Love Guide Me

Oh wayward life of love and passion
Come home to me now
Rise in my heart once again
Ignite your Divine Spark
Visit me, Holy of Holies
And tell me of your visions
Who am I now,
As your expression of Love
And loveliness
Whisper sweet nothings
Whisper sweet somethings
In my heart's ear
Show me the way
Guide me into love
Guide me into light
Guide me, as I send out my
Love to my Beloved
I feel him
His kiss
His breath
His touch
I see him
His eyes
His mouth
His chest
I want him
His essence
His soul
His temple
I love him
His presence
His joy
His play
I welcome him
His light
His dark
His forever becoming
I know him
His body
His heart
His soul
I have known him
All of my life
I have known him
Lovers don't just meet somewhere
They have been inside each other
All along
I have been looking all of my life
But today Beloved, I have found you
Yes, today...within my own heart
I have found you.
Bring me home
Ever so gently sing me home
Love is my home
Forever united in the tender embrace
Of Love's impassioned fire.
The trinity of Love's masterpiece
Here now.

Rising in Love ~ Sufi Practice

One of the important things to do when releasing a habit or addiction is to create a new, nurturing and nourishing ritual to replace it with (instead of just making a "lateral move" to another addiction).

I would like to invite all of you to practice this Sufi heart awakening ritual once a day for the next week. Let's see how we join together when we make this our ritual instead of the practices of numbing we have engaged until now.

Ten minutes is all you will probably need to do this practice, to fan the flame. When you open your heart, you open your life!

I am posting this practice on the blog for those of you joining us on this journey through this medium! I invite you to join us in this practice this week.

******
Rumi wrote, "Love is not just the thirsty seeking the water, but the water seeking the thirsty." That which you seek is seeking you as well. What you have been seeking all along is love. All the while, love in its wonder has been seeking you. Rise now into the ideal. Rise into the possible. Rise in consciousness. Rise in realization of love and come to love yourself and your new life with the Beloved.

A Sufi Practice to Awaken the Heart

Most of us have learned how to build a fortress around our hearts. This technique, which is the proper use of a zikr, allows us to relax and permits the fortress walls to crumble. When done properly, this zikr leads one into holy union with the Divine Lover or the Beloved. It is a remarkable experience.

You will need a way to keep count of 33 exhalations. You may use a rosary or a mala if you have one. Or use your fingers. What you are going to do is take 33 very deep breaths and visualize the breath penetrating your heart center. With each exhalation, you will make the deep resonating sound of "hmmmmmmm" three times. Also, you gently tap your heart center several times on each exhalation.

Inhale slowly and fully and exhale to the sound of "hmmmmmm, hmmmmmm, hmmmmmm," as you tap your chest three or more times. Repeat the cycle 33 times. As you progress, you may experience a buzzing sensation in your head, chest or body. Do not be frightened. This is very good. the energy is beginning to be quickened and to flow. Take your time during the 33 repetitions. When you have finished, sit quietly and envision the Beloved coming to you through the call of this practice. Invite the Beloved now to sit before you in the available empty seat/space.

Your heart is now open, and you can with ease send love from your heart into the heart of the Beloved. In the same moment, you can visualize the Beloved sending his or her love into your heart. Be very still during this part and you will feel the sweetness of divine, holy love.

This may take several practices , until you fully realize the bliss available to each of us. Once you do, falling in love will never again be the direction you travel when you experience love. For now you know the mystery of the heart, and the only way to go is up.

