Long ago and far away, GMA K, before she was a GMA, met a tall, lanky, blonde blue-eyed athletic sister of many teachings, who noted: SCHOOL is truly a kaleidoscope!
In another turning point, when GMA K, still not yet a GMA, was living and journeying in Ajjijic, Jalisco, Mexico, she met a young, battle-weary Peace Corps facilitator, just returned from Bosnia, Croatia and 3 years amidst the remains of a religious war that took revenge upon the women.
This courageous soul noted: The first thing we did when we moved into a battle-scarred and ripped to shreds area, was to gather survivors, say, WE NEED TO BUILD A PARK FOR THE CHILDREN, and then, to gather resources, recycled from shrapnelled homes.
Life, these days is such a kaleidoscope, is it not? With one turn of the dial on this tube of papery shiny gems, cut into geometric forms of so many colours, our perception of our lived experience changes. This is our current SCHOOL!
Many come to these shared moments, battle-weary, returning from karmic familial and ancestral soils bloodstained and wreaking with revenge, tired of the wars that our genetics withstood.
WE NEED A PARK FOR THE CHILDREN!
Temperatures are cooler now, so the rage of our tormented ancestral thoughts is cooling as well. Our sky dharma minds are expanding, relaxing, once more we as two-leggeds, are normalizing that which is truly violent. That lense of past living pain keeps us stuck in the kaleidoscope of fear that this will replicate itself in our children. There are pockets within the soul bodies of earthlings full of traumas that have not yet been emptied fully, down to the ZERO POINT!
Today, I sat within another SPHERE, that of a PARK FOR THE CHILDREN. There beyond my chosen picnic table, stand five deciduous trees, four rooted into a verdant hillock, guardians of a neon blue play structure, mostly of metal and heavy-duty plastic. The structure has woven into the forms, light sage limey green metal poles. All stands upon a dark blue outdoor carpeted tarmac.
IT is the size of 4 large living rooms, or family rooms and feels as though it, in and of itself, is a SPHERE!
Or it might be an imaginal EARTH SPACE SHIP specifically cocreated FOR THE CHILDREN!
To my left, as my peripheral vision softens, there is a tan wooden roofed playhouse, 5 feet off the tarmac. Waiting, inviting children to climb and enter into it. The exit opposite the blue metal spiral stairs is that brilliant dark blue, heavy plastic, SLIDE down onto the tarmac of life.
In the central place of THE PARK FOR THE CHILDREN, stand two circular engaging structures. Both invite partnership. One could stand on the 2-foot diameter platform and move into a circular cycle, and it is so much more FUN to share the platform with another CHILD and agree to move in a certain direction. The KALEIDOSCOPE changes in the hands, hearts, eyes of the two and lived experience changes.
It makes my GMA heart chuckle!
This afternoon, I witnessed both an 18-month-old girl toddler screeching her way down to earth on that slide, followed by her youthful, quietly excited mama. Her hips fit snuggly into the slides embrace as her daughter child squealed with delight!
No shushing, no silencing, rather a joining within the sphere of sounds of FUN!
The metal whirligig invites singular riders and then, there seems to be a shift of the KALEIDOSCOPE, and suddenly another rider appears! Whoosh, the circular orbit takes hold and great spirit moves them into a collaborative mystery tour, both touched by that agreement.
There are taller, higher structures architected with FUN in mind and heart. At one point in this nebulous time, 2 about 10-year-old boy-men arrive and decide to take on that taller structure.
That mutual agreement gifts them with exuberant permission to discover what more is possible. Soon, that taller with soft sage lime green oval structure between them for hands to hold on as the circular platform tilts and twirls, is fully engaged by curiosity and surprise and that tempting experience: Let’s wonder how fast and furiously we can twirl on this? YAHOO!
The oppositional forces are at work, and they each have to lean in and lean out synchronizing so that curiosity is satisfied. What a stomach chuckling expression this is for GMA to witness and feel into.
The swirling magic stops and my lense turns to the putty grey holed structure, wondering what is its purpose and who will reveal this to me. No one during my 3 hours at the PARK FOR THE CHILDREN steps into that inquiry so I am left with: Perhaps another time!
Suddenly, to my left, there is a robust visionary with white running shoes, long blue black t-shirt untucked into loose dark sweatpants revealing HER KALEIDOSCOPE INNER SCHOOL! Seated and stretching her hamstrings on earth, there is an aura of seeing, feeling, knowing what she wants her body to experience. Standing up swiftly, the performance unfolds, beginning with a fluid backbend. Her body arches backward and then flips into standing. The one move births another and she cartwheels with ease. Standing in star pose, there is a thoughtful pass and she of the acrobatic school, wiggles and squeals, thrusting her body into a no-handed flip. WOW, mom, who did you birth here?
Dark hair ponytailed, her life force beams into each movement, and just as though she is in front of her team, an audience, with an invisible coach estimating some measure of next steps, this beauty of 12 years or so, bounces in those white runners, crossing the lawn, over the blue tarmac, and throws her body into a circular rope woven basket swing, completely satisfied!
Her voice singingly reaches high pitches almost as though she calls to her slightly older sister. This one comes running as well, from another direction, throws her body on the woven basket swing occupying the space left for her by her sister Acrobatta!
Life is swinging back and forth with two sistars in agreement to share and to care and to have FUN!
Relief emanates from each of the multiply aged children as the stories spread by adults and projected into the KALEIDOSCOPE SCHOOL lense dissolve in the vibrations of JOY and INNOCENCE.
