The Disease of Attachment to Time

Monday:
Many animal totems today. And I was (re)united with some soul family last night; with tribe. I haven't yet met them here and I know they came at the perfect time. I so wish I could write a novel about my every experience, and am in moments, releasing the burden of knowing that I will not be able to make any of this nearly as potent as it is in the sensory experience.

Wide-circing Heron: Patience and grace

Tuesday:
I am writing poetry and notes mostly in a journal now and on pads of paper, rather than full essays. I am turning inwards and then vacillate to turning outwards, and both seem to be creating an expense of energy. Recognizing the need for other creative outlets and last night felt a severe lack that I don't play an instrument. Singing, though. This is just sort of journal feeling rather than for an audience ...

September, "a time of transition", and I've never felt everything that I do so acutely. This morning I moved into surrender. I felt a buzzing in my pineal gland and it was something I've never experienced before. Other things going on, too. Trying to write on here every day to stay consistent with a ritual but this is obviously more journal-feeling.

Oh, I do have something for the collective: If it's from your heart, even if it doesn't make you money, you should do it. You don't have the time not to. Expansion will happen. I haven't gotten to the point where I'm comfortable with the Big Expansions in embodiment, though. I will say that my brain actually sort of aches with "growing pains". I can feel it happening. This will obviously sound what society likes to call "nuts" to those who have not experienced this. Okay with it except for the fact that it is sadly such a construct, and keeps so many contained to attempted normalcy, which the earth is desperately attempting to reverse. It's happening, too. Tribes are reuniting. Grateful.

Also, from an experience I had this morning: surrender brings an actual floating sensation if there's a ritual guiding you into it. At least, it did for me. It still feels very hard to not be focusing on all the "how will this look/feel/what will I do?" pieces (future-oriented) but I was able to let go a little bit more from that while in this floating space.

Resistance // Free Flow

There gets to be this point when talking to others stop helping. Because all we are trying to do, at the core, is take ourselves away from our pain. Come from wherever it does, it is unavoidable. And what I'm learning is that the more we run from it, the more we try to avoid it, the more it persists. I've connected with Carl Jung's quote, "What you resist persists" since I first heard it a few years back, but now it takes on new meaning. I have gotten close to the end of resistance, at least in this phase. I can't preemptively conquer pain. Can anyone conquer pain, at all? I feel that in actuality, it doesn't stop. It doesn't go away -- it just changes form and, in the same breath, neither does joy go away but simply change form. It depends on what we feel more. I understand that this feeling is a choice we make, because we do, ultimately have the ability to choose, but based on our core strength, the level of ease of difficulty in choosing becomes so varied. If heavily conditioned to fear and run from what makes us uncomfortable (via distraction methods in their myriad forms), perhaps the only way to wake up from this illusion is by intense, full experience. Experience that shakes us out of the illusion that we can avoid what we don't want and choose what we do, as if life is some emotion buffet -- pick what looks delicious, bypass what doesn't -- and brings us into the reality that we are here for just that: to experience all of it in service of growth, of collective growth, of collective planetary growth so that all beings may evolve and thrive. Feeling into our personal experiences, from the sublime and orgasmic to the horrifying and terror-inducing, is the very thing that might allow this evolution to carry on -- that might allow each of us to move through those sentient experiences of the latter, move through them into the joy that resides on the other side. I've experienced this in my life in small doses, and have been assured by those who have gotten the big doses that there is abundant light on the other side of these horrendous & necessary experiences. I must trust this for it is this trust, this faith, that will carry me, and this whole sensory-experiencing package that houses within it the same light that is of all things through to the other side.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

A Knowing of Peace

This is what I know in the deepest parts of my being. There are some things that simply cannot be authentically felt until they are felt. And thus, they cannot be processed and integrated -- and at some point, written about -- until then. This is what I would like my mind to come to, to find rest within: no amount of preparing can prepare me, or anyone, for the felt sense of an actual experience.

I believe that one can build strength and core, and resource support, in between the waves. That this is the time to seek your buoys -- during the calmer stillness between waves. And when the waves come, one must ride them out. This is when the strength and core and support are necessary -- in moving through the wave. And on the other side, I would imagine there's more of all of those waiting in offering, waiting for gathering, for integration, waiting to offer hold, care, space. I am grateful for this knowing.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Feelin' the Bern of the Independent Party ...

Ok. So. If Bernie Sanders were to run on the Independent Party ticket, he would not win, this time around. BUT, a seed planted long ago in the Grassroots movement for the Independent Party but not tended to and water would begin to bloom -- people would realize its need for cultivation, and as is the way with humans who are waking up, a collective watering would occur. And with this water, as with all things that begin, something will grow. Slowly at first, and as the collective awakening of this planet occurs, the Independent Party would start to show signs of actual life. Actual life in that something might happen with it.  And with that, the dismantling we've all imagined might start to occur. Real. Change. A dismantling to the system that we so need to break down if forward movement will ever occur.



A social activist friend of mine who has spent years studying systems of power has a feeling that Bernie Sanders is simply aiming for Secretary of State or a similar, lateral position of that sort. Perhaps Bernie does believe he can win Presidency. Perhaps he believes he can't. But the thing is, if he wins on the Democratic Party ticket, the wheel just continues to rotate back and forth, back and forth.



This message of the wheel is of the exact same sentiment that is so powerfully portrayed in Khaleesi's chill-inducing statement from Game of Thrones, Season Five: "I'm not going to stop the wheel. I'm going to break the wheel." I have no doubt that this is a direct message to our current society in a shifting paradigm. Breaking the wheel is the only way for the beginning of an actual breakdown -- a systemic breakdown -- to occur. The two-party system, as anyone who is paying even the slightest bit of attention knows, is just a game. Back and forth -- families buying elections. One party in power and the *other* party stopping "them" from achieving any real change, then the other in power and the same thing happens. We're tricked into believing we're making actual headway with the women's right to vote (first Caucasian/White women, then Native American women, then Asian American women, then African-American women), then the Civil Rights Movement ... on into legalizing marijuana in certain states and now marriage equality. These are all HUMAN RIGHTS. No one should have the ability to make them or take them away. The government spoon feeds us what we want years after we've hungered for it so much that we're almost numb with starvation, and then finally dumps whatever it is this time around in our starved mouths so that we rejoice and celebrate this so-called "victory" like it's actually been won. Like we didn't deserve to EAT, but now we are getting to so we should be thankful. The thing is, we won all this stuff a long time ago. We won it through our very existence. It's just been taken away from us. And the rate at which these human rights are being returned to us -- this pace at which we're allotted our fill is too slow, yet we celebrate these "victories" like they're something. Like we're actually winning, as if it's a game that can be won. This is the thing: it's always two steps forward, one step back; one step forward, two steps back. "Progress" moves at the rate that the wheel does, and since it's a wheel, with the same two parties rotating it back and forth, there is no actual effective movement at any sort of pace that is necessary. An Independent Party movement would change all of this.



Yes, the Independent Party splits the Democratic vote. But even if a Republican did win the election, perhaps things would have to get that bad for more people to wake up and build on the Independent Party movement. Perhaps things have to get even darker for there to be a real shift to occur. This is how it works, right? Fuck the truth of this because that shit is painful, but if there's going to be a collective movement forward, things need to get dark. Because it's only then that people move towards the torches others have lit, and then light their own with the fire that burns there ... maybe even berns.



*** 



Oh, and one other thing: Nothing changes if you check out. You might get to live a quiet life on a farm somewhere, or go eat a bunch of drugs at festivals and shows year after year and pretend the outside world doesn't exist, or go to your 9-5 and acquiesce to the rat race until you're burned out and wondering where your whole life went, but what's the point in that if there's no future for your family, your friends, your relations, the plants and animals around us ... and if you want to get really far out, no future for you in a future life (if you can get down with the reincarnation/regeneration thing)?

The point is, you can't check out. You're making a difference regardless of what you do -- you're either harming or healing. That's the way it is right now -- you signed up for it by being alive.

