Life at 65%

When my energy healer told me I was operating at about 65% yesterday, my first reaction was "Wow! That's awesome! Just imagine how great 100% will feel, if this is how great 65% feels!!!" woo-hoo! I don't have any sort of "gee, I thought I was doing better than that. Shouldn't I be further along than that by now?" Trust me, I'm the person who has spent their whole life thinking they should have been further along than "wherever" I've happened to be. So feeling so incredibly happy and thankful at 65% is a really sweet surprise, a really great blessing.

And it's also a wonderful time for assessment. 65% is a vast improvement over 6%. And I can see it. My life has been full of metaphors and examples of how full of MySelf I have been (not from that egoic "full of myself" mental place, but truly energetically, how full of my own precious Self is my tank? How much of Me am I running on?).

Before this all happened, I was using about 6% of my house. I have a tiny, tiny house, and even so, I was only using 6% of it. I would come home, and curl up in my bed. I ate in my bed, slept in my bed, wrote in my bed. My bed was literally my little nest that contained everything I needed. I slept with my computer in my bed (if my boyfriend wasn't there) and with my phone in my bed. I would fall asleep at night holding my cell phone, and wouldn't let go of it all night, like a security blanket. I would wake up in the morning, and before even getting up to go to the toilet, I would open my computer and check my email. So even before I had started to care for myself during the day, I was caring for my business.

In my house, wherever things landed was where they would stay. I was veering dangerously towards the energetic pattern of the person who carves passageways out of stacks of paper, only for me it was stacks of clothes. When your spirit is being pushed out of your body, it takes more energy than you possess to create an appropriate living environment. Or, rather, your living environment becomes appropriate as a reflection of just how much you are actually occupying your Self.

As I started to fill up again, and started to re-inhabit my house, I started to discover all kinds of metaphors for how "out of it" I was. For example, I had bought quite literally hundreds of candles, and yet I did not own a single match. I love that. How accurate, how eye-opening! Hundreds of candles and no matches. I have spent hundreds of dollars on jewelry, some of them custom, hand-made pieces of art, heaped in a pile under miscellaneous clutter, sometimes even garbage. I had created a beautiful altar and yet hadn't consecrated the space around it enough to prevent both my boyfriend and myself from just dumping stuff in front of it. I have tiny closets, and most of my clothes are soft, knit things that benefit most from being folded, and yet I do not own a dresser and kept attempting to keep my wardrobe on hangers. I even had a sweater-sorter thing, one of those collapsible shelving things you hang from wardrobe rods, which I wasn't using and even had in my car to take to Goodwill! I could go on, but you get the picture. So many simple things I could do to actually inhabit my body and my house, so many details I had overlooked.

So I've made tremendous progress. Yesterday I organized my closets - always an obsession of mine; I even had a business for awhile helping people organize their own closets. I LOVE a gorgeous, organized closet, no matter what size. I brought the hanging shelf back inside, and lovingly folded all of my t-shirts and sweaters and arranged them by color. My closet is no bigger, but there is a place for all of my treasures to be displayed to their own best advantage, and it's a joy to look into. That simple step of reaffirming myself has gone a long way!!

My altar is now a sacred space. I took my computer out of my bed, and placed it so that as I am writing, I am sitting on my meditation cushion, on a rug. My altar is behind me. My books are to my right, and the blowing breeze through the open door is to my left. I have my music playing, and incense burning, and all of this is contained in a tiny nook of about 4'x6'. I very much like writing inside my meditation space. Since I have started writing here, I feel like the words I write have more strength, love, and light. It feels like an occupied, important space, not just a place to dump stuff.

I organized the bathroom last night, and rediscovered my jewelry. I put some of my favorite pieces on - pieces that were made for me or given to me by very important and beloved people. I feel their strength and love while I'm wearing them.

The bed is made, and I put all of my nesting things in a little basket, so I can still nest up if I like, but it's easy to take the stuff out of the bed and keep the bed for what it is here for - a place for rest and love.

I feel like I've made great progress here at 65%. There's still 35% more to be done to fully occupy the house. The kitchen is still untouched (it's so loaded. Energetically. Entering my kitchen to feed and nurture myself is a direct act of defiance towards the energies that have been draining me, a very clear statement of their lack of authority in my space, and ironic given my "other" identity as a raw food educator, writer, advocate and proponent!). A huge part of this energy battle in my body has been fought over my diet. Huge. That's another post altogether. Add it to the list! My car is still a mess. There is still scrubbing to be done. All of this will come together, slowly and gently. I am in no rush.

