DatingGod

Clear Senses

So much of what I'm doing these days is a kind of un-doing. Like removing wrappers of insulation from what i perceive, how i perceive.

The day to day whole-song process of it isn't something I'm conscious of until somewhere well into whatever is being unwrapped. I only know the note to be played and work toward perfecting that note until it rings with Yes. Once a string of notes has been perfected, the song begins to make itself known, and I get a clearer sense of what the song is about.

Not knowing what the song is forces me to be fluid in the moment, to let go of results, because I have no end game in mind, only the current note. And with the only intention of singing the note to a place of Yes, the freedom to go where the notes lead is allowing the old, tired songs from my past to be removed from the replay lineup.

And again, a huge part of it is not writing or speaking about it because someone looking in from the outside is simply going to be shouting from their own old song, insisting that the notes they hear coming from me are this song or that song. The shouting muddies the tone. Slowly, the songs I'm learning are becoming a part of me, ringing so clear and strong that hearing words spoken against the song from outside of me are less and less important. Keeping right company has been invaluable with this. The ability to walk away from anyone at anytime if it feels true is one of the strongest tools available. The courage and trust it takes is a muscle, built up over time. It brings outrageous clarity around what we want from people, what they want from us, what we're willing to offer, what feels true to accept.

And so I can share a bit of the songs I've learned, even as I still don't know their endgame. They show up as mundane, but the effect in my living has been profound. Profound enough so that dedication to perfecting the current notes is the main focus, and this effort, rather than a discipline that I make myself do, is something that gets done because on the other side lies Yes, and more Yes is so very Yes . . .

One of the most fascinating occurrences to me has been the arc of spending so much time outside. It began with the burning of plants and not wanting the smoke inside the house. The urge to burn plants, to begin understanding what the plant world offers humans, what we have to offer them, kicked in about 9 months ago. For 9 months I've been going outside a dozen times a day, in the cold, in the rain, in the hot sun. I've talked to stars and trees, vines and ants, seen fawns and hawks and foxes and cardinals. I've interacted with deer, wasps, fog, high wind, cicadas, clouds, moss. So many songs still in process of being revealed. 

By going outside, a dozen times a day, for months, and then checking the weather app on my phone, I now know what temperature it is, simply by walking outside and feeling it. I can tell by the level of humidity I feel how it's going to impact my thought processes. I can feel rain coming or leaving. I can sense different types of emotional and mental energy that's going to be stimulated by the density of electromagnetic  currents in the air. By knowing the temperature coming during the night, I know how to adjust the windows and heat or ac to provide restful sleep. I never knew how deeply the weather effects mind, body, heart. Now I do. The song of weather . . . 

The body pain - digestive, back, knee, neck, jaw, shoulder - that's been a constant in my living the past six years nearly made me lose my marbles and go home in a huff. I had all sorts of pharmaceuticals I could turn to, which I did when the pain became unbearable. At the height of coping in this way, I was taking muscle relaxers a few times a month, and ibuprofen 1000mgs at a clip, three or four times a day. I was seeing the Korean acupuncturist regularly. Trying detox after detox. Yoga classes, three times a week for months helped in some ways, but made other things worse. The pain would release for a few hours, sometimes even for a day. But would always return.

And then a few months ago, something clicked. It was a process of un-doing, and with it came releasing from all of the things propping me up - painkillers, forced exercise, detoxes, sessions with the acupuncturist. Just let it all go and let the pain rise. 

I began to watch the pain, look at the pain, get very clear exactly what and where was hurting. I stopped pushing to make myself do "good" things, and stopped trying to force myself to quit "bad" things. Instead I followed the trail of what felt true in the moment whatever it was, and then watching the result on the other side. I learned that making decisions, coming up with solutions and plans to do good things and stop bad things came from the logical, male, left part of the brain, but that the impulses came from the asymmetrical, female, ever-flowing and changing right part of the brain. 

What I saw was this: the issue isn't about forcing good in or bad out, it's about raising energy, using the lever at the core. This lever at the core demands that we give up what we think we know, and instead follow its directives. This core knows exactly what will work, and it what order the steps need to come, the notes need to be played. Everything that we hunger for, crave, is simply a primal need for more energy, to be so alive, so vibrant, that our lives, every moment, is filled with Yes, singing in cells and neurons, down all of the pathways that make up a human and its connection to the web of Life.

And so I get stronger. The pain unwinds, the strength needed to live the new awarenesses I've discovered the past three months begins thrumming through my consciousness, and I wake up to the song of strength . . .

