EXCERPTS  FwFL

p. 6  Regarding she who crafted the actual words you are now reading - that is my life-companion and guardian, Jennet. Here, for this text, I shall call her my Love. It was very near the end of having a body when I asked my Love to write my life-story for you.

 

p.11  My other body lifetimes as a philosopher, peace-maker, scientist and a poet were okay, but not as nearly as much fun as I would have liked. Nevertheless, it seems like some of those experiences stayed with me.

 

p. 13  I’ve already told you; in the early days when I closed my eyes the Great White Dove was always there. Her underbelly was soft, and billowy and warm. I was always safe. And dry, and clean. There was always enough light, and I was never hungry. The wind swooshing gently over my body and ruffling my ears, made my eyes water just a little. The view from her wing tips was like no other.

 

p. 18   Right away we were in a car with another lady who smelled very nice. We drove in a car for a long time. I really needed to throw up. Since I was tucked inside the jacket of my new companion, I very carefully, by hardly moving at all, made as little mess as possible.

 

 

p.25   My heart fell out of body. Right out of my body, onto the floor, onto the paper. My mind froze. I tried to focus. I couldn’t solve the problem. So, I chewed all the sheets of paper into teeny-tiny teeny-weeny bits of paper, all the same size and shape. So there were piles and piles of tiny bits of pieces of paper all over the floor. I was pleased with myself. It all made sense to me. All the bits and pieces of paper on the floor felt like I did. Bit and pieces of something all shredded up, strewn all over the floor. A big mess.

 

p. 28  I already said that a focus for my new life began with lessons from Reymundo and my Love. First thing, Rey taught me the “good-living-way”. Good-living is about everything that matters. It is about smart thinking. And right feeling and right action. Good-living is love, loyalty, friendship, food, quiet, play, freedom, the night, the day, the sky, the Great White Dove, and pretty much everything else that’s good that I haven’t mentioned.

 

(Tao 1) p.29

From my perspective this is what people understand about the Tao: they understand nothing, and they understand something. Something might be the sky, the stars, the night or daylight. But things are not one thing, they are also everything, and that’s the Tao. And then the thing is also nothing all over again. And that is the Tao. And then EVERYTHING is the really big NOTHING, and that’s also the Tao. So if the Tao is the way absolutely everything fits together, it is also a good way to feel, act, and live in harmony, this is all the Tao. So, you see, the Tao is the really big everything Mystery that we don’t know anything about, and at the very same time we also don’t know what the really big nothing Mystery is either. Because we’re not supposed to know. The Tao. I liked it. Balance of opposites. Know. Not know. Sound. Silence. Moon at night, Sun in day. Push. No push.

 

Xena Seeing p.32-33                                                                                                                          I learned to copy Rey’s force of contemplation. I watched him SEE everything. Then I watched him send the beauty of what he saw right back out into the desert light, the trees, the birds, the clouds, and me. Seeing and sending, just like his slow breathing.

I watched him work when I was down the driveway in front of my Love’s workshop. I copied his pose and good posture, and his breathing technique. I learned to be still for long hours, with short breaks, and then back to stillness and contemplation. I learned to use my eyes as he did; seeing everything, focusing out on the edges of my vision, not the middle…relax the muscles in my eyes, and see from my heart, not my head.

I practiced this Tao as often as I could; working in the studio, resting in the house, driving around in the car, and out in the world. People began to look at me and say, ”…her eyes, she sees everything, it’s like she looks right into your soul…” on and on, and blah, blah, blah.

It seemed that all through my life people were affected by me in the same way. What was actually happening was that the force of my contemplation saw into and around many things. What I was actually doing was mastering the deepest meaning and purpose of the Tao d’Chow – sending messages of harmony and peace - from the heart.

 

p.40   The King of the World was gone. There it was again, my heart flew out of my body and dissolved into the morning light. My body felt like an empty food-bowl. Flat, stuck to the ground. I could hardly walk, or breathe. Panic crawled over me like the ants on my anthills. And then I felt like the anthills. I was crashed into and smashed up. 

 

p. 47  …and me rolling down the hill, I finally understood one of the great teachings of the Tao d’Ching. The courage to laugh starts in my heart, and it always makes better the lives of others. This I learned is not an idea in my head, or a problem to solve. It is very simple.