Healing the branches, ignoring the roots: The Problem with (Some) Allopathic Meds

I am realizing, in action, the extent of the way allopathic medications mess with our natural body systems. If there is trauma to be processed, the body will release it through various methods, one of which is through the nervous system. I have witnessed my nervous system release through shaking, chills, and when rapidly flowing from me, the feeling of electricity leaving through my hands, feet, face ... You may have experienced it as well after holding in trauma in the form of pain via fear/anger/sorrow -- if so you know it's quite a thing to behold. Our bodies know what to do, when aligned. The first time I settled into nervous system grounding work with a psychosomatic/spiritual healer, my body immediately started to release as she made contact with my feet, knees, adrenal glands, shoulders, then a cranial-sacral hold. It release all this old stored trauma through my feet, working to clear my lower energy body, and also through my hands, leaving them in a unique mudra as the electric feeling rendered them shaped. 

When we take allopathic medications -- and specifically I'll refer to anti-anxiety pills (the ones that provide a temporary high of some sort in the short term, but end up exacerbating the experience of anxiety later) -- we sever the mind-body connection of releasing trauma. * Our thoughts don't necessarily slow down (and this is especially true, I would guess, if one's experience of trauma -- and the pace of one's thoughts -- is an especially heightened one), and what's healthy is for the body to release this trauma through the nervous system. Anti-anxiety meds (and those of the "pain killer" variety) trick our bodies into numbness. But it's merely a delay. Since our thoughts and what would be the residual release (on multiple levels) don't stop (even if they seem to slow down), the experience of the held trauma stays, and actually compiles upon itself. So we end up with more to release later. Our minds may go into overdrive without our body's response of release what must be release for the healing process to be underway. So when the meds do wear off, the body has even more it needs to handle and can even go into shock. This ... is a problem. It is a systemic problem, so how do we heal it? Cleanse from the meds ... I'm the last person to say something is easier done than said. But I also know that the discomfort is worth the eventual peace that comes from physiological alignment. This is one piece of alignment, but all the pieces hinge on one another.

* This understanding is based completely on my own experiencing, and what is channeled through it.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Pushing Forward: The Aliveness of Cycle

Preface: I am making space for what is alive within me to further develop by beginning to sit with it. As I mentioned in my last post, though, getting some of it out, here, relieves weight while simultaneously allowing me to contribute something that feels positive (even from within what generally feels like a helpless state). Perhaps helplessness can be reframed and reconstructed into the understanding of freedom. My sister Hope told me today, when I asked her in tears what we have control over, after a pause, "Our reactions". So, this is not helplessness. Events that create pain will come. And in them, freedom, for we have a choice. I feel somewhat sure that I will write more on suffering later. I know that my words, here, now, can aid in hopefulness and not helplessness for myself and for those who read them. They help me in finding and grounding my power so as to stop wielding it in ways that are destructive to myself and to others. (Of course realizing that I inflict confusion and pain to the extent that I have been experiencing confusion and have been hurting. This only makes sense, and can be just as it is in its truth, in its stillness in what has been. It can sit.



To cultivate my power in integrating an experience of chaos -- because it is a lot to bear in this moment, I will put the fruits of what I am picking -- that is, what becomes more ripe all the time, here on the page. (For this trick, I will attempt to transform fruit into the linear!)

It is a muggy night in mid-August, dense with the underlying buzz of all that is,
and I am filling space held for me with a verbal stream-of-consciousness. More
space appears within that which already is. I've come upon something that feels
like a tool in encouraging the ever-opening of the bud of my being, of
collective being. I came into this: a direct correlation between sustainability/science (science being
human-studied and concocted and thus, limited, systems of measurement); spirituality; and social justice/equality. (The way in which they work in
conjunction, in which the three parts form three even spokes on a rotating
wheel means that they're co-dependent on one another for the forward
movement of the wheel, and that all three need to be in alignment to fill
their part. This also means that you can find your way into the three-part
system via any of the three concepts and rotate your understanding through them
going in any direction.)

Beginning
with sustainability and environmental preservation (often gauged and measured
through systems of science, which may perhaps be the easiest for humans to
touch since there is tangibility here), we have to incorporate three parts in
our actions; in the West, most of us have these in-conjunct words imprinted in
our memories from our days of standardized early education but rarely actually
implement, thus manifesting a breakdown and even pointlessness of the entire
system: Reduce. Reuse. Recycle. What I'm saying, basically, is fuck the label
of "the green movement" if all it's doing is encouraging trendy
reusable bags at the grocery store and can deposits (which is problematic of
course in its own right because of the introduction of money into the equation,
but makes sense in a still-operational paradigm for the purposes of creating an
incentive for said can-donator. The problem is, though, if a monetary can
return is taken out of the equation, the masses "forget" to recycle,
which shows the systemic and problematic reliance on money to elicit action).
First, reducing the amount of things we have, reusing what has
already been produced so as not to perpetuate the system's habit (and need for
its sustained existence) to create more things -- so that instead, we are fully
utilizing the physical things we have to their fullest potential (i.e. that
which is already available to us), and recycling what we can so as to
slow down our inherently destructive habits of dumping our waste into the
earth's water and soil. [Watch even a few minutes of
this if you'd like a Culture-of-Consumerism 101 rundown of the
way the act of persistent consumption (in terms of materials goods, but
this concept is also of course relevant to what we put into our bodies) works
to create and perpetuate a sick society.] If more ways of putting any of these
elements of this trifecta of sustainability into action is not clear, I also
suggest this: if you have a toaster that works in a single family
home, don't buy a new one just because it's shinier and has more slots so you
can toast more shit simultaneously. Here's another: if you have more than one
pair of snow boots, and especially if you have a pair of snow boots
and you don't live in an area that ever gets snow, please do not buy
anymore snow boots. The same goes for shoes, in general. I would
actually go so far as to say that if you have more than a couple pairs of shoes
and only one pair of feet, you probably need to stop buying
shoes, especially if those shoes are made by small children whose
names you can't pronounce in factories located in countries you've never
been, because you are creating a problem much larger than the size of the
carbon footprints collectively created by all those pairs of shoes that sit
unworn in your closet because, as my assumption goes, you only really
have the ability to wear one of those pairs of shoes at a time. And, if you're
still located in the micro-space, here's this little nugget: I know of guys
with whom I went to high school who have hundreds of pairs of sneakers in their
closets. And what's hiding underneath all the sneakers in those closets is the
truth that these guys haven't changed much since we were in high school.
Conformity was never cool -- not even when we thought it was in high
school. What good are all the other pairs going unworn in your
closet, especially when there are children without shoes all over the
world? (Many of them are the very children who hand-sewed that swoosh
that's shaped just perfectly to cushion your ego within its shiny,
crescent form.) 

We
are not contributing to a thriving and just living system on this planet if we
stand on the flimsy, bolstered statement that we're providing work for
others -- this is outsourcing, and, as a concept, it is harmful because
everything that we need can truly be found where we are; we have just become
disconnected from the knowing of how to access it. The same goes for our
internal processes, right? When we outsource, we are perpetuating a system of
dangerous interdependency that continues to poison everything with its
power and, simultaneously, it gives our egos more reasons to believe that
because of a societally-dictated status, we are "better" or of
more importance in some way than another person who doesn't have every
color and style of say, a Nike shoe; this then continues to separate us,
thus perpetuating conflict between one another (on micro and macro scales, both
internally and externally; as within, so without). So, this
broken system to which we are contributing reaches from deep within our
beings from which we are so disconnected, all the way out to the
electric-rainbow-colored, shoe-filled closets we identify with, and then far
beyond it, all the way to the farthest-reaching atmospheric point of the punctured
ozone layer of the only home planet we have. But here's the thing: if you don't
care about that; about well being, about all your relations; about
intersectionality and healing; about Earth, and the forests and streams and the
very breath that nature allows us to have ... if none of that matters to you,
then this whole thing breaks down. It breaks down right now.

