From time to time, people tell me, “lighten up, it’s just a dog,” or “that’s a lot of money for just a dog.” They don’t understand the distance traveled, the time spent, or the costs involved for “just a dog.”
Some of my proudest moments have come about with “just a dog.” Many hours have passed and my only company was “just a dog,” but I did not once feel slighted.
Some of my saddest moments have been brought about by “just a dog,” and in those days of darkness, the gentle touch of “just a dog” gave me comfort and reason to overcome the day.
If you, too, think it’s “just a dog,” then you will probably understand phrases like “just a friend,” “just a sunrise,” or “just a promise.”
“Just a dog” brings into my life the very essence of friendship, trust, and pure and unbridled joy.
“Just a dog” brings out the compassion and patience that makes me a better person.
Because of “just a dog,” I will rise early, take long walks and look longingly to the future. So for me and folks like me, it’s not “just a dog” but an embodiment of all the hopes and dreams of the future, the fond memories of the past, and the pure joy of the moment.
I hope that someday they can understand that it’s not “just a dog,” but the thing that gives me humanity and keeps me from being “just a man/woman.” So the next time you hear the phrase “just a dog,” just smile–because they “just don’t understand.”
I just woke saying … and then I had to walk thru fire.
What the heck? Someone quizzing me on my capabilities?
Who am I?
All my life I have lived fully transparent, wearing my emotion, my strength, and my weaknesses in their fullness for all to see. I’ve never shrunk my experience to make others more comfortable. I’ve lived it with its intensity, in its rawness, in it bigness.
I requested that the archangels keep my subconscious self and all that dwells there private from the violator, protecting the identities of those friends and family I commune with in the astral.
Perhaps it was friends and family inquiring about my prelife training and skills.
Even tho I requested these things remain private from the violator, it would not surprise me if they had developed a way to see thru this veil. And even if they have … I will still live fully authentic and transparent.
I am right here. I am not hiding, nor am I being sneaky in any way. I am who I am .. whoever that is… hahaha
The card pull … And descriptions “right from the book”.
The Emperor ~ The Empress reflected sensuality and the creative principal while the Emperor balances Empress energy with rules and foundation. He gives form and shape to the Empresses expansive nature. The Emperor holds an ankh, the Egyptian symbol of immortality. The globe in his left hand reflects his dominion over the natural world. The astrological symbol of Aries is represented by the Ram placed on his throne. He surveys his domain. The Emperor is where your habits and patterns are formed. Father. Order. Authoritarian, firm, masculine nature. Strong and assertive. Setting limits and rules. Type A personality. Formation and stability.
Temperance ~ Archangel Gabriel, the Messenger angel is depicted on the card. He bears the sign of the sun on his forehead. It is also the alchemists symbol of gold. Temperance and the Moon card balance each other under different circumstances. This card reflects the change of seasons and the embrace of new ideas. “Temper” is the act of repetition to invoke skill or to refine something, make sharper like a sword. Alchemy. Blending and harmonizing oppositional forces and concepts. Holding opposing ideas and fostering complexity in life. Fusion producing evolution.
Wheel of Fortune ~ The universal and spiritual world in a constant state of flux. Clouds in the corners of the card reflect manifestation while the creatures on the corners reflect the four elements and the four cardinal directions. The spikes of the wheel carry alchemical symbols; mercury, sulfur, and salt and the astrological sign for Aquarius, while the Latin word for “wheel”, Rita is inscribed. Life in an ever-changing state. Keep your eyes in the center, find a steady focal point to keep you grounded no matter what life throws at you. Ancient symbol of fate, fortune and destiny. Forces of time and space. Energy and motion. Life cycles, ups and downs.
The Sun is the center of our solar system and the source of life. The child on the card reflects rebirth and resurrection as he wears the same red feather as the Fool and the Death card. He is the Fool reborn, with spiritual understanding and mastery. He rides forward on the horse of purity with his newfound freedom. The wall behind him reflects a barrier that has been crossed. The sunflowers represent all the bounty of summer and the richness of a beautiful August day. The Sun appears to fill you with optimism and let you know everything will be okay. Each of us is a Sun with our universe, friends, family, Magic, and creativity orbiting around us. You are pure consciousness and energy. Let yourself shine.
