Traveling Monk Wind

Posted on June 29, 2016 by noellevignola Standard 38

Painting by Albert Bierstradt

Clouds hang thick and brooding above me, as I stand on the deck. The rain comes and goes at its own bidding, with thunder rolling across the rooftops with little punch. The sun sets over the hogbacks, barely visible between the heavy cloud cover and a thin stretch of blue that holds to the mountains as if it were snow. Lightning flashes and a spindly thread of electricity that whips outward toward the fading sun calls a passing goodnight.

It’s the air that has brought me to the railing, leaning out just a bit to catch it moving along the house. Over the past two years a love affair with wind has been brewing and percolating within me. I feel as if she comes to my house for visits. Sometimes a loud and rambunctious toddler, rattling my crib for attention, while at other times, so soft it’s as if she were a lover. Tonight she is the cloaked traveler asking for a night’s stay and a stable for her pony. There is something mysterious in the night air and a feeling of intensity and anticipation, all the while holding a gentleness as she moves by. I decide I shall call her the Traveling Monk Wind and turn my face more fully into her presence. I feel the air moving past the cells in my body pulling the skies electricity deep into me. There is an alchemy in this moment that hasn’t escaped me.

The rain returns, but the wind does not abate. Things seem more silent, though the sky flashes and the clouds rumble. I really should go to bed, I tell myself, but I linger and then, linger still.

Painting by Albert Beirstradt

Double-U Trifecta

Posted on March 18, 2016 by noellevignola Standard 33

Photo by Noelle

I stand in the parking lot and let the wind and snow penetrate my clothes. I think of standing at bus stops as a kid waiting on the bus for school or trudging home from after-school jobs because my mother forgot to pick me up. She wasn’t mean, just a little ADD and most certainly not on time for a single event in her life. She’d always say, “There you are!” as if she’d been looking for me a good while or naturally expected me to arrive out of thin air.

Photo by Noelle

It’s occurred to me, of late, that my problems as they relate to the notion of waiting really do stem from this. Years of waiting for my mother to be ready to leave or to show up. I’m not blaming her now. Just aware where this whole crazy waiting bus got started.

Photo by Noelle

Christianity, as a rule, teaches a lot of waiting, too. Waiting to be worthy for things, waiting on God’s good graces to slide your way. Not knocking the Christians either. Like my mother who got her “waiting” from somewhere else, then passed it on to me, the Christians have been passing it along, too. The rolling wave of work hard, worthiness and waiting. A ‘Double-U” trifecta that forms the worst sort of box. Always feeling like you have to prove yourself somehow. Push more, demonstrate more, work harder, than wait for that tipping scale when your worthiness reaches some magical goodness quotient and all that you strive for will arrive.

Photo by Noelle

As I stand and feel the snow beginning to cover my lashes it occurs to me I shall let this wind take these old notions out to sea. They no longer serve me. The whip has cracked long enough at my back. The old beggar woman inside of me is finally turning to dust on this gale. How absolutely lovely to know that. Really know it down deep somewhere near my solar plexus. Like a winter sun suddenly pulsating into a white wind.

Now… ah, now, to live it.

Photo by Noelle

Hungry to be Ptolemy

Posted on February 25, 2016 by noellevignola Standard 26

Copyright: Tartu Observatory Virtual Museum

I stand in my driveway for a few minutes each morning looking out at the night sky. On my iPad is an app, Star Walk that I can put up to the sky and it will identify each constellation. I have loved staring at the stars but have never really known what the various night forms are, and so have taken to trying to find them. I marvel at their names, Ophiuchus, Serpens Caput, Centaurus, Bootes, Corona Borealis, and Hercules. So much magic and myth in each name. The map above is of the sky as I saw it this morning: Scorpius, Lupus, Sagittarius, and Corona Australis. “Look who watched over my home this night”, I think to myself.

zenandpi.com

This is how our ancestors saw the night sky. A cast of characters galloping across the firmament each night. Each one part of a larger story, part of a mystical journey each of us could partake, if we chose. Or we could look upon the third brightest star in the Northern hemisphere, Arcturus glimmering in the night sky and know from that brilliant light erupts Bootes, the Plowman, first cataloged by Ptolemy in the 2nd Century. There isn’t just stars floating up there, but histories and stories and ancient mariners or philosophers charting unknown lands.

