I have gained 30 pounds. (To understand rest and not doing)

I have cut off my 36 hip  length jattas. (Exposing what’s next to come)

I have added metal plates and screws to both arms. (As power, strength and protection)

My circulatory system has changed. (So I can pay attention)

I have shattered my elbow. (Facing a new direction)

I have a new car that is reliable. (My vehicle transporting me to my known)

I am carrying my mother, the water, the forest, my known, within me.

I am.

​

A couple mornings ago I heard the summer dawn sound of a mourning dove. It immediately brought me back to  mornings in my teens at 735 West Green Street when, up early, voices hushed, mourning doves cooing, my dad, Marcia and I would jog around the race track. We would stretch our arms and walk across the wet grass in the backyard, down the hill, across the swamp and over the fence to the fairgrounds, where a one half mile harness racing track was kept in good condition. If we were lucky, a horse and driver would also be up early, training at the track.

Dad would go on these occasional diets which included eating dry toast and daily jogging. Sometimes he and Jim Sell would start up a daily jogging routine around our neighborhood in Hastings, Jim was all "Go Blue" and dad was in his white ragged canvas sneakers. Eating dry toast and cutting out the beer seemed to make my dad especially grumpy, and I would try to persuade him to at least add some jam to sweeten his mood. But he always stuck with his diet plan.

I always felt that I am among the fortunate ones who wake up easily as the veil of dawn moves into day. Dad and Marcia were also early morning risers. Why fortunate? As a kid, early morning was when I shared my sweetest moments with Dad. Sitting quietly next to him in the metal folding chair as he navigated the bus towards another unexplored vista. No talking. Everyone else still sleeping in the bunks that he made. Just watching and feeling the presence of dawn opening on grand mountains around us.

Early river mornings, dad's coffee in his hand, frogs galunking. 

​Early mornings at the race track, running side by side, just quiet panting and the soft thump thump of sneakers on dirt and the coo of the doves. 

Now in my 60's I need to diet. I was an all or nothing kind of dieter. Just stop eating. But I want to do it differently. I've thought about dad's style; cut out a few things here and there and add jogging until the excess pounds are off. It seems so simple. Or maybe it was all about companionship in the early morning, when no extra weight was needed.

Yesterday at the Temple we were looking for some keys. We looked in the usual places and when we couldn't find them, we tried other keys that we thought might work. Then I "removed" my mind from looking and instantly "saw" a picture of the puja set in the kitchen. I went to the puja set and there they were, the missing keys.

Finding things is one of my superpowers. Of course all moms inherently develop this superpower that goes on from morning till night, "Mom, I can't find my socks!  Where are the scissors? Who took my keys?" 

The Finding superpower that I was blessed with by Swamiji is magnified far beyond that. It's a power that happens when the third eye is open.  It's as if I am already there with the object and I just have to trust myself, open my eyes and see. This isn't always easy. Sometimes when I am "looking" I experience a swirling field of doubt where I feel there is nothing to hold onto and I don't know which way to go. If I can stay with that feeling, it settles, and what I needed to find is in front of me.

If you've ever been given a directive by Swamiji, that becomes one of your superpowers. When His gaze is on you and He speaks to you - the words He says are already a reality in the past, present and future. The directive that Swamiji gives gets instantly bolted into your bio-memory. Ma Durga just posted on Fb that she has recorded 75 videos in the past 5 years as directed by Swamiji. Making these videos has become one of her superpowers. Ma Sivananda was given a white towel that Swamiji was holding in His hand. When He handed her the towel, He said, "This is the Key". And directed her to build the Shiva Temple (Nithyanandeshwara Hindu Temple) in Columbus. This became her superpower. The first time it happened to me,  "Finding" was burned into me. 

I was in love with my hip length jattas/extensions. I loved how they defined me. I loved looking like Swamiji. I loved following Guru Vak. I loved doing my best to live as fully as a Hindu Yogini as possible. I loved knowing that they were supporting me in my journey by containing energy and clearing the higher chakras. I loved meeting the people who were drawn to them and talking about them. When the first extension fell out after about year of having them, I was shocked and repulsed. Even though it was synthetic hair, I felt I was losing my hair. Over three years, more and more of the 36 extensions fell out, which is the maximum length of time for extensions to stay in. At first I was disappointed. At the end of the fourth year, I cut out the remaining extensions, happy to have chest length jattas and all my own hair.

