Love, Thy Will Be Done: Tales of Awakening A Wild Heart Vol.2

By marcia singer

MYSTICAL. EXTRASENSORY. SHAMANIC. The lyrics to a song, "Love, Thy Will Be Done,"(Prince & Martika) captivated author Marcia Singer in '91 during an exquisitely painful life passage. Both of her parents were dying, her lover was moving far away. She was ripe for profound awakening, deep healing through Surrender to whatever Life might bring. Learning to love unconditionally was the Path, the Work to be done. Following Iron Jane (2019), this sexond collection of soul-bearing stories of personal transformation wake a calling to live a big life. Sourcing the deep and erotic, wildish and ecstatic feminine Soul, Singer risks it all to be a trustworthy way-shower.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Jun 12, 2021
• ISBN: 9781667145150

Book preview

Copyright © by Marcia Singer

2nd Edition © 2020

All rights reserved under international and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.

Published in the United States by P.L.A.Y.house.

Cover designs by Marcia Singer

Editing by Walter Hochbrueckner

First revision 2011,

Second revision 2020.

ISBN 978-1-716-63-033-0

Love… Thy Will Be Done

Lyrics to song from Martika’s Kitchen, LP 1991

Love, thy will be done…

I can no longer hide,

I can no longer run…

No longer can I resist your guiding light 

That gives me the power to keep up the fight.

Love, thy will be done…

Since I have found you my life has just begun,

And I see all of your creations

As one Perfect complex,

No one less beautiful or more special than the next…

We are all blessed and so wise to accept

Thy will Love. be done.

Love, thy will be done…

And make me strive for the glorious and divine.

I could be no more satisfied,

Even when there's no peace outside my window

There's peace inside

And that's why I no longer run.

Love, thy will be done.

Songwriters: Marta Marrero / Prince Rogers Nelson Love…

Thy Will Be Done lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC,

Universal Music Publishing Group

DEDICATION

I dedicate this book to all those who have gone before me on the path of life,

Those who stumbled and fell and got back up,

Those who hunted for the treasures buried in the mucky places,

Those who went to the mountaintops and returned wiser and kinder,

Those who evolved a sense of heartfelt humor through the fray,

Those who withstood what needed withstanding, who stood firm enough,

Those who reached out to touch the untouchables and the weary,

Those who’ve graced us with Presence

From which Wisdom and Joy and Playfullness flow,

Those who Whisper to me in the winds

And Trick me with unexpected blessings So I can keep returning

to the world with a Wild Heart.

Namaste.

Love, Thy Will Be Done.

FOREWORD

Presence is the most sacred thing there is. John O’Donohue

Jump For Joy

I’m delighted to welcome you, dear reader, to my second collection of self-styled wisdom teachings. You’ll find scores of medicine tales, along with published and not-yet published essays on subjects deeply meaningful to me, and amidst all the serious fare, some much needed levity. Also, to spice up the reading, I’ve added pictures of my artwork, personal poems, cartoon-ups and an occasional photo. I hope that my need for variety and diversion matches your needs for entertainment, education, and enjoyment.

As with my just revised, first collection, Iron Jane: Tales of Awakening A Wild Heart, the Love, Thy Will Be Done manuscript is divided into topical sections. Though a few chapters might be as readily stored in one section as another, I’ve placed them in terms of subject matter and/or the manner in which the wisdom teachings came to me. The final section entitled, Last & Found has a few of my latest writings, and several pieces found in a manila folder after the book was ‘complete.’ I stirred them into the final soup as well: after all, life IS an improv.

As before, you will bump into my varied private and public hats: the Contemporary Shaman (a member of the White Urban Female Shamans WUFS clan); Tantrika (practitioner of Tantra yoga); the wildish woman at large (what I’ve named the Iron Jane archetype); the Healer–hands on and off the physical body; the Thinker, busily cogitating life and writing down her stories and lessons; and the person In Relationship –with people, men, women, family, the Earth, and the Cosmos. You’ll also be witnessing the Artist and the creative whiz kid around every turn in the road. This part of me is very active, and assists my Spiritual self –perhaps the most important to me, to bring my ahas into forms I can understand and utilize, and pass along to others, a key purpose for and motivation in my life.