If
this is breaking down, here comes the part where we rebuild: YOU MATTER,
and are making a difference, regardless of what you do: you're either harming,
or you're helping. So here's a secret I have come to learn: caring fills your
cup. The evolution of not only our wellbeing but our
livelihood, our children's livelihood, and our the current flora and fauna kin
that grow and thrive on the planet are dependent on it, ... and even your
shoes -- that is, the carbon footprint that they, along with the beings whose
feet occupy them, create. And I know you care about that. I know that because
about all these dependent factor because if you didn't care about them, you
wouldn't be here. So I'm going to keep going -- and so are you. Remember,
you're making a difference regardless of what you do -- you're either harming
or helping.

Onward.
ALL three of these elementary school-instilled R's must be utilized for
there to be a change. And here's where it starts to flow.

It
is in reducing that is built the window to the next part of what will
allow our evolutionary expansion: and that is our spiritual consciousness.
Before half of you check out here, I'll be more clear: I'm not talking about
religion, and I'm not talking about wearing a screen
printed tank top with a merkaba on it because it's trendy, or acid and
unicorns and music festivals, unless it's all of those things, integrated, on
the spiritual path that's carried you from darkness into light and then takes
you back into darkness sometimes, and love is your religion. That would be the
grounded truth of spirituality, and through all of it you're beginning to see
that love is truly the only religion that there is. That you're reading is the
proof that you care; proof that comes through in the fact of the very truth
that you exist. There is a tangible way through this, and it wraps up with the
human part -- the social part -- that follows. So, however you identify in
terms of spirituality or non-spirituality; wherever you fit on the non-linear
belief spectrum, from staunch Atheist with no "belief system"
whatsoever to a card-carrying Believer in an Omnipotent Diety, to the simple
belief in karma and cosmic force, of ebb and flow, of the power of
manifestation and attraction, stay with me here. Our ways of being and
experiencing and relating to all that is -- to ourselves, to the ground
beneath our feet, to the air we breathe, to our ability to acquire what sustains
what is within and give back what sustains what is without -- might depend
upon it. If this next part seeps in -- even in the most minuscule way, it is
something. Within all of us there are messages for others, for us to impart to
them, and there are also messages from other for us. These messages have the
power to bring others into awakening or further their already-trodden journeys
on that path. There are messages that come through in actually words and
writing and through other people, and there are also messages that come through
via encounters with animals (as each holds specific totem messages) and in
situations all around us all the time. [When we begin to relinquish control a
bit, when we let go of the plan and asking for signs from another person or
from the natural world, and then really look for the sign we've asked for, and
then follow that sign -- embodied within our highest selves, rather than living
within the indoctrinated fear-based model in which many of us have been raised
-- we get to the best place there is for us.] We realize the world and broader
Universe speaks to us in the language of nature, and so we pay more attention.

When
we have less things because we have been reducing the amount
of material goods around us (and are reusing what we already
have so as to stop contributing to the damaging and stagnating society of
consumerism), we have less distractions to entice what yearns for
comfortability within us, less to distract from the signs around us coming from
the messengers' signs from the spirit world ... so what do we instead of
entertain ourselves with all those things that kept us so disconnected
before? We sit with ourselves more. We connect. We recognize the human-run
cycles that keep us apart and start to instead embrace the natural cycles that
bring us together. So, we connect with ourselves, one other, and the natural
world around us just a little bit more. And because of this, we move into an
innate need to deepen our connections with one other more
because our consciousness grows when we are sharing thoughts, ideas, and
physical and energetic space (whether that be with a roommate, someone you
haven't yet talked with standing behind you in line at the market, our plant
friends that we bring into our homes to contribute to the good health that
thrives there, the barista concocting your drink, the cat that finds its way
into your garden, the person on the other end of the telephone line -- a
"wrong number", or lifelong friend), and we begin to notice the mysterious
and purposeful buzz around us more -- the kind that comes from deep within us
and is met from far, far outside of us. We realize that there is no difference,
and that we are all here together, experiencing this buzz. And we become
peaceful. Our internal and external periphery expands. We've reduced what's
piled up around us, and have a clear path to walk amidst all the stuff ... and
there's way more life at the other end of that pathway. These connections
begin to affect us. They affect us on a deeper level than anything we can
access from watching our favorite character on TV (who is or was an actual
human being out there -- who is or were living their life while you watch
something that was recorded while that person acted in a role other than which
they typically play; a part other than themselves. While this can be
entertaining and there of course valuable things on TV, but this is the
permeating truth.) True connection; touch; a knowing look or passing grin; a
shared witnessing of an event, no matter its stature; an understanding of an
experience had together -- they all begin to take effect. They affect us
psychologically, physiologically, cellularly. And then we realize that not
having those experiences begins to feel like not living. It
begins to feel like not enough ... and that's okay. If you're feeling this, it's a good thing. It means you're alive. It is supposed to
feel this way. This is what living is. You are not alone, and
you're starting to realize this. Because it's through this process that we connect
with our true nature. Deep joy, deep sorrow. We are alone. We return to that.
But, then -- others have these experiences, too! So we are not alone. We
remember we are held, we are okay ... we remember that this is
okay. Alone, not alone. Not alone, alone. It's all to be experienced. There's
no difference in the state of aloneness or not aloneness, and we exist in that,
together. Joy, sorrow. We realize that the two grow simultaneously. We connect
with the human experience, and our aliveness. Through reducing, we have less to
keep us zoned out, distracted from our aliveness. And in touching our
aliveness, we touch all aliveness -- which is everything. We live within
a pulsing, cycling, universe of aliveness, for everything exists within a
cycle, and that cycle does not end -- it is circular; a growing sphere, out
around us, expanding just as all things do to the edges of our universe, and it
is. That cycle is alive. The cycle, of course includes death (and regeneration
or rebirth), represented in the natural world in the prevalence of the seasons,
and in its cycling nature, it is pushing forward -- it is in being. When
we come to terms with this aliveness, we recognize that we are no more and no
less important than any other being. Truthfully, if one were to actually
zoom out far enough away from Earth (we've all seen those videos denoting
our smallness), if you get far enough away and out into the vast depths
of the surrounding cosmos, everything here on this planet becomes, at some
point, the same size. If we can get far enough out in our understanding (while
going far enough inside ourselves), I believe we can embody this knowing.
Perhaps this aids in healing. Because of course, and often to our detriment,
the variable in the human experience is the processing mind -- attachment
through ego -- which brings us to really doubt and discredit the fact that we
are small. We believe that because we process and think and exist (in the ways
we choose to create and destroy, especially) in different ways than other
beings, other species, that we are larger or more important or that our lives
matter more. And it simply isn't so.
My point here, is that when we detach from all that we are accustomed to
believe matters (and most of those things -- leading to even the way we relate
with one another and our allegiance to those who tell us what to do, show us
where we should build our houses, provide us with a human-concocted notion of
what to believe -- are programmed into us by those in power in order to keep us
in our comfort zones, in our fear, and therefore in order and "under
control" so as to perpetuate the existence of "power" for a
select few) we recognize that we are as infinite as the universe around us, and
growing in our vastness all the time in the same way. And that is what pushes
everything forward and up: this aligned growth. As large as the universe is
around us, it is also as large and vast within us, within each living thing,
each cell, each microorganism. The conscious cognizance of this explains the potency
of the human experience: we feel our joy and our pain on the same scale as our
own unique spectrum of perception of this vastness. This holds for us the
deepest and most expansive joy and sorrow, simultaneously. And that is the
beauty of being human. We experience this in ways that most other species do
not. When we start talking about space, things get pretty far out (that's
the nature of it, right?), so to come back and ground down around this felt
sense of spirituality, or whatever term for connection to ourselves and
all that is around and within us we like to use, here is this: when we
recognize our interconnectedness on this basic level and recognize it in
its simultaneous simplicity and complexity, we recognize that we are
all the same. Because we are all experiencing. That we are another's
experience, and our own experience, and therefore we are experience
experiencing itself. We recognize that we experience differently, and we also
experience the same. Our joy and our pain are one. It is through THIS
recognition that we come upon the third part of the triad that creates positive
change ... and that is social justice.

