FEEL THE FLOW OF NOW

This morning I heard a man describe the way he fell into the cosmos.

He was on a boat one night off the coast of Maine and 

the stars all around him were a glitter so bright to behold that he decided

to just lie down and stare at the black velvet sky.

He shut off the engine,

and turned off the boat's running lights.

And lying there, he saw the spectacle of the night sky

splattered in stars like diamonds. He was swept up into the heavens, 

and gone was any separation between him

and the celestial beauty that went on

and on and on

into infinity.

It isn't every day you can lay under the stars floating

in the ocean.

But you can 

try this: go as slow as you possibly can

through your day. When you walk,

set down one heel, then sole, toes 

after another.

Feel your knees bend.

Stop often,

not so much to think

but to be in your body

just

be

present

Eckert Tolle says it over and over and over 

again, sink DEEP INTO YOUR OWN ARMS 

lie there sleep there until you wake up stay there

make it a practice to reside in your legs and heart and skin

Feel the life energy within always always no matter what else

you are doing feel that

THROBBING IN THERE

BE AWARE THAT IS THE FEELING OF PRESENCE

that is if you will

GOD ENERGY

so there you have it, the POWER OF NOW

and in the middle of the afternoon

light a candle and

just sit there in PEACE AND STILLNESS 

Stay cocooned INSIDE YOURSELF

And should the thought occur to you,

"What am I doing here, sitting, accomplishing nothing,"

That’s exactly when to

focus on YOUR HEART.

Think about the fact it has been beating since that day you were born

and it is still

still

beating.

BE GRATEFUL FOR THAT HEART AND ALL YOUR OTHER BLESSINGS

THE MORE YOU GO INTO YOUR HEART THE MORE THAT divine energy 

PERMEATES UP AND DOWN YOUR BODY 

and floats into the world.

IT IS ALMOST LIKE THE SUN has taken up residence in your sternum

THE MORE YOU DO HEART MEDITATION THE MORE YOU ARE GRATEFUL AND AWARE, 

the more YOUR BODY whispers and shouts and

CALLS OUT TO YOUR ANGELS AND ARCHANGELS

COME ALONG COME ALONG 

dwell here. And hear the angels sing

THE LANGUAGE OF LIGHT and love, the language you hear NOW

every time you open your heart.

Can you hear me screeching at the top of my lungs?

How do I get over the anger, the rage, the fury, the sadness? HOW DO I LET GO OF ALL OF THE FEELINGS THAT ARE LEFT OVER FROM MY STAY IN a psychiatric hospital eight years ago? NOBODY WANTS TO READ THIS. Least of all me.

I am healthy and have been for a long time. I'm not the depleted depressed self that I was in 2012. But feelings linger and I want to clear all of it. I don't want to carry it in my body anymore. I don't want to spend the next four months, or weeks, or days or hours OR EVEN MINUTES thinking about it. I sit here and I feel my body in the NOW. I WANT TO STAY IN THE NOW AND FEEL GRATEFUL FOR ALL OF MY BLESSINGS.

I am terribly sad about Sharon. But there is absolutely nothing I can do to change what is happening in her life. She isn't permitted visitors in the hospital.  I can phone her, when I am able to muster the energy. But when I do call her I know she is going to be depressed and desperate and it's so awfully hard to hear that.

My sister called me a few minutes ago and said "What's up? You haven't phoned all week."

I love my sister. I don't want to speak about the funk that set in as a result of Sharon's hospitalization.

My dog started barking for no reason a few minutes ago. That's not typical. I tried to ignore her but she just kept barking.

Finally I started yelling at her: WHAT IS WRONG? SHUT UP! I WAILED AT THE TOP OF MY LUNGS.

And LO AND BEHOLD, she did stop. 

Now I do the same thing with these feelings dragging me down today. I AM FURIOUS, I AM ENRAGED. I WANT TO SCREECH ABOUT THE HELLISH WAY I FEEL. PLEASE GOD PLEASE TAKE AWAY THE SADNESS AND ANGER. PLEASE LIFT THE DESPAIR. LIFE IS TOO SHORT TO WASTE IT FEELING CRAPPY, I DON'T WANT TO BE UNHAPPY ANYMORE!!!! I DON'T WANT TO CARRY THIS SHIT ANYMORE. THERE IS NO REASON TO. I DON'T WANT TO AND I AM NOT GOING TO SHOULDER IT FOR ANOTHER MINUTE!

