You know when you get so close to something you’ve been working for for so long that, well, people say you can taste it? Strangely enough, it’s not my sense of taste that’s most engaged when this happens, but you for you, maybe that’s what happens. Instead, it’s my sense of touch and smell that get most affected.
First, I can feel with my hands how the energy begins to change when I’m very close to breaking through. It opens up in a way that feels like nothing else. You know how it feels when you move your hand through an open window, when it just moves easily through space? This is how it feels to me.
Second, I begin to smell it, almost like I’m running a race, and beginning to catch up to the lead runner. I can see the sweat on the back of this person’s neck, hear the air moving through his lungs, and witness his chest moving up and down as he races for the finish line. But it’s the smell that brings it into three dimensions for me. I can smell his feet, hot in his sneakers, straining to bring him there faster. I can smell his fear coming out of his pores, that after so much work, he may end up finishing behind me. And I can smell everything going on around the race — the air like a cross between fresh paper and jasmine, the water chck-chck-chking from the sprinkler on the lawn, the smell of the shampoo in my hair, as it streams into the air behind me.
This is a race that plays out in my mind a lot these days. I am gaining on this runner every day. And with the energy this open, who knows where it will all end up?
“It is by going down into the abyss that we recover the treasures of life. Where you stumble, there lies your treasure. ” — Joseph Campbell
I’ve been thinking about this quote a lot today, for a few reasons. The first is that I’m considering what I want to learn next. I keep adding to my skill set every few years, and love to keep learning and learning. Honestly, I don’t even care of it’s practical or if I use it. I just love to read and learn and engage with new information.
The second I suppose I used to believe that you had to suffer to make good art. That to make money or even have a semi-comfortable existence due to your art was “selling out,” and that somehow getting attention was too awful to consider. I was stupid then.
I’ve come to realize it’s not about the suffering, but about the abyss. To be able to sidle up to it, run toward it, or peek over the edge isn’t just a fear-producing form of torture. It’s a privilege, an opportunity the universe grants so you’ll first of all be more appreciative for your life, which always looks a lot better when you’ve looked into the abyss, and second of all will see more deeply into human experience, and be able to create from that place. No matter what you do, music never sounds the same if you’ve had a near-death experience. Art doesn’t look the same, relationships with people you care about don’t feel the same, and really nothing will ever be the same. So you live in that place every day.
So the next time I stumble, I’m gonna give a little fist pump of joy when I’m on the ground. If that’s where the treasure is, I’m gonna look for it, roll around in it, revel in it until I find the good stuff.
I’m feeling really different these days. I don’t know, fresher somehow, lighter and with some sort of renewed purpose. I’m not ordinarily someone who sits around wondering why she’s here. I’m pretty directed that way, and endlessly curious. So I could pretty much go on learning for the remainder of my days.
But when I get in touch with my emotions, and the sensations I feel in my body and in the energy around me, it’s as if the universe is pushing me forward somehow, asking me to take a broader role in the world. Part of me knows what to do, what is being asked. Part of me doesn’t. So on most days I’m content to take one more step toward whatever.
But then I started thinking about trees, and how they lose their leaves once a year. Sure, the process is visible in fall, when the leaves are turning color and hitting the ground, but it must begin in summer. Just when the leaves are losing their very greenest color, and the air is getting hotter, the tree is agreeing to change. It’s setting forth a contract to do what it always does — move into the inevitable slowing down of autumn.
I feel like those leaves, making an agreement to move through the intense changes of spring and summer, so that things can slow down a bit in fall. I love that time of year, anyway. There’s something deeply reverent and still about it. And this fall, there’s something in me that says I’ll be in a far better and more enjoyable place, even though there’s absolutely nothing wrong with right now.
On any given day, I work with a lot of confusion. Usually, I’m so busy trying to see through it intuitively, so I can help someone release old, negative patterns from their past and bring in newer, fresher and healthier patterns for their future, that I don’t see how much of it I’m actually weeding through each day. That came to a screeching halt during the work I did with my clients today.
I was trying to help someone see why they had tried many times and failed to find a wonderful romantic relationship. Normally, you want to approach this so the person sees the pattern themselves, then accepts that they need to release it in order to be happy, rather than acting upon them, and forcing your version of what works and what doesn’t. So she was getting pretty near the pattern in question, then circling back, not quite seeing it but still, practically touching on it, but wasn’t quite willing to accept that it was this belief she had inside herself, about her ability to get the real kid of love she was seeking, which was the primary culprit.
“Do you think it might be this?” she asked.
“Do you?’ I responded, trying not to sound combative or petty.
A few moments passed. I could practically hear her mind turning the idea over and over.
“I’m gonna chance it,” she finally said.
I asked her what she felt she was risking by letting go of a thought pattern that had her believing she could only have love for a few months, and then not at all.
“It feels like me,” she said. “Like it’s been part of me for so long that I don’t know who I’d be without it.”
That’s what we call a bingo moment.
Finally, she let me remove the pattern and install a healthier one in its place. At the end of our session, she said she felt lighter and less stressed out. But it got me thinking about how we want to cling to whatever feels like us, even if it’s unhealthy, or brings us nothing but grief. How whatever feels familiar is a better ally than an outright enemy.
After the session, I did a little group energy work, to let go all the energy of confusion for everyone I was working with, so they could release anything that was standing in the way of clarity for them, or obscuring their ability to see what was best in the moment.
About an hour after that, I got an email out of the blue from a client I had worked with late last week. “Just wanted to say I feel so much clearer now,” she said, “and grateful for our time together.”
That, people, is why I continue to do this each day.
