Easily Amazed

[ashley]

I'll use this space to explore aspects of my practice... my journey of unfolding wholes, diving into the rivers and alleys of awareness, embodying life force, living my fullest potential. . . a practice of expanding awareness and cultivating presence.



Today I'm fascinated by how difficult it has been for me lately to hydrate myself. It seems like such an easy formula: I'm aware that I am dehydrated and thus I would expend energy to ensure that I hydrate myself. And yet... I can't seem to follow through on the equation adequately.

Recently Thomas and I were talking about the connection between informational awareness (I am in need of water or I need to stay away from sugars) and then the next step of taking action in carrying through with the needed effort that is required to integrate and embody the underlining meaning behind the original awareness.

Right now, I am taking actions and yet can't seem to satisfy the need for hydration. Two possible 'reasons'. 1. I'm not drinking enough water still. 2. There is a deeper need within my body. I'll explore the second possibility in a few minutes when I meet with my acupuncturist ( ).

The first possibility intrigues me and invites further attention. I am noticing how difficult it has been for me to get into a habit/routine in regards to basic care of my physical health: drinking enough water, eating regularly and balanced meals, finding a regular excercise routine. I feel myself slowly chipping away at these needs, and I judge the speed at which I am attending to myself. I feel guilty that because I can't 'get my act together' I'm watching my health suffer. I'm aware of the imbalance in my body and I'm aware of changes that would help and I'm aware that the shift to incorporate these changes in this new schedule of mine is not happening fast enough.

Right now, I choose to rest in acceptance of where I'm at right now. I honor the efforts that I am making, I honor the attention I am giving to my own balance. I invite that which is of essential need to be clear to me and that I may be open to readily integrating that awareness into my life-flow. I remind myself to accept that whatever happens is all that could and when it starts is the right time.

I am also so excited to be articulating these details of my own growth towards wholeness. There is someting about the public sense of accountability that helps me 'stay on track' and I love the feeling flowing through me in response to having this open practice journal.... Yippeee!!!

P.S. If you feel at all inclined to respond to something I've written in this thread, please follow through with the inclination. Your perceptions, observations and inquiries are most welcomed.

[ashley]

(from an email I wrote this morning)

[ashley]

My life is an ongoing journey of inquiry and practice, unraveling understanding of my personal process and integrating new growth into existing forms of expression. A place of learning that I continuously visit in my merry-go-round-the-spiral is the relationship between being and doing and my own personal means of manifesting this interplay.

When I am balanced and resting in acceptance of what is, I am Being. From that centered state of being, that which I need to do naturally emerges. Doing arises through Being.

Often I wake up, noticing myself in a state of imbalance: In July I wrote:

[ashley]

Exploring habits, patterns, responses, sensations, attitudes, judgments, reactions, etc around:

Feeling guilt
Time management
Setting priorities
Accepting and honoring my flow and its pace
The pressing urge that I should do more
The insesant voice that 'It's not enough'
Breathing and resting in me
Smiling and laughing

[ashley]

I'm crawling in the murky water right now.
My vision is blurred with a heavy inward spiral. I feel weighted -- I long to give up this weight. I long to release into the support of another. I long to dissolve into bliss.



Lying down, I close my eyes and allow the space between my cells to expand.

I try and stretch my arms out wide, to open my heart. . . it feels scary --
I need the protection upon my heart.
It's comforting and calming.



As I sink into the ground, I feel a tug -- a pull of habit trying to entice me into depressed depths.
I notice this tension,
observe the invitation,
and decide those depths are not life-giving in this moment.

That pull takes me to a place where my mind is quick to create stories -- stories of 'why' and 'how'. I don't choose the stories right now, I choose to Be and witness.



I feel much lighter now.
I'm floating just above the surface.
There is a small whirl pool spinning rapidly about my heart.


I step back into the day -- still a bit off balance but much closer to center.


I give thanks for the fullness, the wonder and awe of this process... I give thanks for the many blessings of life.


addition: This pull is so strong. As I spin back into the movements of my day, I feel its presence continuously creeping towards the surface. I keep feeling, watching, noticing, experiencing, clearing, opening, feeling, noticing....

[kang]

Hi Ash...hope this finds you well.

I must tell you that you describe your process extremely well and i would like to share some thoughts that reading you stimulated inside of me.

Your description is to me a possible journey into the WEST... the
"looks with-in place" that i have attempted to describe a bit.... the WEST is the place of imagination and creativity of possibilities....

Creativity/imagination comes from both our deep joys and our deep sorrows.....

Deep heart experiences such as joy/delight and success as well as grief, sadness and loss can trigger our creativity and imagination. Until we have really experienced both deeply ....the joys of life integrated with the sorrows of life....we have not lived fully.

Mystics called these:
via positiva ( the joy)
and
via negativa (the suffering)

I watched a show last night on the life of Robert Kenedy. When he first started he was a young man...worked hard for his big brother..but was a moralist that saw everything in terms of good/evil....black/white. He seemed to really come of age dealing with his brothers death...he used his grief to transform himself and used his personal suffering to begin to understand the suffering of other human beings.... His deep lost triggered his imagination and creativity....

