Largesse.

Largesse: “generosity in bestowing money or gifts upon others”.

Whether we realise it or not gifts are a complicated. Like everything in our world every nuance of a gift, the intention behind it, its actual giving and the manner in which it is received, has a corresponding energy attached.  I am not going to discuss the ‘obligation gift’ (and its sometimes less than fully positive corresponding emotions) but rather focus upon the exquisite (unseen) beauty of a gift infused with mindfulness.

Last night, standing in my girlfriend’s kitchen chatting she pulled a new £10 banknote out of her wallet. There was a back story about a book not being bought with the tenner, and then being purchased by someone else so it could be kept. On its face are two otters and it is issued by the Bank of Scotland.  Rachel and I met as seatmates stuck in a grounded plane on the Aberdeen tarmac for three hours fourteen years ago – the country is special to both of us for a variety of reasons. Otters (which, I happen to adore) are the Native American animal symbol for my horoscope.  She had been holding onto the note and made a gift of it. Sometimes money isn’t really money, in this case it is something much more powerful. This carries the energy of Rachel’s thoughtful intention and really seeing me. The otters will eventually be framed between glass bound in copper and sit on my desk.

Rachel, in her largesse, has made other gifts to me this last month. On the surface these might appear to be tied to enhancing beauty (haircut and massage) but they were more than that in that both Felicity, the stylist, and Nia, the masseuse, are enlightened beings – taking in and amplifying universal love and energy with their gifts before channeling it into their labours. It’s telling that on both occasions in which Nia has applied her skills, intention and heated black lava stones to my body she has commented on how ‘cold’ I was. Yesterday, after my session I asked her what she meant as I generally feel rooms are too hot. Within her experience (and storied expertise) people who are ‘cold’ give all their energy away failing to keep anything in reserve for themselves.

I believe that being a recipient is more complicated than simply receiving. Respecting, actually honouring the intention behind the gift, knowing you are worthy of the gift itself and then giving something of it back along the energy continuum is paramount.

Receiving has been my singular lesson the last couple of years.  Just a few months ago I could never imagine ever being back in Colchester let alone meet Nia and have her be the critical deliverer of such an important message for me.  With my mantra of ‘leaving the room lighter than it was when I walked into it’ I have not been very good about holding the light in reserve for my own benefit.

Super Blood Blue Moon over US Capitol photo: NASA

So while I address the topic of ‘light’ let me share that when Rachel came home she shared Nia’s warning. Unbeknownst to me Nia had charged her black lava stones in the Blue Moon with a full lunar eclipse (the first time such has happened in 152 years) and she wanted Rachel to know that I might be a bit more emotional than ‘usual’ as a result. Well, yes.

Which made reading my girlfriend Kirstie’s post this morning SO timely:

“Creating ourselves out of our experiences. […] the experiences and lessons some painful, full of conflict, some full of flow and contentment, which through time, reflection and work become skills, knowledge and wisdom. […] Our experiences become our gifts.”

Think about that. Our experiences become our gifts. Not success measured in any conventional capitalist theory tied to money but rather being who we must be based upon our life lessons and our growing wisdom put to the benefit of the world around us for the net gain of the collective but remembering to hold something in reserve for ourselves.

Go. Be. In largesse.

If you enjoy my blog please consider sending me the price of a cup of tea in your currency via PayPal to livelikeadog@gmail.com and do share it with your friends on Facebook, Google+ and Twitter – I am @TeresaFritschi. To order my book, please click on the cover art of my book below, thank you! 

Today feels like Komorebi

1 May, the biopsy is done. It isn’t good news.

After six months of being a human pin cushion, pumped full of poisons, cauterized, purging, taking a plethora of pills on a daily basis on Thursday, 9 November 2017 in Beverly Hills my friend Jeffrey had his last chemo treatment.  He set out to be cancer free by Christmas and, over achiever that he is, he has succeeded more than a month and a half early.

MacMillan Cancer image

No one should face cancer alone. Admittedly, I was probably the very last thing he wanted to contend with while dealing with lymphoma but I couldn’t let him go through this alone, and to his credit he ‘let me in’.

