The Pheonix Moment

A little over a year ago, the Phoenix myth came to live with me. I saw her in Buddhist texts and in poems on tea. In the wings of the Phoenix myth, across cultures, was a sense of depth: the Phoenix was calling me to really accept life’s need to end and renew itself. In the year and a half that has followed I’ve applied this. Join me, and I’ll share some snippets.

Be willing to feel
I often think before I feel. Some of this is a problem of constitution, of basic personality but on the other side of the coin is a society that loves to think before it feels, reasons before it intuits. We are programmed to like things neat and cookie-cutter, in fact we’ve gotten to a place where political remedies are surgical, to me, it’s time to step back: recognize logic and use it, but balance it with feeling. Even deeper, I tell myself, work on feeling with someone; now is the time to practice compassion.

Action is My Essence
I want to be enlightened. I want to draw water from a well or tap on my blogger keyboard and do it with full presence, even though sometimes I can’t. I accept that I’m going to fail, or cause others suffering, but I won’t use it as an excuse to avoid making a decision or having a difficult conversation. I won’t use this as an excuse for being paralyzed or numb, the worry or the lack of consideration that plagues my human condition. Instead, every moment, every action is my rebirth. Little deaths, little births and suddenly, plateaus give way to new vistas.

Love What Came Before
I walked into a late night New Year’s party to start my 2012. I looked around and remembered how I had responded to one major life shift, by hiding inside nightlife and underground loft parties. Some of what I saw in those dark places, some of what I learned, has given me compassion and understanding that a straight and narrow path could never have provided. So, even though I now prefer 6AM yoga to 6AM Djs, on that first long night of this year I allowed myself to dance, to love old friends and to regret nothing. Love what made you suffer, love that you made yourself suffer and then, dance with it, and then, move on.

Believe in Your Levels
You’re so deeply complex that you need to believe in your daily, weekly, yearly, and so on…until you believe and behold your life complexity. You’re a frequency, an algorithm. You’re a tool of the universe and a singer of it, too. Love that you need to serve and love that you can always serve better. Service to self means to treat your shortcomings with kindness. You need to treat your weaknesses and your strengths as mysteries of this being, this person, this life-cycle you’re uncovering. You are a mystery to yourself; marvel at your life, like you might at the rings of a tree.

Be Calm, Be Aware
We think of calmness as inaction. We see peaceful as being without power. We see anger as energy and we see violence everywhere. The simple reality is that we’ve built a very violent society. We use violent energies to power our tools and we use violent energies to power our motivations and our relationships. Don’t do it. Be calm. Be aware. Be deep, starting today. There is nothing more powerful than going along with the grace to know that sometimes your actions will be met with opposition, sometimes your love will be met with hate. Stay calm. Stay relaxed. Follow your highest truth and let nothing disturb you.

Accept Today’s Weakness as Tomorrow’s Strength
I used to hate my growth. I dragged my feet on change and sometimes I still do, all it really gets me though, is extra wear on my shoes. Let go. Abandon the art project that torments you, or finally, finish it and accept that it’s over. You lost. It didn’t turn out how you thought it would. Homeless, sick, unemployed? This is where you’re lucky. You can become an entrepreneur. You can become a great healer. You could find yourself on a great adventure. Have faith that your weaknesses are here to teach you, not that you’ve failed, but that you are ready to re-invent, to burn off your old notions of who you are and find that there is an infinite gold inside you. It’s light and weightless and it burns eternally.

Let go of the Particulars
Let go of the Dogma. Leave all your gurus and saviors and all their words and trust that you need silence to cultivate and to contact your deepest self, with no mediation, no middleman. You can touch your eternal self and your most effective self, just by letting go of all your rules and regulations. You can go back to them later, if you find they serve and instruct you, but leave them here and there so that they don’t enslave you. In short, don’t be fanatical about who you are or what is divine. Don’t be fanatical about ideas or thoughts. Tie yourself to truth and just let yourself fly. Vagabond in your heart. Be graceful in your wanderings. Let go of ideology. Let go of pronouns. Practice speaking silently. Practice seeing silently, too. Dogma is the opposite of silence.

The Magic of Mystery
Believe in the magic of mystery and worry seems to fade. Does the phoenix know how or why it burns? Does it make each flame or is it consumed, owned by the Purifying Moment? Does it say, oh now I’m transitioning feather by feather, or does it simply feel it coming and allow it? The magic of a more conscious life or a more realized practice is that simply by living we change, so simply by living with practice in mind, we’ll find ourselves going in that way. Last year I said I wanted to read in other languages more often. I kept that intention and suddenly, with practical steps and the passage of time, I am doing it! Why do I want these languages? What compels me to speak or read in different ways? Why do I crave that mental flexibility and satisfaction? Even if the intention was vain or passing, putting it into graceful service to love (to creativity), makes it somehow pure. Go towards your mystery. Go towards it with action. Be willing to see your mystery inside the mystery of history, see that your evolution evolves with a bigger, greater world. Stay humble, work local (within your personal frame), but accept your global, universal role in this all.

Be Open
What else can I say? Be open to myth, to love, and to practical needs. Be open to all that cultivates you in a balanced way. Maybe your balance is to become deeply imbalanced and then balance yourself in a fire, like I have, so maybe you’ll be open to the myth of the Phoenix. But maybe you’re a bit more fish, or wind or water-like? Be open to love and the rest works out. Peer to peer, sustainable, perma-love is what you’re after. Find it. Walk into it like a strong wind on a beach. That’s it, take a long walk on the shores of your own evolution and if you’re open to that, the world will greet you with sunshine, rain, warmth and cold. It won’t necessarily feel safe, but it is safe. Love is an adventure. Welcome the challenge.

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Maybe these make sense to you and maybe they don’t. I hope you enjoyed.
My next post will be about Holidays and the New Year with the Occupation in New York. Until then…love and Happy 2012!! The end is here, the beginning is here…now, let’s get on with it.