"Durga, Protectress of the Universe"

 

Durga, embodiment of life (Shakti), the cosmic feminine creative power of wisdom in the universe. Cuts through illusion of separation with unconditional love.

An afternoon dip in the ocean

 

"An afternoon dip in the ocean". We had about 5 days of very hot weather! I felt like I was at the sea with my feet in a galvanized tub... felt how all the water circles through so many forms and places and carries memory...

A visitation from the heavens

 

Tsultrim Allione has said, “A dakini takes you out of words and Logos into a direct experience, and so define the dakini is in a way impossible, because she is beyond that, and she takes you beyond that. Given that ‘dakini’ means ‘sky goer’… they say that she is called that because she moves through space or through emptiness. She is like a messenger of emptiness. Dakinis can be human beings and they can also be deities, wisdom deities. And there are also worldly dakinis who are not human and they are not wisdom deities, but they are kinds of spirits, I guess you could say, that may be partially enlightened, but not entirely. So there are many kinds of dakinis. What I focus on are the Wisdom dakinis who are enlightened, they are equal to Buddhas in terms of their understanding. Dakinis are fierce, generally, not always, but generally they have a fierce aspect, or a semi-wrathful aspect. To me, that fierce energy is interesting because of the way the fierce feminine has been denied. If you're a fierce woman, you are dangerous. So the way the dakinis have that fierceness and clarity and wisdom, and allow that aspect of the feminine psyche... in wisdom which is always based in compassion and an understanding of emptiness... So, I think a simple way to say it is that a dakini is a conductor or a mediator or a midwife for wisdom.

This dakini, this sky goer appeared in the sky in the formation of a cloud during during a particularly magical and powerful sunset.  I immediately recognized her as a flying mermaid visitation from the heavens.  The light was extraordinary.  And from horizon to horizon there was a call and response of light with streaming subtle energetic lines which I somehow associated with scalar waves.  The way the light was filling the space of the heavens accentuated an awareness of spaciousness and awe. Knowing nothing of scalar waves other than that I had heard the term.  I later looked up scalar waves.

la transparencia

las primeras horas de la mañana

están colmadas de neblina

ocultando los lugares más allá 

de la cabaña de piedra blanca envuelta en hiedra y su jardín

ausente la colina de eucaliptos al otro lado del barranco 

la única forma de saber la diferencia entre la neblina y las nubes

es a través de su distancia sobre la tierra 

sin embargo estas tierras están tan arriba del mar 

como podemos saber la diferencia entre lo singular y plural a estas alturas?

entre la neblina y las nubes? un recuerdo y las cosas sustanciales? 

un vendaval de pensamientos y una tormenta? la nieve derritiéndose y una piedra o un río? 

la fría humedad del aire se siente como si fuera nieve

y el blancor de la nieve y la neblina se hablan 

a través del tiempo y el espacio que quizá nunca han existido

Estoy parada junto a la cabaña

en una cascada de verdes ramas 

una recatada gota que engloba el mundo en su esfera

se forma en la punta de cada hoja del pirul

en la medida que avanza la mañana la neblina se sube por las colinas 

y se convierte en nubes

la luz del sol ilumina la abundancia de hojas en el jardín

es como si brillaran por dentro

cada una de las gotas diminutas se ha desvanecido

tan solo dejando su transparencia 

—Lorena Wolfman (19-2-22)

Web of life

 

I said a few days ago that I wanted to tell you story about chickens, dogs and myself.  Like so many impressions in my soul, when they offer words and the opportunity is not taken, it may be hard to find your way into the magnitud and shape of what was revealed in those instants full of meaning.  But I will try to find the path, by walking it in the retelling of what happened.

I was busy doing something with my hands, touching and moving things that have to do with earth.  Memory, as happens with dreams, has been transmuted into sensations. Perhaps I was weaving more tepozán branches into a fence, when suddenly I heard a chicken making a ruckus from below, near the "bodega del río", as I have named the shed we built of pallets, almost two stories tall, tall enough so it has a "tapanco" that could be used as a sleeping loft.  Immediatey, I recognized the alarm in her voice, my eyes darted to where I heard the sound that was repeated in staccatto pleeing waves for help.  Almost before I could process what was happening, I echoed her, seeing one of my dogs in pursuit: Chaparro!  Chaparro!  Chaparro! I called out repeatedly in the loudest strongest most alarming voice I could produce, a voice that echoed and amplified her pleeing waves for help.  Chaparro had her by the tail, feathers were flying, I was yelling. Too far to strike or intercede physically, I threw my voice with full force towards Chaparro to call him off.  He let go of her long enough for her to scramble in ball hurtled by her fear, over some stones, past a maguey and up a small hill and out of sight into the  brown winter folliage of bushes burned brown by the last week's cold snap. The colors matched her color, and dense nopales also obscured her whereabouts.  