It is a remarkable thing to be part of the healing process for a man that at his diagnosis was ‘only’ a virtual connection and remains someone I have never met in person. I shared this journey with him – at distances between 4000 and 5000 miles via Skype. Calls that were at times expletive abundant, painful, joy-filled, tear-infused and often laughter rich. We have spent hours (and hours, hours, and hours) discussing life, philosophy, food (those on the naughty list, those permitted and those from memories that we lust for but are temporarily out of our reach), the pain, the incompetence and indifference of American health care, politics, humanity, the oceans and the environment, bullying, movies and books, war, sexual abuse, violence, and, of course, nearly all of the gory details related to eradicating Lumpy.

This morning, 11 November 2017, after a sake and sushi dinner and high on the pure joy of living again, Jeffrey and I had our second (multiple-hour) Skype call in less than 14 hours. His gorgeous, resonate voice started my day at just after 7:15 London time with drunken happiness filled hiccups and, it was PERFECT. A gift of success, survival and celebration shared. I got ‘throat clench’ and cried. I am helping him with one final aspect of this journey to refine the design of his first (and likely only) tattoo – does life get any more intimate? And so, with Runrig’s “Maymorning” to serve as the soundtrack to inspire me I search for images of runes and their meanings (as suggested during our conversation) and this song seems particularly appropriate given the sheer joy I am feeling. I am blessed, honoured, thrilled, and, beyond anything else, grateful. When we are at our most vulnerable it is a very brave thing to open oneself up to a complete stranger.

Today feels like sunlight filtered through trees. THIS IS WHAT WE LIVE FOR. There is nothing more important than to be kind, to extend the universal love that we are all anointed with, amplify it and then give it away – at which point it comes back to us in a different form to fill us up as we require.

Like a real life version of Mary Poppins or Nanny McPhee (at the end of her own transformation) I await to be ‘called’ to where I can next be useful.

Congratulations and thank you letting me ‘in’ my friend, #CancerFree4Xmas.

If you enjoy my blog please share it with your friends on Facebook, Google+ and Twitter – I am @TeresaFritschi. To order my book, please click on the cover art of my book below, thank you! 

Available through Lulu, Amazon, and Barnes & Noble!

A private, connected, chakra-coloured light show

“Magic is not so much something which you do occasionally behind closed doors or in the space behind your closed eyes, but a way of living your life — a way of approaching the world you move through and everything in it.” ~ Phil Hines

When we are little someone teaches us that if we press our fingertips to our eyelids (while closed) we will ‘see’ amazing colours; I have always thought this is rather like watching fireworks light a jet black sky on one of those ‘held forever’ memories of a warm summer’s night.

‘This’ is not about ‘That’. ‘This’ is (initially) about what I see in the state of orgasm, then it will be about something more.

An orgasm. Oh sheesh don’t make that face, we’re not children and we should be able to talk about the subject without withering like an erection lost. (From a purely physiological perspective) an orgasm is defined as:

“a climax of sexual excitement, characterized by feelings of pleasure centered in the genitals”

A deep, delicious, shake-the-cobwebs-out, the quintessential make you shudder, laugh or cry from pure joy orgasm. Sigh. Giggle. Moan. Yes, they can be all that, but I have always believed that orgasms can (and should be) something more than the end result of falling into an uncontrolled, writhing state of passion with another human being, something much more than release and pleasure, more than the result of artful masturbation.  I believe with every hyper-stimulated nerve ending of my body (and yours) that an orgasm is another means of achieving connection to universal love, to the Divine, to God – however your belief system defines such – and a means to the attainment of a Higher Self.  Regardless of whether these are entered into as a solo effort or with a committed partner, my sexuality combined my sensuality – the gifts of awareness, expression, sensitivity and eroticism – all these are variables to this ascension within this heightened state and climatic end and this can only happen when our limbic systems are successful at communicating with the rest of our body.