The Lover

My eyes are dry
My heart is crying
Is it opening and expanding?
Grieving, feeling the loss.
What is this loss?
Or is just the name I give
To this feeling
Of opening
There is a bittersweet-ness
To living this path of the naked heart
Of un-numbing
And experiencing life directly
Experiencing myself directly
Experiencing others directly
I am a range of emotions
An embodiment of contradictions
A beautiful woman
Emerging and learning to walk
The way of the naked heart
This morning a sadness on my heart
Instead of pushing onward
Shouting my commands
Run, do yoga, be productive, get going.
I stop and breath and listen
What do you need precious one?
What is this that is wanting my attention
My intention
The Soul speaks through our emotions
Especially the ones we'd rather not feel
What do you have to say this morning?
I am tired
I need to rest
Restore, rejuvenate
Be still and silent
Let the phone ring
Let the emails arrive
Just be still and know I AM
I am thinking I want him
To come to me
To love and hold me
I project outwardly
What is available to me
From my own self
Waiting for some knight
In shining armor
To arrive
No waiting Anakha
Love yourself
Hold yourself
Nourish yourself
Breath and take the time
To be with your own
Sweetness
Adore yourself
And in time
He will come
Whispering hello
The Friend is always here
Whispering love songs
To your heart
Be still, Dear one
And know I am God.
I exhale and feel a smile creep onto my face
I will care for my own self
Today
Love the one that has been
Here all along
Staring at me from inside
Beholding me in love
I am the Lover
I have been looking for
I relax
Tension in my shoulder releases
No more holding
Slowly opening to this Love
That I am.

Vulnerable

Hollow bone
Naked heart
Breathless
I whisper,
I pray,
God help me to have
The courage
To stay open and revealed
In this Love
Vulnerable
Pliable
Feeling everything
Gratitude
Love
Devotion
Tenderness
I am a petal
On Love's flower
Some days I wonder
If I can do this
Love this much
Feel this much
Surrender this much
My heart no longer
My own
Donated and devoted
to Love
I feel the urge
To stop
To shut down
To numb
I breath
I pray
I reach out
I remember
To receive this love
To be nourished and sustained by this love
To relax into the arms of God
Who holds me
Who lives within me
Wrap me in Love's embrace
Let me hunger for nothing other than you
Let me turn to you when I tremble
When my naked heart needs to hear
Tender, soothing words
Reminding me
That a calling has been placed within my heart
My heart living within the one heart now
Susceptible to all
I have never been this available
This open
This vulnerable
To love
To others
To my soul
My prayer
To surrender beyond surrender
To love beyond love
To set myself, my life and my living
On the altar of love
Search me God
Search me God
Bring me into your radiant heart
I am one
I belong
I am here now
Belonging to everyone
Nothing separate
Nothing rejected or preferred
All is welcome here,
In the city of Love.

15 Years Ago...

Fifteen years ago I was gathered with friends and family at McMenamins Cornelius Pass Roadhouse for my rehearsal dinner. There were 25 or 30 of us gathered. I was getting married the next day to my college sweetheart, Christopher Voigt, at Montinore Vineyards. It is hard to believe that so many years have gone by.

Tonight as I write this blog, I am aware that I am just now finally ready for love...to give and receive love, to create a crucible for love, to love beyond constriction, addiction, projection. I have a vision of sacred, intimate relationship that I now have the capacity to fully manifest with the support of my partner and God (my partner who is God).

I am entering the waters of enchanted love. I am ready and I am available. I am grateful for the preparation and the purification that have delivered me to this moment. And I am grateful for my Beloved's as well. God is working and weaving the miracle of love between us.

Yes, the "he" is a mystery. Yet I can see him, sense him, feel him.

I have a simple vision for my life that I am ready to receive...that I am receiving and living. I intend to create a home of peace and beauty...a sanctuary for my soul and his, a place to love, heal, celebrate and create. I intend to speak and teach and write about the journey into love -- embodied, unconditioned, sustained love. I intend to write mystical erotic poetry and books that help us heal the split between the spiritual and the sexual...and thus between the genders, the nations, the religions. I intend to be published. I intend to express my wildness, my unbridled creative love through movement, singing, dancing, painting, cooking, love making, celebrating, communing, worshipping. I intend to catalyze and support the formation of Beloved Communities around the world...alchemical, intimate communities gathering to love one another and free one another from the darkness of constriction.

This dream is coming true. I had the pony dream. I had the prince charming dream. Now...the enduring love dream. Three wishes granted from the Genie...yes, all came true.

I am grateful tonight for so many things. Grateful for my family and friends, for my healing, for Jesus, Christ Yeshua and his constant love and guidance, for my learning and education, for the financial support that flows to me, for the women at CCCF for all they have taught me and continue to teach me. I have so much to be grateful for and I am so blessed. Thank you, thank you, thank you...for the blessings of my past, for the blessings of my present and for those blessings rushing forth to meet my soul's deepest desire, my integral need.