I will write it down.  Maybe if I see the words in front of me will help cleanse my psyche of the memories.

So it was my second (and last) stay in a psychiatric hospital. It was about a month after the first, three-day stay I wrote about the other day. This was a two-week stay in an upscale psych hospital. Lots of people were there for drug issues. I was there for ECT. Shock treatment. I remember it like it was yesterday. Being wheeled into the room with the giant machine. Lying down on a table and having the electrodes taped to my head. I had six ECT treatments. And except for taking away some of my memory, the treatments didn't relieve the depression for very long.

PLEASE GOD TAKE THE FEELING OF DREAD AWAY. TAKE THE TRAUMA AWAY. CLEAR IT FROM ME IMMEDIATELY. THERE IS NO REASON TO CARRY IT AROUND TODAY, JULY 24, 2020, EIGHT YEARS LATER.

Must I write about it more? Isn't it sufficient that I've admitted it, laid it out. I don't want to carry it anymore. I don't want to sit here in despair anymore.

Mary says get angry at the doctors -- two of them, one my psychiatrist, the other, my obstetrician who saw I was depressed -- who insisted that shock treatment would cure me. GET ANGRY AT THEM, GET ANGRY AT THE HOSPITALS AND THE STAFF AND THE ENTIRE MENTAL HEALTH SYSTEM WHICH HAS SO LITTLE TO OFFER PEOPLE WITH PSYCHIATRIC PROBLEMS.

One thing I think is very interesting. The whole time I struggled with depression back in 2012, my husband Richard said he thought I was going through "a spiritual crisis." He felt that I needed to confront my soul, that I needed a qualified therapist who would relate to me and guide me and my situation spiritually. In the end, he was exactly on target.

I'm feeling a bit calmer. I'm feeling like I can look at the bright side. I'm able to celebrate the miracle that is Mary and her instruction. She has a PhD in Jungian psychology. But she is more than that. Mary is a true healer. She is connected to the Divine realm and shares this spiritual connection freely.

Mary is the one who helped me understand that what I called depression was just me being numb to my feelings. I had cut myself off from my feelings of disappointment. Feelings of helplessness. Feelings of rage and frustration. Feelings of sadness and anger.

Her instruction has been dramatically life-changing. Mary spent the time necessary to help me get in touch with my feelings, both positive and negative.

"When you tell yourself a negative story about the depression," Mary says, that gets you nowhere. "But you can tell a positive story. You can tell yourself, 'I can have my difficult feelings, they flow through me like a river, and then THE SUN COMES OUT," which by the way, it just did!

"You don't have to suffer or be in fear anymore as you have these memories," Mary says. "Instead of feeling fear and dread, you can shower yourself with love and compassion."

We did tapping exercises to help me clear the sting and trauma associated with the hospital memories. And as I told her this morning, "I think I have to write the trauma out of my body."

While you're writing, Mary advised, "let yourself be furious. Be an avenging angel. Write the fury you feel toward the doctors, the fury you feel about there having been no alternatives, the fury at the fact that the experts were certain they knew what was good for you."

And of course, Mary reminds me to immerse myself in cleansing violet flames, which purify and clear all negative human emotions.

I have been writing for about half an hour and I feel so much better. I feel hopeful. I feel upbeat and energized. I am finally hungry for lunch so I'm going to make myself a salad.

And then I'll call my sister and tell her I'm OK because I am!

NO WORDS

I open my mouth. Nothing. My mind is a blank too. But somehow I know I have to write this chapter. I have to write about what happened on the road to getting healed.

It's been 8 years almost to the day since that horrific hospital stay. It was only three days long because I couldn't stomach another minute.

I wasn't planning to write about it. Sitting here I'm still not sure I can.