I would rather stay at 65% and create a strong imprint of 65% Self than to try and rush to 100% and not have the strength to maintain. These things take time. Healing is a process that cannot be rushed. I feel so good about my progress. I'm happy.

Energy, Part Deux

Trust me, everything is funnier in French. Try it sometime.

To follow up on my earlier post about energy: I realized that I hadn't actually mentioned that indeed, my energy healer was able to detect that I had been "hijacked." That an energy from the old business - not from any individual there, mind you, this is not about any person there, but rather an energy around the old business - had come along and picked a fight with me. From what it feels like to me, it's the same energy that has been picking fights with me for awhile, and it's the same energy that created the original "bad blog." After all, it worked so well the first time, why not try to get me to do it again? Writing is as natural to me as breathing, so it's not like it has to try and get me to do something I don't want to do, right?

And I felt it again today. I was just humming along, doing great, working on my house, getting back into my space, when suddenly I felt this sense of shame. Not much, just a little, just a taste, like that whiff of cigarette smoke you get from a passing car with its windows open. Just enough that I could recognize it. "Ahhh, shame. I know that feeling. Ahhh, yes, I should be feeling that right now. Shouldn't I? Oh, the pain I've caused people, oh, I'm a bad person, I should feel ashamed." I felt this sneaking in, and I just stopped. I laughed out loud. HA-HA!! A fake, harsh, phony laugh. Then I went into the bathroom and I forced myself to look in the mirror and laugh out loud (a more challenging exercise than you might think). Then I started talking. I asked myself the hard questions: do I feel this shame? is this me? what do I have to be ashamed of? is God ashamed of me? And I forced myself to answer: I don't really feel this shame, I just feel like I should. This isn't me. I have nothing to be ashamed of - people were hurt, and I am grieved by that, but I am not ashamed. There is no shame in God, only Love, and Love drives out shame and fear. So then I started dancing. And laughing. And then I went for a walk. And the feeling of shame went away.

What I am learning from this: our true emotions are not the same as our conditioned reactions. I am sad, but I am not ashamed. I take ownership, but I do not take blame. I am happy, because I am joy, but I take no pleasure in the suffering of others. I have practical concerns, but I am not worried. I can hear all of those imprints from childhood: you should be ashamed of yourself, I blame you for this, how dare you laugh at a time like this, you better be worried. I want to cast those imprints off and build myself new.

My energy healer did a quick tune-up on me tonight (he has been so marvelous and patient and answered all my questions). I said I'm feeling so much better, I feel like I'm around 80-90% full-of-me! He laughed and said, well, looks more like about 65%. Which is a whole lot better than the 6% or so that I was a week ago! I'm excited - if this is what 65% feels like, wow! what must 100% be!?!?!?

Energy

I am looking very closely at Energy these days. Not just the get-up-n-go pep kind of energy, although that really is a much bigger part of the other kind of energy than I had figured, but really the cosmic energies, the cosmic forces that play and dance and laugh and sing around us. I've given them some lip service, carried a vast fascination about them, studied them, but always allowed my attentions to them to wax and wane dependent upon whatever else was going on in my life. Whenever I have less than way-too-much going on, however, that is where my attention naturally slips.

I will admit it fully: I believe in astrology, numerology, tarot, angel cards, goddess cards, psychic readings, energy healings, clairvoyance, ghosts, "crossing over," and all sorts of the realm of the supernatural. I believe in the gods and goddesses of the ancient religions, the angels and the saints, the boddhisatvas and the avatars. (how did "avatar" become the term for the little cartoon drawing people use on games? it's the name of the wisest and most ancient incarnate souls! bizarre) I'm very much like the Cowardly Lion, twisting his tail and muttering as a mantra, "I do believe in spooks, I do believe in spooks, I do believe in spooks!" I believe in magic, I know the trees and rocks are alive, and I know that there are benevolent and malevolent forces at play in our lives. I love Harry Potter! (There, I've said it. I read HP7 in less than 24 hours the first time, and in the 18 months since then, I've read it at least 18 times. It's been an enormous education for this process, as, like Harry, I have had to stow my wand beneath my robes and go to face my "death" without defense. But, I digress. We'll talk about Harry Potter later.)

And, as much as I believe in the esoteric, I also believe that it is all very organized, logical, intertwined and planned out. I believe in Free Will, and also that our Free Will is all organized towards a planned result. I love Human Design! When I discovered Human Design, it blew my mind apart - and then I got too busy to fully engage in it. I am my own worst enemy, always.

