The thousands of little swimmers from your Dad had to swim like crazy in the cosmos of the biological/mystical/feminine realms of the sphere of beginnings in the human body. The sought after egg must have looked like the planet Jupiter to the madly pressing forward swimmers. The best swimmer won (and the rest expired with satisfaction, knowing they gave their all), and voila, you had a beginning as one destined to have a human experience and navigate inside a body and psyche unique to you.

Every so often I am stunned at how like my mother I am becoming in some very fundamental ways. Following not far behind that awareness is the utter knowing of the ways I am a replica of aspects of my father, so like him I might as well be him. But . . . my parents are very different from one another. I am a living, breathing amalgamation, and that is where all the hope for life exists, in the knowledge that the unique combination of two different 'codes', if you will, has never been here before, not like this, not like you.

Each one of us is potentially 'the hope of the world.' (No pressure there!) By carrying elements that are so different and getting them to work in combination, that is how evolution has its way with us. Add a big dose of free will to do what we will with our potential and you have what can only be described as the keys to a very grand adventure. We are all Indiana Jones.

When I was trekking in Nepal, I purchased a beautifully carved wooden cane to help ascend those rocky rocky paths that relentlessly drove us upwards. When we would come to small Nepalese villages, my cane would always attract massive admiration by the villagers who had not seen its like, so clearly, it was an item of value to them.

Upon returning to Kathmandu, post-trek, I rode in a rickshaw driven by a young Nepalese man who took me to where I was staying. It was only after he left that I realized I had left the cane in the rickshaw, and he was long gone. I was sad at the loss but prepared to just let it go.

Several hours later, I was told someone was looking for me. It was the rickshaw driver. He had only discovered the cane after he was far away. He drove all the way back (Kathmandu is big and ranging and crowded) which took him over an hour to return it to me. I was thrilled and wanted to recompense him and he would accept nothing. To him, it was just a matter of doing the right thing. Knowing how this item appealed to those in his culture, he made an a large impact on me. I will never forget my being introduced so eloquently to the fact that there are good and honest people on this planet that serve as points of light. He will ever be that to me.

It doesn't matter whether you remember your dreams or not. They are there, and they are in high service to your well -being. You can go to bed nearly destroyed with the weight of life in a body, and with the aid of sleep, your vehicle gets rested, and with the aid of dreams, your Soul gets remembered and restored.
 
Even nightmares are in service, though it would not seem so for they are accomplishing something. Nightmares are a mechanism for playing out something that needs releasing, or needs to be faced. They serve to get your attention in an undeniable way. I never met a nightmare I did not come to appreciate.

Shakespeare nailed it when he referred to sleep as knitting up the unraveled sleeve of care. That it does, when it is deep and restful. But dreaming is also connected with traveling throughout the worlds and universes at large. We die to this world every night and are born to other worlds but then, our Soul, understanding we are not done here with our purposes, returns us. Like little lambs,  our Soul sees to it that we return to our body, wagging our tails behind us, ready to take on life in the physical again, fortified and, in the case of perfectly marvelous dreams, greatly inspired.

Such a gift, dreams. Lifesaving, really. Just another example of how taken care of we are.

Something about dew in the early morning covering velvety soft flower petals feels like hope and renewal. Especially when the color yellow is involved. Dew is a form of water I would designate as dreamed up by fairies. It is so delicate and subtle and covers all it touches with a gossamer touch, never weighing down nor drenching. More caressing.
 
A relative of dew is fog which blankets us regularly, we who live here on this island by the sea. Fog seems to say don't look at things so sharply. Let your eyes go soft.

In the winter, when the air is crisp and you can smell snow (even though it rarely comes to us), there is a bracing kind of moisture that does not so much chill as it quickens the senses from just the sheer quality of freshness. It is a time of year that I am not so aware of our air being salty sea air. The winter air feels like it is delivered straight from the North Pole.

When storms blow through, wind gets in on the act and we can get sideways rain that can feel like being pelted by little pebbles. When there is less wind but we get what is affectionately known in the South as a 'gullywasher", it is the sound of all the water gushing from above that gets the attention.

During the hot August dog days, the sheer oppressiveness of the humidity can be like we are being sat on, or like you could literally wring the air out like it is a wash cloth. That is when my dogs look at me as if to say "make it stop."

But now it is Spring. This is the season (ordinarily, though nothing about weather is ordinary anymore) of the light rains, the sweet rains with the gentle thrumming sounds. Also, it is a time of the fickle rains that start and stop and keep you guessing.

So, you may ask, why all this focus on water? I just figured it out. I sat down to write and didn't realize, I am really thirsty. The body rules!

