Miracles

Every single moment is a miracle.  Can you imagine how different your life would be if this truth was at the forefront of your awareness every step, every breath?  I thought to myself, I haven’t noticed any synchronicities today.  A voice replied, “You haven’t been paying attention”.  The world and its existence is a miracle.  Synchronicities are always there; we just have to tune into them.  No matter how small, how seemingly inconsequential.  There are no coincidences.  Everything is divine orchestration.  Every moment, walk in reverence.  Every moment, recognize the synchronicity of one zillion webs weaving in an infinite pattern repeated.  To spend your life in recognition of the miracle, that is true enlightenment.

See, I can get caught up real easily in the shit.  In my life.  In me.  In the eyes through which I see.  When I am swimming down in that well, it’s hard to see out, up, even down.  All I see is brown.

To go from here to there; that is my task.  To bring awareness to every moment’s miracle.  To witness with wonder, with awe, with curiosity.  To witness the mind as a separate entity.  To witness the world from a place of freshness.  Baby eyes.  Beginner’s mind.  This takes practice.  Time.  Diligence.  I sit and I pray.  I meditate.  I wake up with the sun.  I do my asana practice.  I write.  I breath and I feel my heart beat.  I walk in the desert.  I smell the breeze.  I listen for the inner voice who leads me to peace.  There are days when I forget.  I fall down.  I swim in shit.  I recover.  Eventually.  I get back up and I lovingly lead myself back to myself.  To my heart.  I listen and I study.  I ask for help.  I call my friends.  I love myself.  And then, I return home.  And I pray that next time I won’t be away as long.

”Every moment is a choice between a grievance and a miracle”. -Deepak Chopra in reference to A Course in Miracles

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Wake Up

I woke up today a different person.

I’m thirty, but there’s almost no point in the past that I can reference to this moment.

The web of memory spins and unspins itself, particularly in the dreamworld.

I wake up and there’s no thread left to pull me back.

It’s dark here.  Or is that light?

Even perception is fresh.

I wake up to the smell of something burning.

I wake up and I don’t know how I got here.

I wake up and I am alive.

Escape

I am paralyzed with fear.  Fear of being found out.  Fear of being discovered.  I try to think but nothing is there.  I can hear the familiar soundtrack in the background.  I try to think, but it seems someone has turned the volume up.  I’m swimming in sounds, confused where it’s coming from.  My body is stiff.  I’m aware that my hand has gone numb and I do nothing about it.  I’m frozen in time, yet the time is not now.  I ask myself if I am sleep walking.  Am I alive and operating in this world?  Am I at dinner with my family and I’ve slipped into a catatonic state? I’m in a different dimension, yet my body remains.  I come to.  I’m just here in bed.  Or, at least, my body is.  No one is talking to me.  But what about all that noise?  I stare at the door and I pray no one walks through it.  I turn away and pretend to sleep.  I slump over my bowl of soup, or is this cereal?  Scoop, insert, repeat.  I notice there’s nothing left.  I consider getting some more, but I can’t remember what of.  It’s a journey just to set the bowl down in a safe place.  Is that right?  Anything could happen now.  A person could pop through my phone.  I put it on airplane mode.  I could drown in the leftover milk.  I scoot it further away from me.  I could never wake up.  Am I dead already?  Someone could be watching me.  No, I’m certain someone is watching me.

This is the most lonely place I’ve ever been to.  One where my only companions are my memories and I’m terrified to make human contact.  Judgment day is upon me and I have definitely entered into the dark night of the soul.  Nothing is familiar except for everything.  I reach back for support and I find a thread-bare net.  That which was once strong and thick, now can’t hold my weight.  I slip through its holding place and I land with a thud.  I turn on the flashlight in my hand.  The surroundings remind me of a shed.  It’s a mismanaged shed, to say the least.  Tools everywhere without application.  New and unused, but missing their manuals.  I search through the mounds, seeking the tool that will set me free.  My first thought is to go out the way I came in: through the roof.  I find many things that could serve me, but without knowledge of their use, I pass them by without recognition.  I’m looking for something easy to use and wildly effective.  I come up empty-handed.  I change my course of action.  Instead of going up and out, I’ll go down and out.  Of course, continue in the previous direction of travel.  I consider digging a tunnel.  I pull up a board to discover soil.  It is cool.  It smells of death.  It invites me in with some very soft and supple scoops of earth.  I’m beginning to think this is the best option: down.