I fractured my elbow only a month after finally posting a blog about my jattas, fantasizing that I would have them until death. I had no idea how so much of the struggle connected with an unusable left arm would focus on my jattas. I went from loving them, to having a complicated relationship with them, to hating them. I was unable to care for them one-handed. I couldn't get them out of the way at night. I couldn't wash them. Leaning forward to eat, they would get in my food. They were getting yanked and pulled, caught by the velcro brace. But fighting with them at night was the final straw. I was waking up 5 or more times a night, needing to move my arm, which entailed needing to move my jattas out of the way also. If you've ever been pregnant, trying to turn with one arm is like trying to turn over in the ninth month. I would finally arrive in the new position only to feel my hair stuck under me, pulling on my scalp, and would have to start the process all over again.

I went to Facebook and posted a query. There was a lot of feedback boiling down to cut them, keep them. But I didn't see any in-between. I wasn't comfortable with keeping them as is or cutting them off. I started searching on-line for what others did in similar situations, and there were no role models or examples. After so many sleepless nights, self-judgement and hesitation, the urge came again to paint. Putting paint to paper, painting the struggle with the jattas, an aspect of Kali emerged, a more compassionate image that mirrored me. I didn't want to cut them out of hatred. I didn't want to take out my anger and struggle on the jattas, an extension of Swamiji. I didn't want to make this decision while in depression. So I was waiting for clarity.

A friend made a suggestion. Going deeper in visualizing what I wanted instead of what I didn't want, I realized that what I was struggling with, and what I wanted, was to have a family or community to physically support and help me with the care of them. 

I started realizing there were other options; I could cut them shorter, cut them all but a few, untangle some and keep the rest, and that it didn't have to be all or nothing. I started visual zing long wavy hair in the water, swirling and swimming. I visualized having blue hair. I dreamt of being in a jungle swinging from vines made of my jattas, but the jattas broke, no longer able to support me.

The doubt and hesitation cleared and I decided to cut one jatta shorter and see where it led. The process was reminding me of our first year of living near the temple, when over and over i had to "follow my nose" with no examples, or maps to guide me. 

I told my daughter, who has supported my process with the jattas from the beginning, that I had decided to cut one, and she immediately joined me on a video call, creating the community I craved. For the next hour, as I cut most of the 36 jattas shorter, we talked about power, transitions, vulnerability and courage. I told her that twice I had found myself saying that I was afraid if I cut them I would lose everything. I took off fourteen inches, a length I could manage in my life right now. We laughed at how it was coming out, and she begged me not to leave a tail or three on top to make a bun. When I completed shortening 31 of the jattas, I realized how joyful I felt, how grateful I was in that hour.

My daughter and I ended our call, and I propped the painting of the Compassionate Kali Mirroring Me beside Swamiji's murthy and did puja to Swamiji. I felt so much love and expansion happening in my inner space. I saw I had made a powerful decision, fueled by surrender, vulnerability, walking into the unknown.

​Trying to make the decision from what I knew, my past experience, had been full of fear, the outcome I feared was loss. My hair had become a protection, a security, a definition of me. In trying to make a decision based on fear and hatred, I  could not see any future besides loss if I cut them. 

After puja I opened Living Enlightenment randomly and was shown this by Swamiji.

"Surrendering to the Unknown"

"The unknown can never be trapped with the known. The unknown can only be known by surrendering to it. Intelligence recognizes the mystery of the moment and surrenders to it joyfully. (Otherwise) you continuously remain with what is called 'fear of the unknown'. To the ego not knowing means being nothing." 

I couldn't believe it. This exactly summed up my fear about cutting my jattas, losing everything, being nothing. It is only with the support and courage of the community that I have created, my families, sangha, homeopathic and Ayurvedic support, allopathic support, and Intelligence gained from being willing to surrender to the unknown, that the mystery of my life is unfolding.

In deepest gratitude. 

