Lesley’s World

Lesley’s World

Chapter 1

Whatever possessed me to believe that sewage was supposed to flow down the drain instead of coming up it?

Gravity.

I suppose this is what brought about the foundation of my belief in the natural order of things, e.g. the downward flow of OPP (Other People’s Pooh).

Gravity.

Give a hand to old Sir Isaac for explaining it to us. Though even he may have been perplexed and equally disgusted if he were living in my basement flat in Istanbul and coping with the ordeal that I had recently been through.

Yes, gravity. There should be more of it, regarding sewage at least.

There was a time when the foundation of my belief in gravity was rather dramatically shaken.  It was a sweltering summer night at 3:02 am on August 17,1999 when I was awakened from my slumber by the rattling and shaking of my bed, my room and all its contents.  As I bolted out of bed, I found myself standing in the doorjamb of my room, arms braced outward against the frame in some instinctive maneuver as if I were superwoman attempting to stay the structure of my flat, mirroring my friend Emma only two feet away in the doorjamb of her bedroom in the exact same posture awkwardly asking if this always happens in Istanbul.

“For fuck’s sake Emma. It’s an earthquake!!”  I practically shouted at her as adrenalin and shock jolted me awake.

“What do we do?”

“GET (brief pause) OUT!!”

For the next several months every jitter, bump or loud bark, day or night, struck a nerve somewhere inside me which sent tremors vibrating through my body.  I walked around the streets of Istanbul often in a semi-schizophrenic and non-drug induced hallucinogenic state of mind and body.  I cannot tell you how disconcerting it is to be walking along the sidewalk uphill and having to stop and lift your entire leg in slow motion so that you can gingerly place your foot one step in front of you, testing and guaging where exactly the solid sidewalk will actually meet with your foot before placing any weight on it so that you don’t lose your balance and fall over into the hallucination you’re having of a sidewalk which appears to be moving Rebel Yell roller coaster-like and topple over onto the very concrete reality of the bricks you’re treading upon.

I’ve never quite figured out if an hallucination is still an hallucination if you’re aware that you’re hallucinating. Especially if you’re making conscious efforts to avoid hurting yourself in the reality that surrounds you.  Basically, you’re aware of both illusions, though unsure of which, if either, is real and/or threatening. I’m sure you can see why this might be confusing.

Right now, I simply remember being acutely aware of the fact that our planet is not a solid secure mass but an extremely dynamic, highly volatile, liquid centered mass held together by invisible forces of energy (there’s that gravity-thing again) while hurling through space at phenomenal speeds!  I desperately wanted the illusion and security that basically every other human on the planet has. I wanted it to filter back into my consciousness and erase the fears and truths that Mother Nature had so violently usurped.

I think this is when I discovered that sometimes illusions are necessary if one wants to function in a world that others have collectively agreed upon.  And to be honest, I’m not completely convinced that this is ‘the’ way to live one’s life, but it is one way.

I’ve discovered that if you want to play the game, then you really do have to accept the limits of the board and play by the rules – so to speak.  The way I see it, you can either follow the herd knowing that there’s another way to live your life, or you can just be part of the herd and oblivious to any other way.  I don’t honestly believe that either of these ways is easy.

There’s also a third alternative.  You can jump back and forth between the two.  However, this does lead to a lot of jumbled up versions of reality in one’s mind and often bizarre conversations with oneself pop into the mind; like when a radio station is playing some song you’re really getting into, singing along with and thoroughly enjoying when a frequency interruption occurs and you get some bible belt evangelist telling you to put your hand up to the car speakers and you’ll be healed of your drug addiction.  Then the interference comes back and the song you were singing just continues as if nothing ever happened and you’re unsure of how you moved from Point A to Point B.  And then, suddenly, you realize it was all just an illusion.

Now there’s a word that’s been in my vocabulary and tantalizing me for quite some time.  “Illusion”.

I first heard about Richard Bach’s book “Illusions: Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah” one night when I was at a party at university.  I overheard two people talking about some book they had both read recently that at the end said, “Everything in this book is a lie”.

About a week later I wandered across the railroad tracks and into the bookstore just outside the town square of this sleepy little Virginia town I was living in and picked up a copy.  I carried it home that afternoon and curled up on my bed and dug in.  I don’t know how many hours passed, but I read it straight through from front to back cover and then did the strangest thing.  I turned it back over to the front cover and without pause began reading it again from page one.  I had never before and have not since done such a thing.

