Trust – Page 2 – Cathy's Blog!

Posted on September 22, 2023 by Cathy Edgett

Landing

In Sensory Awareness, we often ask ourselves or another: Have you landed?

And usually I feel how much more landing can occur, how much more “coming down” and feeling energy, movement, and exchange there can be. How present am I?

Today I’m with transitions, noticing when I walk through an entry or doorway. I pause and contemplate as I invite immersion to journey within me as I enter a new room, a new place. Moving from indoors to out, or outdoors to in, is revelatory as to integrating liquidity and solidity in space.

I try to avoid politics here but lately it seems to require even more landing as I try to digest how close Trump came to a coup, and how even now he continues to try to destroy this democracy.

From Heather Cox Richardson today:

The extremists are bolstered by former president Donald Trump, who posted on his social media platform today that the Republicans in Congress “can and must defund all aspects of Crooked Joe Biden’s weaponized Government…. This is also the last chance to defund these political prosecutions against me and other Patriots. They failed on the debt limit, but they must not fail now. Use the power of the purse and defend the Country!”

Experts say shutting down the government would not, in fact, end the former president’s legal troubles, but he is actually doing more than that here: he is trying to assert dominance over the country. As Representative Adam Schiff (D-CA) said: “Let’s be clear about what the former president is saying here. House Republicans should shut down the government unless the prosecutions against him are shut down. He would deny paychecks to millions of working families & devastate the US economy, all in the service of himself.”

It is for each of us to continue landing within what we know is true as destructiveness and lies dissolve in the swelling oceans of truth.

Posted on June 12, 2023 by Cathy Edgett

Surrender

As we come down and root we rise like a flower or tree. The maturing process brings one more and more into release, into the grounding rise that produces, distributes, and returns to the ground.

This morning I’m with these words of William Blake.

He who binds to himself a joy

Does the winged life destroy

He who kisses the joy as it flies

Lives in eternity’s sunrise

Posted on June 7, 2023 by Cathy Edgett

Connection

Our family gathered on a ranch 1000 feet above Half Moon Bay to celebrate Steve’s 75th birthday.

Fire in the custom fireplace morning and night

Prayer flags wave in a Tibetan temple above us

Posted on June 16, 2022 by Cathy Edgett

Low Tide

The moon was still in the sky when I rose this morning. The moon influences the tides and I knew yesterday would be a low, low, so I went to the marsh to see the mud exposed where water often flows.

I think it’s clear these are challenging times, and as I walk by houseboats sitting on mud I think of how clearly those who live there know the rise and fall four times a day.

I’m with these words of Mark Matousek, from “A Splinter of Love”.

In grief we access parts of ourselves that were somehow unavailable to us in the past. With awareness, the journey through grief becomes a path to wholeness.

Stranded boats for now – wait a few hours for the float

Posted on March 2, 2022March 2, 2022 by Cathy Edgett

Life

I’m reading a friend’s book, Sara Bragin’s The Living in Her Dying. It’s about the time she spent with her mother as her mother was transitioning. It shows how much we need an advocate at such a time, and the learning that occurs when we show up to be with the loss of the womb in which we came.

The end of life process is with me these days as I feel the approach of a change over which I may not have control.

Last night I had one of those experiences that takes one out of their body and into awareness of so much more. My cat Tiger is getting older, and needing body warmth, comfort, and support sleeps snuggled in with us at night. When I got into bed last night, he came over with a look that lit the room, that was more than his huge eyes. I felt the gift of this livingness, this gift of being in a body for a time.

I was reminded of Thomas Merton’s words about being on a street corner, and …

“In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all these people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness, of spurious self-isolation in a special world. . . .

This sense of liberation from an illusory difference was such a relief and such a joy to me that I almost laughed out loud. . . . I have the immense joy of being man, a member of a race in which God Himself became incarnate. As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition could overwhelm me, now that I realize what we all are. And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.

