December 19 , 2024

In a nutshell… 

• The dearest way through the dark
• How to find your joy
• 188 days of joy

Back in 2016, I had one of those life experiences that can really pull you down.  It included a painful loss as well as new trauma, plus the re-opening of old trauma, wounds and fears. 

Death, divorce, betrayal, a hurricane or earthquake, losing a job suddenly – these are the types of major events that often bring a lot of pain, turmoil and change to us and can be very difficult passages.  Especially if more than one happens at once.

This time I felt barely able to grasp for wisdom, yet through the roar in my head I seemed to hear, “Two things my dear, so listen up: First, drag your bum off the “battlefield” ASAP, placing yourself with people and nature where you can heal.  Do this and then you will be given an important assignment.”  So I went to Hawaii where the ancient land and ancestors always speak to me of peace and balance.  

My first morning under Miracle the Banyan tree in my dear friend’s yard, Wisdom whispered my new assignment. 

“Begin each day with the following question, answer it as best you can: 

What will bring you joy, right now?  
It can be anything.  Do it.  
Then ask the question again, 
answer it and follow through again.”

Wisdom also said: “This is the assignment. Repeat your singular task – to choose joy as best you can – day after day, radically and fiercely.”  

And this is what was promised to me: “In time, joy will slowly begin to fill your heart once again.”

The truth is, I didn’t want to.  I hated the idea.  I had a bad attitude; I didn’t care.  It all was poop, what did it all matter!  I was mad and fussy and stinky and hurting.  I had a big fit and fell over in it a few times.  (note: I’m sometimes a touch dramatic which is fine, since I know it’s all Holy.) 

At first it was excruciatingly hard to do because I was in a lot of pain and fear.  I felt no joy and nothing seemed likely to bring joy.  It all felt so flat.  I sensed an urgency in this though, so I limped into doing what I could.

What joys did I choose?  In the morning I generally chose being outside to hear the birds waking up the world.  A nice steaming cup of something to sip in early morning light.  

I went to the water when possible; I craved living water.

Sometimes I chose to smile at someone, getting a smile back. 

I chose lots of quiet time and writing to you in weekly articles.  

I often tried to sing or play my zither though sometimes I was too sad, but not always. 

I left the future alone. I allowed the past to unwind itself.  I chose joy.  And I took care of the basics, not much else.

Slowly but surely it worked, I came through. I began to know that peace was still there.  Inspiration started coming back too, and my work felt good again.  Energy began to flow in, stronger than before.

I came through, I found my way back to joy and meaning.  

The inner river of joy is lovely and beauteous yet wild and crashing with endless waterfalls, banked by secret gardens.  I discovered this river by choosing joy even when not feeling it.

If you want, choosing joy can start to bust your world wide open, right now, if you begin.  Oh, and by the way, after doing this 188 days, I just stopped counting because I thought, “Why stop?”  Radical Joy is now a wonderful part of my daily practice.

Alas, it’s time to go, I’ve gone on longer than I planned, so goodbye for now.  And love.  Do we have a bigger word than love?  No?  Well LOVE it is then, dearest,

I’m sending you soOO much love,
Mayet

December 12, 2024

Article highlights: 

• Celebrating 20 years
• My first ever blog, 2005
• egg on my… everything!

I began blogging regularly in the fall of 2012 – 13 years ago now – and some of you were on that early blog mailing list.  But my first blogs began being posted irregularly in 2005 on a website set up by a friend in 2005. 

That’s 20 years ago!  So I thought it’d be fun to celebrate a LOT of years of blogging by sharing the first blog I ever wrote, March of 2005.  It gave me a little chuckle remembering, and might give you a smile as well.

Happy Blog-aversary to me and Cheers! to you, and a holiday hug or two,
Mayet

Egg On My Space

A mishap occurred at my place a few days ago.  It was one of those repeat life-lesson moments one sometimes asks for.  I put a dozen eggs on the stove to boil.  I use the Julia Child method: cover eggs with cold water in pot, bring to boil, cover and remove from heat immediately.  Leave covered for 16-20 minutes.  17 minutes gives me perfectly and gently boiled eggs.  Gentle is important because eggs – whether you’re boiling or scrambling –  need the lowest possible cooking temperature so their proteins don’t toughen and turn rubbery.

So.  While waiting for the eggs to come to a boil, a call comes in on the landline in my office (2005 – remember landlines still being a part of things?)  The water seems about simmering so I put the lid on and turn the burner off and hurry to the phone.  

90 minutes later later, I’m blithely still gabbing it up with my friend when I hear a weird sound on the roof and wonder, “what’s that?”  10 minutes later there’s a lot more clatter on the roof and I say to friend, Gary, “Santa must have just landed on my roof or my satellite dish fell off in this wind (remember those giant satellite dishes on the roof?)

Though you’re probably guessing what’s going on, I’m  STILL not getting it.  Another 10 minutes goes by before a weird smell reaches me.  “OMGosh!” I holler to Gary, “gotta go, I’ve burned the eggs!!”  I dash to the kitchen, over in the other wing of the house. 

