Open Hands, Open Heart

Happy New Year!

Last night I danced by the light of the blue moon and sang whatever song illumined my heart. Any day I have written and walked in the woods is a good day. Any day that sends me a sprinkling of synchronicity is one that sparkles. Yesterday was one of those good and sparkly days.

I am contemplating the word “open.”  It’s not my new word for 2010.  It’s a 2009 spillover.  Just because I turned the calendar page, doesn’t mean I’m done with the contemplations of 2009.

Soul-time knows no calendar.

My body, in its infinite though sometimes painful wisdom, is having me look again at this word “open,” by way of a very swollen tendon in my right-hand thumb pad. I did not do this in some noticeable way, like an accident. It just came on and the explanation is likely connected with some way I held the steering wheel during my long drive home. It’s painful. I type very slowly. It hurts to write with a pen. To hold or grasp anything with my right hand, I have to use the fingers only. It’s giving me a new appreciation for the evolution of the opposable thumb!

In Heal Your Body, Louise Hay writes that issues with hands are about how we handle life. I took a walk contemplating how I might be trying to hold on too tightly, steering too much with the masculine (right side of body) “doing” aspect of my being; how it might serve me to release and open more. I took my hands out of my pockets despite the chill, and opened them wide.  As I left the woods and approached the driveway, I thought “I need to get rid of all that stuff I’m holding on to in the garage.” Then I stopped in my tracks and laughed out loud when I heard, “You don’t even need to hold on to letting go.”

The either /or of hold on – let go is a polarity that keeps me distracted with the game of it all rather than living life more freely. There is the baggage without and the baggage within that weighs me down, physically and psychically. In this contemplation it was about stuff, but in the bigger picture, it’s about life.

It’s not the stuff in the boxes that weighs me down. It’s how I think about them. It’s not my past that holds me back, but the story I tell about it and this notion that I somehow have to be entirely free of the sadness and anger in order to feel alive and happy. It’s also some idea I have that if it crosses my mind at all, I didn’t really release it.

I don’t have to do anything. I can do whatever I want: pick through it, let it go, give it away, sell it, never look at it again, let it rot, mold, be destroyed by mice. It’s not about letting go of the stuff. It’s about awareness of my fears; that there is one right or best way to handle it, that I will be letting things slip through my fingers, that I have to honor it, hold on to the lessons, understand everything about it, to release it and be complete. That’s precisely how having to let go makes letting go nearly impossible.

I don’t have to permanently forget people and pain from the past. I don’t have to make them saints for the lessons I learned from them. I don’t have to do anything other than what I want, which is to accept it for what it is, and open wide to accept new people and new experiences into my life. If tears come through now and then, it doesn’t mean I’m not healed. It means I have an open heart and energy moves through and around an open heart.

I want to hand-le life with an open heart!

"Open Heart" Bell Pine Art Farm* (K J Loh)

*you can get this and other lovely clay figurines from Bell Pine Art Farm.

Interlude: Breathing is a cycle of inhale and exhale and that curious space of nothingness (no-thing-ness) in between.  I use both my fingers and my thumb to grasp things. They are in opposition, like the poles of hold-on and let-go, and they work better together than alone. So, as I open to grasping, I grasp opening. Giving and receiving, I hold one hand turned outward and one hand facing me, and both are open. It’s becoming clear that the lesson for me here is in giving and receiving open handedly.

Living in the paradox (hold on, let go: give, receive) means living in the question. Living in the question is living in that curious space between the in and out breath.  It’s what Julie Daley wrote about in her blog today as the “blessed unrest” and what Beth Follini wrote about in her New Year post as “living with not-knowing.”

I call this space “creative tension.” It’s where we are always at the edge of our frontier as creative, evolving beings and consciousness; where the drop knows it is the ocean and yet still the drop. It’s unfamiliar, edgy and completely natural.

It’s a muscle we build, this willingness to be and live in the tension of the question. The friction ignites our creative embers. I want to warm and heal the way I handle life by the wisdom and courage of this fire. I want to use its light to illumine my way through the ever-unfolding Mystery.  And, while I’m driving the distance, perhaps I don’t have to hold the steering wheel so tightly!

Oh, and my new 2010 Spirit Cards (chosen during my New Year’s Day ritual)?

I Am – Mercy

I Will  – Inspire

I’m dancing with these to the music of Open.

