Meditation #25 L O V E, L O V E, L O V E...

Meditation # 25 L O V E, L O V E, L O V E…

At this point in the year-long process I have embarked upon, with full commitment and mindfulness as I approach my 44^th birthday on August 22^nd, and as an homage to my mother, whose health was severely impacted last year and with whom I initially did these meditations over the phone, based on Macrina Wiederkehr’s book, Behold Your Life, I reached a magical island last time, with Meditation #24. That last shared reflection was about Water, and I celebrated life and its impetus, how it picks us up and thrusts us into new experiences, into thrills, into sorrows, and manages to erode us like everything else it touches, but also defies us to become resilient and to embrace change; adapting like water itself to the new containers we become as each life passage forces us to bow to the thrust of new situations, new people and our ever-evolving identities. Since then, I have felt like Jonah inside the whale, sitting and watching with eyes wide open as life led me to explore the Supreme Emotion, as Barbara Frederickson calls Love in her fascinating book, Love 2.0

Love is a constant ace in our arsenal to deal with life’s challenges, and it requires, like any other emotion, maturation, practice and active pursuit of mastery.

I am a child of divorce, so my life-quest to understand Love and its mutations started with my own bafflement as to how two people who swore fidelity and union gradually experienced a process that turned the very love that had been the foundation of their marriage into bitterness, isolation and deceit until it eroded, like a sand castle, into the sea.

When I felt my own heart stirred and my whole self summoned by meeting someone at the impressionable age of 18 whom I recognized as my life-partner, I had no doubts. I had promised myself to follow my heart and its designs since childhood, and I did. My conviction caused upheaval, criticism, skepticism and scandal, but follow my heart I did, and it has proven to have known exactly what it was whispering; the path to Love is not rational, not straight, and not for the faint at heart.

I have tried to make my life a living experiment of Love in its many forms, by keeping my heart open and inviting love to preside as the CEO of my every decision. Now I am learning that Love alters the invisible chemistry of our body and brain in such powerful ways that it causes identical changes in the bodies and brains of people who surround us. Love is unfolding between strangers, it ties friends and binds lovers, but, literally it is truly a communal phenomenon, a one-meaningful encounter at a time-mind transformer which depends on connection and can change and evolve whole communities, families and societies. If the bonds that hold us together are strengthened and cultivated, we all benefit from Love in a way that transcends the actual individual to individual affection transactions.

I am getting ready to start life in a new place, a house of peculiar characteristics where, when I saw it for the first time, I knew I would be guiding meditation workshops, teaching art, self-love and trying to communicate what I have come to learn and understand about Love and its power to transform individual lives, making us realize the power of connection, and helping us realize how we are all really united, connected, and interdependent, strengthen community and create waves of healing, growth and resilience that can physically alter the ratios of negativity and darkness of our world. The House of Love will be a place where people can share their stories, contribute their gifts, grow their hearts and find meaning and solace in a community where we will encourage one another to fall in love with life, one day at a time. Can you summon Love to preside in your heart and home too?

With L O V E,

Lina.

The Daily Death, Meditation #21

The Daily Death, Meditation #21

I died a little yesterday night. It has become habitual, and, in the scant maturity I have acquired at 43, it is woven tightly into my rituals of being alive, of keeping my heart open, of caring, of loving... to die a little every day in order to live while I am alive. And this last death allowed me to wonder if this is what critics label as blue or gray periods in artists' lives. This latest death heaped despair in my heart as I finally mustered courage to finish an article I had began three months ago, called Blood Ivory ( Nat Geo Mag, Oct 2012)about my favorite animals, elephants.

I wanted to press control, alt, delete and reboot the relationship our civilization has developed with the mystery of the divine and our expressions of faith. How can destroying the gift of the life of the gentlest of giants, my beloved elephants, all for the ivory of its tusks, to carve inanimate objects, honor God? It is a crime perpetrated by Catholics and Buddhists, Hindus and atheists, but I fail to understand the utter lack of common sense that justifies this crime; hiding behind rationalizations of power, greed, need, or even worse, faith. My desire to voice, protest, rebel, educate, inform, pulled me out of the deep hole of my rage. I commit my spoken and written words, my heart, my art, my passion, to add drops of care and clarity to the trickle that might coalesce and create a river of reason to illuminate our behavior. Richard Feynman's words held my hand as I found my way back to face another day: "In order to make progress, one must leave the door to the unknown open- ajar only. We are only at the beginning of the development of the human race."

And as this picture seems to whisper in my heart, there is always hope, as long as baby elephants and baby creatures of all sort keep making their entrance into our world, that we might just get it right the next time around...

With love, Lina.

