. I had to petition for my drivers license and learn how to drive. Running, my joy and my coping mechanism for so many years was beginning to fail me (knees blowing out). And then, how to deal with a business partner who, it turned out, I knew not at all.
I don’t know when it began. Maybe when I was a child and we lived out in the country of New Jersey. (Yes, New Jersey had lots of country back then — we couldn’t see another house from our second story windows). I would wander in the woods around the house and talk to the trees. I believed in elves and fairies and would sit motionless on a mossy log for hours (it seemed to me) waiting for them to show themselves. I would skate on Silver Lake and notice the pine trees rimming its edge, glistening in white winter sun, their lower branches encased in mysterious dark ice beneath my skates.
Somewhere along the line I came to know and cherish serenity. And its beauty.
As a business woman, busybusybusy, I would savor the Sunday mornings I didn’t have to travel. With classical music, coffee and the NY Times and no other human in sight all day, I wouldn’t get dressed. The gardens, sunlight and the birds outside were company. My cats. Was I odd, I wondered?
When that chapter of my life ended I sought serenity in a house on a lake. Until others built nearby I had my serenity; only the internal demons to deal with. But time passes and circumstances change. I am back in suburbia again, seeking the serenity beyond the EMS sirens, the neighbors’ barking dogs, and miscellaneous workman coming and going from the never-ending fixer-upper next door. A friend reminds me that these are externals, that true serenity lies within. I know he is mostly correct. I genuinely feel gratitude for this place, my friends here, my blessed level of havingness. I read Thomas Merton for strength and reminding. I do my best to practice True Beauty. I am not perfect. As Martin Prechtel espouses: “Shamans are not holy people…”. Thank heavens, literally.
There are elves and fairies in this Southern garden, I know. I suspect a gnome as well.
Two things have occurred recently that bring me to the page today: March being Women’s History Month and the Smithsonian Museum of American History contacting me about my role in that history.
Really?! Well, yes — but it is so very nice to have the Smithsonian recognize it!
“…the sports bra revolutionized women’s sports more than any other development besides Title IX.”
And one of my claims to fame, as they say, is that way back in 1977 I invented the very first sports bra (it was called a Jogbra at the time), and founded the Company that marketed and sold it. Of course, I was only 10 years old (kidding, kidding). Many years later we sold our entrepreneurial success to a big corporation.
Since there are so many urban — and suburban — legends about how this woman’s Horatio Alger story unfolded, I think the occasion of Women’s History Month and the Smithsonian’s active recognition of the sports bra’s influence in said history is an opportune time to tell the early history of the birth of an idea and its transformation into a thriving business that facilitated the entry and performance of women in sports.
The 1970s were the beginning of the fitness “revolution” in this country. At the time I was in the vanguard of those who were “jogging.” Logging about 30 miles a week I found myself with an annoying and private problem: uncomfortable and sometimes painful breast movement while running. One day my sister telephoned me, complaining of a similar concern and distraction, asking me if I had any solutions. I told her of wearing a bra one size too small, of wearing nothing, of cutting runs short. We bemoaned our predicament. Then she quipped: “Why isn’t there a jockstrap for women?” We laughed uproariously. “It would just be on a different part of the body,” I said between laughter hiccups. Today she claims I went on to say “I think I’ll do that, make one of those.” I don’t remember. What I do remember is after the call, sitting down and thinking that it wasn’t such a silly idea; why not a “jock bra?” What functions would such a garment have to fulfill to make me and my sister happy, comfortable? I sat down with pencil and paper and made a list.
Polly is my childhood friend who grew up to become a successful costume designer (6 Emmys to date). In our 8th grade sewing class she got an A and I flunked. She and I would try to cut gym classes together. Neither of us liked the silly gym uniforms they made us wear back then; we were artsy, not athletic. Field hockey!? Yuck! So imagine her surprise when in my 20’s I became a jogging fanatic. Which she discovered when she took a costume design job in my town and rented a room in my house for the duration of the job’s run.
