6 November 2010
now i remember ~ connecting the dots ~ My relationship with Melinda
Posted by Ray under: Uncategorized .
Yes ~ we realized back in 1995 after watching the film , ‘ The Little Buddha’ that we had been incarnated @ the time of the first Buddha ( Gautama ) in India and had known each other as friends ~ we were part of a wealthy affluent society @ the time. We could not help but notice the increasing interest in the teachings of the Buddha and those who chose to travel upon the path he showed as the way to enlightenment. I do not believe that we ‘followed’ the Buddha’s teachings but we knew them in our hearts and to some extent understood them within our minds as expressed by our own personal dharma in daily life. The buzz around the Buddha’s satsang was reverentially devotional to a high degree and we had sparkles in our eyes and smiles upon our faces before during and after attending ~ a feeling and perceiving of a kind of non~ dual wisdom awareness initiation. We were very good friends in that life.
There was yet another lifetime that I knew her in . I remember that Now too. It is more like ‘on another plane of existence’ rather than a discreet human lifetime.
In 1978, Caroline and I were in Maine camping out on a private nature preserve owned by the ‘Saint John’ family near Bath, Maine where our friend, Gunjan also had a yoga studio and produced her wearable weaved clothing and shawls.
On a perfect September day ~ we held a ceremony involving communion with ‘Mescalito’ ~ the deity of the peyote cactus, one living, healthy specimen of which we had brought with us for this purpose.
Mescalito revealed to me, in the perfect golden sunlight of that forever never ending afternoon that ‘this’ was not ‘what it was like back in ancient Egypt’ ~ instead ‘this’ was ‘ancient Egypt’ in terms of the state of consciousness that I was experiencing. I gazed towards the sun in that infinite blue sky as monarch butterflies sailed around me. I had a feeling ~ and then a vision ~ of a woman with deep dark eyes who’s look was connecting to me. Soul to soul.
Who was she ? ~
I called her ’Isis’.
Years later, in 1992 when I was in my office @ the Multicultural Arts Center in East Cambridge, Massachusetts, holding down the roles of both facility manager and producer ~ she walked into my office again. We smiled. I knew that she was very cool and I sensed that it would be a huge blunder not to be open to being her friend as well as working together professionally. She was on the Board of Trustees of the Newtowne Courts Art Center of the Newtowne Courts housing project near Polaroid corporate HQ. I had been briefed by the board @ CMAC that I was to give them the ‘best deal’ possible for a fundraising event that they were undertaking. It was a wonderful success and produced a lot of money and good will.
A couple of years later I was ‘out’ of CMAC and I wanted to follow thru on a proposal to show the film ‘Amazona’ about what was happening to the rainforests of Brazil. We connected with our mutual friend, Jon Sachs who ran the Media Center @ the time and we premiered the film @ the Brattle Theater near Harvard Square in Cambridge. In the planning process I visited Melinda’s lovely apartment in Newton Corner, near the Charles River.
There was a painting of her there.
It reveals the power and beauty of the woman who she is in this lifetime.
She is wearing earrings in the painting.
The ear rings are in the form of Isis, with her wings extended.
Soon we began to put into action a weekly seasonal plan that got us to go to the beach every Saturday, as many as possible, from June thru September ~ up on the North Shore of Boston, Cape Ann ~ most often we ended up @ ‘Singing Beach’ in lovely Manchester by the Sea. We always got there after 2 PM, relaxed, did yoga circa 4 PM as the sun was going down, we then ritually adjourned to a bistro near the train station half a mile away where we had seafood and my favorite drink of the latter 20th century ; the margarita. We did this from approximately 1996 until 2003, 7 years.
In early November of 2010, we resolved to meet @ Whole Foods Fresh Pond Cambridge and take one of our seasonal walks around the Fresh Pond reservation. It was raining We decided on tea and lunch@ the WF café instead. When she insisted on buying me lunch and ALSO something to get for dinner later, I experienced yet another revelation about who we were before.
In a recent lifetime, I was an orphan who lived pretty much in the streets of New York City. I recognized her that day as a stately Italian woman who lived in Brooklyn during that same lifetime as I ~ late 19th century, waves of Italian immigrants coming into the USA and the metropolitan New York area to make a new life here. She would often show me kindness and made sure that I had enough to eat, could bathe and take rest @ her home.
I declined her offer to buy my dinner for later that night. Instead I went to the Golden Temple and had scallops with shitake mushrooms preceded by a martini made with organic blueberry puree.
COPYRIGHT – ALL RIGHTS RESERVED – Ray Iasiello, 2010.
Ray Iasiello
Certified Hatha Yoga Teacher
Certified Resonance Repatterning™ Practitioner
617-852-6479
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