Richard D. Serros: www.serrosstudios.com

Richard D. Serros: http://www.serrosstudios.com

With all our technological advances and our hunger to know as much as we can, I often think we’ve lost a little of the mystery and wonder at the world and skies around us. We’ve forgotten to tell stories about the curious things we find in plain sight. We’ve lost touch a bit with the magic that looking upon a night sky to see peacocks and lovely, floating maidens can elicit.
corona-australis_overview_edited

We focus so keenly on the day ahead, we forget all around us is beauty and mystery that could alter our entire day if we would pause only briefly to look up and know a king’s crown or a great hero of old hangs gracefully there.
corona_(crown)_overview_edited

sagittarius-constellation

Our lives are not ground to salt by our labors. We lose the luster and vibrancy in living when we won’t take our eyes off our labors to see the marvels that exist effortlessly around us. Life dulls under the weight of brooding instead of delight in something extraordinary as a single crocus pushing up through snow or the wonder that comes from gazing upon Betelgeuse in Orion’s belt. When we release the need to stare at our troubles and turn our gaze upon the beauty that simply awaits our notice life becomes so much easier to bear, so much easier to awaken to each day, so much more fun to really live.
stock-photo-6062738

Peace of Snow

Posted on February 1, 2016 by noellevignola Standard 45

Bird Eagle Snowfall

The silence pulls me and I offer no resistance. The flakes swirl past the window and I could fall forward, Alice down the rabbit hole. I was born in winter. My name conjures up winter, my colors are winter, my very nose smells the scent of it a month before it arrives. Everything about it fuels my engines and releases me from a thousand worries. I cannot explain it. Winter heals me. Snow invigorates everything I love within myself.
snowfall_winter_precipitation_trees_60966_1920x1080

snowfall_winter_precipitation_trees_60966_1920x1080

I sit watching the snow fall now, thick and dense. The world of human chaos comes down with it. The streets empty and the store fronts close. Mother Nature calls all to home, soup to the stove and a fire burning steadily into the night.

miradna.com

This is the peace of snow.

A Hole in Me Pocket

Posted on January 29, 2016 by noellevignola Standard 16

Clement Park at dusk: Photo by Noelle

I most certainly have a hole in me pocket. Every day I am full of time, but before I know it half of it is gone out a hole in me pocket. I stitch the blasted thing up, but the next afternoon I find myself in the same straits. Too much to do and not enough time to do it in. For someone who praises peace and breathing room this damn hole is most bothersome indeed.

It seems no small irony that all of our technological advances were intended to give us time and yet I feel more robbed by them every day. I was reading an article about the Greek isle of Ikaria. The New York Times dubbed it the place where people forget to die. They have an extraordinary number of octogenarians. They say their lifestyle hasn’t changed in a hundred years. They walk everywhere and garden. They remain connected to their faith and dine on fresh food and good wine. They never hurry. They sit in the sun without sunblock. They laugh a lot. This story plays itself out in Okinawa, Japan, too. People bike and carry their own groceries, and eat fresh food each day. They stay connected to their passions and talents. They breathe slower and speak less of troubles.

Autumn Leaf: Photo by Noelle

John Muir wrote in 1912, “Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul alike.” I wonder how such a man as this was not the most guiding force in our country’s evolution? How did we get money and busyness confused with the acquisition of peace and contentment?

There is a deep lesson here I don’t want to forget. Something that moves me about laughter and sitting in the sun. How much do I really need to get done everyday? Who is cracking this whip? What would happen if I planted something and sang to it, rather than worried about what was on my schedule? What would happen if I consciously found ways to step outside the machine?

I feel I might find others and there would be wine with some good cheese, time spent gazing at the horizon, all enjoyed after a lovely, scenic bike ride. I think this might be true. I think there are others like me wanting to feel dirt on the bottom of their feet.

Bike trail, Ken Caryl: Photo by Noelle

New Year’s Eve

Posted on December 31, 2015 by noellevignola Standard 39

From vivaboo.com

The door is not nearly as grand as one might think. The knob of solid brass, though tarnished from use, glows enough in the dark of the unknown to show me where to lay my hand. The threshold is clear, clean and unobstructed. The frame sturdy and the width large enough for me to pass with anything I wish to carry into this new year. Though not a word is spoken as I stand here, I also know it offers me the chance to walk through naked and with nothing at all.

From wallpaperup.com

I pull in on the great billows of my lungs the promise of this fresh moment. I let the taste of adventure and mystery to linger deliciously upon my tongue, savoring the prospects of all that I have yet to become. Each new day, of course promises this, too, but there is something unique about New Year’s Eve that speaks to the magic of transformation and opportunity. That calls out into the twinkling darkness of the heaven’s one’s excitement at what’s to come.

