A Little Synchronicity....

Florence at 92

I had a lucky day yesterday, in the midst of an extremely stressful month.............I couldn't help but feel very grateful for a few synchronistic nudges that pointed the  way.

Florence by the Shores of the Sea

My mother went into the hospital earlier this month, and for a while I thought she might pass.  But she's improved and is now in a rehab center in good spirits.  But it's apparent she can't return to her home again.  So, with less than two weeks until I'm scheduled to leave for England (not to mention the 115 degree temperatures and my politically correct non-air-conditioned car)  I've been desperately seeking an assisted living community for her to go to, and resigning myself to the possibility of giving up my trip.  

I've looked at places gorgeous but too expensive, and lots of places less expensive that are very depressing.  Finally I went to a big community to meet with a manager named "Sharif".  I walked into a beautiful building with a big dining room, impressive art and furniture, and a huge landscaped interior garden.  I was expecting Sharif to be a rather intimidating Middle Eastern man, but instead was met by a young,  freckled redhead in a Hawaiian shirt, who told me that he and his brother, Omar, were named after the famous actor.  I immediately saw that the place would be perfect for my mother.

We looked at a lovely studio, and in the course of a tour Sharif interrupted our walk by bounding down the hall to assist an elderly woman who called for help.  She was fainting, and he caught her before she could fall.  I  excused myself, and said I'd be back later.

My mother's name is Florence, so I was a little amazed when I came back to notice a big sign, with balloons, over a door that said "Welcome Home Florence!".   When I met Sharif again, he told me the lady who had almost fallen was fine, just a blood sugar problem, and that her name was Florence.  And last but not least, I received an email from someone who was interested in purchasing a "Flora" mask!

Flora Pitcher with Florence, 1917

 It turned out my timing was good as well - with a summer promotional event, my mother will get the first month free of charge, and a lovely place to live that she can afford.  And I will get to go to England after all!

Beaches & Synchronicity

Photo from www.popartuk.com

I wanted to remember a funny synchronicity............

I went to the beach with my friend Joanna, and she was called away for a while, so we agreed to meet in front of the stairway that led down to the beach.  While waiting  I meandered  barefoot, picking up some lovely rounded black stones.  I found the perfect black "touchstone" - and then, of course, I needed to find a white stone as well, to complete my "yin and yang" touchstones.

No luck!  There were red, green, brown and yellowish stones everywhere, but not a single truly white quartz pebble.  I saw Joanna sitting on the beach by where we agreed to meet, and with a pocket full of black stones, sat down beside her. Kids were playing around us, making castles of sand.  As we dug our toes into the sand,  I noticed that between us, by my handbag,  was a pile of white stones someone had carefully collected, and then abandoned there in the sand, 10 or 12 lovely, rounded pure white quartz pebbles.  

Ask and ye shall receive indeed!

Living metaphors......... I have a hard time explaining these fanciful moments, sometimes, to anyone else but myself!  But to  continue, there sat Joanna and I at the great warm beach of the great Pacific Ocean, catching up with each other on the events of the past 35 years or so, me playing with my greedy treasure trove of white pebbles, and watching the surf,  speckled with young surfers on their boards.  

We talked about love, our marriages, children,  and being alone now, which we were both well content with.  I remember saying something about not being able to imagine being in a relationship again, all the drama and stress.  As seasoned and salty old veterans of love, we sat there  content to watch the surf roll in. 

 I noticed something bobbing on the waves........"what's that?" I asked, as we were rising to leave. "Well", Joanna noted,  "looks like the surf is bringing it in, whatever it is."  I walked out to catch it, and brought back a slightly deflated, metallic, heart shaped balloon.

It was covered with hearts pierced with arrows, and a great big "Te Amor" on both sides.  

We had to laugh! Just when you think you're done with all of that.........the Ocean brought a Valentine!

The "Akashic Experience"

"Weavers" (2009) (Detail)

I've been reading THE AKASHIC EXPERIENCE by Ervin Laszlo, systems theorist once nominated for the Nobel Prize.  He is a founder of the newly formed GlobalShift University, author of 83 books, and president of the international think tank called the Club of Budapest.  Laszlo is an amazing visionary.  His term for non-local consciousness, the integral field, as it manifests in human consciousness is "the Akashic Experience". In this collection of essays, he invited articles from colleagues in science, psychology and the arts to write about their "akashic experiences", within their research or their personal lives.

