"... Settle your debts, not just to "the other person" but to the collective.Basically, if you're letting other people do all the heavy lifting, you realize you should pitch in. Family (the Moon) may be involved with this as well. Think also in terms of inheritance or your legacy.... Standing by, watching another person struggle when you could easily assist is a giant no-no...
Take the weekend to balance your "books", understanding you may have to dig deep to do so (Pluto). You'll feel better as you get things sorted; but the real payoff is down the road when you don't have to pay the price for the things you failed to do when you knew you should have."
"Heads Up Newsletter"
We have sunshine. After more than a week of dodging slash burn, (since original posting, the fires continue) filing smoke and fire complaints, keeping a running email thread with government agencies; having conversations to clear the relational air here on the Prairie Front; and searching for a place to live ... Pete is now hauling out 'stuff.' Piles of tools, bags of framed photographs, oxygen tanks, old mementos, a cross-cut saw that needs a splint to make it work again.
"There's more here than I thought." There always is.
Earlier today Pete cleared what was stored under the wagon, preparing the vardo to be moved out of her settled-in position of the past many months. Before we can hitch her up there are things to ready her and literally, Pete must dig her out of a hole. To level the trailer on this land, which though a prairie has very little flat ground, Pete dug us in. There's a slip of a metaphor going on with that but we won't dwell too long. The opportunity here is the karmic debts that have come due as we ready ourselves for a new next.
I've been chewing on what Elsa suggested in terms of settling the karmic books. For years now the hundreds of blog posts I've written have been stories of our current events. My comfort with so much disclosure is like a sound wave, not constant in its levels. The posts are as much a way for me to hear-by-heart as much, if not more, than finding the words to translate what's going on in my head.
What debts do I need to settle?
Pete's sister wrote a long and deeply informing email to me after she read the blog post 'Braiding and Making the Appreciation Rounds'. In part she said,
"I enjoyed reading your thoughtful appreciation tribute to your life and Pete's at this time. I was stunned by the smoke crisis and the attitudes around it that developed last week and realized how very difficult life can be for you every day. If I can help you more in any way please let me know. I've learned that money is really a form of energy. It's alive and is always changing even if it's sitting in a bank and gaining interest. Even if it's not being spent money can give the person a feeling of emotional safety which is essential when situations are hard. I've been there many times. Money can change lives as I have seen with my own family as they moved in new directions."
Akua, the Creator, and all my Ancestors who light up the night sky give me the tools to dig into and dig up my debts. Watching another struggle when I could have helped? There is one very big regret I have. Rationalizing worked for years. But this winter, I see my past mirrored in the actions of others. Pete came up with the phrase, "appropriating my suffering" to explain the disappointments we've had when offers of help (sharing a place to live) were offered and then withdrawn with the added drama of tears, their tears. Tears because it was so hard to make the decision not to help. But not so hard that they would help.
Hah, Isn't that the stuff the Blues are made of?*
I watched my brother struggle with addiction, and struck an unfair deal with him when he was at a low point. I didn't give him what he wanted; instead I gave him what I could give. It wasn't fair, and in the end the karmic debt has hounded me because it was about money and 'property.' This was about settling on his part of the family inheritance of our family home. He wanted money. I was living in the family home; it was my emotional safety. Money cannot buy everything, but without it or its equivalent it's hard to ever feel safe enough. A rift split us apart for years and when I finally sold our family home, I paid my brother the remainder of what he asked for years earlier.
Before he died, my brother and I reached a point of ho'oponopono, setting things right between us. I asked for the reconciliation; I missed him in my life and asked 'Can we start again?' In a way the last few years of his life allowed us to progress in our relationship becoming more mutually communicative. I was given more time to talk and David did more listening.
What is the debt I feel in that relationship?
This past weekend as my astrologer Elsa laid out the opportunities of heavenly bodies aligned to clean up a regret that could have longer lasting family legacy, I recognized my actions repeating themselves. Mirrored in the relationships with friends, I saw how betrayals snap trust between bites of warm and savory food. I saw how unsuspecting set-ups appropriate my suffering. MCS is a tough illness to live with. Sharing and accepting the burden by others takes a special kind of person. Why offer only to be withdrawn?
We make our decisions at the moment and for good or ill we live with the consequences. This experience I'm trying to describe is helping me to see that 'settling the books' is still a matter of interpretation. I've been on both sides of the story when it comes to watching another struggle. The consequences of my choices could easily be disassociated with the current challenges I have/we have to find community who will share their goodies with me/us.
I'm taking the position that my actions of the past have consequences today, and recognize that 'property' and 'money' play big into my progressed evolution. With that awareness I begin to settle my books by not repeating my actions, or silence when I see another struggle when I could easily help; or allowing others to repeat those actions with me.
The clues, the signs, the astrological alignments conspire on my behalf: learn this one they tell me. I, am an old woman with a Progressed Life that is now much, much fuller than it was when I was born 71 years ago. Settling my debts to my brother in both the specific and the collective sense means I can feel my heart's desires because I am more fully who I really am. I can act with decency, and not weigh so heavily on being efficient. There is such a big difference!
My struggles and suffering are many. They aren't just made up, but, then some of them are. The imagination can be a tool of fabrications. But there is a place for fiction especially when they serve a function of escape from the cruelty that is too often real. My brother and I grew in in a family and in a culture torn into shreds by a dominating White Colonizing power. Roots and cultural values laid low in my parents and inelegant but necessary coping techniques tampered with our senses. We survived and carry a legacy that is both powerful because we do survive, and challenged because to thrive we must adapt. Adapting does not mean forgetting; it means remembering. When suffering continues without recognizing systemic de-humanizing and episodes of 'entitlement' the dynamics repeat.
Who could have guessed that Pete and I would build a small wagon home together and I would write these blog posts to describe our lives. Those who read these stories, and those who know us as real folk are attracted (some repulsed) to the grit and repetitive challenges, but keep a distance lest their comforts be disturbed. Lyrics of the blues for our times. Mirroring our pasts we, Pete and I, learn in public. Over and over again this winter we have reached for that welcoming community we have imagined. Activating the change that we wish to see, we become the change, leaving marks for family and strangers to oogle at or cluck their tongues. What good is it?
"they once told me
'Nah, you can't do that.' they clicked with their tongues & pursed up their lips. but now I really don't care."-from 'Mana'o of a makua o'o a bundle of simple words', by Yvonne Mokihana Calizar, Copyright, 1999
The good is that through our real life and the blogging there is an opportunity for progress in our collective evolution. We, humans, have so much to learn about being Native and of the Earth, not just on the Earth. My brother David continues to be with me, often and in many of my dreams. We have ongoing adventures and when I get messages from his son -- a small video of my brother's granddaughter whacking a baseball into the outfield -- I see the legacy is carried forward in many ways.
She's some kind of wonderful - Grand Funk Railroad
To be continued ...
How about you? Are there debts in your money or love commitments to be paid in your life, and how is that going?
Singing the Blues:
*Billy Holiday sings it blue ... "Don't Explain." (Link to an interview about Billy Holiday's rendering and lyrics of this song for insight into the depth of blues -- how "uncomfortable Billy Holiday makes us" for being so honest about her passion; raising the question of 'appropriating suffering' for me. )
Our son, Chris Kawika in the shared kitchen @ Christmas
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