Peacock Dreams

The heart is the only nation. - Ruth Barrett and Cyntia Smith

What borders do we draw? What walls do we build? Which are necessary to our well being, and which are simply a reaction of our wounded animal, trying never to be hurt again?

It is right to say, "enough!" And other times we have to take another risk.

Last night, I ate a strawberry. As flavor burst upon my tongue, I gave thanks for my embodiment. Last night, I stood on a hill under a gibbous moon and kissed my lover while warm wind blew. An owl perched nearby, then silently left on the hunt.

My heart used to be more guarded, and with good reason. Now, I celebrate my lack of pain with strawberries and kissing in the wind. I have so much love around me - from so many - that my heart would burst were it still so constrained.

What borders are around your heart? Do you still need them?

What do you celebrate? What draws you in to love?

Being cognizant of the threshold itself, a kind of stillness appears. And with it, perhaps, a realization that one has been asleep. There can be a dawning of consciousness in these moments of transition, if one is able to become still enough to perceive them...

If one is able to stop, one can become sensitive to the presence of another energy. It is as if an abyss fraught with possibilities has appeared. We are in front of a call. - William Segal, from an interview with Marvin Barrett

You probably know about the devastating cyclone that hit Myanmar. You may also know that the military junta is making it very difficult to get aid into the country. Well, a way to help has come in the form of the International Burmese Monks Organization. By donating through Avaaz, the monasteries will get the money directly and channel it into food, shelter, and medical care.


And to brighten your day, via Content Love, here is Isabella Rossellini enacting educational insect porn. I highly recommend watching them all. You may (ahem!) learn something, plus there is interesting gender weirdness happening, which I enjoy in most any form. Add Rossellini in a variety of bug costumes having sex and what's not to like?

If your heart is not open, what shall open you? Suckle on the golden breasts. Be joyous in your pain. Dance. Be singular. Know that you are one with all. - LVX

I'm off to Bodega Bay to celebrate, to dance, to toast, to kiss. I will return in time for Cora's funeral. Today is Victor and Cora's anniversary, and one of mine as well, for I am blessed with love. Today is a day of joy and full immersion in life's goodness. Even pain is a reminder that life emerges in every second, just as death is a constant occurence. Every breath brings in life and dying both. We are singular. Every exhalation is connection. We are one with all.

Cora Anderson taught by living and she taught in her dying. She taught by cooking, and watching, and listening. She taught by lying in bed and telling stories. She taught by asking for what she needed, when her body was failing. She wielded a wand as she used to wield a broom. She taught by intense love and sometimes by strong words. Cora taught with her whole life. May life continue to give us teaching, and may we continue to be open to the lessons that are in front of us. Every breath can teach us something, if we let it.

I hope you all have a glorious day.

Cora Anderson, Feri Queen, crossed over this morning at 1am.

I was in the midst of a sacred Beltane rite at that time, lit by candles. This morning, the bells of the Morris dancers were joyous as the sun rose over green hills.

We will miss her.

I said what I needed to say yesterday.

Here is a lovely gift from VeeDub, from a picture of Victor and Cora when they were young.

And Onyx wrote this, and Morpheus, this.

There is a three day vigil planned for her, if you wish to light a candle to aid her spirit, and in her memory.

Sex and death, the cycle continues. What is remembered, lives.

It is Walpurgisnacht and my teacher is dying. There is a bale fire in my heart.

Gate gate, para gate.

We sing. We chant. We sit. We breathe. Every fire needs fuel. Every student needs a lesson.

Her skin is translucent. There is blood in the corners of her mouth. Her eyes are clouded, barely open.
She struggles to speak. "I love you," she says. "I love all of you."

(Water, engulf me.)

We lean in close to catch her words. "Thorn, take my heart." or was it "Thorn, take my hurt." We clear her body of pain. She rests.

Tubes and bruises. Her spirit hovers.

Parasam gate, bodhisvaha.

She insists on speaking to her son on the phone. Urgent. She tells him, struggling, barely able to speak, "I love you. You've done the right thing. I love you and D and T."

Yes. It all ends up in love.

(Fire, scorch my skin.)

She clutches my hand so long my fingers swell. Life is still present.

"I am going in and out," she says. We see her. Victor is there too, at the foot of her bed.

Gate, gate, para gate.

"Is it May 3rd?" Not yet, Cora. Saturday. Her and Victor's anniversary.

God Herself fills space and time. Fills the room. Including everything, we fall away.

(Air, suck my breath.)

Light is in extension. Stars wheel. Time ceases. There is only the hum of all.

The nurses aid is named Luz. Light. Breath. Stars.