Or cutting off all of my hair. It felt so true to do it, to keep cutting closer and closer until arriving at the current buzzcut with the curly mass at the top. As I did it, played the notes that required more and more to be cut off, it was surrender to what can only be described as ugliness. It was a willingness to let go of showing up as beautiful, womanly. But when the moment came, as I applied the electric clippers to my head and shaved the hair down to the scalp, all I felt was: Yes. 

What blew me away was what happened as I left my home over the next week. People began seeing me again. The buzzcut? It changed everything. 

As a heavy-weighted, 46-year old female, I've gotten used to being ignored when out in public. After a couple of decades as an attractive young female, having people stare at me when I walked into rooms or down the street, it was shocking to simply not be seen at all, even when trying to get someone's attention to ask a question or share a conversation. And yet over the years I embraced the invisibility, began to truly enjoy the anonymity. There is great power in the stealth of invisibility :)

And so now, in many ways, it's like being in my twenties again. Except for now, it doesn't matter. There's no need for the energy that people send with their eyes. Only a lighthearted acknowledgment of whatever it is - fear, admiration, confusion, delight, lust - it's all fine. It's not mine. I'm just over here enjoying the song of the hot pink buzzcut whirlwind that lives atop my head . . . It feels so good to sing it . . . 

So many other songs in the process of being sung. Drumming and toning as prayer to the beings and teachers that are available to us just on the other side of this reality, those beings and teachers that don't care about our mind's desires, only what our hearts sing out at full shamanic volume . . . Taking all three of the feline weasels out into the yard every day, training them to the ways of cars and hawks and dogs and people, letting them slowly acclimate to the weather that exists outside of the house, being with them as their true nature in relationship with things winged, wiggly and crawly is explored. . . 

What song are you in process of singing? What song have you just discovered you're singing, after many months, years of playing the notes? What notes are you playing, over and over to perfect their tone of Yes? 

So many songs to sing . . . such a gift to be alive . . . every morning, the day before an open pathway to release the No with a shrug, to cock an ear to the sound of Yes in the nighttime sky . . .

Past Life Stories

Since I started consciously diving deeply into things of a spiritual nature some thirty years ago, I began having past life remembrances. Sometimes it was talking with someone and watching as their face changed into another face - a boyfriend, very blond and blue-eyed anglo, morphing for a few moments into a classically korean face, and a flash of the life we lived together in a fishing village. Other times it came out of nowhere, as "downloads" that appeared in a millisecond, fully formed, into my conscious mind as complete remembrances, usually followed by how these lives were impacting my current life - I'm in the middle of the forest and can read the forest as if it were a book, the sounds telling me who was there, what they were doing. The patterns of moss on the bark and light showing me what time of year, what the seasons before had been like. The scent in the air telling me a thousand different things of soil and plant and stone and animal and coming weather. All of it showing me how I've read data streams before, and how in this life I read the psychic and shamanic streams, and that my love and endless fascination with it was born out of mastery in that forest life.

As I've gotten more practical over the past decade, I've filed these memories as a kind of unknown. No way to prove they were real - they could just be imaginings, projections. I was fine with not knowing, because these "memories" always brought some sort of relief, healing. So regardless of "truth", I felt an outpouring of gratefulness for them.

Over the years as I've worked with more and more clients, and so many past lives came up during sessions, I began to see what genuine healing occurred when soul pieces were brought back and integrated into the body. And the stories witnessed while in shamanic reality, when told to the client, often triggered great release and understanding for them, explaining all sorts of things they hadn't grasped the importance of - a love for a specific place or type of work, a hunger for a certain way of being, a fear or illness they hadn't known the basis of.

Witnessing these stories for other people, I felt such connectedness, a sense that these past lives were as real as our current lives, this supposed "reality" we all travel in in the Now. And that by bringing them into the conscious mind, a deeper sense of wholeness came into the living, clearing the way for access to more energy, flow, purpose. Knowledge and wisdom as power. Acceptance that this reality and how its put together is so much more than random.

And so, as I've been doing more soul retrievals on myself, more past life remembrances have been flooding in. Explaining so much. Bringing such healing into this living. Helping me slough off the No that remains. Opening into more Yes. The quiet of Yes. The stillness of the unobstructed flow.

So I thought I'd start telling you lovely Tribe of Yes the stories of some of the past lives I've been remembering. Some are sad, some are weird, some are flashy, some are violent, some are quiet, but they are all entertaining. What's the point of having a life if it can't be a helluva good show? :)

Zoom and Stillness

It's been a roller coaster couple of weeks inside this brain, body, heart. Nothing going, of course, according to plan.