So it was up the stairs I went to Polly on that early summer day. “Pol, can you make me a bra for jogging? Here’s what it would need to do.” She rolled her eyes at me. She explained that bras were engineered, not just designed and draped, as they had to support as well as cover. I didn’t take no for an answer, and so embarked our summer of making prototypes.
We weren’t having luck. One day, my then-husband decided to crash our design meeting and cheer Polly and me up. He came in the room wearing his jock strap over his head and around his chest upside down, declaring loudly “Here’s your Jock Bra, ladies!” We laughed and laughed. I took it from him and imitated what he’d done, pulling the jockstrap over my head, its cup embracing one of my breasts. Stunned, I looked at Polly. “Polly. Look — the straps could cross in back. Two cups. Wide rib band… might work!”
And the first working prototype was born the next day when Polly sent her assistant, Hinda, to buy 2 jockstraps. Polly cut them up, sewed them back together, cup next to cup, and I went running in it later that day, with Hinda jogging backwards in front of me to see how much I bounced. So, yes. For all those people who ask me if it is true that the first sports bra was two jockstraps sewn together, the answer is: yes.
My report on that prototype: best yet. But the fabrics were awful. One of my most important design criteria was that the bra not chafe. Polly booked a flight to New York to shop better fabrics for our new baby, asking Hinda to watch over the costume shop (and her job) while she was gone. We were excited. Returning about a week later, Polly had a then revolutionary new fabric in hand: poly/cotton/lycra. She’d also found acceptable elastics and thread, no easy task I learned. Who knew there was more than one kind of thread? Polly sewed up a final prototype and I went for a run. What I did know: it was a winner.
The summer was drawing to a close. Polly finished her job and decamped back to home in Manhattan. Hinda went off to teach in South Carolina. I had my prototype, the precious prototype. What next? I called my brother-in-law, my sister’s then husband, for business advice. He contacted one of those “we’ll market your invention” companies and signed a contract with them. I got all huffy. He wasn’t me! He had no authority to sign the contract! He’d given them money. He got all huffy. Oh dear. I paid him back the money and tore up the contract. Thanksgiving that year was a bit sticky. I could have left all this bit out of my story, but I think that it is important to note mis-steps as well as good steps. Life and progress ain’t all roses.
An attorney friend suggested I incorporate, using the share issuance as a way to acknowledge Polly for her help. But I knew Polly would not want to leave her path and go into the Jog bra biz. She’d said so. And Hinda had been very enthusiastic. She hadn’t been cutting gym classes growing up. And she was a skier. And she knew how to sew! So I incorporated and issued myself, Polly and Hinda shares in the fledgling business.
At this point one might say “and the rest is history”… stock ownership kerfuffles, seizures, pregnancies, Brandi Chastain, Playtex Apparel, Sara Lee, Champion Sportswear and all. That is, alas, missing out on some of the most important and dramatic parts, not the least of which is the significant role that Hinda came to play. Or the personal growth that occurs in learning to run a business; all the great employees who grew with us — such stories! Learning to operate within a partnership; to run a women-owned business selling women’s products in a male-dominated industry: sporting goods. To learn what it takes and what it means to sell a business that was “your baby.”
Or what happens to and for three women over the course of three decades as the result of one idea — the right product at the right time. But this is a blog, not a book…so
Happy Women’s History Month!
And here’s a challenge for my readers: Does True Beauty show up in this tale?
I wish I could say that this notion of Beauty as an applied philosophy and daily practice was my brainchild. I can’t. True Beauty as the central tenet of a society is not new, just ancient and mostly forgotten now. I am ringing the bell. What The Way of Beauty as I put it forth is doing is remembering and urging action. Saying — no screaming — that True Beauty must be reclaimed now. And you and I can do it ourselves, so easily really.
It will save us, and our earth. True Beauty is what keeps the universe in sync. In harmony. In balance. Expanding.
True Beauty is the raison d’être of the Universe.
I am not exaggerating. It is our prejudices and preconceived notions of what “beauty” can be, can mean, might be capable of that make us scoff at the notion of True Beauty as a power. As the reason our Universe exists and continues to expand. When I first was struck with this notion it was one part intuition and 3 parts instinctual certainty. But I thought I might be a little mad. Courting hubris. So one day I told Brian Swimme (author and cosmologist) that I believed that True Beauty was the raison d’être of the Universe. His response? “Well, of course!” as if I were stating something obvious to all.