I wake up and I am covered in dirt.  I see a mess of tools around me.  I can see them now.  My eyes trace a line of light to a crack in the horizon of my sight.  I step towards it, stumble over something.  I run my hands along the golden seam.  I see particles of life, new and old, floating in the space that my hand just passed.  I press on the doors. They give in slightly and return back.  They didn’t open.  Maybe they aren’t doors at all.  For a moment, I resolve to return to my digging.  I am grateful for this new light to show me the way.  But then, I remember that these potential doors might be sliders.  I wiggle my fingers into the light, one hand above the other.  I breath in the warm air entering this shed through the crack.  I exhale deeply and pull my hands away from each other.

The whole of my body is embraced by the heat of the sun.  I fear I might burn alive.  I hesitate before crossing the threshold of shed to world.  My feet, first right, then left, step upon the earth.  Parched earth, dry grass, crispy leaves.  I fall to my knees and I weep.

Morning Meditations

I wake up and I can feel my stomach, my guts.  It feels empty.

I can also feel my heart in my chest, which in contrast, feels full.

My shoulders need a constant reminder to relax, drop away from my ears, chill out.

I can breath clearly through my nose this morning without the neti.

I see a hair in my periphery down by my chin and collar bone on the right.

My hand is stiff from writing.  The familiar indentation has returned on my left hand middle finger.

I hear birds outside.

A school bell rings.

My mom and her bible sit two feet to my right.  She’s texting.  She’s an audible breather. She says she sighs so much in the morning because she’s excited about life and has to constantly remember to slow down.  Her feet rustle under the covers.

A motorcycle drives down Guadalupe a mile away.

Children are playing on the playground around the corner.

A piece of wood was dropped.

My breathing is only audible to myself.

My hand scoots across the paper with short jerky bursts and returns to the left like a type writer.

My heart continues to beat along with five other hearts in this house.

The lines are running out on this page and the cramp in my hand has made it to the top.

It’s quitting time.

Structure

”Saturn teaches one virtue above all others: self-discipline.  That is the key to understanding the symbol… Saturn seeks to focus the will.  To teach us the most elusive of arts: how to do exactly what we please.  How to make our intentions dominant over our fears, our laziness, our emotions.  Jupiter is the planet of faith.  But in a sense it is Saturn that truly deserves that title.  Jupiter gives us the feeling of faith, but often by supporting us with a thousand crutches.  “Sure, I’ve got faith.  Life is great.  Look at my bank account, my sexy mate, my brand new Mercedes…” Saturn’s approach to faith is not like that.  He takes away the crutches.  He shows us darkness, impossibility, certain defeat.  Then he asks, “Do you still have faith?”  Again, this faith has nothing to do with religion.  It is faith in life, in oneself, in our dreams and visions, in our ideals.  It is faith in the idea that we have a destiny.  And only if those visions can stand alone, unassisted, in the face of absolute impossibility, can we say that we truly have faith.” -Steven Forrest, The Inner Sky

I am in the deep end of my first Saturn return.  What this means is that Saturn has returned to the same place in the sky that it was when I was born.  Saturn takes 28.5 years approximately to orbit our sun.  I’ve been doing a lot of soul searching, particularly in the last two years.  The way I see it, Saturn has been asking me to re-evaluate the foundation upon which I’ve built my life, and re-organize that structure, if necessary.  I started asking myself the question “who am I and what do I want?” I tried to squeeze, adjust, conform, and make fit my desires into the current framework of my life. It wasn’t working.  I decided to tap into my intuition to find what life was calling me to do.  And what I found there, was a call to move. But where to, I asked?  Go home.  Leave everyone and everything I know?  Yes.  What for?  To know yourself.  And to be authentic.

”[Your inner guidance] speaks in whispers, and sometimes we can hesitate, not knowing if we have understood rightly.  But the indications are clear: in following the inner guide you will feel more whole, more integrated, as if you are moving outwards from the very center of your being.  If you follow it, this beam of light will carry you exactly where you need to go.” -Osho, Zen Tarot

So, I set a plan in motion.  I prepared.  I gave my notice at work.  I cleaned houses and saved money.  I talked with my friends.  I secured a place to live.  I got an oil change.  I brainstormed people I could hang out with when I got there so I didn’t get lonely.  I thought about how I would keep myself busy.  I thought about the new life I would build for myself.  I researched yoga studios and community events.  I looked for jobs.  I said goodbye a few too many times.  I visited my favorite meadows.  I looked a little longer into the faces of those I love.  I stared at the mountains, swam in the lake.  Took videos.  Went to parties.  Bought gifts for my dearest friends.  Smelled the sheets.  Went over the checklist.  Looked around at everything I was leaving.  Packed my car.  Paid the electric bill.  Ate My Thai as much as possible.  Signed the lease over.  And then what, just go?  That was the hardest fucking moment.  To just drive away.  From the friends, from the mountains, from the lake, from the bed and the orange sheets, from the security, from the known, from my best friend.  And why, God, why?! For Authenticity? For Spiritual Growth? For Honesty and Truth?