The plan was to do a deep cleanse for the nine days after leaving the fellowship. Water fast, yoga, walking, lots of sleep. Instead I sort of crash landed into a pile of No, and spent the time mostly resisting the urge to pack up the kitties and flee to some cabin in the middle of nowhere. 

Partial cleanses occurred. Lots of sleep occurred. Days free of burning and fermented and caffeinated plants occurred. Carby snacks found their way into my belly, via a tunnel in my mind. Kitties snuggled the heck out of me, then avoided me when the No got too noisy. Joyful interactions, and less joyful interactions. Stepping up and backing away.

I got a lot of work done. Okay, maybe not a lot, but enough. Over the next couple of months, This is happening, and there's lots to do to build it in a way that's strong, stable.

Part of the last couple of weeks has been questioning whether or not I can pull it off. I've been doing this work for almost three decades. Teaching others how to do it for the past fifteen years. Planning it for over a year. But putting it all together, in three local and global online locations? This is new.

The tagline for the training is: Mastery, Transparency, Tribe. It's technique based - shamanic skills, psychic skills, personal development - a very practical way of learning how to access, translate and utilize the data stream that runs behind, underneath this world. Gold standard methods used worldwide, across all times. Clear, straightforward, easily learnable, like playing the piano, or learning to read.

But a vital aspect of using these skills isn't so head-on and has to do with transparency. It's around how to do healing work without pretending to be sunshine and light, without wearing a mask of "perfect". Because trying to show up in a certain way blocks the flow, actually decreases access, and limits the ability to translate.

And yet sunshine and light is generally what's expected of healers. Being respectful, being kind, is simply about being decent. Whether the healer is a physician or a massage therapist or an energyworker, decency goes a long way in helping clients, patients, relax enough, feel safe enough, to enter into their own space of healing. But the dynamic of healer as perfect, and client as broken, needs to change.

We're all - every single one of us - in various places of aliveness and decay. It's the way of this place, this world. Enlightened people get the flu, die of cancer, go bankrupt. People with abusive tendencies and lots of cash have access to medical treatments that 99% of the world barely knows exists. There is no "fairness", only flow, movement, change.

We take the actions that Life is urging us to take. Or we fight the urge, based on some sort of "should" lodged inside the body-heart-mind of how we believe we're supposed to show up in the world. We find a hole in the wall of resistance, and take action to release the should. Or we sit at the base of the wall, and eat cupcakes and watch tv to pass the time, trying to ignore the drumbeat inside that says: Further.

Facing who we are, and who we're not, takes courage, fortitude, and usually comes packaged with suffering. Grief and mourning are part of it. Anger and depression, too. So is pointless joy, random moments of synchronicitous hilarity and revelations of perfection. And on the other side? Immense gratitude. 

The past couple of weeks have been about asking myself: how dare you step up to take on a tribe of folks, to teach them, be with them as they navigate their own storms? It all just seems too big, so impossible, so foolish to take on. I feel inadequate to the task, afraid that my own patterns and struggles will keep me from being there for folks in the ways that they need, from engaging with them in a way that facilitates Yes for both of us.

But where I keep coming back to is this: it's still about individuals, helping them see the map, teaching them how to read a word, a sentence, a paragraph at a time, showing them how to access their own individual way of translating this for themselves, the people they serve in their living. It's about doing session with them, entering into the landscape inside of them, helping them unweave the No a strand at a time, see the story they surround themselves in. It's about feeling such profound joy whenever Life gives me the opportunity to do this with someone. It's about showing up, over and over, even when fear is present. It's about being still and knowing All Is Well. 

And of course, as usual, Life has shot me through a tube, dumping me out with a thud in a land where only one path is available. I suppose I could listen to the fear that says I'm an idiot for not being in a job with health insurance and 48K a year. But that path disappeared a few months back. I hunted around for it for a while, and still am open to a trail if it happens, if I find it. But for now, there is only this one path, called Tribe of Yes, and the landscape is mostly unknown, and the flow of dark moon and bright sunlight cycle quickly, and the razor's edge between delusion and vision is hard on the feet.

Maybe I'm throwing a party and no one will come. Maybe this is just another emptying out. Or maybe this is when it all comes together - the shamanic, the psychic, the science, the muscles gained from years of mountain climbing - to create something that assists this huge shift in consciousness we're all deep inside.

I want to teach as many folks as possible about the data stream. How it's there for all of us, like an infinite library that contains all times, backwards and forwards, all dimensions. How the library card is our birthright, along with opposable thumbs and highly functioning frontal lobes. How to use that data stream to help connect the global biosphere in a way that sings Yes, that births a global organism that joins in the conscious, universal dance with truth, eyes wide open.

