The Winds of Memory

Making Memories

-Rush

There’s a time for feeling as good as we can
The time is now, and there’s no stopping us
There’s a time for living as high as we can
Behind us you will only see our dust
So we’ll just keep smiling, move onward ev’ry day
Try to keep our thoughts away from home
We’re travelling all around, no time to settle down
Satisfy our wanderlust to roam.
You know we’re having good days
And we hope they’re going to last
Our future still looks brighter
Than our past
We feel no need to worry
No reason to be sad
Our memories remind us
Maybe road life’s not so bad
From sea to shining sea and a hundred points between
Still we go on digging every show
The cities in the land all extend a welcome hand
Till morning when it’s time for us to go.

As we age, we begin to lose some memories, but, it seems to me, older memories surface more often.  Nostalgia is a beautiful thing.  It reminds us of how brave and beautiful some of our lives truly were and we ARE because of those very things, not just the negative memories.  Choices we make today are, in part, because of body memory, mind memory, emotional memory, and spiritual memory.  The weights of most memories are residing in our emotional quadrant.  And, of course, memory retrieval is, in part, sensory.

A scent, a sound, a glint/sight, a taste, can trigger a memory that was embedded deep in our brain.  Every memory has an emotion.  And, although I am not entertaining the negative thoughts, for those are hard enough to deal with without acknowledging them, the stronger the emotion attached to the moment of that incident or any incident, positive or negative, makes the memory cling more deeply.  In most cases we should learn the lesson of the incident so memory can facilitate our healing and keep us safe from that incident again.  We crave those good memories because they bring with them the joy, the love, the comfort they initially brought.  Peonies will always remind me of my mother.  Baking homemade bread recalls my grandmother over her big kitchen wood stove.   But we cannot spend great blocks of times to merely memories.  It stops us from making new ones.

 Who we are today is guided by our body, mind, heart and soul incidents and memories.  Sometimes, though, our memories are not accurate – in that they get warped by recall every time we recall.  Our memory bank has many similar memories to file through and sometimes one or two other memories can become included in that one memory.  Most memories, though, are bits and pieces of our truth.    Use clear and direct ways of looking at a memory to see the core truth.

In Maine, I made many of these.  I called them singing Hoops and there was a story that went with them.  Some were God’s Eye kinds and some Dream Catcher.  I will do a blog on them one day and explain the story of dreamcatcher and how it was gotten all wrong.

©Carol Desjarlais 5.27.20

Magnificent Obsession

Doing art, creating, decorating, all these and more creative activities that involve moving into that creative space of energy, is a place of sacredness.  In that sacred space, where the critical inner voice has no power, (unless you give it) and you move to a timeless connection with your spirit/soul/heart.  It is there that the world cannot distract you, even for a short time.  It is there we restore ourselves; we enlighten ourselves; we live in that beautiful energy of creation.  That is the space of your divinity, your agape, your place of true wisdom, the place of your divine connection.  These are the things I experience and I believe.

In that quiet space of loss of known time restrictions, of listing things to do or not to do, to that space where there are no critics or judgments, is where we are most open to spiritual teachings, even if we are not aware of it.  I remember hearing a story that we were all like deep-sea divers with a lifeline to those above us (the Mother Ship) on another plane are feeding us what we need to sustain ourselves down here on earth.  It is in that quiet space that we thrive.  It is a place we go to with a deep intention of being inspired, of having our hands and eyes and heart moved to create.  

It is there that thoughts do not tornado around making us weary and less energetic.  It is there that we are most aware of divinity.  In that inner stillness, where living just simply goes away, that we wish to stay.  We return to it again and again because we begin to desire more and more of it.  What a magnificent obsession.

It is there that we find comforts and kindnesses and compassions that wrap around us in that space.  It is there, like some great receiver, we are given signals that the eye cannot see, the ear cannot hear, the body cannot sense.  It is there we begin to use our spiritual vision and teachings.  When we leave that space, we are often exhausted because the teachings have been so great, yet we did not realize it was happening, as I said.  But shortly, we recover in this hard place down here on earth and we realize we have more energy to do more, to see more, to feel more, to learn more.  Much comes to our conscious knowing at the time the teachings need to be more consciously known.  The soul knows what we can handle and when we can handle such things. 

I wonder how many of us feel the same about that space and place we go to when we become totally Present in our creating?  How do you explain that space and time?

