I think, therefore...

I'm on the freeway and I'm taking a minute to think about the magnitude of the universe.  I see it in my minds eye.  I start with my center of awareness and expand from there.  I see the pale blue dot called Earth.  I see how tiny it is.  I try in vain to keep expanding my view.  I know (although I don't really know) it's too big to every honestly comprehend.

I consciously like to remind myself daily of how big the scale is.  How small we are.  I like to remind myself of the fluke that we are.  That we still have a long way to go.  We've only gotten started.  This never fails to reset me.  It calms and comforts me.  I accept my place in time and all is bearable.  Dare I say, good.

I also think about something that's been in my head the last few days, and that's wondering why I experience my consciousness and awareness from the point of view of what those on earth know as Deena Marie.  This body.  This particular time in the history of the world.  This life.  Why this? Is it random? Or is it perfectly matched?

I think about how a man and a woman can create a human life, and how that means suddenly a new consciousness comes spinning into being.  Bam.  Just like that.  This leads me to struggle to remember the exact Rumi quote, "we come spinning out of nothingness, scattering stars like dust."  

I then realize it's not even 10 am and this is what I've spent my first few hours thinking about on a monday morning.  Then I think about the Frida Kahlo quote, "I used to think I was the strangest person in the world.  But then I thought, there are so many people in the world, there must be someone just like me who feels bizarre and flawed int he same ways I do.  I would imagine her, and imagine that she must be out there thinking of me too.  Well, I hope that if you are out there and read this and know that, yes, it's true I'm here, and I'm just as strange as you."

I'm suddenly inspired to keep track of my thoughts through the day and decide to ask my friend JayC to do the same, and put it in a blog that we could both post tomorrow.  I think he'll dig the idea, I think it'll make a great joint post and I guess that he's probably already had a million ideas, deep thoughts, or profound moments this morning as well.

It's been coming and going for the last few days.  My suddenly remembering I'm driving a personalized car with not only my name on it, but three cartoon faces of me, and a unicorn.  I'm struck with the words, "this is my lot in life."  I find this so funny.  My life has always thrown me unexpected and strange turns.  Who gets to do these kinds of things? I do.  Why? Who knows.  But I'll take it.  It fits.

I get into the building where I've been headed and it's cold.  I start thinking about how soon it will be fall.  How last summer was the worst of my life and while this one has certainly come with it's share of surprises and transitions, it's also been the best in many ways.  A dream come true.  How I only have August now and that's it.  Done.  I'm already starting to mourn the sun and this summer and prepare for the nostalgia and melancholia that only fall can bring me.  But I don't want to.  I don't want to rush it.  I don't mean to rush.

This reminds me of being a little girl and discovering for myself the concept that as soon as we're born we start to die.  Sure I'm growing up, growing older, but I'm dying every day.  This didn't make me sad, it just made sense, and I didn't understand why people didn't like to teach this or to think of life that way.

Despite the dying and the rushing, I never have nor will I ever consider myself a pessimist.  It's just that I want more of everything, always.  I am better at being in the moment nowadays more often than not, but I just want more...time.  That's what it is.  More time to savor.  I want to savor.

I'm aware I'm thinking poetically again and I like that.  I'm getting back to the me that I am at the core, when I'm not covered up by too much of the goings on around me.  I'm settling in once again after another storm of change that kept me swept up over the last few months.

I think about how open I am now.  How if last year hadn't cracked me open and rebuilt me, I wouldn't be who I am today to receive what I'm being given and know how to deal with it.  The dark and light.  I've been braver than I ever thought possible and I feel the difference in what I'm doing now.  It's living.

I'm not existing, I am living.

Manifestation.  That word keeps bubbling up.  I'm contemplating.  Thinking that the old cliche, "be careful what you wish for" is absolutely true.  It may look different.  It may not come at the moment you think it should, but if you manifest it, get ready to live it.

I also think about manifestation in another way.  How holding too much in for too long, and never letting it out manifests itself physically.  Months of anxiety attacks, dizzy spells and feeling at times like I was losing my mind are finally behind me.  Be careful.  It's okay to let it out.  And follow your heart.  Listen, listen, listen.  Hear that voice? You can follow it.  I swear to god.  You can.

An F. Scott Fitzgerald quote comes up, "there are all kinds of love in this world, but never the same love twice."  Each love I've experienced brings out a different version of me.  It molds me ever so gently.  It is a delicate difference.  It turns me up in some areas, and turns me down in others.  I love differently each time.  I am so different as I awaken.  I am better at love as time goes on.  At loving.  At being loved.  At recognizing the right, or best, love for me.

That evening I find myself at a read through.  How strange it seems to me that I get to do this.  That this is what fuels me in this life.  That when I leave, I leave happier, having been surrounded by creative folk I very much admire in this community.  How smart they are, I think.  How lucky I am, I think.