Just got through watching the first episode of Push Girls, an interesting new reality series about four attractive wheelchair-bound women living in Los Angeles. Sure, it’s great that they’re smart and spunky and directed. It’s great that they can do a lot to smash stereotype of ableism ,and show that people in wheelchairs can do all sorts of things, even be independent.
My only question is: Why does a reality series always have to focus on the most vapid traits in us?
Think about it. In Push Girls, there’s a quadraplegic trying to make it as a model. OK, not a problem. If you’re willing to break down those walls, more power to you.
My issue is that she’s 36. That’s paleolithic in model years. To this character, it seems like there are two jobs: working in an office, which she’s dismissed because of the lack of mobility in her hands and fingers, and modeling. Heaven help the rest of us.
Maybe I had my expectations up too high, hoping to see, say, a woman in a wheelchair who was a mechanic, or a teacher, or a member of the clergy. I was hoping to see paraplegic restauranteurs, travel agents, movie critics, and bankers. In short, I was hoping to see “real” people doing real things with their lives.
I live in Los Angeles, and I know there are a lot of body conscious, model and actor/actress-wannabee people here. I’ve just grown weary of everyone on earth wanting to be a model. I don’t wish this woman ill — not at all. I just wish the spunkiness in these women extended to doing things that — let’s be real and honest here — are just as valuable as having your picture taken, or showing up to auditions.
Why does seemingly every reality show have to start out with every single character launching a tour, putting out a record, getting their headshots taken, or heading to a high-powered meeting with an agent? Perhaps all the naked striving and jockeying for attention, even if it’s negative, was what lost me the first time around.
Hey, it’s never too late to turn the channel, I suppose.
Super excited to report that my book Searching for Sassy: An L.A. Phone Psychic’s Tales of LIfe, Lust & Love has just won its first award, as a finalist in the Indie Excellence Book Awards!
Yay and double yay!
The response has really been great, and I am so grateful for all the reviews I’ve already received.
Onward and upward, to see what’s next. :)
Just found out that my book Searching for Sassy: An L.A. Phone Psychic’s Tales of Life, Lust & Love is on sale at Amazon for just $13.96!
Not bad. Not bad at all, considering it’s about $5 off the cover price.
Also, I’m offering a small gift for anyone willing to read the book and offer an honest review on Amazon. In case you’re in the marketing for a reading, some healing energy work, or another service I offer at SassyPsychic.com.
For most authors, reviews can make or break the book, so if you’re interested in that, please message me and let me know you’ve bought the book, are reading it or have read it and plan to review.
Much thanks from your humble Sassy Psychic. :)
It’s starting to sink in that I’ll soon be finished with this blog, 365 days of almost daily posting, reframing my experience to find the beauty in my daily life if necessary, and finding ways got work with the challenging and the rest. Before I’ve even finished the 365th post, though, I’m noticing that a profound change has already come over me.
I started this blog because I was noticing a lot of negative people around me. It started to really build up for me — all the bitching and griping, spending previous moments complaining about the same things over and over instead of ever doing anything about them. I got the feeling that these people somehow expected others to build their lives for them, to take the responsibility that was rightfully theirs to make them happy.
Beauty is always the antidote to complaining, I have found. Try spending a day in nature when you’re in a bad mood if you don’t believe me.
The Me 2.0 that’s emerging is less afraid, less burdened by other people and their issues. Not that I don’t care about people. I just find their intentions to stay stuck a lot less interesting, and a lot less of a drag on my own energy fields. I feel freer, lighter and happier overall. I enjoy doing my work, and so many new avenues to work have opened up for me of late that I enjoy a great deal of gratitude as well. I’ve met some great friends during the past year and, if we’re continuing the software metaphor, believe there are fewer and fewer sucky people in the world.
In an era of few morals and even fewer reasons to believe, that’s a pretty big deal.
Sometimes, life takes you by surprise. You’re driving along a sunny Los Angeles street one afternoon, kind of spacing out, just enjoying the light bleeding over the horizon as the sun makes its way southward again. The radio may be on or off, it doesn’t really matter. Your fingers may be tapping the wheel a little, as you coast to a stop at the light.
And then you see the bubbles, luminescent in the afternoon sun, a multitude of colors undulating back and forth as they make their way across the street. You see the kids then, doubled over with laughter, blowing as fast as they can until the entire street is filled with bubbles. You see them drifting across one lane then two and three until they’ve covered the cars in both directions.
And the kids keep laughing, and people are actually making eye contact now, smiling at each other in their cars, at the kids giggling and blowing bubbles for their lives on their way home from school. There are so many of them, you can’t quite believe it. All those fragile bubbles, managing to stay together at once, almost like a squadron of little colored balloons.
The kids have no idea what they’ve just done. They’re just trying to have a little fun between the boringness of here and the relief of there. Maybe you imagine that it’s the last day of school, and they’re looking forward to a summer of not much at all.
But they crack our hearts open a little, and widen our surprise at the way life has a way of making us laugh and wonder and know there’s some force up there pointing out our innate connection, just so we don’t miss it.
What do you get when you call a bully’s bluff, or do the equivalent of pushing him or her down without all that messy violence?
Most of the time, you get your way.
During some of yesterday and the early part of today, I stood up big to a bully. He’ll remain nameless for the moment (no need to bring even more attention to someone who doesn’t deserve it). But suffice it to say that I, uh, got my way.
I didn’t start a fight, throw punches or go all Krav Maga on his ass. That’s not my style, anyway.
Instead, I just stood there, demanding to be seen and heard, quietly claiming my ground. This will change everything going ahead.
We’ll work together knowing that we are equals, and that we must communicate clearly and openly if what we’re doing is to succeed. He may still have his issues, and I may still have to look the other way when his, um, tendency to want to senselessly dominate rears its ugly head. Not my job, man, to fix that guy. I’m here to get shit done.