I was heartened.
As I said above, other civilizations have embraced True Beauty as their society’s guiding principle. The Navajo (or Dine as they refer to themselves) come to mind. I love that the Dine might measure a man’s worth to their community by the number and quality of songs that he contributed to it. Their culture of Hozho valued beauty, harmony, balance and health.
And there were the Greeks, of course. Our sense of aesthetics come from their incredible research and works. But we’ve gotten stuck there. As a civilization the West has been merely replicating and doing versions of that which has come before. We have adopted the Greco-Roman standards of beauty and not dared move on. True Beauty is not static. It is always changing, surprising, refreshing. Think of dawns, sunsets, laughter, the sound of rain on a roof, sunlight ‘prism-ing’ through a raindrop on a leaf; crystals growing in the earth; that feeling of satisfaction and accomplishment after completing a challenging task; sunlight interacting with plants, almost anywhere. The lively twinkle in someone’s eye. A sweet voice raised loudly in song. No two of any of the above ever the same; all of True Beauty.
If I were a scientist as well as an artist I could give you all the “proofs” and “evidences” that support the claims regarding the importance and integral nature of True Beauty. But I am not. One of my fav fantasies is to pull together a panel of folks from different disciplines to articulate, from their area of expertise, their understanding of True Beauty’s nature and importance. I’d have a physicist, a mathematician a couple of visual artists, a couple of writers, a philosopher or two, and of course, a theologian of sorts. What fun!
In the end what we would do is create a proper “white paper,” serviceable for the general public, publications and today’s “influencers” to state with an impressive degree of well-rounded authority what the Navajo already knew: What we call Beauty (true Beauty and not cheap “glamour”) is the raison d’être of our Universe. My fantasy white paper would stir the social marketing gurus to do for the Glamour vs. True Beauty confusion and our western civ’s value system what was done to tobacco and the smoking habit: change the general population’s understanding and values around the issue. Raise awareness about True, Deep Beauty — and banish mere glamour back to the magician’s realm.
Tuning into True Beauty and nurturing it in our everyday lives through these Beauty Practices will raise the vibration of not only (you/me) the practitioner, but of the earth itself and all the creatures upon it. At this bleak point in our species’ history what could possibly be more important? More joyful? Easier? It needn’t be stressful and difficult to help tip the balance back to the light.
Turn off the TV news and experience your geranium growing.
This first and basic Practice of True Beauty might best be titled “Practice Perceiving“, but I got into a, er, discussion with one of my professors about the differences between “sensing” and “perceiving”, and in the end I just left this Beauty Practice titled “Seeing”. Seeing is really a metaphor for all sensings, both of the physical and intuitive sort. Opening up to our visual capabilities is a great place to start, but our eyesight is only one way into the universe of perception. Indeed, perception is not dependent only upon our physical senses, but our intuitive senses as well.
Too often we are on “auto pilot,” not truly aware of our surroundings. We are not truly seeing/sensing and being in relationship with our environment and the stimuli that is coming in (let alone what we are putting out, another chapter). Auto-pilot, the short-cut method has its advantages of course. It is efficient, necessary at times when speed and efficiency are the qualities and outcomes that are desired. But if not? Or shouldn’t be?
Too often we are just on that insidious auto-pilot: “Green. I know this.” And we inspect/explore/perceive no further than what we have on mental-file from previous perceptions.
So, look out your window. How many colors of green are there really, how many are truly available for you to really see?
To practice Seeing:
1) Challenge your own assumptions. What aren’t you noticing? Make a conscious attempt to get off your automatic pilot.
2) Play the “What color is…” game with yourself and/or family. What color is the grass in a field? What color are the windows in a building? Trust me, there is pink grass!
3) Notice what you don’t notice. Can you recall the building on your corner that you pass every afternoon? How many stories is it? What is the color of the inside of the shoes you have on?
Fun, huh?
There are further layers in and implications for the Beauty Practice of Seeing, but this is enough to get one started. Try it!
