The Beautiful Answer

One of my biggest pet peeve, which has only gotten bigger since I took on this daily reframing practice, is complaining. Of course, we all do it, and it may actually serve some evolutionary process in us, which encourages the sharing of feelings. Voicing them, including our discontent, may begin a dialog with ourselves that spurs change or even causes us to grow faster than we’d previously thought possible. 

It’s the over complaining I can’t abide these days, or saying that things suck once, but circling back to them again and again, as if talking about it endlessly will make it better. I have friends who use other friends, and even forums on Facebook, as online therapy sessions. I know people who say that life is great, and then go into a litany of why it isn’t. And I know people who seem to need to throw obstacles in their own path so I guess they have more things to complain about? Not sure about that last one.  

It got me thinking about how even the best of us can fall into these unconscious patterns of thought and behavior. So today, whenever I found myself veering into that territory, I caught myself, and brought my thoughts back to the present moment. Then I consciously said, “There’s nothing wrong with my life.” 

When I dropped a dish and it smashed on the floor, I told myself there was nothing wrong with my life. 

When I had to spend a good portion of the day doing boring bookkeeping and bill paying, I reminded myself that there’s nothing wrong with my life. 

And when I went to the gym when I was tired, and really wanted to take a nap, I thanked whatever twisted divine power watches over me — for my life and health, for my body, which works pretty damn well, and for the chance to be able to go the gym. I watched ESPN and pedaled my ass off on the stationary bike and lamented that for me, baseball season is over. But there’s still nothing wrong with my life. 

It’s been interesting over the past few days, watching the Wall Street protests in New York (or not as the case may be, if the media doesn’t feel like covering them). Though they don’t seem to be pegged to anything other than a sense of being ripped off and taken advantage of for too long, it’s important that they’re out there. 

As the recession worsens, with jobless benefits running out and health insurance and dignity merely distant memories for most people, it’s an ongoing mystery why all the stimulus money of last year, which was supposed to spur new hiring, has been mostly banked by large corporations. I guess they’re saving to pay the higher-ups their million dollar bonuses for the next five years or so. Important stuff. 

I see greed in its other aspects, too. Today, a friend of mine had to almost choke out a congratulations on my new book proposal going out to my agent yesterday (actually it didn’t come out that way; I kind of finished the half sentence for her, trying to give her the benefit of the doubt). Emotions and not saying what you want to say is a type of greed, as is not letting someone in to traffic, or even withholding love when you’re mad at your partner. 

I think we can all agree that greed sucks. But what to do about it?  I can’t single-handedly change the entire financial world, just as you can’t make everyone be nice to other people.

To reframe, I imagined myself as attached but separate — to the financial institutions, other people who may be withholding in nature, or even the concept of greed. I felt my way into it as an energy, but couldn’t even get very far. It felt very tight and clenched, somehow unknowable. I saw the threads connecting me to them as thin and slight, and I was free to move as I wished. 

When I stopped visualizing, my lungs seemed a little clearer, and the headache I’ve had all day seemed a little less intense. I don’t know how, but I want to keep working on greed, in the spots I’m blind in myself, and in the world at large. Certainly, with so many of us against the blind greed of huge corporations, we can make an impact of some kind. 

Ugh. I think I just threw up in my mouth a little typing that headline. It reminds me of that dumbass Blink 182 song from the ’90s, and waiting for something better to come on the radio. But let’s get back on track. Today has been one of those experimental-type days, when I try new things out and then see what happens. 

The first few of these moments were communication-oriented, as I stood up for myself with some folks who want payment from me for something that’s not really done yet. Crappy customer service experience aside, it’s worked out pretty well (so far), and I didn’t have to go to Defcon 4 to get it that way. Consider it a successful reframe. 

The next one was more observational. I like to watch how other people react to things I put out on the Internet, particularly Facebook, and then interact with each other in turn. Part of me wants to see what people’s secret agendas are (they’re seldom as sneaky as they think they are) and part of me just likes to people-watch. I’m a shameless eavesdropper, and just dig watching people when they think they’re not being watched. It’s a great technique for listening as a writer. 

It’s interesting when people who are normally all over your stuff don’t want to get involved. I’ve had a lot of great things happen for me over the past few weeks, and it’s really interesting who can’t say congratulations and who just doesn’t even bother to say anything. It’s their business, of course. I can’t get too caught up in what other people do or think. It’s just not how I roll. But it’s all those small things that make a relationship, and some forget that it goes both ways. 