"She Moves On" by Paul Simon feels like it is describing the struggle between my analytical mind which tries to now the outcome based on the past and my more powerful, innocent intelligent self - Paramashivoham. This line sums it up, "...my storybook lover, you have underestimated my power, as you shortly will discover." 
www.youtube.com/watch?v=414FPXLWDVk Paul Simon "She Moves On"

I would not let go of Sammy Kai in a hospital. My experiences of hospitals were places devoid of life, places of giving up control, a place where I felt powerless. I wanted to deliver Sammy Kai at home, the same way Asha, and later Saskia came into the world. ​

I was still very active in the second trimester, enjoying summer, still roller blading while pregnant. I was so happy to be carrying this second child whom we had already named Sammy Kai. When I had the first inkling that something was not right I just froze inside. Freezing has always been my reaction to events beyond what I thought would happen. I had been trying to ignore that my belly had not been growing and that things felt still and quiet with the baby. Then one night I had a night sweat. I woke up with the same icy cold fear in my veins that accompanied me when I woke up from a nightmare. I felt betrayed. The thoughts came fast one by one; I only had night sweats when I was about to start my period. And I would only have a period if my cycle had started again. And that could only mean one thing. It was a difficult night, tossing and turning with the intuitive knowledge I could not fully accept. In the morning I made an ultrasound appointment.
​
​We went for the ultrasound. In every way you could tell from the technician that Sammy Kai was dead. Her face, her body language, her evasion when we asked. She could only say, "The doctor will answer all of your questions." We had to wait an agonizing amount of time while a doctor was fetched to give the painful news. I was told to have a D&C and in my state of shock and grief I could not understand what they were saying. The doctor had to spell it out, and did so mechanically, as if I didn't know my body, as if I didn't know Sammy Kai, as if I didn't know the sacredness of life and death. It was just a clean-safe-antiseptic-efficient way to get rid of the problem. My natural reaction is to fight, and when I asked if I could deliver the tiny baby at home the answer was absolutely not. I started freaking out and arguing which did not help. 

​This is where my husband really shines. He's like an underwater anchor, a quiet force that knows how to lean sideways into me, so I won’t fight him, but he can get through to me when no one else can. He whispered, just like he did at Asha's birth when I was screaming at the mid-wife, “Just agree to what he says, then we’ll get out of here and cancel the appointment.”

​I get caught up in the injustice, the fight, the principle, the need to MAKE THEM UNDERSTAND that there are other options, methods. But it rarely works. So I stopped arguing, agreed to the D & C, and we left. The minute I got home I cancelled the appointment and called my friend Anne, a midwife. She assured me that my body would let go of Sammy Kai when the time was right and I could call her if I needed to. From that point it was just a waiting game.

​In the next days I felt between worlds. To walk around not pregnant any more. To walk around with a dead baby inside you. To not know what to say to people cause you know they will not know what to say when you tell them.  It was living in twilight.

About three days later my body was ready to let go of the baby. Mentally I was not ready. I had contractions and fairly quickly delivered Sammy Kai. I was surprised at how tiny he was, like a little pink frog, with little hands and frog bent legs. There was a beautiful purple eggplant shaped placenta. I was alone the whole time, calling Anne when I became fearful about the process, but she continuously assured me that it was all normal and natural. I have mixed feelings about being alone, the feeling that I had to bear it and deal with it myself. I didn't reach out to anyone besides Anne, and yet I felt unsupported and lonely. 

We buried Sammy Kai under a Japanese maple. It was very quiet and sad. No adults talked about it. But Asha had to have a burial over and over and over until she played it out of her system. I wondered what past life memories Asha brought with her, because at age 2, she said for a funeral we needed to put a peppermint scent in with the baby, have a certain type of cloth, and kept talking about fish along with the burial.

Months later I want to Lynn for an astrology reading. I owe Lyn so much gratitude for the gift of not just insights, but how she delivered them. In this reading she got a surprised look on her face and said,  "Wow! You avoided something here!” I asked what she meant and she said that in my chart, it was shown that I would have a stillborn, not a miscarriage. She said that would have been much harder to bear.  

In the third third of my life, many healings are happening, many things are making sense, or I am able to come to terms with them. Some kind of weight has been lifted where I am able to see the pain I was in, but I am no longer pressed down by it.

I never had a boy child, I never knew Sammy Kai, and yet who we thought he was never left.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9M4XJXnCcw Graceland by Paul Simon

Fourteen years ago today I was immersed in the beginning of the biggest quest of my life. I was  was participating in the inaugural events of The Dhyanapeetam Anandeshwara Temple in Delaware, Ohio. Swamiji, an enlightened master, had come from India to not only bless and consecrate North America's first Nithyananda Temple, but to teach us all the rituals of prana pratishta and running of a temple. 