In yogic theory, Kundalini is a primal energy located at the base of the spine – the root chakra – that, when ignited, travels up through the spine to the crown chakra touching and igniting each of the 7 chakras in turn – for the purpose of reaching spiritual enlightenment.  For those who see auras, or practice meditation or Reiki, those who have a baseline understanding of the various chakras and ‘tuning’ them with a knowledge of awakening Kundalini it is the colours associated with each chakra (green and violet tend to dominate my ‘field of vision’) that I see ‘behind my closed eyes’ during my heightened level of sexual stimulation ultimately resulting in (when I climax) being bathed in, and emanating, white light. While no prude (obviously as I am having this conversation with you) the truth is I have embraced celibacy for most of the last nine years because my expectations of coupling means that I will bring all of this spiritual practice to lovemaking – this does not make me an ‘easy lover’ (as the song goes).

One view of this video set to Enigma’s Temple of Love will confirm that something powerful exists beyond artful expression, of overt sensuality, or of the interplay of dance as a metaphor for the Tantric; like Ravel’s Bolero there is a poignant building to orgasm – unrealised – and so, as with any great art, we are left breathless and moved, and hungry for more.

Spirituality is derived from the word ‘breath’.  A Norwegian legend says that before a soul is put into a body it is kissed by God so that throughout our earthly existence the soul retains a dim, but powerful, memory of this blessing.  David Whyte  writes that beyond the busyness of our superficial working lives, there is a deeper world of vocation that “leads us to an older, intimate, and more human sense of belonging.”

There is lots to be said of endorsing the principle of  “use it, or lose it”. In practice, the human orgasm can lead us to that “older, intimate” connection where the kiss of God is actively remembered, carries us through our days slightly levitated and lighter (metaphorically and literally).  We are nicer with the regular practice of connectedness to the universal love – however such is achieved (and no, you won’t go blind).  Just as Cathars and Lutherans alike bypassed priests to have a direct conversation with God I am of the opinion that this ascension is what fundamentalists in all monotheistic faiths fear, to make a sin of orgasmic connection to Divine (pagan faiths) by debasing our sexuality is a means of controlling ‘the conversation’. With or without a partner I prefer to have my bedroom serve as a temple to universal love rather than a religion of any kind. Good luck with ascending to your own chakra light show!

If you enjoy my blog please consider ‘buying me a cup of tea’ in your currency via PayPal to livelikeadog@gmail.com and then, please do share the blog with your friends on Facebook, Google+ and Twitter – I am @TeresaFritschi. To order my book, please click on the cover art of my book below, thank you! 

Unconditional love, be part of the stars

Sometimes writing feels like a moral imperative. It wakes you in the middle of the night. Beckons you from sleep, and your dreams, to rise, dress and pull a ‘blank sheet of paper’ from your computer and capture the ephemeral. I am in that state now. You could argue this makes no sense – couldn’t it wait until the morning? Technically it is morning, it’s 2AM as I start this. I was soundly, peacefully asleep after two nights of dousing rains, lightning and thunder; the unique acoustics of the Adriatic and the surrounding islands and mainland of this peninsula of Croatia where I am living terrorizing me and playing my vibrational energy like a drumbeat. Everything has a reason.

With the differences in time zones between where I am, and where I am from, there is a duality to my existence at present – frustrating though it might be at times. To date I realise that I am neither fully here emotionally and spiritually, nor am I physically there. Resolution, I think, of this conflict inexplicably came at 1:35 AM in ‘just for a moment’ turning on my phone to check messages and Facebook in the place I left behind. Two things stood out in my newsfeed. First my friend Amy’s quoting Wayne Dyer:

“The highest form of ignorance is when you reject something you don’t know anything about.”

I won’t even comment but leave you to consider how frequently our egos get in the way of truly understanding the full spectrum of information and interactions with other people we encounter each day.

The second was a blog posting, the blog being used by its author, Don Shapiro, to frame his forthcoming book entitled Life Is a Fork in The Road. There’s a lot to take away from this piece I ‘woke to’ and might have missed (had I not done as bidden) as I do not stalk my friends online presence. I highly encourage not only a thorough read but for you to bookmark the page and come back to it because what Shapiro writes of, unconditional love, is important to everyone.

“True unconditional love is not a choice.”