But now a very dear friend is a patient in one of these wards, and there's no end in sight for her. I was asked to bring her some clothes and as I drove to Hudson, N.Y. to the hospital, it occurred to me that if this is indeed a healing tale I'm writing, then by rights, I have to recall it all, I need to talk about where I was before I finally saw the light.

No one with any sense would willingly land in a hospital psych ward, if they knew what they were getting into. You go to a psych ward because a) you're regarded as a danger to yourself or B) you've tried everything else and nothing has worked and you think maybe this will help.

But your terror begins almost the very minute the intake starts. That's when they sit you down and take away your phone, your keys, your wallet, and anything else that reminds you of who you are.

You say goodbye to the husband who's brought you and you're led back to the ward. You have a room with two twin beds. Sheets. A blanket. Nothing on the bare scuffed walls. 

You have a hazy memory of the other people.  You weren't like them. Were you? They were the ones who were really crazy. Not like you, a well educated woman suffering from a serious depression. These other people were angry. Or silent. Or incoherent. Or insulting. Some of them yelled profanities. 

You were on the phone almost immediately begging: "please please honey I made a mistake please get me out of here."

But they had you for the next 72 hours, so settle in.

I'm fighting myself here. I'm trying to tell you how awful it was but I really can't because I've done such a good job burying it in the deepest reaches of my psyche.

How about breakfast? Watery coffee. White toast. Cold scrambled eggs but I am not hungry anyway.

And then the group meetings. Sitting in a circle for what? To share your misery with others who are even more miserable than you are?

I don't remember the doctor. The nurses. The aides. The social worker.

I remember being deeply afraid that somehow I would never get free. I called my husband so many times. And he visited me every day. Nobody else had visitors.

Maybe I should stop here. Maybe this is enough.

I am today a very healthy person. Yes I have my mood swings, but more often than not, I'm in a good state of mind. But I still cringe when I think about this part of my past. 

The real problem? I had a string of horrible therapists. And I wasn't on the right medicine.

It wasn't until December 2012, six months after the hospital stay, that a talented psychiatrist in New York City suggested another antidepressant.

And it wasn't until February 2013 that a miracle was bestowed on me and I met Mary Marino, who has a PhD in Jungian psychology.

The woman who recommended her to me said of her, "She saved my life."

And yes.

She saved mine too.

Miracles in the Meadow

It happened a few weeks ago, after dinner, as we sat gazing out at the meadow. I had seen a small deer grazing now and then, but that night, the small deer appeared with a very tiny fawn.

I had also seen a coyote that morning, making circles in the tall green grasses.

Twilight was descending when the fawn and the mom strolled into our view. Suddenly our dog Poco started barking and spooked the mom. She fled to the back of the field and bounded over the fence, leaving her baby behind. Back and forth the fawn went trying to find a place to get through the fence to be with mom. I asked Rich, "Should we go over there and lift her across the fence?" We decided against it. Soon enough it appeared that they had found each other so Rich and I got up and went into the house.

No sooner were we starting to close the door when we heard a gut wrenching bleating and yelping All I could think of was the coyote and the baby fawn!

We flew out the door and there in the distance on the right of the meadow was the coyote. The little fawn was on the left and the mother was nowhere to be seen.

I turned primitive. Without thinking, I went running toward the meadow bellowing, "GET OUT OF THERE DON'T YOU DARE TOUCH THAT FAWN GET OUT OF HERE!" I must have scared the coyote because he took off. I stood there amazed.

As twilight deepened, the mother and baby strolled up the field toward our lawn. I stood at the edge of the meadow and I could see the mother staring right at me. The pair stood there for a long while with me saying "Everything is ok now, you are safe. I won't hurt you and neither will the coyote."

It felt like a long time that we were gazing at each other. Slowly the mother and baby turned and disappeared into the wetland.

And I went into the house, my heart beating, and full of love and gratitude.

Mary says, "The Divine is speaking to you personally."

Maybe. Today when the fox appeared, a beautiful golden brown, it crossed the meadow before it slowly came towards me. But it didn't stop before it disappeared into the  forest on the right.

I am so grateful for these miracles, the hummingbird by my shoulder and the deer and the fox appearing in the meadow.

YOU CAN HEAL YOUR ANCESTORS and YOURSELF

"You Can Heal Your Life." That's what the email says this morning.