I came away from this book with what would become the foundation of my belief system for the next six years.  Apart from a pressing desire to push my finger through my bed sheet by sheer force of the mind and an urge to materialize my very own blue feather,  I, henceforth, firmly believed that I was GOD.

Not your GOD or The God, but my own.

The idea of a blue feather returned to me just last year. in an odd sequence of events.  I had moved back to that same mountain town in Virginia nearly 15 years later and went out to a party at a friend’s house where I met a homeless alcoholic who latched on to me.  He talked nearly incoherently about some song he had written that some country singer I’d never heard of had supposedly stolen from him.  I was desperate to escape and created my own opening to head for the door.  He grabbed my hand and said he had something to give me.

In my hand he placed a small silver charm of Isis.  He obviously had very few possessions and had been holding this trinket for quite some time.  I lapsed into his illusion, though only momentarily, that I was somehow personally related to this ancient Egyptian goddess, thanked him, and quickly took my exit.  When I got home, I tossed the Isis on the dresser and crawled into bed.  I was simply grateful to be home in the quiet of my apartment and alone.

That night I dreamt about a giant blue ceramic angel statue hovering above me.  When I awoke, I glanced over at the shrine in my bedroom and immediately focused on a postcard of the Buddha tacked to the wall, awash in a brilliant turquoise blue with feathered wings fully spread.

About three days later I was in a coffee shop on Court Square listening to some different stranger talking about teaching mentally handicapped adults when I glanced up over his shoulder and on the wall in front of me was a three foot by four foot painting of a blue eagle with wings aloft brandishing full plumage.  I was shocked!

I kept my eyes pealed for blue angels, blue wings or blue feathers for the next month or so, believing this to somehow be the key to unlocking the next step in my path, but I never did figure out the significance of what the universe was trying to tell me through those messages I’d received.

It did, however, manage to keep me more acutely aware and tuned in to the signs that the universe constantly places in my path. It’s up to me if I choose to notice their presence.  But they’re there. One needs only to look with pure intent and a bit of curiosity to see the signs. It’s as if they magically appear before you; a bit like watching a skilled magician pull a rabbit out of a hat or turn a small coin into an elephant.  All you have to do is believe.  There’s a logical explanation for how the master performs his or her illusions, but learning the ‘trick’ makes the illusion disappear.  We can choose which perspective we prefer to believe in and our choices can vary from moment to moment.

When I’m watching and aware, the most amazing things happen.  For example, before visiting my family for the last time before leaving the States last year, I had already decided that I was going to see my ex-boyfriend whom I hadn’t seen for two and a half years.  Though I was intellectually sure the relationship was finished, I felt I still needed to see him face to face to be absolutely certain. At that time he was living in Chania on the Greek island of Crete running an Italian ice cream shop in the touristed old section of the fishing village.

I packed my stuff up and got onto the road in my little white Honda and headed southeast towards my parents at around 10:00 am.  As I entered Interstate 81 from the ramp and began accelerating to the legal speed limit of 60 mph, I looked up and marveled at the massive steel wall of an 18 wheeler parallel to me. It loomed monstrously beside me, emblazoned with the largest letters I’ve ever seen at such close a range, shouting at me in it’s largesse

C-R-E-T-E!

I shouted back out loud to the universe from inside my car, a huge smile on my face, “I got it!”

Sometimes the universe can get a bit dramatic if we fail to recognize the more subtle signs strategically placed along our life path.

So, after reading Illusions I spent nearly six years believing that I was my own God, that I controlled my own fate, made my own decisions and either suffered the consequences or enjoyed the fruits brought about because of my own choices.

At about this time during one of the High Holiday services at my synagogue, I decided to read the English translation of the prayers I had been reciting by rote in Hebrew ignorant of their meaning.  For about 25 years I had been attending these annual family sojourns religiously (no pun intended) without stopping to consider what I was doing there.  Each year I became more and more disillusioned due to the fashion show and gossip that seemed to overshadow the true purpose of being in the synagogue in the first place.

That night things went a little like this:

Baruch Atah… I don’t believe this.

Baruch Atah… I don’t believe this either.