Perhaps in this reading, you will also find a persistent pattern of seeking, finding and losing presence–surely the most sacred thing there is. Maybe my whole life can be summed up as the longing for this beautiful, life-bestowing state, and the pursuit of ways to secretly, or overtly enter into it. Into the poignant, still, rapt saturation of Being in the Moment, in the Play of the Moment, where everything that is alive, real and worth having or experiencing, Dwells.

I’d love to join you there.

INTRODUCTION

I am left to construct the unfolding, the writing, the directing and performing of my continually evolving story within the Story with as much care and daring as I may. And to be caught off guard, surprised, again and again at the unexpected Blessings contained within the enterprise.

Love, Thy Will Be Done begins where Iron Jane –my first collection of personal stories– left off: with a relocation. In 1993, the year I registered for copyright a first draft of that manuscript, I had just moved from Los Angeles to the San Diego area.  Then in ’99, around the time of completion of another draft of that writing effort, I arranged to move back to Los Angeles to be near my best friend, and former lover, who’d been diagnosed with cancer. Today I am relocated to Santa Rosa, California, finishing another installment of wild hearted tales.

I’ve been writing essays and poems, and drawing and making artwork since I was a little kid, but it was in the 90s that it became an enterprise and a devotion.  That decade –arguably the most difficult and adventurous of my life, gave rise to the first version of Iron Jane, revised just weeks ago, adding an historical Back Story, more art and poems created in that time frame, plus other tales from that period that called to be written down. While doing so I realized that ten more years had passed, another decade of writing down key personal experiences that mark my passages and when blessed, my wisdom-culling. So I decided to compile a second volume, which you have here in your hands. It brings us right up to my most recent relocation –back to northern California, and most likely, stirrings of a third volume.

The most recent decade has not been not a simple time of life, either–but I am not a simple soul.  I came back to L.A. in ‘99, estranged somewhat from my former paramour, yet arranging to stay rent-free at his little bungalow, while debating whether to return to Los Angeles more permanently. Tim was staying with his new girlfriend, just north of the San Fernando Valley; I was staying in the Valley at his place, where we had been lovers. It was a really difficult choice, even though I appreciated the charitable gesture, and a place to work with former clients. And since Tim’s new woman was very uncomfortable with him being with any of his old girlfriends, the healing work we engaged in together was done in secret at his place, as well. This secrecy was an uneasy thing for us both, although the sessions were life-giving, as Tim told me.

Staying At Tim’s House

Timmy’s mother, the other Marcia, also an astrological Leo, too was harboring unsolved issues with her son. She offered me a hand in friendship –spiky though it could be. And while ours was not an altogether predictably simpatico relationship, we did provide some solace to one another. We also shared quite a few show business stories, since Marcia was a well-known actor, a former child star who worked with Shirley Temple. As a member of the Film Society, Marcia loaned me many movie DVDs, as she liked to do with friends and family, and we would discuss some of them –which gave rise to more stories.

Once I decided to actually commit to being back in L.A., I found a rental in Reseda –a town I had sworn I would never live in. (I did this also with Oceanside: never say never.)  A series of roommates followed, a couple proving to be very troubled souls, as well as episodes with hostile neighbors and their barking hounds. All this provided much fodder for my introspection. I found myself seeking after peace and reconciliation time and time again, even landing a writing assignment with Dr. Marshall B. Rosenberg’s publishers –the originator of Nonviolent Communication, NVC.  I transcribed and edited a taped workshop on reconciliation into the first booklet in what became a series explicating his peace process. It was quite a useful, if tedious process, and sharpened my mediation and conflict resolution skills.

My private practice was barely sustaining me, but I was holding my head above water. I joined IONS, the Institute of Noetic Sciences, became a community group leader, and went to a few meetings. IONS is an international organization comprised of heady and heart-felt persons who want to know –or should I say, Know about things– everything. Instigated by astronaut Edgar Mitchell, it bridges the most recent and fascinating scientific research with spiritual and mystical foundations of life. I gave a presentation in L.A. on my Tao of Play works, and enjoyed my membership until I realized, along with several other cohorts, that IONS was not going to promote our own work, choosing rather to focus on that of persons already established in their fields – regardless of the merit of our work.  Or our compelling financial challenges to achieving a wider audience.