Thank you God for your abundant presence in my life...within and without.
You are my true Beloved...now and forever, Amen.

Return Again

Having wet me with love,
why did you leave?
You abandoned your unwavering consort,
having ignited her lamp wick;
she's like a pleasure boat
set out to drift on an ocean of craving.
Either way, I am dead ~
unless you return.

I was struck tonight by Felix' sharing...grieving past lovers...grieving the ways we leave and don't complete. As I wait for sleep to come, my heartmind drifts...the bittersweet wandering through moments past, slipping through my heart, weaving a tapestry of lifelines, connecting souls in timeless intersections.

Quietly I make a prayer to restore wholeness to all my relations. Summoning the uninterruptible movement of love, the river of gratitude...to flow to me, to all of my Beloveds past, present and future. May I learn to love, may I become a clearer reflection of the beauty of all of Divinity's children. May we all walk in the land of Namaste.

When two people come together, an ancient circle closes between them. . . . When you really love someone, you shine the light of your soul on the beloved.

Thank you Beloveds for shining the light on my soul.

****
Return Again ~ Rapheal Simcha

Return again, Return again,
Return to the home of your soul.

Return to who you are
Return to when you are
Return to where you are
Born and reborn again.

Return again, Return again,
Return to the home of your soul.

Your Song

You and I, a vessel formed.
God the waters beneath us.
Delivery...Salvation...Innocence...Wholeness.
I remember the Sacred Trinity of Union
You, Beloved
Me, Beloved
God, Beloved
And now my heart longs for you,
All the while enjoying this time
Of knowing, of learning
A new way of Love
Loving across the distances
Seeing through the veils
Yours and mine
For now, I sail this vessel
Into my own soul
Parted only by Love's journey
Feasting on the mystery
Of this divine ordination
And yes, my Love
My soul remembers
Will always remember
You
Your song lingers
Playing on and on
A sacred text
In the inner ear
of my heart.
I remember you.

Pancakes, Butter, Maple Syrup

Pancakes, butter, maple syrup.
Sitting across from my lover.
Sunrise cafe.
Table for two.
You and me
After a night of dancing
Body to body
Bed full of love
You and I
A dream
Yesterday's reality
Burns bright
The future not yet
Ready for the brilliance
of this Love
It waits dormant
In my heart
In my belly
In my hands
In my thighs
Where are you my Love?
Oatmeal sits in the cupboard
Mangoes silent in the bowl
My love steeping
Like a tea bag
In desire
Oh folly, such silliness
Let desire overtake me
Now
Let my own love
Make love to me
Feel the erotic
Surrender the exotic
Energy builds in my nipples
My toes, my thighs, my pelvis,
My chest, my eyes
The sacred tremoring
This is God in my body
God embodied
There is no other Lover
But you
God meeting God
The intimates touch
The touch of the Divine
On my skin
Breeze God's fingers
Storm God's breath
Sun God's heat
Ocean God's mouth
Earth God's scent
Moon God's gaze
Open me Life
Open me Love
Open my Body
Heart, Mind and Soul
To receive God
As My Lover
Pancakes, slurpees, seedless watermelon
Nipples, soft belly, painted toes
Silk dress
Soft thighs
Eyes dancing
At the sight of you
Lips warm at the thought of you
God...bring my love and my loving
Home to me
Bring Him home ~ Divine Masculine
Bring Her home ~ Divine Feminine
Through the gates
We enter the mystery of Eden
Where our Love
And our lovemaking
Are held in the temple
of God's Love
under Her prayerful guidance
I surrender my sex
To you God
My loving and my love making
My fire and my desire
Bring me alive
Bring your radiance fully alive
Take me straight to the Razor's Edge
To the heart
of the heart
of the heart
of this Love.
Amen.

