Birthing Your Life Dream

Pitfalls of Comparisons

So often we may find ourselves either consciously or unconsciously comparing ourselves negatively towards other people, other lifestyles, or other whatevers..you fill in the blank.

This activity only serves to create suffering and lack consciousness within our minds and our lives.

It's one thing to set reasonable goals for ourselves & strive for them; it's quite another to look at other peoples lives with envy, jealousy, or words like "those lucky dogs"..

When I was in high school, the following poem came to me that I think says it all in just six lines:

The grass is always greener on the other side

and if it looks greener

go ahead, go there.

Then you might find though it be greener,

there is too much fertilizer

So you'll burn your feet

 

Namaste...

Stephen

 

(C) Stephen Eric Levine, All Rights Reserved.

 

Re-Visiting My Mom's Parents and Their Home

They lived in a large white two story frame home. In the front a massive wrap -around blue-gray porch graced the house, complete with wide white pillars and a grated gate or fence made of thick cross hatched wood.

During stay over’s when I was a young child, I would hop into my yellow roller skates and glide across the porch, listening to the rumble of wood beneath wheels.

Under the porch I gazed into a fascinating world of musty smells and spiders of all shapes & colors.

Bordering the house along the side were what we later called “firecracker bushes”,  tall bushes with huge white,  blue and lavender balls of flowers that blossomed in the summer.

Trees bent big branches across part of the sidewalk, creating shade and birdsong during the warmer months.

The front of the house faced one of the main boulevards going into town. Beyond the houses rolled fields and a little bluff towards the distance.

Curb and sidewalk loomed several steps above the street, something I had seen nowhere else.

In back of the house, a large yard bordered backyards of all the neighbors who also lined the boulevard.

Thus, I could look deep into the western horizon, and at sunset, tree-like TV antennas mounted on roofs silhouetted their branches against the twilight sky.

There were two doors to the house, one along the kitchen atop several steps, and the front door which led directly into the living room from the porch.

We always used the kitchen door to go in and out of the house.

My grandma grew waist high forests of dill along the space by the kitchen door, and she used the dill for canning the most delicious pickles I have ever tasted.  Unfortunately the family recipe has been lost.

My Grandma, Mary Blockstein was an amazing cook. Her birthday was July 4^th, and we enjoyed family get togethers at that time as well as on some Thanksgivings.

She would fix elaborate 5 course meals that would start in the summertime with balls of honeydew, water mellon and cantaloupe, then move into delicious homemade soup, followed by a sumptuous main course, then lush salads followed by some of the most delicious apple pie I’ve ever tasted in my life.

She had brown eyes and long dark graying hair tied around her neck.

Her dining room was filled with elaborate Victorian rugs donned with patterns subtle in color. Large antique cabinets for dishes and other things graced the walls and a pull-ring sliding door that lurked behind a wall could be brought out to separate the living room and dining room areas.

A large piano graced the dining room and it was fun to get my hands on it & play it, even though it was out of tune much of the time.

Below the dining room and living room area, a large tornado cellar beckoned. Steep, narrow steps dropped into the cellar from inside the house (even as a child with small feet I had to really hold on going down those stairs) and large flip up doors accessed the cellar from the back yard, with steep but wider steps.

The cellar, filled with musty smells, also had an old scrub board washer and hand cranked roller style dryer.

Mason jars of canned food decked some of the shelves.

My Grandpa, Harry Blockstein, a somewhat petite man with blue eyes and white hair was a humble kind man. He was sensitive to beauty, and when we were outside and he heard a bird singing in the tree, he would say “yoy… listen to the Cardinal singing..” (or Robin, if it was singing)

He owned a shoe store and both repaired and sold boots. A walk into his store, located on one of the main streets was a visit to an amazing world.

Boxes upon boxes of shoes climbed the shelves along the wall, and partially dissected shoes in repair mode lie on tables. A rich smell of leather filled the air.

He was a very busy man, working 6 days per week, yet despite his schedule, he always remained kind and warm hearted.

During the Summer, the local firehouse blew their siren every night at 9 pm .

Sometimes the weather there was intense; I remember one visit when so much snow fell during dinner that my parents had to pick me up and carry me to the car when it was time to drive home after dark.

My Mom’s brother Bob owned a convertible sports car, and I remember one night when we rode under a magical sky filled with stars and crisp wind rushing upon our faces.

