Nice Meditation

I wanted to pray and meditate this afternoon at 1 as my daughter was getting ready to start an important interview. I chanted, lit candles, prayed and meditated for half an hour, getting up sometimes to do a walking meditation down my hallway. Afterwards I finished up my Starbucks coffee and did 20 minutes on the treadmill at my rec center. I'm starting Summer of Hate by Chris Kraus which seems interesting. Her writing is very good although the book seems a little strange to me. But sometimes strange stories are good. I've been happy about my luck in finding most of the books I want to read at the Multnomah County library. Books can be expensive and I like to keep my hobbies cheap.

More books

I just got finished with my Anam Cara women's group. It was wonderful. Mary shared that when she does collage she only uses one magazine and gives herself 20 minutes to get it done. I'm going to try timing myself when I do a collage again. I wanted to mention two books, Gifted by Nikita Lalwani and The Garden of Lost and Found by Dale Peck. Both are excellent and I was able to check both of them out at the Mult

nomah County library.

Try these

Last week I got through two excellent books. They are Desirable Daughters by Bharati Mukherjee and Hand Me Down World by Lloyd Jones. I picked both of them up at the library. I've been listening to podcasts and looking at other blogs such as dodi-bellamy to find ideas for titles to read. I find I love reading and then writing or journaling about what they make me think about or how I feel about the stories.

I have started reading a lot in between writing spurts. This week I read Annie Dillard's Teaching a Stone to Talk and Kobo Abe's The Ark Sakura. I read not only for the story but to enjoy the writers style and learn from it. I've been spending hours reading and writing and the day flows in such an enjoyable pattern. I've also been checking out blogs. Try bomblog. Also I find the New Yorker Podcasts

to be very good.

November Sunday

I had a wonderful day today. I got up early and went to the eight o'clock service. Then I came home and changed into my sweats and got bundled up for a walk. I drove fifteen minutes to George Roger's Park in Lake Oswego. The weather was cold and foggy, just what I like to walk in. The park was magical with beautiful light and golden leaves all over. I did a forty five minute walk. Not bad. I came home and put on the Law of Attraction Radio which is something I'm really getting into. I just love the positive message and thought behind it. I'm getting ready to make some banana bread with the three frozen bananas I have in the freezer. Candles are on and I'll play some gentle music. I'll end with a prayer for a dream and if I get one tonight I'll write it down in the morning.

Waiting

Today I'm waiting for my new professional blog to get going. I'm going to be selling ebooks. I will still be posting at Writing Magically to try out new ideas and get my writing practice. A couple of days ago I went for a walk in downtown Lake Oswego. I find that although I love walking in the forests a walk downtown is interesting too.

New blog idea

I gave wonderful new ideas about getting another blog going and getting really into writing online. I'd like to become part of the social network. I find I love writing and I love sharing what I write with others. I just did my first Facebook post. It was exciting. Another new hobby that has come out of this is photography. I find I love carrying my camera with me when I walk and snapping pictures as I see them. A great site for women's writers and bloggers the She Writes blog. It has been a great resource for me.

Beautiful fall days

I've really been enjoying coming into fall this year. It has been sunny and cool, perfect weather for walking. I have been enjoying walking in the Portland area parks and have been going a few times a week with friends. I started out with twenty minutes but now I can walk for an hour. Most of the time I do forty or forty five minutes. I'm also including an hour and a half gentle yoga class on Fridays. All this exercise is keeping me relaxed and my stress level down. And just for fun I love Plushpussycat blog.

Anam cara group

I have just started with my anam cara group and I love it. So much that I'm planning to go to Ireland with them in the spring. We talked about our birth stories and how we feel about our births. The theme was arrival. I remember my mother in a happy way and I feel sad and positive at the same time. Kathleen v says we all suffer and witness suffering but we do not let it ruin our joy in life and all the beauty around us. I am working on a practice of walking, meditating and writing. This is how I write and get my inspiration. The is my personal focus.

Enery and the libido

Jung talks about how energy moves from the unconscious to the conscious and back again. He also talks about how this energy is tapped when we work. Consciousness takes energy and that energy can be exploited and trapped. What I want to do is to learn how to work yet keep my unconscious flowing. That would be the creative process. Also what becomes important is having a conscious conversation, not just one person doing all the talking. I'm very interested in conversation and how my energy flows well when I have one. I'm able to be very supporting yet I feel supported too. It starts by having a conversation with someone about things I'm interested in and sharing between us. Its amazing how much more energy I'm getting from being in therapy, writing back and forth in my writing group, walking or writing in nature and spending time with people who are interested in spirituality. When I'm in conversation I feel alert and in my body. The body is important too and psychic energy or libido from the unconscious to the conscious affects our bodies too. My body feels more secure when I'm in conversation or have had expression during the day. I feel happier and more energetic and I wonder how much isolation has to do with trapped and exploited libido. I

Jesus and the feminine

I'm getting more interested in Jesus. I'm interested in His relationship with the feminine and how Jesus supports my quest for incorporating more feminine spirituality into my life. The Communion can be a mix of masculine and feminine and you can eat the God. How did Jesus relate to His mother and wife? Did he have a daughter, Sarah? How is it to be in relationship with the King? There is joy and comfort yet Jesus suffers. We do not get away from suffering yet Jesus, in his feminine side, comforts us and shows us how to be human with out loosing the feminine. I am looking for a man who can show me the way to my feminine side and I think that man is Jesus. Jesus does have a good relationship to the body and doesn't reject it the way some people say He does. Jesus is in His body, is fully human and divine at the same time. We can have moments of that, maybe, with hard work. We have to look for Jesus and look for ourselves in Him, let Him mirror us and interpret Him in a way that mirrors us. That is relationship with God, just as God is mirrored by us and sees Himself through us. We mirror each other and just like us God has different aspects and personalities. We need to be in right relationship, not a relationship of rejection. God rejects Himself in those who He rejects, just like us. Jesus is a softer God while Hashem is still rejecting parts. Hashem rejects to be whole and to discover himself and what He wants to be. A more feminine, peaceful, spiritual leader and teacher is what I find and am discovering in Jesus.