My Salvation is in Your Love

We are each other's salvation.
We have the medicine, we carry the elixir.
We have the key to unlock the sacred text
Buried deep in the heart.
We have the power
To love one another into wholeness
With our eyes and our seeing
With our hands and our touching
With our lips and our kissing
With our lungs and our breathing
With our tongues and our speaking
We have the power
And this our holy purpose
Love One Another
Det haboon had l'had
Akayna d'ena ahabtekoon
Love One Another
Not some lukewarm, skim the surface impostor
But the dig in, stay awake, guard the flock
See, feel, hear one another
Deeply, truly
Beyond the words
Beyond the masks
Reach in and taste the essence
The essential other
In love
As love
For the sake of Love
Now
Do it
Don't go back to sleep
The door to this love
And this loving is open
WIDE OPEN
Say yes!
Say yes!
Begin now
Love One Another
As the I AM is loving
You.
Yes Beloveds, the second coming is happening, quickening.
Manifesting in this Beloved Community.
The radical blossoming of Love here now.

Now

I am tired tonight.
I noticed that I was running my fingers through my hair as I sat and listened to Jimmy and Randy after our gathering to welcome Krista tonight.
I did that as a little girl when I was tired.
Some things don't change.
Like the birthmark on my leg.
Tired.
Want to be held.
Don't want to be held.
I was like that as a little girl too.
Who really cares.
Why blog? Why not?
Jack on his back with all fours praying to the sky.
Fan blowing on my skin.
Legs smooth, stretched out on my bed.
Eyes too tired to close.
It would be nice to lay in your arms for awhile.
Just rest.
Would you come and hold me?
No words.
No promises.
No expectations.
Just two people, two people that have loved.
Tired.
I want to go on a road trip.
Stop at 7-Eleven and buy bright red slurpees.
And cheese nachos.
Why, I don't know?
Did that with my husband, surfboards on the roof, flip flops on our feet.
Baja bound.
I want to skinny dip, lie naked on the rocks.
Did that last summer at the end of my retreat.
Rogue river, hot...naked, cool water.
Chocolate body.
Yum.
I remember, that was then...this is now.
Now what, Anakha?
This one year anniversary marks a completion.
I am available.
Ready, set, go.
I am leaving.
I am staying.
Moving towards.
Fading away.
At home with myself.
In this moment, nothing else matters.
At home...already home.
Amen.

Lord, Make Me An Instrument

I have been keenly aware this week that bringing love to the dark and constricted places, clears the way for Spirit to use me as a divine vessel...an instrument of love. This journey into love is an act of sacred service...the more available and present I become (the hallow bone)...the more Love can move through me, as me. I am grateful tonight for the experience of Rumi's words..."when you open your loving to God's love, you are helping people you don't even know and have never seen." Amen to that.

Tonight I sat at Coffee Creek Correctional Facility with Nichole. I sat for 30 minutes in the cafeteria with the other visitors before she came in. She had been "walking the yard" and the officers didn't inform her of her visit. As I waited, I watched the children, ranging from age 1 to 15, run to their mothers as they walked through the door into the visiting room. One little red headed girl about 2 years old ran through the tables and chairs laughing, squealing..."Mommy, mommy, mommy!" The older children seemed to be more hesitant...trying to hold in their excitement which is now swirling with their pain...with their sense of betrayal. I can see it in their eyes...big love mixed with big pain. My heart opened and tears welled in my eyes...the agony of love, of addiction, of betrayal, of prison.

Nichole finally arrives. We embrace and share the details of our day. I ask her about Isiah, her son who will be 7 years old in September. She hasn't seen him for 4 years. His paternal grandparents have legal guardianship. Her eyes well up with tears as she begins to connect with her grief. I draw a little dot on a piece of paper..."Nichole, this is all the faith it takes for the mountain to move and it will move, can you have this much faith that there is a way to reconnect with Isiah?" She nods her head. And right there in the middle of a noisy, crowded room...we prayed and set the intention that she and Isiah will see one another this year.

"Nichole, I think you should work the twelve steps around your relationship with Isiah." She nods again. Our foreheads wrinkle as we both try and remember the first three steps...1) Admit I am powerless over XXX situation 2) Believe a power greater knows the way to sanity 3) surrender the situation. We walk through the first three steps together. I ask her to begin the 4th step...a fearless moral inventory around her part of creating the situation. More tears. She tries to keep her eyeliner and mascara from smearing. We laugh a little. Eyes locked on one another. I tell her I am committed to staying awake with her, to do everything that I am guided to do to help her. I know this was part of the reason for her relapse. It was Christmas. She was alone. Without her family, without her son. I can only imagine the heartbreak she numbed with Meth. (By the way, I am not excusing the choice, the behavior...just feeling in with compassion tonight).

