Living With No Spiritual Beliefs

I have spent a good deal of time this week talking with a friend I’ve known for over 40 years. I received a call from her early in the week asking for support to go through the end of her eighteen-year-old dog’s life.

We have a long history. Our lives crossed as roommates in college. She was from the area and my home was fifteen hundred miles away. Her family took me in. We spent many weekends and holidays with them.

They were quiet and shy folks and only became relaxed and animated after they had known me for several years. Then, it felt like I was one of the family. I felt trusted. Accepted for who I was. Liked. Loved.

The family was extremely enmeshed. The father was clearly in charge. The mother was quiet and submissive. It didn’t feel as though they ruled their children with an iron hand. It was more a passive guilt-controlled environment. I am describing this not in a derogatory way but more to paint a picture of the world and life they had created.

My friend and her older brother were, it almost seemed, kept by some unknown source from having their own lives. I felt that neither had a sense of themselves outside of the family. Neither dated or had significant relationships until they were in their 30’s. ( I think the brother was in his 40’s)

One of the most striking things about them was their incredibly strong need for “control”. Everything was precisely and perfectly in order. Material things were highly valued and well taken care of. There was a backdrop of Catholic schools and religious background with little evidence of a current practice of those beliefs. There was no sense of any spirituality or beliefs that would sustain you. This lack of belief made the controlled environment make sense to me.

I was young and didn’t question the basic fabric of their lives. I was more focused on experiencing being accepted into a family that was welcoming. I wasn’t able or aware enough to project into the future what this set of life variables would produce.

First the father died unexpectantly of a heart attack. Then the brother ran off and married an older woman who had a number of children. Then he died after a short battle with cancer. That left my friend and her mother. Their relationship was one of enmeshed closeness. Almost too close. Too dependent on each other.

I came in and out of their lives and as I moved away for many years missed out on a lot of the drama of these traumatic episodes. I was summoned back when her mother was dying. Her mother was in her 90’s and  failing health was alarming to my friend. My friend’s control was not working to stop her mother’s health from deteriorating. She was terrified of losing her mother because that meant that she would be “alone”. I could see from statements like that that she was not aligned with her husband and didn’t consider him part of the family or of her life. She was, nonetheless, dependent on him to be there.

When her mother died, my friend fell apart—keeping it together just enough to thrive in her career. She had always used work as her safe haven as it had been the one thing in her life that had been “successful” in her eyes. A recent car accident has left her with headaches and difficulty standing and sitting for long periods of time. She cannot work now—probably until fall. Without the safety and identity of her work she is lost. Discombobulated. Frantic.

This was what was happening when I got the call about the dying dog. The dog had been her mother’s and its dying brought up all the unresolved feelings around her mother’s, father’s and brother’s deaths. It meant she felt she was finally “truly alone”. It was a gigantic ordeal!

I spent several days reassuring her that the dog was indeed suffering. The little dog had been hanging on, literally for dear life, for three years beyond what I thought she would because of her mother’s and then my friend’s need not to be

alone. The poor thing’s body was giving out but she was still trying to hang in there.

The emphasis in her conversations with me was around trying to control everything possible so that there would be no second-guessing after the dog had passed. We spoke about  physical things, such as what was happening with the dog in any given moment. My friend could not let go of the dog and was berating herself for not doing the right thing every step of the way.

Her anxiety level was growing exponentially as the days passed and the dog deteriorated. She became more and more specific in her thinking as time went on. Details became the hallmark of her anxiety.

I played the role of opening up the micro thinking to more general ways of thinking. I would come up with statements like: “Some things are working here”, “You’ve been through this before, and I know you can do it now”. She would relax momentarily with these and then would jump in with an anxiety-ridden comment or thought. It was very challenging.

I realized a some things  through this. Having no beliefs in a spiritual world doesn’t allow for living in the physical world very well. Even if there are some beliefs, anxiety and control can throw them easily out the window. This way of living is excruciatingly painful.

The dog was put to sleep this week with a fight. That, too, was traumatic. There was no other way to script the experience—my friend’s reality was being created in such a rigid way with no room for peaceful outcomes or spiritual or emotional support. I hope my friend can have the motivation now to search for a life with  greater meaning. I wish for her peace of heart and mind. I will hold that belief in my heart until she can do it for herself.

Spring Re-birth

Paula deChelly, ladies' woman, creative artist, single parent and  musician, was re-born in the Spring of 2013 on Easter Sunday, March 31st.

