Slowly, I've been in the process of combining my work website with my personal blog. It's going to take a while, not so much because it's complicated, but because even as I know that transparency is the next step in my living, I get that it's scary. It's risky to open up all of my living, to stop hiding and pretending even a little bit that any of us, all of us, is anything other than a member of the Human Club. We all struggle, and slip and slide, and in our best moments, we reach out to one another to offer a hand, a snack, a smile, an email, a kind word, an honest answer to a tough question.
I know this means I'll lose clients. I understand that this means I'll invite all manner of craziness to walk up and waggle it's finger in my face. But I also get that as a culture, as a species, we stand at the forefront of a great leap of evolution that's showing itself in the form of memoir, celebrity reveals and outings, face*book and blogs, corporate and governmental salary and policy transparency. I can't hold out any longer. Life says jump, so with this email, I jump.
And I want you to join me. You can do it. You can have an amazing life where the No falls away, revealing the Yes that is and always has been a drumbeat, a heartbeat in the backbone of your living.
It's time we stop trying to hide from one another, pretending that one is better than another, that we let go of the illusion that anyone is exempt from the hard work of letting go of suffering, despair, anger, hopelessness, guilt. It's time we stop investing our energy in fighting one another and channel all that effort into the Yes. It's time to grow up. It's time to enter into Human Adulthood, that precursor to Enlightenment, otherwise known as Thank You God/Life/Spirit for my living, for this beautiful Earth, for the chance to walk and love and be.
What follows is the first post linking my work website to my personal blog, which you can read in this email or read where it lives over at DatingGod.
Much love to you . . . as you navigate the waters of your own living . . . and at this time and space of our connection, at the intersection of You and Me . . .
Spiritual Bon Bon or Hard Work or Just Plain Good Luck?
I had an amazing day yesterday.
- I woke up, drank my yogurt, flax seed oil, maca root powder, green food powder water. I felt sad and tired and hopeless. "Do you feel awful?" I asked myself. "Yes," I answered. Then I went for my three-mile walk and as my feet flew ever faster, and the cobwebs and funky mental fog blew away, I planned out the summer - work on the novel and my health May, June, July, post audios of the Sunday night journeying classes and launch combined websites in August, begin doing a class or two a month starting in September. I arrived back at the house happy and joyful and full of vim.
- I cleaned my house, and the resulting feng shui-ish quiet had me walking room to room, just to inhale the Yes radiating in each room.
- I got my car back from the mechanic, a friend of my sister's who installed a brand new radiator (how awesome that I won't have to fill the radiator up every few days!). He also did new brakes, spark plugs, air filter, oil change, and I'm sure some other stuff. He picked my car up from my sister's place on Thursday, took it Leland, then brought it back yesterday afternoon. All for $200. Which my sister paid for, and refused, absolutely laughingly refused to let me pay her back for. So I took the money I'd saved and went and had new tires put on the car, which I'd been meaning to do for many months because the front righthand side tire was so bald it was totally smooth, not even a hint of a tread left.
- I ate only healthy, clean foods all day, avocado and tomato, pineapple and watermelon, rice crackers and organic cheddar, hazelnut coffee and almond milk.
- The kitties attended the soul retrieval sessions according to some calling only they hear. A guy arrives and Baby Wallace sits at his feet, staring at him with the sweetest of expressions. When we do the healing work, Wallace jumps up on the table and curls into the space between his feet. When the guy leaves, Baby Wallace goes into my bedroom. A woman arrives and Jacinta comes out, which she very rarely does, and talks to the woman, these pointed mreowwwws that has the woman leaning over and talking back to Jacinta in a very caring way. Jacinta stays with her for the whole hour and a half. The woman leaves, Jacinta disappears into the apartment. The next client arrives and Emmaline and Malcolm come out, Emma spending the first ten minutes sniffing and licking the woman daintily, which delights the woman, and Emma gives her the love look, you know the one, over and over. E and M then nap on the floor, Malcolm at the woman's head, Emmaline at her feet. After she leaves, all the kitties come out, and sit, watching me as I shut things down, turn off the drumming track, blow out candles, fold the blankets and put them away, fold up the massage table. Then they all disperse. I know this is a main reason I knew I needed to work from home - so that the kitties could do their work too.
- I went to the grocery store and stood in the cake mix and frosting aisle, eyeballing something called "chocolate explosion- just microwave and eat!" for many long minutes. It took that long to get to the knowledge: this will make you sick. As I put it back onto the shelf, I felt a sliver of gratitude, the smallest poof of virtuousness, but mostly what I felt was a profound grief that stayed with me for approximately one minute, then was gone. When I left the grocery store, without a single product made from wheat or chemicals or sugar, the sun felt brilliant and healing, and I smiled all the way to the car and back home.
- Instead of going to the movies to see Iron Man 2 and eat popcorn, I drank a banana and pineapple and vanilla rice protein shake, and scratched and rubbed various kitty pelts, and watched Fringe and Medium and Flash Forward and Stargate Universe off of Side*reel and Hulu. Then I went to bed, read some more of The World Without Us, kitties all up in my stuffs, and listened to the suburban soundtrack of birds and squirrels and dogs and wind as we drifted off to sleep.
Maybe this would have been a more or less normal day for some folks, or for others, with the economy the way it is, a freakin joyride on a magic carpet. For me, it felt like everything that's going on is a confirmation of the hard ass, bone grinding work I did the past few years.
But then I think: maybe I'm just having a streak of good luck. But I remember I don't really believe in good luck, or at least good luck in the form of Yes just randomly zipping into a life, then zipping back out. And then there's the fact that this "good luck" always always seems to come in the wake of doing hard time in the inner mines of spiritual work.
Then I think: maybe this is just what happens when someone quits being all erratic and flighty and buckles down to a regular "normal" job. I've been working seven days a week - five days in Hiveworld, then shamanic healing work clients for three to five hours on Saturdays, then shamanic journeying class on Sunday night. A phone session or two on the weeknights. Keeping my apartment clean. Being on time.
And then I get: this is the beginning of Human Adulthood. This is what a life is like when a person drops the emotion, the batsh*t crazy rage and judgment and addiction and depression and hopelessness and victimy blame and romantic love and delusion and belief that anything means anything (the ones most people pretend they don't feel, but which all but the tiniest percentage of members of our western civilization tribe indulge in). It doesn't mean these vapors don't still come around - it means they are so much less attractive that a person doesn't stare at them, reach out a paw to grab them as they whirl past. This is what happens when a person stops buying into the insanity of the demons that nip at their heels, not turning to fight them, just flinging them off, keep climbing, further, always further. This is the beginning of Human Adulthood, and it isn't something that is achieved so much as surrendered into.
I highly recommend it. I give my stamp of Yes approval to turning toward whatever horrible awful No is vibrating in your world. I support and encourage you, as the No begins to surround and then consume you, to chant the mantra "Yes, yes, yes, Yes." And then as the No changes into Yes, and you begin to laugh at how hard you fought all these years against the supposed No, when you see how it always was and always will be Yes, go sit in a chair, and watch the wind move the trees, and watch the movement of your mind downshift into floating, and the pointlessness of your life to reveal itself as quiet joy and sweetness and hilarity.
It's not your life. You just travel in it.
What a beautiful day . . .