I could have never prepared myself for this.

“Even in the ever-changing flow of life there are moments in which we come to a point of completion.  In these moments we are able to perceive the whole picture, the composite of all the small pieces that have occupied our attention for so long.  In the finishing, we can either be in despair because we don’t want the situation to come to an end, or we can be grateful and accepting of the fact that life is full of endings and new beginnings.”   -Osho, Zen Tarot

 

The Mind is a Psychopath

I have been learning a lot about ‘thinking on purpose’ lately.  This means bringing attention to the conscious and unconscious thoughts in my mind and deliberately choosing thoughts that feel the best.  Last night, I was reflecting on some commitments that I am making, and these thoughts came up:

I’m not good enough.  I’ll never be good enough.  I am irresponsible.  I am irrational.  I make bad decisions.  I’m not good enough.  I am too fat.  I cuss too much.  I talk too much.  I need to be quiet and listen more.  People don’t want to hear about me.  I’m not special.  I am self-involved.  I am not good enough.

This stream of consciousness was flowing like Niagara Falls.  It seemed unstoppable. I could choose to believe these thoughts, or I could not.  I decided to bring in an exercise that I got to practice in a coaching session recently.  It’s called ‘plot change’.  It’s as simple as it sounds.  I wrote, “plot change” in my journal, and moved into positive thoughts.  It wasn’t easy to transition at first, because the negative thoughts were so loud.  This is what came up:

I am a badass.  I can handle anything that comes my way.  I am capable of doing anything.  I am unique.  I have a lot of cool things to say.  People like to talk to me.  I am smart.  I listen to my intuition and take action.  I care deeply for others.  I love myself.  I am amazing.  I am living my best life.  I am making decisions based on evolution and becoming my best self.  I am doing my best.

Coming up with these thoughts were tough.  I was really spiraling in the shit.  I thought about the possibility of continuing to challenge myself to say nice things, generate positive thoughts, but I had a feeling that the negative thoughts needed to be heard as well.  Sometimes when I write my negative thoughts down, I get scared.  Like if I write them or speak them, they must be true.  But then all I end up doing is avoiding them, and therefore, they persist and remain unconscious.  And the coolest part is, they are only true if I choose to believe they are.  Isn’t that spectacular?!  The point of this exercise, for me, was to bring conscious awareness to my thought patterns.

Plot Change:

I am lazy.  I’m not doing anything with my time.  I am not a hard worker.  I am wasting each day.  I am irresponsible.  I am distracting myself with new desires each day.  I am lazy.  I am not going to do anything with my life. I will never earn enough money.  I will always just barely get by.  I don’t have what it takes.  I am lazy.

Plot Change:

I work for what is important to me.  I am fun and funny.  I am enjoying life.  I am happy.  I am joyful.  I am learning.  I am giving myself time to transition.  I just went through a major change.  It’s okay for me to take time to figure things out.  I am figuring things out.  I am creative, resourceful and whole.  I am courageous.  I am being authentic and brave.  I support myself.  I am doing a great job.

This time, the positive thoughts were gaining some traction.  It was easier to come up with this stuff.  Amazing.

Plot Change:

I am lame.  I am scared.  I am lazy.  I’m not good enough.  I’m irresponsible.  I can’t actually do whatever I want.  I don’t have enough money.  I’m not willing to work for what I want.  I’m lazy.  I’m impatient.  I’m being dramatic.  I’m unrealistic.  I want too much too soon.  I can’t have everything that I want when I want it.  I am privileged and entitled.  I expect the world to give me everything I want.  I’m not willing to work for what I want.

Now I can see the core of my negative thought loop.  The theme is becoming clear.  I can start to pick these thoughts out and address their validity.  I can choose to believe them or not.  If I choose to believe them, then I can choose to change my behavior or actions.  If I choose not to believe them, then I can find a proper replacement.  This was pure gold for me.

Plot Change:

I am at peace.  I am doing a great job at becoming my best self, at changing and evolving.  I have so much to offer the world.  I am powerful beyond belief.  I have a very strong point of view.  I love what I have to say.  I can do anything I put my mind to.  I am resourceful.  It is fun to ask for what I need.  It is fun to create an amazing life.  I am having fun experimenting with what works for me.  I love this life I’m living.  I have everything I want and need.  I can create anything.  It is fun to be a deliberate creator. I am creative.