I’m dancing to this song by Abbey Lincoln that my friend Joette Tizzone played for me after I told her about my contemplation during our New Years Eve chat. Enjoy! (The lyrics are below)

Throw It Away (Abbey Lincoln)

I think about the life I live

A figure made of clay

And think about the things I lost

The things I gave away

And when I’m in a certain mood

I search the house and look

One night I found these magic words

In a magic book

Throw it away

Throw it away

Give your love, live your life

Each and every day

And keep your hand wide open

Let the sun shine through

‘Cause you can never lose a thing

If it belongs to you

There’s a hand to rock the cradle

And a hand to help us stand

With a gentle kind of motion

As it moves across the land

And the hand’s unclenched and open

Gifts of life and love it brings

So keep your hand wide open

If you’re needing anything

Throw it away

Throw it away

Give your love, live your life

Each and every day

And keep your hand wide open

Let the sun shine through

‘Cause you can never lose a thing

If it belongs to you

Copyright (c) January 2010, Kathy J Loh, All Rights Reserved (excluding artwork, video, music, lyrics)

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Listening to Fear – Following Heart

As promised…here is the follow-up to that story about the internal meeting of Body, Mind, Spirit and Heart:

I love Sundays!

On Sunday, I get to begin working with a new Tarot of the Spirit card as part of my 10 Powers lessons with Lightning Spiral Mystery School.

On Sunday, I get to tune into my Bnei Baruch Kabbalah Webinar

On Sunday, I can do whatever I want, even eat waffles.

On Sunday, I think I have this amazing amount of time to do all the things I want to do. I generally end the day wondering what happened. Where did all the time go?

On Saturday, I tackled another several boxes of paper; those boxes I mentioned in a prior post that have followed me around since my divorce several years ago. I’m pretty proud of the progress I made.

I’m pretty proud of the amount of stuff I recycled. I actually tossed magazines that are not the newest issue even if I haven’t read them yet. I have to admit, it made my heart race, but as the paper hit the bottom of the bin I felt a huge sense of en-lighten-ment.

From Tarot of the Spirit Deck by Pamela Eakins PhD and Joyce Eakins MFA
(c) 1992  U.S. Games Systems, Inc. Image used with permission

Sunday morning I did a meditation upon my new Tarot card: 5 of Wind (Fear). In my mind’s eye, I kept seeing the image of one particular file and the title on its tab. Without naming names, I will tell you it holds notes from a teleseminar on a particular method for busting old beliefs.  It’s the perfect example of files I have kept that I never look at again.

In fact, I have so completely integrated the many coaching and healing tools I’ve been exposed to over the years, that I don’t really coach by-the-book anymore. I use or create whatever is needed in whatever way it comes in handy. I mix it up and it’s all improvisational. I actually have a preference for working that way, though my mind keeps thinking I should be more structured and organized. Oh gosh, that’s the story of my life.

In the meditation, I had a conversation about fear with the guardian Wind Brother (part of this Tarot deck). What a great coach he is. Here’s how the dialogue went:

Wind Brother:  What are you afraid of?

Me:  I’m afraid of losing ground. I fought hard to make it on my own and reach the survival level doing work I love. I don’t want to lose the ground I’ve gained. (I saw myself on the face of a cliff. My hands were holding on to the top edge and my feet were resting on a tiny ledge. I was one good hefty pull-up from being on top.)

I’m afraid of losing the clients and creature comforts I have now. I’m afraid of losing all the learning in which I’ve invested time and money; all the learning which I imagine lives in those files.

Wind Brother: What do you want?

Me: I want to be up there on top of the cliff, running free and enjoying life to the fullest. I want creature comforts, yes, and more; freedom, mobility and I want to contribute.

Wind  Brother: Then why don’t you climb on up?

Me: I’m afraid I’ll fall all the way back.

Wind Brother: So what?

Me: I see myself fall and what it means is I will have 2 or fewer clients and empty file drawers and I realize that the fall was about 4 feet down. I also realize that I can’t lose the learning, the experience, the wisdom. I burst into laughter. I laugh so hard that I can’t stop for awhile.

This is a “struggle of the intellect” as Pamela Eakins, PhD writes in the book Tarot of the Spirit. It’s all a big smoke screen. Ooga booga kind of stuff.  I’ve saved the financial padding to take some risks. So, I can’t fool myself that it’s about money. It’s about fear and it’s about pride.

Oy, pride…

So, let’s see…shall I let my fear of losing pride, of backtracking a bit, of falling to the bottom of the cliff and landing in a place of a few clients, a lack of neatly filed folders of information (I mean is this absurd or what?) keep me from following my heart and doing my work in the world?

I think NOT

Heart, I’m listening!

Lift me up Wind Brother!

We’ve got to ask ourselves the “so what?” question. We too often collude with ourselves and others by not questioning the logic, the scary if-I-do-that-then-drama scenario.

No matter how bad it sounds, how horrific a picture you’ve painted, ask yourself “so what?” See where it takes you.

I will tell you what I know about the so-what trail in an upcoming post.

Copyright (c) August 2009, Kathy J Loh, All Rights Reserved

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