Parasam gate, bodhisvaha.

Tonight, is the coming together. Of old, fires blazed on the tops of hills. The veils are thin, they say. The veils into the realms of faerie. The veils of birth. The veils of death.

Tonight, is the pleasure of the flesh. Tonight, there is dancing in the barrows.

(Earth, receive me in.)

Tomorrow morning, we will rise before dawn to watch Morris troupes dance up the sun. We will drink steaming tea on the hillcrest, and stamp our feet in the cold.

Tomorrow, Cora returns to her home, her bed. She will die in the lavender room, not this white place of machines. It is her wish.

Parasam gate, bodhisvaha.

It is Walpurgisnacht and Cora is dying. There is a need fire in my heart.

People are gathering, in spirit and in body. Lessons to be learned.

(Into the arms of Mystery, my spirit soars. Open the gates!)

Something new is coming.

Sshhhh. Await!

There are food riots and wars and economic collapse and dying animals and insects. All this, a buzzing in the base of the skull: the reptile brain knows something feels quite wrong.

And there are trees that tower above me. Ferns and horsetails. To walk in the cathedral of Muir Woods is to be firmly placed in cycle: Things grow. Things fall. Things rot and dissolve and new things grow. Life and incarnation take many forms. The animal is reassured. It stretches like a redwood toward a distant canopy.

The world tree spans the spaces of the heart. We are that tree. Extending up and down and into each other's lives. The soul stretches now. We are molecules in motion and in rest. The world tree spans the spaces of the heart.

After walking in the trees, there was a motorcycle ride to Sausalito. Dinner on the water. Sunlight. Laughter. And then home, stretched out like trees next to each other. The Gods seem pleased. The molecules stretch further out and in.

There are food riots and wars and economic collapse and dying animals and insects. The world tree spans the spaces of the heart. We are a cycle. We are now. There is no way to parse the difference.

To be sensual, I think, is to respect and rejoice in the force of life, of life itself, and to be present in all that one does, from the effort of loving to the breaking of bread. – James Baldwin, from The Fire Next Time

Presence. How are we present? We learn to pay attention. We pay attention, first to one thing, then to five things simultaneously. We pay attention to the sunlight streaming through the kitchen window. We see it hitting the water glass we are filling at the sink, just as we hear the rush of water, and the birds outside, and feel our hand holding smooth glass, our feet on the cool kitchen floor, and our breath, always our breath, moving quietly through our bodies.

We are children of earth. Sensual beings. The senses inform our lives, if we allow ourselves to be in-formed. When the mind is racing, there is little presence and no new information can be taken in.

Last night, I had the good fortune to sit in on a study group of Ouspensky's In Search of the Miraculous with philosopher Jacob Needleman. To one woman's question about how to give herself permission to open to information and change, he took her through the first layers of attention: the physical. Butt on the chair, where your spine is, where your hands are... He said, "When you know this, you have attention. When you are unaware of this, you have no attention." Simple.

Physical beings, our attentive practice begins always with the physical. Then we move on to the emotional. Only then should we pay attention to the mind.

Most of us approach this in a backward fashion, giving the undisciplined mind free reign to tug on emotions and subsume the body. The only observation we may be able to engage in at that point, is no observation at all, but the substitute of psychologizing. We psychologize and think we are being present to ourselves. Really, we are just making up new stories to feed our emotions.

What is the light like right now, where you are? What is your body doing? How flows the breath?

Like James Baldwin, we can be present, and rejoice in the force of life.

Mmmmm. Yes.

Stillness. Then Motion


When your mind wonders, pause a moment.
Listen to your soul. What is the deeper question?

We get caught up in wondering:
Emotion fraught, brain turning cogs and wheels.
But the quiet contemplation of the stillness in our belly
Yields a different fruit. Juicy.
Something in us coils to pluck the sun warmed globe.
We are alive, and shimmer in the air.

First, the bees were in trouble...

Now it is the bats.

It is almost a cliche to say that every day is Earth Day, even though as a Pagan, I try to practice that. Since it was the named "Earth Day", however, I decided to check out my carbon footprint. I've been making changes toward ramping down my travel schedule for awhile, because I suspected that my carbon footprint was too high. Yep. Turns out that is entirely too true. Walking, bicycling, composting, recycling, and eating organic food is not enough to offset the amount of air travel I do. My travel needs to be cut in half, not only to maintain my physical health, but for the health of the other species on the planet. I've said before that I hope the work I do is worth the expenditure of jet fuel, but life has been nagging at me to make some different choices. We shall see what doors may open.