When
we realize our shared experience with all beings, we stop bringing harm to
other beings -- and this includes other humans. It simply becomes
impossible to consciously do while feeling okay about it. We begin to recognize
that what we harm in others we harm in ourselves. We deepen our wounds, our
trauma, our sorrow, by harming what we perceive to be another. On the flip
side, the joy and positivity that we encourage in others, we encourage in
ourselves. We remind ourselves through these actions. Even if this
encouragement in another is to keep going -- we encourage because we hope that
others will encourage us to do the same. Perhaps, even, we become our own best
and strongest support when we lift up others. We build core. We begin to thrive
together, to help one another to live a best life that is possible. We begin to
see physical manifestation as a gift because we get to experience the potent,
sensory texture of it. We feel the goodness of joy and the goodness that comes
from the processing and releasing of pain. When we clear it out, more joy can
flood in. It is a tangible expression of nature, like any other: energy moves,
and new energy takes its place. It is the nature of the cycle. Through our
growing recognition of a shared experience with all beings regardless of how we
look (two eyes and ears, a beating heart, leaves growing from limbs, fur or
scales protecting flesh, words spoken in the same or different sounds, sounds
made in audible or inaudible tones) we don't need to steal personal power from
other beings because we have our own. We begin to recognize that the world can
function on a system of sharing. That we will find what we need; that we will
be provided for. We learn to recognize our gifts and just as each cell, each
organism, each being is slightly varied in makeup from the next, we're the same
in that we all have one thing fundamentally in common: we have unique and
authentic gifts, offerings, abilities to service. Through a system of sharing,
space is created in which we can learn our own unique gifts and can creatively
bring forth to the world so as to ensure its continued survival -- all
continued survival. We trade what we learn we are able to create, to manifest,
of our own personal and unique gifts and we no longer take or steal others',
for there is no point in this. We aren't bombarded by the need to HAVE, which
is what the outcome of the habit of reduction of things that distract us from
these truths (along with reusing and recycling, since many things of course
already exist here on our planet) has instilled within us. We continue the
perpetuation of aliveness via the cycles around us and within us, and this
returns us to the promise of a sustained environmental culture. Sustainment so
as to continue cycles here. The truth is that, in physicality, this planet, the
one we call Earth, one day, will be all that remains of itself. But these three
pieces that construct the promise of positive evolution and fluid, non-harming,
forward movement, if embodied and implemented, ensure that aliveness will
continue in its highest form -- and that essence will carry on within all.

So,
how do we begin to integrate this? How do we move forward in effective ways, and
how do we move into our sacred responsibility to this planet, to each other,
and to ourselves, carrying along with us both grace and ease? We find a
teacher. We recognize that we, ourselves, have much to teach from our knowing
of what is possible but perhaps, we have even more to learn. We must trust that
there are organizations that integrate all
three of these principles; we trust that these are organizations bringing
these principles to the world and in our merging with these organizations we
feel less alone and become more impactful as human beings. Trust that there are
teachers out there and trust that once you are ready your teacher will appear.
Most of us will have many teachers over the course of our lifetimes and some of
them may be involved with these organizations. Look to teachers who are no
longer with us whose words permeate pages we can find in bookstores; look to
teachers who are still with us but whom you may never meet in the flesh –
teachers like Joanna Macy, Jane Goodall, Pema Chödrön,
Deepak Chopra. Look into organizations like the Pachamama Alliance; go to
local food co-ops; volunteer at places where people are writing poetry, tending
gardens, chanting mantras, feeding the poor, creating music, planting seeds,
and learning and playing together. The connections generated in places such as
these – conversations like the ones centering
around the topics highlighted in this piece – are what will allow our planet to continue to move forward; and you will be aiding in that collective
movement.

Gratitude.

May all beings be at peace. Aho.

Here

I have a feeling that writing will be my salvation. I have not built a practice up until now except for writing, which, while the pen has fallen out of my hand for long lengths of time -- those times which I would claim I was "uninspired" or had what I would now describe as a Westerners' approach to procrastination which we label as writers' block if we fancy ourselves writers (I'm pretty sure the latter doesn't actually exist, and that I love that I just used the term "fancy ourselves"). Finding turbulence amidst the flow certainly does exist, of course, and what is referred to as "writer's block" is found in that turbulence, but I would say that it's only the name of a concept that exists in Westerners' minds due to inability to access creative because of suppression or distraction or numbing methods. This is not our fault. I feel angry, so angry at this system of programming that we're subject to. I look into the eyes of someone I want to save and recognize I cannot save them -- that we can only save ourselves, but it hits me like a punch to the gut how excruciatingly difficult this society has made that process for those who fall prey to it. I want to be angry at those of us who do, but I know, really that this is not where the blame can go. I know the true nature of people, and that is that we are good. I know that we are brought to fear, and this makes us blame and steal and kill and do others wrong, but this is not our true nature.

I think about the last few months and how hard they've felt for me and how much and how often I've been reaching out for support. Sometimes I find what I'm looking for and sometimes not (the latter is when I'm forced to reach deep within myself to find something that will save me, even if just for a few moments), but I was thinking tonight about how difficult it must have been for those people who were waking up long before ANYONE in their time was, or at least before they had any sort of means to reach (on the physical plane) others who may have been. I hope that the universal powers that are led those people to peace in some form or another. We hear about Plato, about Aristotle, about Confucius. These are the people who made discoveries that affected human life on a broad scale; these are people who strung together words to create poignant messages in speech, who found meaning in the tangible and intangible and brought these understandings into the light where they could be seen more broadly. These are the people we know about. I would like to honor them; they are honored by many. And I would like to honor, also, the people who were waking up and who were not noticed. The ones who didn't have the means to get their messages heard, or who were silenced or suppressed and who eventually left their bodies in vain, their varying thoughts and ideas and understandings kept tucked into the nooks of their own fruitful minds and hearts. I hope that they surrendered in their last moments of breath to whatever demise they came to. Perhaps they caught a glimpse at eternity, at the nature of existence; perhaps, if reincarnation does indeed exist and a soul's essence is recycled again in physical form, these people knew that to be true in those last moments, and they were at peace. I hope so. (Of course we have heard the stories of how Plato was silenced via poison in his ear, of how many of these great artists, philosophers, and explorers of whose names we know were suppressed and silenced by the fear made manifest in those so afraid to lose their power, those who knew only the weight of their own egos.) While I feel alone often, I am able to talk with my friends who are also waking up about their experiences in their aloneness. We share this bitter, sharp experience, and while it looks as different on each of us as our own fingerprints, as the cells that make up our strands of our hair, as the depth and variety of ink droplets that form the tattoos with which we adorn ourselves, as the ways our toenails our shaped -- the experience is, in its essence the same, just as these things that make up our bodies are. And so we know that we are not alone. I, somehow, can access gratitude through this understanding. As Penelope said, too -- give it up to nature, for there is nothing nature hasn't seen, from the most sublime moments of existence to the most tragic. Nature has seen it all. The earth has held all of it, and us with it.

For how scared I often am in these days, I know I am not the only one who is scared. We are scared for different reasons. Even if your fear is macro, and simply a pervasive and powerful fear because of your clarity around the state of the world and the separateness and confusion within humans, and what is created out of this -- that fear is big. I used the word "simply", but it's not because this fear is simple. It is complex, and interwoven into our very DNA. It is tangled. We feel this fear in our bodies, because it is a part of us. How do we untangle it? And if your fear is that, along with your own personal micro fears around the people you love (and even cling to) most in this world, I am with you. I am with you because you are with me, and this must be, because it's the only way we will make it through. Well the visceral experience of this fear is not something I would wish on anyone, perhaps it is what drives people to find their practice. Perhaps, if we can find our way out of the crippling clutch of its stagnancy, we can find what will save us. Because the sense of peace when we notice the fear, allow it to be, and don't scramble to escape from it ... well, it's what peace is. I've found moments of that, even today. Moments. Moments are something. Moments is how humans assign a construct to a period of time, but what is time anyway. Maybe we can stretch moments. Maybe that's a big part of what this experience is about: allowing moments to be what we need them to be -- allowing them, or even gently pushing them (with practice) to be the exact thing that we need them to be so as to suffer less. If our minds are what experiences suffering, can't our minds also manipulate moments? I'd like to think so. I hope so. I pray that this is so, because a life of suffering would be a long life, and that's certainly where something that could be beautiful if we allow it to be (while immersing ourselves and removing ourselves from whatever is, based on the needs of our health and wellness) becomes more of a perceived curse than a blessing. This is why we practice. I am learning.