Paula fancies nature and this re-birth only intensifies her love of going to the mountains, being in nature and soaking up the many high vibrations that are found in the Great outdoors.

She is purported to have brought even more house-plants into her small "nest" of an apartment -- particularly ones with colorful blossoms or color in their leaves. Her coffee table is graced with purple, pink and yellow, and, of course, green, green, green.

Paula has always loved the women in her life. Even though the relationship with her mother (deceased) was complicated and confusing -- Paula attributes the development of many of her passions today to her mother's generosity. Also foundationally significant were her Great Aunts -- Leonie and Marguerite. Her sister, Susanne, has been a beacon of love and life and this, with the re-birth, is bound to shine even brighter.

Paula excels at listening to people, finding treasures in thrift stores, being generous with her time, her family and friends and her resources. Creating and bringing masks into form, playing and writing music, and simply "being" in the moment will all just get better and better.

She loves dogs and has had nine of them in her life. (Mitsy, Marcus Aurelius, Tristum, Happy Dog, Hobbit, Johnie, Arty, Abracadabra and Ladybug). Paula is currently finding ways to nurture and care for Ladybug in her "Golden Years". This is teaching her opening of the heart with deep compassion and love.

Paula loves her son, Shannon, and her granddaughter, Amelia, her daughter-in-law, Kirstyn and soon to be Grandson, Finn. As a single parent she did her best to keep a steady course and now is reaping the rewards. Her re-birth will only enhance these relationships.

Despite the many challenges of many dramatic changes in her life Paula has been an inspiration to many people. Her openness and sincerity has drawn many beautiful friendships that promise to blossom and unfold now even more.

Spirituality has been an ongoing quest for Paula and she has pursued many paths on her journey toward consciousness and wholeness. The re-birth will enhance and magnify the present moment so much -- the vibrational level will get so high -- the future promises to bring many joyful experiences of Spirit.

Taking care of herself has always been secondary to taking care of others. The re-birth will solidify the recent shift of putting herself first. Her many activities: meditating, practicing Tai Chi and NIA to name a few things and quiting smoking (the hardest challenge in her life) are bound to embolden her into a greater life now.

Just what is the re-birth? She doesn't exactly know. It is a renewal. A re-directing. A new perspective. It interjects joy into every aspect of life and aligns you with your highest being and with something greater. It brings you into the moment and allows you to "be". Fully present. Re-newed. Re-born.

Paula asks that to honor her now you support equality for all people: LGBTs, women, the poor, the sick and all people who are depressed and oppressed in any way. As for Paula, she will spread her wings with this re-birth, pray, play, create, give and receive from Spirit and live with joy each moment she is given.

Grateful for Arches

I embarked upon my Tai Chi journey last May. In the beginning I was lost—but in an introspectively curious way. Tai Chi was different than anything I had ever tackled. It was enough to simply "be". If I didn’t know what I was doing I could make something up. Sure, there was a several thousand-year-old form we were learning but, hey, there were more important things going on than worrying about perfection.

The funny thing is I don’t know how I made my way to Tai Chi. I had seen it being gracefully done in parks in San Francisco, New York and on my trips to China. I had thought it was beautiful to watch, but it was not something I had ever imagined doing. After all it was an internal martial art practiced for its defense training. It was only after starting to do it I discovered it was also done for health benefits.

Tai Chi felt “right” from the first class. I can’t put my finger on what it was that clicked. Maybe it was something I couldn’t think my way through. Who knew that not thinking would become so important? Any time I would start thinking in class, I would lose track of my body. In the beginning the entire focus was on what my body was doing and learning structure to encourage connection.

Then there was balance. And flexibility. And steadiness. Those were all things that had become quite precarious in my day-to-day life. I had taken three falls in the previous year. When new people would come into the class and we would introduce ourselves and say why we were there, about half the class would say “balance”. This gave me pause. I began to feel changes in my body that encouraged and allowed me to stay grounded and balanced.

I was basically learning about what my body was doing for the very first time in my life. I was listening to the subtleties of the body: joints, muscles, tendons, and organs, back, legs, where my weight was--feeling how complex and yet simple the movements were. Discovering connections and disconnects between the upper and lower parts of my body, side to side, pushing too hard, too far, holding hips off center, not letting the imaginary drop of water sit carefully in my too-tightly-curved hand...