On one leg of my flight home Sunday night, after an incredible weekend teaching at Diana's Grove, I sat next to a woman coming home from Fort Sam Houston in Texas. Her daughter was being shipped back to Iraq for the third time. The woman spoke of all the amputees and burn victims she had seen at the medical facility there. She talked about how difficult it was to see that, and to send her daughter off again after she'd been injured. And she spoke of her hopes that all the soldiers would be sent home soon. I gave her a protection amulet a friend had made me, strung with beads and an Isis pendant, and asked if she would send it to her daughter. I noticed she herself was wearing an Egyptian necklace, so figured she might not be offended by the offer. She thanked me, of course. And said she thought her daughter would appreciate it. A gesture from a stranger, after a moment's connection.

But that is what this life is about, isn't it? Moments of connection.

The issues we face are so large - war, increased population, over-consumption, multinational corporate pollution - and the scale so far reaching, that there is no way to truly gauge the impact of one human being. But that does not mean I won't keep trying to increase my impact toward that which helps, rather than toward that which harms.

We all have a choice. Every moment.

Meanwhile, I keep breathing deeply, and am thankful for the small things: snap peas, roses, and finch's song in California; puffed up cardinals and swaying tree houses in Missouri; concerned mothers and fathers everywhere. And for the good work of engaged people.

I posted this on LiveJournal in the Feri and victor-cora groups, but then recieved an email from someone who checks my website's blog inquiring as to how Cora is doing, because I haven't posted about her lately. So below is the report from Monday's visit. Basically, her 93 year old body is really tired. My impression from the last two visits is that she's spending more time out of body lately.

I finally got to visit Cora today. Usually I make it once a month, but it had been a bit over that because of a more intense travel schedule than usual.

Loki and I visited together. Cora was not doing well. Very tired from a pain pill, she perked up a bit near the end. We cleared and blessed the house because she was complaining about things not feeling right. Usually I just do her room when she requests help, but she insisted on the whole house this time.

We did energy work on her, too, as usual. And she requested singing. We sang the usual chants and her favorite, Amazing Grace. Then it dawned on me that she'd probably like some older tunes, so out trotted "Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree" and "Chattanooga Choo Choo," both of which she remarked on. She and Victor used to sing the former and the latter, he would play on accordian. I then sang "Unchained Melody", which put her to sleep.

When I asked if there were any prayers she wanted said, she had two requests: one is that she'll be allowed to stay at home until she dies and the second is that people whom she hasn't seen for a long time will come to visit. She said she would last 'til May to get through their wedding anniversary (May 3rd) and Victor's birthday (May 21).

Cora also related a dream she had recently about a Red Angel, like a naked baby. She asked if it was Herbert (her brother who died) and it said "yes." And she said Victor had been to visit a lot. We did a Star Goddess meditation with her and then it was time to go.

As we left, I quipped to M. that she put up with a lot of weird people. She remarked that she would never call us weird, as to her, we were always nice. She then told us a Victor story. One day he was sitting at the kitchen table and remarked that there was something strange going on with the neighbors in the next house over. He told M. that he visited them on the astral to check it out. M. scolded, "If you ever travel to my house, just make sure I don't see you!" We all had a good laugh about that.

So, if you know anyone who hasn't been to visit Cora in a long time, let them know she requests their presence. Soon.

Respect your form. Respect your strength. Respect your grace. Respect your soul. Respect your life. Live fully, ever after. - LVX

My friend Anne tagged me to write about what I am passionate about. Here is an answer, not following the Meme:Passion Quilt rules because I just don't wanna:

The answer, in a nutshell, is Practice. Saw that coming, didn't you? Breath work. Meditation and alignment. Daily exercise of some sort. Green vegetables, drinking water, and not eating garbage. No television... You get the idea. Showing up to my life with as much attention as is within my capacity.

Passion: I gravitate toward things that feed me deeply, challenge me, and give me sublime enjoyment. Delicious food gives happiness. Sitting on my meditation bench gives happiness. Walking, bicycle riding, and dancing give happiness. Spiritual reading gives happiness. Friends + wine + talking about magic gives happiness. What gives you happiness? What makes you feel strong, beautiful, happy, and centered? What makes you feel like you are open to the whole world? That is the thing that only you can bring to us all. Follow it and let anything that does not support that begin to fall away.

