The Queen Must Die

“The sun is the sun behind the veil.”- Rumi

Living in nature is living in rhythm with the universe. 

I realized that living here in St. Croix. Spending my time in undeveloped nature on a Caribbean island among brilliant flowers and fabulous tropical fruit from the garden that falls to the earthen floor and rots and starts to seed all over again where it fell.  

Tat Vam Asi. Thou Art that.

My rooting in the Little Piece of Paradise is firmly established from my withdraw from the material world these past two and-a-half-years and tuned inward to the body, heart and voice of the inner world. Quietly living in nature, practicing yoga and tuning the senses toward the garden revealed the depths that are present.  I am that golden tree that is continually flowing but holds its shape. I am the tree that flowers in winter.  

Om Mani Padme Hum. 

I am the jewel in the lotus.

I am the energy. I am the perfect work. 

Perfect timing with Higgs Boson.

In the five years since I started this blog and the three years since I left the U.S. Mainland, The Queen of Bohemia was my guide.  The journey I underwent with her started from my life-long home of Boulder, Colorado, developed in Buenos Aires and then ended in St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands. I did my Mythic Yoga.

The myth and yoga distanced me from an identity attached to pain and guided me toward a new awareness and experience of Self that led to an identity infused with the golden joy of the divine. The alchemical process complete, it then planted me right back again to the outer world again.  Reborn. Ready for the next cycle. To step out of that cycle, I need only be present to be anchored once again in my special transcendent real estate within that is housed in my body. But now the Queen must die.

The Queen of Bohemia is no longer needed. She did her part. She said, "What sorrow? What despair? What life?" She guided me over rough terrain and through some very tough times, gave me the courage, strength and vision to go on despite great despair. In the process I fulfilled life dreams, healed my self and family and re-created myself anew. Now the journey of healing and wholeness is complete. Thank you, Oh, Queen!

That's the purpose of mythic image. It is like a bridge over a river, with one foot in the material world and one foot in the transcendent. It only takes you so far, and the image needs to disappear so that you can step through the final door to the still point that is within all of dancing creation and its cycles and leads you to your own little piece of paradise and ineffable bliss.

That's why many religions want no image to represent God. There is a saying in Buddhism that you can't mistake the finger pointing at the moon for the moon. The finger is just a guide to show you the moon, which is ineffable. Symbols and myths and stories are like the finger. Images are the bridge that point us to the eternal. They are guides to aid us in our journey, until we are grown enough to recognize that there never was any journey, there is just eternity.

My body, nervous system and guiding myth are completely transformed. The garden and nature, yoga and storytelling do that to you. They transform you completely by working with what's keeping you stuck in the past or future. I'm in a new space and awareness and am not under the grips of stuck energy in the body nor the hauntings of the mind's memory and stories. That's the healing power of yoga and story, assisting us in making sense of and having a new attitude at what happened. What happened is now rendered as art, poetry, story and memoir. Words to be spoken over campfires and feasts as we all sing and dance in ecstasy together.

Transformation of course, means just that, changing form. 

Shedding old skin

Dying.

It's the hard part, not, letting go, that gets you stuck. To die and surrender your ego. Such a sneaky thing to see. Not found in mirrors. Found only by listening to the silence and conjuring up images of diamonds from the deep.  Found by speaking the words and asking the question. Who am I?  And having the patience and courage to listen for the answer. Hard to do! Kali does a good job helping, giving us all a swift kick, as she did to me many times. Destruction, death and despair birthed the light. I'm happy to say I've had a good go at it and feel pretty great about things. Witnessing the endless life, birth, life process of the garden I ultimately saw beyond it all.

Mythic Yoga: Caribbean Kali Sydney Solis

So it's time to retire the Queen and get ready for the Return. Things have shifted greatly, enormously, incredibly, amazingly. A profound healing.  No longer do I have the desire to examine myself or my mind's stories about what happened in the past. I'm too much in the present now. I'm still guided by mythic imagery, however, and as usual, by Kali and Durga, who were the Queen's Guides all along.  I will always journal, write memoir and tell my life's stories. But now the images have changed. The stars realigned, the compass direction points in a new world and the map holds a different story to now be told. I'm ready.

 

The battle was worth it and the triumph great. I have found that Little Piece of Paradise within to accompany me in life and am ready for the next phase. My battle scars are tattoos, home from the war as I prepare to return to the U.S. Mainland and move to Deland, Florida this June. It's time for the Return. All that can be healed has been healed. Hanging out spending time with Queen in the Garden did the trick. She had some good stories to tell. It was just the trick for my father, my mother, my sisters and my brothers, too. The retroactive healing of the ancestors when you heal yourself.

Of course The Queen lives on! A new cycle begins! She has moved to her permanent abode. You can find her in the Little Lotus in the Mythic Yoga Studio in live, online webcam classes on Powhow.com, enchanting, entertaining and educating children all over the world with yoga! Teen Yoginis in the Artemis Club and adults too in Mythic Yoga. To dig up the jewels in the worlds of our own bodies and tell the personal myths and heal the heart. 
 

So here's to the next phase! Long live story and yoga and long live the Queen of Bohemia!

The Egg, the Dove, the Golden Dress and the Magic Key

The Queen of Bohemia delights in the garden eternal in her Little Piece of Paradise. She sits among the banana trees with her trusty animals and all the little children listen to her tell lots of stories.

She even tells them the story that happened long ago of a little peasant girl who once upon a time became a Queen. But this Queen had a hard time living in her desert kingdom. War, death and destruction had destroyed her home. Terrible demons tormented her and badly wounded her. And the biggest wound was a hole in her heart.

So she sojourned to the land to the south. A long journey that first brought her down, down to the great city near the bottom of the earth and then back up to an island near the middle of it. To her Kingdom by the Sea and the garden. There the gardener fed her fantastic feasts of the finest plants from the garden, and flowers brought her to a magic place of the other world. From out of her dreams in this other world appeared entire new worlds, because every day the Queen sat peace in the garden, quietly fishing by a well.

Until one day she fell asleep and she fell into the well. Deep down she fell. The well swallowed her up into the darkness, the terrible darkness, and she felt the terrible fear overwhelm her as she could barely see the light above her.  She worried what was awaiting her in the darkness. What beast would leap out at her? She had battled so many demons in that old kingdom, could she find the strength for yet one more battle here? She breathed in and out. She felt her feet touching the earth at the bottom of the well. Her body and mind were posed and focused for battle. Her hands reached out in the darkness. Within that darkness appeared an egg. The first thing that arose from the egg was a golden dress that radiated like the sun. The next thing to come out of the egg was a white dove, fluttering toward the light, and the third thing was a tiny, magic, golden key. The Queen put on the golden dress, the dove alighted on her left shoulder, and The Queen's hands held the key close to her heart. It fit perfectly the hole in her heart. A golden, peaceful light permeated her being. All is well. All is eternal. Water began to flow into the well, rising up until it reached the top, overflowing, delivering the Queen back to the surface once again.

All the trees and flowers in the garden started blooming.  The Queen started blooming too, like a hibiscus blooming the world into creation. The Queen bloomed into creation and eventually she expanded so much that she left for the stars, because she discovered that amidst all that creation, she was there at the center all the time. She was the jewel in the lotus. A bright star in the night sky.

She's up there now today, and is also now a book on a shelf. Her story. The story is still told to little children as the Queen lives on with them in the Little Lotus so they can all find their way to the stars one day, too.