As i have gotten older the alchemy of the dark emotions has become a way to transform the pains and sorrows of life....

Be well ash.... mike

[ashley]

I locked myself out of the house this morning, I smiled on the walk home realizing I had no keys and knowing I needed to use the hour to just sit and be, enjoying the sun, unwinding from being stressed lately. I spent the first 45 minutes sitting, breathing, and chanting. It was really nourishing, feeling the sounds spring through my voice, feeling my internal rhythms wrap themselves around the air and vibrations moving through. Creating songs with deep meaning to my soul, speaking my hearts language, and feleing the sun encourage me on.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

This forum is reflecting for me a pattern I'm oh-so familiar with in myself and still holding tightly to. The story is that 'I'm not doing enough', 'I'm going to let people down.' I feel the times that I want so much to respond to people's words... here or in emails or at other places in the virtual world, or on the telephone... and yet my own time and space doesn't seem to point me to that place. I seem to be needing more ashley time lately. I accept this more and more... and yet I still carry this sometimes little sometimes big contraction, stress, that I'm not living up to that which I would like to be.

[ashley]

(p.s. Roger, where did your post go? It made me smile....hmmm?)

Practicing by the River

I needed a break. I needed a place to take refuge, some time to refuel. Life is unfolding and expanding, growth is exciting and exhausting. It's time to sink in. I request the help of the land to sweep me away, to cleanse my mind and ground my soul.

The flow of the water reminds me and refreshes me. The river flows through me, my channel sighs open. My body folds in... giving over to gravity, being guided by the energetic currents moving through, shaping, turning, folding, contouring within... and spreading beyond.

I drape myself upon the rocks, my feet mold to mimic their shape. I breathe in the coolness of their grounded strength, I'm charged by their ancient pulse.

(photos can be found in the Gallery)

[ashley]

Experimenting. . .

I felt a desire, a need?, a request of attention from my physical body. This request, this invitation into physical depth was not able to be answered. I noticed the intensity of this desire, longing, needing? (question mark upon the need... is it really a need?)

The intensity of the charge tells me that there is something of essence present. Wether it's the essence of my ego-attachment, the essence of my habit, or the essence of a true need, it is real. I trust that from the intensity of my experience.

I decided to try an experiment. What if I try and feed that desire in the subtle realm instead of the physical. What if I honor that call for attention and connection, exploring and engaging in subtle ways (since physical connection is not currently possible).

I invited this experiment into action. . .

I noticed the difficulty I have moving beyond my physical experience, my will wanting to stay centered there. In feeling the grasping, I turned to imagery. My mind's eye went to a place beyond my body. I enter this bright, airy, breezy, shimmery space. 'I' am a long flowing piece of fabric, a sheer tapestry. 'I' have color but just barely, a light transparency. This fabric moves brilliantly with the wind, swaying, shaping, dancing effortlessly in ecstatic play with another flowingly sheer tapestry of cloth. My heart purrs as I feel this elegant and authentic play of souls dancing together, weightless, unhindered, free and flowing.

As I return into my body, feeling more of the grounded components of this present moment, I miss something very important. My awareness slips as my attention is grasped by the little tendrils of habit waiting to sweep me back into my old patterns, waiting to tie me to emotion and attachment, longing, wanting, recognition of a 'need' unsatisfied (need is back in quotes because again, I'm uncertain if it is a true need).

I lose contact with the boundary I had created in this experiment. I lose sight of the fact that I was not going to indulge the physical but was giving attention in the subtle. I sink into a place of tinkering upon the edges of this physical yearning and I am immediately hooked back into the place I was before the 'experiment'. I am left feeling unsatisfied, feeling confused, feeling triggered. . . .

I feel an awakened sense of awareness to my tendency to lose sight of a boundary. I feel invited to pay attention to boundaries, recognizing separateness, recognizing what drives my own experience, recognizing when I lose sight of my own experience, dissolving boundaries, a situation in gestalt therapy that is called confluence.

[ashley]

An aspect of myself that I've been exploring deeper into lately is that I am a depth junky. What recently stood out to me was that in relationships, when I percieve a lack of meaning and substance present in our interactions, my attention often turns to the shadow and pathology. My own boredom in sitting with sustained surface engagement leads my attention to areas of depth and substance, which in that situation are the not-yet-whole parts of myself, the other, or our relationship.

I feel like with this awareness, I've connected some dots that weren't previously connected. I look forward to paying more attention to when I am focusing on not-yet-whole parts and how it may or may not be connected to my own boredom or eternally hungry endulgance of depth.

[ashley]

An awareness that struck me the other day.

I was feeling extremely ungrounded. I could locate my center and yet I couldn't really maintain connection with it. I felt overwhelmed and wiped out. I knew that going to work, jumping head-on into deeper expressions of 'giving of myself' and 'being there for other people' was only going to entrench my sense of lostness.

I called in sick and headed out into the woods.


A A A A H H H H H H. . . The lush green of this moist day in the northwest, roaming amongst huge old trees, resting in their stillness, fluttering in the aliveness, breathing in the reality of what is.