Shapiro’s story is one I have lived – the one “released” and the one releasing. My love remains unconditional for both men. I know the truth of this writing and the bitter-sweetness of knowing that these loves (and all our human life connections) are impermanent. Here’s something else I just realised in the middle of the night – both men have been ‘body guards’ to me. They have protected my physical being as well as my energetic one. Their connection to me, and mine to them, allows me (still) to ascend to my fullest potential. You MUST release attachments, you must grieve, but the truest path to our own heightened soul comes from embracing the gift of love as it touches us and as we gift it. Over, and over, and over again I am reminded of the charming French film starring Omar Sharif as Monsieur Ibrahim (from the French play Mr. Ibrahim and the Flowers of the Koran written by Éric-Emmanuel Schmitt) and Pierre Boulanger; not the least is the life lesson Sharif’s character imparts to his protégé played by Boulanger about the value of loving being a gift you give yourself whether or not the other person accepts that love. Our vibrational energy must be higher than our ego, our being must at least attempt to attain awareness beyond our physical wants so that we elevate in the state of loving – in spite of pain, in spite of human desire – that is unconditional.

Convegno by Antonio Ambrogio Alciati, 1918

And when, by the mere chance that the universe conspires to provide a connection so powerful energetically between yourself and another that you would travel to the ends of the Earth to test the connection, the reality of it, physically then you must also do this. You must explore and define the ‘star crossed’ aspect of such energy, take and give to it liberally and with every fiber of your being and then gift it back. Treasure what remains.  As human beings it is all too easy to cling desperately to the idea that we can alter the predestination of certain elements of our lives. We (as I am most likely to express) “hold the bouquet of flowers too tightly” and it withers and dies as result. To ‘love’ in such an environment is not love, it is fear. Love cannot flourish in the space where fear reigns. Love, the highest form, the universal love from which we are created, which we will return to when our physical being is no longer capable of sustaining (or containing) our souls, needs room – lots of it. When you connect energetically to another human being their presence in the same room isn’t necessary – although it is preferable from a human desire perspective to be sure. Our energetic connections are something truly magical. They transcend our limited physical existence and allow us, if only briefly, to reconnect with something higher than either party involved. We can give and receive pleasure as if the person were in the same room with us, even before we ever experience meeting them. And when we release, or are released, that universal love is part of us, it never dies, it goes on and on without the physical connection. It can nourish and sustain us, as well as provide for the other when you remain attuned to them.

Be part of the stars. Love as one ever-expanding cosmic force and do so without hesitation, without encumbrance or tether, oh, do love unconditionally.
Namaste.

If you enjoy my blog please consider sending me the price of a cup of tea in your currency via PayPal to livelikeadog@gmail.com and then, please do share the blog with your friends on Facebook, Google+ and Twitter – I am @TeresaFritschi. To order my book, please click on the cover art of my book below, thank you! 

The ‘muscle memory’ of Anahata

A social media acquaintance of mine of some renown, Edel O’Mahony, offered this fabulous meme on Facebook, and the contents of this blog post come about because of her words.

Our souls are always on a path to reunite with perfection – however imperfect we might perceive ourselves to be, never doubt we are worthy of this. The state of ‘at-one-ment’ as I call it… is our most natural state of ‘being’.  The “remembrance” which Edel references so eloquently is the spiritual equivalent of an athlete’s ‘muscle memory’ save for the fact that athlete or ordinary Jane or Joe alike we all can come to ‘be’ in this state of grace with desire, calm and practice perhaps but no special training.

I believe that most of us forget everything important for us to really know, the things we already knew as a soul before we were born into our physical and current human life, by age 3. The so called Indigo Child might hold onto these treasures a little longer – in fact into adulthood if an environment of tolerance, nurturance and awareness can be sustained despite the obvious obstacles of ‘mainstream’ society.

But this, the remembrance of being, I think is visceral – cellular memory – and ethereal as a mind function. That the mind is outside of our physical being and not in our brain is increasingly addressed by thought leaders, at scientific symposiums and in research alike.