I’m as supportive as the day is long when you’re my friend. I’m also incredibly loyal. So when other people don’t step up to the plate when my stuff is concerned, it’s certainly noticed. How I react to it, or not, depends on my training. And since this reframing stuff has already had a huge effect on the way I look at the world on a daily basis, not to mention the way I interact with other people, It just causes me to move away, not engage, hoping for more attention or love, and certainly not pick a fight. 

The funny thing is that when you move away from people like this, they’re usually all over you again. Maybe because you exist to help them feel better about themselves, or because they’re lonely.  Either way, I get those feelings. I just don’t want to be around people who can’t take it all in and engage with everyone, no matter how great or awful they might be doing in that moment. 

Thinking about what other people talk about on a daily basis, to me at least, I’m always amazed that the first things that tend to come out of their mouths are “busy” and “crazy.”  OK, sure. We’re all busy. Even a mom who stays home to take care of children is busy in her own way, though it may not be the kind of busyness that comes with memos, staff meetings and sensible pumps. Busy has even become the most popular excuse for why people act like assholes. I know; I’ve done it myself. But I’m trying not to do that anymore, or bring more awareness to my own inner asshole. 

I first realized that I hated this word several years back, when everyone started saying it. It was as if busy somehow connoted important, and made the person you were talking to much more in demand and together than you were. Um, screw that. Everyone is important, from the housewife to the stay at home dad to the cleaning person sweeping your crap off the floor. We’re all busy. We all have families, and friends, and goals, and dreams. And we’re all kicking ass every day to go after them. 

I propose a kind of “find and replace” type of dealie, where we replace the word busy with something else that robs it of its societal meaning. I’m going to reframe this word every day for a week and see where it goes, emotionally. Today, when someone says busy, I say Ralph.

“I’m so Ralph today. I have no idea how I’m going to get all my stuff done.”

“My boyfriend said he’s too Ralph to see me tonight. Should I break up with him?”

“I would love to see you, but my schedule’s so Ralph. Can I take a raincheck?” 

See how stupid that sounds? Same thing with busy.  I work like hell, but know when it’s time to take a day off, or a half day, to go to a museum, read a book, get a massage, or just wander around aimlessly. 

I don’t believe in luck. There, I said it. I believe there are the creation of good circumstances, and being open, and making your chosen reality out of decent decisions, and tough choices and following, even if it’s hard, the path you feel to be true in that particular moment. So today, as the chocolate pound cake was baking and the substantial haul from the farmers’ market was being put away and organized into meals in my mind, I decided to work with the concept of luck. 

I used reframing and realized that I suppose I am lucky, in my way. I have been through more than my share of scrapes in my life, escaped poverty, and bad jobs and worse boyfriends and, heck, even survived a life-threatening illness last year. More on that soon, since I’m finally figuring out how I want to talk about this. But for the longest time I never looked at it that way. I thought I had managed, through sheer moxie and street smarts, to pull myself out of various situations. Arrogantly I suppose, I thought it was me who had made it all work out. 

Now, after many years spent directing energy for healing purposes, I know that’s not entirely true. I know that we’re always directing energy, always, even if we’re not aware of it. I know we do this inside our bodies, and even in the area right around us. I know we do this in our minds. So how much of it is luck, and how much is us? If it’s not conscious, is it entirely an external force? 

After I got my terrible diagnosis and went through what I went through to heal, I thought about getting the word lucky tattooed on my body someplace. I go back and forth between thinking it’s life affirming and that it might somehow might attract bad fortune, just to fuck with me once something unremovable has been inked onto my skin. But that’s the way it felt — as if I had been given a second chance, a new life, and that the old one simply wasn’t going to do anymore. 

So maybe I do believe in luck, a little. Maybe the universe has shown me, in no uncertain terms, that it’s there, and that it helps to create my reality right alongside me. Maybe today, and tomorrow, and forever, my old way of being isn’t even going to dare to peek it’s little head up anymore. That ship has sailed and it’s onward now, to whatever’s ahead. Personally, I can’t freakin’ wait. 

I’ve always been one to question authority. I had the bumpersticker on my first car, and have pretty much continued to bug people with my anti-authoritarian stance ever since. Today was a slow moving, get-er-done kind of day, where I had to crank on mundane tasks that reframing tends to love. 

At the car wash, I reframed the lack of listening when I said no wax, please. 

At the post office, I reframed the lack of caring and knowledge that soon, we’re likely to have no Saturday delivery, and no Saturday acess to P.O. boxes. 