My faith structure goes like this: I exist in this body. I am a soul having a human experience, which requires a body, a human body. It's very much like - I live in Texas, therefore I require a car in order to have a fully Texan experience! (it's really so true, in so many ways!) But even in Texas, you get out of your car occasionally (it's not LA, after all! that's something else altogether). We get to choose our cars, we get to choose how well we take care of our cars, we get to choose our fuel for our cars, and we get to choose who else rides in our cars with us. And sometimes, if we're not careful, our cars can get stolen or damaged while we're not paying attention to them. We can pick up hitchhikers, or carpool. And there are a whole lot of people who don't have cars - they have to ride the bus, but they'd really love to catch a ride or borrow your car. And then there are the really smart people who just have bicycles, but that's a different story (they matter in this one too, though!).

So to keep the story going: the people with cars are ordinary people. The people without cars are disincarnate souls. The people with the bicycles are boddhisatvas, here, incarnate, but traveling at different speeds and using different energy sources. Our friends and families and people we share rides with create positive energetic connections, as long as they help pay for gas and don't make us drive out of our way all the time and don't turn up the radio so loud we can't hear what we're saying, and it's nice if they share by driving you in their cars equally the same. When they don't do that, or when we do that to them, it creates an energetic drain. When the people without cars steal our cars when we're not looking, our car can get involved in all kinds of mess! It's registered to us, so it looks like we're doing it, and it's hard to prove that we weren't involved. And if we pick up hitchhikers, we have no way of knowing what they are going to do, as an unknown person. Same with disincarnate souls. We have no control over their actions.

With our physical cars, at night (or whenever we're away from them) we lock the doors and roll up the windows and hide our valuables. We need to do the same with our bodies. With our physical cars, we get tune ups and we drive the speed limit. We ask our passengers to help pay for gas. We need to do the same with our bodies and with our energies that we are sharing our bodies with.

Not all shared energies are bad! Some are very beneficial - such as the shared energy of children and lovers. It's when the shared energies crowd out the original energy, the Driver, that things start to get crazy. Your body becomes a clown car, a school bus, the truck on the Beverly Hillbillies.

My belief in this, which allows for my belief in all the other magic of the world, has been solidified by what I have been experiencing this week. According to my energy healer, I was carrying about 30-40 people in my body. I was using over 60% of my creativity for my work, my job, I should say. I was using about 94% of my energy for my job. I was grounding my job - and by job I mean the entire business, not just my section of it - through my body. My 6th and 7th chakras were buried and crammed up against each other in the center of my head. There was very little ME in me, and it was evident in my life. My house was a mess. Not just a mess, but a heaping pile of mess, and I simply had no energy to take care of it. I was so barely present in my own body, how could I bother to be more than barely present in my house? Any attempts I made to clean or decorate my house were thwarted by the huge demands of the energies residing in my body which would pull me back into taking care of it/them instead, and my house would deteriorate almost immediately. My boyfriend commented that he had never actually seen the bottom of both sides of my kitchen sink at the same time in the (then) 5 months we'd been together. Sad but so amazingly true.

It's been a week since the day I began to lose my job. I had my energy healing done 6 days ago. It's taken me this long to (very gently) start to get back into my house, to get it cleaned up, to get it pretty, to get ME back into it. I can't work on it for very long, maybe 15 minutes at a time, before I get pretty wiped out and have to sit and write and re-build. Learning to use my Self-care muscles, getting my house together so I can live in it.