My mind wanted to figure this phenomenon out. But I quickly gave that up. I have come to realize even in the short amount of time I’ve been practicing Tai Chi there are many, MANY levels to even the minutest aspect of every thing we do. Each move has a billion variations depending on each person, their body’s story, the energy of the day...

Some of the levels presented themselves early on. There were the physical aspects. Body memory was the way we are were being taught the form. I began to experience the subtleties of the brain breaking from its rapid beta self-talk and commentaries and dropping into calming alpha waves. I felt my brain shifting even when we’re warming up. At the end of each class I felt like I’d been swaddled for an hour and fifteen minutes. Held. Cared for. Loved.

Another level that bubbled up in Tai Chi was emotions. Slowing down and practicing the form made a lot of room for inner emotions. Sometimes there would be negative self-talk that would be severely critical and competitive. Sometimes there would be waves of sadness. I believe the body carries a lot of emotions. It became clear that Tai Chi was a way to allow old energy patterns to release and move through unconscious resistances. I liked using the body in this way without analyzing everything.

One day in class I had an “ah ha” moment. We were talking about the tiny muscles in the feet and ankles that create balance and we started walking around the room. We were to tune into how we walked. Suddenly I could feel the arches in my feet. I almost wept with gratitude. I admit it sounds like an extreme reaction but it has repeatedly been my experience with Tai Chi: small, simple things touch me with the magnitude of the mountains.

Have I mentioned the sense of community? I call this the “social level” of Tai Chi. I have been in many group processes and I can say for a fact the people in this class share something mysterious. The way the class is set up through the Recreation Center new people can come into the class at any time. Sometimes that is annoying, but ultimately it is teaching me patience. The core group though, the ones who keep coming back, are the ones who delight me. Besides being really nice people we share something that I feel but cannot explain.

I can’t help but notice that the practice of Tai Chi, while being a martial art that is about fighting, is pushing me into deeper levels of spirituality. There are within the subtle (beautiful) movements,  spaces of Light that I have only felt in the awe of nature, the joy of a small hand reaching up for mine, the sweet melody of a Beethoven sonata... I know I am touching into something much Greater than myself.

Okay. So you probably think I’m making up this magical story? Actually, it is all my Truth. Even the gratitude piece about having arches in my feet is true! How many people do you know who have flat feet, metal in their shoulders, stomach problems, knee replacements, bodies that fall down or get up too early in the morning? I have discovered a deep secret in the practice of Tai Chi. It is as solid as the earth and as ethereal as the blue sky. And the best part of it all—I love it!

Mysteries Of The Moon

It was night of February 20, 2008. I was out watching the total eclipse of the full moon. The sky was enormous. There were no clouds. When the moon came up, it was a breathtaking milky-gold ball that lit up the horizon. As it rose and became white, the eclipse shadow began taking over. I kept watching it as the shadow grew and even tried to take some pictures of it. The pictures did it no justice. It is one of those things I will just have to remember.

I have been enchanted and awed by the moon as long as I can remember. Watching her cycles wax and wane has taught me more about life than just about anything else. She has been the most consistent and dependable thing in my life. I know she is out there when it is cloudy, her path misses my view, or when she is covered by the shadow of an eclipse.

When my son was small and one of us would go away, I used to tell him that we were never far away from each other because we could both see the moon. That made it much easier to be apart. It would have been unbearable if the moon had not been there for both of us. Even though my son is now an adult and on another continent, I still use my reference point to be certain of our connection.

Once an amazing thing happened. While watching the moon one night I had what I would call a sacred experience. I was on a mountain in Colorado camping out under the stars when a full moon rose in the sky. The light was so bright I could see as if it was daytime. I was laying in my sleeping bag watching the sky in wonder when, suddenly, I had the experience of not being separate. It was as if I was a part of the mountain, the sky, the moon—I was everything. From that moment, my spiritual life has filled and changed my perception of life.

I was hungry for lunar knowledge. I found the symbolic and spiritual connections fascinating. I read folk stories, fairy tales, poetry, novels, magazines, astrology, psychology and any spiritual books I could get my hands on.

I found out that many ancient cultures worshiped the moon more than the sun. Some called all deities the “moon”. To the Greeks, menos meant both “moon” and “power.” To the Romans, the morality of the Moon-goddess was superior to that of the Sun god. In many cultures, the Moon-goddess and the Creatress were one and the same. The Moon-goddess was thought to create time, with all its cycles of creation, growth, decline, and destruction, which is why ancient calendars were based on phases of the moon.