In many ways, this place felt home for me, even though I did not actually live there.

As a child, I always hungered for the Midwest.  On trips, it was magical for me when we crossed the border from Pennsylvania & drove into Ohio and the land began to flatten while the sky seemed to grow bigger.

When I got older, I realized that my Grandparent Blockstein’s home felt like Iowa, even though it was in Western Pennsylvania, some 40 miles S.E. of Pittsburgh and I had never set foot in Iowa.

Since then, as I shared my memory of their home with people who grew up in rural Midwest towns from Kansas, Iowa and Minnesota, they universally told me that the home and town that I described could have been lifted right up from their home towns.

This got reinforced in March of 2010, when a strong tornado blew through a town located within two miles of my Grandparent’s home.

One person explained that the curb and sidewalk was so elevated above the street because the original road was probably a dirt road for horse and buggy, and that the steps made it convenient to step from horse and carriage onto the sidewalk.

My Grandma and Grandpa were both very hard working and had a difficult life.

I honor them for who they were, for so hard they worked and for the positive impact that they had on my life

In the Lap of Santa

When I was four years old and in fact during my entire childhood, everything was magic and awesome.

Experiencing Santa was no different.

Our family grew up in the Hebrew tradition, so Santa was not a normal conversation piece for us.

However, during a trip to my Mom's parents, it was decided that I would visit him at his local domain in the town Firehouse.

I felt excited and awe struck to be invited to visit this strange man who I had only heard about in songs played on the radio.

As we entered the open Firehouse garage, there he sat, seemingly on a throne and huge - - bigger than life-- in a magnificent red outfit and gigantic white beard.

I felt shy, timid, as I was led to this powerful presence who hosted children like myself on his lap.

Some of the children squirmed and squiggled, some laughed and giggled, some seemed to rub their eyes in disbelief.

When it was my turn, I watched as his gigantic fingers beckoned me to hop on.

With a big HO HO HO, he smiled and asked me what I wanted for Christmas.

Undoubtedly I told him that I didn't celebrate Christmas, but he invited me to share anyways.

My heart burst free and took wing as I gleefully told him all my childhood dreams of wondrous toys and other things.

What an amazing joy and release it was for me to share with him all the things that I desired in life and receive unconditional permission and head nodding in response.

Before I knew it, our session was finished.

On one hand, it felt like a total healing for me to have such permission to share my dreams.

On the other hand, I felt awe and confusion about what just happened.

They actually taped that session onto the equivalent of a 78 RPM recording.

Years later, I found the record and listened with awe at my high pitched child voice

filled with excitement that mingled with infinite amounts of scratches on a record  seemingly ready to leap off the turn table at any moment.

So went my only encounter with Santa.

Regardless of your tradition, I wish you a very happy Holiday season.

(C) Stephen Levine, All Rights Reserved

Ode to Beauty

Through Beauty We Discover Truth

 

"In our brokenness, our hearts reach for beauty"

- Lily Yeh, Founder of Barefoot Artists, reviewed in the latest issue of "Yes!" magazine

 

All the beauty that we see outside ourselves also radiates from within each of us.

Our Bodies, Our Sacred Miraculous Temples

What a sacred vessel that God gave us to move through the world!

Most of the time, our bodies with all their intricacies faithfully work on their own without us ever thinking about it, giving us the freedom to fully express ourselves in the world.

Our bodies are living miraculous systems of aliveness, who are invested in maintaining their own lives -and ours. 

Our heart is almost like an infinite time machine, pumping precious life fluids through our veins without our ever thinking about it.

Our lungs transmute the air we breathe into parcels that feed our myriads of cells and keep us alive. Unless we focus on our breath, this process also occurs without ever a thought on our part.

When an attacker such as a bacteria or virus enters our blood system, an entire military complex of white blood cells attack and surround the invaders, killing them and flushing them out of our system.

Our liver, also a much un-thought of organ attacks toxins that enter our system from air, water and things we eat. Our liver works hard to break toxic compounds into non-toxic compounds that then may be either integrated or flushed out of the body.

Our kidneys filter our blood, eliminating old tired cells.

Each organ that we have within us serves a Divine purpose that honors the greater good of our physical and emotional being.

Each system, whether it be the digestive system, the circulatory system, the eliminator system, our skin, the muscle system, the nervous system -- all work together in harmony to maintain our life force.

We have multi yards of intestinal tract. Our blood vessels if stacked end to end could circle the world five times.