Later, it hits me that the key to my feeling happier overall has to do with the word yes.  Over the last few months the yeses have replaced the nos.  It's been so slight it took a minute for me to see it.

Delicate differences.  Molding me ever so gently.  I tune into my truth a little more each day.  I am getting better at this life thing as time goes on.

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Thanks for reading,

Deena Marie

Made of Stars

When I'm asked about my religious beliefs, it's hard for me to answer.  Simply because I don't know that there's an existing label that fits, nor do I find the vague answer of "I'm spiritual", satisfying or informative.  I can claim New Age more than anything, as I don't dig dogma.  I can tell you I lean toward Eastern Philosophy.  That I find a lot about Hinduism and Buddhism both beautiful and sensical. That maybe a part of me deep down feels like we can't be anything other than agnostic.  That I believe all religions are true, because they are all someone's truth, meaning it's their reality and their right to believe what they need to believe to guide and comfort them through their human experience.  That "if there is only one nation in the sky, shouldn't all passports be valid for it?" That "we are all just walking each other home".

But maybe the pairing of words that ring truest for me are a combination I came up with myself back when I was writing my speech for the funeral for my uncle Chuck, last May.  I called myself a Spiritual Scientist.  I feel the most comfort and the deepest sense of truth in my Scientific Spirituality leanings and learnings.

Funny enough, my deepest sense of home, truth, soul, magic, absolute wonder, view of humanity, and comfort have come from science.

Some people come to Earth with minds so ahead of their time.  We are so lucky that sometimes they not only choose to share their thoughts and knowledge, but find themselves with a vocation or status to do so.  Like Carl Sagan.  Nothing has opened me up quite like his influence of understanding the universe, or of finding and trying to endlessly understand our origins.

So much so, I recently tattooed "star stuff" on my arm to serve as a reminder that we are so much more than these physical bodies and will be so much more again when they expire.  Literally.  As much as I'd love to think our consciousness goes on, and I'll wake up time and time again as something else (and even feel as if that's what I've always done) right now the literal is comfort enough.  The thought of recycling.  Reincarnation in the most literal sense.

It's enough that I can look into the sky and know I'm looking into my origins.
Ancestors.
My future.

Nothing else has ever brought me a deeper feeling of complete and total spirituality.

We are Literally Made from Stars

by Gerald Grow

---

I was moved by an editorial about how the Hubble telescope is showing us the immensity of the universe. With our sun one among 50 billion stars in our galaxy, among more than 50 billion galaxies, it is easy to think of ourselves as lost on a speck in space. 

Indeed, one common outcome of modern education is the widespread feeling that we humans are forever separated from the rest of the universe by unimaginable distances, and that the forces operating in the universe are utterly alien to us. 

Spiritual traditions give us ways of feeling connected with the universe. I want to remind you of another, scientific, way of feeling connected to the stars. 

The same science that reveals to us the vastness of the universe also tells us another story: Astronomers explain that all the elements heavier than hydrogen originated inside stars. The carbon in the ink on a page, and the silicon in glass and microchips, were created in the heart of a star, long ago, as that star shined by fusing hydrogen. The iron that carries the oxygen in your blood as you read this, was created when a star, in its dying phase, exploded. 

You and I are not merely separated from the galaxies by unimaginable immensities of space; we are also connected to them by unimaginable immensities of time. We are literally made from stars. We are their descendants. The only difference between us and stars is time. 

I don't know how this way of looking at things strikes you, but it raises in me an absurdly wonderful sense of celebration, and I look at the night sky not with a sense of hopeless separateness, but with a feeling of kinship: There shine the origins of every element in our bodies. Because stars exist, I exist. The processes that created those billions of unimaginably distant galaxies also created us. 

We human beings are not separate from the universe. Those galaxies are not merely distant--they are distant cousins. 

With this in mind, I urge you not to miss the nightly wintertime rising of Orion in the Southeastern sky, followed by the star, Sirius, flashing red, blue, and golden light. Or the summer rising of Scorpio across the Southern sky, with red Antares burning at its heart. 

That is a kinship worth celebrating. 

Her name was Athena

There once was a little girl named Athena.
Formed in a star, created in eternity.
She came to live on Earth sometimes, and always found it difficult.
For you see, she simply didn't fit.
She carried too much recycled warrior stardust to pack neatly into human form.
The parts inside were just too big.
Ancestor tapestry of Sylvia Plath, Carl Sagan, Joan of Arc 
seemed at times the perfect, albeit unfortunate, melancholia.
Although lightly pinned together, she is trapped.
A temporary purgatory of constant fighting, forging, blazing,
It is relentless.  She must push through.
Until she returns once more, parts scattering,
releasing, before she becomes something else.
She longs for the day when she'll feel it again,
The freedom of the in between...home.
Where she belongs.
In the sky.
The galaxy's aching poet child can do nothing,
or she can do everything...while she waits.


- Deena Marie  3.11.2013