Yes, I DO BELIEVE THAT'S TRUE! I am writing this book as a way of healing. Healing myself and my history. HEALING my family, specifically two of my ancestors:

Clementina Ciucci,

my great grandmother on my mother's side. Who told her daughter, my grandmother, Michelina Rotondo, to vaccinate her firstborn son, Dante Antonio. The baby, a gorgeous nine month old, a blonde cherub, died. Writing that story a few weeks ago put me into unspeakable terror.

And Filomena Scrivano, my great great grandma on my father's ORZO side. Who had my great grandfather, Pasquale Orzo, out of wedlock.

What was it like to be PRESENT as FILOMENA SCRIVANO? The shame and darkness were so great that they appeared 150 years later when my cousin Donna went to the little town of Paola in Calabria in order to get Pasquale's birth record.

I woke up this morning feeling a darkness. Afraid. After meditating I decided to take a walk and my husband came with me. I was telling him about the challenge of telling the ancestors' stories. "If I'm going to tell their stories, I have to dwell in them, at least for a little while," I said.

"But why tell them at all?" he asked. I couldn't answer him.

We were sweating and walking fast. We were talking about the novel that we are reading together.  BELOVED by Toni Morrison. Talk about a dark story. The novel is a riveting tale of the ghost of the child who is slated by her mother, a mother who wants to save her daughter from a life of slavery. What a dark dark story. But then again, so many novels are dark.

I try to stay away from them. But here I am now in the darkness of my own history.

When we got back to the house, I was dripping with sweat. And it was time to talk to Mary. So I asked her.

Why tell the story at all? And how does telling it help heal my ancestors or me?

Mary is always ready to say, focus on love and light and miracles.

Focus on the light that dwelled in your ancestors.

In the midst of all those difficult experiences they endured, they went on to have beautiful families full of LOVE.

You have a beautiful life -- you have a body you can go out and sweat and walk

COUNT YOUR BLESSINGS. BE GRATEFUL.

HOW BEAUTIFUL TO HAVE A HEALTHY BODY THAT CAN EXERCISE LIKE THAT

HOW BEAUTIFUL THAT YOU HAVE SUCH ABUNDANCE IN YOUR LIFE

LOOK WHAT CAME FROM YOUR FAMILIES

THIS LIFE YOU HAVE

YOUR ACCOMPLISHMENTS ARE THEIR ACCOMPLISHMENTS

THEIR LIVES ARE REDEEMED  BY YOUR LIFE!

EVERYTHING THEY SACRIFICED FOR EVERYTHING THEY DID WAS WORTH IT

THEY CONTINUED TO DO EVERYTHING THEY NEEDED TO DO TO SURVIVE

LOOK AT THE BEAUTIFUL DAUGHTER JOCELYN YOU CREATED WHO IN TURN CREATED HER DARLING DAUGHTER DANI AND HER BIG BROTHER RONEN.

THE PAIN AND SUFFERING ARE ALL REDEEMED IN YOUR BEING ABLE TO BE GRATEFUL AND ENJOY ALL THE BLESSINGS YOU HAVE IN THIS PRESENT MOMENT.

YOUR ANCESTORS ARE ALL LOOKING DOWN ON YOU AND ENJOYING THE BLESSINGS WITH YOU.

RIGHT NOW.

I TYPED IT ALL UP. And finally I heard what Mary was saying. I started to feel her words and her extraordinary spirit and energy penetrate my heart and mind and I started to realize that I am healing myself of darkness by telling this story. I'm healing myself of all the darkness that I inherited from my ancestors. All the fear and pain that they carried. I feel it so strongly this morning, that my body wants to be shed of all darkness. That my body wants to absorb all the light of the universe and live in constant gratitude for the present moment.

I want to visualize the light from billions of stars coming into my head and heart. I want to be completely absorbed in that love and light and spread it around.

"Don't let your fear make you small," Mary says. "Let yourself have an extraordinary life. When you are open to miracles, as you are, then hummingbirds come and sit by your shoulder. And deer come up to you in the meadow and stare at you."