©Carol Desjarlais 5.26.20

Grief Horse

“As the poets and painters of centuries have tried to tell us, art is not about the expression of talent or the making of pretty things. It is about the preservation and containment of soul. It is about arresting life and making it available for contemplation. Art captures the eternal in the everyday, and it is the eternal that feeds soul—the whole world in a grain of sand. Leonardo”
― Thomas Moore, Care of the Soul: Guide for Cultivating Depth and Sacredness in Everyday Life

Losing my mentor, my teacher, my healer, left me very bereft.  Again, I am forced to stand on my own and find my own spiritual way to the things that help me live a good life, to that find ways to heal myself, to that which heals.  As in all things, I do not feel ready enough to do so, even though I have been at this for these 36 years.  At some point, no matter the teaching and the teacher, we must stand on our own ground, stand for what we can learn and from whom, and stand in ways we know to live.  I have lost my one authentic teacher and comforter and healer and compassionate soul that led me these decades.  Grief is a spectrum and includes so very much but this loss strikes right to the spiritual.

I never longed for a mentor the years before in my life.  I merely banged against walls like a child’s toy that hits a barrier and goes another way.  I never had “A Way”.  Once I heard something that struck right to my soul, I became hungry to know more and to feel that kind of knowing.  

I have met some magnificent teachers in my life.  Some were little children who held a ball of sage in his hand until he was put under to sew up his arm and main artery that he cut when his arm went through a window.   Some were young boys, drooping chains, a history of murder, and an angelic face that goes with some FASD (Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder) youth, as well, no empathy, another sign of FASD in many.  He was a magnificent young man who told his story of killing someone with an axe, in most detailed ways with no emotion.  I watched him turn into someone who no longer bullied the others and became a more caring individual through four years.  What he taught me, along with others int hat group of kids you had broken laws, hurt people, belonged to city gangs, changed their lives in incredible ways as I found those who could mentor them in their traditional ways.  As they were mentored, so was I.  I saw God every day in kids and youth and adults I worked with through my whole career.  

It has been a month that he is no longer on this plane.  It feels like a long long longer time.  I am sure he watches over us, that he loved, and I feel his presence when I smudge.  I am thinking I will need a spiritual way to feel him close, this means, to me.  At first, it was overwhelming.  Now, I have found some peace and comfort.  Was he a perfect man, husband, father, grandfather?  No, but his teachings were perfect for me.  I cannot say for everyone he was a teacher.  But, those who met him or spent time with him during ceremony, or sat and saw him change as he counseled me, they have seen what I saw, felt what I felt, and knew what I knew.  

While he was ill, and I went back to Alberta, I took medicines for him, that I knew he would have me collect, from here and from Arizona.  The last I took over was given to his daughter who knows and experienced the kind of spiritual man he was.  He was young, 61 years old, very traditional, and not one of his children has strayed away from absolute life on The Good Red Road.  He was a blessing to them and they were to him.  They now have the responsibility and the honor and the hard work it takes to live that life without him.  I have faith in his parenting and in them that they can do this.   They have all my love and support.  

I owe my life and my youngest son’s life to his knowing and his medicines, his prayers and patience.  He had been told his time was short.  One is never ready even then, I believe.  That he went suddenly and in the arms of his beloveds as he took his last breath, is comfort to me and, I am sure, to them.  While I will miss him beyond the pale, they miss him more.  He was truly a fast-hold to all things good and spiritual and right things.  Out of my admiration and belief in him, I too, must find ways to carry on in his honor.  

I spent a these few weeks feeling vulnerable and a bit spiritually lost as I grappled with the physical loss his passing meant to me.  But I have taken hold and I know that I have things yet to do, in his honor, and will remember his teachings even more clearly now.  I have a sense he will manifest things for me to learn and to do.  At the end of the month, I go back to Alberta and I will make time to go to their family and gather with them in the love and honor he was and bestowed on all of us who loved him.

This painting was done during his family gathering in their home.  As I listened, I remembered his story of the horse(s) and what colors and what they were doing meant.  It was a good lesson for me.  It came out when I needed that teaching.  It came out as I needed the comfort during the last opening of the casket and the traditional consecration of his body.  What strong young men and women he has raised that even, at that last sight of him, they could do the ceremony needed, sing his song that needed singing, and say their goodbyes.  I was and am blessed by him always.

©Carol Desjarlais 5.25.20