I remembered another practice: breath. The breath. The breath. Here, here it is. Steady breath. In, and out. Accept and release. Know and let go. Remember and forget.

I talked to Penelope tonight for the first time since I was in Colorado, and it brought me peace even a bit more. She spoke to her own experience in facing what death is, and a story that she had shared with me in our work together when I was back there. She used to look at babies'  faces and see the face of death -- she would see the baby age and die. It must have been horrifying to see this. (I will mention here that another healer I went to in Boulder had a grieving process around his little girl, who was/is very much alive -- he grieved that one day she will die. This is what a preemptive process to the start of healing is: holding this truth. Wow.) And Penelope reminded me of this very real and very powerful message: the human mind cannot process death. Death is too large, too vast, too mysterious. Try as our human minds might, we cannot. It's easier for someone to say "everybody dies. We're all going to die." and I think that some people who say that have truly faced it, and others are bypassing because we all know this of course to be true in our minds. But I believe that most, in this day and age, have not actually processed and grieved and known this to be true. They haven't hung out with this truth, haven't sat with it, haven't breathed it in. And this is my process now. This is the start of my journey. It is my awakening. I am no longer spiritually bypassing -- the spiritual path is not trendy. This is not trendy. And I am understanding that for those who are on it, for those who perhaps have been chosen for it -- we don't care. I no longer care what is trendy. There is so much more. I don't have the space to care, at least not right now, because I haven't reconciled everything else that is. Everything else takes up all the space I have. I'm at capacity, yet here I am writing. Practicing. Building capacity. Wow -- I have said that term before, and it was over a year ago. That was some layers ago. Penelope spoke to something I am experiencing on a consistent basis now, and that is this: even when you think you have found peace one day, the next you fall apart. It's the nature of being. (And it is breath.) In relating to my previous post, I am remembering now the words that this is why we practice. So we are better equipped to find resiliency. Well, this is why I am writing. This is my practice. This, and breath, and prayer. I can develop other practices, but writing is perhaps the strongest, the one I've always felt the most called to, and is perhaps the most calming to me, even in his inability to fully capture an experience. Words fall so short, yet in practice I can strive to expand. [I actually may be too far out for meditation right now, which is why yoga does feel helpful when I force my bones to move into asana, and I bring my breath to match the movement. Actual yoga -- not the "yoga" movements so many Westerners occupy. True yoga, when I find it, is helpful, though not as consistently pulling as writing is for me.] While I am very much using my thinking mind to write these words, I am also using this as a tool as to get these thoughts out of my head and onto the fabric. To make them texturized. To process further. So here they are, out of my head. Only a small, small fragment of the many thoughts and knowings and beliefs and connections going on in my thinking mind, but a small fragment is better here than in my mind. Better here, where it might help someone else to make a connection that helps them to aid in their healing. Better here, where the physicality of these thoughts relieves even the smallest bit of pressure in my thinking-mind and allows me to aid in my own process of healing as well. Turning away from words into the beingness of empty space, though, is something writing does not embody, due to its very nature of being constructed of words. I have found liminal space a few times, though not since this experience has become more acute. Paradoxically, writing slows down the words in my head. What matters are the words right here, right now. Free write. Breathe. Don't give any shits about the trendiness of what is on the page. Here it is.

Glimpses of Light in a Dark Well

My fear feels overwhelming to me now. I've been recommended to say, to affirm to myself, that instead of repeating that sort of thing (as if I am chanting it into construct), to say I am strong - I am able - I am wise -- asserting and affirming my own power that is within. To not give it that power away. I have given so much power away for so much of my life to those who are willing to take it. To those not even of the awareness that they are. I have been that person, too. I have stolen others' power -- those whose power felt stronger than my own.

I have been coming to the realization more and more of the depth of my family members' societal programming. This is not their fault. I feel anger towards society for weaving this thick web in the minds of the people I love in this world. Of weaving it into so many people's minds. It is so thick that there isn't even space for new information to enter. The thing that pervades this, that feels like this growing web of darkness that I can physically feel within my mind is the darkness of my deepest fears coming up, and the sense-making of all of it in terms of the karmic scheme of things. Even that this is my 29th post and I am 29 (almost exactly 29 1/2 -- it is said that Saturn returns at just about 29 1/2 years) is a trip to me. I feeling hesitant to write much here because of my deep distrust in the "powers that be" in terms of our society and knowing that this account is linked to my email. I would like to start a new blog soon under an anonymous name. I see so clearly the dysfunction of our society, how sick everything and everyone (especially here, in this culture) is. The way that our society perpetuates the "rat race" so as to keep everyone from being disconnected from truth and their own personal power. For those "powers that be" have no power if its citizens come into their own strength, their own personal power.

It feels close to impossible -- as close to something as another thing can get -- to recreate my experience, even just today, via words. Perhaps I can say it is impossible to fully describe it, because it is a comfort. We can never fully describe our experience because language simply falls short. But the language of experience speaks volumes, and I know that when others know deep pain or abundant joy, that the sharing of this comes closer to allowing us to know one another than any words -- a human construct -- could ever allow us to come. I know that I outlined some key points as to my day yesterday to some so deeply cherished, supportive friends yesterday. I continue to label it "absurd" that through this experience of having what I consider to be visions, I still want to write everything down, to record it all. It is what I consider the Writer within me. And I know that it is also my inner Healer (Penelope would often describe this experience, even in those early months of this year, as "birth of a healer" -- she knew it.) Or perhaps this desire to share my experience comes from the scared, alone little girl in me -- I want to comfort her in ways that she can't find now, and she -- I -- have always been writing. (I just often did not know how.) This little girl is still within me -- she is a part of me, just as everything is -- and she is there just in the way that there is a little one within each of us in need of some form (and varying levels) of healing. See, the way I just wrote that sentence? That is my inner Teacher. I am trying to teach others what I have come to know, even throughout this. How am I doing that? It's because these figures are within me. And also, the one desiring to record all of this is the frightened Experiencing-Human I am embodying right now, the one grasping and desperately trying to control, the one I feel in such need of others to witness. To be able to more fully understand. But I know that my Healer wants others who are suffering to know that someone out here understands, has been in this dark well. I am still in it. I can say that I'm not in it, and it can feel true for a moment, but if I am being honest, my day-to-day experience exists in this well. What is underneath this well, or around it, or below it? It is held by something. If these things that would elicit the pain that I am so terrified to experience come to pass, I know the well will get even darker. I wrote two days ago about what we do to remove ourselves from pain, what we do to avoid it, even preemptively. Last night I sat and looked into the darkness of this room and found some comfort in it. Granted, I had taken some Klonopin for relief (which it did offer, especially in terms of physiological systems) and some Ambien for sleep. I felt that I needed rest, and so I gave in. I am not sleeping without Ambien, currently. And last night, I was scared to go to sleep because I was scared of what might come in dreamtime. I have heard of people who pass on visiting their loved ones in dreams. I was scared this would happen last night. I am also scared to name who that is; my current deepest fear, and perhaps one that I hadn't been able to even touch before wading through what I thought was my deepest fear (that of losing my mom) is now pervading my experience. I don't think I can name it here, explicitly, in words, but it's in losing the person who is the most dear to me in this world, the person who I know is simply pure good -- she is so wise, she is compassionate, she is understanding and she is so strong: she is coming into her power, and she gives me hope every day. Without her, I am scared to feel the feeling that I will actually have lost all hope. I'm not sure I can do this without her. She is light. She is happy, at her core. She doesn't need the antidepressants that these western professionals say she does. What she needs is to experience love, to experience herself. She does experience joy -- when she laughs, everything lights up. That's how I know that she is not depressed -- that it is simply her conditioning that has brought her to that "diagnosis". Really, I believe that we all are full of abundant joy, actually -- that we are all GOOD. I know this to be true. I recognize, though, that most of us wear our thick programming like armor without even recognizing we have it on. Hers, though, is porous -- like mine. This is the beauty of sensitivity, of porousness. It is through those holes that we can let the light in, that truth seeps in, even though other stuff gets in as well -- and that other stuff is what makes, for us, life feels far harder than it should be.