I wrote a lot, enjoying being published primarily in California New Thought publications, and scouted ways to garner attention for my bodies of work through broadcast media as well. I guested on a couple of PBS radio shows, and a pilot for a psychic series, while doing a few psychic fares, mostly for charity.  I kept an eye on show biz opportunities, too, even while primarily engaging in services as a counselor and healer, using tantric and shamanic practices, as well as modalities like Voice Dialog, Hypnotherapy and the Arts.

One of the most important changes in my life of service and employment came early in the decade. In 2000, I began to sing for older, sick and disabled adults in assisted living and nursing facilities. And I began to teach in the local junior college Older Adult Program –funded in part by the state. In the fourth of my six years there, I was able to parlay that adjunct faculty position into one that let me create and direct a senior improv community. We did a little performing as well, under the name Second Childhood Players, and even did a private cable performance (one of three I did on creative Play and Improv.)  I adored these elder ones, adored the role, and for all its hard work and having to shepherd the flock –it remains a highlight of my professional life.

Other worthy nuances of my history in the 2000s were a decision to be celibate, for as long as it would take me to become reasonably stable and ‘happy’ without a man, without a lover. I was clear that I had never experienced really being my own person in a lover relationship, for all my cogent writing and lecturing on the subjects of relationships. (But then, we always teach what we need to learn…at least at first.)  I had no idea that this initial period of going without partnered sex would be six years. Or that it would continue for many more…

So, from L.A. I’d gone to San Diego, flirted with the Bay Area, then returned to L.A. to re-create myself once again, drawing upon the support and caring from a few old friends there, and a few devoted former clients, who returned to my practice.  In the nearly nine more years I stayed there, my shamanic pathways and coyote medicine trails were well travelled, even as my identification with Goddess and Gaia-based earthy spirituality deepened. Simultaneously, mystical and magickal Marcia thrived, inspiring the artiste, the writer and the visionary to a grander view of things, and a continual proliferation of artworks. I found a capable woman to create a web site for me, a feat I had thought no one capable of: I am not a simple person! On the writing scene, I evolved a Tao of Play works, found an agent, spent two years creating the marketing instruments, only to be thrown completely off kilter by having to move twice from three- bedroom, two bath rentals. The housing bubble had grown noticeably bigger, and home sale prices were rising.  When my landlord in 2003 put the house on the market, it sold the first day, sending me and my darling, aging doggie Kris flying. I found rental prices had gone up, without my awareness, about three hundred dollars in the region.  I struggled to find something suitable and affordable –winding up with a $1500 rental, and a month-to-month contract –not the assurance of stability that I’d wanted. Kristol died four weeks after our move-in, a few days after I settled in.  Blessings on her bones.

My rent was increased twice in the next two years.  When in 2006 it was put up for sale, to my horror, I discovered that comparable housing was again, hundreds of dollars higher. Looking at funky, junky houses, being offered at $1800-2000 a month – I was incredulous. Mortally tired, that August as the new owners were moving in, I exited my home and went to stay at a friend’s house –along with a professional house-sitting friend –for three months.  Those months wandered into two and a half years of displacement, waiting for rentals to come down. Waiting for the economy to be more hospitable to workers in healthcare, aging, arts and healing arts. Finding house and pet sitting gigs, renting bedrooms in friends’ homes…no life for a Highly Sensitive lady, for whom home means safety, sanctuary, a place to debrief, unwind, sensitize, assimilate.