2 days ago, I wrote a post which really hurt a beloved friend. I didn't mean to. In fact, I wasn't even sure where that post came from or why I wrote it. Here is my experience of that day: I had a beautiful day on Sunday. I woke up on Monday, full of excitement and promise for the week ahead. "My Sabbatical starts today!" was my opening idea. I had been given some instruction via Human Design to spend some time listening to my Sacral Center, to write some lists of questions and to just spend some time reading them and listening - literally - to the sounds from my Sacral Center (via throat chakra) to see how I responded. Also on the list of things to do was to start cleaning my house and to start a mild orange-juice fast. Very much a self-care oriented kind of day, exactly what everyone who loves me wanted me to be doing. I wrote some posts in Raw Fu, answered some emails, made my orange juice. It was a lovely morning, so I gathered up my journal, my Michael Tamura book, and my juice bottle, put on my Keens, and set off for the park. I saw in my mind's eye the bench I wanted to sit at, one of my favorite spots. As I started walking, out of nowhere, I felt this sudden sense of worry - of concern for my belongings still at my old job. Like, wow - I need to get this taken care of. I need my stuff. My head was kind of buzzing. And so I pulled out my phone and sent a few texts to a friend of mine who works there, all the while wondering if this was the right thing to do or not. But the sense of worry in my head was really strong. Suddenly, I TURNED AROUND, about a block away from my house, and I went home. "Too chilly to sit on a bench now" was the reason my head gave me. Rather than the sense of worry subsiding with going home, I found it increasing. Next thing I knew, I felt this huge need to write a post for my blog about my worry, including worrying about this friend and whether or not she still liked me and if I could trust her. Someone who had always been my friend, my ally, someone I really loved. I suddenly was filled with doubt, worry, and fear, and I was the furthest away from love, light and laughter that I had been the entire time. I spent the whole day in this sense of worry. I spent the whole day focused on my friend and if she still loved me. Of course, that much energy brought her to read the post, and a friend who was a supporter was now very upset with me. It was bizarre. Why did I do such a stupid thing? Had I not just learned my lesson about what to blog and what not to blog? Where did this come from?

I am an incredibly lucky person. My friend slapped me, hard. She didn't hold back. She slapped me awake, slapped me back into my body. One of my best friends then gave me a hard, long shake. My boyfriend said, "I can't save you from yourself!" I posted the apology, below, and then set to figure out what had happened and why. I recognized the events as I've described them, and I sent an email to my energy healer. I realized that I felt "invaded" when those worry thoughts hit me. Those thoughts didn't feel like "me," but they also felt so familiar that I didn't fight them off. Had I been hit by an external energy force - a hitchhiker? an old passenger who still wanted a ride? had my car just been keyed by someone angry at me?

Before it seems like I'm passing off the responsibility of the actions onto a "devil made me do it" alibi, I want to make very clear: I did it. I wrote the words, posted the message. But more importantly, I did it in collusion. I allowed this hostile force to come into my body, I allowed it way more room than it deserved, and then I shrugged my shoulders, energetically, said, "yeah, you're right," and I did what it suggested I do. I was weak. I took it on. Therefore, the responsibility is all mine. If someone steals my car and uses it to kill a pedestrian, I'm responsible if in fact I left the car unlocked and the keys in the ignition and the engine running. I'm even more responsible if I'm sitting in the passenger seat and navigating, as I was in this instance.

Lesson learned? What I have to learn now is how to discern that which is me, and that which is not. Easy? Not very. It's subtle, because I have been carrying 30-40 people and a whole business in my body! I know what those forces feel like almost better than I know what I feel like. I feel like the foreigner. I feel "good," I feel "happy." When I'm in my own body and fully occupying it, like I was on Sunday, I feel strong and powerful and at ease. The problem is that all those other feelings are so familiar, and we expect, in our culture, "to have good days and bad days." So maybe "I" am just having a bad day? But what if that were impossible? I'm thinking of Dr. Patch Adams, who decided to never have a bad day. Now there's a man in full occupation of his own body!

I have decided never to have another bad day. I have decided never to let another hitchhiker steal my car, not to let another crazy, dangerous driver take over. I have to learn how to lock my car, how to roll up the windows. I don't know exactly how to do this, but my gut, my precious Sacral Center, is telling me that the best, fastest, easiest way to do this is laughter. To laugh, even if it seems fake, at the idea of worry or fear, is to drive the negative energy/entity right on out - "Me let you drive?? Oh that is HILARIOUS!!! Thanks for the laugh, I really needed that! whoooooo!"

Neutrality

Oh Holy Phool, Blessed Guides and Supreme Being! Please be with me in my thoughts, words, deeds and actions today, and show me the light, love and laughter in all that I encounter! Please give light and peace to my words and pull out of me that which is not me, and help me to share the best that is me with those who are needing it. Amen.

Neutrality. This has been the theme of the day. This is where most of my energy and focus has been going, working through layers and layers and layers of drama. I even wrote (and am now rewriting) a post about drama, one which was loaded with it. I felt like it was neutral, and then my precious Projector shone some light on it, and I saw that while it was closer to neutral, it wasn’t there yet. Still in drama.

So rather than write about drama, through layers of drama, I want to attempt to write about neutrality, through this new and exciting lens of neutrality. When I say “lens” – it feels almost like a combination microscope/telescope, with a viewer right in the middle that shows me both sides equally the same, at the same time, in perfect focus.