Centered

By being (the me as an individual and my state of being) was radiating gratitude and a complete sensation of Blessed. I noticed a difference between me centered and not-centered. When I am not centered I always maintain an experience of gratitude and my sense of being blessed arises with thought. When I am centered I always maintain an experience of gratitude and being blessed. The thought is not needed for summoning or reminding.

[ashley]

I need a regular physical practice. I'd like to start swimming again. The solitude of time in the water seems nourishing to me righ tnow as well. I will find an indoor pool and start going.

in search of accauntability support (!),
a

[cathy]

Ash,
I have been pondering after reading your posts. I need to go back and read them again, but I see right now the references to water over and over again. I want to go back through and look again, but after this first visit, I am struck by the words associated with a liquid state!
Forever fascinated and flowing,
Love,
cAthy

[ashley]

christy, an inspiring woman, wrote a very inspiring post at Life Cultivating Life called little mirrors.

In my response I wrote:

[ashley]

June 4, 2006

I sit in verite with a stiff neck. I’m appreciative of last night’s dinner with K and D and this morning’s run in with J and M. Positive people in our life. It’s a good thing!

My neck grasps at my attention. My head is a little weezy from the coffee and stiffness. My eyes are puffy just because. A girl spreading icing on cupcakes releases a belly laughter… I just sit here.

I want, I want, I want.

I want to reflect on the salon. I want for the house to be cleaned. I want to just lie around and see what naturally arises in the space of my time. Okay… how about you stop expending energy towards wanting and see what arises right now.

We all just want to be seen. We all just want to be heard.

Your attention is powerful. Your reflective attention is empowering.

I am ‘doing’ enough by existing and being present in the world. I am opening my heart to the beauty of life unfolding and I am doing the best that I can to share as fully as possible with others.

* * * * * *

June 20, 2006 – The last day of spring – LaPush, WA

Watching the force of attention. Studying the waves of interaction. Exploring the terrain of my landscape and reflecting with the hearts of lovers.

I am centered around a knowing truth, an unfolding curiosity into the essence of attention, power, and empowering. The circuits of relations and connections. The surprises of mystery streaming into the flow of consciousness.

the stillness of effortlessness invites my being to rest in the expanse of existence and listen for the emergence of now.

My soul turns. A twist. A tingling. An aching of responsibility. Bringing to life and feeling an obligation of connection through form. May I be present as fully without form’s confirmation.

Who will explore the depths of this terrain with me? Who will walk with me through the world aware and attentive, listening and evolving with the mysteriously real unfolding embrace of the subtle terrain. Please will you who wishes to engage with me in such a study show up in my life. Please will you make yourself known so that we may come to know our Self.

* * * * *

Happy Solstice!

Centering around Love, Life and Beauty.

Centering – Feeling the magnetic pull towards wholeness… responding to invitations towards alignment… recognizing forces awakening areas in need of nourishment...and nourishing.

[ashley]

Hi all,

I thought I'd share some words that I wrote over at MichaelD's forum, Heartmind. I figure if I make this confession in front of enough people, I'll walk the talk and start pushing my edges!!

[ashley]

crunchy chik nuggets filling the corridors of my mouth
before turning to stone in my belly

wants and don't wants
desires and misfires

a longing...
to be held for a moment
to feel the touch of loving eyes
to rest in knowing's home
and maybe even cry

too little sleep
a voice tells her
you're doing this to yourself
echos another

and fear, oh the charriot of fear
so powerful in drawing contraction near

staring at it, I take a deep breath
breathing in, seeking ease
feeling sterness
a hardened heart

whose sole knowing
is
just love

I turn to this brook
asking for, while drinking acceptance

I wonder and worry and marvel at the train that is
just love... all twisted up.

[ashley]

Taking smalll steps. I just wrote a post at the easily amazed webl that feels like an edge for me. For one it is much more of a journal entry than a blog post. This is new for me. And secondly, I wrote what I wanted to write and didn't shape my writing to fit the eyes of who I thought might be reading. I do that... and while in many ways I value that practice, I also think that it is part of what has been holding me back from jumping off some edges and baring more of my self and soul and experimental edge in this world of writing publicly. Here I go!!!!

[kang]

Hey Ashe.....

JUMP!!!!!

WE WILL CATCH YOU!



MIKE

[ashley]

Lately I yearn for water. While Thomas was away I attributed some of this yearning to my need for touch. I learned alot about touch and how it is woven into my experience of being alive. I adore how in water, every moment of my skin can be touched by water. I also yearn for the ways in which the water holds me... so fully contains me. I can completely let go to the water's embrace and feel supported and free. My curiosity and intrigue travels further as Thomas and touch are now home and my water needs remain (as they have in the past).

It is both the water element itself (I also am loving going down to the coast as much as possible) and the gravity support of the water that calls me during this time. Fire is raging in my being. I have experienced currents of flames (perhaps like lava but more airy like fire) pulsing through me or some times slowly welling up. Being in water allows the fire to exist and to also be contained. Sometimes without the water I am lost as to how to stay with the fire but also let go of trying to contain it. I can more easily give it over to the water... and in the mean time I am exploring other practices.