When we are born, the reality of what it means to be loved and cared for by the one that brought us into this world is undeniable. But what we don't realize is that that profound love and care is a stand- in for an even grander love and care. When we are born, we leave part of our essence behind, in the spiritual realms. Our essence can never be touched nor harmed and awaits our 'return to union'. The assumption is that the union can only occur on 'the other side' when we are done with earthly life. That is not altogether true.

The union of our essence, in the spiritual realms, with our soul, here in a body, is always available to be experienced. And we, have, over and over in life when we felt our own lovable-ness and value, even for just a split second.

A mother is helping a child hold on to the memory of the union of essence and soul, by her very love and care, but apart from what we get from her (and not all souls got assigned a loving parent), we are ALWAYS being loved and cherished in that manner from the part of ourselves we left behind. It is our job to figure out how to feel that more of the time. That much self-regard feels too good to be true, and too tender to tolerate but it is our best option for having deep peace while in a body.

If you do not feel you were adored by your mother, then watch some other mother adore her child and understand you are looking at a mirror of what is true for you as well even though it is hard for you to access it. You are just that adored, but going to have to dig to discover it.

Peace on earth? We will have that when we all open to how much our essence longs for union with us, not after death, but now, here, in a body, as part of the earth we are wishing peace for.

When a musician performs, you generally think of them as wanting to please an audience. In watching this exuberant Peruvian young man sing and play his guitar (image to left), his joy was explosive and filling the room, as was true of others performing with him. He does this all the time, and it never gets old, I could tell. Probably he is already a happy kind of person but something about watching the joy he got from making the music, being the instrument of all that passion and tone and rhythm totally captivated me.

You may not think of yourself as having music inside of you that wants to express but I promise you, it is there. The way you know that is how you feel, maybe in the shower when no one else is around, when you sing as if you knew how. And just the rhythms of your life, of your steps when you walk and the cadences of your speech and how you write, and the sound of your laughter . . .that is what I call high music.

I am convinced we are supposed to be enjoying ourselves on a very regular basis and the more we can feel and appreciate how we are the embodiment of music and are always sounding our tone, the better. Look at the man's face! Through the blurriness, you see the truth of what he is feeling. That is also a mirror of something inside of you, if you just poke around and locate it.

There are so many things we know, but we don't know that we know. It is true of children but of adults of all ages as well.

Throughout my life, maybe only once a decade, I have hit points of feeling like I need to do a major re-write of my life script. These have been times when I have sustained the deep, sinking feeling that I am simply not getting it right. Whatever I am supposed to be doing with my life is not what is happening. I would hit points of despair, about myself mostly (not having a clear idea of who I was or what I was here for).

I don't remember when I started doing this or why, but at these very low points, before I would go to sleep at night, I would simply say (and usually out loud) "I need to meet with the Council."

I am an excellent dream re-caller, in general, but on the nights I asked to meet with 'the council', I would invariably awaken the next morning with absolutely no dream recall but with a sense of well- being.

Years ago, I was meeting with a friend of mine who was one of the most powerful healers I have ever known and somehow I mentioned to him about 'the council' and he laughed with glee that I knew about "them."

Recently, I have been reading about all the information obtained from thousands of hypnotherapy sessions by a therapist named Michael Newton. (Book title Journey of Souls). Mr. Newton's main interest was (and is) on what the soul experiences between  lives. Fascinating material that I read with an open mind. Well, lo and behold, one of the pieces he has obtained from many many different clients is about 'a council' that we meet with at certain junctions in the 'after life' (strange name in that we are very much alive then!). These meetings are deemed crucial. The council is made up of very high beings, higher than our own personal guide that we work with on the other side.
 
In reading about all this, I knew that I knew about this information. I would not call it 'remembering' what I knew so much as 'recognizing' what I knew.

I feel such a deep sense of gratitude that something in me knew to reach out to these high beings when I most needed their help. I also somehow knew they were not to be called upon trivially, for we are to work out our own issues as much as possible, so that we can learn and grow. But sometimes, when between a rock and a hard place, reaching out is an act of tremendous self- regard.

I pass knowledge of this resource along to all with whom it resonates. Sometimes, we simply need all the help we can get.

There is something about 'taking care of', whether it is of a person, an animal,a plant or even your own body. When we tend something, it brings out a quality in our nature that shines in its simplicity and dedication.

So many environmentalists and animal activists are working hard to get people to appreciate all the kingdoms we share the planet with so that we will want to do that very natural thing that happens when we do care. We will want to tend, and care for and preserve.