And as it all unfolds, I'll write more about the process. Transparency was taught to me here, in this digital stream that connects humans across vast distances of time and space. And so the word, the vibration, that I'm aligning to match is: courage.

Courage in the face of the No.

Courage in the midst of storms.

Courage in the quiet, the stillness, the Nothing.

Courage.

Failure and Flight

This past Thursday was my first day free of the fellowship I've been in the past year. My friend Kelly sent me this in a series of back and forths:

You have a cubicle hangover. Your body and mind are coming out of autopilot defense mode after almost a year, right? Totally good to just accept it and take some time to integrate the freedom and process the feelings of rejection and relief.

I read those words and felt: okay, yes, this is what's occurring, this is the Not-Me that I am very aware is coursing through mental, physical, emotional bodies. It's what's underneath the recurring startle, the cascading knee-jerk responses that say Do Something, do something Now, what are you just sitting there for when there are broken things that need to be fixed?

It's from a year of doing things, not sure if they were being done right, doing my best, and so often receiving only a response of a frown and silence. And then taking that and going back and trying again. More frowns. More silence. More work. More trying. Until I woke up one morning back in October and got: this sh*t feels awful and it isn't Who I Am, and they know it, and I know it.

That is the point where the lawn and the moon and stars and the burning and fermented plants and Florence and the Machine came in. Where this combination of their energies crashed into me, hammering at the wall of No that had been created, a kind of jailbreak that was surprising, not just in its content and methods, but also in how successful it was. Frowns and silence lose their power when the previous night was spent with the universe flowing through body, mind and heart, dancing outrageous gorgeous electrifying Yes until I fell down on the lawn in a heap of wonder.

But there was still work to do. I needed income. The fellowship didn't finish up until December 31st. There was no next job to move into yet. Then they asked to extend my contract until the end of February. With still no next job, I accepted, put my head down and worked. Stopped socializing with the folks I worked with. Stopped taking a break for lunch. Stopped trying to make any of it anything other than the work, and getting as much of it as I could done. Total focus on what I'd agreed to do, committed to seeing it through until Life released me from it.

I stopped writing. Stopped trying to do anything other than work, then come home, watch tv shows and movies, read, sleep, with forays out onto the lawn every couple of days. I ate a lot of healthy food, continuing the healing of gut and back pain through energywork and compassion and acceptance and release. Spent a lot of time outside, on the lawn and on the back porch, day and night, watching as the land around me moved into winter. I spent a lot of time doing this:

 

And I learned that being still and quiet for long periods of time facilitated both the snuggle and the flow. And I also learned that I still have many friends in the world, friends that call and text and visit, friends that skype and do sessions and send long emails describing their own process of setting themselves free. Friends that are planning their own escape from the No. Friends that filled my entire 46th birthday day (February 16) with wine and song and hysterical laughing and music and the magic that is facilitated via smartyphones and skype.

And then I created something that blew my mind, and my heart, wide open. It's been in the works for over a year. Something I took extensive notes on as new aspects popped into my head. That I wrote narrative around when I came in from hanging with the moon and stars, communing with Florence. That seemed more like a dream than anything else. That I kept adding to only because it felt more real than the supposed real life I was living. It was the answer to the obsessive questions blaring through heart and mind the past couple of years: what do i have to offer? is it valid? is it genuinely of use? does it genuinely make things better for people? do they want it? It was this: 

 

 

It's all still in motion. More will be revealed. I just need more time on the couch. More sleep. More time outside walking. More yoga and hot baths and green smoothies. Less thinky thoughts and connection to the stored past inside me that allows fear to deliver its electroshocks. Less contraction. More expansion. More time to process it all. More time to allow the Yes to flow more seamlessly now that the ordeal, the training, the trial, the test, the Whatever is done for this leg of the Waking Up process.

And as she has been for months now, the soundtrack is courtesy of Florence and her Machine:

     

 

Shift and Flow

Obviously not writing much. Except for work. And that is a different kind of writing. Eviden*ce-based incent*ives and benef*its for the research project I work on. How to incentivize folks to take better care of their health. Dozens of documents, reports, briefs, summary reports, literature matrices, graphics depicting full-color attempts made to render pictures out of a sea of eggheady verbiage. For this fellowship whose contract ends at the end of this month.

Where will I go after that? I don't know. 