Anyone who takes a class with me knows I also have passion for Good Posture - both inside and out. This goes hand in hand with my first passion. I see people caved in on themselves. The will is squashed by collapsing onto the solar plexus. Lives and quests are diminished by compressing the spine. Energy is thwarted. Plans go awry. Life force diminishes. People learn to dislike their bodies and to feel trapped in their jobs. Passion is squeezed out. So for me, passion begins in the core, and that core is both a body reality and a spirit reality. The core is the strong stomach and erect spine that form the lattice that our body hangs upon. The core is the diligence of showing up every day to practice, as the balance of our lives also hangs there. The core is choosing vital food and vital company and vital occupation of our time. The core is folded, spindled, and mutilated at our peril, and the peril of all we touch with our lives. Seek out the core, center around it, strengthen and stretch it. Your passion should feed your core and your core should hold up your passion.

I'm passionate about the work of a strong soul in a beautiful body on a blessed planet. The strong and supple core radiates outward, shining for us all to see.

Speaking of passion and practice, have you ever noticed that chapter three of the Book of the Law is about the inner jihad, much as the Bhagavad Gita? (Happy days of the writing of the book, for the Thelemites out there.) What is important enough for you to stand tall to protect, or support, or nurture, or defend? Passion is there, too.

The silence of the temple resounds through all the worlds. Seek the stillness at the center. - LVX



I am humbled and continuously opened by the Work. These last weekends of teaching were gifts to my soul. And the weather in Canada turned out to be gorgeous... Off to scrub soup pots now. Chop wood, carry water.

Blessed be.

When someone asks "Who are you?" what do you answer?

Do you cultivate Being, or simply existence?

What is your wish?



Off to Ontario (Canada. Brrr.). Have a good weekend.

Only he will be called and will become Son of God who acquires in himself conscience. - G. I. Gurdjieff

We have divine nature, and are part and parcel of divinity, yet we only come to this in fullness when consciousness arises and descends. I say arises and descends because there must be foundation within us through which our consciousness grows, lifting from the fuel of life, struggle, joy, complacency, and sex. Slowly, consciousness dawns, peeking out from the veils of personality and fear. We awaken. This awakening is also a descent of the numinous, the supernal, down into our being. In the arising from our microcosm, simultaneously something descends from the macrocosm to greet us. These parts-of-self and connected-to-yet-also-beyond-parts-of-self embrace one another and we come home: fully human and fully divine.

Soul alignment is the daily, minute to minute practice of opening the pathway both up and down, in and out. We align all of our parts of being with divinity. We grow into our Godhood.

The golden sun of Knowledge resides in the heart. Radiating.

Have a blessed day.


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On a side note - and a plug for book selling friends - there is a new book from Parabola Magazine called The Inner Journey: Views from the Gurdjieff Work edited by Jacob Needleman. The link is to Field's Books, where all Gurdjieff related titles are currently discounted!

I find it amusing that British musician David Gray has been around long enough to have a "Best of" album, but I heard him for the first time in an organic food restaurant in Edinburgh a couple of weeks ago. A young hipster woman was singing along quietly, so I asked who it was and made a note in my phone, (along with a note to look up Freak Folk singer Joanna Newson who turns out to be almost local), thinking he was someone new. Well, only new to me is what he turned out to be.

I'm off to Denver tomorrow to teach in rain and slush, but will give a brief update:

I have reconfigured my daily practice and it is proving very satisfying and helpful, as is evident by the fact that I'm back up to one hour in the morning. Yummy. This improves my whole day exponentially, permeating my work and Work.

I've been studying again outside my tradition, though as a mystic, all traditions are mine, really. Re-reading "The Chemical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz," dipping into Sonia Choquette for the first time, and dusting off the Evelyn Underhill.

I spent a good Sunday visiting with old friends, going for a walk along the coast, eating delicious food and drinking mimosas. Much laughter was had.

The vigil for the war dead was on Monday. A lot of vets showed up, including an old Feri friend who helped organize, and Cindy Sheehan spoke. A really cold wind was blowing, so much so that the 4000 candles in cups we were trying to light would not stay lit, much to the chagrin of the TV news folk. They valiantly filmed away until we gave up. A reporter even came up to me asking if we were going to light the candles. I explained about the wind and she looked stricken, obviously needing that shot in the can. She then said, "But are you leaving??" Which I was, off to a dinner date, though I told her I'd passed my lighter on. She was not reassured. The friend I'd passed it to remarked, "Yes, but you are much more photogenic than I" after she walked away, to which I tskd and rolled my eyes. All I can say is, television is weird and I wish there was a way to end this war and bring succor to the people of Iraq.

Life is really good, melancholy strains of David Gray and the actions of the US government notwithstanding. I've a lot of projects in the hopper, including a chants CD, new DVD (eventually), the new book turned into the publisher (until they need corrections, and of course I've already been told by my inner voice that a new short segment is needed), and other things cooking slowly, including an eventual website re-do. Meanwhile, I'm also watering the baby plants, riding my bicycle, attending dance class and eating delicious food. On top of it all, there is a lot of love, so much that I'm swimming in it.