I guess my own term would be "Spider Woman's Web"  for this concept which is also an experience - Spider Woman's threads have inspired so much of my artwork. 

One of the articles I particularly found interesting was by  Stanislaf Grof,  who with his wife Christina Grof has been on the leading edge of consciousness research for 35 years, beginning with research into psychotropic states and LSD.  He's developed something called Holotropic Breathwork to help people enter into altered states.  I myself did some breathwork (not with Dr. Grof) years ago.

In my own experience (in 1993) I encountered what I called the "Mask Deva".....I saw a mask face becoming hundreds of colorful, fantastic faces, shifting and opening like a flower in fast forward.  I can honestly say that I've made hundreds of colorful, evocative masks since, including the Masks of the Goddess,  and my students and apprentices have gone on to continue the journey......so perhaps the Mask Deva is pleased with me.

Dr. Grof numerous times encountered past life memories in his work, although he didn't call them that at first.**  In his article, he recounts the past life Christina returned to numerous times, a life in Salem, Mass. where as a young girl she was drowned for "witchcraft".  (Dr. Grof notes that historically there was a female slave from Barbados, Tituba,  living in Salem at that time, who probably influenced some of the girls by introducing her indigenous shamanic ideas - an experimentation that led to altered states, with disastrous results in that violently repressed community.

Later, the Grofs decided to make  a trip to Salem, where Christina was able to identify the pond she saw herself being drowned in, a former grove of trees, and other significant details.  But what was especially striking about this trip was that Stanislaf Grof learned that the original site of  old Salem, where the historical events occurred, was now called Danvers.

"That came as a shock to us" he writes.  "Danvers was the place where we had held a large conference of the International Transpersonal Association (ITA) in 1978.  There we presented for the first time our concept of spiritual emergency, implying that many episodes of non-ordinary states of consciousness that mainstream psychiatrists diagnose as psychoses and often treat with drastic methods, such as insulin coma and electroshock, are actually psychospiritual crises."

 "In our lecture in Danvers, we had suggested that - properly understood and supported - these crises of spiritual opening can actually be healing, transformative, and even evolutionary.  We had given the talk in a hall from which we could see, on the other side of the valley, an old-time psychiatric hospital that had one of the worst reputations in the country.  They were still using shock methods, which bore great similarity to the practices of the Inquisition and similar witch hunts."

"We were stunned" Dr. Grof continues, "by this incredible synchronicity.  Of all the possible locations, we presented our modern plea for a radical change of attitude toward non-ordinary states of consciousness in a place that, unbeknownst to Christina, had been the site of her past life memory in which her suffering and death has been caused by misunderstanding and misinterpretation of non ordinary states of consciousness."

The Circle Returns!

*The Akashic Experience, edited by Ervin Laszlo -  with contributions by Stanislof Grof, Stanley Krippner, Edgar Mitchel, Alex Grey, others. (2008) Inner Traditions Publishing

**I myself have done past life regression, in particular to a lifetime in 17th century France as a nanny.  It's interesting to note that, although I lack vocabulary, I can speak what French I do know easily, without much in the way of an accent.  And I've never had the desire to raise children, which is kind of odd.  Couldn't stand even baby dolls!

Postscript on "Coventry"

"Spider Woman" -  Mississippian culture shell gorget

I'm not much of a dreamer - if I do remember a dream, it's a rare event, and I roll it around for years, because I figure if a dream is memorable, it's the psychic equivalent of my unconscious throwing a brick at me.  But perhaps because I'm a visual artist and close attention to symbolic language is intrinsic to art process, I've come to think of synchronicities as akin to "waking dreams", many layered and  mysterious. Art process is as seamless, I believe, as dreaming, and partakes of the same weave as the attention that enables us to experience synchronicity.

