Calcification

I'm getting my teeth cleaned today.

It's funny because I can walk around for awhile with grime on my teeth before I notice they are a mess - and it needs to be loosened and removed.

It's that way with old, ingrained of habits of perceiving other people too. I've noticed lately that lots of these habits are calcified; like with my teeth I interact with the same people the same way over and over again, and then judge them when they react the same way back without even knowing that I am perpetuating, creating the pattern.

Some of my habits were my parents habits - some probably come from their parents before them, so they really are ingrained. It actually is a form of liberation to notice what I am doing, and then scrape away all that - to decide to stop walking around with a dirty, built up psyche.

I've been working on channeling my mom and dad from the times when they were loving to me as parents, and noticing that channeling, and realizing, "oh yeah, I had pretty loving parents." It's funny how subtle and sneaky those negative habits are; it's like my ego wants to keep all these judgmental hang ups. It doesn't want to clean up.

I really am ready to get my teeth cleaned today. I really want to get rid of the prior baggage - the dirt and nonsense I'm throwing on lots of other people. I hurl residual garbage their way then wonder why I can't see them clearly, why they keep reacting to me the same way.

It makes more sense to "wave" to them from a clean vantage point instead, and let them "wave" back from a cleaned up angle.

Unlimited

I'm working on a play at the school where I teach this week. Anne Monique, my daughter, comes in after her school is over to help. Yesterday as I was talking about the kids and their parts and their talents with her she stopped all of a sudden and said, "Mommy, you love them!" Later she added, "That's a good thing," as though to clarify her observation.

Anne Monique's statement has reoriented my take on my interactions with the students this week. The same evening I received an e-mail that a dear, beautiful friend of mine has been re diagnosed with cancer - a year after it was removed from her body. I've felt a rush of feeling in her direction - a powerful force coming from deep within and everywhere around me toward her healing.

For me love has always been a romantic, iconic notion, involving the urge to merge with one other being on a physical level. Now I'm learning that the power behind that pull is unlimited.

Extend the love you have for the one, to the many, to the all. Let's try it today.

The Implication of Being

A dear friend of mine just had a baby. It always blows me away to be around a baby - the small toes and fingers, and the entire gravity of life all expressed with such perfection.

But then we are that way too; the fact of our being has implications, that we are the product, the direct expression of being as it's evolved as us. It helps to remember that and notice the implications of who we are.

To recognize the implications of our being is to notice that we are a centrifugal force. My teacher says to think of a spinning top and that analogy is useful. It's easy to get side tracked by all the peripheral "stuff" - thoughts, expectations, excitement - swirling around our psyches. If we can see ourselves as balanced, right in the middle of all of it, then it all becomes effortless.

Then we notice we are the cetrifugal force of the entire unity that is, that we hold within each of us nothing less than the core of all Infinity.

(The photograph was taken by Anne Jablonski at Feathered Pipe Ranch outside of Helena, Montana. I love that part of woods there.)

Unblocking Gratitude...

We're having sublimely amazing weather in Los Angeles this week - balmy, toasty warm, perfectly blue sky over all of it.

It's an optimal time to breathe gratitude.

For the weather, for presence, for all of it.

(The photo is from the jetty at Playa del Rey.)