Because the Moon-goddess was threefold, the Destroyer as well as the Creator, she was the devourer of the dead as well as the giver of life. The Greeks located the home of the blessed dead in the moon. Most important for its association with birth, the moon was supposed to be the receptacle of menstrual blood by which each mother formed the life of her child.

Few religious symbols occurred in so many diverse contexts as symbols of the moon. Despite all the church’s condemnations, rural folk continued to trust the Moon-mother in all their most important activities. To them, the moon governed women’s sexuality, birth, death, and magic. (Walker)

As I gathered information, my own beliefs began to take shape and I was swept away with inspiration. With the new insights, I began to feel my power in a new and exciting way. The moon began to signify the feminine to me. She became a link to my mother, and her mother and her mother. I remembered when I became a mother and felt her presence right beside me, holding me and rocking me back and forth, back and forth.

I was beginning to understand the moon's energies about life and death. When my mother died, I initially felt as if I had lost all connection to everything. It was night when I got the word, and all I could do was go outside with my dog and sit on the ground under a huge tree and weep. Just as I was being submerged in agonizing despair, I looked up and the moon was peeking over a cloud at me. I remembered in that instant my connection to everything, including to my mother, now on the other side. Knowing I was part of everything, even death would ever take her away. My mother died thirty-one years ago this month. It seems like yesterday and forever. Tomorrow is my son’s birthday. It seems like he has been with me always.

As the eclipse completely obscured the moon, I took deep breaths and basked in the gratitude of her presence, her secrets, her power and the mysteries that she has offered me. She has shown me about the cycles of birth, life and death in many it's many forms and ways. She has helped me connect with spirituality. Because of her and what she has come to represent to me, she has enriched my life with a wondrous journey. I celebrate the blessings of the moon as she travels through the sky, holding her secrets for me to discover.

LIFE PATHS

I was born into music. Life offers us many paths, and for me, music has been a constant presence, a source of pain and joy, and a beacon for my inner life. It has meant various things to me at different times. At first it was so much a part of my world, I didn’t even question and couldn’t tell where I began and it ended. As I was growing up, there was a confusing swirl with my mother and music. I wonder now if the opportunities she provided to develop my talents were really about her unlived dreams.



My mother was a natural, talented musician who played organ at church for over 30 years before her untimely death. A guilt-ridden sense of doing penance for some deep-seated sadness permeated her music. She dutifully played without missing one Sunday service in all those years. She also taught piano lessons to any child in our small mid-west town who expressed an interest. When I wasn’t climbing a tree to listen to the music of the rustling leaves in the wind, I used to hide under a table in the hall and listen to her teaching.

I started playing piano at age 4 and violin at 7. Every Saturday we would make a 60-mile drive to take lessons. The weekly excursion gave me the idea that music was my life ticket out of town. That vision grew as the years passed and gave me a forward-looking focus to my life. I never looked back.

I didn’t really know how I felt about music back then. I actually gave no thought about what it meant. Studying the basic instrumental techniques when I first started was tedious dull work, like all new students experience. With my natural enthusiasm to learn, having the discipline to practice was not a problem

Learning the basics was, for me, not exactly music. It was similar to learning to walk, read or learn a new language. In the early stages there was no magic, beauty, or transcendence. It was a necessary rite of passage, which would later give me the tools to step into music and let it take me away.

By the time I was fourteen I started giving piano lessons. This was really fun and I totally enjoyed my students’ progress and watching them becoming ignited with the love of playing music. I continued teaching piano for 15 years. The last year I taught, I had forty students, ten of them adults. At that time, I had become quite fascinated with the effect music had on the heart and soul. I decided to give a workshop for my adult students to share this with them.

They were all much older than me and, as I look back on it, it gives me a great appreciation and compassion for my courage as a very young and naïve adult. I talked passionately about music and the soul and laid myself totally open to my budding beliefs. When I asked the question, “Where does the music come from?” and all ten responded, “the piano”, I spent the rest of the time trying to impart “the real truth” of my convictions.

The following week all ten students dropped out. I was devastated! I knew deep down what I had said was incredibly valuable and true. Had they stayed with the process, I knew it would have taken them to a new level in their lives. I still remember the sadness their leaving provoked in me.

Unbelievably, two weeks later, all the students returned. Their playing had improved tremendously. What was more profound though, was how they had integrated parts of my convictions into their lives. This inner growth had deeply changed their lives and given them a voice. Their souls were singing through the piano with joy.