When I’m in drama, the connection is to only one end of the viewer. Microscope – minutiae, details, blind spots everywhere, no big picture. Telescope – no sensitivity, no subtlety. Both ends are exhausting. What’s more, when in drama, there is no awareness of the calm center, and so I make the mistake of thinking that I am the calm center, and that all drama is going on around me. There’s nothing wrong with this. It’s the nature of drama. When I am in it, I’m in it, and I am therefore either blinded by my attention to (my own) detail, or I am oblivious by my fascination with the big picture. Either way, I’m only looking at one end, and seeing my end as the right end. It doesn’t matter what the drama is about, or who started it, or how long it’s been going on – drama is drama, and fixating on either end of the viewer is engaging in it.

Neutrality, however, is something altogether different. I’ve been getting interesting lessons lately in neutrality. I know someone who is so “Zen” about her approach to life that it used to disturb me a little. “How could she be so calm? There’s so much stuff going on! How can she not take a side, stand up for something, express her opinion, express her feelings?” (as you can see, I have always been very passionate and hard-headed. Aries Moon in the first house. I wear my heart on my sleeve. And as he said in “Fight Club,” “How’s that workin’ for ya?” exactly.) Last week, in the middle of my crisis, this person, this wonderful example, told me how much she loves me, and that she was neutral in my fight. That was a shock to me. “If you love someone, don’t you have to take a side? Don’t you have to stand up for them?” That was my first authentic glimpse into neutrality, my first real understanding of the idea of “Yes, And…”

The next day, I had my energy healing, and my wonderful energy healer gave me another big lesson. He was there to observe, and to remove anything that wasn’t me, to clear the clutter, as he said. Not there to judge, condemn, assess or evaluate. And yet he was quite clearly on my side, in the moment, of working to do the very best for me and all involved. Remove that which isn’t working, keep that which is, that is all.

Reading Michael Tamura gave me the word. I hadn’t really grokked the concept and applied the word to it until I read his book, and it just blew my socks off. Neutrality started to seep into my consciousness.

On Sunday night, working with my friend on her conflict – well, it’s so easy to see both sides of someone else’s drama, isn’t it? I looked at my beautiful friend and the tension in her face and said, “get to neutral.” And it was so amazing to watch as she struggled to find it. I could literally see the tension of the drama pulling her down, and I had never seen that before. It’s always been there, I just had never seen it because I had never willingly backed away from a fight before! Imagine, pulling away from a fight when it’s one of your best friends in it. I just kept getting these fleeting glimpses of neutrality, and how sweet it was there, how sweet she was there. It took us about 2 hours or so of focused work, but we did finally make it to a lovely neutral spot.

Yesterday, I got yanked. When you seek neutrality, you’re gonna get yanked. I got yanked, I got sucked into my own drama, I reacted in drama. I stopped looking through the middle of the viewer. And I got blindsided by the short-sightedness of my resulting reactions. Yanked-n-spanked. “Stay neutral,” whispers my spirit, and all my earthly guides joined back in chorus. Just stay neutral.

And I had one more lesson from a friend today. An incredibly gifted, amazing artist, she is about to have her first one-woman show – a long-awaited dream, and therefore one riddled with anxiety. I had just come home from a long walk, thinking about drama and neutrality, and she sent me a gift – her worries, her drama. It was like a miracle, this gift to be able to see the same miracle I was going through her experience. She gave me this sentence: “my career is on the line.” Wow. Having, of course, just had the course of my whole career change in a heartbeat and yet being on the other side and still smiling, laughing, learning, loving and breathing, I realized that I could be at perfect neutral for her for that worry, that drama. And I saw her career as a line, a line in one of her drawings. Both ends – success or failure – are both present, both are equally beautiful, and both are being held up by the same perfect composition. The neutral point, the place in the middle that supports both ends, is the place in the drawing where the eyes rest.

In my mind’s eye, neutrality is a fulcrum point. Drama resides at the ends of the seesaw. Depending on the situation, I get different seesaws. My work/life drama to me is a bright, shiny silver seesaw in outer space that spins so fast I can’t tell the poles apart and make the mistake of thinking there are no poles, no neutral point, no drama. My friend’s conflict seesaw was a good ol’ wooden playground seesaw, the kind with the deep grooves in the ground under it. My other friend’s drawing seesaw was actually a surreal vine supported by a feather (her drawings are amazing. Amazing.) And each seesaw has a neutral point, which has a bright, shining gem, star, beacon, something.