Just as I sense and enjoy this field of love, to my right emerges a papa running alongside his 7 -8-year-old young man son. He is white runnered as well and truly loves this parallel creation. Even when the boy mansion falls upon the receptive brown soil grass greened, papa kicks up one leg over his son’s body and with some kind of telepathic messaging, encourages the resurrection without demanding without commanding. Just knowing, that there will be an arising. And, of course, there is.
The parallel chase of wind and breath and bodies of papa and son continues beyond the play structure….. dissolving from my KALEIDOSCOPE’s lense.
This playing ground, this children’s park, this designed and devoted infrastructure funded by those who laugh and sing and play themselves, is a reprieve from what traumatized adults perpetuate on the screens of televisions, in news broadcasts, on computerized social media, and GMA inquires: At what cost?
No one here on this lawn of love, no one is invested in such violence of time-space of children, inner and outer. Naked to the vibrancy of the body’s movements, these inhabitants have chosen the KALEIDOSCOPE SCHOOL and shifted their lenses to agree to releasing judgments, letting go of arguments, stopping complaining, and blaming and shaming. These ones are the UPLIFTMENT of great spirits gifts: to explore and to discover as PLAYFUL ones, what now is possible.
Children of colours, adults of creeds, grandparents of various capacities, folks with dogs, adults reading cell phones, then adults letting those go, this CHILDRENS PARK, is a refuge for those to come to their common senses. To feel the winds, listen to BC Ferries horns coming and going over to Quadra Island, dancing, shouting, sharing, daring to resist the temptation to fall prey to those who falsely believe that they know more and are dominating the airwaves.
This is revolutionary, evolutionary, alchemy of PLAYFULNESS and who knows what kind of transformation arises from these past 3 hours of GMA Kaariina’s observations.
Chuckles shift the belly’s weights, laughter lifts up the veils of oppression from the heart centers, kiteflying raises the bar as the wind truly must be tended to in order to attain lift-off.
Relief shines through every effort to let go of the HUACHA, those heavy energies, and to re-enter the enlightened realm of innocence. To be freed in such a short period of time from karmic residues and traumatized even frozen fears about the future, this is a MIRACLE CHILDRENS PARK today.
Smiles mirror decisions and more delightful nuances dance in the airstream around this miniEARTHSHIP called CHILDREN PARK. No one leaves that tarmac of dark blue outdoor carpet untouched. We are all immersed in a KALEIDOSCOPE SCHOOL and we have each shifted the lense with this as an outcome! Our breathing has deepened, there is more restfulness, I do not hear crying infants whose needs are not met. The wounds are not driving this movie, we are COCREATORS.
I do not know who decided to create this PARK FOR CHILDREN. I thank them deeply today with all of my heart. I do know the exhausted Peace Corps facilitator’s testimonial was that even in the midst of wartorn towns and battered women’s lives, the call to ACTION needs to be for the CHILDREN. What more relaxing, all-inclusive way to complete this action and to shift frequencies than to come and PLAY TOGETHER.
Eachof us chooses to be here, transformed, transmutated, even transfigured as our egos need to step down and be composted. Chuckles release the 15 year old boyman hanging from the horizontal bars, self consciously swinging and when he walks away, he knows that he has surpassed or remembered what he is now capable of. Adult butts slide down the longer neon indigo blue slide, reminding us: No one cares here! Just let go!
On these fulling moon nights and sunlit skied days, let us join as ONE in this SCHOOL of CHILDREN and PLAY together. These frequencies are healthy prayers for those struggling with smokefilled lungs in California, in so many states. This joy spreads into the aftermath of Hurricane Laura’s fury through Louisiana and southwards. To be one of the ones who collaborates and discovers the bliss of having a bestie on that whirligig, well we are the ones who teach by our demonstration, adults still struggling to be better than. Swinging in the ropestrung basket chair with ones sistar is an echo of healing for sistars who hurt one another.
Harvesting these gems is such an incredibly enriching time for GMA. I ask of us all now: What is reality? How do we come to cocreate such lived experiences with so much contrast: the darkness of madmen believing that they have power over our CHILDRENS PARKS? Or the enlightenment of fathers whose love for their infants, toddlers, kids, and young emerging men, is self-evident.
We, today, came as a collective together and chose to have FUN, to witness, and to note how folks and families are enjoying themselves. We chose to share this earth, this creative juiciness, this laughter, the air, the waters within our bodies, with five deciduous trees on the hillock beyond as our standing witnesses. In this microcosmic vision, we became the CHANGE we want to experience in the world. Who, then, has power over our moments, our futures?
Another long ago and faraway time, I sat with a black and brown tan hound dog named Maharishi, on the floor of Most Venerable Namgyal Rinpoche, Dharma Centre of Canada. Amongst 30 year practitioners of Tibetan Buddhism, it never occurred to me that this is wrong or bad. I sat with a dog and wanted to curl up between its legs. Namgyal offered: “Be ye as a child and ye shall enter the Kingdom of Heaven.”
All judgments ceased and an aura of YES this is life, pervaded that time and space.
May this be so for each of us on earth now. This earth is a PARK FOR CHILDREN to remember to PLAYin our cosmic KALEIDOSCOPE SCHOOL!
Unmasked, chuckling, smiling through and through for each of us on this Scorpion full moon, facing these challenges with a dissolving unstoppable JOY!
For all relations