At the bank I reframed the impatience of the lady behind me. 

At the store, I reframed just about everything. 

And on the way home, I reframed how long everything had taken. 

People flying around me to race up to a red light made me laugh. Guys who almost mowed down an old lady in the crosswalk ogling a young woman got a tap of my horn, and I like to think it saved them a shitload on their auto insurance. 

The prevailing wisdom on these things says to get angry or frustrated, that having to spend a day on these less than important tasks is supposed to be P.O.-making. But I’ve never been much for taking other people’s word for it. 

Who says? is my answer, and I keep finding my way, every single damn day. 

Short post tonight, because it’s been a long day, filled with work, some fun, a little study and the completion of my new book proposal, which will share some of the energetic healing techniques I’ve been developing with my clients over the past few years. It’s a little scientific, but very easy to understand and fun to use. 

It’ll be off to the agent on Monday, but until then it’s time to celebrate another project done, at least for now. The flow of ideas doesn’t seem like it’s tapering off anytime soon, but I would like to take a little break to work on some theater stuff and think about moving to the Bay Area. I love it up there, as does my husband. 

Change is good. Reframing is helping. And with that I bid you good night. 

Been thinking a lot about the Troy Davis case over the past several hours. and it’s not an easy nut to crack. Normally, my mind likes to know one way or the other if something is right or wrong. It’s just more comfortable that way. But this case, ever since it reached my consciousness at least, has been anything but. 

Details emerging have been few and far between, and maybe you’d have to read back through years of evidence reports, case files and trial briefs to get any sense of what really happened. And that’s if all that work was done in an honest and conscientious way. The fact that seven out of nine people changed or recanted their testimony over the years has been something I can’t recall seeing in my lifetime. Same with the international outpouring of attention and support. 

Nothing can take away the pain of the family who lost their son. Nothing can take away the pain of Troy Davis’ family, either. Maybe time can help, or the idea, as he asked his supporters, that everyone keep working for justice, for other people who might be doing time on death row as innocent men or women. 

I’ve spent a fair amount of time over the past few hours in silence, just thinking about what all this means. The death penalty has not been proven to deter crime in any real way, and it’s far more expensive than life in prison, mostly because of all the appeals and additional trials. I so want to have faith in our justice system, but all I’m left with is a hollow feeling. Using reframing, I was able to refocus on the outpouring of faith that he would be spared, and the coming together of strangers all over the globe who want one thing — fairness. It’s that sense that love endures that keeps me going, and dedicated to doing what I can to make sure the cycle keeps on going. 

Just as he said, Troy Davis is free. 

It’s a rare and special morning when you wake up and before you’ve even had some tea or water, you’ve been assaulted with people’s negativity, self-serving rants and dysfunction approximately ten or fifteen times. I’m taking a stand, people. I’m sick of this shit. None of us — not you, or you, or you — has the time for this crap. 

Stuff exists. Pain hurts. Every one of us will experience it, as well as death, eventually. If you’re lucky, you’ll live a relatively pain-free life, maybe just having your heart broken once or twice and moving on. If you’re not, maybe you’ll lose someone close to you, or experience a terminal disease. Whatever the case, we’re lucky to be here. Believe me on that one. 

It’s human to complain, I suppose, but I’ve noticed a severe uptick around me in that department lately. It’s as if the economy, or life, or not having what they want somehow gives people permission to express their discontent. Don’t get me wrong. I’m a good listener and a better friend. But complaining is not our divine human right. In fact, it’s a huge waste of time after the intitial hurt or frustration has been expressed. 

And when things as beautiful, as transcendentally gorgeous as this exist, there’s no damn time to waste:

So get out there and make something beautiful today. Don’t complain about why you can’t, make like Nancy Reagan and just do it. And if that requires risk of some kind, when you’re good and ready, make that leap. 

Every once in a while, I like to look at the longer-lasting astrological aspects to see what’s coming up for everyone, but also to kind of parallel it to other historical events. This helps me see astrology not as a hard and fast set of rules but a fluid system that contextualizes energies of all kinds. 

So it was really interesting to look back in history and see that the last time Uranus was moving through the sign of Aries, Hitler came to power, the Great Depression was unfolding, and Prohibition was still in effect. Uranus is currently in retrograde motion, while Pluto has just gone direct (as of last Friday). This time, they’re in the signs of Aries and Capricorn, as opposed to Aries and Cancer, which highlights money and influence instead of homeland and country. 