I saved every dime I could.  In 2008 I made three exploratory trips outside southern Cal, seeking a way out of L.A. I went to my old hometown of Wichita –a pilgrimage of sorts, good for my soul, not compelling as a place to live. I visited two friends in Eugene, Oregon, as well, liking the town a lot, but fearful of the months of chilly, grey, wet weather. I went to the Bay Area, too, having had a notion to move there ten years earlier, before Tim got ill.  I spent a week in Berkeley, unable to locate rentals at large, or anything even remotely affordable to me. I then went to Santa Rosa, having been especially drawn to the bohemian village of Sebastopol. It seemed friendly, and although housing prices still seemed to be rising –and were nearly as high as L.A. had been, when a fluky email from that professional house-sitter friend came, offered me three months to house-sit in Petaluma –the headquarters of IONS, I said yes.

And here I am, now, in northern California, starting over again, re-creating myself in my grey years.  May my sense of the power of loving and allowing the yes –P.L.A.Y –prevail.

Ohm.

CONTENTS

Love… Thy Will Be Done

DEDICATION

FOREWORD

INTRODUCTION

GIFTS IN SMALL PACKAGES

1. THE BUTTERFLY

2. JANUARY FIFTH

3. SMALL THINGS

4. RED PANTIES

ELIXIR

5. FROGGIES

UNEXPECTED BLESSINGS

6. VIEW FROM THE CRACK

7. THE HAPPY BIRTHDAY HAWK

8. COYOTE

9. BLANKIE

10. ANGELS IN DISGUISE

11. THE WAY OF NAMASTE

TRANCE- FORMATIONS

12. MANNA

13. HEALING THE MOTHER WOUND

14. DOLPHIN REMINDERS

15. LEARNING FROM DEFEET

16. EMPATH

REFLEXIONS

17. RED SANDALS

18. THE KISS

19. THE HUG

20. FORGIVING

21. TEETER-TOTTERING

22. THE TREE TRIMMING

23. THEATER OF THE SELF

24. SECOND IMPRESSIONS

25. A WEE ENVIRONMENTAL TALE

AN EROTIC SHAMANISM

26. THE HORNED GOD

27. TULPA

28. SEXUAL SHAMANISM

29. CAVE MAN SEX

30. SEXUAL SELF SACRIFICE

AND CONSIDER THIS…

31. SHADOW DANCING TANTRA

TRIALS

TRICKS

TRAMPS (TANTRICKS)

