Soundtrack of My Life Meme

It's been a while since I've done this one, and have since collected both new songs and new friends.

This time, its gacked from iamentheos.

The rules:
1. Open your library (iTunes, Winamp, Media Player, iPod, etc)
2. Put it on shuffle
3. Press play
4. For every question, type the song that's playing
5. When you go to a new question, press the next button
6. Don't lie and try to pretend you’re cool... and alot of the songs fit with the setting

( In which I betray just how geeky and dated much of my music collection is. . .  )

Saturday To Do List

1. Eat some breakfast (not done yet)

2. Walk at least half of the 5 miles on the training schedule for today

3. Clean up the house: dishes, take out trash and recycling

4. Cull my book collection some more

5. Visit an apartment complex again, this time paying more attention to the size of the rooms as related to the size of my furniture (I have some large, heavy pieces)

6. Take no-longer-wanted books to Half Price Books

7. Finish any walking I still have to do

8. Continue watching Babylon-5 from the beginning

Spiraling Up Again -- And Connection

I haven't written much about my spiritual life in a while. For the last year I've been focusing on the spirituality of daily life, the "pentacles" aspects of finance, hearth care, job, body, and etc. I've been moving my spiritual life from my head into my hands and flesh in a way that's truly unprecedented. Which means that a lot has been happening in non-rational, deep-in-the-darkness/soil ways.

It was only a few days ago that I stopped to consider that the "sudden" explosion of positive action in my day job and paycheck, my living situation, and my physical life (the 3-Day) is probably a direct result of the work I've been doing in this area.

Then, last week, I received an e-newsletter from an author who rarely sends them out. I was reminded that I have a book of his on my shelf, and went to pick it up. Spirituality: Where Body and Soul Encounter the Sacred, by Carl McCollum is the perfect book for where I am right now. It's helping me integrate the non-rational, earthy, pentacles spirituality of the last year or so with my dominant element of Air, helping me to better understand the gifts of my recent work. As I read it, I can feel myself moving up and around the next ascending loop of the spiral that is my spiritual path.

Meanwhile, I've also been going through a phase of vivid inner journeys and encounters with my personal energy, which is also a kind of integration of my physical world work with the more esoteric work I usually do. Could I have tapped into this energy if I was still ignoring and dishonoring my body? Somehow I don't think so.

I feel very much in transition right now, and excited about discovering more about what the next stage of the journey will be. I think this stage is going to be integrating body, mind and spirit in a new way, in exploring the magical-energetic work I've always felt ambivalent about and celebrating my connection to the universe in a way I've never known before. It's work that can't be done without honoring embodiment and connection.

Maybe the connections I've been growing in my personal life (love life, friendships, professional relationships) are nurturing this as well. I've been solitary in so many ways for so long that "connection" couldn't be a place I went in my spiritual life. Now I'm connected and grounded in a new way, and that's providing a new foundation -- and a new perspective -- for my spirituality.