The run up to this has been startlingly familiar. Just as Hitler immediately dismantled unions when he came to power, leaders are now calling for the same thing. At the same time, the president is seeking higher taxes on millionaires, and Warren Buffet is insisting on being taxed at the same rate as his secretary. 

Interesting times, my friend. Interesting times. 

Keeping it real as we move toward the next election will be really important. And for me, will call for continued awareness and reframing. It’s not about what’s going wrong with things as much as it is about what can be changed for the good of all, or at least the majority of us. 

I love it when the universe seems to open up in a unique moment and offer an experience up that seems tailor-made for that time in my life. Of course, it feels a lot better if it’s a positive experience, but I’ve learned to be more tolerant of the less-than-pleasant ones, because they’re often jam-packed with assistance or messages. Today, I decided to try a lttle experiment. 

I’ve been meditating for about 15 years now, and am constantly re-evaluating my practice, trying new things, and generally attempting to bring the awareness into my daily life, instead of leaving it all on the cushion, as they say. Part of meditation practice, at last in some Buddhist schools, involves watching the thoughts. Just kind of being with them as they float through your consciousness which maybe ironically has the effect of diminishing them over time, even though that’s not what you’re trying to do at first. 

Today I decided to watch other people’s thoughts, to see how that compared to my own. I read the daily newspapers I check out, and found that most of those thoughts were frightened and a little angry, almost looking for things to be fucked up so there was something to write about. I had to search pretty hard to find the factual news, devoid of emotion or bias. I read a few blogs, and they’re of course opinion-based, just as mine is. I don’t expect them to be news, but I did find that overall, the blogs I read are a little more enlightened — kind of just searching and engaged with the business of living (as long as they weren’t secret portals for porn). 

Finally, I compared these two sources of information to Facebook posts. Maybe it’s me, but Facebook started out as a really cool way to stay in touch with people, to reconnect, but it seems to have evolved into the Most Narcissistic Place on Earth, with people shouting into the void, and not really listening to anyone else. 

Observed this way, as if they were thoughts moving through a mind instead of various ways of gathering information, was really interesting. The news is the news. I don’t expect it to be different. But people have the choice of how to reframe their reality with their words and gestures. Blogs are one such way, as are Facebook posts. 

I had not expected to find that the healthiest thoughts (again, in my opinion) came from blogs. Though some were hateful or even self-destructive or painful at times, they revealed a pattern of searching for truth. Meanwhile, Facebook became, for me, a fairly toxic environment of non-support and dysfunction. My reframe will be to limit my time there to the bare minimum.

When I returned to my own thoughts, I found that my mind was more expansive for this little experiment, and my own destiny a little clearer overall. Mission accomplished. 

I’m with Leonard Cohen and a host of other people who’ve been calling for a moratorium on performing the song “Hallelujah.’ It’s a gorgeous song, filled with light and shadow, and all kinds of shades of meaning. But that just means that it’s massively misunderstood while being overused to the point of making a beautiful work of art meaningless — like endless Van Gogh reproductions on dorm room walls, and Monet checkbook covers. 

I finally came to this conclusion once and for all while watching the Emmys this evening. Half my client list was at the award show, and one of my clients even won (yay!), so that’s all good. And I don’t even know the group who sang Leonard Cohen’s masterpiece over those overly-sentimentalized montage sequences depicting “those we’ve lost.”  

But I have to say this: Stop. It’s not a performance. If you’re serious about memorializing people, how about silence? Or quiet background music? I just can’t stand people using this song to suit their own purposes because it has religious symbolism in it, or the word hallelujah. 

Argh! The song about love, and sex, and the nature of relationships, no matter if they succeed or fail, to take us to emotional extremes and the brink of faith. It’s about how deeply personal and important love is, despite the fact that it’s sometimes hard. And it’s about how it enriches and simultaneously enfeebles us, in every way there is. 

It’s not about dead people, and it’s not about religion. Well, maybe spirituality, but not entirely. Please, just please, stop overusing this song. If this blogging project has taught me anything, it’s taught me that special things come around very, very rarely, and genuine works of art even more rarely than that. They need to be treated with gentleness and respect. And above all, they need to be fed a steady diet of quiet in order to flower in the world. 

Namaste and change the channel. I love you Leonard, but I know you agree. 

