The End of the Story - The Return of the Queen

It had been many years now since the Queen left the desert kingdom so very long ago. In the midst of her garden paradise at the middle of the Earth, in its deep silence of the fecund cathedral, she reflects upon this fact and ponders the future. For spring is approaching and the energies of the universe flow through her body, stir something within and remind her that the cycle of life continues in eternal renewal.

So I bet you are wondering how the story ends.

Here in St. Croix it's absolutely gorgeous right now. Art Thursday was last night and I reveled in living my dream as an artist by showing my work at my friend Tina Henle's gallery in downtown Christiansted. I was thrilled to sell a photo collage the month prior and meeting interesting people, local and tourist alike. The Agriculture fair came and went, and it's the peak of the season with the lush, farming goodness of people, animals and earth and 3-days of island buzz.

Now it's back to cleaning the house, spring cleaning, that starts with the body. The salvation of meditation and yoga that bring one into alignment every time. To be so grounded in reality and to recognize one's identity as the jewel in the lotus, identical with Vishnu dreaming the world into creation. So I meditate on the porch every morning to the sound of roosters, birds and other sounds of the bush. Those and the cool breeze that touches my skin to keep me present on the cushion.

It's also back to work. Back to writing, telling stories, teaching yoga, performing Storytime Yoga and the Queen of Bohemia, re-enchanting the world with yoga and story. It's also a time of deep personal practice and reflection. To look back on 10 years since my husband died, and nearly three years since I moved from the mainland U.S. After his death I started Storytime Yoga and worked again out of passion but also fueled by sheer post-traumatic stress. Then seven years into it, I wanted to return to the place before the wounding, before his death. I wanted to be a homemaker and mother only again and enjoy my children. Because when you are widowed with young children and it's only you to work and run the household, something falls through the cracks. I didn't want it to be my children. I think that's what the world most needs - to not let children fall through the cracks.

So we set off for Buenos Aires for a great adventure as a family. I yoga home schooled the kids with the help of a local woman from such locations as Café Tortoni, the Botanical Gardens or Science Museum. There I took the time off for us all to learn to knit, cook and live simply and without American-style pressure or culture that I didn't think was particularly healthy for kids.

In Buenos Aires I also wrote only for myself rather than blogged or wrote for business. So that I could tell the truth about things. The satya in yoga. That's what memoir writing does. It examines what happened and why it happened and comes to some sort of understanding of the truth about things. To see things clearly from a distance and see all the characters, all the players and the fates and world stage of which we submit to our amor fati willingly.

The deep peace and healing I have found in those three years since leaving the U.S. and ending up here in St. Croix amidst the garden and isolation from the insanity of the outside world has indeed brought me to realize the "pedacito del paraiso," as Tonio puts it. The little piece of paradise. That paradise that comes from within, no matter what the situation in life, we have an anchor on a little piece of real estate within that is undisturbed, "anahata" unstruck in the heart, a reservoir of eternal life and salvation that is instantly available. If we only can reach it. It does come with meditation, with yoga and surrender. With the ability and courage to look at one's self clearly, still the mind and peel away all the unresolved conflicts. For that you have to die, terrifying as that may be. Die to your ego and fears and stories about who you think you are. Then liberation is great. Like a gourd released from the vine, as the Maha Mrityunjaya mantra puts it.

I have been involved in a dream work group here on St. Croix. It met for six weeks on the ruins of Mt. Washington at my friend Nancy Ayer's house. She has a fantastic labyrinth there I have walked many times, even with my children. It's power to go deep sea diving to within your own depths is great - if you have the courage to face it all. The journey is arduous, as Emily Dickinson wrote, filled with demons, dragons and most deadly of all... denial. Few can handle it. Those with so much to lose, they are the first to flee. But those who have nothing to lose, it's easy to just throw one's self in to the fire and transformation comes in a flash, the phoenix rising as sure as the morning sun.

The dream work has been profound, especially when with a group. We start again for another six weeks soon. I'm now helping teach too. Last time I worked this intensely with dreams was when I did a workshop with Rebecca Armstrong through the Joseph Campbell Foundation in Oaxaca, Mexico for some psychotherapists. Called, "Dreaming the Myth Body of the America's" we worked for three days with dreams and created new myths based on those dreams told. Truly you start dreaming other's images, as I've found in my own online dream work courses I have taught. Those dream stories, Campbell said, is the emerging myth for the world. The myth that started to arise was that of the feminine returning. Women claiming their sovereignty, power and selves. It's through the body, its creative energies, and putting the dream images of the conscious as well as unconscious world together into the body and reality. It's a stitching together of inner and outer worlds. The true meaning of tantra, which means loom. You co-create your world. You, as Vishnu, are dreaming reality into place, as Physicist Fred Allan Wolf claims in his book "The Dreaming Universe." You just have to pay attention to those jewels brought every night, as much attention as you must pay attention to your day dream. What are you dreaming? What are you bringing forth to creation? That is the question.

So I am content, and I question my self. This persona, this mask. The Queen of Bohemia is my aid in the quest, and I question all my story and my life in reflection from the point of the deep peace and joy I feel in the center.  This deep peace and awareness that was born out of great pain, deep sorrow. Call it the agony and the ecstasy. Always the paradox that takes place when giving birth. And now I am seeing clearly from the center of everything and make art out of it. Be it a collage, a poem, a yoga practice or a memoir.  I wrote and finished a memoir this year that I have been working on for some time about my late husband. What an intense release of energy! That's the beauty of taking time off. To refill the well. There was a study recently about the productivity of people who take a lot of time off, who sleep a lot or take naps. (ME!!!!) Not lazy, just brilliant!!! I am amazingly productive, and it requires long periods of nothingness to recharge like a battery and burst onto stage in a flurry of creation, like flames from a bonfire.

I now turn toward pulling out those old writings I made in Buenos Aires, where I set out each day for some historic cafe for which to write and drink cafe con leche and eat three media lunas. I had a trusty map with the locations of every cafe, and each time I reached one I marked it off, I wrote and wrote and wrote. For my self. For my heart.

So now it's time for deep reflection. To look at things from a far and continue on the great journey of teaching that The Mythic Yoga Studio does. The Yoga of Your Story. The Dream Story of the Body.  What did the Queen do when she lived in Buenos Aires? How did she come to St. Croix and how did she find such profound peace and deep healing? For she heroically journeyed into the depths to find the pearl of great price and now to come back out again. She risked everything and conquered her fears. How did she do it? The lens of time brings everything into focus for the Queen. From a far the angels gaze over her shoulders and witness with her, cheering her on, peeling back the layers of thoughts and mind and coming to the truth of it all and to bring forth art out of the rhapsody of experience. It's the End of the Story - The Queen has Returned. Arriving at the end of the story in order to begin all over once again, and for ever, ever after.

OM SHANTI

"If you are irritated by every rub, how will you be polished?" – Rumi