Reymundo, who had come running, arrived, there were feathers everywhere, fine downy feathers, body feathers and long tail feathers, but there was no blood, a good sign.  Chaparro seemed to understand my displeasure and just cowered near the ground under my glowering gaze. Reymundo and I looked and looked and looked.  She was nowhere to be found.  She had disappeared after being attacked when she was scared from her place under a maguey where we had seen her laying an egg earlier.  The roosters were far off on the other side of Mira Uri, nowhere near enough to have come to her aid.  

Reymund, an intuitive Piscean who moves on land with the ease of water, was confident she would come out, and he was sure that the "gallos" would look for her.  And soon they came, calling, the whole gang, 4 roosters and 8 or 10 hens. When they saw the feathers littered across the ground, they could be heard calling out in alarming raising a ruckus, objecting, warning others of danger, but also calling to her... they called and called, and, not right away, but after some time, when we had left them to their business of restoring their tribe, I noticed that there was no more ruckus and there was an air of quiet normality. The tribe had resumed looking for bugs and seeds on the ground and in the earth beneath the trees.  I approached and looked for her, first I saw one of her sisters or cousins, who still had her tail feathers, so I knew it wasn't her... I stood still, and there, rounding the corner beneath some low hanging pirul branches this side of a nopal, I saw her—she had three of her "galanes" watching out for her, keeping a protective eye on things. Calm had been restored.  

I am left with such a deep respect for this interwoven shared intelligence, web of life. How the chickens and the roosters care for each other, sense danger, and restore the tribe's balance after trauma. How a call of alarm, its rhythm and urgency is felt and sung out depths, moving species to species it is understood. Chicken, to human, to dog, the sounds of the song, initiated in an agression, moved through us, each, in turn, adding our gestures, responding to the rhythm with our voices, and completing the dance, our dance on the earth. Each of us learning from the moves of the other... later one of the "galanes" danced before me, cocking his head to side, eye straight on, as though to say, "you, yes you" and he shook his head vigorously, the feathers his neck fanning out making him look so magnificent as he pulled his had back and let out a cry, once, and then then again, and again, acknowledging my presence in this web. Then, he went on about his business.

Before leaving for the day, Reymundo, told me of his plan for the chicken to give her time and space to recuperate.  He would enclose her in the chicken coop's garden, when she could forrage and walk and not be bothered by the rooster's amorous outbursts while she recuperates and grows back her feathers.

transparency

 

the early hours of the morning

are filled with fog

hiding the places that are beyond 

the white stone cabaña and its garden

the hill of eucalyptus trees across the ravine gone

the only way to know the difference between fog and clouds

is by their distance from the ground

yet here this ground is so far above the sea

how can one really know the difference between singular and plural at these heights?

fog and clouds? a memory and the real thing? the thoughts blowing through us and a storm? melting snow and a rock or a river?

the cold moisture in the air feels like snow

the whiteness of snow and fog call to one another 

through time and space which may not exist

I stand just outside the cabaña

in a shower of green branches

a demure droplet encompassing the world in its sphere 

gathers at the end of each pirul leaf

as morning proceeds the fog moves up the hills

and becomes clouds

and sunlight illuminates the abundance of leaves in the garden

it is as though they glow from within

each diminute droplet has vanished

leaving only its transparency

—Lorena Wolfman (19-2-22)

la luz

 

la luz

 

bailarines brazos del sol

mensajera de implosiones internas

sus caminos a mi jardín son invisibles

mientras hace visible   

a cada brote de hoja pálida

a cada extravagancia de las flores desbordándose de color 

magenta blanco amarillo

el verde polvoriento de la piel de la carne túrgida del nopal 

el gris opacocente de la barda de adobe despellejándose 

entre blancos trozos de caliche 

cada cosa define su forma

por la rúbrica de su color 

las frecuencias que suelta 

y las que guarda 

el resplandor está en todas partes 

regalando tantos secretos de la Tierra como las que conserva 

aludiendo a través de la ausencia  

a los misterios aún más profundos 

de los que los ojos pueden sujetar 

—Lorena Wolfman (Trad. 18-2-22)

light

light 

dancing arms of the sun

messenger of inner implosions

its pathways into my garden are invisible

as it makes visible  

each pale budding leaf 

each extravagant flower 

overflowing with color

magenta white yellow

turgid dusty green flesh of the nopal

eroding opaque grey of an adobe wall

littered with white chunks of caliche

each thing defining its form

by its color signature

the frequencies it releases

and the frequencies it keeps to itself

shimmering is everywhere

giving away as many of the earth's secrets as it keeps

alluding through absence 

to the even deeper mysteries

the eyes cannot apprehend

—Lorena Wolfman (Rev. 18-2-22)

 

Each day I learn so much...