Swamiji blessed us, the Temple, the city of Delaware, and the deities who resided in the temple from that day onward.  ​

It was a sight to behold. People travelled from all over the world to be part of the historic event and to get a glimpse of Swamiji. Swamiji gave every single person who attended a personal audience. The care and respect that he gave each person was an unusual sight for me.

He brought a team of volunteers from Los Angeles and a container of deities and ritual objects which he proceeded to use and teach how to use down to the very last detail, such as how to clean and care for the implements used in the rituals.

He had the ability to lead all of the events without effort or force and it seemed that all of his actions simply radiated outward from Him to the volunteers, participants and by-standers.

I felt both like a bystander and involved. Marsha and I seemed to be the newest volunteers and the only non-Indians. But we were both given responsibilities and were fully involved in helping to put the event together.

I was helping with the massive amount of flowers that were arriving daily to be used in making garlands and for the poojas and homas. Indian rituals and customs are very different than western/European so I made many mistakes along the way. 

Swamiji commanded a reaction in me that was very powerful. I would feel hit by a wave of awe that would cause me to lose words and logic. In that wave my impulse was to bow at his feet and not move, basking in the protective embrace of His radiance or energy, feeling as if I would stay at His feet for eons. The opposite impulse is the one I always went with, thinking that I should not bother Him and that He should see me contributing - that I should continue with my volunteer work. 

When this would happen, for example Swamiji leaving His room and walking by the office where I was working, I always felt the moment freeze. His very being there in the doorframe made time  freeze, as I grappled with the two opposing impulses, to drop everything and let myself express the outpouring of respect and awe I was feeling, or to suppress it and not bother him. He would seemingly watch me as I struggled and I would go back to my work.

Fourteen years later I am taking a back seat at the Temple while my health takes a rest. It feels that in this time of non-action that my inner temple is growing. For the first time there is room in me for those powerful feelings to come forth and I can be with them. Happy Anniversary to The Ohio Temple, and to my inner temple.
​

After fracturing my elbow on Thursday I had a huge bursting desire to paint. I had never painted and so was hesitating, thinking I needed to take lessons. A friend suggested skipping the lessons and just putting color on paper. Brian brought home an easel, brushes and acrylic paints and I was off.

The energy waned with the need to rest my arm and sleep, but today I one handedly dragged out the easel, cardboard, paints and brushes. I just started painting the colors that were bursting to come out, and before long an inner knot started to unwind and emerge; This Kavi is Mine!

There is a day when spring arrives, when she demands that you open your windows and let her in. The cool fresh air cleanses and renews all the winter stuffiness. You have to keep your sweaters on, as it is not yet warm enough for open windows, but it can't be helped. It is a time of awakening and new promises. It is the time when the flowering quince bursts forth in blooms. In 1985 it was the first time I opened my home for Brian.

I lived in a house on the beach. Manitou Drive. It smelled of the salt flats and mold. It had a wood stove. Already too many adult burdens and sorrows had accumulated there, broken hearts, an abortion, and sprained ankles halting a passion for long distance running. 

​It was also a house of healing. I was a Zen Buddhist and the sangha met weekly on the island for meditation and chanting. The sea in front of my eyes fed my soul. And I had met Brian Brogan.

We were finally going to see each other again, he driving north to my house from Oregon. We had met on a Republic Airlines flight in December, and he had sent a letter to the restaurant in Seattle where I worked. We got to know each other over three months of writing letters and finally we were meeting again!

All the windows were open and the salt breeze was blowing in. The wood stove was burning and I was cleaning. There wasn't much to clean as I lived simply; a futon, a small table and two chairs, a rocking chair and a trunk. As the time grew near and I was finishing up, I went outside to see if anything was blooming. Flowering quince is one of the earliest bushes to bloom after winter, and the flowers had just opened. I cut three branches and put them in a vase. Such beauty in the color! Such beauty in three sparse branches!

He drove up. I walked outside. He got out of the car. My eyes saw a short man, not the man I had sat next to for 4 hours on the wine tasting flight. I turned and ran into the house. I didn't know it at the time, but he also had a thought, and had turned and gotten back in his car.

I stood inside the door not knowing what to do. It was like two magnets repelling each other - we had each turned away and ran. Later he said that when he saw me come out the door, I looked only 18 years old, and he turned away thinking I was too young to date. 