The child of earth holds an innocent nature. It reflects the parts of yourself that is lost in play, exploration and treasures of the material world. An upturned field behind the Page is the bed of possibility. What will you plant? What do you want? An attentive student. Focusing on studies and schoolwork. Thoughtful and curious nature. Focus and fascination. Playful and creative.
Intentions are sent. Energy in motion. Intentions are powerful and the eight of wands is an illustration of action in motion. What is done cannot be undone. The send button is hit, the letter is in the mail. The spell is cast. The words and incantations have been said. While you can’t undo what is done, you can pause, wait and see what the ramifications are. The energy is strong and effective. Allow the universe to work its magic. Do not try to control what has been sent. The situation is out of your hands for now. Be patient and you will get results.
A grown man looms behind my three-year-old daughter. Occasionally he will poke or tickle her and she responds by shrinking. Smaller and smaller with each unwanted advance. I imagine her trying to become slight enough to slip out of her booster seat and slide under the table.
When my mother views this scene, she sees playful taunting. A grandfather engaging with his granddaughter.
“Mae.” My tone cuts through the din of a familiar family gathering together. She does not look at me.
“Mae.” I start again. “You can tell him no Mae. If this isn’t okay you could say something like, Papa, please back up—I would like some space for my body.”
As I say the words, my step-father, the bulldog, leans in a little closer, hovering just above her head. His tenebrous grin taunts me as my daughter accordions her 30-pound frame hoping to escape his tickles and hot breath.
I repeat myself with a little more force. She finally peeks up at me.
“Mama . . . can you say it?”
Surprise. A three-year-old-girl doesn’t feel comfortable defending herself against a grown man. A man that has stated he loves and cares for her over and over again, and yet, stands here showing zero concern for her wishes about her own body. I ready myself for battle.
“Papa! Please back up! Mae would like some space for her body.”
My voice is firm but cheerful. He does not move.
“Papa. I should not have to ask you twice. Please back up. Mae is uncomfortable.”
“Oh, relax,” he says, ruffling her wispy blonde hair.
The patriarchy stands, patronizing me in my own damn kitchen. “We’re just playin’.” His southern drawl does not charm me.
“No. You were playing. She was not. She’s made it clear that she would like some space, now please back up.”
“I can play how I want with her.” He says, straightening his posture.
My chest tightens. The sun-bleached hairs on my arms stand at attention as this man, who has been my father figure for more than three decades, enters the battle ring.
“No. No, you cannot play however you want with her. It’s not okay to ‘have fun’ with someone who does not want to play.”
He opens his mouth to respond but my rage is palpable through my measured response. I wonder if my daughter can feel it. I hope she can.
He retreats to the living room and my daughter stares up at me. Her eyes, a starburst of blue and hazel, shine with admiration for her mama. The dragon has been slayed (for now). My own mother is silent. She refuses to make eye contact with me.
This is the same woman who shut me down when I told her about a sexual assault I had recently come to acknowledge.
This is the same woman who was abducted by a carful of strangers as she walked home one night. She fought and screamed until they kicked her out. Speeding away, they ran over her ankle and left her with a lifetime of physical and emotional pain.
This is the same woman who said nothing, who could say nothing as her boss and his friends sexually harassed her for years.
This is the same woman who married one of those friends.
When my mother views this scene, she sees her daughter overreacting. She sees me ‘making a big deal out of nothing.’ Her concerns lie more in maintaining the status quo and cradling my step-dad’s toxic ego than in protecting the shrinking three-year-old in front of her.
When I view this scene, I am both bolstered and dismayed. My own strength and refusal to keep quiet is the result of hundreds, probably thousands of years of women being mistreated, and their protests ignored. It is the result of watching my own mother suffer quietly at the hands of too many men. It is the result of my own mistreatment and my solemn vow to be part of ending this cycle.
It would be so easy to see a little girl being taught that her wishes don’t matter. That her body is not her own. That even people she loves will mistreat and ignore her. And that all of this is “okay” in the name of other people, men, having fun.