I do soul retrievals and psychic sessions on the weekend. I spend the week feeling like a flow wedged into a narrow tube, the flow getting all hectic and chaotic from trying to shove itself through such a small aperture. Then the weekends overflowing with cracking through what built up during the week, and submerging down into sessions with folks, feeling like Yes again.

I spend a lot of time out on the small back porch, watching the trees. I spend a lot of time on the front lawn, watching the night sky. I drink a lot of wine. Burn plants. Look for the throughline with it all. What the truth is.

Patience is growing deep roots inside of me, as I surrender to what I can put into motion, what I can't or won't force to happen, what Life has in store for me next but hasn't revealed yet.

I send out resumes when it's true. I submit a proposal to a local, well-established holistic center for an Integral Shamanics Training. I hear nothing from the public health stuff. I get a go on the shamanic training. And so that's what direction I head in. Even as I wait to hear from the state public health job, which I interviewed for over two months ago, but because of the slow creaky machine of the state, I may or may not have gotten. 

The worst scenario is that I get unemployment until I can find a public health job (I have yet to figure out how to make a living doing holistic work). I have no idea how the best scenario plays out. I try not to go there. To ask for a scenario from Life. I take actions when they feel true. I refrain from action when I get a No or I get no action to take.

I don't feel afraid. Not really. Just in a strange sort of suspension.

I don't like how the current job has curbed my willingness to write here on this blog. How there is something hard and intense and unYes about it. I do the work they give me, do it to the best of my ability. In a workplace full of teams and interaction, my project is solo, and it's been like working inside an echo chamber, only coming up for air for an hour or so every week when I get to update my supervisor on the latest things I've researched and written. 

They don't like me there. They want to like me. But they don't. But they can't cop to it. Just radiate their discomfort when I open my mouth. I do my best to keep my mouth closed, to simply do the work. It's helped that I've been "remotely commuting" two or three days a week for the past month. Then I can simply sit at home, with the kitties, and write, do the work, create the widgets, deliver the widgets when I'm back in the cubicle farm. That small, windowless wedge of space in the corner away from everyone else where I can hear them talk, but not to me, and so I refrain from answering, because if I do it's just weird, like dropping into a conversation with the people eating lunch at the next table to you. But mainly sitting in that cube by myself all day, five days a week, just feels like a shriveling kind of death. 

I saw Jin again this morning. Surrendered to the brutal needles and muscle manipulation that is Korean Chinese Medicine. Except it wasn't that brutal this time.

"It doesn't hurt as badly this time, Jin. Are you going easy on me?" I asked.

"No!" he laughed. "I never do easy!"

Which means that my exploration into being with pain that I've been dealing with the past few days is working. I'm not so afraid of pain. It's there. I can feel it. But I don't need to run and take acetaminophen or a scalding hot bath with aromatherapy. I can be with it. The pain. I can let it inform me of its message. 

I talk on the phone with people, more social interaction than I've done in years. My sister, some friends. But I don't know how to do "friendship" anymore so I end up doing a session of some sort with them, in a conversational way, and it feels both true and weird. Especially if I'm drinking wine.

I'm reading about all sorts of things. Downloading enormous sh*tloads of documents onto my kindle, my smart phone. For some reason, I've become obsessed with predators, how they operate, what they take, what deflects them.

I read about the aliens who use this planet as a feeding ground - what my old spiritual teacher used to call "the entities" - who feed off of human emotion, and have come up with ever inventive ways to stimulate emotion, as high and as low as they instigate. An email from a blogger I follow linked to this a while back.

I read about sociopaths, how they operate, how intuition comes into play long before they make their move. I read about guns and haikido and crisis intervention. An old college friend whose become an FB*I agent who is going through a divorce and has been calling me and chatting turned me onto what agents read and use.

I read about chakras and auras. A kind of refresher course. From a new book out by my old spiritual teacher. An excellent book, and I do some of the exercises I use to do (the book doesn't go into new things, just the things we all learned some ten years ago, but which is very good, distilled Yes.)

But mostly I rip tv shows and movies, learn the new pathways put into motion since the S*OPA crackdown, which in spite of its not passing, shut down most established pir*ate sites for a while. And again I ask: please, all of you media outlets: give us a place where we can watch what we want to watch when we want to watch it and we'll pay you our 30 or 40 or 50 bucks a month. But the choices are so silly that ripping is the only option, even as annoying as its gotten.

And I cut off all of my hair last week. All of it. No trauma. Just a feeling of freedom. From tangles and mess and laborious machinations. And a chance to let the grey grow in. Facing the loss of youth and the oncoming time of crone. Took the action. Feel the Yes.