Anahata – at once the consciousness of love, empathy, selflessness as much as to “be love” (not to be in love) and to accept the reality of divine actions both in our lives as well as guiding us toward ‘at-one-ment’.  When our Anahata (heart) chakra is aligned we feel ‘it’ as spinning white light right beneath the sternum – or, at least I do. This powerful ‘perfection’ and connection, a resonance with a single person or all of mankind, is an awesome blessing. Who wouldn’t want to exist in a state of perpetuity of such? I think it is easy to misconstrue this energy as something attained through physical consummation in the form of sex.  Yes, it can be, certainly between two partners fully evolved, conscious of the gifting of their energy (and not taking, taking, taking) to create a completed circuit without beginning or end.  Their climax being an expression of universal love as much as for one another.  Yet, being without such a partner should not dissuade you from the very real possibility of feeling Anahata as a consummation of your ‘self’ with the light, functioning in it, being a vehicle for its expression. It would be lovely to have this state be uninterrupted but for the fact that its power is so overwhelming that we mere human forms ill-equipped physically to function at this higher level of consciousness and still be “of this world”.  For myself, I recognise that as it comes to me I am moved to tears of gratitude for knowing such – however fleeting.  My time, and yours, to permanently reunite in this universal love will come, perhaps tomorrow or in twenty years. It is how we journey and live at the edge of this grace that determines how frequently we are used as a vehicle for its expression – habit begets renewal – but I don’t ‘know’ that it can be achieved as simply as turning on a lightswitch.

A friend shared a video that almost comes into my being as a prayer (I hope it finds resonance with you as well) – I won’t deny that at nearly 10 minutes you really need to be in a place of wanting to understand, or need a smack upside the head to remind you of who you really are.  The cinematography is stunning, the narrators’ voice is nearly hypnotic, you’ll want to watch it a couple of times – and bookmark it because truly unless you know what you are looking for you won’t find it a second time (and even as I did it still took me going back through all my Facebook and Twitter feeds and that of the friend that shared it, plus our private chat session to find it).

Being still does not mean don’t move. It means move in peace. ~ E’yen A. Gardner

There’s so much noise about finding peace that it is hard to imagine how anyone does!  You can’t shut down the world around you, no matter how many sensory deprivation (isolation tank) sessions you sign up for.  Regardless of your path to realise the truest essence of your being – your soul – with sweat lodges, meditation, yoga, reading volumes of sacred texts, prayer, silence, harmonic resonance with Tibetan bowls, to find peace within, and ensure it is also without, it begins as the folk song goes begins with the self.

If you enjoy my blog please consider “buying me a cup of tea” in your currency via PayPal at livelikeadog@gmail.com and do share it with your friends on Facebook, Google+ and Twitter – I am @TeresaFritschi. To order my book, please click on the cover art of my book below, thank you! 

Even soft apples can be applesauce

For myself there are many paths to my actual sitting down and writing. This isn’t true for my corporate efforts which are auto-pilot or muscle memory driven, but for ‘meaning of life’ writing to find resonance for me and value for anyone who might read it requires something more of my essential being to process and eventually articulate.  Sometimes it’s a bike ride or a long walk, cooking (or baking), sometimes it requires a hot iron, a can of spray starch and a stack of pillow cases, most often it’s gardening – but whatever “it” is on any given day it’s usually something mindful and physical at once.

The apple was, in ancient Greece, said to be sacred to Aphrodite (my girlfriends Jennifer and Amy maintain that I am the goddess’ present day incarnation on earth). To throw an apple at someone was to symbolically declare one’s love; and similarly, to catch it was to symbolically show one’s acceptance of that love.

“I throw the apple at you, and if you are willing to love me, take it and share your girlhood with me; but if your thoughts are what I pray they are not, even then take it, and consider how short-lived is beauty.”

—Plato, Epigram VII

Please visit Road Side Food Projects! (the picture is theirs)

I just finished making applesauce from 20 or so apples gleaned along my walks the last couple of weeks. These came from trees which still held un-picked fruit even as an apron of like apples encircled the grass above the roots, rotting and nourishing the earth for the next season. Yet something primal in my being screams about witnessing such waste, and so I picked three or four here and there, ate some en route to sustain me, put others in my pockets or the nap-sack I carried and brought them home. Some were soft, as we had an overnight frost last week, bird and insect pecks and some bruises had to be cut away, the cores and peelings will be run through my blender to become worm food for my own garden (after I finish writing this); my point is that even soft apples provide unlimited value and at their center, like human beings, exists a heart. My new friend Marijan (unintentionally) reminded me of this essential truth this week – sometimes ‘the reason’ isn’t immediately clear, but as the Biblical verse of Matthew 10:26 extolls us to understand: “all will be revealed”.