TRANSFORMATIONS

32. SEX

THE MASSAGE

33. SENSUAL AND SEXUAL WHOLENESS

34. SPIRITUALITY AND SEXUALITY

35. ORGANIC TANTA

36. A TOUCH OF TANTRA

ARTICLES OF FAITH

37. ADULT INDIGOS

38. IMPURE THOUGHTS

39. A PERFECT LIFE

40. A CHANNELED MEDITATION

41. BEAUTY FROM THE INSIGHT OUT

42. RAISING YOUR C.I.Q.

CREATIVITEASE

BLOW YOUR MIND

43. THE CHANGE OF LIFE

WOMANifesto

44. THE PSYCH HIKE

45. THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ADDICTION

46. HUMOR

47. THE ANIMATED COLLAGE

PEACE BY PIECE

48. EYE FOR AN I

49. THE PLAY OF PEACE

PEACEFUL QUOTATIONS

50. THE WAR IN TERROR

RAGE

POEMS

PEACE PRAYER  &  REST IN PEACE

COMING & GOING–HOME

PEACE PRAYER 2

DANCING IN THE COSMIC BARRIO

HESTIA’S INVITATION 2003

ROOM-MATES

TIM HAS CANCER

52. RUTH LESS

53. WARRIOR AT PLAY

ENDINGS & BLESSINGS

54. EARTH DAY 2003

55. THE MIDWIFE

56. LILLIAN

57. ELISE’S BLESSING

58. LETTING GO

59. THE OTHER SIDE OF KRISTOL

60. PIED PIPER YOGI

The Play Of GROWING ELDER

61. SHIFT INTO PLAY

62. TRUSTING THE PLAY OF THE MOMENT

63. SENIORS AT PLAY

64. LIFE IS AN IMPROV

65. WHOSE LIFE IS IT, ANYWAY

66. THE WAKE-UP CALL

67. IT’S A SMALL WORLD, AFTER ALL

68. I AM LEO, I AM SUN

69. CHANNELING BILLIE

TEA AND ROSES

LAST & FOUND

L A S T

70. CAREGIVER AS MARTYR

71. LIVING IN SCARE CITY

72. PROSPERITY 102

73. WAMBATTLES

The Dream

The DreamWorking

FOUND

74. LETTING GO GRACEFULLY

75. THE PLAY OF RECOVERY

76. JEALOUSY

77. THE TOLERATORS

78. COUNTING OUR BLESSINGS

79. LOVE, THY WILL BE DONE

F Y I

BIO

RESOURCES & LINKS

GIFTS IN SMALL PACKAGES

1. THE BUTTERFLY

A Lesson in Faith

Butterflies have always brought me a special joy. When I’m down, they foster a sense of hopefulness that things will improve. When I moved into my first home after relocating to Santa Rosa, a house with a terribly neglected backyard, I set to work to green it up.  I planted flowers and shrubs, pruned trees and watered everything.  When the first butterflies appeared, gracing my new garden, I felt my body relax at last. Now I could be at home here.

Looking often to my garden and its beauty to cheer me when I’m down, butterflies continue to bring me reason to hope. Recently, I received the news that my contract would not be renewed with a local community college program due to funding considerations. I felt a rush of sadness and fear at the thought that a sizeable chunk of my present income would be lopped off. Also, being an instructor in the program who has received four years’ worth of sterling testimonials from her students, I couldn’t help but feel personally betrayed by the distant hiring powers that be, cast off like a shoe fallen out of favor with a fickle owner.  Bursting into tears, I instinctively headed for my garden.

From the patio, the warm autumn sun laid his hand on my shoulders, lighting up the patch of salvia in his wake, teasing several blue blossoms out for a sunning. Through the blur of fresh tears I spied a lovely golden orange butterfly about six feet away, stretched out fully against the greenery, motionless, resting. My first thought was how beautiful it was. Next, that I too was a kind of butterfly, one that had succeeded in doing its cocooning and emerging into the world at large.  Somehow, I would be OK, I was ‘out,’ I’d made it.  I half-heartedly began to make wings with my arms, as if I could fly; a kind of spontaneous gesture of interspecies communication.

But as is so often the case, fear and sadness are not so easily put to rest. Thoughts of How could this have happened to me? and What am I going to do now?! came rushing in on the heels of my pretty I-Am-Butterfly metaphor.  My eyes closed for another round of feeling sorry for myself, arms dropping limply to my sides. When I opened my eyes moments later, looking back to the spot where my butterfly had alighted, it was no longer there.  It had split, flown the coop.  Now I really felt abandoned.

But here on my garden patio, I began spinning around in a kind of self-styled dance, trying to give expression to my hurt. Dancing with my back to the salvia patch, then forward and facing it again I was surprised to see a butterfly visitor. The same one? Or was it another, laying across the salvia much closer to me now? Fascinated, I noticed that it seemed to be missing a piece of its left wing. Near the bottom, it looked like a bite had been taken out of it. Feeling sorry for both of us now, innocent victims of circumstance, my eyes filled with tears again.

In a flash, the butterfly took flight, darting around in front of me showing me in no uncertain terms how very strong and capable it was of flying anywhere it darn pleased! It was a crazy, marvelous show of daring and dash and elegant power, and I couldn’t help but smile and know that once again, a Messenger from the gods had come to give me hope. Better than hope, to renew my Faith in Life. Yes, I am like that butterfly. Yes, even with a piece of me missing, even with all I have endured, I am sturdy and able to fly, able to take myself wherever I need or want to go –even enjoying the heck out of the dance.

And so, it can be, again and again as I am reminded that Life is inherently Safe, and that I am free to revel in it.  And share my stories.

2. JANUARY FIFTH

I shinnied up the slope, climbing higher into the Santa Susannas, aiming for a large cave in a particularly intriguing rock formation. I felt pretty agile for an old goat, holding my 57 years well enough, though taking care with my right ankle and lower back. Best to be mindful. It was a sunny, warm winter day in southern California, and I was coming alive with each step.

Arriving at my chosen spot, I stripped down to my panties and socks and laid face down on a large