Just as I got off the call with Mary, my friend Kellie texted and asked how I was. And I realized that I was swept up in the light and love that Mary shared with me. And that I am ready to share this happiness with the world.

Splashing In -- the Mysteries of Water

By Kathy Joy

In this season of limited restaurant outings, my family and friends are happily opting into beach picnics on the peninsula. 

The lake beckons, and our sunset suppers are a highlight of summer 2020.

These water encounters are full of life and laughter; no matter how old or young we are, the urge to squeal with delight is irresistible. 

The other night I met up with my daughter, who has an unmistakable kinship with All Things Water. She snaps pictures of sunsets, scours the beach for bits of smoothed glass, and runs to the waves for all the splashes, all the water therapy she can absorb.

Her red hair in the glow of a Lake Erie sunset is a work of art, and can never really be captured in a photo.

After a beach picnic of turkey sandwiches and fresh fruit, we kicked off our flip flops and headed for the surf – which that night was full of kick and sass. 

The waves were rolling in high and splashy. 

The break-walls in the distance were pushing back towers of froth and spray.

I carry this memory like a tall glass of pure hydration: every sip replenishes and renews.

Water is a living, dynamic being – just like us.

A scientist-writer wrote a book, “Secret of Water – A Language of Life.” In the book, and then the movie, the late Masaru Emoto claims water has memory. He says water can be influenced by positive words and form beautiful crystals.

This one has allegedly responded to the words “love” and “gratitude.”

The researcher says water also responds to music in the form of these exquisite hexagonal shapes.

On the flip side, less vibrant, or “dead” water, does not form hexagonal shapes; rather, its image appears flat and unremarkable.

Some might call these ideas bogus, an extreme hoax; even pseudo-science.

No matter where faith and science might overlap, water is pretty amazing.

Water is pretty amazing!

We can all agree it’s important for life.

We, like the surface of the earth, are least 70 per cent water.

An adult should drink at least 2.5 liters of water every day to sustain normal life function. Another 1.5 liters is absorbed through the skin during bathing or showering. 

It is also absorbed from standing in the rain! 

Pretty much every living thing depends on water 

Can water drops retain memory? 

I don’t know. 

Personally, I defer to the Creator for the mysteries of water. 

To me it’s no secret water is life-giving, that it cleanses bodies, refreshes the earth and draws us to the shore for our own rejuvenation.

Test the waters, and see for yourself.

Kathy Joy is a Pennsylvania-based author of a four-book series, "Breath of Joy." She writes for the collaborative group, Books for Bonding Hearts, and is a blogger at Coffee With Kathy.  She lives very close to Lake Erie and is a frequent visitor to the sandy beaches.  After the pandemic set in, Kathy was asked to keep a mini-blog for her coworkers, who are sequestered at home. "Splashing In" is one of those daily blogposts, known as Lunch Jabs.

Fear and Love and Natural Awareness

As I begin to write this morning, fear is a dark bubble all around and inside me.  Exactly 18 years ago this week, I started the grueling chemo treatment that I endured for 13 weeks in the summer of 2002. Every Tuesday, my husband drove me to New York City to Sloan Kettering, where I was infused with five chemo drugs. I suffered terribly. These days, I rarely think about that dark time. But today I am petrified.

In the midst of the terror, I have a miracle to share. The other morning, on Shabbat, I was sitting on my patio near the hummingbird feeder, talking on the phone to my dear friend Kathy Joy, a writer in Erie, Pennsylvania.  I was telling her how I received the diagnosis for my lymphoma, on the telephone, the night of my son Noah's Bar Mitzvah.

I was literally half dressed -- I had on the bottom half of a two-piece dress, navy blue with tiny rosebuds on it -- and the phone rang. The doctor said, "You're busy this weekend, why don't you and  your husband come to the office on Monday and..."

I interrupted her. "I want to know right now what's going on," I said. "Please tell me."

And so she did. She told me I had a massive tumor in my chest, the size of a cantaloupe. She told me I would need "chemo and radiation."

And my teenaged daughters were on the staircase and they heard it too.

And you can't know how how how how how how how how how how

God help me. You don't know how hard it is to hear that...