 

Every day I learn so much in contact with the earth, as though my feet opened my nostrils, and I am sure they do, awakened to the  scents of the earth, they speak to me and tell me of their provenance. I am a "penca de tapón" or I am a "penca de duraznillo".  Today the plain nopal said very little to my nostrils, while the others reminded me of the taste of their fruit and its texture though it will be some time before they birth their fruit.  This year the winds have been gracious, generous, coming at a time stimulated the nopales and the mezquites and perhaps, most certainly, other plants.  The lavender that cohabitates this landscape and that I deeply pruned less than a week ago is emerging with new budding blossoms.  I can feel in the pruning of this plant and that, this tree and that, the mezquite, the tepozán, all variety of nopales, the lavender, they all breathe more easily when the air can move through their branches and their branching architecture is strenghthened with clarity of form—reaching heavenward from somewhere in the earth, even if that earth is limestone.  The tepozanes are undaunted by limestone, they seem to enjoy finding crevices and making the soft stone into their own white soil, donning and luxuriating in its alkalinity like silk.

I am in awe of the way the saw moves more smoothly on the diagnonal of the mezquites, it reminds of how our own bones grow in spirals.  Is there anything that does not grow in a spiral.  As I remove small branches or those that are dried out, I notice how the branches too have grown into place in a spiral.

I am in awe of the way the nopal trees grow.  To be able to prune them back so we can cohabitate the landscape,  I notice how their very heavy branches sometimes reach heavenward, sometimes reach earthward, most often play labyrinthine games of counter balance.  The branches that reach to the earth penca by penca most surely seek a place to take root or even to drop to the earth to make a life away from their parent nopal... 

Pruning nopales teaches you respect.  Where is your head, your arm, your elbow, the curve of your butt in relation to this dance?  Which way is the wind blowing, is it dry, or is it damp, is the sun now too high?  All of these are factors that must be considered in relation to their spines, some are very fine and fly like dust. What will the collaboration between weight, gravity, and angle mean in the determination for where they fall?

Yesterday was extraordinary in its density of lessons... early, before the sun even began to illuminate the sky with its first colors, I went to the kitchen.  There, in the honey jar I had left open on the counter, was a gray lump of a form, I looked again, saw it had small eyes looking up at me, it was a mouse... "Are you alive" I asked... she shugged, lifting her shoulder ever so slightly, just enough for me to see how stuck she was.   "Don't worry" I told her... "I will get you free"... I put the jar in a bowl of warm water which got cold quickly with the morning chill, again and again I refilled the bown and she was first able to dislodge her shoulder from the thawing stickness of semi crystalized honey.  I warmed water on the stove to dip the jar into, and slowly she dislodged part of her side, her forearms, but all while the curve of her tail seemed to be still firmly in place, at last she was able to free her front paws and reached upwards towards the mouth of the jar.  While still viscous, the honey was now fluid enough for her two move out of, and so, I tilted the jar towards the top of the cabinet from which she was able to reach up to a hanging cup, clime up on it, and find her way to the iron chain that held the hanging structure for pots in place. With increasing ease she was able to climb each link in the chain and then jump to the ledge at the top of the wall, using her now familiar route across the top of the wall to find her way out between the tejas of the roof, its iron "tubular" support structure and out into the last moments of night before sunrise...

I have another story to tell about all I learned from the chickens and the part the dogs and I had to play... but that will have to wait... 

Another early winter morning...

I am here again, this morning, still in the early hours of the sun low on the horizon, when its colored reflections are most illuminating and colorful on the landscape, and the sacred hill just across the way from the front door of my stone and adobe cabin... at the moment somewhere between golden yellow and lime green, making the leaves of the semi-arid vegetation, trees and all manner of cacti glow from the essence of what they offer the world: greenness... the shadows and the rays of light are long at this time, sweeping across the landscape from just south of east at this time of year... The sun rising has become visible now, as not long ago, in the darkest part of the year, it was so far south that only the arrival of its light was felt. 

"Creation of the Feminine Grail"

 

New creativities being born...