 "If you go deep enough into yourself, you find yourself in a noisy place with a lot of other people.  And if you draw symbols from there, you plug into a collective form of consciousness." (Alex Grey)

"Universal Mind Lattice" Alex Grey

 Synchronicities are threads from the loom of Spider Woman, woven into a vast pattern; but they can also be funny, and deeply personal as well.  I often feel compelled to write about them, without necessarily understanding them, just as with dreams, their "meanings".  In the course of blogging this past year, I've been fortunate to meet others who've inspired and contributed to my appreciation of this phenomenon, among them the Macgregors,  authors of the book The 7 Secrets of Synchronicity, and  Robur D'Amour, author of two blogs, who wrote recently wrote two fascinating articles about Lady Godiva and the Grail).

I've been exploring the weird synchronicity of finding myself singing a 60's song about Lady Godiva    in several posts the past month, and its led me down a mythic and her-storic trail to the Great Goddess,  submerged and re-emerging into our world now.  Perhaps most personally, the threads of this synchronicity have helped me to rekindle my passion for my work with the Divine Feminine, re-energizing me as I flounder around these days.

I have often thought that the Goddess, by whatever name, has always been with me,  my particular work.  I remember when I was a little girl, the first paintings I ever did were of the bull dancers of ancient Knossos, and their  snake entwined  Goddess.  Memories from past lives?  The Collective Unconscious?  Or just an encounter with a National Geographic?   I still have no idea why I just had to do those paintings, but I've been true to the impulse ever since, painting many, many Goddesses.  And I wonder what  my teacher in the '50's   thought of  an 8 year old's renderings of a bare-breasted woman. 

Minoan Snake Goddess
from Knossos, Crete, c. 1600 BCE

So, as a postscript to my mythic, synchronistic wanderings, and following the logic that synchronicities can be followed as one might a dream,  I have to add this as the "grand finale".  It was sent very kindly  by Robur, who has been writing about the Grail, on New Year's Day:  a blurb from a British paper announcing that the Holy Grail is to be found in Coventry!


I'll take that as most auspicious!  Again, pursuing this as interpreting a dream, I remember that "Coventry" means in the dictionary "banishment". 



What is the Holy Grail?  To many feminist writers, the Grail is equated with the womb, a primal symbol, of course, of the the Great Mother.  In the Christian/Judea/Islamic traditions we have inherited, God does not have a womb.  How has or could culture be different, when the Deity or deities do have a womb?

"Womb symbols" abound throughout ancient mythologies - one prevalent in England during early Christianity is the Celtic "cauldron of Cerridwen" .  In the legend of the Grail, this generative symbol is transformed into the "cup of Christ". Riane Eisler, in her famous book "The Chalice and the Blade", used the symbol of the Grail, or Chalice, as a symbol for the Goddess, displaced, demeaned, and devalued gradually throughout patriarchal history.

The Grail Legend is the story of a great quest to find the missing cup, the cup that "heals all wounds".  One famous variation is the story of the Fisher King, in which all the great knights fail to find the cup needed to heal the wounded King.  Ultimately, it is only an open hearted fool, an innocent, who is able to find the Grail, and thus bring healing to the King.  To bring healing to the King is to bring healing to the whole country.  A wonderful contemporary version of this myth is "The Fisher King", with Robin Williams and Jeff Bridges (1991)

Exploring the meaning of all of these threads of synchronicities for myself,  based upon learning about Lady Godiva and her ride through Coventry in the Middle Ages, I would have to say they all lead me back to "the return of the Goddess", once the May Queen of the "coven tree (coven-tree)", then "banished (Coventry) ", now returning, with all the healing power of the Grail, to a world in the midst of  transformation. 


And at last, for me,  all Goddesses become one Goddess:  the primal Goddess, Gaia, Mother Earth.

"Gaia" (1986)

"Holotropic"

My counselor, a pragmatic and wise psychologist, has listened to many of my synchronicities, metaphysical ideas, tales of goddesses, and magic over the years;  I've often wondered if she doesn't secretly think I'm nuts sometimes.  The other day she surprised me by handing me a book by  Stanislof Grof, one of the early pioneers of  LSD and altered states, and one of the developers of contemporary transpersonal psychology.  She encouraged me to write about my "out there" stories, as she felt I would find a "defining pattern" in so doing; she said that all of our stories are important now.
I've copied below a video and link by Dr. Grof*, in which he talks about a term he coined called "Holotropic Consciousness".   I suppose my own term  might be "Web Vision".  I do agree with my counselor...........we all need to "tell our stories" now.  From the Telling a fundamental unity can be glimpsed.

