Colette Obrien

Trust, essential to so many other things; with it we feel safe and when safe we feel confidant and free to move and play, create and connect with the world around us. It is as if, trust creates the space within which all good things come into existence. Like a playground with a fence around it that lets the children know they are safe to play within it with no interference from outside forces. We are after all, baby gods and the world is our playground, our place to learn and interact.

Without trust, we contract and are afraid, shrinking the space into a denser and denser concentration of energy like a neutron star that will eventually blow itself up. At the very least it will not have room for play and pleasure, creativity and open communication with the world at large.

Granted then, trust is a good thing, but if it’s so important to our well-being, why is it so rare? Why are most of us, most of the time, living without it? Part of the human experience is to continually have the rug pulled out from under us; to have our hopes disappointed, or unpleasant things happen that we’re not expecting; love lost, job lost, rejection in a myriad of forms.  When this happens most people contract, as if it is a blow. And what this perceived blow hits is our trust! We then say, I can’t trust life; life is not safe; only fools trust, I’ll get hurt if I trust.   Fundamentally because life is unpredictable, which it most definitely is, it is not safe to trust.

There is a certain logic to this, but it is a flawed argument for if we know that life is unpredictable, we “trust” that it is, why argue with it whenever it proves to be true? Why demand that life give us what we want when we want it in order to trust? Why not trust that life is as it is and that what comes will come and that we can trust that? So we keep our trust intact, freeing ourselves to enjoy the play. A favorite book/movie title comes to mind, “At Play in the Fields of the Lord.” This is an area where the ego is still childlike; so unsure of itself that it needs constant assurance that it’s valuable and loved, and – it’s never enough.

I’ve booked the first reading for the novel after publication on May 10^th at the Orinda Book store. Look for details in the schedule section.  And the next workshop which will be on Aphrodite is set for April 13^th.  Now if it will only stop raining for long enough to get my roof repaired I will feel that things are truly moving forward after this long sloggy sloppy mushy period. Some call it Mercury retrograde, I call it mud.

A friend came to me with a dilemma today. The gist of it was how does one know the difference between what is wrong to do and what is painful to do? The two get pretty tangled and when it is painful it often feels wrong for that reason when it isn’t actually morally incorrect, just hard.  In this case, is it morally wrong to put an animal down when it is unable to adjust to life indoors with people? The Human Society says it is not wrong.  My friend’s heart is pained but she cannot live with this animal’s behavior – she’s done everything known to man to change it.  And no one else will either – she’s searched all avenues for a home.

This is an ambiguous moral dilemma. Thoughts about it anyone?

I adore Hestia, preparing for next Sunday’s workshop where we’ll be looking at what she represents archtypally, I am in love with her all over again. I see that she has been part of my foundation always and that even when I’m unaware of her influence, true to her nature — moving between the seen and unseen world –she’s always at work weaving her web of connection. She is the one that makes the unconscious conscious that gives depth to our perceptions that would otherwise see only the surface of physical reality. It is she who’s at work when we gain a deeper understanding.  It is also she who frightens us with dark possibilities, with eruptions from the depths that can cause havoc in our otherwise orderly lives. She is not always a friend to the ego that wants to believe it’s in control over things it is most definitely not. Her symbol is the moon and it’s madness—not popular with today’s high value on tidiness to the point of an obsessive/compulsive kind of disorder!!

The line between what we are meant to at least try to control, and all the rest that we cannot, is a moving target. I’ve yet to find it stable and predictable and even when I think I’ve finally understood, oops, dear Hestia pulls the rug out from beneath my feet and shows me once again that the truth I thought I’d found is false and that if it takes that to bring me to my knees, which is the position she prefers that we be in, so be it. I surrender, and frankly, once I get down there where I can rest my head on the ground and smell the sweet earth, I am glad beyond measure to give in; it is the place of peace and of true connection where I’m returned to the larger truth that I am one indivisible cell in the body of the universe; that my experience of separation is an illusion and I’m returned home, which I never left.

This life of separateness is so hard and so sad and confusing—and it’s that way only because of the illusion — that I can’t help wondering why we must do this.  Some days I feel punished, on others I accept it without question ( that because I’ve spent so many years questioning to no avail; as this is obviously the situation my questioning has become an empty exercise and loss of energy) and do my best to get through it with some grace and care for all the rest of us who are suffering the same fate.

It’s raining today, and new leaks have sprung open in my living room adding to the growing number in my sweet redwood house. It is now more outdoors than most, but dear to me none the less.

What a wonderfully insane week this has been. Part of what has made it so, is that Ancient American asked me to do a rush to help them out and get an article in to them for this month’s magazine. So, look for it probably in two weeks at the bigger bookstores, Border’s, etc. Also, the book has gone to print and can be pre-ordered athttp://www.wheatmark.com/bookstore.  If anyone has contacts in the public world that might have interest in my novel, please pass them on to me as it’s time to really get the marketing in gear for the book.  I’m working this week on talking to bookstores about readings and when I have a schedule I’ll post it in the Schedule section of my website.

The magazine “What is Enlightenment” has an interesting article this month regarding the Divine Feminine. I was delighted to read Ms. Diebold’s premise that a return of feminine values is not the answer to inequality of any kind, not just spiritual, so then what is? The thesis of my novel looks at that issue, so I was happy to discover like-minds questioning it as well.  Maybe it’s because I started out in life as what is referred to as “a father’s daughter,” a typical Athena character that supports men, but, it’s not just that, but more an awareness that: 1. Our essential nature is not gendered. 2. The feminine and the masculine are equally valuable.3. Too much of either one creates an imbalance.

We can see the balance when we look at the natural world which has always been the best guidance when our intellects get lost down a rabbit hole of thought that takes us too far from the simple truth.  From that perspective any enquiry becomes simple and obvious. Ask any simple person; a village mother, a farmer, a fisherman. They’ll look at you like you’re daft to even bother with such questions.   But for those of us who are burdened with a desire to question, whose minds are not naturally simple, the answers can still be best found in the simple and obvious.

Once a month does not a blog make, but now that the website is up-to -speed and the marketing for my novel,Time & Transformation, scheduled for publication May 1^st, is underway, I will devote more time to this venue. I’m very excited to announce that I’ll be writing a long series of articles for the magazine “Ancient American” beginning in the April issue. I’ll be able to use photographs from the ruins and explore some of their fascinating concepts in depth. It’s a great opportunity and I look forward to sharing it with everyone.

I live on a mountain side from where I look out at the contour of the mountain and a valley full of trees of many varieties.  When I sit and look at this gorgeous vista, I know in my mind it is beautiful but it seldom catches my breath as it does when the mist is playing hide and seek with me.

All day today the storm has brought layers of clouds and mist.  In this season of mist everything moves  in and out of existence, now here, now disappeared.  Each reemergence a delight; a friend recalled.  I think we are very bad at appreciating what is too present; too constant.  I no longer see the art on my walls that once had the power to move me to heights of passion.  It is in my nature to delight at existence however, it needs to catch my attention and familiarity does, sorrowfully, breed discontent.  Here is another of life’s brilliant ideas; we all know that the one thing we can depend on in life is change, right? So life makes human nature fickle, which forces us to be awake to the next moment for as soon as we fall asleep – fall into any form of complacency- we lose life, in other words we experience varying degrees of depression.  To be fully alive we must be fully awake; we must be able to see the tree anew each moment.  This is where the mist is a great gift for it tricks us into thinking the tree is gone so that when it appears again, Voila, we actually SEE it.

I have spent a lifetime studying and practicing different prescriptions for awakening.  Nothing works as well as mist.