It is one of the commonest of mistakes to consider that the limit of our power of perception is also the limit of all there is to perceive. ~ Charles W. Leadbeater
So how does one embody (a current buzzword) True Beauty? As I became more and more convinced of the all-pervasive importance of deep, True Beauty I began thinking about this. One day I sat down at my computer and the answer(s) just flowed out of me. It was if they were channeled. There are 18 points — or practices — that anyone/everyone can integrate into their life — no matter their age or socio-economic status. In fact, quite a few of these “practices” we might be doing already, and all that is required is an expansion of awareness about that activity’s importance to the nourishment of true beauty in one’s life — and then elevating the importance of that activity. A slight attitude shift/lift that can ripple through your life in a hugely positive way.
And again, why? Why “practice True Beauty?” That ripple, or repercussion of the Practices: Joy. Contentment. Harmony and a feeling of being in sync. But most importantly, greatly helping to heal our world. Yes: healing the world, I kid you not.
From this point forward I am going to focus primarily on the Beauty Practices. This being a blog and not the book, I may stray from this intention with some something that has inspired my variation/deviation. Let me know how this works for you! Stay tuned!
YAY! This day has always been special to me. Where I live on the planet, the Winter Solstice in December is the shortest day and the longest night. After the Solstice, the days start to become longer, nights shorter. Light is in ascendance. For this I celebrate.
A bit of factoid trivia: “solstice” has its roots in latin, and means to stand still. To early humans, the sun seemed to stay in one place for several days twice a year — in December and again in June — before continuing its travel across the skies. Hence our twice-yearly solstices.
I revel in sunlight. It instantly lifts my spirit. As one teacher put it, “the Sun is the Master Shaman.” The master healer, medicine being, bringer of Beauty.
Enjoy the day. Celebrate our natural cycles and the return of the light, once again.
There is no time, nor space. These are our illusions to help keep a sense of order.
That’s what science is telling us this week. (I say “this week” because who knows what will be touted as The Truth next week, month, year…. Remember when the earth was flat, and was the center of the Universe?) Anyway, I try to imagine the chaos I would perceive if left without those ordering concepts of space and time. It is a fun game…
…the tree is over there, and I am here. Noooo…the tree and I occupy the same space — oops! There is no space! So what am I left with? How do I wrap my head around that?
Here’s what saves me: experience. When I was a child — I can’t remember what age, but I recall being about eye level with the railing of the balcony — I had an odd and wonderful experience. The balcony was off my mother’s bedroom, on the second story of our house. I was standing there in clear morning sunshine looking into the branches and green leaves of trees. A slight breeze riffed through the leaves; a bird’s vibrant call rang out — and all at once I was one with it all. In every way. There are no words, really, to describe what occurred. I have never forgotten the experience. Interestingly what ended it was my noticing what was happening.
Throughout my life I have come across other experiences and terms to describe them: “out of body”, “trance”, “journeying” (in the Shamanic tradition), but none — neither experience or terminology — have adequately caught what I experienced that long-ago morning. Subsequently, still while quite young, I had two other similar experiences but not as complete and intense as that first one, as all too soon I would notice it was happening and that would slip “me” back into regular/normal perception.
I have been yelling and screaming at the people around me. A veritable temper tantrum. Now I am trying to remain hidden from them all, feeling threatened. I am curled in a ball under a table with some sort of thin netting over me. It is hardly adequate, but I am banking on the fact that they will not come into this room and find me. I know that I have ruined my chances for advancement. All will go forward without me; but I could keep silent no longer. I let my anger and outrage, outrage!, get the better of me. Now I am fearful of the consequences and in hiding. A very large figure comes into the room. His energy is hostile and his tread makes the floor shiver as if an earthquake; I am found. His weapons are words. I remain silent.
When I wake in the morning and remember the dream I am surprised by the aircraft. Usually in my flying dreams it’s just me in my body –no flying carpet, bird or plane involved. But I have been plagued by uncomfortable dreams recently, since my latest blunder. The earlier dream, the one where I am so angry, just makes me feel sad. I rail and quail nakedly in my dream life.