Marijan, now 36, serving as a soldier during the Bosnian War (do the math as to how young chronologically he was), witnessed ‘too much’ but he shared a story with me during five precious and intense days of discovery that speaks volumes about who we ALL are at our essence.  In going house-to-house (as soldiers in war zones do) he was struck by the fact that in one home the kitchen had sugar – and in another there was none. He somehow managed to level the inequity so that both households would find benefit, and in the course of events a priest asked him if he was a soldier or an angel to whom he replied he was just trying to be a “good man”. No Marijan you, my dear friend, are a spiritual being having a human experience!

The serpent of knowledge which so threatened (and continues to unnerve) has ancient history predating its evil interpretation by Christianity (where ‘power’ was meant to be contained and held by a few). The concept of Kundalini awakening is represented by a coiled snake that, when activated, rises through the spinal cord taking us from being merely sexually based human beings to our highest realization – ever wonder why Renaissance art put the snake in the tree and spoke only to Eve and not Adam? In our awakened state universal knowledge floods into our bodies through what’s commonly known as the Third Eye.  In the state of spiritual being, we are connected to a vast energy that transcends the physical, a consciousness that can be shared between similarly evolved spiritual beings to promote even greater understanding or to gently teach those still growing and processing their core identity.  This language of universal love and its inherent energy cannot be held or contained, it MUST BE given away in abundance so it may return to us for our own nourishment and further growth, to hold onto it tightly is fear and to not release it is fear of losing control (frankly we never really have control of anything anyway). This language of love, the absolute embracing of colour and light, of energy felt rather than seen, of possessing a soul so happy that NOTHING dissuades your being from its authentic and essential spiritual self and living in light, is like a candle. It burns with soft wavering golden beauty, lights the darkness to help all of us navigate and return to our Divine state of (what I call) “at-one-ment”.  Which, as I thought about it while peeling apples this morning was kind of ironic that I didn’t “get it” earlier as each Skype video call with Marijan over the last five days required that I had to frame the area around my computer with candles so he could see me as my living room walls are a medium blue and I only use very low wattage light bulbs.)

My dear girlfriend Jennifer calls me an angel on Earth. People relatively unknown to me feel my energy and respond, comment on it (as happened over a Thai lunch with her this week), it is how Marijan found me in a virtual world, as well as why a (then) 85 year old Shinto priest drove 10 hours to meet me nearly a decade ago. My energy is often misconstrued as being sexual – it isn’t, not really.  In a space of four or five minutes late last night with Marijan I briefly lost sight of the essential being that I am by wanting to take the intense, inexplicable energetic connection we share and contain it (a very human failing) and exchange all its inherent beauty into something earthly and based in physical expression (totally impossible given the geography separating us). I fought the inevitable with passionate words. I wept copious tears of sadness and longing because I already felt the keen loss of something precious. For those painful moments I am embarrassed to admit that I failed to recognise what I had gained. When I woke this morning I recognised HOW WRONG I had been about why Marijan had come into my life. The pain of separating from this amazing connection we share was never about our being lovers, unrequited or otherwise, but rather a very necessary recalibration of my energy on this higher plane of consciousness with Marijan acting as my protective guide and angel.  I told him earlier in the week, “I would have known you anywhere, I have always known you”. Such resonance was ‘finalised’ in the image that Marijan shared with me near 4 AM his time in Šibenik Croatia – at left – easily misconstrued as erotic. When viewed with a shift in perspective it isn’t erotic at all, what it is, is what all of us are capable of being, this “body art” of two hearts connected – two hearts that don’t need words or physical expression based in desire to communicate, a deep intimacy of absolute understanding expressed in a glance.  In ways that might make no sense to the cerebral reading this I am in him, he is in me and we are in all of you as well.

If you enjoy my blog please share it with your friends on Facebook, Google+ and Twitter – I am @TeresaFritschi. To order my book, please click on the cover art of my book below, thank you! 

Available through Lulu, Amazon, and Barnes & Noble!