Baruch Atah… I don’t believe any of this.

Now what?

I continued to attend services and did my best to just take solace in the fact that I was seated or standing in a religious house of worship with approximately half of a congregation of over a thousand people who truly believed in the worth of their prayers.  I took the time to do my own private meditations and reflect on the past year of my life.  Maybe this served some purpose in my life at the time, but most likely all it really accomplished was keeping my father happy.

Though I was not a religious Jew-and never have been really – I am most certainly a spiritual person.  I’ve been exploring religions and recognizing energy as “God” probably all of my life.  And though I was born a Jew and will die a Jew, and if I ever do have children they will be Jewish according to Jewish law, I find organized Western Religions to be far too limiting and rigid for my beliefs to fit neatly inside of.

I discovered Kabbalah around this time in my life and sought out information about Atz Chaim/The Tree of Life.  I found a layman’s book of sorts and very slowly studied my way through the 10 Sephirot or 10 energy centers of being:

1-Keter (God/Creative Energy/ Crown/Perfect Union/Perfection)

2-Hockmah (Wisdom/Father Force)

3-Binah (Understanding/Mother Form)

4-Chesed (Mercy/Compassion)

5-Geburah (Strength/Severity/Justice)

6-Tiphereth (Beauty/LOVE/Harmony/Perfect balance)

7-Netzah (Victory/Emotion)

8-Hod (Glory/Intellect)

9-Yesod (Foundation/Independence)

10-Malkuth (Kingdom/Physical World)

I learned that energy can move either upward through the tree beginning with the heaviest earth and then gradually become lighter as it travels through the gifts and challenges of each center on its way to the spirit and beyond.  Or the energy can travel from spirit towards matter in a similar fashion but in reverse order.

Kabbalah is the mystical sect of Judaism, just as Sufism is the mystical sect of Islam.  Sufism would too prove to be of interest to me though it was several years into the future before I came across anything to do with this sect of Islam.  The Tree of Life is only one part of this sect of Judaism, and though I felt drawn to study, learn and practice Kabbalism, I was disheartened to find that before one can embark on this path, there are several basic rules which much be adhered to.

Rule #1-You must be stable in your career.

Rule #2-You must be a man.

Rule #3-You must be 35 years old or older.

Rule #4-You must be married.

At that point in my life I was studying to become a teacher.  So, Rule #1, the career thing, was at least on the way to being sorted.

As for Rule #2, I am a woman and will always be a woman.  Being a somewhat matrilineal religion, I figured I might be able to talk my way around this limitation.

Rule #3 was a little bit more complex.  At that time I was 27 years old.  Since that time I have surpassed the ridiculous age limit issue.  I really have found little to convince me that one’s biological age is a true indicator of one’s maturity level.  In fact, I’ve been wondering what relevance, if any,  age has in accordance with one’s readiness to connect with God.

Last year in America I was carded when I asked for a pack of matches at 7/11.  I was so surprised when the cashier asked me for ID that my response was an indignant though honest question asking how old you have to be to buy matches.  I’d been living overseas for eight years and quite honestly had no idea there even was an age limit for buying a pack of matches!

I was subsequently carded 4 or 5 times for alcohol over the next year in America in bars and once even for cigarettes.  By the way, you have to be 18 to buy cigarettes in the States and don’t be alarmed when at seeing your driver’s license which identifies you as being twice the legal age necessary to buy them, the cashier who appears to be barely over the legal age herself “humphs” at you and says you don’t have to make her feel bad.

As for Rule #4, the being married bit, that’s far more complicated.  At this point in my life I’m wondering if having been asked three times, having said yes twice, though never actually getting married would suffice for the mystics sitting on the entrance committee today.

I suppose this is where the story truly begins. The marriage proposals.

New Orleans March 2010

A Celebration of Lights

Celebration of Lights

Funky Flower II

(Photo) Funky Flower II

Flower Fairyland

(Photo) Flower Fairyland

Funky Flower

(Photo) Funky Flower

Dancing to the Sound

(photo) Dancing to the Sound

More Sound Reflections

(Photo) More reflections on the Albemarle Sound enhanced with color!

Reflections On the Sound

(Photo) While on the Albemarle Sound today, I discovered something strikingly beautiful. The rest is a mix of colors added in for fun!

Two Monkeys