I told Kathy the story of how I went up to the Rabbi, Andy Klein, the next morning, and said, "It's OK if I die, but I don't want my son to remember his mother crying at his Bar Mitzvah."

Andy smiled that lightning smile of his. And he said, "You won't cry. I know you won't cry."

And every time I looked across the room during the service, Andy beamed at me. And he was right, I gave my speech and I didn't cry.

As I was telling this story to Kathy -- at that very moment -- this plump little hummingbird -- later I found out it was a baby! -- landed on the feeder.  She just sat there and sat there. And I got closer and closer and closer to her and took one photo after another and another and finally I was close enough to set my finger on the  bird and I saw her tiny black eyes blinking and I kept thinking I want to touch her right there on her shimmering green back but I was

afraid.

All day Saturday I was convinced that the hummingbird was a positive sign; as my friend Connie said of hummingbirds, "They are magical healers." I sent the photos to my dear friend Kellie too and she photographed pages from her animal speaks book and sent them to me: "There are 300 species of hummingbirds. This is very significant. In the Hebrew alphabet, the letter "shin" is given the numerical value of 300." And hummingbird's appearances are linked to "the past and future and the laws of cause and effect."

Mary said to me that she thinks the hummingbird is a sign that "the Divine is speaking to you personally." If that's true, I am ever so humbly grateful!

Things went south on Sunday, when Kellie texted to tell me that my mother's doctor -- the woman who diagnosed my mother's pancreatic cancer on October 9, 2015, just  eight days before she died, passed away this week herself. My mother adored Dr. Sharon Rawlings, who apparently developed cancer this spring and died on July 7th at the age of 48. When I read this news from Kellie (Dr. Rawlings was also her doctor and Kellie also adored her)

somethinginsideofme SNAPPED>>>>>>>>>>>>>

FEAR EXPLODED and SUCKED ME IN>>>>>>>>>>

I have a minor virus my throat is scratchy my tongue is sore my chest is a bit sore too and somehow those physical sensations and the CANCER memories got all wrapped up with Dr. Rawlings very suddenly dying of CANCER >>>>>>

I had a PTSD-induced meltdown, a panic attack among the worst I've ever had.  I could hardly catch my breath. It was Sunday but I called my spiritual therapist Mary and she talked me through it and we did tapping together to clear the memories.

She reminded me to surround all difficult situations in violet flames.

Enough. I won't write any more about the fear. Instead I will write about light. About this thing called "NATURAL AWARENESS," which I learned about a few days ago from my meditation and mindfulness teacher and dear friend Greg T.

Most of the time in meditation you focus on the breath and when your focus wanders you keep bringing your attention back to your breath.

Natural awareness is different. It's a form of meditation in which you focus on awareness itself. You think about the fact that you are aware and you dwell there in awareness and all that it feels. I said to Greg in an email that natural awareness feels perfectly wonderful to me. I said I AM WRITING A BOOK ABOUT HEALING AND BEING IN THE NOW, and natural awareness feels exactly like what I am trying to achieve morning, noon and night.

The article Greg sent to me is by a long-time mindfulness teacher at UCLA named Diana Winston. She says that natural awareness is an invitation to notice or become aware of the sensory awareness "that already exists and is available to you at any moment."

Like right at this moment, with my darling puppy dog Poco sitting on my lap making me feel so soft and warm and the birds making a sweet racket everywhere around my ears and the sun warming the meadow and my heart open and full of love. I'm smiling and relaxed and hummingbirds keep coming to dive-bomb the feeder.

I am feeling not a bit of fear right now.

Over on the wooden nesting box at the edge of the meadow, a tree swallow is resting. Or is it a house wren? No matter.

The purple cone flower is in bloom in the garden as is the bright orange tiger lily and the brilliant red Bee Balm.

I am not fearful when I am calmly sitting in the present moment, the awareness of awareness all around and inside me. I feel the breath come in and slide out and the wren is back to the nesting box and the tweeting of the birds is the sweetest sound I've ever heard.

And my husband just walked in and he said, "Hello darling," and he told me he wants to go for a walk and so I am going to stop now and I will go slowly through the day trying to stay aware of awareness. And I will be grateful that I am writing a book about healing.