I'm splashing some outward for whomever wants or needs some.

LVX amor - Thorn

Unfortunately, yesterday the toll of US soldiers dead in Iraq reached 4000.

A candlelight vigil will be held tonight, Monday, at 7pm in the San Francisco Civic Center. Bring candles. Do not bring signs or placards, please, at the request of the Veterans for Peace. Note the time change - 7pm, not 6.

What is remembered, lives.

...the stronger the forces of destruction appeared, the more intense grew the spiritual vision which opposed them. We learn from these records that the mystical consciousness has the power of lifting those who possess it to a plane of reality which no struggle, no cruelty, can disturb: of conferring a certitude which no catastrophe can wreck. Yet it does not wrap its initiates in a selfish and otherworldly calm, isolate them from the pain and effort of the common life. Rather, it gives them renewed vitality; administering to the human spirit not - as some suppose - a soothing draught, but the most powerful of stimulants. Stayed upon eternal realities, that spirit will be far better able to endure and profit from the stern discipline which the race is now called to undergo, than those who are wholly at the mercy of events; better able to discern the real from the illusory issues, and to pronounce judgement on the new problems, new difficulties, new fields of activity now disclosed.
- Evelyn Underhill, from Practical Mysticism


Hail Jesus! Hail Osiris! Hail Hildegard! Hail Odin! Hail Ing! Hail Hallaj! Hail Rumi! Hail Dionysus! Hail Mirabai! Hail Brigid! Hail Lalla! Hail Teresa! Hail to mystic Gods and divine humans! Hail the impulse to unfolding the mysterious and real.

All hail to the mystic rose of consciousness that rises within the prepared soul! Come down from the mountain and greet your friends.

In my part of California - despite what I was taught as a baby Pagan - our seasons reflect the Eleusinian Mysteries in that things die in the summer and are revived in the winter. Spring is still special here, but for different reasons than in northern climates. Life giving rain has made that which was brown and gold, bright green again. Everything gives thanks when the strengthening sun sheds its light on the glory of color: purple, yellow, orange, and shades of green.

Perhaps because the axial event happened close to 10pm last night, I seem to be celebrating a two day equinox this spring. Yesterday, I bought a bicycle in celebration of the abatement of the winter rains, and to be able to journey more comfortably to places just outside my walking radius. I also got a rather odd psychic reading for the fun of it (remind me to write up my rant about reincarnation someday).

Today, I was up early to do my prayers and answer a few emails, and have since been out walking in the sunshine. Balance occurs in moments of grace, I find, in white flowers on the sidewalk, running squirrels, California poppies, and calling crows. There is newly planted sage, lavender, rosemary, and thyme in our pocket-sized front garden, replacing the grass that had started taking over. A small faery planted them. I plan to ride said bicycle later while meditating on all the blessings my life holds. Perhaps I will purchase some California cheese and wine to go with the beautiful greens filling up the refrigerator.

To close, on a less strictly nature-based note, here is a ray of wacky sunshine from the Onion.

No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.
– James Madison

Five years, this time around. On my way home from Europe last Sunday, I sat next to an Iraqi man who now lives in Abu Dhabi. We were talking about the economy, world politics, and war, and I said something about getting arrested during "what we call the first Gulf War," and he replied "Oh. That is the second Gulf War." Right. US involvement doesn't mean it hasn't happened before.

My friends and I sat zazen once a week in front of the Federal Building for a year. The day of Mission Accomplished people shouted at us that the war was over and we should get up and go home. Our meditation was not disturbed and the war, unfortunately, was not over. In fact, the bulk of deaths have happened since that day in 2003.

US dead are now counted at 3992. Veterans for Peace Chapter 69 in San Francisco have planned a candlelight vigil at the Civic Center in front of City Hall, 6pm for the day that number reaches 4000. This not a demonstration, but a silent vigil to mourn all the dead, soldiers and civilians alike. Civilian deaths from violence are documented at around 85,000, by the way, with total deaths closer to 1,200,000. I'm sending out a call for us all to look for or organize vigils in our own towns. The day is fast approaching.

Meanwhile, George W. Bush claims the war in Iraq is a success. Perhaps the Iraqi man I sat next to would agree. He commented that they never thought the Saddam Hussein regime would end, but would continue with his son and grandchildren. That is one thing, I suppose. But at what cost? How much money and how many lives? And couldn't we have spent the trillion dollars helping those people in some other way?

I cannot imagine living under a despot. Neither can I imagine seeing my home torn to shreds by war.

See you on the streets, by candlelight.