Posted on by Cathy Edgett

Leadership

I‘m going through journals and notes from the past with intention to release and not store, collect, hide, and neglect. How do I open to what’s here, and step more firmly, clearly, and lightly into my own life?

I’m inspired by Sir Laurens van der Post. Living from 1906 to 1996, he was a writer, farmer, soldier, political adviser to British prime ministers, educator, journalist, humanitarian, philosopher, explorer, and conservationist.

He wrote:

“The age of the leaders has come and gone. Every person must be their own leader now. You must remove the projection, and contain the spirit of the time in your own life and your own nature, because to go the old way and follow your leader is a form of psychological imprisonment.” 

He watched the Bushmen and wrote: “Art, poetry, and music are matters of survival. They are guardians and makers of the unbroken chain of what’s oldest and first in the human spirit.”

What calls us here?

Posted on by Cathy Edgett

Embrace

Joan Halifax:

We derive nourishment from our ancestral past. In a Ute song, it is said, “In our bones is the rock itself, in our blood is the river, our skin contains the shadow of every living thing we ever came across. This is what we brought with us long ago.

We are the sum of our ancestors. Our roots stretch back to blue-green algae; they stretch to the stars. They ultimately reach the void.

Between the great original emptiness, the ancestral void, and the body that reads these words, there stand numberless generations of inorganic and organic forms. As geological history is written on a canyon wall, this history is inscribed on our psyches.

Silence and solitude enjoin us to remember our whole and great body.

Posted on by Cathy Edgett

Softening

Yesterday Tiger’s spirit passed over the Rainbow Bridge.  I see how the term comes from the light of passing shining through our tears.

Today I feel a softening in the grief as though my heart is melting like butter. 

A friend reminds me of all that happened in my life while Tiger and Bella were here.  Tiger really never came back to himself after Bella passed, so the vet said this could be grief for the loss of his womb mate that led to yesterday.  He is at peace.

Tiger

The cat in charge of the office of the vet

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At the Vet

I was at the vet with Tiger this morning. He’s 16 years old and the vet can feel a mass. He’ll have a sonogram at two today to discover what’s wrong and what can or cannot be done.

How do we understand and deal with the weight of grief?

Mural at The Cat Clinic
To the right on the mural – wait for it!
The mouse is safe!
Easter Peonies

Posted on by Cathy Edgett

Pilgrimage

These days, with age, there is so much change. Where before, I pursued travel as necessary for pilgrimage, now I feel each breath journey in and out.

From Snow Leopard by Peter Matthiessen , Lama Govinda, The Way of the White Clouds:

Just as a white summer cloud, in harmony with heaven and earth freely floats in the blue sky from horizon to horizon following the breath of the atmosphere – in the same way the pilgrim abandons himself to the breath of the greater life that … leads him beyond the farthest horizons to an aim which is already present within him though yet hidden from his sight.  

I only saw the flower when I took the picture and not the bee
Posted on by Cathy Edgett

Ease

In an article in the summer issue of Parabola Magazine, Benson Bobrick writes about his relationship with P.L. Travers who wrote Mary Poppins and studied with G.I. Gurdjieff.  These quotes come from letters she wrote to him and his former wife.

 “Let ideas just go into you.” 

 “By “standing under” I mean to let it come down upon you as you would if you were willingly and restfully standing under the rain. Or sunshine, if you like.  Be defenseless. Do not ‘try’ so hard …. The trying can become merely muscular; the mind has muscular gestures as well as the body. Let the ladder, as it were, draw you up rather than forcefully putting your foot on each rung.”

What an image.  Let the ladder, as it were, draw you up rather than forcefully putting your foot on each rung.”

I lift like Mary Poppins floating up into the sky.

What resides inside the trunk of a tree, inside the trunk of me –

Posted on by Cathy Edgett

The Weight of Thought

I’m in reflective mode these days, noticing, receiving, contemplating. I’m with this:

What is the weight of thought on my tissues?  Is it heavy or light?  Can I change it?  Do I want to?  Do I need to?   I’ve been noticing the weight of thought on my bodily tissues.  If it interests you, notice, and see what comes.  

In noticing, I feel and applaud the weight and lightness of my ancestry move through me. I evolve complexity and simplicity, compassion and understanding.

As Thich Nhat Hanh wrote in The Art of Living:

Breathing in, I see all my ancestors in me: my mineral ancestors, plant ancestors, mammal ancestors, and human ancestors. My ancestors are always present, alive in every cell of my body, and I play a part in their immortality.

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Gathering

I’m going through my journals from my trip to Nepal.

As we were preparing to leave the Everest area, and fly out on a plane from Lukla, Celeste shared with me this quote on Emerson’s definition of success.  Certainly she lives it, and I consider it too, this day, a weekend sacred and celebrated with gathering, connection, and a pause to reflect.  

Ralph Waldo Emerson’s definition of Success:

To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and to endure the betrayal of false friends. To appreciate beauty; to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition; to know that even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded. 

Spring

Beauty
Circling

Posted on by Cathy Edgett

Spring

Each season brings its own meaning and teaching.  This weekend we celebrate in different ways, each of us with our own beliefs.

I love how the word spring, springs.  This morning it brings me to honor the sacrum, the bone at the base of the spine that hosts the four dignities: sitting, standing, walking, and lying down.  The word sacrum means “sacred” in Latin.  The Romans called this bone “os sacrum” which means “holy bone”. The Greeks called it “hieron osteon” which also means “holy bone”.

I sit here now, my holy bone moving back and forth, side to side, floating waves and springing joy in the nature that is my life.  Tissues wake.

I’m with these words of Eckhart Tolle from Stillness Speaks.

Wisdom is not a product of thought. The deep knowing that is wisdom arises

through the simple act of giving someone or something your full attention.

Attention is primordial intelligence, consciousness itself. It dissolves the

barriers created by conceptual thought, and with this comes the recognition

that nothing exists in and by itself. It joins the perceiver and the perceived in a

unifying field of awareness. It is the healer of separation.

Life is both fragile and strong allowing us to balance, ground, rise, and connect, trusting the spring to life.  

It rained all day yesterday, and the creek in Mill Valley went from dry to rushing and gushing.  This morning, sun.  

Morning View from my deck