MC Squared

          Calories are energy, a unit of potential heat most often measured in food and calculated in how we feed our body.  A clear and quantifiable amount, we can see what goes in and link it directly to the exercise and activity necessary to burn it off, what must be accomplished to get it back out.

            ...or we get fat.

            Money is energy.  Likewise, we produce in fits and spurts or methodical routines and track our bank accounts like so many meals.  We accumulate and compare, struggle to make ends meet or hoard our stashes like squirrels preparing for winter.

            In this case, obesity is often considered a good thing. People envy the man in his castle on the top of the pile, the hearts of women and respect of fathers laid on the mantel like so many trophies.   More can seem better and there are many of us who are raised with our focus on the calories more than the taste. To some, there can never be enough and it must be flaunted brazenly to cover over the holes of fragility in the basic structure.

            Love is energy.  Our hearts expand and flow without measure, swell to the point of aching.  We speak in poetry of "bursting" when it is accepted and "broken" when it is not, but either way, the passion is energy that fuels our existence with vitality as succulent as the most exquisite meal.

           

              Sexuality is energy.  In our most sacred practice, we unite with our beloved, making love, creating joy and discovering passion that feeds our soul as much as any food can enrich our body. Two souls connect and become one with source, ecstatic and entwined, passion for life, creating a life of passion.

            Fear is energy.  It blocks all that we might do with billboards that can turn us in wrong directions, create doubts about what lies ahead, temptations of disasters that may or may not be actually lurking, luring us from our determined roads.

            In so many ways the quality of our lives can be measured.  We seek definitions to account, justify and explain our actions and behaviors.  No matter how hard I try to stay in the beauty of the moment first waking each morning, my mind bounces from past to future, evaluating and promising, missing out on the grace of the sunshine that dawns through my window for another day.

            Meditation helps to find the quiet place of gratitude, but in the bustle of the day, it is a constant battle not to judge each moment, quantify and articulate the progress and regressions as good and bad.  Calories in and dollars handed over the counter.  Am I loved? or so desperately, painfully alone when I settle back down into dreams at night?

            As if a message from my mother herself, so long ago lost in Alzheimer's and finally death, a postcard greeted me from my kitchen table this morning, tossed down by my son who shifts his belongings to live with me full time.  Of a painting in Paris by my father, on the backside she wrote a gushing note about the wonder of the trip they were on. 

            Her delight was so contagious, even now, fifteen years later, her love and gratitude so plentiful, it is easy to conjure the vision of the woman scribbling on a cafe table, thinking of her grandchildren, surrounded by the simple pleasure of a market full of life. Tears I had not felt since her graveside (a year ago today, I suddenly realize) welled from deep within as I remembered how much grateful energy she allowed to flow from within and without.

            Life is energy.  We expand and contract with every breath, opening our hearts to what is available or shutting ourselves behind walls of fear.  Each moment lies before us to make a choice.  We have the power to act or re-act, doing over and over and over again until the lessons are learned.

            Intuition is the voice within that truly knows the best path for each of us, ignoring the billboards of fear and guiding us towards fulfillment of our highest interests.  Listening carefully, like a heart beat from exercise and nurtured by diet, if we let it, the voice becomes stronger and louder.

            Gratitude is energy, a celebration that invites more love into our lives.

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