Heroes in Halfshells

It was two months ago today that Max passed through me. He returned back into the breeze that makes the branches move, back into the space between breaths, back into the current of grace where we like to have our play dates and rub elbows with other great masters. Max is back to flirting with the pulsation, our electrical gadgets like tinker toys. His name just recently showed up in Kim P's telephone. We are quite certain that calling it will take us to Narnia, as if we haven't already been there. Max is in all of the magic. The more aware I become the more it reveals itself.

I am closest to him when I stay in the space in between... In between my agreement to adhere to the fundamental laws of this universe and my diligent bastardization of them. Life will not go back to normal, why would we want that? Normal is not our work. Being o.k. is being an abbreviation. How could you be living in your fullest form abbreviated? Staying in the un-o.k. is actually a very rich place to be. Grief, loss, heartache...these are some of the richest gifts life gives us. Please get out your jewels and strut your feathers as you beat your fists on the floor. Your beauty is your broken. Your wounds are your warrior paint. And like a hero in a half shell, your vulnerability is a lovely accessory that you can use for a fashionable sun hat when you aren't in battle. I am broken open not broken pieces that need to be fixed. None of us are.

Max is asking us to stay in between: in between enlightenment and doing the laundry. How effective can we be if we only stay in the awakening of the grief? How effective can we be if we only stay at the mountaintop? How effective can we be if we don't return home because no one will understand? Listen closely my warrior friends, it's not a matter of the world understanding or not understanding, that's too easy. That is your excuse to either stay on your journey or never leave the couch. What Max is asking us to do is make the return home and live the Hero's journey. The work is to utilize your crystal clear vision from the mountaintop and serve humanity.

Max is just getting started, so if you're in may I suggest you get pretty clear about what that is. How will you match your action with your heart?


In the meantime enjoy rubbing cosmic elbows with the hotshots in your half shell.

Max Love
Heather

Max's Rebirth Prayer

Today marks 49 days since Max passed through me. 49 days is a significant day of transition in Tibetan Buddhism. And although Max is very clearly an awakened being, I have roots with the wild crazy wisdom side if things. Jen Z, Ivy, and Jess joined me early this morning at the same shrine where on April 3 they kept 108 candles lit as the Tucson Warriors shared prayers and chants for Max. The cookies that Bronwin and Darren offered were still there on a little plate from 7 weeks ago. When I arrived a candle from the original offering was lit. Pure Magic.

The spoken word below is not a push. I wrote it as a love letter to read to my son. I offer it to you as a way to honor and share the awakening that has occurred in your life these last 49 days.

THE REBIRTH PRAYER
For Maximilian Ka'hanu Heintz
Love Mom

I am onto you death.
You and your handle bar mustache under that black hooded little number you wear.
You aren't scary and you can't take my son.

Max is bigger than your bardos. He built your bardos.
And still Max I remind you to fly my sweet beautiful boy.
Move through. Move over bacon because Max is very much in the house...this great big mansion of my heart.

Time travel Max in your interstellar space machine. King of angels. Teacher of teachers.
Play planetary marbles my Boddhisatva Baba Baby Boy.
You are free.
You are me and me you. We never leave each other.

You have my blessing, just promise to call on the magic cell phone.
I want to hear about all of your adventures. All of your love. All of your heartache.
You are not a story. You are not downloadable.
You are more and more alive as I become more and more awake.
But I need to know that you are safe, warm, fed, happy... My hero.

My Jambavan. I just need the reminder to just remember.
I remember. And sometimes the smell of your skin surrounds me and I feel you in every cell of my body and you breathe me.

You breathe me Ka'hanu.
And here I was holding my breath thinking you would leave me.

Release Mom
You can't loose me. You never have.
I am ever present. You sang to me Nischprapanchaya.
Jai Guru.
I am yours.
Body or not.
Mother and Son.
Hanuman and Jambavan.
This lifeime or the next.
We are love.

OK My Mirror Max, add smoke or not.
I see you.
Thank you for dusting my path and adding golden sprinkles.
I will walk it and dip my fingers in the frosting and put my head in the donut cabinet at the grocery store to taste the richness of every moment.

I have and will let you go without me now knowing that you always return.
So take pictures. I want details.
In the meantime I will swing in your sunshine and sing with the keepers of wonder.

