I’ve been waiting for this morning. I’ve been writing for this moment.

A moment of clarity. Of kindness towards this body, this body’s experience.

I detailed my suffering, best as I could, through the previous blog posts. I wondered if it might be helpful to read later, if it might reveal a pathway. If I might be able to follow it again. It’s been an experiment in holding myself, paying attention.

Holding myself doesn’t equal peace. Holding myself equals noticing and observing everything which happens. I have been the observer. (Thank you all the beings in my life for the pointers towards noticing!)

I visit Lone Pine regularly. I sit under their branches, sit beside the big root which erupts from the rocked embankment and roots, deep and deeper and deepest to pull water from under rock and dirt.

I wonder, when we love the land, does the land begin to help us work through our troubles?

Through symbol and metaphor Lone Pine helps me and has helped others, too. How does Lone Pine help me?

I haven’t noticed until this moment the way the water’s release from the dam– big, big sprays of water under pressure– mimics my own rise of the blockages in the unconscious erupting into conscious.

I haven’t noticed until now the way Lone Pine drinks from the water however it can, like I might drink from the unconscious made conscious, the invisible made visible, grateful for the opportunity to be freed from pain by going through pain.

I haven’t noticed until now how the felled mountains, eroded into rocks, become rocks eroded by water and weather. How rocks become beauty and beauty and beauty and beauty. I, too, have grown more beautiful by erosion, by weather.

I haven’t noticed until now: small pines and flowers and plants I cannot identify, grow and flourish among the chunks of concrete and rusted iron rebar from the dynamite-blasting of the energy-hungry seekers. I am the plant and the beauty among the blasted-out bits of my childhood.

I notice I am wary of grasping onto all this beauty I’m seeing. The swing of pendulum from beauty to fear (and memory) is a swing I experience in my heart and my body. So tense and painful my muscles! So weary my body from the onslaught of the unconscious blocks. Be wary of grasping. Be wary. Let it all flow through. Pain and Joy.

The need for safety is something I’ve been noticing. And, underneath this need:

• I want a heating pad along my low back and/or low belly.

• I want to hear someone reassuring me about how there is a pathway forward. I would also like instructions, life-hacks, pro-tips. I ask for help and the help comes from people I love, from the beings I love, from the observer who is observing all of this.

• I want to center self-care and I’m confused about self-care: juice, silence, soothing music, walks in nature, stillness in nature, stretching, going to sleep early, waking up early, waking up whenever I want, napping whenever I want, moving when I feel low energy, talking to others, meditating, being all alone and doing nothing.

• I notice I envision safety as as being loved by anyone and everyone.

Isn’t that funny? I want to be loved by anyone and everyone!!!! I want to make them see me, love me, listen to me, want to hear me, make myself irresistable! So much want accumulates when the small girl feels the betrayal, the harm, the embrace of love and the withdrawal of love. I have so much love in my life. I have all of the love I have ever wanted. I remember. I likely will forget again. I have forgotten many times. So great is the harm the small child endured.

I’m trying to make the invisible visible. Yes, to pain! Yes, to pain! No need to skip over the mud stage of the lotus growing through the mud! That would be cheating. Not seeing reality. Clear seeing requires a willingness to see pain, to experience it. The practices of the Warrior for the Human Spirit help in this regard.

Some clarity/honesty: I notice other writers, other storytellers, other facilitators, other teachers, other culturally-aware humans and I want what they have, the safety of being someone who listens to themselves and is heard by someone in their group. This want feels like jealousy and I hate feeling jealous because it feels like I’m being the lowest of the low of who I am. I have rejected jealousy as embarrassing, immature. I have rejected myself as embarrassing and immature. I have wanted to feel superior to this feeling and have thus attempted to experiencing superiority over others. And, here I am, admitting to my jealousy! Suddenly, I also feel like laughing.

Hello, envious Instagrammer Mar’ce!

Hello, jealous Leo-in-the-limelight Mar’ce! Hello Mar’ce who would love to learn the secret of being whole through any cultural practice/belief I notice! Such a seeker I’ve been. Such a seeker I am!

Hello, girl who could not listen for fear she wouldn’t have a chance to speak! Welcome. Welcome to the party we’re throwing for you!!

What might this party be?

• Photos of you posted everywhere with waterballoons filled with orange and blue- the liminal colours of dawn and twilight- to throw at your green eyes?

• How about a big pinata in the shape of your body and filled with candy? (thanks to my sister for the pinata idea) We can hit her with big sticks and let all the love out!

• A rock cairn with something inside, some scroll of symbols showing the seasons of your life, the time loops of joy and love, of despair and fear?

• A funeral for who you have been. A celebration ritual for you who have always been! Both are true.

Somehow it feels I’m zooming past of all these rituals already, as if they’ve happened and I’m just now noticing.

The sun is here. The birds call. A swallow family with brilliant blue wings (the colour of twilight) nests only 10 feet from where I sit. What do they know of my fingers tapping? How do they react to the humming sounds I make? What do they feel when I am silent? Me, Silent: when the stillness flows through me, like water, like energy, like sound vibrations, not heard. Sound vibrations, felt.

What will today hold? I have so much more to say, but the moment is calling me and I don’t want to write anymore. I’ll come back later. I promise myself.