What a sacred vessel that God gave us to move within the world.

I believe that given the precious Gift we have of our health, it's important for each of us to remember and give thanks for this Gift.

Good health is one of the greatest prosperities that anyone can have.

Our bodies tolerate a remarkable amount of stress and still maintain themselves in the face of it.

Instead of judge a skin flab here, a gray hair there, let us give thanks and treat ourselves with the loving kindness that we truly deserve.. our bodies included.

Copyright, Stephen Eric Levine, All Rights Reserved

Your Best is More Than Good Enough

We can be our own worst critic, harder on ourselves than any living acquaintence.

For many of us, our inner critic stems from our childhood, when we never could clear the hurdles or measure up to standards that family members imposed upon us.

Now in our adulthood, perhaps we have become friends with our original childhood critic, or we have made peace with them in other ways.

Yet the internalized inner critic lives on. 

Through the inner critic, no matter how hard we've tried in a given situation, it could have always been bettter.

This sets up a profound gap of dissatisfaction and restlessness, where we  continuously strive towards yet never reach our goal because the bar keeps rising higher and higher.

Your Best is Truly More Than Good Enough! 

If at the end of your day, or at the completion of your project/ assignment, or after concluding your interview, you can look into yourself, declare with honesty:

"I gave it my all. I was fully engaged, fully committed, and did everything within my power to successfully accomplish the task at hand".

than this is all that you need for acknowledging your competance and success.

With this awareness and inner strength, even if some external party is dissatisfied with your work, you can look inside yourself & know that you were in full integrity with your deepest commitment. This inner knowing is all that really matters.

If a boss of yours at work, or a significant other in your life constantly judges you as "not being good enough" in the face of your honest heartfelt commitments to do the work at hand, perhaps it's time for you to have a conference with them and discuss the concern.

If they refuse to hear you out and continue to set unrealistic goals or requirements, perhaps it's time to change your life by declaring your worth and changing jobs or ending the friendship.

(C) 2011, With Love, Stephen Levine - All Rights Reserved

 

The Delicate Preciousness of Life

It's so fleeting, tenuous and precious.

We live it daily, not giving it a thought.

Yet before birth, we were handed an amusement ride ticket called "life" and nobody knows when it's time to turn that ticket back in- - or if we will be asked to exchange it for a different ride while still at the park.

This Fall I have been teaching brain injured college students the creative arts for self discovery.

They remind me every time that I see them that a mere one second occasion can totally change a life in unexpected dramatic ways.

Some of their stories are so deeply sad. For instance the super athletic, high achieving high school student who was transformed to a wheel chair, fuzzy speech, occasional unexpected convulsions due to an accident.

The high functioning student now confined to a wheel chair, grieving his old life after going to his high school home coming.

The students stricken by brain cancer at an early age and now, despite profound enthusiasm and intelligence, bear the burden of equally profoundly tenacious health.

The ski accident survivor who smashed head first into a tree and does so well with his verbal skills but can not decipher his own hand writing.

In a way, despite our "dominion over the earth", our lives are as fragile as those of insects and trees.

What a reminder to live our lives fully, with wisdom and discernment yet faith and passion.

What a reminder to honor and follow our dreams.

What a reminder to express gratitude every day for the many blessings that we have.

Amazingly, most of my students, despite their intense challenges have a very positive attitude, and believe in God - and that God is working with them.

So many of us get up every day and go onto our routines taking everything for granted, not thinking of anything except our schedule or something wrong in our personal world.

These students are teaching me, and through this I would like to remind you that with the tenacious preciousness that our lives/our worlds represent, it is so vastly important for us to live it fully, gratefully and with honor towards ourselves and all others who we interact with.

When Making Decisions

In the end, there is no right or wrong, only experience and positive spiritual lessons to be gained.

I believe that it's so important that we listen for the "still small voice within" as it says in the Bible; that still small voice being the voice of our inner Truth, our Divine given wisdom that runs like a sub-surface current invisibly carrying the river forward.

It is sometimes so very hard to make choices in life because different parts of ourselves may be in conflict about anticipated outcome, or what other people may think.

When we feel such self conflct, it becomes hard to make that leap because we feel shattered.

That "Still Small Voice" sometimes may have the innocence of a child and defy all logic or previous life time experience.

Or that "Still Small Voice" may restrict, modify or postpone a strong current of desire that wants to be expressed in this moment.