Catching glimpses of enlightenment these past few days has been terrifying for me because it's come alongside these "visions" (imaginings?) that elicit such deep and paralyzing fear. My mindset with that is that if I am waking up, seeing sacred geometry pulsating around the setting sun while sun-gazing [I will mention here that a doctor who I knew would not be able to help me who I went to see today for the second time at the behest of my mom who has claimed he has studied "vedic sciences" and then it was "vedic arts" (which is it?? Sciences feels sterile and inaccurate and Arts feels like a way to flimsily and whimsically label what is truth rooted in ancient human-as-spirit-being experience) did not know what sun gazing was when I mentioned this to him, and instead said that I should be hospitalized. Which I will say here is what another friend said to me yesterday, a friend whose advice hasn't felt appropriate in a long time. I wish things were that simple. I wish that anti anxiety and pain meds didn't suppress what is trying to come and instead simply delay it.] I also saw some other crazy patterns [what is referred to in our culture as "sacred geometry" as it makes up the blueprint of the universe -- for those who may be reading this who haven't heard of this term -- you should look this up. Across time and space these sacred geometric images have been found in humans' physical recordings of them on land masses, buried deep underground, in the very shape & construction of the pyramids] when my eyes were out of focus at night on the way back to my parents' house from my sister's apartment two nights ago. That whole day preceding was a trip of trying to bust through the fog of a sleepy society, and that night when I returned back to the house, I felt I was failing a test because I asked to go over to Hope's because all day I had found it so hard to be alone -- relying on her rather than simply myself. The reason it felt so scary is because of this "vision", this deepest fear that I have. Regardless of timing (and it may be obvious that what I fear coming to pass feels like it will exist in a much shorter timespan than what one would or could ever want or feel capable of accepting), we are all alone and for each one of us, all we have is what we do with our aloneness.

One of my dear sister-friends in Boulder said to me, amidst other words of deep and strong support, these words:
"I feel like we are sisters in arms, in our locked mortal battles. We can't fight the demons for each other, but we can buoy one another when one is faltering." I am trying to stay strong. I read about the "shaman's journey", that the first "demon" someone who is being called into shamanism meets on this journey is fear. I don't know where I read, that is was at some point in the last 6 months or so. I would imagine the second demons the would-be shaman must learn to befriend are anger and then sadness. There are no words for this. Having "almost too much water" in my astro chart, as my friend Kevin puts it, is creating a deeper well for me here. But, as I came upon many years ago when I still going to Marissa for support, pain grows along with joy. These are just words until one experiences it. The deeper pain carves, the deeper the joy can go. I have experienced this in action, but I have not yet experienced the joy coming into the canal pain is carving now (through fear). Can fear be classified into the category of pain? I think it may be the other way around -- that pain comes from fear. I do feel that I'm in pain, but I know it is nothing like the pain I will feel should any of this come to pass in physical reality.  It is currently just fear, although my body often physiologically responds like I am already experiencing the trauma of this pain. I wonder if I could meet fear and conquer it without these things coming to pass. Perhaps, yes. I do know that Dr. Charles told me that, if I am to be a healer, how would I know another's suffering (and, presumably, be equipped to truly help another through their journey) without knowing that sort of suffering myself? The greatest healers have been through the greatest struggle. I don't currently feel equipped to be thrown into the fire (though that is precisely what I did when i chose ceremony in December of this past year.) There is karma tied into this -- that I can see. How it looks in physical reality I don't yet know. Through this, I find myself deeply drawn to my strongest friends -- those who are truly grounded in their power. Most of them have lost someone close to them. My friend Eryn, when I started to move into fear around my mom, told me in April "I thought I would die without my mom. I thought I would die." I looked into her bright eyes and I knew the fact of truth within her words.

My comment about conquering fear leads me to this:

I read a quote from the Dalai Lama within the last week or so from an article that someone sent me, I believe. The part I am remembering now goes like this: "This is why we practice." So that when things come up in our lives that throw us off, when pain comes in, we have our practice, our ritual, to fall back on to hold us. My practice is faltering now. I am seeing how this society provides anti-pain medications so as to replace practice. If we continue to feed the pharm system, we continue to feed The System, as they're all, of course, intertwined. Even that dark web is connected to the web of light. Humans have built it on the surface. What holds all of it, the web of life (of light) is there underneath, and it is stronger. I have to believe that this is true.

A selfless, kind friend who fed me and offered me safe space a couple nights ago, the night I sun-gazed and watched as a pulsating geometric pattern surrounded the setting orb, witnessed these words as they came out of my mouth: "How do we learn to accept the pace of things? We often so want to speed things or slow things down." I am quoting myself because that's what I said. That thought came from noticing how quickly the sun went down behind the building next to his. I was out on the deck and sat -- and then stood as the sun continued to set so as to catch some last glimpses of it -- how quickly it went down. In our society's concept of time, it was simply a few minutes. That is how quickly the earth passes through each day, every day. But we notice the pace of it during the sunset, or at least I did. It feels metaphorical: I don't know how much time i have left, but I do know that we notice things more towards the end. This is a lesson for living, and I have done so much wasting of my time here. As my friend Alix says (yes, her name is spelled that way as well), "the blessing of your beautiful life" -- we know pain is on its way at all times. How do we hold that knowing and still live in joy? Due to the acuteness of my fear (and also a very triggering, frightening astrological forecast that was told to me of late), I am overcome with it. I have experienced moments of abundant, pervasive joy in my life. Some people don't get any. I will say I don't feel that I have experienced enough of this, simply relative to what I am able to understand in my head (though have not practiced enough, therefore do not yet consistently embody). I do know that everyone has a set of circumstances that we enter the world with (genetics, biology, physiology, etc.) but we also have a set of circumstances that we are put onto us by our setting and society in which we're raised. Waking up in Western society is harder -- and those of us who know this know why. Constant distraction, constant games set up like they're important (i.e. everything that's on TV, and therefore TV itself: it is quite literally the food being spoon-fed into our psyches), constant interference keeping us from ourselves, from our true knowing, our true essence, from truth. The rat race. The trick that we are making money for ourselves so as to live a "happy" (comfortable) life while turning away from other humans (e.g. the banks taking people's houses away, often leaving them in poverty and on the streets) in exchange for what we believe to be the value of money, and the reality that we are never actually making this money for ourselves, since all we actually do have is something we can't touch. So to distract from the pain that comes from this knowing is this: the more we have that we can touch, the more we are associated to believe we are living. Is this truly living? Touching all these things without touching our own true essence? Without connecting with others, with love? If touching love is how we truly live, and there is light behind everything, then it is only through seeing this light, that is, finding it within ourselves, where are true essence exists, that we can experience the pure joy that can be aliveness. I would like to embody this knowing. Truly. Aho.

Through writing this, the fear that I've felt surrounding me is just slightly lessened. It is slightly less.

Normal Consciousness

A friend in Boulder, before I moved back here, told me that indeed it might be "good" for me "to be around people of normal consciousness for a while". I agreed, grateful to hear support of this decision to move back here, this decision onto which I grasped so tightly in an unrelenting clutch and refused to let go, in words that made sense to me. The prevalence of beyond-my-wildest-imagination synchronicities, haunting and persistent dreams containing various messages transferred to me by what I can only describe as a faceless, dark force, experiences of glimpses of seemingly random images in my mind's eye only to come face to face with that image in waking life anywhere from hours to days later, and other sorts of visions of the sort that I'm not ready to write about here, along with the sort of heady and out-there, ethereal explanations from well-meaning friends had gotten to be way too much for me. My friend who spoke of my reintegration into the world "normal consciousness" happens to display a well-integrated balance of spirituality and earthiness that I appreciate -- but this felt rare in Boulder. I can think of maybe five or six other friends who I would describe as having solid feet in both of those worlds. My community (and the Boulder/Denver "conscious community" in general), far and away, is extremely astral-plane-bound -- and with this comes a lot of spiritual bypassing. The topic of spiritual bypassing is another topic all on its own, and one I don't feel like going into right now. But basically, all the existentialism became way too much for me.