But. What I see instead is a little girl watching her mama. I see a little girl learning that her voice matters. That her wishes matter. I see a little girl learning that she is allowed and expected to say no. I see her learning that this is not okay.
“Years ago, anthropologist Margaret Mead was asked by a student what she considered to be the first sign of civilization in a culture. The student expected Mead to talk about fishhooks or clay pots or grinding stones.
But no. Mead said that the first sign of civilization in an ancient culture was a femur (thighbone) that had been broken and then healed. Mead explained that in the animal kingdom, if you break your leg, you die. You cannot run from danger, get to the river for a drink or hunt for food. You are meat for prowling beasts. No animal survives a broken leg long enough for the bone to heal.
A broken femur that has healed is evidence that someone has taken time to stay with the one who fell, has bound up the wound, has carried the person to safety and has tended the person through recovery. Helping someone else through difficulty is where civilization starts, Mead said.”
We are at our best when we serve others. Be civilized.
There are a lot of people who feel they know how to run you, better than you do.
“Confusion” is someone else in the middle of your reality, attempting to alter “your truth”.
Center of the Head = Personal Command Center.
We have a thought. Someone else comes along and says, “That’s not the way you do it” or something of that nature. We “accept” this “gift” and replace our own thought with theirs.
The savior … mom, dad, teacher, minister, peers, friends, etc, requires we step out of the Center of our Head, releasing our Seniority over our Personal Command Center, so they can then put “their truth” in it.
Place fingers on each temple. Draw an imaginary line inside the head from one finger to the other. Now place one finger on the brow between the eyes, and one at the back of the head, draw imaginary line. Notice where these two lines intersect. This is your Personal Command Center, the Center of the Head.
Focus on this space, eyes closed. After a moment your mind may begin to wander and you may see your childhood friend from the 3rd grade, your mother at the amusement park when you were 17, your first husband/wife from 25 years ago … take a breath.
Own this space. Take charge of this space.
Begin to dismantle and dissolve other peoples “truths” you permitted to replace your own. Release the “gifts” you accepted from others which altered your own personal truths.
Remember, anything that is unlike “I like me” was never yours, release it.
“In the course of my lifetime I have lived in two distinct cultures. I was born into a culture that lived in communal houses. My grandfather’s house was eighty feet long. It was called a smoke house, and it stood down by the beach along the inlet. All my grandfather’s sons and their families lived in this dwelling. Their sleeping apartments were separated by blankets made of bull rush weeds, but one open fire in the middle served the cooking needs of all.
In houses like these, throughout the tribe, people learned to live with one another; learned to respect the rights of one another. And children shared the thoughts of the adult world and found themselves surrounded by aunts and uncles and cousins who loved them and did not threaten them. My father was born in such a house and learned from infancy how to love people and be at home with them.
And beyond this acceptance of one another there was a deep respect for everything in Nature that surrounded them. My father loved the Earth and all its creatures. The Earth was his second mother. The Earth and everything it contained was a gift from See-see-am… and the way to thank this Great Spirit was to use his gifts with respect.
I remember, as a little boy, fishing with him up Indian River and I can still see him as the sun rose above the mountain top in the early morning…I can see him standing by the water’s edge with his arms raised above his head while he softly moaned…”Thank you, thank you.” It left a deep impression on my young mind.
And I shall never forget his disappointment when once he caught me gaffing for fish “just for the fun of it.” “My son” he said, “The Great Spirit gave you those fish to be your brothers, to feed you when you are hungry. You must respect them. You must not kill them just for the fun of it.”
This then was the culture I was born into and for some years the only one I really knew or tasted. This is why I find it hard to accept many of the things I see around me.
I see people living in smoke houses hundreds of times bigger than the one I knew. But the people in one apartment do not even know the people in the next and care less about them.
It is also difficult for me to understand the deep hate that exists among people. It is hard to understand a culture that justifies the killing of millions in past wars, and it at this very moment preparing bombs to kill even greater numbers. It is hard for me to understand a culture that spends more on wars and weapons to kill, than it does on education and welfare to help and develop.