It may demand stretching and reaching into previously unexplored crannies and spaces of life and possibility, triggering emotions of fear, trepidation and resistance - yet be the perfect next step.

An old Hindu story stated that in order to hide God so humans could not find him/her, the Universe decided to hide God inside each of us.

Indeed inside sometimes is the hardest place to look.

(C) 2011, Stephen Eric Levine

Dad's Memorial

Below is the memorial speech I read at the funeral service for Dad. I am sharing this with you so that you will have a hint of the remarkable person that he was.

Blessings to you,

Stephen

Dad’s Memorial:

We mourn the passing of a very strong, proud man who walked through profound life challenges, and who handled them probably much better than many people in the same situations ever could have.

The theme that I wish to linger with is that of his unconditional love.

I experienced much unconditional love with Dad, beginning very early childhood.  I still have fond memories of his taking (brother) David and myself to see the fireworks on July 4^th celebrations in Washington PA.

We sat on the hood of the car, so close to the rockets that you can feel the car vibrate and practically hear your ears ringing and all along, he was there by our sides, sharing the human made fury and power with us.

He also would jump in the swimming pool with me and hold me around the waist to keep me afloat when we went swimming and this felt quite grounding and reassuring to me.

He literally stood by my side and assisted a terrified me as I learned how to ride a two wheeler bike for the first time and he helped me get over my terror so that within a year, I was swooping down our hill at 30 MPH-loving every second of it.

His unconditional love manifested itself powerfully during my early adulthood as well, when he sat respectfully with me as I was pondering an ultimate divorce with my first wife.

A couple decades later, he gave me a key to get out of a prison of debt when after years of struggling endlessly to pay off my student loans, out of the blue he told me he was tired of seeing me struggle and would pay off the balance for me.

A few years later, after I had hungered for five years to have a computer for writing a book, he surprised me with a phone call to look for a package in front of my apartment. Much to my awe, it was a complete computer system.

In my quest to move from Vermont to California, he added funds so that I might have crucial money to assist with the move – and again deliver myself from a life that felt like prison.

And last year, after I struggled with almost non-stop breakdowns and repairs on my old car, he assisted me in manifesting a new, high integrity car, another bold act of unconditional love.

When he gave in these ways, it was pure love with no strings attached.

As an adult I learned that beneath a sometimes hard façade was a very tender and caring heart, and as I matured within my own awareness, the relationship between my Dad and myself grew ever deeper, positive, and filled with mutual gratitude.

Our last time together was filled with much laughter, humor, lightness and honoring of our love for each other, and I will hold this as well as other memories dear in my heart.

I am blessed that he welcomed my wife Dorothy in to our family circle, and that she felt very welcomed as my partner– which meant a lot to both of us.

It’s with sadness that I acknowledge that he will not be here with us in physical form anymore, but I also feel happy to know that he truly is in a better place now and that the terrible physical challenges that he so bravely faced are now a thing of the past.

Thank you, Dad for the blessings that you brought to all of us.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Journey Through Grief and Beauty

Last Friay night, after a bout of physical deterioration, my Dad passed.

Due to the deterioration that he was undergoing during this last month, I suspected that his end was near; but of course it still comes as a big shock and devistating blow when death actually occurs.

We shared an awesome weekend in early June when he was in better shape and I had a great good bye phone call with him two Sundays ago, when it truly seemed that the end of his life might be imminent.

The funeral was on Monday, and my friends - from high school and in one case- Jr High stood in with deep support.

My wife has been also profoundly supportive -during the time she spent with me during the day of the funeral as well as during my time on the road and arrival back.

It was my hope to drive back to Dallas from Pittsburgh where my Dad lived, and that hope was realized.

This provided for me an opportunity to integrate and transition towards the life I left behind back in Dallas, a life forever changed in one key way with my Dad gone.

It was a trip that mixed grief with beauty of my surroundings.

Here are some highlights along with photos:

This photo looks NW and was taken in Pittsburgh the evening after funeral and gathering. I saw this as a sign of the magnificence of Dad's goodbye and entrance into the "other side".  Not long after dusk, I enjoyed a distant lightning show, which also added soothing to my aching heart.

Washington PA- SW of Pittsburgh where I spent my early childhood: Despite the many decades passed, I can still feel a very special vibration to the land around there. It contained a peaceful meditation energy when I was a child, and brings me inspiration right here and now as I gaze across the hills and old City.