Making time for detoxing has its benefits. You feel a little wobbly and on the verge of getting sick for a few days, but it’s one of the best excuses ever for sleeping. I love sleep. After basketball, it’s my favorite sport. It involves no contact, results in a sweet dizzy hangover if you’re doing it right, and hurts basically no one, unless you’re late for work. But since I work for myself, that’s rarely a problem. 

I had a pretty full agenda today — errands, yoga, writing and a little work. But about halfway through the day, I just … bailed. My brain and body conspired against me and basically said, “You know what, lady? You work too much. Your body needs to let some stuff go — some old memories (been having some really strange dreams) and maybe even some ideas about what the “right” way to spend Saturday might be.” 

I work a lot. True dat. I like working. My work doesn’t suck, at all. But sure, I hear ya. Sometimes you just gotta freakin’ fall asleep on the couch for an hour or so. I literally haven’t done that in years. 

Also been thinking about reframing some limiting thoughts and beliefs that have come up lately, about what I can and can’t expect when my book comes out next year. I keep finding myself thinking I shouldn’t expect too much, or should protect myself from disappointment if it doesn’t sell the way I want it to. 

Crap to that. I’ve been working with reframing that stuff all day, and now it goes something like this: Who knows what’s going to happen? I will work as hard as I can, and exploit the resources I have, and after that I have to trust that the universe and other people around the world will somehow find their way to it, and want to read it, and buy a copy. I hope they will find it funny, entertaining, and maybe a little moving. 

And I hope above all that I can keep weeding out this stuff that doesn’t serve me, and probably never has. Who needs that, anyway? 

This may be the detox talking, but I’ve been feeling a lot lighter over the past few days. This is practical of course, as my body sheds whatever’s been weighing it down. Don’t even want to think about that.  But it’s also happening on a few other levels. Some of the habitually negative people in my life seem to think that I’m Kryptonite these days, which is fine by me. Not that I want to get rid of them. Hopefully the divine will help them find their own ways toward healing. But it’s nice, as I go through this process, to not have those distractions. 

I feel more focused, so some of the detox seems to have shoved some of the strange thoughts that flit through my mind to the side, or maybe even released them altogether. Admittedly, I feel a little dizzy and “funny,” not just because of the change of diet and routine, but I think because the season is changing and, even though I live in L.A., the temperature has been dropping. For us, it’s a big deal maybe. Everywhere else, probably not.  :) 

Lastly, I’ve been feeling as if I’m shedding more than physical toxins. Maybe you could call them limiting thoughts and beliefs, or ideas that say the world is smaller than it really is. I suppose we all do this, to a certain extent. We live in our little bubbles of influence, and rarely travel outside them. But as a person who tries to broaden her awareness a little more each day, it’s always surprising when it can be wrenched open a little more, and then even a little more than that. 

So while I may not always be sweet (I try, but I am human), I’m filled with a new kind of light. Don’t know yet if it’s the healing kind, but it feels that way. Reframing today doesn’t feel crucial, because my whole body seems to be doing that work for me. Now if I could just get it to do the dishes and laundry, we’d be all set. 

My throat is scratchy and I feel like I’m getting sick. I guess this detox stuff is working, right down to the molecules I’m releasing through my pores and breath. More tomorrow. 

Time for sleep and hopefully some more releasing while unconscious. :) 

The word cleanse gets under my skin, especially as it applies to the diet. I get that nutritionally, most of us aren’t all we could be, and that bringing more awareness to what we put into our mouths would make us happier and healthier. But the idea that somehow our insides are dirty and that we need to clean them out is to pretty much diss the body and the amazing things it’s capable of, despite our best efforts to eff it up. 

Despite my distaste for the idea of cleansing (I hate even typing the word — it just gets on my nerves), I signed up for Yoga Journal’s 7-Day Detox program, available online. I like the idea of changing my diet to be local and seasonal (luckily, I live in California, so that means I get a lot of choices there), but also to transition into the harvest season of fall in an intentional way with yoga, meditation and other related techniques. 

Ayurveda is on my list of Things to Study as I keep getting older. I’m fascinated how medicine is so intricately entwined with spirituality in pretty much every other culture except ours, and how they treat people often without the high-tech equipment we have in the U.S. This detox program is based in Ayurveda, and so far, I’m finding it pretty great. When fall comes around, I want to go out a little less anyway, so this is a great way to reconnect with myself and what I want to get done over the next few months. 

Another thing that’s arisen on its own has to do with detoxing, but not within my body. I eat pretty well, for the most part, and exercise almost every day. But toxic friends and acquaintances seem to have moved another layer outward in my life. No reframing necessary. Without drama or self-inflicted suffering, they just … moved away. 