Near-constant physical pain. Mental and emotional and spiritual pain that comes and goes. No clear throughline. And so I just wait. Do what feels true. Release what doesn't. Hold my death in one hand, Life in the other. 

Patience. Just that one word.

Oh yes, and Further.

PS - and new pic posted on site with shorn locks and freaky vibe. Yes, freaky vibe occurring. N'est pas?

Dammed

(and because they haven't said howdy to you folks in a while, gratuitous weasel pics at the end of this post!)

I had an epiphany on the acupuncturist's table Friday afternoon that writing is what this being has used and still needs to keep flow occurring in heart and mind, saw so utterly clearly that in this personality, writing is medicinal, and that without it, the sh*t, the waste, the No tends to build up inside, creating blockages - much like an unwashed cut is more likely to become infected.

And continuing with that metaphor, what's really occurring is an overhaul of the immune system than powers this body-mind-heart. Instead of turning to pharmaceuticals to create a sensation of health, the focus has been moved to diet, exercise, content of actions and duties that make up the daily life.

Okay, it's not just metaphor, that's what's really happening. Instead of energy being spent on formulating a career - public health, holistic or otherwise - or maintaining a blog based on keeping readers engaged, or maintaining relationships to cultivate friendships or soulmates or mentors or mentees - energy is building up inside, not in height, but in depth. Energy that normally would be extending outward to keep all sorts of life components going, is being used to clear the decks of No down to the wood grain. 

And yet there is no more big push of burning, no more dramatic Torch This Muthaf*cker to The Ground. None of it matters. Whatever. And yet if presented with the choice between more pain or less pain, I choose less pain. And yet when I see an opportunity to choose more pain that leads to less pain in a fraction of the time, I'm still taking it, much like during the time of big torching. 

Like acupuncture. Really good, authentic acupuncture. The kind that hurts in a way that causes shrieking, deep inside the body and mind. Especially when combined with Tui Na, which is a kind of oriental/chinese medicine massage which is not unlike having muscle fiber and fascia ripped apart, which is probably not far off from what actually happens. The day after treatment, there are real bruises, and it hurts to touch even the skin, like after a car accident, or a bad beating.

And yet, the healing occurring in body and mind in its wake is astounding. Yoga hurts, too. And between the two - acupuncture and yoga - my body is becoming free again. 

I'm still fat. Still in pain. But where this body is is light years from where it was even six months ago. And there is a spaciousness in the mind that allows even thorny predicaments to fall away like a sigh. 

How do you free yourself? It really is about just saying no to drama. That's such a buzzword - drama. But it is a real symptom of western living. And you really can opt out of it. How do you opt out? Just say no.

Why don't you just say no to drama? Is it because there is some belief inside of you that says you're suppose to deal with it, or accept it, or not walk away, or that you have to because it's a boss or neighbor or child or mate or friend, and this is how a good person is with these sorts of people?

Why do you have to not walk away from these people, either as a one-way walk away or simply a walk-away in the moment? Is it because you believe these people give you, provide you with something - a physical or emotional or mental resource - that you can't live without?

But is this true? Do you really need what they offer, or is that you keep waiting for them to cough up their end of the bargain but they never do, or never to the degree they've promised or you expected? Or is the resource just another one of western culture's shell games, delusions? Like 99% of Face*book or country clubs or hobbies or the "food" in grocery stores or the "medicine" doled out in doctor's offices?

And what is walking away? It's genuinely saying adios mutherf*cker, sure, but at its simplest it's saying No Thank You, and watching as the other person finally, finally understands that they won't be receiving what they're demanding, and they get bored or peeved or whatever and they wander off to find someone else, someone who wants to do the drama dance in the same twitchy, frenetic, howling way they want to, too. Or in stilettos, or with this season's fashions, or in full face makeup, or while chanting the right tone of Om.

And does this mean that we have to be selfish assholes who refuse to help anyone else? Or does it mean that, in the moment, we have to listen to the energy, and then follow what it says, be it move closer or move away, regardless of what mores or rules or shoulds are squeezing our minds and hearts? 

Can you see the commonality, the through-line in this post? Can you hold the seeming dichotomy up to the light of your brilliant beam of discernment and see the truth in that ray of Yes?

Can you see how it changes your living forever? Can you see it's the only tool of enlightenment you really need? Can you see how this world would utterly transform if we all just started walking away from the buttheads, just collectively said No Thanks?