Devastation, what a gift...

Thank you for your comments, your poems, your pictures, your hearts. Truly, they are a life line for me.


Many of you have written to me personally about wanting to do some mending but not sure how to begin. Let me start by extending my deep appreciation for you. You braving your anger. You braving your grief. You braving your hurt. You braving your worthiness. You braving your dharma. You braving to let love in.

I want to begin by inviting you to pay attention to your word choice when you speak about your relationships and be curious about if using words like "toxic" are really your egos way of guarding your heart. It is certainly easy to stay away from things that are toxic and no one will argue with you. But if toxic is your way of perpetuating an old story and you want to truly break through the bullshit and get to know your heart then simply start by changing your language.

What follows is a little of what I have shared with a very dear friend from SD that you might find helpful.


A big part of my process has been meeting people where they are at, not meeting people at a place that fits into the mold of where I think they should be at. Max is clearly not a practice of "should". Should is a practice of wishing things were different. We can wish all we want, but we cannot act from a place of wishing things were different. This may be a type of spiritual materialism; thinking how people should be in the world is somehow better than the way they are. This only fits our agenda and not our connection.

I have had to work through this in the relationships that are on my list to mend. Of course I want each of them to be incredibly enriching, heart felt and authentic, but it's impossible. Not all people have those kinds of relationship with themselves. I am not saying this out of judgement. It's just the way some of us move through the world.  I still am blessed to receive their love.  What's beautiful is that I get to explore all of the ways people share their love with me.  
All of us will to continue to act out neurosis, like the way we dish it out to compensate for our own insecurities. As a warrior what I invite you to do is bring people back to their hearts. Instead of rolling your eyes or changing the conversation or avoiding them altogether, remind people of the ways they love themself or ask her about the ways they don't. Start to change the language.  What will start to happen is that the time you spend together will start to serve the heart connection that you two have. It might not happen overnight, or it might. SERVE LOVE not your expectations.

The other thing you need to stop doing is being afraid for the other person. We cannot take away our parents pain. We cannot take away our children's pain. We cannot take away of lover's pain. We cannot take away our friend's pain. No matter how hard we try.  It's an illusion. This is a hard one for me too. But awakening doesn't happen if someone is coddling us. We would better serve by moving out of the way. I have had to do this with my mama. Of course I want to make sure she is ok. She lost her grandson and she has to witness her daughter suffering. But what I realized is that by me trying to make sure she is ok was actually getting in the way of what Max has to offer: The teaching of impermanence, the teaching of radical acceptance, the teaching of love as a birthright, and the teaching of the veil of separation.

Life is devastating. Life is also creative.  Let your people be devastated. They might need to be.   Death and re-birth can happen while you are still alive in this body. What a gift. 

Remember you cannot act attached the results. Stay in your heart and see where the chips fall.

I hope this is helpful. If not, trash it, but trash it with certainty. 
LOVE YOU 
Heather Bear

go heal a broken relationship... seriously, go heal a broken relationship

Master Kim P sat next to me on the airplane. It was 22 hours after Max passed through me. We were on our way back to the Big Island. Kim held my hand. All I could think about was how am I going to do this? How do I go home without my son? How do I return to a community where all the bustle was about Max's arrival? How do I return to my bedroom where he was born a healthy, wailing brilliant baby? Tears just streamed down my face. People are going to ask what they can do for me. What can I possibly tell them? Then BAM, another PUSH from Max. "Mom, when they ask, tell them to go heal a broken relationship". Side note here warriors, when I have birthed my Guru, teacher of teachers, master of masters named Max and 22 hours after he leaves his body of 8 days old, he tell me to not only go heal my broken relationships but tells me to tell people who ask what they can do for me, to go heal their broken relationships...YOU LISTEN.
As my arms ached to hold him, I went through a list in my heart of the relationships that I needed to heal. "Get busy Mom, you may not be here tomorrow, or worse those people in your heart might not be here". This is how I prioritized. When I went down the checklist I asked myself if I were to run into them, would I run the other way? Anyone who I would run away from got a phone call. It sounds funny to me now that this is how I proceeded, but I am telling you because it doesn't have to be complicated. It's not easy, but it's not complicated. You will hear this again and again from me. Actually if it becomes complicated you need to re-direct your intention. On the same note if it feels easy, you aren't doing the work.