I pray for Divine guidance and support. I feel powerless, I know that the Divine can guide us to right action...I surrender my fears and ask for God to guide me in how to best support this young woman and her son.

A woman stops by our table with her son. I recognize them. They were at the table beside us last weekend. Her 9-year old son vomited everywhere. Most people moved, with disdain and disgust on their faces. We stayed. I looked over, looked at her with compassion and love. It's okay, I thought to myself, this is life...sometimes we get messy...sometimes we vomit everywhere...sometimes we can hold it in...hold it together any longer. Tonight she stops and says, "thanks Anakha for last week, you really made it better for me." I am surprised...she must have felt the compassion, the love, the silent support.

That is the power of the Crucible. Yes, I want to be healed into wholeness and yes, I want to be fully available to be an instrument of Love...to embody and express and experience this radical Love and Loving. I want my presence to be alchemical, transformational...to be the medicine and the elixir of Love. That is why I am here...that is what I devote and donate my life and my living to. Everything else has dissolved, faded. Love my primary purpose now.

We end our time together writing about our heart's desires and our wants. I make a list. I notice how I hold some desires and wants as more "lofty" than others...more spiritual. I smile and remember that they are all expressions of love...

One of my wants is to have the Crucible be a place where the seeds of our dreams are planted...individual and collective. I want us to come together and donate this experience and the love we generate in service to others. I want to listen for how we are called to serve together as a community...what will we create together? I want us to remember that this journey into love is serving others, healing the planet. Right here, right now.

Love in action. That is my intention. How can I serve? Show me, guide me, inspire me God! I am available. Humbled, hollowed...available.

Amen.

P.S. This is Nichole's writing regarding her heart's desire...

My desire in this life...is to fully love myself through all the things I've done...the wrong doing, the right doing. I desire happiness, to follow my dreams. I desire to turn from my old ways. My decision: to not live as an active drug addict...to be in recovery. This will allow me to desire better things. I desire a life with Isiah, to love him, to help him, to laugh and cry with him. My choice is allowing me to desire this connection, and for it to come true. I am desiring all things possible for me, with the guidance from those around me and especially from God within me. Amen.

I Am The Bridge

I am the bridge

The bridge between the religions

Between the genders

Between the nations

I am the bridge between the seen and unseen

I am the elixir for all your so called "problems"

I am the bridge

I am Sacred Love.

Remembering

My body remembers the feel of you on my skin
Your breath in my mouth
Your eyes melting my armor
Their gaze beyond time and space
Leaving me naked, trembling
Yes, I remember
The feel of you
The form of you
The essence of you
Swirling in my soul
Penetrating my core
I breath in and out
Re-membering me
In love
With you

El Sagrado Corazon

El Sagrado Corazon burns tonight, keeping watch as I pray in the darkness of my room. My prayer...to have love infuse, infiltrate, invade all of my relationships and my relating. With God, myself, my family, friends...with all of life and with all of us journeying into love.

The candle will burn all night...a ritual to invoke, to summon the fierce and tender, radical and relentless love of Christ Yeshua.

As I try to sleep, I hear this calling upon my heart.

"Stay in...stay in...stay in this fire, Beloved.

No matter what it looks like, feels like...

No matter where it takes you

Stay in and burn.

Burn in this love, for true and lasting and embodied love.

Most leave when it is uncomfortable, challenging.

Yes, I have left a thousand times.

The ego has a million excuses...masquerading as rationale...as intuition...as guidance.

Enter the garden of this love and lock the gate.

Stay in until you become medicine for one another.

I am asking you to stay in with me,

To stay through the crucifixion...for the beauty and the glory of the resurrection.

For me, for you, for love.

I know this isn't what you thought it would be

I know I am not who you thought I would be

Will you go beyond your illusions of what is love and what is not?

Will you walk with me through this fire?

And emerge with me...

New, renewed...forever changed, forever marked by this Love.

Will you go with me...enter the garden...lock the gate...take back Eden before the fall?"