"Reality is merely an illusion...

...albeit a very persistent one." This is a quote from one of the finest 'minds' of our modern era. Albert Einstein knew there was more to life than even his brain could encompass and explain. I have been revisiting some of the experience of a blog I wrote a while back, the one about swimming out to the sea, responding to the call of Sirens. This was not a nihilistic compulsion. Quite the opposite, I believe it was a call to leave behind all that I believe to be true and enter more courageously into the Mystery.

I have taken up reading an author who has inspired me further along this path. John O'Donohue (philosopher, poet, scholar, lyricist) is guiding me as I explore this idea of SOUL; what is a soul? does it exist? for what purpose? Perhaps part of my journey that began in September (if one can indeed mark the beginning of a change) was for me about becoming more intimate with my soul. In Anam Cara, O'Donohue writes:

"Trusting the more prenumbral dimension (soul) brings us to new places in the human adventure. But we have to let go in order to be, we have to stop forcing ourselves, or we will never enter our own belonging...One of the things that is absolutely essential is silence, the other is solitude." (p.98)

I don't believe that one can think their way to an understanding of their soul. I can make lists, analyze situations, choices, circumstances, and history and nothing brings the Mystery to light. Indeed, I have begun to appreciate more and more how light and dark play in this world of discovery and secrets; how valuable the secrets are to maintaining aliveness in the present. I shiver a bit as I think about my past work as a therapist and how I was hungry and driven to throw on all the lights in order to help someone understand their life circumstances. The garden has taught me a great deal about ripening and how there is a time, an intelligence, and a grace to unfolding.

On a more concrete level, I am including some photos taken last weekend, hiking with my friend, Becky, and her 2 dogs in the White Mountains. My skill and technology cannot do justice to the feeling of walking through the woods and coming out on a rock outcropping and watching as the sun sets behind the mountains to the west.

I am still very much enjoying sleeping in my tent (granted the weather has been very kind). On Thursday this week I will fly, once again, for a week-long visit to Colorado - hoping to do some work as a therapist and also reconnect with my friends and community there. I am aware that my life has gone from 4 phones and constant internet access (30-50 emails + 10-20 phone calls daily) to 2 hours a day of sitting, 6 hours of gardening, and dishes. I don't want to lose the solitude and stillness I have cultivated in my life. I do wish to invite back working with people; I want to see how I can incorporate some of my learnings into the privilege of sitting with people as they awaken and ripen.

horses, kitty cats, puppy dog, birds

An exciting, satisfying, gratifying, relaxing, and wonder-filled time in southern Quebec this past weekend. June and I (check engine light on) travelled north of the border to visit with Jane and her excellent 'family' of hoofed, pawed, and clawed beings.

For those who don't know, I've generally been frightened and awed by horses. Jane tells me that horses can see through our masks. Perhaps I know this intuitively and freak out because I can't fake my way into their hearts. I think it also has something to do with history. I had the delight of growing up with an obstinate pony named Dusty who took perverse pleasure in hurting small children. On top of that, our family owned a few high strung Thoroughbreds who similarly had little patience for awkward youths. If you've ever considered getting your children involved with horses, please follow the advice of Jane: have them take lessons for a few years, get them involved with horse care at a nearby farm, and then, when they're 16 or older, go halfsies, maybe.

Horses, even moreso that doggies, need a great deal of space, knowledge, time, energy, training, and care. And they need other horses. They're a herding animal, right? So many of us, particularly women, are drawn to horses. I could share my thoughts on why this is but it would probably just give you unnecessary insights into my own psyche and neuroses. I'm grateful for people like Jane who have put their passion, time, and energy into really being with horses so as to provide a link and access point for the rest of us.

Case in point: Yesterday the sky turned black in the middle of the afternoon and a torrential system moved across the skies and accosted the farm and surrounding area. The horses came in from the fields to seek protection. Jane opened the door to the indoor arena and we all came together under one roof (8 adult horses, 2 foals, 2 women, 2 cats, 1 dog). The air was electric and the winds and rain unleased on the outside walls of the arena. The horses started moving and I could feel myself holding my breath, my eye to the exit. Some nicked and kicked at each other, some rose up on their hind legs, some raced around shaking their heads, whinnying. Jane sat calmly and quietly on a white plastic chair near the middle with the 2 cats on her lap. My eyes were saucers and I kept my body close to the open door in the event of needing to escape. I played with relaxing. I played with re-establishing my ground underneath me. I played with how much power and energy there was in one enclosed area. I liken it to sitting on a surfboard, looking out to sea, watching the building and collapsing of 30 foot waves rolling towards me. I wanted to surrender and simply enjoy this much energy so close. Part of me stayed present and part of me felt compelled to disassociate a bit to moderate the arousal and fear in my system.