I thought I turned the gas off but didn’t and THOSE EGGS!  Smoke is wafting about and that sulfur smell of eggs-gone-wrong will taint the air for months to come.  I turn off the gas burner and survey the damage.  

The lid blew off the pot and hit the 14 foot ceiling above before clattering to the floor.  And oh my!  There’s egg stuck up there too.  In fact there’s egg EVERYWHERE.  12 exploded eggs can cover a lot of ground as it turns out.

One egg appears to have blown across the kitchen island, hitting a glass of water by the refrigerator, knocking it to the floor where it shattered.  A glass bowl on the counter is also shattered by projectile eggs. 

Days later and I’m still finding burned egg bits and glass in things.  And wiping the egg off my face.  The pot, of course, was shockingly blackened but I luckily knew the powdered dish soap in hot water soaking-trick and, amazingly, the pot was saved.

Note to self: new rule, no leaving the kitchen with a burner on, NO exceptions.  But what was that life lesson I mentioned re-learning. 

That’s the funny thing.  While I was still standing in the kitchen waiting for that dang pot of eggs to boil so I could turn the heat off, guess what I’d been thinking?

I’d just asked Wisdom, “what’s the most important factor for making things real in the  physical world… for manifesting creatively?  

The answer was Attention, Focus and Intention.  I guess I needed that illustrated, right?

Give something your full attention.  Bring laser focus to it.  And apply a clear intention.  Without those, what you create can be random and surprising.  You think?  

Well, at least I’m laughing.  And learning.

December 5, 2024

Article highlights: 

• Time is not time
• Nothing is really solid
• Why not?

Dear Time Being,

In February this year I watched a Netflix docudrama called Einstein and the Bomb.  I enjoyed it, not only because it explored the topic of its title, but more so because it prompted an unusual experience of time for me as I watched.

Recently, going through my Morning Musings file from that month, I came across the thoughts the film prompted, including a message about time from those who walk with me on the inner.  It seemed a fun thing to share today.

~~*~~

Thoughts about time today.  Well, not time itself, per se… about time not being time at all.  I watched a good docudrama on Einstein last night.  Its script was taken from his letters and speeches.  Entirely.  Every word, phrase, each line the actor spoke in this docudrama was, in fact, something he actually said.  

This interested me… it’s an idea I had some years ago.  I thot: what if a life story was created using someone’s letters and speeches…. Someone from a time when it was common to write letters each day.  Someone whose life was archived.  I wondered, could a good script or book could be created that was accurate to their own words?

That’s exactly what this was!  So anyway.  At one point, Einstein said a few things about time; he said it didn’t exist, that it wasn’t a dimension, he said time is only a construct.  

We’ve all heard this before, we even parrot it to one another.  Most of us believe it must be so because science has affirmed it, yet day to day we can’t really integrate that idea.  We can’t fully enact what it means, practically speaking.

However, in these moments of artful dramatization, something integrated the idea in me… it was as though my body was listening while my mind was engaged elsewhere… and I suddenly had a visceral sense of this actually being so.  

Einstein also said that nothing is really solid… which we’ve all been taught as well but have the same problems relating to our daily experience.  I felt that viscerally too.  So this morning I’m pondering what that lack of solidity and lack of time offer my life.

In the ground zero of our daily lives, the constructs of time and solidity are utterly convincing.  But there are activities in which time seems different… when I fly in a commercial plane for instance, feeling out of touch with daily routines.   The daily world doesn’t feel as solid and time has a suspended quality.  

Vacation drops one out of time and solidity in similar ways, doesn’t it?  Deep meditation can also be a free fall away from both.  What do I learn about time in such moments?

Taking in the random comments around me – those of store clerks, friends, clients, neighbors, waitpersons, overheard conversation at a restaurant, waiting in line or at the dentist.   “Time is weird,” is something I’ve heard more than once.  Some relate it to aging, some to the light coming in; some fear they are losing their faculties. 

Something seems different, we aren’t sure what.  It’s unsettling and we are trying to explain it.  Perhaps it’s not yet explicable.  Maybe we are moving out of the world time, dimensionally speaking.  If so, how would we know?  Would we begin to notice the “weirdness of time” as we seem to be doing now? 

Also, don’t you wonder why?  Why isn’t time real, why aren’t things solid?  I was asking that of Wisdom, when I go this message in reply.

Both temporal solidity and time – being constructs of your physical world – are very vulnerable to distortions, erosions, to change.  That’s because they are relative to what is impermanent… not to what is unchanging.  

The entire physical world is relative to impermanence and therefore it also is not fixed.  It erodes, decays, changes.  It can never be permanent, nor can any creations within it.  

The physical world is not relative to what is permanent or unchanging.  That’s why it’s important to make one’s self relative to what is unchanging… the real essence of life itself.  

Hummm… much to muse on.  I’m not being definitive today, just mulling things around, getting ready to open further to changing time  ;-).

Timelessly yours,
Mayet