Walking

I am now walking. In the forest, by the river, on a treadmill. Forty minutes this hot summer afternoon. A little bit more after dinner. Jennifer offering to show me trails in the parks and walk with me. I'm into the Earth. Working with Earth as an element and with fairy and fey energy. Taylor told me about a good book. I'm waiting for it from Amazon. The Earth is alive and the forest is alive. Walking gets me into a light trance state and then when I sweat and stop I feel in my body, my body is alive too and as Caryn says it has a wisdom of its own. What is really interesting is the body, being in the body and experiencing the body. Both in nature and in community. Being with others who like and accept my body, who love me. And me loving the feel of my body of my new hobby which is walking. Down to 227.4 Need to take of 20 lbs more this year and keep going. I don't need the weight anymore and the light trance state of walking is taking the place of the trance state of eating pasta or drinking wine.

Write On

I joined an online writing group called Write On. I'm excited about it as I have been taking my writing time more seriously. Although I'm not sure if it is at a professional level the processing I'm getting from doing all these hours of writing has been great. I have quite a bit of free time and if I fill it by journaling, blogging or writing on this new writing group I find myself feeling very productive and relaxed. On of the blogs I'm using is bethquick.blogspot.com She writes prompts for Scripture. Sometimes I like working with Scripture, especially if I can be creative with it. One of the things I'm working with is only being in relationships that I want to be in, not being taken hostage or coerced emotionally in any way. This can simply be not calling someone I don't feel like talking to, or not being emotionally available to people I don't want to mother. I find I was doing a lot of that because I was lonely. With the writing I'm starting to have myself. I feel I am becoming a person and I can dialogue with my new personhood.

new inner being

I have conjured up or worked up a new inner being, entity or way of being. This new animus figure has an inner mother/father figure and comes out as someone who is not always trying to please or entertain people. I feel very comfortable with my new inner dimension of self. I feel comfortable, less angry or bored and less stressed. I'm able to spend time by myself with out the monkey mind going off in my head. I'm able to forgive others, myself too, and move on. I feel present. One idea that keeps coming to mind is the need to build up. Its one thing to enjoy the mundane but building up in my life keeps me from being dulled. Too boring becomes a lack of internal parents. Building up is a way to keep from that deadly boredom of neurosis or from falling into addiction. Building up is a good sign. That's what Sarah did in the Torah.

Today

I went to my Jungian therapist today. I enjoyed the session but I feel I bore her. I brought in some drawings of my mother and father. Sometimes I don't feel right talking about my parental complex. I feel guilty as if its not nice to talk about your parents. My therapist said the work I'm doing isn't about my flesh and blood parents but about my inner parents that come out as my inner masculine and my inner feminine. She said that doing this work would help me to take care of myself better and to be more creative. Jung is magical. Speaking about magic I just got Josephine McCarthy's book Magical Knowledge in the mail. It is great so far and is talking about meeting inner figures and beings. I am very interested in inner work, especially as it really alleviates boredom for me. Sometimes the mundane is good, necessary, but sometimes so slow and boring. Inner work is interesting and exciting. In another book Josephine talks about lighting a candle as a threshold to the inner world. I think a lot of it is imagination but my therapist talks about projection and how our inner figures come out in dreams and in the real world. There is also a way to combine the inner world and the mundane world in lucid dreaming, but that is another topic. Dreams are also interesting and dream snippets or small dream memories can be good to work with too. I have Jung's Red Book and I am going to work with it and write about it when I get through Josephine McCarthy's very good books. Taylor Ellwood is another favorite author of mine. He is over at magicalexperiments.com

New blog

This is my first post on my new writing blog. I started this blog after realizing that I am wasting too much time watching the news on TV. I want to spend more time on my inner life and getting into the feminine side of my psyche. Part of the way I do that is by getting some body work done, like acupuncture or a massage. My body is becoming more and more important to me. Really. For the most part for most of the time I ignored it. Now I realize that doing inner work like writing and working with a therapist really works best if I can feel myself in my body. Even my meditation teacher told me meditation is all about being in your body. With the weather getting warmer I've been going for walks at night around 7:30 or 8. I walk and enjoy the warm breeze and the fading sunlight. I get into the greenery around me and notice the trees, plants and grasses. I've been walking about 20-25 minutes and then coming home and taking a hot shower. Then I usually try to sit in meditation and later have a glass of tea. I have noticed that after working my mind races and my body gets tense and rigid. That is where body work comes in so well. But I also noticed that body work can get boring if I do it all day. What works best for me is an hour or two a day and more on weekends. Having the discipline to write is good too. Writing makes me feel grounded and creative. Part of meditation, walking, being in nature is coming home to tell the story. My body has its own story and my therapist says it has its own intelligence. One my meditation teachers takes up a drum and uses it to get into the sound of the story he is telling. Sometimes I take up my deer drum and play a little before meditation or starting a journal entry. The sound gets my storytelling going.