From Pinterest images

To the wise and quieted mind this wondrous anticipation has all the charm of a child on Christmas morning. It holds the wild hopes only a seaman stepping onto his ship bound for uncharted seas can know. This moment in the dark hours leaving one year to enter another is a sacred passage to those with an open heart. A heart that whispers as it passes through the doorway, “I am ready”.

Christmas Tree

Posted on December 20, 2015 by noellevignola Standard 29

From: Letstalkabout.co.uk

Today, I send into your meditation a Christmas tree. Few things are quite as beautiful, even in their simplest garb, as a Christmas tree standing alone in the corner of a darkened room. With the children off to bed and even the fire burned down to embers, its value transcends holiday gifts and punch bowls full of nog. In the quiet of the late evening it shimmers and draws all into the mystery. Though the light cast is not bright, there is a magic within it notwithstanding. The ambience of the tree pulls us in as surely as moths to a flame. As a symbol of late December it has brought the Christmas holiday into most homes whether Christian or not. We are drawn to the flickers of light that dispel the darkness, regardless of our secular or religious notions. All have come to share in the delight at midnight hours its curious luminescence.

From moddb.com

On this great earth are many things, but of late, a thread of violence, greed and despair has consumed our times. Such suffering has gripped our planet and it is often difficult to turn away. What shall dispel this darker part of us? What can illuminate the human heart in such a way as to cast out shadows? Where shall the light come to push that ebony veil back a few feet that we might breathe more deeply?

From hdwallpapers11.com

Until we come to know fully our own luminescence, we will always feel the oppression of that curtain about us. If we can awaken within ourselves our own shimmering light, we become like the Christmas tree, a beacon in dark corners. We alter the darkness not by demand, but by attraction. As we become our true brilliance, all come forward wishing to bask in the glow. Awakened our light joins others dangling so delicately from the tree of life that says:

From coverhdwallpapers.com

“No darkness shall prevail this night.
No suffering shall lay waste upon my door.
For I am the lone star beaming forth into the firmament.
I am the light that dispels shadows.
I am the voice that calls to others – wake up, see who you are!
See how your light shimmers – see how beautifully it glows.
I hold the power to wipe away darkness in the most dispirited souls beating magically, wildly within my breast.

I shall not listen to the wind that shakes the limbs with fear for I hold fast and true to this branch.
I hold fast and clear to this moment.

I am the mystery!

I am the light!”

From freejupitor.com

Paris

Posted on November 15, 2015 by noellevignola Standard 39

From Kandkadventures.com

Today, I send into your meditation Paris. How can we best serve the wounded, the dead and the aggrieved, as well as, the angry, the vengeful, the perpetrators of such suffering? Where in our practice can we rest our thoughts of confusion, fear, and despair? In what way can we be most effective? How might we turn this tragedy into something else entirely? Something that heals, binds us in love and strengthens us in our deeper knowing that we are all one. For we are as much in the lost and frightened wandering in the streets of that great city, as we are in the hearts and minds of the bombers.

When we come to understand this deeply we see there is no escape. There is nowhere to go. We are already in it with them. We carry their pain, hatred, fear, and grief within ourselves. We are The One and so we are the terrorist and the terrorized. We are the dead and the living. We are what remains whole and what has been destroyed.

Separation from the Parisians or from the terrorists is an illusion.

In Joe Vitale’s work on the Hawaiian prayer for healing and forgiveness, ho’oponopono he speaks of Dr. Hew Len’s work in a Hawaiian prison where he prayed each day for forgiveness from each prisoner. The psychiatrist asked for forgiveness from prisoners he’d never even met, because in his culture the prisoner’s wounds were his wounds. The crimes they’d committed he believed were his crimes. Through this process extraordinary healing came to that prison. If we are one, then we each can ask for forgiveness, healing and grace for the whole. We need not wait for the accused to heal themselves. We need not wait for the wounded to become whole again, to reach within our collective being and see our own wholeness manifest before us. We can ask forgiveness now from all who suffer.

In the end are we not the best to do so? Are we not in the safest position, away from the smoke and cries to ask for forgiveness and healing? To give what others in our Oneness are not yet able to give? As we do so with love, we are laying our own hands, in this moment, on the hearts of many. We are all connected. We are not powerless. We are not trapped in violence and despair.

And so we sit. The silence descends amidst our wandering thoughts, and still we persist. We turn back again and again to the breath, the mantra, the voice leading us down a guided trail. We let go. We accept. We see our own wounds inside this situation and we seek in the next breath to heal ourselves. For healing of others begins within our own being.