Pretty cool, the way this stuff works on more than one level. And me? I don’t ever want to stop being amazed by what goes on. 

Maybe other people have this —I have no idea. You know when you get really excited, when something really amazing happens for you and you’re kind of clenching up a little, as if in the next moment someone’s gonna snatch it away from you? I don’t have that exactly, maybe a minor version of it. I don’t assume that people are going to eff me up. I’m sure they’re worrying about other things. But I have noticed a little pattern of wanting to downplay my good news. 

So let’s see what we can do about that. 

Having a book published is always exciting. And even though very few of my friends are writers, or can even understand what this process entails (I don’t know, a few hundred days or nights of being on your own, living in your mind, then getting an agent, getting a publisher, going though the editorial production, then putting it out and arguing over the cover. And then the real work begins, of trying to promote it), they smile and like me I guess enough to buy it, or tell people about it and endure my endless talking about every little aspect of the damn thing. 

Today, my publisher and I worked on the cover of my book, and I think we have a central image, which of course will determine the color palette, etc. It’s usually the hardest part of the process. You may have the best manuscript on earth, but until you see that PDF of your front cover, it never seems real. 

Hopefully, within a week or so, we’ll have a proof and I’ll post it. To reframe my little issue with downplaying stuff, I played with telling people today. I told my family (they have to care, I guess) and my husband of course. But then I started telling other people, to see how they’d react. I told a friend I’m not that close to, and the guy at the yoga studio and even, yes,  my landlady. 

All had differing reactions, of course, but most were encouraging. So maybe those inner gremlins in my mind, who tell me I can’t, or it won’t happen, or you better wait until you get permission can and should suck it. 

I’ve been thinking about lasting goals today, the kind that make us who we are. And in between the looking at myself in old pictures and trying to find the me that exists now in that little girl’s face, I realized that many of my dreams have remained the same since I was 6.

I wanted to be older (check), I wanted to help people (yup). I wanted to work with animals (well, a little, but not professionally) and loved the outdoors (that never goes away). Other things I successfully achieved: get married, have my own place, move to California, and travel around the world.

While I never became a veterinarian, I still love animals and would probably adopt lots more of them if I had the room. Maybe in time.

And what has getting all I ever wanted, at least as a child, achieved for me? I don’t know. It’s an ongoing question.

Most of us are so used to wanting more as soon as we accomplish anything, or not stopping to celebrate our smallest victories that I decided to reframe that in my own life. If I made this day one of small celebrations, what would happen?

The first thing I noticed was that I felt lighter, as if nothing really bothered me. And the image right after that, riding along the crest of the thought wave, was that a real life, fully flowered and truly engaged, involves these little triumphs over the things we feel could defeat us. I celebrated brushing my teeth, then putting on sneakers and doing some crunches. I ate some sesame and honey covered almonds and celebrated their existence, and the tree that nurtured them. Next came a new client, and a lovely thank you email I received from a person who had energy work last week.

Finally, though the day’s not over yet, I celebrated my new shopping cart over at my other site — http://www.sassypsychic.com — and the fact that it will make my life, and that of my assistant, a lot easier.

Who made this amazing life? And how can I get some more of it?

Deep bow to where we’ve been, where we are now, and the lasting, continuous wish for peace.

No need for displacement.

Breathing in, breathing out.

Nowhere to be. Nothing to do.

And nothing more to say.

As if it’s not enough that today went way too fast (the nerve of some people), I had some of the best readings I’ve ever had. Which begs a question about impermanence, and how unfair it sometimes is.

Impermanence, of course, is the idea that things don’t last. That happiness doesn’t last, just as terrible pain eventually subsides. That things arise, and then they fade from view. And that high I get after certain readings fades, definitely. And then it sometimes comes back later, when I’m holding my husband’s hand in the grocery store, or seeing a little kid streak across a lawn under a sprinkler.

Two years ago tomorrow, something very painful happened to me. Something very scary and traumatic. But I walked through it. I’m stronger and healthier and better than ever. I enjoy my life, and I love my work. I continue to “work” on myself in a sane and gentle way. My gratitude is palpable all the time.

Thankfully that time, too, was impermanent. And even though it’s a lot harder to get my mind around the concept of the good stuff having to fade away, along with my life at some point, I go with it. And just about when I’m ready to say WTF and that’s not fair and why is it like that anyway, something heart-strikingly beautiful happens, and I’m back on the cycle, moving back up.