WELL. The truth is this: things don't stop because your geographic location shifts. This shows up in myriad ways, of course. What I've learned, fully, is that once you've pulled back the veil -- and I mean, you've really pulled it back -- there's no turning away from what lies there in front of you. There's no closing your eyes to what you've seen, and there's no lessening, really, of the guilt you experience when you're awake in a world that is in such dire need of conscious action from awakened humans (in whatever form that takes) but you're choosing to not be a part of the action because of fear. Because that's just what the system wants -- fearful, complacent citizens. If we're easier to control, those in power get to continue with their harmful cycles that ultimately perpetuate greed and unearned power, add to their already high piles of dirty money, and their power grows, along with the thirst for it. I know, I know. The us/them talk sometimes contributes to the problem. But let's be honest, if you really know, you really know who is "us" and who is "them". Enough with the talk of oneness that doesn't get us, collectively, anywhere but might make you seem more enlightened in the eyes of the supposedly less enlightened (thus in some way excusing your blatant cultural misappropriation of your attire at music festivals -- attire, which, by the way, is almost definitely Made in China, India, Taiwan, or some other third world country that employs a child-labor-exploiting, lax-labor-law and horrendous-working-condition-having factory, thus perpetuating those countries' dependencies on ours for jobs -- and our own citizens' misled and highly dangerous beliefs that "we are giving people in those countries jobs" so buying these clothes must be okay, while unknowingly contributing to so many of our nation's perpetuating cycles of misuse of power. For the record, if you're buying clothes that aren't made in the country in which you live, you're part of the "them".) Everything is connected, sure. But the whole "oneness" thing began from this knowing, and it begets a certain type of complacency. Things aren't changing quickly enough, but it's not from turning away from the systems that got us here in the first place that change happens. It's by engaging consciously with these systems. For years I stepped back from the political scene because it all just seemed like too much, and I wasn't seeing a candidate who I felt actually could and would create change, or even speak to the issues that really matter (as in, a tangible plan to uproot the forces that perpetuate the unending environmental concerns plaguing our world or the myriad systemic issues contributing to social injustice and inequality), and besides, the two-party system is a complete joke anyway and no one really wins because everyone is saying the same thing in different words, but all while maintaining a snail's pace rate of change but calling it progress because it's what we're used to. We have so far to go.

You may understand why comments like, "If astrology were accurate and actually held water, why doesn't 99% of the world look to it for answers?" and "I'm the most intelligent and informed person you know; I watch the news every night," and (upon my questioning of the political leanings of the New York Times [in so much as that there are political leanings at all, thus contributing to a broken and antiquated system]), "Do you know what you're even talking about?! This is the New York Times! [Insert incredulous pause, as in, how could I not sign my soul away to the decisions made around content by the Editors-in-Chief at the New York Times?]" ... and then there's having my altar referred to as "sort of creepy" (which I actually translated as the fact that I have an altar at all being "creepy"), and also altered (pun unintended) while I'm not around (which just feels disrespectful, but those who don't understand obviously will not understand that), as well as a plethora of other micro-aggressions and insinuations, are absolutely and fully infuriating. Not to mention, eliciting a feeling of total and complete isolation. Being awake is fucking isolating. Not everywhere, but when you don't have others who see and understand these basic nuances of awakened interaction, and the larger picture of all that's actually wrong with so much human-driven choice at the detriment of all societies and the planet at large, it's isolating. As. Fuck. While I have met some within Ann Arbor's conscious community, I don't feel like I have the energy to really share myself, my story, right now. If you're a friend who knows me and is reading this, you might know what I'm referring to. So instead, for the most part, I stay in my comfort zone, which is my parents' house. Sometimes for days at a time. The definition of "comfort" is closing in -- smaller and more tightly on itself, and my conscience -- all the time. (I say my conscience because I feel an incredible weight, that guilt to which I referred earlier, heavy on my shoulders: I'm awake, and I'm doing nothing about what I see, aside from sitting here typing blog posts like these and picking up trash on the ground wherever I go.) Perhaps this is the greatest burden of all, and contributes even more to the feelings of isolation.

Contributing also is that Ann Arbor is still so far behind in so many ways in terms of higher consciousness. Note: Being a *politically liberal* city does not a conscious city make. At least not in the way I'm using the term conscious, which is in that those who relate to this word have awoken to the truth (and illusion) of separation; have recognized the need for the integration of the concepts of science/sustainability, spirituality, and social justice (and recognize that this three-legged stool upon which we all must sit will topple over without all the delicate and even balance of all three of its legs; and that man-made systems on earth have become co-dependent on one another, many of them relying on "first world" countries such as the U.S., meanwhile, the U.S. allowing this perpetuation of said relationships so as to maintain "power" while exploiting other countries' resources), rather than all parts of the world organically and co-creatively building a healthy interdependence with one another. This would look like each country producing goods unique to that land's production capabilities and its citizen's crafting (which is often based on culture/ancestral teachings) and farming abilities, and trades for (or consciously purchases) what each needs and is unable to produce; and recognizes that the poisoning of the earth and all its beings is parallel with the poisoning of the people of this earth. What we destroy around us, we are destroying within us; what is awakened around us is awakened within us: that's the interconnectivity.

While I do, definitely, feel lucky to have grown up in a town with a rich history and culture, a vibrant art and music scene, options for local and organic food when you eat out, a twice-weekly farmers' market, and a recycling plant (a rarity in the Midwest) -- I will mention, though, that I do notice a lack of the other two tiers of an effective waste-reduction system here, which are reducing and reusing, though this may be symptomatic of all areas of privilege, or perhaps the broader culture at hand, which is one of consumption. I also feel lucky that, while here, one is always in such close proximity to water :) (it's said that you're never more than something like two miles from a body of water while you're in Michigan). AND, it feels like there's still a lot missing here.

Perhaps it's because I've grown to expect a certain sort of responsibility from myself and from those around me after living in a place like Boulder (and Nederland for that first year out there), where raising your kids without a TV in the house is the norm; where you see people wearing yoga gear actually headed to yoga; where Western Disposal charges local residents for trash collection but recycling and compost collection is free (so as to encourage thoughtfulness around the latter two and reduction around the former); where getting up into the mountains is a daily practice; whether it be for contemplative practice or exercise or some combination of the two; where communities come together in the face of counties-wide destruction at the end of Mother Nature to, quite literally, rescue and bail each other out, back onto dry land. Where there are city-wide sit-ins and marches to show solidarity with the sort of atrocities being committed by those in power across the nation; where conversations are going on around things that bring us deep discomfort are not shied away from so that we might be of higher service to our sisters and brothers who have less -- less being anything that stems from less privilege. I saw restaurants that didn't have organic, local food options go out of business. I would say something to someone working behind the counter of a dine-out restaurant if it didn't have a recycling bin and I wouldn't receive a look like I was being ridiculous and high-maintenance, or like I was speaking some distant and foreign language.

I don't know how to wrap this up right now. Love. I know it's here, somewhere.

The Writer's Paradox

The ultimate paradox as a writer: the world keeps spinning, life continues to happen, synchronicities and patterns and events that must be noticed, should be documented, potentially highly meaningful connections that could have been made, symbolic interactions that MUST be made but aren't -- none of it stops. But you must, if you're going to write. If you have a "writer's mind" (or perhaps one of an artist, in general), you notice everything. You're aware. You're awake. And so this is torture, knowing that these things, this world, these connections going on outside of you that would infuse your insides are all going on without you because instead of living those connections, you're sitting somewhere putting words to page. Words that are, by now, past their expiration date due to the fact that the experience they tell of is in the past.