Be fearless and step into the heat of this breath full of our collective pain, breathe out all the love you have to give. Do not spare your amends to the bomber you would give willingly to the baby. For us to heal, we must all heal. To be whole, we must all be whole. There is no force greater on this earth than our own willingness to except responsibility for the wounds we all share and bow our heads in humble forgiveness that we find our way together.

Young Jedi

Posted on October 14, 2015 by noellevignola Standard 23

From Nedhardy.com and the National Geographic Photography contest

I haven’t been posting much lately, as a quiet has permeated my mind that is difficult to describe. I am not without thought, but rather a tension I hadn’t noticed was consistently there until now gone. I find myself suspended a bit, as if my thoughts have slowed enough for me to lift a few inches off the ground. I laugh to hear Obi Wan in my head. “There is no disturbance in your force, young Jedi.”

I think about this objectively, as if examining an exotic beetle. Iridescent blues, pinks and greens of the scarab float as a mist about my mind. It’s a little “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” inside of me these days, but without the psychedelics. I am not in nirvana nor have I become some Bodhisattva. There’s still a good bit of funky shit in this old noggin. It seems, at least for the present moment, I’ve lost interest in the inner drama. It begins it’s crawl across my mental windowsills, as I have allowed it to do for decades, but find myself either completely disinterested or curious that such a creature should have found its way into my home.

There doesn’t seem to be a point in wondering where it all came from. I’m fifty-two years old. Like most people I’ve been a hoarder of life experiences and reactions and reflexive memories since I hit terra firma. I’ve been storing a lot of stuff for a very long time. Cement boots sit next to a Mad Hatter’s hat, teetering on top of ballet shoes, dangling from a business suit as worn as all the other items inside my mind. They all have the same value to me now. The reasons for all of my previous costumes and acting parts just doesn’t seem all that important.

I move about the attic looking at it all. There was a time the sheer volume of internal debris and boxed up crap would’ve overwhelmed me. Now I look at it all, as if from a great distance, and watch the decay. A millennium’s impact on a human life leaves nothing in its wake. Everything in the end returns to the earth or to the Force, as Yoda would say. I feel no need to wait the time out. I imagine it is already decaying, evaporating and blowing out into a strong, celestial wind. This young Jedi has other things to do.

From Lady-Laerwen.tumblr.com

Freshness

Posted on October 3, 2015 by noellevignola Standard 33

From Pinterest and Enchanted Nature’s Facebook page.

I am uncommonly joyful these days. There’s always more to evolve and grow, places to be challenged and changed, but I seem to have found a sort of sweet spot. I note areas for this same growth, yet feel little struggle at the discoveries that are causing me to let go of old ways. My heart pumps steadily and even my breathing seems the easiest it has ever been. I have engaged many new strategies for living lately that I can clearly see are working. On a broader level, I can see it is not just these few things, but an odyssey I’ve been on to let go of old versions of myself that no longer serve. I look back and see I’ve been opening up windows drawing in the freshest air for now on seven years. My latest mantra that simply rose up in my mind now makes sense to me.

“I am open to fresh ideas, fresh thinking and all manner of newness to my soul. Show me, Source Energy, what I have never seen in this world or in myself before.”

Freshness as a quality, a way, a manner of looking at things seems to have pervaded every corner of my life. I take clothes from the closet and put them in new combinations I have never worn before and suddenly feel I have a new wardrobe. I take off down side streets not caring the way home will be longer, as I feel an eagerness to see new paths to the same place. I walk into work and feel the lightness of my step. The day cannot be the same as it has always been, because I am not the same as I have always been. I cut open a tomato and really look at it. The pulp, flesh and seed. What an amazing miracle something so common really is. The cat meows hello for the millionth time and I am completely taken with the look of love on her face, as if she had never spoken once before.

Even as I laugh more I grow more quiet within. The chatter of my mind seems at an all time low. I am certain something will arise to get it clambering again, but for now I relish its gentle murmur. I realize I am no longer afraid. Afraid of life, other’s thinking, myself, the future, the past. I am no longer afraid. I could write that sentence a thousand times and it would be no less wondrous to me. I am no longer afraid is as fresh an idea as cut lemons and spring rain.

Fresh. New. What I have never seen before.

Now to milk this moment for all that it is worth. Really indulge in the joy and the peace, as a child would a huge, autumn leaf pile. Isn’t that the true glory? The moment you feel free enough from yourself to actually enjoy the present moment meeting yourself, as if it were the first time.