You want to change the world? Then do it in a way that you absolutely can do today, most likely in the next few minutes. Just say No Thanks to a butthead. Just opt out of someone's screeching drama. Just take a deep breath and allow yourself to put down that action you're pushing yourself to engage in because you think you should, or because you're afraid you'll miss out on something.

Absolutely do what Life is beaming Yes at you around. Push through the pain if you know it's about breaking through scar tissue. But seriously, it really is okay to just say no to a bad time.

How do you tell the difference? I have great faith in you. You'll figure it out . . . 

Evil Soy

I yammer on enough about how I'm gluten intolerant, but I don't really talk about how soy f*cks my sh*t up. Seriously. With wheat, I get sleepy and snotty, and if I keep eating it, I'll get rashy. But soy? After eating soy, within 24 hours, my hands are covered in blister-like eczema, the kind of crazy eczema I never get with wheat.

Soy is evil. Really. But don't believe me. Read This.

Thanks @flowcoach Scott Sonnon for the link.

Dead Air Refurbished and Filled With Fresh Breathable Yes

You can bet that when you experience dead air here at DatingGod that there is Deep Sh*t going down. And this past period of silence from me? Deep Deep Doodoo. And the slow but sure realization of the power of compost . . . 

Breakthrough and change are occurring, and while I'm struggling, and there's a lot of chaos happening, I'm okay, the kitties are okay, and I trust what's going on.

What's going on? The highlights:

I'm actively, confidently job hunting. I was waiting for some sort of signal to make a job change, and I got one. A big blaring neon one. It's too messy to go into yet, but it took me three weeks to get, yet again, that I can walk away from No. That I don't have to try and change it, or make friends with it, or adjust to it. I can just walk away. It's no one's fault, just the changes Life brings. For every season, turn, turn, turn. 

I don't know how long it'll take me to complete this, but it's in motion. I'm actively job hunting, both here in Wilmington, but especially in the Durham, Raleigh, Chapel Hill area. And I have an interview on Wednesday for an amazing job, one that uses all three of my biggest skills: holistic medicine/modalities, program management, and the public health master's degree. Will their culture be a good fit? Will we get along? Will the start date allow me enough time to give notice and move to Durham? Can I convince and show them I can do a great job? I'll get a chance to find out the answers to these questions in just a few days. 

Two weeks ago, Tuesday, December 7th, I had the roughest day I've ever had with the food addiction. The day before, I'd had a super clean green smoothie only day, so the following morning was feeling the detox pretty intensely. I went to work to the blaring neon of No that's flashing, and then was invited to a department breakfast, and I went and ate everything they offered. Then to a department xmas lunch, and stuffed that down. Wheat, meat, sugar, cheese, carbs, processed, oh my freaking god. I ended up so sick from it, throwing up for two days, out of my mind in pain and grief, that not knowing what else to do, I drug myself to an AA meeting. Then another, and another.

I'm not an alcoholic, but I'm certainly an addict. I've used substances over the years to numb and comfort, to get me high, and help me relax and feel joy. But because of the work I've done on myself the past 25 years, I'm at a point where all the addictions have fallen away. Except the demon that inhabited them now only uses refined carbs to survive. The gluten free cake slice: the demon's last stand. 

I've been to a few AA meetings over the years, and never felt any resonance, but that Tuesday night, I felt support and love and a place where it was okay to bring The Crazy. I don't know how many more I'll go to, I'm not an alcoholic, and these folks are very intensely focused on alcohol, and I have tremendous respect for what they're doing. But the basic tenets resonate for me, and have been a great help: complete honesty, a surrender to the fact that the addiction is unmanageable, and how a power greater than myself is the only way to vamoose it. Plus I've met some really lovely people. And the food addiction has been dialed down to doable. One day at a time . . . 

And oh good lord, the lovely holistic clients I've been speaking with the past month. I've spent my weekends in awe, in the presence of such surrender and willingness to let the No slip away, to embrace the Yes, even as it comes in a form they never ever would have imagined. Working with these folks has had me digging deeper than I ever have, to use the psychic and shamanic abilities in new ways, to reach past any resistance in me, to the place where generosity and love and Yes is right there for them. I don't mean this to sound hubristic. If anything this has been about stepping away from my ego, about allowing whatever skills and abilities I have to be used however they're needed in the moment, even as I watch and respect the boundaries my little one, my gatekeeper have erected to keep my energies safe and clear and strong enough to keep me alive and healthy and well as we do this deep work with folks.

With all the chaos going on in the other areas of my living, these hours spent in session with folks have been my sacred hours, sitting in worship of the magic power of the presence of Yes with another human, in gratefulness and surrender at the courage and willingness of a human being to face a lifetime of collected No, to set it down, even as they cry, and mourn it's passing. It's been a blessing. And for every one of you: thank you, thank you from the depths of my heart, for being with me, for allowing me to be with you. 