It starts small. Children are told they can have an animal but they must take care of it. Some children seem born with that nurturing tendency. Others do well with learning through practice.

I love watching my grand daughter Laurel doing things for my dogs. She does it with such focus and interest. She doesn't just put a bowl of food in front of them and run off. She turns feeding them into a Zen act of mindfulness.

Needless to say, my dogs love her. All  whom we tend feel, on a deep and non-verbal level, a link of love with our spirits. They may or may not show it, or say so, but they unavoidably feel so..

I have heard it said, and it rings true, that there are no longer safe places on this planet, but there are safe people. Those who tend to Gaia and all her inhabitants are loving her. She in turn, loves back those very ones and keeps them as safe as they need to be to fulfill their destiny. That is all the assurance we need to have as we go about the simplicity of the daily parts of life in which we are tending what is in our care. We are safe people.

She's here to stay, and she wants to come through you, whoever you are, and whichever gender you are. You are her means of arriving. Because you are unique, you are as a prism that will break up Light differently as it shines through you. You will become an aspect of her face, though you may not realize it right away.

It is so easy to fall prey to thinking of the Divine Feminine in terms of what we already identify with being feminine. She cannot be so easily circumscribed, and we need to be prepared to discipline ourselves not to limit a new archetype that is birthing herself, even now.

Think of all the feminine archetypes that have been until now from all cultures and all times. The range and variety of models of what the 'feminine' is about is vast.

What is coming in now as the Divine Feminine is all of what has been in times gone by, but in new combination. We have never seen 'her' before, not like this, so staying empty of concept is best advised.

It is a little like the night before Christmas and you are looking at the wrapped presents under the tree and figuring out what you think they might be. And then sometimes the next day, you are totally surprised and over the moon because you guessed wrong, and what you got was so much better than you could have imagined.

I wrote a blog in 2012 entitled 'Something This Way comes.' That is how I feel about the Divine Feminine. We can feel her approaching and entering into our realm and our beings. It is a subtle  and simultaneously powerful progression we are experiencing, and more or less wipes out our hard drive of expectations.
 
Not knowing and not speculating I think is going to be one of the best parts of this great gift and privilege of being here for this incoming of the new field that is being called the Divine Feminine. I deeply suspect that our art and our choices for living will describe this event just fine. It is humbling to lay so low and put our over- conceptualizing to bed but I think this is the time for us to be surprised.

Nods to Joni Mitchell for the subject title 'Both Sides Now.' This picture to me is so symbolic of the journey we are all taking at this point in time. We are looking ahead and seeing the 'portal' to Unity, and we are still going through what it takes to get there.

'Both Sides Now' refers to the Dark and the Light. Yes, this image is referencing duality, but not in the way you might think.

There is a rush on to leave duality  behind as we come into the very esoteric experience of becoming One. Duality has become the bad guy and Unity has become the Holy Grail (which, if you think about it, is another polarity, paradoxically enough).. I encourage us not to be in such a rush that we miss some of the finer points of what transformation is really about.

In our eagerness to transform and become "One" , which absolutely is what is afoot in my view, it becomes easy to tuck away from view (from ourselves and from others) the parts of ourselves that have not caught up with all the brightness and beauty. Just by virtue of tucking things about ourselves away, they become things we do not feel great about.

In my experience, our strengths are our weakness, all rolled into one. The thing you love about someone has a flip side that you do not love so much. We can say we carry light, and we also have the human elements that I call 'a works in progress.' that is more shadowy. The reason it is shadowy is because we hide it away and are afraid the sheer imperfection of it will be an embarassment.

I remember reading years ago about how communes that started out filled with idealism had a shelf life of about three years because it took that long for the shadow of all the idealism to emerge. By no means am I saying that now, intentional communities could not work and thrive. In fact, I think they are the wave of the future. What I am suggesting is that what will allow for them to thrive is for everyone to be real. To let the imperfections of personality be seen and loved into a higher vibration. This process can be messy, but if it is real, and humor is kept close at hand, the bonds formed gain a strength that cannot be broken.

Guess what. Your friends all know your flaws, the ones you think you have successfully hidden, and they love you anyway. No, I correct that. They love you BECAUSE of your flaws, because they signed up to be part of your transformational team.

So as we are riding the freedom train to Unitive Consciousness, I say, let's enjoy the contrast of the Light and the Dark, find ourselves so dear as the mass of contradictions that we are and come to understand, in this very acceptance of just who we are now, that is when LOVE, as the power, can come in the strongest and have its way with us. And that is what we all most want, in our heart of hearts.