Love wants to pour through us. Love wants to pour through you. But you and your grudges, you and your blame, you and your feeling victimized, you and your jealousy, you and your fear, you and all your excuses are great big blocks, huge dams that prevent that river of love to gush through every cell in your body. Love is your birth right. I know. I just held the purest form for 8 days.

Confronting the people that we have been most hurtful toward, and the people that have been most hurtful toward us is liberating. It frees us and them of the bullshit that has been trumping our deepest truth. Life is radically different when the truth is so palpable. We can only taste the truth when we confront our demons.

I am on quite a journey, and as some of you have said "an undeniable one". All of us are.
Here is the bottom line, if you can fix something, fix it. Go heal a broken relationship in the name of Max, in the name of me, but mostly in the name of the love truth that you are.

My midwife told my amazing sister who hadn't spoken to our dad for over three years to "just open the door and let the breeze come through". Amen April. You have to start somewhere.

Go open the door.

Max Love, Max Widom
Heather Bear

Heintz & Huelster families opening the door in Saint Paul, MN - March 2011

What is your push?

I don't use the term "push" lightly. The rests between contractions became vital for each subsequent push. This was true for the end of laboring with Max. This was true for the birth in my bedroom with Max. This was true for the eight days in the NICU with Max. You can't just stop labor. You can't just collapse when a contraction comes. You cannot not push. You just know what to do and you have to do it. You and your baby work together. You take turns taking the lead. But you do not collapse. This is my dance with Max. I gave birth to Max and to myself as Max's Mother but I am still in labor. My pushes now are very clear leads from Max that are simultaneously miraculous and painful. The miraculous is that I have Max gently guiding me into unexplored areas of my life with these huge bursts of intensity. The pain is that some of those areas are dark and really fucking uncomfortable. But one does not come without the other. Max is a miracle. He has broken open more hearts in his eight days than most of us dare to do in a lifetime. But having a broken open heart doesn't have to feel good. Don't kid yourself. Giving birth to your babies or to your realized self does not feel good. When we open so radically we become vividly aware of how and where we are rigid or have closed ourselves off. This takes being bold. This takes being vulnerable. These two things are not mutually exclusive. They are in relationship. One will take the lead but they are in a constant dance. So amazing warrior... What is your push?
Max Love
Heather Bear

Happy One Month Birthday Max

Wow am I feeling your love.
Thank you for truly braving your heart space and posting. It is an amazing gift to me.

It's 11:11 pm in Minnesota and one month since I gave birth to my heart teacher Max. We celebrated by putting his birthstones in my ears. I feel him everywhere, he is everywhere but I literally see him in the eyes of my sisters babes. Zoe walks down the stairs with her rainbow wings and pauses to look up past me, "Aunty Heather I have to be careful with my wings, Max does too". Howard told a visitor yesterday, "Max didn't stay because he has bigger work to do". They know. It is the adults that have a harder time. On the other edge of rejoicing that Max is present is the reminder that he is not physically here. If given the chance I would fist fight god with brass knuckles and go into straight up spiritual warfare to have Max with me. I did this. I did this fully and didn't get what I wanted. None of us did. So let us not bullshit my amazing warriors for Max, nothing about this is about getting something in return. Again, nothing about this is fair. Again, nothing about this is anything but unconditional love. This is one of the most difficult teachings of Max and if you are going to really be a part of this movement you best start to get a grasp of how radical this is. In the words of Kimmi G, "Love is not an economic equation". Love can't save your marriage. Love can't even save your babies. But love is the human experience and all it wants to do is pour through us. When I wrote "Let Love In" as a push from Max, what it really means is that although we don't always get what we want, what we do get is the realization that love is something we get to do. We get to participate in relationships where we can pour love into each other, skin to skin, and eye to eye. This is the incredible gift of embodiment. So on this one month celebration of my teacher and son Max, remember the gift.
Max Love. Max wisdom.
Heather Bear

Max's birthstone earrings to celebrate his One Month Birthday.

Share Your Max Story!

Heather is asking us all to record the incredible openings that are happening within our own hearts. These are the miracles, the blessings, the shifts we are each making to embody and share Max's teachings. Please share your stories inspired by the EXTRA ORDINARY power of a Teacher named Maximilian Ka'hanu Bumblebee Heintz.