While my natural horsemanship skills leave much to be desired, as the weekend progressed I felt noticeably more at ease moving around the horses. And for the most part, the horses were very patient as I learned. I am remembering a suggestion I offer to parents who struggle with holding their ground around their rebellious teenagers: "Don't pretend to be something you're not. Name your experience, own it, make contact with it. Don't make it your child's job to fix how you're feeling. Then you can find your ground from that place of authenticity. And don't stop breathing!"

Thank you, Jane, for sharing your gifts with me.

wild child

I awoke in my tent one morning this past week and heard a quiet voice within: "I don't ever want to sleep inside again." Immediately a louder part of my psyche intruded: "That's ridiculous! Everyone lives and sleeps inside." But it was too late, a part of my being was uncovered and I couldn't turn my eyes away from what lay there.

For 6 weeks, I have been working outside and sleeping outside, coming indoors for food, meditation, contemplation, and washing. I am noticing a shift in the way that I position myself relative to the out of doors -- no longer do I feel like a garden assistant whose actions intervene for the benefit of the land. Rather, it is my place to yield and serve. It is a subtle but profound shift in who leads the dance.

Perhaps it is the combination of working outside with sleeping outside which has altered this dynamic because each night I lie down with the sounds and sensations of weather, my choice is whether I endure or give into the various energies of wind, water, temperature, and light. Maybe the willingness to lie down and be vulnerable has shifted my sense of stewardship; perhaps I have fallen under the guardianship of the natural world and now see myself less as an insider.

With this discovery I am uncovering a belief that my life was to be spent as a professional, be it as a business mogul, lawyer, or psychotherapist. I had not entertained the possibility that I would live with the land as the ground of my being. I tended to look towards recreational activities (camping, hiking, paddling) as a way to satiate my affinity for fresh air and open space. If I consider the level of satisfaction that I have gleaned from this hobby lifestyle as an accessory to my real life I can see that I was not fully satisfied. I was simply looking to more conventionally modern ways to bring the outside in.

In fact, it's less the wilderness that I love than the natural world. There is nothing that compares to fostering greater intimacy with life. There is nothing I have experienced that is as mind-blowing as the voice of the outside which is heard through becoming quiet. The combination of stilling my mind through mindfulness practice and attuning to the movements of nature outside me is revelatory. When this practice is combined with the production of food, heat, and shelter, the dance between being human and being of nature is a practice of worship, grace, generosity, and gratitude.

Rebellion -- I don't kow that I properly pushed back against society when I was a teenager. I feared antagonizing my family and creating general anguish. At that time, rather than dabbling in alcohol, drugs, and sex I pushed aggressively into perfection, competency, and control. My dreams were of living in an estate or a high rise somehow separate from the mediocrity of lower humans and wielding great power over life. Now the phenomenon of rebellion is giving way to non-conformity; a willingness to move through life with authenticity even when it flies in the face of conventionality.

I very much love humans. I light up when I am around people sometimes because there is the possibility of opening and blowing through the boundaries of judgment, projection, protection, and safe/controlled interactions. I no longer wish to live a life away from the magic and mess of humanness. And I now know that I don't want to "sleep inside". No idea how these two parts of myself will coalesce but I am pushing gently into my curiosity and passion for the land not as a place to hide or even restore but as a place to deepen into my own nature. I wonder if I dare to move more towards nature, be it through farming, beekeeping, or gardening, and not revert so hastily back towards the familiar land of therapy. It's a little scary because I fear losing the foothold that I have established as a counselor. But my soul is speaking and the idea of going back into an office leaves me cold.

So, if anyone reading this knows of a way to apprentice as a farmer, sheepherder, beekeeper, or gardener (preferably in Scotland or Ireland) let me know. My back is strong. My hands are like sandpaper now. And I look simply smashing in overalls and rubberboots.

check engine light

...came on again within a week (or 500 miles) of my recent rather expensive excursion to the mechanic's shop. I laughed and shook my head last Sunday night as I was returning from a day in New Hampshire (see photos); what would be the point of getting angry? It is.

This orange symbol perniciously glows out from my vehicle's dashboard each time I start June (aka "my unsympathetic guru"), marring the perfection of an otherwise unobstructed reflection that all is as it should be. I was momentarily relaxed after my last trip to Schnell's VW Auto, exhaling deeply into a fragile self-insinuated sense that nothing was wrong. Funny how I am addicted to the notion that the world is in order and how my system tightens when I judge that something is out of 'flow'. Is it even possible for the Universe to be out of flow? The Universe is flow.

And yet, my consciousness is compelled to look for the proverbial stain on the carpet. Hilarious and sad that much of my attention and energy is committed to looking for what is off and then going to the ends of the earth to rectify this imagined defect. So kind of June to oblige this neurotic compulsion in her own way.