It is hard for me to understand a culture that not only hates and fights his brothers but even attacks Nature and abuses her. I see my white brothers going about blotting out Nature from his cities. I see him strip the hills bare, leaving ugly wounds on the face of mountains. I see him tearing things from the bosom of Mother Earth as though she were a monster, who refused to share her treasures with him. I see him throw poison in the waters, indifferent to the life he kills there; as he chokes the air with deadly fumes.
My white brother does many things well for he is more clever than my people but I wonder if he has ever really learned to love at all. Perhaps he only loves the things that are his own but never learned to love the things that are outside and beyond him. And this is, of course, not love at all, for man must love all creation or he will love none of it. Man must love fully or he will become the lowest of the animals. It is the power to love that makes him the greatest of them all… for he alone of all animals is capable of [a deeper] love.
My friends, how desperately do we need to be loved and to love. When Christ said man does not live by bread alone, he spoke of a hunger. This hunger was not the hunger of the body.. He spoke of a hunger that begins in the very depths of man… a hunger for love. Love is something you and I must have. We must have it because our spirit feeds upon it. We must have it because without it we become weak and faint. Without love our self esteem weakens. Without it our courage fails. Without love we can no longer look out confidently at the world. Instead we turn inwardly and begin to feed upon our own personalities and little by little we destroy ourselves.
You and I need the strength and joy that comes from knowing that we are loved. With it we are creative. With it we march tirelessly. With it, and with it alone, we are able to sacrifice for others. There have been times when we all wanted so desperately to feel a reassuring hand upon us… there have been lonely times when we so wanted a strong arm around us… I cannot tell you how deeply I miss my wife’s presence when I return from a trip. Her love was my greatest joy, my strength, my greatest blessing.
I am afraid my culture has little to offer yours. But my culture did prize friendship and companionship. It did not look on privacy as a thing to be clung to, for privacy builds walls and walls promote distrust. My culture lived in big family communities, and from infancy people learned to live with others.
My culture did not prize the hoarding of private possessions, in fact, to hoard was a shameful thing to do among my people. The Indian looked on all things in Nature as belonging to him and he expected to share them with others and to take only what he needed.
Everyone likes to give as well as receive. No one wishes only to receive all the time. We have taken something from your culture… I wish you had taken something from our culture, for there were some beautiful and good things in it.
Soon it will be too late to know my culture, for integration is upon us and soon we will have no values but yours. Already many of our young people have forgotten the old ways. And many have been shamed of their Indian ways by scorn and ridicule. My culture is like a wounded deer that has crawled away into the forest to bleed and die alone.
The only thing that can truly help us is genuine love. You must truly love, be patient with us and share with us. And we must love you—with a genuine love that forgives and forgets… a love that forgives the terrible sufferings your culture brought ours when it swept over us like a wave crashing along a beach… with a love that forgets and lifts up its head and sees in your eyes an answering love of trust and acceptance…”
See the Truth ~ Do not be deceived. Be watchful and mindful of the illusions others weave around themselves, and that you may weave around yourself. Know the night. Understand the shadows. See through the darkness to the light of truth. Pay attention to contradictions. Notice when actions and words are not in harmony. Hone your intuition and insight so that you may know the minds and hearts of those around you – and yourself – and trust in the wisdom born of that awareness.
Have Courage ~ There are Times when you feel small, afraid and alone in the world, but you are not alone. You are watched over and cherished by Gaia and Great Spirit. Know that you have within you the strength to overcome all obstacles placed in your path no matter how daunting or large they may seem. Have courage. Now is the time to trust in yourself and have confidence that you will overcome all.
Embrace the Dark ~You have been taught that all is either good or evil, negative or positive; good gives rise to good, and bad gives rise to bad. It is wrong to have feelings of anger, dislike or fear as these emotions are born of our shadow self. This is not Truth. Everything happens for a reason. Love can give rise to destruction, and hate can inspire acts of genuine love. The lessons offered by our shadow often teach us the most. Know your shadow self. Love it. Without the darkness, the stars cannot be seen.
opensenseme 