The key here is not to trick myself into believing that I believe something that I don’t actually believe.  I know, it’s a mind fuck.  I’m not just repeating affirmations over and over and trying to force this new thought into my consciousness, kind of.  I mean, I am doing that.  But I’m also looking at the negative thoughts.  I’m giving them a voice and then I’m telling them that I know they are bluffing.  If these thoughts were a person, I’d tell them they were full of shit and I didn’t want to be their friend anymore.  I don’t want to believe that I am lazy.  I don’t want to believe that I’m not good enough.  These thoughts don’t serve me best.  They only lead to negative emotion, and unconscious action, and ultimately, undesirable results.  So I am choosing to think thoughts that serve me better.  Like, I am a badass and can handle anything that comes my way.  Or, I am creative, resourceful and whole.  Also, I have everything that I want and need.  I am doing my best.  I am doing my best.  I am doing my best. ❤️

 

My Soul is the Color Blue

My soul is the color blue.

Not dark blue like the night sky, and not light blue like the day sky.

The color of tropical water blue, with a little bit of green.

It’s the second gradient of blue on the east shore of Lake Tahoe, where the lake bottom is still visible but you cannot stand.

In a box of Crayola crayons, you can find it.

Not a small pack, though.

This color lives in a 96-crayon box.

In my crayon box, just look for the smallest one.

You might have to peek into the little cubbies to find it; hiding, resting until the next time I take it out.

It’s name, as given by Crayola, is Cerulean.

Over the years, I have come to love and accept this name,

perhaps for lack of a suitable substitute,

or perhaps because it starts with a soft ‘c’ and ends in ‘ean’.

The name conjours an image of a small island off mainland Greece,

with all the tans and whites and greens to offset the majesty of the Cerulean Sea.

It sparkles of blue green.

Calls you in to take a drink,

take a dip,

take a dive.

Here lies my soul,

as a bubble that starts at the sea floor.

It dislodges and slowly rises up to find the light.

It bursts and I am nothing and everything floating on the sun-warmed water.

Until another bubble is formed down deep and I start the journey anew.

Contact

The veil is thin out here in the desert.

Since Day 1, I can sense a presence.

I’ve put up protection and invited only beings of light, yet still I ask, “Am I ready to see what they want to show me?”

There is a tinge of fear about seeing the truth.  Because with truth, comes action.

There is basically no other option.  Unless, of course, you want to live in an illuminated dumpster for the rest of this lifetime.

For me, the only option is truth and inevitable release,

change,

death.

And then life presents itself again.

So about the others; I know you are there.

And I say, “Welcome Light Beings”.

And I plead you reveal to me slowly, gently.

Although I sense I can handle much more.

In fact, it’s exciting to experience a reality that transcends all expectation of time.

So I take that back.  Bring it on.

Illuminate the path and I shall follow my light, which is your light, which is our light, which is simply Light.

Magnificent, blinding Love and Light.

Intentions

With this new moon in Libra (October 19), we have the opportunity all month long to solidify and manifest and create anew, particularly with and through partnership.  It’s also a great time to seek and develop balance in all areas of our life.

I heard an amazing podcast on Synchronicity by Noah Lampert where he interviewed Thomas Miller on Accessing and Following your Intuition.  Great podcasts by both these guys, I suggest you give a listen.  Thomas was discussing his rituals around the lunar cycle.  This is something I’ve heard of before, and participated in, albeit infrequently.  Essentially, the new moon is regarded as the beginning of a cycle.  Birth, initiation.  The opportunity to plant the seed and watch it grow.  Typically, I have heard that this cycle culminates with the full moon, two weeks later.  I’ve also heard that the cycle can continue through to the next new moon a month later.  Cycles and cycles and cycles.  I’m sure it’s all correct.  Nonetheless, this podcast epidsode served as my inspiration for this journal entry to set my intentions in concordance with the celestial stew being served up right now.

This month I want to anchor:

  • Unconditional Self-Love ❤️
  • Awareness of Miracles and Synchronicities
  • Meditation daily
  • Yoga for my body and mind
  • Trust and faith in the ‘bigger plan’
  • More practice coaching
  • Study and integrate to Walk the Talk
  • Community connections on the basis of spirituality, empowerment, astrology, entrepreneurship, and dancing
  • Deepen my listening skills: to my own inner voice and to others
  • Nourish my body with healthful food and exercise
  • Forgiveness: release grievances
  • Fun, light-heartedness, fiesta 💃
  • Write, write, write
  • Love, love, love 💕
  • Create and share my voice
  • Attend Celebrate Your Life in Sedona
  • Find the balance between Doing and Being
  • Courage and fearlessness
  • Humility
  • Anchor a new belief: it is okay for me to ask for what I need
  • Attend Gold Rush on Sunday (see RL Grime and Hippie Sabotage)
  • Earn money, sell gear, work events
  • Breath deeply, witness my heartbeat

🙏✨💓