kerrya's blog

HAWK ... is the messenger. IT is also about visionary power and guardianship; the hawk is very protective of the young in its nest. It teaches us about providing for family and self. Hawk teaches us to be observant and to pay attention to what we may overlook. This could mean a talent we don't use, a blessing for which we haven't expressed gratitude, or a message from Spirit. The hawk has keen eyesight, it is about opening our eyes and seeing that which is there to guide us.
~ Power Animals website

This past weekend, I began to explore the animals I relate to based on the astrological forecast for November by Elizabeth Hermon. It is about seeing our strengths and weaknesses through the animals that we are. She suggested thinking about those animals whose characteristics we identify with. I had previously done a lot of work with my Fox energy, but this go-round, thanks to the inquisitiveness of a fellow non-dual healing classmate, something very different arose.

The Hawk.

Every morning this week I have been working with the same passage from my teacher Jason's book "The Instruction Manual for Receiving God". It is about being limitless and connected to the world. The closing statement in the passage is the one that packs the punch: "All day long, whenever you have a decision to make, say to yourself: What would I do if I were completely openhearted and in love with God ?

I struggled first with embodying the words above in an authentic way. I kept feeling all the ways in which I am limited -- like how I contract and hold back and tighten. How sometimes I get really, really small. And want to quit. Or run away. Or disappear. If I'm really honest, once in a blue moon, I fantasize about exiting here for good when the going feels just too much and too tough and too tiring. It feels really good to give voice to these pieces of me.

A classmate in my non-dual healing program, Lili, made a guided audio meditation using questions that were posed in a talk given by my healer/teacher, Brenda, at our retreat last weekend.

The opening question is: "Who is the WHO that perceives the future with imagination?"

I have been meditating with this and numerous other questions every night before going to sleep and, for the first time, this morning shortly after rising. There is tremendous power in allowing statements such as these to work through oneself, as is instructed by my classmate on the audio.

As I have begun to feel into my "who is" that perceives the future with imagination, an invitation from a friend and fellow traveler in the rooms of AA co-arose. It involves a dream of mine that I never actively pursued and have always said I'd do for my 50th birthday yet never really believed I would follow through.

Skydive.

"Ecstasy is not something separate from fear. Ecstasy is something that includes fear in the price of being human."
~ Jason Shulman, The Instruction Manual for Receiving God

The American Heritage Dictionary offers 3 meanings for ecstasy:
1) Intense joy or delight.
2) A state of emotion so intense that one is carried beyond rational thought and self-control: an ecstasy of rage.
3) The trance, frenzy, or rapture associated with mystic or prophetic exaltation.

Its origin is from the Latin word for "terror".

I, like perhaps many others, have only considered the first, more upbeat, definition for ecstasy. Which is why I have spent several days on my teacher's passage above and could not make the connection to fear coupled with ecstasy. As I see that the meaning is not limited to intense joy and includes emotion beyond the rational and trance and terror, I am standing at attention with eyes wide open.

Jason goes on to say in this passage about ecstasy the following:

I posed a question yesterday in our non-dual healing school to Jason, who spent the afternoon with all of us as our 4th year class came to a close. The question was about the relationship to being in Malchut -- being in the place of meeting life as it is -- AND our kavanah -- the trustworthy intention to be in integrity in our actions and interactions with the world. The bottom line of his exploration aloud with us boiled down to this profound statement:
"I have no choice but to love".

My sponsor in AA often shares that her primary reason to not pick up a drink and to stay sober, even after the love of her life died nearly 2 years ago, is because she has no choice but to be here and to love what is here -- be it an alcoholic who is struggling, her sponsees, or the stray cats who find their way to her home. This is what gets her out of bed each morning, amid the bouts of unbearable missing and longing for her husband to re-appear and to hold her hand once more.