So, seeing both my compulsion as well as the orange dashboard light I wonder how I shall respond; a return trip to Peterborough is out of the question (but no doubt my righteousness wants proper customer service). My resources are limited and I am leery of more mechanical diagnostics and interventions which end up putting me in debt. As such, I continue to drive June with my AAA membership and cellphone in tow, trusting that if a breakdown happens the same perfection of the Universe will be at play and all will be just as it needs to be, just as it is.

And, I do miss my trusty 2001 Toyota Tacoma (aka "Hazel").

the fridge magnet

This past weekend I travelled to Ontario so that I could gather with my family and celebrate the October birthdays including my father's 75th. The weather was a wonderful combination of steady rain and open blue skies. I celebrated the simple pleasures: bedrooms with only one bed, doors that close behind me, bathtubs, beer, and the kind of deep breaths that come only from a sense of privacy.

I like my family. I know that not everyone can or will say this but it's true for me. We're all quirky. We can struggle with and trigger each other. Sometimes I think that "2" is the best number for McClure's -- that when I am with just one family member our level of connection drops to greater authenticity, more honesty, and generally some good emotion. Then again, when we come together as a group, we can laugh and play in ways that bust through the generational differences. Case in point, this weekend found all 3 generations on the grassy lawn playing a competitive game of volleyball (see photo of Dad, member of the winning team).

I admit that I melted down when I went to pick up my tempermental little June-Bug from the VW mechanic outside Peterborough (her 3rd trip to the doctor in 4 months). The cost of a coil replacement has me postponing my dreams of a new camera for the time being -- and that's okay, just because I cannot see the perfection of the Universe doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. Enjoy the pictures anyway.

Being around my peep's stirred up some longing for me -- I miss having a room of my own, I miss cooking for myself, I miss earning an income. My sister, Corry, is learning and practicing pottery. She presented me with a little clay oak leaf facsimile telling me it was a fridge magnet. I sure hope it works, I'd love to attract a refrigerator into my life again one day.

how I spent my birthday

Discovering that having no plan makes space for everything

seeing that change is reflected best in stillness...

.... witnessing how Life pushes up through Ground

...noticing how power can be smoothing...

.... and feeling Life through and beyond gratitude.

trading down and looking in

I have become somewhat self-conscious recently about whether or not others understand the choices I made to wind up working in a garden in exchange for room & board at a Buddhist-based retreat center.

Two years ago I was operating under a belief that happiness and security would be the proper fruits of my efforts to be a success in the world. I married my partner, I moved up the ladder at work, I purchased an expensive SUV, and I fostered visions of creating a beautiful home. I spent upwards of 60 hours a week doing the work that I loved and I wanted more than anything to be masterful as a therapist.

I was building a house of sand and fog for myself thinking that one day I could hide there and slip into comfort and complacency. Within a very short time, my fantasy unravelled. Unlike many people who experience a severe loss or crisis of health which then leads to a desire to wake up

I felt no trauma in my outer life. Instead I felt a dull ache inside and a general discomfort as though I was far from living an authentic life. I was hiding in a coccoon and my system wouldn't stand for it.

I realized that most of my life was not being guided by connectedness and flow but from a desperate fear of emptiness, chaos, and isolation. I was making choices that were not necessarily congruent with my spirit but driven by my need to have something to hold onto.

Today I have cored down much of the noise of my life and relinquished some of the things that I once believed were most valuable. I intend to consciously invite back aspects of conventional Western life but not from desperation nor the need to fill up the void. I am also making more space for true peace which arrises within me not by hiding but from seeing and acknowledging those parts of myself which are not shiny.

I am not a master gardener in the making. Much too much stooping over and I simply do not have a mind for the chemistry of mixing nitrogen and phosphorous in the soil. I don't want to return to the practice of therapy as a way to run from emptiness or meaninglessness. I don't even want to turn to my work as a counselor out of a need for money - I'd rather answer phones or make cappucinos. At least now I realize that I can live off of much less than I made in my prior incarnation.

The photos come mostly from the garden. The rock is situated near the entrance to the garden and reminds me to keep it simple and move towards balance, always with my face to the weather of life. I was drawn to a spider web that was being built in the corner of our tool table and some rakes and shovels that were hanging off to the right. I appreciate the blue light that is caught in the web.

Finally, I connected with a woman this past Sunday who participated in a program here at Karme Choling a week ago or so. She was kind enough to invite me out to visit her home in nearby Sugarhill, NH and to show me around the pastoral fields nearby (see photo). I relished being around an inquisitive spirit, a woman who ponders the great questions of being human while sharing the company of dogs.