I got a degree in violin and piano performance and became a professional musician. I practiced many hours a day. The isolation heightened my shyness and tendency toward depression. I was not happy. I played in orchestras and freelanced with other musicians who were underpaid, unappreciated and unhappy. Being paid to play music was no longer play but work. Music was no longer uplifting and I felt as if I was losing my life force.

The familiar knowing of needing to let go that I had experienced many times in my life emerged. I had to let go of making my living with music. Once I made the leap, I gradually began to remember the joy of music, my passion for it and how it fed my soul. I yearned to play with people who loved music as much as I did and who played for the sheer joy of the experience. This path led me to chamber music. I was enchanted with all of the different combination of instrumentation and the wealth of compositions that had been written.

During this time a pathway opened up and music became my own. More importantly, music took me over and made me hers. I do not remember the exact moment when I became the music and began to express myself and my relationship to everything in the Universe through this seamless collaboration.

Rediscovering earlier awareness about the connection between music and my inner life coincided with opportunities to improvise with other musicians. This was a totally new way of relating to music, quite different from my classical training. This expansion from form to formlessness began to help me conceptualize the thread between music and psychology.

Psychology was a tremendously exciting path. I loved becoming more familiar with my inner life. I took classes in psychology, immersed myself in individual and group therapy, extensively read psychologists and their theories and eventually molded all of my deep-felt zeal into a new career. My process led me into a world that provoked many of the same experiences as music, but was bigger, deeper, wider and higher. I realized this was what I had been trying to convey to my piano students.

With psychology and music, my inner and outer worlds merged and became enlivened in ways I couldn’t have even fathomed. I found that my creativity was rising to the surface and finding expression I didn’t know I had. This combination fed and nurtured me beyond my wildest imagination.
Then, one day I woke up and felt like a chrysalis about to break out of a cocoon. No part of my life seemed to fit anymore. The path I had been on had taken a sharp turn and then divided. It seemed impossible to find my bearings. My soul was opening my awareness to something new.

My immediate inner response was to drop into an empty void so deep that psychology and music disappeared altogether. I plunged in the anguish of the dark night of the soul. Music and psychology had been so alive and active. This place was totally still and dark. There was no light to guide me. All I could do was sit in the quiet and wait. My soul was taking a new direction and I had to wait to see where I was going.

In the waiting, I became aware of the importance of silence. In music, the space in between was equally as important as the notes. In the inner psyche, the places that seem void of everything are just as vital as the ones filled with noisy experiences and frenzied feelings. I could not escape the depth of this emptiness. My soul had a lesson for me. All I could do was wait and let it emerge.

After what seemed like an eternity, I began to sense a new dimension emerging that was bigger than music and psychology together. The world that my soul began to show me was metaphysical. It began to connect all of me together. The inner work I had done on myself and all of the ways music had guided me throughout my life began to come into focus, with the backdrop of something greater. My soul had broken out of its old form and was showing me a deeper, spiritual dimension of my life. This outgrowth from music to psychology to my spiritual self seemed like the most natural thing in the world. All tension lifted and I experience inner peace for the first time.

Psychology is the study of the soul. The next step in looking at the personal and interpersonal aspects of my life is transpersonal. I believe the soul offers life lessons through giving situations that require both inward and outward tension. Working these lessons out, no matter how many mistakes or successes, moves my soul forward to the next level or lesson. At some point, a transpersonal vantage point comes into view. This gives my soul its connection with the spiritual aspects of life.

Music and psychology, as they have operated in my life, have given me many lessons and taken me down many paths of learning. By integrating them into the transpersonal, I am now much more aligned with my soul. I am now connected with myself, others and something much greater.

Recently I have dusted off my violin case, put on new strings and carefully place chosen notes into the world. It seems so delicate and fragile, yet strong and powerful at the same time. My inner life resonates with the ‘new’ through my every moment of my life. Everyday my soul gives me another piece of this metaphysical puzzle in ways I understand on a deep level, but have no words to express. I have entered the next phase of my life. I know psychology and music are my foundation and now I am learning to fly low and have a strong place to land.

I was born into music. Music has patiently accompanied my soul. I am blessed to have come into this life with the gifts and willingness to find myself over and over again. From where I am now, there is nothing to do but follow the ancients in their pursuit of the Music of the Spheres.