Meditation #20 The Call to BE

Meditation #20 The Call to BE

I am back with my Meditations. The last one was short, concise and powerful, based on the fact that no-one can be better at being You than You, and this one will propel us further. The Call is To BE, to be more, to be holy, as Macrina Wiederkehr so daringly voices. But in her book "A Tree Full of Angels" she details it even further. To be holy in today's reality entails seeing the sacred in the ordinary in order to keep the spark of life ablaze within. In her meditation she confesses how the Church might have disillusioned and hurt her, either by changing too fast or by not changing at all, and I identified with this assertion. How many of us no longer feel the Church responds to our needs or feeds us, but the invitation is to forgive and move on, and to remember you are a "portable chapel". You carry God wherever you go, and every human encounter is Holy when approached in this light. She beautifully declares: "I want to be a bucket for the sharing of the water of life. " And, being echo to the invitations I am voicing in my Lunita Company page, the summons entail falling in love with life all over again; remaining aware of the sacred mystery of life; becoming artists at life.

"Artists are those who have visions. There is something of and artist in ALL OF US. Artists have hungry hearts and hungry eyes; hungry for truth, hunger to understand, to know, to create, to see the depth of things. They are not satisfied with our ordinary, dim way of seeing."

We conclude with her prayer: "Help me, Oh Lord, to help answer prayers. A Saint is one who exaggerates what the world neglects."

With love,

Lina.

Meditation #19 The Geography of Your Destiny.

“Your soul knows the geography of your destiny. Your soul alone has the map of your future, therefore you can trust this indirect, oblique side of yourself. If you do, it will take you where you need to go, but more important it will teach you a kindness of rhythm in your journey.”
― John O'Donohue, 'Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom'
Powerful words posted by Alejandra Calle-Cook, they summarize Meditation #19, which follows the reflection on Nativity, so befittingly, we are summoning a new You, which is not your Ego, or your Profession, or your Relationships, it is the You that resides within, the one accessed through meditation, through serenity and the relentless, quiet pursuit of living with Presence and Mindfulness. 

"Tan sólo tu alma conoce la geografía de tu destino. Tu alma posee el mapa de tu futuro, por tanto, debes confiar en este lado oblicuo, indirecto de tu ser. Si lo haces, te llevará donde tienes que ir, pero aún más importante, te enseñara una dulzura de ritmo en tu jornada."
-John O'Donohue,'Anam Cara: Un libro de Sabiduría Celta'
Palabras poderosas compartidas por Alejandra Calle-Cook, resumen la Meditación #19, la que sigue a la reflexión sobre la Navidad, tan apropiadamente, estamos llamando a un nuevo Yo, aquel que no es tu Ego, ni tu Profesión, ni tus Relaciones, es el Yo que vive en ti, aquel al que llegamos al meditar, el que hallamos con serenidad y la permanente, callada búsqueda de vivir con Presencia y Conciencia.
Con Amor,
Lina.

Meditation #18 "All is well, You are Beloved"

Meditation #18 "All is well, You are Beloved"

Last time we were pondering about Growing Pains and the sheer thrill of adolescence. This time around, precisely on Christmas, we are invited to reflect upon the presence of God in our lives. How has he manifested his power as your days have unfolded?

I vividly recall an image that made me feel a Loving, Reassuring presence in a moment when I desperately needed it. I was eighteen years old and had left home to fly very, very far away, and as I was riding on a bus back home, crossing the barren, frozen landscape of Salt Lake City. I felt so lonesome and lost. There was a mother traveling with a child, and they caught my eye because the little girl's hair was a glowing, deep black wild mane, so much like mine, and as I watched, her mother took out a comb and started the loving ritual of untangling that blessed mess. She then carefully parted the thick, wavy locks and carefully wove them, trapping them into thick, strong braids that she decorated with red yarn. I felt like I was watching a scene from my own childhood, and I remembered my own Mother's loving hands brushing my hair, and I cried. Ironically, after my outburst, I felt reassured, comforted, and held within the certainty that I too had known love and that thought felt like a shield, an armorplate that life, in all its fierceness, could not penetrate. I had a Capital Mother, so it is perhaps logical that the most meaningful image of God I hold is a Mother's love. But sacred texts and theology offer some beautiful images, and perhaps one of them works best for you. My second best is the image of an eagle teaching her young to fly, or as I read it really happens, pushing them out of the nest. Other options include God as a shepherd, a lamb, a king, a warrior of righteousness, a ray of sunlight piercing the clouds (a definite winner on my list), a fiery spirit engulfing a brush, the masterful designer of the web of life, a bleeding heart, a friend who knows even the number of hairs on our heads, a loving friend who washes our feet, or a person just like you and me, who loved his way into splitting history in two.

What is your vision of the Deity, the presence that reassures, glows from within and reminds you that all is well and that you are beloved, time and time again?

Can it find shelter in your heart and be reborn once again, revealing your own Nativity?

With Love and Light, wishing you a Rebirth of all sorts=)

Lina.