Laughter and love from the heart are the same thing.

In the mirror of goofy…is the face of love.

 

p. 84  Seemed to me that, among other things, the cats in her house were very rude and they used bad language. They said I smelled like “crap”. I was kept clean and my coat was combed often; wrong there, guys. They said that their food was better than mine. Wrong. How did they know that? They didn’t. Really, picture this: their food was a disgusting-looking (one color) mushy pile of blop that had a big huge smell. The smell alone made my brain race out of control, then slow down too much, then race again. It made me dizzy. If I tried to eat their food I usually closed my eyes. All of that - not like my food at home, not at all.

p. 85  The next time we visited the cat-lady I put into action an excellent way to be of Tao d’Ching service to her cats. You should know - I never barked at them, or tried to scare them. I was not mean or rude. Instead, I decided that the most entertaining service I could perform was to chase them around the first floor of their house. I convinced myself a big problem was being solved. I imagined that if the cats were to exercise a bit and lose a little weight, maybe they’d feel better. I told myself that if their brains worked a tiny bit better then maybe they’d be happier and not so rude.

p. 86  Reymundo taught me that being Tao-smart meant being happy in the body, mind, and heart. Also problem solving, that was an important feature of cleverness and living a good-life. Clearly the cat-lady’s cats were not happy in their body, mind or heart, both before chasing them, and after. So I was not clever enough to solve their happiness problem. As to the fat problem, my exercise program did not help them lose weight or think more clearly. It may have made them fatter; hard to tell.

My service to them did not enhance their lives; the cats were not made happier in any way whatsoever. But I did make others laugh, and that was fun.

 

p. 90  I remember wondering if the no home-ground-people were the ones who took care of the real sky - the one I could not see, there in the New York City. I also remember an eyes-open awake-dream I had one day when we were there. What I saw in the dream was that the New York City sky was food (Cha) for all the atoms in the superfast everything in the city on the ground. I saw the New York City eating the sky. Looking up at the white sky, my dream showed me that the sky is where everything goes to find food, and peace.

p. 91  The New York City sky was not at all like the sky in the desert mountains at home. Our mountain sky looked like a huge upside-down bowl in the sky. That bowl of sky was filled with space and light, and the star-seeds of Time at night. And the mountain sky stretched down tightly onto the edges of the land in every direction. The sky at home in the desert held everything together.

Was this New York sky scraped away by the skyscraper buildings, much like I did with the anthills at home? Or was the city sky solid - like white rock? And where were the night-time star-seeds? Actually, during most of our visit to the island I was never sure the sky was there, in the sky.

 

p. 94  Right there all the time, the Virginia people also had a wonderful way of talking out loud  – I mean how they made the sounds of their words. Like music, the sounds around, between, before and especially after their speaking was a new world of communication. For instance, when they said the word “dog”; it sounded like – “…dhaaaoww-ghe”, not “dog”, or “doggie”. Long and pretty and round in the beginning and the middle, ending with a soft swallowing of the whole word - “ghe”. It sounded like the feeling of d’Cha rolling around on my tongue and gently slipping down my throat. Beautiful. It also seemed like the people in Virginia talked about their “Dow-ghes” with love and enthusiasm. Really a lot.

For me, the sounds of their words were filled with time and wonder, and then kindness. The sounds of their words also found a way of lingering in my heart long after they were spoken.

 

P 119.  This is what I saw, heard and felt. The rivers spoke to us and to everything around us. There was a constant conversation between the river and the river banks, the river and river rocks, the river and the plants and trees, and the river and the wind, the sun, the rain, and the sky. Because the rivers kept this conversation going for everything all the time, there was a sound both quiet and loud. Not the river sound itself, but the sounds answering the voice of the running water.’’

 

p 123  Everything smelled clean; everything was clean. Every day the beach washed herself over and over again. The waves that licked the edge of the beach washed, again and again, everything lying on the beach. Then the ocean either placed her things up high on the beach to dry out and blow away in the wind, or the ocean took her things back into the water and they disappeared.

 

p. 131  The idea of it all was, (and still is), Lily Moon only ever looked at me. She loved our two-leg friends but, from the beginning, she had absolutely no use whatsoever for any other dog or animal. She actually turned her back on each and every animal she ever saw. She never ever said hello and for sure, never, ever, even once, permitted any sniffing of her behind area. No need to say, except me, she never sniffed any other dog anywhere, ever.