Floating minutes that seemed like it could have been hours or days later, we both turned back and met again.

He came inside and was greeted by me, the breeze and the Quince. He recited a line from a children's book that often gets repeated in our house, "Spring is a breezy, blossomy season, when everything is fresh and sweet and clean". 

He brought me gifts; an axe for cutting wood, slippers he had made himself, and poetry. I had never received such romantic gifts. We danced to "Good Time" by Bonnie Koloc, made crackers, and sat in the rocking chair and laughed.

We didn't know it yet, but we had a whole lifetime ahead of us. He planted a flowering quince bush for me years ago. Every spring when it blooms I think of that young love, beginnings, and beauty.

Bonnie Koloc singing "Good Time"
www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-8yUKO7i7I&list=PLdW-GIPIzutaflRKZFH09BoTdPbzekwZo&index=2 Bonn

I feel very restless, irritable and sad. Leah died two days ago. I couldn't believe how long, drawn out and dramatic it all was. How hard it was for me to stay present with the process. How many times I felt a screaming inside my head to DO something. As if I could stop it. As if I could change the outcome of her process. As it was, Leah died on Mahashivaratri, the most auspicious day of the year for Shiva Devotees. 

For seven days I thought she was dying. Every night Brian and I and Kala slept near her and everyday she rallied at some point. Every day Saskia and I face-timed and Leah responded to Saskia. She even started eating and drinking again - until the last 24 hours. I thought she had pulled through and she would see Saskia again this summer. 

On Mahashivaratri morning I got fully dressed in a saree with rudraksha jewelry, vibhuti and kumkum to do my puja. Everything was clean and I had fresh roses. Leah's mobility only extended to about four feet and that morning she had only made it halfway out of the pet bed. But when I started the puja, she pulled herself out and lay just behind me. I felt this day was different, that Leah was in a different state. In retrospect, all the other seven days of dying were not actually death. But this day was different. Even I felt like I had entered another state of consciousness.

After my puja I opened Swamiji's "Living Enlightenment" and my eyes fell on a meditation on acceptance. Swamiji said accept everything happening in your outer world. Accept all of the qualities you have in your inner world. Accept all the things people think about you. Accept the worst things you think might happen. 

I closed my eyes and entered into the meditation. All my resistance broke down and I gulped in acceptance like I had been waiting lifetimes to finally drink these words. The thought rose up, "I am enough." It rose from the depths with a certainty I have never known.
​
I left the room to take Kala out on a walk, and when I returned, Leah had moved to the corner of the puja area and put her head under a dark curtain for the final passing.

It's odd waiting for death. When my dad died, I was next to him for about the last hour, reciting the Psalm 27 and singing Christmas songs which my Dad had always loved. When his soul passed, it was seemingly silent, unobtrusive and not noticeable. But it was also a deafening roar because as his soul left the body, it expanded so hugely in the room that my own energy inside expanded with it. It was joyful and glorious, huge! The room and I were filled with ecstasy!

With Leah, I sat with her and entered her silence and felt the heaviness and confusion in her body. There was so much heaviness keeping her in her body. At the same time I could see part of her had started leaving the body, and it was also huge like my dad. I felt a presence, something was waiting. It made me think of Swamiji describing how he had seen Shiva taking the souls at Manikarnika Ghat, "He says ‘I saw very clearly Shiva himself going near every burning body, taking the soul, unclutching it from the body-mind and liberating it.'"

I was very agitated as the night progressed, snapping at Brian and Kala for any noise or disturbance. I felt compelled to sit straight in meditation near her. I fell asleep and woke with a start. She was still breathing. I sat in meditation and fell asleep again. Again I woke with a start. 1:27am. She was gone. I did not feel the hugeness or ecstasy. I felt relief but not expansion. I just wanted to sleep. 

I saw in the whole long process how she was less and less her body and more and more this big beautiful energy surrounding her body. By the time morning came, it was so clear that her body was nothing. No more than a garment. No more than the outer world that had held her. 

The burying ritual seemed odd in that she was not there. We were celebrating an empty body, the shell of her.

Leah had been initiated by Swamiji. She has the opportunity to take a human form in her next life. She has the opportunity for enlightenment.

This was the unbidden song  in my head the last two days; Diana Ross's version of "Ain't No Mountain High Enough" www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjCz_sUVZ5U