Red Alert

It's Friday, October 23rd, and according to "The Daily View Gate 50.5 - 'If it's not broken, don't fix it,' is theme today."

What happens when it's your heart?

What happens when you get news about incoming gamma-ray bursts, experience abrupt unfriending/rejection from a dear woman (with whom you've been close friends for over 15 years!), and hear from another friend that her husband has just passed?

Couldn't there be some kind of warning? A red alert??

It's not easy to remember there's some Higher Order. That this is exactly the time we chose to be here - and for this reason.

One line of Rumi's poems is:

"The cure for pain is in the pain."

Yes. I feel this to be so. To be so present for all of the emotions and allow them to shake through you like an earthquake.

To trust that your heart breaking (again?!) is expanding to make space for more love and light.

That by owning the grief, you are transmuting it.

These experiences leave their mark on us - which was a great reason for me to get clear about my stance:

Were the stories I was telling myself about these experiences taking me on a positive spiral - or a negative one? Was I in victim - or victor - mentality? Could I get to neutral?

I was thinking about this when Tony arrived and we walked down to the river. He's taken numerous tracking and wilderness survival classes with Tom Brown.

He explained how these marks told the story of a raccoon pouncing on a river rat.

Then, a little experiment in panning for gold...

It's good to remember there is gold mixed in with the dirt, there are clouds with silver linings, and there are cures for pain in the pain - even when life gives no advanced warnings.

I'm holding us all in my ever-expanding heart.