Love, love, love . . . so much love . . . even in the face of glaring blaring neon No, there is so much Yes . . . so very much Yes . . . thank you Life . . . thank you for always bringing the Yes . . .  and for the grace, the surrender to be able to see it, feel it . . . thank you . . . thank you . . . may your broadcast of Love and Yes beam out into every heart . . . every mind soothed by the presence of your Yes . . . thank you for our lives . . . thank you for our lives . . . 

Oh, The FEELINGS

It's easy for me to give myself grief for still not regaining vibrant health. For the ridiculous amount of excess fat. For the back pain. The lack of consistant exercise. It's been a long ragged struggle the past few years, and so often it seems to get down to the place where all I can see is that I'm a comfort addict with no willpower. And there's truth in that. But I got a hit last night of something, and in reaction to it, I wrote on the bathroom mirror, in lipstick no less.

I've felt this several times, but last night I GOT IT. It was like I was trying to take flight with a fifty pound weight attached to my belly. The experience of it, that moment of total clarity of the reality of it felt just terrible, like being trapped, caged in fat. But even as I stood there, feeling the truth of it, the weight I drag around with me, I knew that the awareness of it would pass, and that there was nothing I could do about it. I ran to the bathroom, scavanged through drawers for makeup, found a tube of lip tint, and wrote:

And then I went and ate four large sesame rye crackers with olive oil butter.

I keep thinking it's about the food. I keep trying to manage the food. No Nachos! I scream at myself. Back away from the millet toast, muthaf*cker! I buy organic produce. Faithfully spend a half hour each morning making my gallon of green smoothie in the pre-dawn light. I swear I won't go to the coop and buy cake, and then I go buy cake, convincing myself that at least it's gluten free, and made with organic ingredients. I make roasted broccoli for dinner. Then make a baked potato too and smother it in sour cream and salsa.

But it's not about the food. What I got last night is it's not about the food. It's about the fear and pain, that wall I hit where all I know is that I want to sit down with a book or a tv show and eat something yummy. It's the great comforter, and there's simply nothing else in my world anymore that is simple and straightforward and comforting like food is. And although I have the intellectual knowledge that my body doesn't want anything much other than green smoothies, in the moment, I can't make the jump from addiction to reality.

It's Groundhog Day every day in relation to food. During the week I eat because Hiveworld is Hiveworld and I don't want to work in this environment with these folks anymore and so I focus on food instead. On the weekends I eat because I'm free to do what I want, and what I want to do is cook and eat delcious healthy meals.

But it's not about the food. It's about the feelings. And I absolutely do not know what to do. It doesn't do any good to keep hassling myself, or leaving messages for myself, or trying to get myself to do anything. In the moment, it won't matter. In the moment, my mind is not my own, and the choice gets made based on something else.

And of course, no one can help. This thing I crossed over a few years ago means no one can tell me what to do (because it won't translate). I can get a session that'll have energy flowing along my spine again, or get a soul retrieval via telephone from a shaman in California, or an email from an Enlightened Guy, and they help, but only in a kind of buying-me-some-time kind of way. This portion of the Waking Up program is solo. It's a hard transition to make, but once it's done, it's done. There's no going back to turning over power to someone else. (Of course, you never know where the next nugget of Next is going to come from. But be assured that it's very rare for two nuggets to be coughed up from the same source. In fact I've seen the opposite, though this is most likely simply to keep me from getting even a tiny bit attached to anyone or anything.)

And things are better. Way better than a year ago. My joints no longer ache. There's no more stomach anguish in the middle of the night. Even the back pain is down to a minimal level. But the imbalance isn't cured. The symptoms have been turned way down. But the root cause is still diseased. Something inside isn't lined up correctly. Something is off. I can feel it. In my body. In my mind. And I've no idea how to get to it. No idea how to set it right. Because it's so deep, so intrinsic to who I think I am, it would be like pulling out a hacksaw and removing a leg.

Of course this gruesome image isn't true. But it is. That's the hilarious part. It's no different than any other portion of Waking Up. The leg is killing me, but there is no leg. Just walking around the wall, banging on doors and windows, still can't get in, refuse to give up, walk, walk, walk, bang, bang, holler, holler. Nothing.

Because on this side of the wall, I see a wall. On the other side, I'll laugh as I get there never was a wall.

Nothing to do but pray.

I do a lot of praying these days.