It’s so beautiful at Neutral. I’m still just getting fleeting glimpses of what it’s like to be there, but just that is enough to make it very enticing. The misconception I had before was that all the action was at the poles. Go to your pole, stay on your end, and that’s where the effort, energy and action would all take place. It’s true that at the poles is where you get to feel the g-forces – you do get that adrenaline rush, but it pushes and forces you into immobility. You can do nothing while spinning out of control, held down by gravity. What I’m learning is that all the action happens at neutral. Sneaky, huh?

At neutral, you get to see both ends. At neutral, you don’t miss a thing. At neutral, the heavens open, and there is magic. And light, laughter, love and joy. The miracles happen at neutral. Not at effort, or attachment or spinning out of control. The miracles happen at neutral, because neutral is where you can finally let go of attachment to outcomes, because at neutral you can finally see that both sides of the drama are perfect and beautiful, and so are all of the players.

Neutral is not passive. Neutral is not apathetic. Neutral is love for all. Neutral carries the power to stop the madness. Neutral is non-resistance. Neutral is defenselessness. Neutral can solve the economic crisis, the Middle-East crisis, world hunger, genocide, global warming, and can soothe a broken heart and mend a broken relationship. Neutral is that powerful. All we have to do is get there.

Humor, Laughter and Amusement

After a melancholy day, I was instructed to write a new post that would pull more light, love and laughter back into this holy-seeking blog. Good idea! Still feeling groggy, though, I figured what I really needed was some laughter therapy. I want to watch The Office. Surely nothing I've ever done in "real Life" is as stupid, offensive, or ridiculous as what Michael does on The Office, so that will lighten me up and make me laugh and then I'll be in a terrific place to write a terrific post.

And the Universe is cracking me up! We don't need no stinkin' comedy routines! This mess is FUNNY! Not only do I have an old computer that moves slow, well, suffice it to say that I've been working on loading the video for about 10 minutes when I give up on Hulu and go to NBC. Once I get to NBC, I get the message that I need a new flash player. So I go to Adobe. It's going to take 7 minutes to load the new flash. Hmmmmm.

I seek laughter, so I go to a comedy. I seek patience, so I get a slow-moving computer. My comedy won't load. I gotta laugh, because if this WERE a comedy, it would be hysterical. I feel like I am being told so clearly: the laughter cannot be because something is funny. The laughter must come from you, from within, because it's ALL funny! The whole of Nature is roaring with laughter at the joy of simply being what IS.

The situation that I have just left is funnier and full of more wonderful characters than The Office could ever dream. My current situation - sitting on this pink comforter in this messy little house, making mistakes and pissing people off and just trying to make things make sense and failing miserably - this is funny. I have to laugh at how SERIOUS I am about it all. The pout and the self-pity and the worry. Remember, the spell to dispell a Boggart: RIDIKULOUS!!! And how do you get rid of dementors? You think of the happiest, strongest clearest thing you have. Laughter is the magic that rids us of evil, worries, neuroses, anger, fretfulness, addictions, cravings, loneliness and sorrow. Laughter is the only medicine. I've been saying for days that I am going to do laughter work, and I have yet to put myself in a place of just letting go and laughing.

well, HA!!!! to that! time to get giggling.

More apologies

I'm in such a maelstrom of confusion right now. Please bear with me.

First, I have to apologize, again, to anybody who may have been literally hurt by any of the posts that I put on this blog. I thought I was writing from a place of sharing ideas and my experiences, but instead, I was simply ranting - non-constructively, airing dirty laundry, setting fire to bridges, and using my blog to discuss people instead of ideas, to discuss ideas instead of God. This is how people got hurt in the first place.

I have been in a big delusion. I was under the impression that by writing incognito, I was disengaging from any sort of fray around my situation. What I realize now is that what I was actually doing was participating energetically, retaliating. I was looking for validation and reinforcement - I wanted all of the people who are supporting me to say how fantastic I am, to cheer me on, to tell me I'm great and "don't let the bastards get you down!" It's true. That's what I want from anybody and everybody who reads this blog. I figure you're here for some reason, it's got to be that you think I'm just AWESOME. And if you think I'm just awesome, then it doesn't matter what I say, I can just say it and no problems. But that's not what happens. Once again, I forgot that my blog - even a supposedly anonymous blog like this one - is not my journal. I don't leave my journal lying around for people to pick up. A journal is a place for catharsis and processing. Hopefully a blog is a place for something worthwhile to say.