But maybe this is the way to turn things off. A breath. Ah.

I used to write in the middle of the night when the world was quieter and the absence of activity around me brought clarity of thought, and words felt more accessible because everything had slowed down. 2 ... 3 ... 4 in the morning. Sleep could wait. But things are different now. I trade sleep for the possible perfectly penned (and) abstract allegory, the line that brings me to laugh at the thought of how brilliant it is. Sleep feels more important.

"You can sleep when you're dead" is the dumbest fucking quote I've ever heard. Don't say that shit to me until you're a sleep-deprived asshole snapping at the people closest to you, lugging around bags under your eyes [and as a woman this matters more because somehow, still, on the physical plane people care way too goddamn much about how women look; it defines us & can be the difference between getting a job or not, getting the guy or not], severing relationships with your serpent tongue that didn't get its full night of rest, its honey reprieve, didn't get its sweet humming lullaby of bees bringing nectar to dreams. Don't say that shit to me until you're that person and you feel okay about yourself. The people spliced like sentences-that-weren't are also the people who might hold me as I cry, racking sobs, about how the world is burning and I can't do shit about it. How my world is burning and the fire won't go out. The drought is here, and it's real. I need those people. And they might need me, sans serpent tongue.

The thing is, trading sleep for my would-be-story-put-to-paper, for carefully crafted lines, for my penchant for penned perfection is what's making me that person. Maybe through writing I could do something about the whole world-is-burning thing -- and that knowing is heavy. That weighs more than the bags I'm somehow still lugging anyway, sleep or no sleep.

And it doesn't feel okay.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Sundays are for Relieving Weight, I think. All is Love (Thanks, Matt).

The moon was in Scorpio last night. Things feel even more intense for me than usual (which isn't saying much, but is saying something). I'm not quite sure how to put any of this into words, but I need to try. Even as I am sitting here typing this, things are happening. Meaningful things. Everything has meaning, I know -- at least, I have said this for years because I have felt this way, and now I really feel that way. I wish I could experience just maybe a few minutes of nihilism. How would this feel? Right now, perhaps good. If current, real-life, momentary circumstances were different, perhaps it would drive one -- me, in particular -- to complete self-destruction.

What's happening right now is that I hear my mom, from outside, saying "I'm sorryyy, Alix" (I brought attention again, to her seeming need for control at all times) -- not that I need an apology for her being the way that she is. How does an apology function, here? Also, what is happening is that Pier and I are really getting along with one another and it feels necessary because of what I feel may come. Even if it does not come, oh please let what I most fear not come, not come anytime soon, soon as in anytime in the next couple years, or ten years, or even twenty years, oh please, but this feel so necessary with Pier that it brings me to tears. Also what is happening is that Hope is outside in the backyard and she's on the phone, perhaps ending things with the person she has been dating (which is currently a "long-distance" relationship) and I am thinking about our earlier conversation about it and my response to her, all the while very much a pattern and very much bringing us ever closer, and I am worried about her in general. Also what is happening is that Scout pushed open the door of the bedroom where I was when I began this entry and saw that it was me in the room and turned and walked away and then began to resume barking, like he's been doing the last 15 minutes. My mom and Pier are outside painting the house. My dad, I believe, is at his office. I am realizing some things that are very startling yet comforting and unsettling simultaneously. (I have since moved to the couch and Scout has jumped up into his spot on the other end and then jumped down and barked three times since I've sat here, and finally jumped up, laid down, and stretched out, moving closer to me so that his face is underneath my elbow as I type, cross-legged, here. He is settling for me. I am a cat person, I've learned in the last few years, but I do love him and appreciate his company and this contact. Sidenote: My voice, on this blog, feels very cold to me right now. I don't know why -- maybe because I haven't typed a journal-feeling blog entry, and this is some moment-to-moment stuff, and it feels a little bit unnatural.) The things I am realizing have to do with qualities I've noticed in my dad, like our deep love for music, and our good taste in music, and our ability to get a bit lost in good music. I've also noticed that my parents' relationship is very much two-sided, as well as their functionality (and, at that, dys-functionality). It scares me how clearly I can see things, because I woke up today after four drinks last night (three vodka, one sangria) -- and I rarely drink that much these days -- around 8 AM, or maybe a bit earlier, took two gabapentin capsules, which eventually knocked me out again, had vivid dreams, including ones before I woke up, but also afterwards when I fell back asleep until about 11. And, as they tend to be right now, my mom was very much a part of them, and the quality of what I most fear (and can't seem to structure a story around that is different so that I can function without this specific fear in my day-to-day life) was very  much a part of the dreams. Hope also had a dream that was incredibly detailed and specific, and she shared it with me today and I interpreted a lot of it -- honestly, a lot of her dreams feel easily interpretable, though I realize this is through a specific scope [mine] -- and her story feeds into mine, and my fears.

This whole day has just been fraught with fear for me, and I'm functioning alongside it. It doesn't feel good, and I cry a lot. There has also been incredible connection with my family: we moved furniture together, we ate lunch that my dad brought home for all of us together, and no one really yelled at each other or got offended or even mildly butt-hurt over anything. It all felt (and continues to feel) very bittersweet to me, because of the large fear monster that clings to my back. I actually literally feel heavier. I did some yoga, and some twirling and dancing in the yard, the kind of stuff that I can do around my family most, just like my really loose silliness and ridiculous yet witty way of saying things, and also my stupid, in-the-flow dancing around that I don't show many people. Lauren has seen it, aside from my family, and other than her, only moments of it have I shown other people. Some of my good friends in Boulder, actually, have as well, but there's usually some substance involved to get me there. What the fuck am I so afraid of? I can peel this apart, and my mind furiously is right now, but I'm not sure I can type it all right now. It has to do, in part with this part of myself, or my way of being, that shows up in my Human Design chart: the 5-1. Anyway.

Aside from a lot of things, one of which was a Saul Williams (video of a live reading of Black Stacy) iPhone viewing with Dave between martinis that my body didn't really need, there was also something else, last night: this person whom I've texted with (we have been Facebook friends for a year or two, and whom I messaged when I got home as I've felt a desire/need to get involved with a conscious community here and make new friends -- fuck, I miss my friends in Boulder, and also Lauren, who may be one of the only people reading this) walked into where I was eating pizza with a friend (Dave) last night. I have no idea what it happening with my writing right now. But anyway, it was like the Universe saying, Alright, you haven't made the move and met this person in real life yet, so here he is. Silver platter shit. Take it or leave it. So, when he walked in, there was no not taking it actually. My visceral reaction when he walked in was a verbal Whoa and then standing up and approaching him immediately. He actually had texted me the day before this to ask how my settling in was going, and prior to that text we hadn't been in contact since maybe the first week I was back in Michigan. So, I definitely took it, though our interaction there was a bit awkward. Liz would say (and did to me once) that nothing (or no one) is really awkward, things just are the way they are. I love that, and will defer to it here, actually. So, yes, this was the way it was: Dave invited him to sit with us, and he was so sweet, and took this little moment I think to consider what Dave was to me, but it wasn't like he wasn't going to accept this invitation, and he said, yes, of course, thank you. It was all very sweet. I will mention now that this is a pizza place I've never been, and this person, whose name is Nick, told me (today on the phone; getting there) that he goes there maybe twice a year. So there you go. Or rather, there I go. I texted him last night -- I was going to wait to call this morning, but a half an ambien will make one text at 2 AM, and also sort of self-judgementally, or in protection of one's ego, name that one is "getting awkward with it"; shwing. I said in the text that I was going to wait until today to call him -- so it turns out that he actually called me today, right around 11 AM. It was sort of perfect timing, and a beautiful and easy conversation, despite some interruptions, and this is a thing: We share Beaver Island. I cried on the phone. I'm not sure about a lot, except that I feel heavy today, though some moments are lighter, and that he and I are getting lunch tomorrow.

Perhaps I will type more later. Also, to continue with the name-dropping that I apparently just can't stop doing in this entry; Hi, Sarah. <3 Loving you. And you.