I think my (non-physical) guides have quite a sense of humor. Years ago, when I was thinking of doing a performance with the Masks of the Goddess in Tucson, I kept waking up singing an obnoxious old surfer song, with a chorus line that went "She's real fine, my 409" (the 409 was a '60's car).  I never could  figure out from what corner of my psyche that song was dredged from until much later, when I noticed that "Restoring the Balance", the best event I did with the collection, was held on April 9th, 2004.

Lately I've been singing "Lady Godiva", another old song from the 60's, which has been equally annoying as a mental "muszak".  According to legend, Lady Godiva rode naked on a horse through the streets of Coventry, England, to ease the tax burden of the citizens imposed by her husband, who agreed to relieve the toll if she did this.  The song was recorded in 1966 by Peter and Gordon.  Pulling out my Jungian Inner Pun book, I decided that it had something to do with "Goddess" - "Lady God" and "Deva" being what I get from the word. "Coventry" is an interesting addendum to the idea, in that the actual definition of the word "coventry" means:

"the state of being banished or ostracized (excluded from society by general consent); ie,  "the association should get rid of its elderly members--not by euthanasia, of course, but by Coventry"**

Thus, "coventry" is the opposite of "coven", "covenant", or "to convene", which means to bring together.  So, addressing this syncronicity as one might seek to interpret a "waking dream", with multiple layers, I would say that I am reminded that the Goddess, the Divine Feminine, has too often been banished from our world, to our great detriment.  Lady Godiva, naked for all to see, rode through the streets to protest and defy her husband's cruelty and injustice.  It is further interesting that the pop song is about "Lady Godiva" becoming a porn star, trivializing the story and turning the Lady into a kind of prostitute*** -   which is what has so often been  done to the Goddess in the course of patriarchal mythology,  except when she appears in the guise of a dutiful wife or mother with a submissive role.

 Robur d'Amour    commented that there is a Lady Godiva procession which is an annual event in Great Britain, and he very kindly provided a photo, which I take the liberty of copying below.  In his comment (on this post) he also provides a link to a photo from a 1911 procession led by Druids.....further indicating the symbolism of the Lady.  Of the picture below (thanks Robur): 

"This is a very recent procession........Miss Godiva now wears a body stocking." 

Hmm.  Now, I asked, can I hum something else, like maybe the "Ode to Joy" or a little Paul Simon?

But there is one more postscript:  just recently I was offered the opportunity to attend and present a workshop at the Goddess Conference in 2011 in Glastonbury, England. I'm delighted to go and meet these wonderful folks who carry on the Lady's work ........more on this later!

(2010 Goddess Conference)

_______________________________________________

Stanislav Grof "Holotropic" 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mA1hDI5IiJQ&feature=related

**http://www.thefreedictionary.com/Coventry

****"Whore" possibly derives from an ancient Semitic word, "Hara" or "Hora". It's original meaning may go back as far as Babylonia and Sumaria, when women served as priestesses, thus, it was related to a title for a fertility priestess. To this day,  a circle "fertility" dance, the "Hora", is still danced at Jewish weddings.

Angels in Nebraska

In my previous post I discussed Alzheimer's, and I mentioned my Grandmother, who I loved dearly as a child. I became her caretaker at around the age of 12 when she developed Alzheimer's, until she died when I was 16. I still have a kind of empty place when I try to remember those years.

I wanted to write down this story, because I feel it's important to the previous post, a gift, I believe, from my grandmother, whose name was Glen.

Glen was from Nebraska, and she married my grandfather, who died long before I was born, when she was in her 20's. He was considerably older than her, and died in his early 50's, leaving a young widow in a small farming town with a small boy to raise in the midst of the Great Depression. Perhaps, with no money, she had no other choice but to leave her homeland, or perhaps she wanted to make a new start; but whatever her reasons may have been, like many during this time, my grandmother took my father and went west to California. In Los Angeles she worked as a seamstress.

Right or wrong, when Glenn developed dementia, my father would not put her into a nursing home, but confined her to a room in our house. When we went to Afghanistan in 1963 (he worked for A.I.D.) she went with us, and lived her last years in our house there, no longer the grandmother I knew. When she died my father took her body back to the States, to the little town of Dewitt where her husband was buried. It was never discussed again.

