DatingGod: Sybil Goes Granola
This entry from katherine regarding her morning spiritual exercises reminded me of this - what i think may be one of the final chapters in my book. and a good thing it was, too - because i discovered i had never pasted it into my diary let alone my book.

so thank you katherine.

as always when i post book chapters any commentary whether it pertain to the content or to the writing itself is welcome. thanks. it might be nice of me to mention that following bekah's death, if i felt fallow or empty about what to write i would sometimes practice stichomancy, using the deepak chopra desk calendar that bekah gave me for christmas in - wow! not sure, i think 1999. also, most of the book was written in the form of letters to bekah. so you know, she is the baby...:)

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The inner experience of meditation can be had without any kind of forced discipline. The outer trappings – how one sits, breathes, dresses, and so forth – are irrelevant. - Deepak Chopra

01-20-03 late a.m. early p.m.

Oh yeah baby this dude sends me straight into a trance. This statement is – well, the word that springs to mind is ridiculous.

Okay. I’m trying to fathom what the fuck this is supposed to mean. Basically it looks like he’s saying you don’t have to meditate with attention to the pastime by making sure you are comfortable, by breathing from your toes to your crown, or whatever.
Do you need a quiet space free of distraction? Or can you have an “inner experience” of meditation while, for instance, standing in an hour-long line and then taking a seat on a rollercoaster and going for a ride on that monster? As I sit here explicating the diminishment of the respect I once held toward Chopra am I partaking of the inner experience of meditation?
I don’t think so; in fact meditation as I understand it does not want one to apply thought to any single idea – if thought goes there, then meditation would counsel one not to follow it with any concentration – the concentration in meditation is kind of anti-concentration, except to that very task.
I’ve an image, loosely a tunnel, or a hall, and what I concentrate on is the need to release my thoughts, to blow by my thoughts as I am swept by concentration to the core of spirit.
I am who I am. It is a given that there will always be thoughts. But just as I give myself permission not to attend to them while meditating, I give them permission to wander about the grounds.
If I tried to shut thought out, the meditation would surely either fail, or grow beyond meditation to true hypnosis, or I would fall asleep, sedated by my thoughts that would not stand for their attempted exclusion.
So – roaming thoughts, like a crowd of strangers. Spirited meditation creates its own setting though I’ve been prepped and taught about visualizations. That is the first leg of the trip. Later I go elsewhere – the tunnel, the cave by the ocean. The lovely meadow and the gate and the huge tree give way to walkways, paths, where spirit – at least that “Sam” dude – walks and I can see him, smiles broadly, showers affection upon me.
With Grandma Blanche, in retrospect, I cannot say with total confidence that I saw her. It’s like I did see her but the way I might in dreams: I know it’s Grandma Blanche regardless of what she looks like.
And right now I have a memory of Grandma Blanche, and a memory of the cave where I first realized that she is my guide, and visually speaking the memory of the cave is very sketchy regarding how she looked. But that it was Grandma Blanche, that was abundantly clear.
I think Aunt Geri is near too.
Anyhow. This my experience, meditation, communing with Spirit, all of that, takes faith to be fruitful. Especially if I’m to meditate alone. In circle, at church, etc., there is a collective energy applied that is powerful; enough to knock out doubts that might impinge on a solitary meditation enough to nullify it altogether.
Anyhow – Bekah – I love you. I wish you were here, in the flesh, breathing, laughing, doing your growing and your learning back on earth.
You gave me this calendar, and I love you for it. I appreciate your concern for me, and do conclude that I am your mother and you were my daughter and you are my daughter always. Though roles may eventually reverse because of the deplorable interference of your destiny by the worst crime we know of.
I need not worry beyond the confidence of being your mother. I can speculate but even that would be effectively worrying it don’t you think?
All is done; the destinies were rewritten in the space of one final heartbeat. The space of your death – what unfolds from here to when we are together again and even to when one or both of us returns to a mortal state for another life – these transpirations perhaps scripted in haste, under duress, and also subject to unforeseen – well, we’ll go as we go and learn as we go, right?
Oh, yeah, I should not forget – we’ll decide as we go, and between all that even without the capricious and homicidal actions of another, we will decide and continually decide. We’ll use our minds and minds do change.
For not the first and not the last time the unchanging and immutable element pipes up, saying minds, yes, but not this most vital aspect, that which has in the past, does now, and always will speak to the most basic of needs, fulfilling them through lives after lives, validating those whose lives appear to have ended, maybe, if you like, the aspect that finds a way for virtually anyone to feel acceptance of destiny even if it has been altered from without….

Do you know? Yeah. Love.

I could argue over a lot of things. Without your brilliance, your affirmations, manifestations, without goose bumps or cosmic rhymes dropping in to keep my spirit on its toes, etc., without all that and more, I would just withdraw, maybe even shut off my awareness of love, reception to love, issuance of love. And mourn my altered destiny until I catch up to you by dying, much weaker and sadder than had to be….

But Love, keep me open. Your love is free to be wherever and whenever it wants or needs to be.

Someday maybe fairly soon I will know it to be true…
until then, I will simply believe.

XXXOOO Mom

meantime I will nurture
all I may
by the grace
of infinite love

and gratefully partake
grow strong on
depend upon
infinite love

Okay…Words run out, mind tired, life intrusive, accusatory. Because of my faults and weaknesses they ramble near senselessness, or so it seems that may be true…
(Birds chirping from outside my window)
But the hand, Bek! It insists, and it is digging into a tired field of answers that may not always make a perfect fit to the question but must satisfy it nonetheless.
In this pile, validation, over there, intuition…my five senses never abandoned me yet but appear gratuitous to the wisdom that must grow the soul big enough and strong enough to carry the love on past the shocking wrongs.
All the help I need is at my disposal and the outcome for me is up to me. Because your life was stolen prematurely against that thing that defines me (and you, and all who love you), and I could not change it, it was fact.
It whipped it some, yes. To my will, your will, the wills of those who love you Bekah, and still survive over here, it was a blow of great proportion.
So in the field I reclaim my will and as I do, I notice that it is a mighty will. It has always been. The forces that tried, still try, to break it: they cannot break it Bekah.
It’s been too well-fed. When it needed to retreat it did, joining you in non-places, we partnered Bekah in this endeavor to triumph.
And triumph is certain – yours, all over the spirit, love, and serenity you impart when you visit this plane with your copious love that nourishes me…back to health, wholeness, a commitment to life within an unusually close attachment to death and the determination and agreement between you and me that at the most basic and important level of who we are – our souls – we love and find within love peace, happiness, hope, and each other. amen

I love you Bekah-la – mom
- posted by barbara @ 1/07/2004 11:13:00 PM