Zanesville Ohio: Sampling a delicious wild blackberry, my first in decades. Nice juicy and sweet. And my wife is so thrilled to hear my voice on the telephone when I call her to check in.

Zanesville to Columbus, Ohio : Cirrus cloud wisps floating southward across the deep blue sky.. It occurs to me that this northern windflow is caused by the enormous high pressue system anchored right over N.TX, baking and searing our region more than 1000 miles from where I stand in Ohio. It amazes me how our sky visibly reveals our connectedness with one another just as our human Spirit shows that we are linked through forces far removed from our present locations.

Columbus to Wilmington OH: My Spirit soars and sings as table top Midwestern landscapes greet me with lush and soothing greenness. It's a vast sky, and at one point, I do a dance, pushing my energy deep into each direction where it appears that it can travel off into infinity.

In addition, I spend the night at a motel located at the southern end of the road where I did my very first storm chase ever.. S.R. 68. This feels wonderful and entails an amazing acknowledging celebration for me. My has time changed in 30 plus years :)  I never dreamed during those early storm hunt days that I would end up creating and running a storm chase tour business, getting paid for taking clients into wild skies and receiving international media publicity. What a Blessing it was, and how amazing to return to this birthplace and stay overnight.

Also at the motel front desk, I meet a middle school girl who along with her Stepdad lives in Troy, Ohio .. NW of Springfield, where I lived for over 4 years. In fact, she recognizes the precise spot where I lived when I mention it to her. It's an amazing small world..

Overnight I savor my best sleep in weeks.

Clermont County, Ohio (East of Cincinatti): Driving by, I acknowledge what a difficult life I endured while living there, and give thanks that I survived it and have moved on with great strength and integrity within.

South of Covington, KY: Beautiful lush green hilly landscapes. Looks like I'm in PA again, and the trees appear blessed by abundant rainfall here.

North of Nashville, TN: More beautiful landscapes. In addition, splendid thunderheads blossom in the Southern sky with majesty and call to me.  As I draw closer to Nashville, they tower with immense beauty, though I never get the opportunity to connect with the juices and electricity within.

It's also a joy to listen to Beethoven's 5th Symphony on a CD I took back from Dad's collection. This was my very favorite childhood classical piece.

South of Nashville to Jackson, TN: I take a dinner break in a rest area and enjoy an atmosphere softened by recent rains. What a relief it is to return to this mellow energy.

Once back on the road, as I move into aching heart over the loss of my Dad, my friend Mike from Pittsburgh calls me to check in, and we share a nice long conversation and that helps alot.

All through my drive back, a two day journey- it's  grounding and joyful to connect with my wife who is quite happy to hear from me each time and offers great support.

Jackson, TN: Very heavy rains and probable lightning arrive and pass through (unfortunately) before I arrive there, leaving huge puddles to greet me, as well as mists and blue sky mixed with magnificent thunderheads - along with soft sweet air.

The next morning I am ready and revved to make it all the way back to Dallas, and thus awaken at 4:15 a.m. never to return to sleep. I partake in a beautiful dawn with mists and moonset over lush green fields & trees.

Full moon setting in the West, Jackson; 7/15/11

Jackson to Memphis, TN:  I feel awe and delight to witness the honor that Tennessee gifts to her musicians.  The highway is called "Music Highway" and a delightful surprise greets me at a rest stop just 15 miles SW. of Jackson as you will see from the photos below. I wish that all states would honor their musicians and artists in this way.

To my delight, this sign greets me at the first rest stop. Isaac Hays was one of my all time favorite singers/instrumentalists. Part of this road is called the Isaac Hayes Memorial Highway.

Here's a close up of the sign.

I enjoyed the creativity as well as the honoring that Tennesee gives their musicians.. and I also remember this song :)

Memphis to Little Rock, AR: Mystically and magically, mists arise from rainsoaked fields to condense as dense cloud puffs just above the earth. I watch as these blossom into beautiful cauliflower-like shapes of brilliant white upon the blue.

After Little Rock, I watch temperatures rise about a degree every 50 miles and move from 93 to 102 by the time I reach Texarkana, TX.

Amazing searing heat awaits my arrival throughout East TX, and the car outside thermometer says 107 degrees at one point - - and this is the official high for Dallas on this day.

Jubilantly, I arrive back home at supper time, at least a couple hours earlier than anticipated.