I have been under the delusion that I was in non-resistance, going with the flow and being Peace in my situation. Sometimes, I was. Sometimes, I was not. Some of my posts (which have been deleted) were posts of war, written from a place of anger or outrage or fear, sadness, loneliness, emptiness. They were not from a place of Peace. They were not from the place of
seeing Love in all situations. They were from a place of wanting to be right and wanting validation. Other posts were written from a very good place, and I'm pleased with that work and will allow it to stand.

I am working very hard on seeing love, light, laughter and peace in all the situations around me. I forgot that when you open yourself to see peace, the Universe will hand you war. When you open to Love, you will be handed fear. Seek Light, be handed darkness. Seek Laughter, and be handed tears. This is how it goes. Because the trick is not to be in Peace when it's all peaceful and happy - I had a wonderful day yesterday and was so easily at peace, so this morning I got the opportunity to experience some loneliness and fear and insecurity. Thinking I was staying in peace, I wrote a post out of fear. And it got caught. By someone I love very very much, and who I had a moment of insecurity about. My fear, my insecurity, crowding out the peace in the situation I had stopped trying to see. I didn't stop trying to see it for long - only for a few moments - but that was enough. Enough to keep me in fear and insecurity all day, enough to hurt someone beloved to me. I have been so concerned about the opinions of these readers "out there" who I don't even know that I am putting at risk the very real relationships that I have here in front of me.

There's a quote, I don't know from who: mediocre minds talk of people, average minds talk of ideas, and great minds talk of God. The intention of this blog was to create a place of my spiritual journey - a place to talk of God. And instead I have used it to talk of people. Not always, but I am learning, painfully, slowly, that it takes constant vigilance and practice to stay in the light, love and laughter.

I faltered for a minute. I almost deleted the whole blog. There are too many of you who have encouraged me to take these steps and work along this path, via this forum and this medium. I am learning how to use it, and making terrible mistakes every once in awhile. I want to be great, not in your eyes, but in my defenselessness. I am disengaging completely from the fray, the energy of the blessed place behind me. I have stowed my wand in my cloak. No more writing about people, no more dirty laundry. This is about my journey, and only my own, and hopefully about ideas, and ideally about God.

I have a very clear instruction to find the laughter in this situation. It's kind of funny that I would slip so easily from love into worry on a day so beautiful and so full of blessings, like a little kid throwing a tantrum because his mom ate the swirl off the top of his DQ sundae! You've still got the whole bowl of ice cream, just maybe not the part that makes it so pretty.

A Most Glorious Day!!!

Today's words have been done mostly through my voice, which has been really exciting. I can't even begin to count the blessings of today, they have been so many, but here are the highlights:

1) I woke up to a dream in which I was visiting a Sacred Circle, like Stonehenge.
2) then I went to Michael Tamura's website (www.michaeltamura.com), found a YouTube video, watched that and it was speaking DIRECTLY to me, of course.
3) got a phone call from a good friend
4) met another good friend at Starbuck's - don't normally go to Starbuck's, but she does, and it was her treat, so while there I got to try a really yummy drink called a "London Fog" which is a tea latte made an earl-grey type tea with vanilla, bergamot and lavender. I had it with soymilk. TOTALLY not on my regimen, but also totally a wonderful treat.
5) my good friend I met at Starbuck's is a woman who, when I met her, my heart just immediately went "YUMMY!!! MINE! MY FRIEND! She's got stuff I need to know! Can she be my friend and teacher pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeezzzzzzzzzze?" I just love her. And I have been so freakin' busy that despite the fact that we live in the same neighborhood and I practically drive past her house every day, we have not been able to find time to sit together and have a cup of tea in the almost 2 years that I have known her. RIDICULOUS! So now, I have this blessing of a Sunday morning free and clear, with plenty of time to sit and chat. Wow.
6) my good friend I met at Starbuck's is: a potter, a realtor, a yoga teacher, an astrologer, and a counselor. She's all of that and more. It was so amazing to talk to someone in this situation who not only knew all of the players on a human level, but who could also look at them from a more global, even cosmic level and give a really wide-ranging insight on what had happened, like "wow - Pluto is going conjunct this person's Sun. No wonder!" We had an amazing conversation in which I told her the experiences and she gave me the insights. Incredible.
7) during my time at Starbuck's, I had calls from one of my best friends, my boyfriend, and my energy healer. They're all super-awesome.
8) the weather today was just knock-your-eyeballs-out perfect. 65 degrees, spotless turquoise sky, just blustery enough to make the kite festival fun and interesting. I got to spend my whole afternoon in the park instead of stuck at work! woo-hoo!
9) I am practicing amusement and laughter. This is work I'm taking very seriously. I made a point to walk around with a smile on my face, and to smile at everybody. I even waved at people. I smiled at dogs like crazy - I always talk to dogs, too - smiled at babies, smiled at grown-ups, everybody. I had one baby go out of his way to catch my attention and make sure I waved at him. He was great. Whenever I saw something funny happen, I laughed and chatted with the people involved. One guy had a ring-shaped kite, and it fell out of the sky and landed neatly around the head of an adorable little girl - she looked like she was around 5 or so, playing with her sister. I laughed and asked the guy how many points that was worth - he said he wasn't sure, so I said it's gotta be at least 3 points for that. And then the older sister, being careful to extricate the kite strings from her little sister's braids and barrettes said, "nah - that's 4 points for sure!"
10) this guy had the coolest kite - a yellow dragon with a 6-foot wingspan, and an 8-foot tail. wow.
11) I got to sit at a picnic table at the crossroads for all the people leaving the park, and all the people coming in, plus all the people just exercising. Dogs! Kids! Bicycles! Kites! Strollers! Joggers! Young! Old! Everybody! So much fun.
12) I got calls from closest, bestest friends which I was sitting there, so they got to join in the fun, too.
13) I talked with a very powerful supporter. This is a woman I respect so much, and she totally is in agreement that I did a stupid thing, but she feels that what the business owner did was more stupid. She asked me what I am going to do now, and I told her that I am going to take 3 months sabbatical to write. "Good for you!!!" she said. "I'll help you in anyway that I can. I don't know anything about writing, but anything I can do for you, anything at all, just let me know." So I bit the bullet and said, "Can I ask you for financial assistance?" And she said YES!!! We're going to meet next week. Short term, she's going to help me rest and write, and long-term, we may work on opening our own business together. This is massively cool. Suddenly, for the first time in days, I felt like I could take a really, really deep breath.
14) I came home and talked to my Mommy. I hadn't called my parents until yesterday, until after the news. I talked with my Daddy yesterday, and my Mommy today. That was good. And still no nephew, but he'll be here anytime in the next 2 weeks!!! Little Pisces Boy. First grandchild. Pretty exciting.
15) went to Whole Foods and got some dinner. The cute check-out guy (I love me some cute Whole Foods check-out guys! Dated one once, hot Mr. 1977 tattooed yogi artist. He still makes me smile to think about. I hope he's doing really well.) asked me how my day was, and I beamed back, "Absolutely awesome!" "Really?" he said. "Whatcha been up to?" "Gettin' fired!" "Well awlright!" he said, giving me a mental high-five.
16) came home and ANOTHER good friend came over and we spent a couple of hours working on healing a tough work situation for her. That was amazing for me, using the tools I've spent the past few days learning, plus some others I just made up on the spot - little Byron Katie, little Michael Tamura, little creative visualization, etc. We did a lot of color healing - pink fluffy glittery stuff for the person she's in conflict with, a big noble purple for the client who's getting screwed as a result, some bright yellow sunshine up the ass (literally!) of a friend who's just had rectal surgery. THAT was fun!
17) and I did some color healing for the people I've been in conflict with. I put great big huge yellow candy valentine's hearts (you know the chalky ones? that pale yellow?) with pink writing on them that say "We Love You Lisa!" all over the house and workplace of one of the people - and "We Love You Lisa!" is being said repeatedly in the voice of David Sedaris as his sister Lisa's parrot, who she taught to say that, which I think is totally ironic and hilarious as his whole family is fodder for his stories, names and all their gory details. Lisa needs some pale, soft yellow. (oh, see, now I've gone and given you a name. And since there's only one Lisa out there in the world, you'll definitely be able to figure it all out now!) And I put emerald-city green glasses on the eyes of the business owner, so he can get some desperately needed green light in his field, and poured golden caramel (for grounding) into the field of the 3rd person. It mostly felt good to get some laughter into the story. It's an inside joke, but it's hilarious to think of this business owner walking around with everything in his sight suddenly turned green, and the voice of David Sedaris pursuing Lisa, telling her we love her.

So that's where I've been today. It's been an amazing day. More happened than that - that's just the short version. The love and support and opening of relationships, all the intimate details, that's all mine, my golden treasures. I'll transmute those into words tomorrow.