I see myself here projected

my skin is flame blue

in my belly lives a consciousness

when its eyes are open

I see the world and its spinning colored gyre

through the knowledge of creation

the core of life awakened to itself

I as life itself ongoing awareness

the faculty of embodied creation

the golden egg 

nucleus 

cell

cosmos

embracing the staff of life

the lotus materializing from beyond

one cell in the totality of all

all in the totality of one cell

I sit across from myself 

with deft hands to earth and sky

uniting both here and now

pure illuminated light blossoms from beyond

but all the same born of mud and suffering 

all part of the tree with deep roots

Self and Universe 

emerging feminine knowledge

yet in the balance beyond duality

in perfect dancing balance here and now

the golden sphere appears

the tree life understanding love

unifying body and spirit

flame blue golden glow

all in the awareness of now 

and now 

and now

—Lorena

"Healing thread"

 

"Healing thread"

I wanted to come back and write something about this image after posting it a few days ago.

The image has its origin in a dream image in which blue yarn or twine appears out of a dark dream field, much like "Orange" appeared out of this same vast field.  The blue yarn was curved and looped over itself.  It was a turquoise color.  I always associate the color turquoise with healing.

There has been a progression.  Red. Orange. Turquoise.  If I were following the chakras, I might think yellow was missing.  But it has been present in my early morning walks when I wake up just before sunrise to watch not just the sunrise on the eastern horizon, it is still south of east, as it slowly makes its way into the northern hemisphere. But I watch the sacred hill across the way and how it lights up.  Red, then orange, then yellow, then green... And two days ago I saw it!!! Purple. Yesterday I looked carefully for the green and the blue ... somehow they seem harder to discern, especially the blue... It is an exercise in watching, being present for the moment, and the essence of the sunrays lighting the landscape! 

This is the healing thread!  Being present. (Interesting that turquoise is a combination of green and blue!)

The jeweled sword in the image for me has to do with discernment. Being on the present sharp blade of awareness, able to discern the essences, the colors that fill, luminesce around and in us.  It could also be read as a kind of gordian knot to be cut with a sword, and that dimension is true too. The jewels on the sword are the essential colors, and the treasure that they are.

My turquoise thread became thicker in the art-making process, like a rope woven of pearls, or like a serpent,of life. Serpents are associated with life and healing to a large degree because they can feel the subtlest things from the earth through their skin.

In the background textures there is a hill outlined by the glow of sunrise... this acknowledges, or places, the ground of these experiences where they are lived, made real, walked, breathed, here on the land with the hill across the way that changes colors and teaches me to see.

I could add here that on a deeper level our senses are functions that occur, are functions that are beyond the physical organs themselves.  Hearing happens when you listen. Listening is a function, a capacity of our field.  I have experienced this directly.  Before I experienced this I had listened to a  respected teacher, Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen, speak about working with brain injuries and other injuries, in which the tissue of an organ is missing or damaged and recovering function in working with deeply with awareness. Recovering, reweaving that part of the field held in the physical form into the function of the whole.  I now know that this is possible.  I feel that in a way it is related to a somatic movement/dance student I have had who could see others moving while her eyes were closed... and other abilities people have shown from the field.  I believe they are experienced from the field.

This has to do with the healing thread, in the way that perceiving the sunrise has to do with the healing thread. It is not seeing just the sunrise, but the whole phenomenon, the broader field, of life, reflections, the music of the sunrise...

I feel moved to go on... Here where I live, on this side of the hill... the northern side, there is a base of caliche, a white limestone that forms much of on the mantle of this area, of Mira Uri.  It is directly exposed due to erosion, mining, deforestation of different sorts... But there is also a lot of rock that is dense, filled with iron ore, red and ocre tones, that was torn out of the earth in pieces during mining operations.  It holds heat.  The rattlesnakes love this piece of land it was explained to me because of the heat.  While, by contrast, just down the way, there is an area that is preferred by the Chirrioneras... a long snake with a small head.  It loves the grey stone that stays cool and holds moisture.

Taking the smallest of leaps, the earth, the soil, is the other healing thread.  How to build soil. The compost pile is so small.  The pruning piles (of nopal, maguey, wild grasses, fallen and pruned twigs/branches) are small relative to the size of the landscape too, but there is soil!  There is more and more of it!  And how, how, how to terrace the slope so that in the torrential rains that come some years more than others, it doesn't wash away?  That is my burning question... 

Spiders, mice, scorpions and snakes (and chickens) don't fear for their lives here.  And mostly we have no problems. Still, this last year rattlers and dogs got into like never before.  It is all a process of learning to live together... Some lessons are hard and ask for even deeper awareness.