Then it was as if I suddenly saw the secret beauty of their hearts, the depths of their hearts where neither sin nor desire nor self-knowledge can reach, the core of their reality, the person that each one is in God’s eyes. If only they could all see themselves as they really are. If only we could see each other that way all the time. There would be no more war, no more hatred, no more cruelty, no more greed. . . . But this cannot be seen, only believed and ‘understood’ by a peculiar gift.”

He uses the word God. I might use the word Spirit or Light or Grace but the feeling and knowing, believing and honoring – that is the gift.

What’s happening in Ukraine is with us all. We are united in this. We feel the attacks; we share the fear and yet Tiger gave me such an invitation with his eyes, and way of being. I wake as light, flowing light, light that is both particle and wave as am I.

Posted on February 19, 2022February 19, 2022 by Cathy Edgett · 2 Comments

Flow and Glow

Ebi and Ginger, two rescue greyhounds, were with us on our trip to Palm Springs. There’s nothing like being greeted as though you are the most amazing person in the world even if it’s just that morning comes and you’re there.

On our return, our cat needed to go to the Cat Spa. He’s older now and his fur mats in a way we can’t comb through so I sat and talked with a lovely woman as Tiger was outwardly pampered though he didn’t seem to recognize it, but then, he calmed and now he’s happy to be home and freshly groomed.

Life –

My son attended a funeral on Thursday. It was done in the traditional Chinese way. He appreciated the ceremony, the ritual, and suggested he might want some of that when I go. I’ve said I want simplicity, a scattering of ashes in nature, no ceremony at all. He pointed out that I won’t be here, which is true, so this morning I’m with how to satisfy us both which even as I type this sounds ridiculous and I laugh both inside and out. I’m tickled by this odd need to control even when I’m entering and merging with other streams.

Posted on February 18, 2022 by Cathy Edgett

Honoring, Embraced

Can it be 17 years since my mother passed on this day? It was 2005 so it must be. I offer comfort to a friend who is grieving the loss of her husband three months ago. Time may not heal pain but it does allow a more open embrace.

The morning sky to the east with the moon still a light to the west

Posted on January 30, 2022 by Cathy Edgett

Flow

Yesterday I was by the bay watching the tide go out changing the niches for the birds. Newly exposed mud offered new opportunities to feed. It was like a poem unfolding new places to feed what we already know.

My daughter-in-law’s mother passed away early Friday morning. She and her brother are dealing with the details and I am with how we meet death. How do we rearrange ourselves for this matter to energy exchange, this cloak of the personal opening to the universal?

Ramana Maharshi, was once asked, “How should we treat others?” He replied, “There are no others.”

I sink into knowing that.

Posted on January 8, 2022 by Cathy Edgett

Retreat

It’s gray and wet today and I feel myself wrapped in a blanket of fullness, of knowing enough, as though not one more thing can enter. Of course, that’s this moment. Perhaps that acknowledgment brings change, or not.

I wonder what these early days in January ask of us, what we ask of them. Years ago, I signed up for a yoga class with the intention to start the New Year “right”, but then the instructor spoke of this as a fallow time of year, and she kept the lights low, and we moved slowly and mainly rested on our mat.

I’m guided by these words of Rumi:

“Let yourself be silently drawn by what you love. It will not lead you astray.”

I focus on the word retreat, and settle into the sound and meaning of the word treat, guided so gently by what I love. On the top of the mountain yesterday, I felt held, and focused on two hands, two eyes, two ears, two so we can hold both life and death as passage and guide. I wondered why the two words ears and tears are so close as though we listen more clearly when we allow liquid to flow out of containment into a wider world, a world we share with acknowledgment of love and care.

One son, his wife, and my grandchild have Covid. I feel fragile in knowing all we share, tender in trusting they will be fine, knowing again there is a separation over which there is no control, only letting go.

Heart-shaped abalone shell in the center of the labyrinth

Posted on January 7, 2022 by Cathy Edgett

The Sky This Morning

I looked up and though it was raining, there was a glow of rose everywhere.

I’m going up the mountain today to be spaciously aware with friends who are making the most challenging and difficult of health decisions right now. May we all be well and gently whole!