Lily Moon became, and still is, my seriously excellent sister.

 

p. 138   Then, one day it just happened, Lily Moon became an expert spinner. In fact, she became an aerial dancer in ways that far exceeded my own spinning skills. Lily was able to spin completely around in a full circle, with no feet on the ground. And so fast, it was a blur. She learned to spin so quickly that her long coat would fly straight out from her body. Like an open umbrella. To stand next to her when she executed a spin was to be body-brushed with her wonderful coat of long soft hair.

Lily Moon never learned my flying-with-four-legs dream-circling moves. But Lily had her own way to move her body through space with extreme joy. Her full-circle no-feet-on-the-ground spinning moves were, and still are, equally fantastic.

 

p. 140  From that day forward, I had a new skill. I saw that my memory lives in waves of light in my head and my body. The waves move like misty rain. Like a dream inside me, the waves are clusters of light, like stars in the night sky. When I zoom in to look at one star, I see more clusters of light. Those clusters contain the colors, sounds, tastes, smells, and friends in the place from the time when the memory-dream was created. If I look each experience of my life is there inside its own star-light-cluster of memory.

 

p. 145  Okay, full access. I pulled out two cookies, offered some to Lily, and started on mine. We were quickly caught in our thieving; but I’d already enjoyed one and a half cookies. I was not too badly sick from our efforts, just a little. Lily was okay. She ate a lot less than I did. I was a hog. A complete hog. A life-time of never eating Cha-ocolate, hog.

Oh, you should know, perhaps previous descriptions and threats of a ghastly death-from-chocolate might have come true, they did not. Lily and I did not die from eating the Cha-ocolate Cha-ookies.

The Great Mystery Cha was as promised; it was an absolute miracle.

 

p.148  If I was a seer, (as many called me, and whatever that actually meant), then my body was the window with the excellent view. Just as much as my eyes and brain saw and remembered, every part of my body was also filled with the wonderful dream of my life.  

p. 149  Like leaves on a tall tree, recollections of my family’s kindness and devotion often whispered to each other. Like leaves on a branch of a tree, each memory sweetly jostled the ones next to it.

The breeze of Time gently eased the leaves from the branches of the tree.

As the treasure of my life settled into my soul, so too my memories nestled, as if one leaf rested upon another. One remembrance upon another, they warmed my tired bones.

p. 150  I cherished the symphony of Love in the whole of my life. Love given and love received, this balance of grace so clearly opened and closed the days of my later years. The mercy of Love; from a frightful beginning, to a benevolent and fantastic journey.

More and more I am filled with high-skied remembrance. The great-heartedness of my family is the high sky. They showed me who I was, who I could always be. Their unending devotion and compassion, their kind discipline and the Tao d’Cha, Ching, Chow was more than just a dream. I had been given the tools to live with purpose.

And Love was the purpose of my life.

 

p. 161  The exquisite care of my soul continues to be my Love’s most masterful gift. I feel her keen awareness of my path (still, especially now in the Spirit World) in a look, a touch, the sharing of pictures, or her stories, or journeys to paint the land, and all the other gifts; so many I cannot count. I will never leave your side.

And then I say “thank you” to my friend, Mari. Forever my dearest friend, and my family, she was a brilliant teacher of many, many things I needed to learn. Thank you Mari, I lived long and well, in great part due to your intrepid love.

 

p. 162  I do not know how to thank the Great White Dove in the sky. She who gave me life, and then a family. She who spins the planets, paints the clouds, swooshes breath in and out of our tiny bodies; She who pushes the rivers and pulls the waves in the oceans, She who wakes the dawn, and puts us to sleep. She whose wings we ride, by day or night, in a body, or in Spirit; thank you.

Your friend,

Xena

 

p. 164  (Jennet writes) During Xena’s end-times I often supposed I ought to write her memoirs. Yes, without question, to honor her. I also felt that in doing so the world might come to know one of the truly great dogs of our time. However, selfishly, before her demise, I also wondered if doing so might illuminate the inescapable fracturing of my psyche when her body was to be no more. There was an abyss ahead, this was certain.

It was an honor beyond words to witness the physical, mental, and spiritual strength of so tiny and vulnerable a creature. I will live in that awe for all my days.