In 2005, I was driving cross country to a residency in Connecticut. One day out from Tucson, I stopped at a rest stop in New Mexico for lunch. Sitting at a picnic table, I noticed something shiny under the table, and looking down saw a pair of pliers by my feet. Expensive looking pliers........so, since no one was around to claim them, I threw them on the floor of the car when I got ready to leave, and didn't think about it again.

Somewhere around Missouri, I had the idea of taking a little detour, and seeing if I could visit my Grandmother's grave. No one had been there since my father took her body there all those years ago, and if I didn't go, no one ever would again. I wondered if the little town of Dewitt even existed still? But there it was on the map, not far from Beatrice. So I headed north, visited the Prairie museum, found Dewitt, and found at last the little graveyard.

I remembered visiting that site when I was a child with my family, and I remembered the Black Eyed Susans that were ubiquitous - so that's what I planted at her grave. Then I explored Dewitt, a town of about 1000 people. Dewitt, surprisingly for such a small town in the Prairie Lands, seemed to be prospering, due to the Tool and Die company there, which was founded by a Danish immigrant named William Petersen in the 1920's. There was even a little Dewitt museum with historical information, and a bronze statue of Mr. Petersen was proudly displayed on the green lawn at its entrance.**
It should be obvious where this is leading, but not to me at the time............I went on down the road, happy about my detour to my Grandmother's grave, and ended up in Connecticut eventually. Where, when cleaning out my car, I found that pair of pliers on the floor. On each side, they were stamped: "Vise-Grip: The Original".So now I never go anywhere without my "magical pliers", which I like to think my Angel in Nebraska provided for me.

Nebraska Sunflowers

**I am very sad to learn, from Wikipedia, that "On October 31, 2008 the plant was closed and 330 jobs were lost when manufacturing of Vise-Grips and other tools moved to China."

Bali Hai

Recently I had to go to California. Strangest thing - for no reason I can understand, I kept noticing that images, more like "fragrances" or sensations, of Bali kept occurring. I'd be driving, thinking about mundane matters, and suddenly have a powerful remembrance of Bali, including a kind of "atmospheric" memory. A sense of the moist air there, the intensity of color.......I haven't been to Bali for 10 years, although I often long to return. I have also been putting money away for a "round the world" trip to Asia, and eventually to Great Britain and Scotland ..........for five years now, but because of my mother have had to put it off.

Towards the end of my recent business trip, I was with my mother heading back to Arizona. She likes to listen to a radio station that features music from the '40's. I turned on the radio to hear "Bali Hai is calling.........". Then "Caledonia" set to big band (That's the Roman name for Scotland, and the name of my old boyfriend Kerry's bagpipe band). The best one came a few minutes later, with Bing Crosby singing "Far Away Places".

Don't tell me the Universal Mind Lattice doesn't have a sense of humor.

Green Caterpillar Synchronicity

(it looked kind of like this)

This morning I went to my mother's house to prepare her breakfast, and beside the door, on a "cat rug", was a strange looking fat green thing, curled into a little spiral. At first I thought it was a bit of plastic the cat had dragged home, but then it moved! Keep in mind that I live in Southern Arizona, where it is currently about 102 degrees, and there are very few leafy trees. I've never seen a caterpillar like this here, although obviously they are around.

I put it on a potted plant, the only thing I could find it might like to eat, although, sadly, the poor thing looks none too well for its encounter with a cat.

Can't get over the fact that just yesterday I was writing about, and reading about, "The Chrysalis Effect" in my previous post!

PS: It was suggested that I consider what this synchronicity might mean symbolically to me. I think caterpillars represent, to me, what we are as a global humanity, adolescent, trying to mature, to transform. We're presently, like a caterpillar on a leaf, mindlessly gobbling up our world, eating up everything in sight. The hopeful thought is that there is an impulse, a greater force, within our collective instinct that will lead us into, and eventually through, the Chrysalis, the "imaginal" stage. So that we might become, at last, "winged, whole". Pollinators.......

"Butterfly Man" Crop Circle, Netherlands, August 2009