The Beautiful Answer

And Away We Go

When you’re approaching a big deadline in life, you can go two ways, I’ve found. One is to ball up into the fetal position and rock bak and forth in bed, wondering why you ever had the idea to write that book, or stage that play, or record that song. The other is to try your best to surf the energy of the moment, bypassing any crazy things like sleep or, in many moments, food and proper hydration. 

The latter brings about better balance, and maybe stronger mental health. The former results in, well, better rest, I suppose, as long as you can sleep while fetal. The reason I’m thinking about this, I’m sure has to do with the fact that I have a book coming out in 9 days. I’m not scared. Hell, I’ve been in this position two other times. I’m not exactly blase, either. That just smacks of a kind of arrogance I hope I never feel. I’m somewhere in the middle, even though there are times when the gravity of this moment of my life sneaks up on my and pounds me down to the ground.

It’s in those moments that I find the best stuff to work with. Today I found a morsel of fear connected all the way back to high school, and released that shit for good. I found a pocket of anticipation, and a wee bit of anxiety and, yes, even some anger that had been held back for so long I couldn’t even trace it back to its source. Gone, gone and gone. Thanks for playing.  Don’t need you anymore. 

Releasing all this old stuff in preparation for my book launch was so fun I was releasing negative thought patterns on the treadmill, and kicking old beliefs to the curb in Trader Joe’s. And even when a woman almost ran over my foot with her shopping cart, I was able to laugh and get out of the way, thanking whatever force gave me these reflexes and this indelibly powerful will to live. Not just live. Thrive. 

On Letting Go More

Once I took a yoga class. At the end of every one of them, as we lay in corpse pose, the teacher would say, “Try to think of yourself as being busy letting go more.” And try though I may, it never made any sense to me. How can you be busy letting go? Aren’t the two mutually exclusive?  And how can you let go more? Aren’t you letting go precisely the amount you’re letting go, no more and no less? 

Today that began to make more sense. For the past month or two, as I entered the New Year, I’ve been thinking about how to throw any energetic ballast overboard. I’ve released issues, limiting beliefs, ancient behaviors and prejudices, and found myself feeling a lot lighter and brighter. 

But you keep digging, as I’m prone to doing, and you keep finding stuff to work with. Not that it’s all bad, not that it’s all dire. Some of it is funny, old beliefs I held while young that were somehow trapped below the surface. I may not have felt that way in years, at least consciously, but they’re there just the same.

When do you get to the bottom? Is there a bottom? And why does it matter, exactly? 

Maybe there is no “there,” where we’re all issue-free and perfectly happy all the time. Maybe it doesn’t matter to have arrived at this place that may not exist. Maybe the work is the real reward, the journey over the destination. And letting go more begins to make the most sene of any activity we could possibly be spending our time on. 

That’s Right, I Still Wish You Well

Let go.  Breathe. Sometimes it doesn’t work out the way you want.

But there is wisdom there, underneath, if you care to look. It’s hanging out in the atoms between us, in the space and the air. It lingers in corners, up with the cobwebs, and down in the teeny mouse holes, sharing cheese with the customers there. 

The wisdom tells you it’s for the best, and whispers about better things ahead. How easy it is to release this way, and how quickly the hurt eases. It would be easy to say ain’t no thang and walk away. Nah, I don’t want to do that. 

Instead, I wish you well, wherever life’s gonna take you. No need to reframe that one. It’s about the best it’s could be, no fake smiles required. I really do feel this way, surprising perhaps to no one but me. 

I trust, I let go, I walk forward. Breath after neutral breath. 

Participation Isn’t Optional

It’s been quite a day — one for reflection and growth, and another for sheer annoyance. Someone I’ve been reading for more than a year and a half placed an order for a reading only to completely flip out a few hours later, calling me several names, getting belligerent and issuing threats. She was obviously in a lot of emotional pain about something in her life, but no amount of my apologies or money refunding would convince her that I was anything but someone who lived to take advantage of other people and make their lives miserable. Why it took her a year and a half and around 15 readings to figure that out, I have no idea. 

I’ve been doing this long enough to know that it’s not personal. Of course it’s not. And I’ve been doing it long enough to know that no one’s perfect. Not even me. :)  It was the entitlement that was so stunning about it, the idea that she thought I owed her something because her life hadn’t turned out the way she wanted it to.  That was really jaw dropping. As if I somehow predicted a hard and fast truth and if it didn’t happen, or not in the timeframe she had deemed appropriate, somehow I was responsible. As if energy doesn’t change form time to time, and she didn’t have to participate in the creation of her own reality. 

Let me break it down for you. Participation isn’t optional. It’s mandatory. Attendance is taken every day and, if you’re not there, it’ll go down in your permanent record. The real one, where no one really cares if you’re there, but it still has the power to make you happy or sad, fulfilled or empty, all the time, every day, for the rest of your life. 

Believe that. 

If you don’t participate sure, you might be able to cast off whatever you don’t feel like dealing with onto someone else. Picking a fight here, or creating some drama there. Maybe you’re so used to the drama that when you don’t have it in your life, you create it just to feel alive. Maybe you can find an enabler who lets you foist off your drama onto him or her long enough that your discomfort relents temporarily, and the relationship gets used up in five days, weeks or months, only to send you back to the drawing board, hungry for someplace else to place your uncomfortable feelings. 

Me? I’m done with it, and anyone else who comes into my reality this way. I have a huge soft spot for the struggling, the people who recognize their imperfections and work on them, just trying to be a little better, a little healthier each day. I am far from perfect, so I don’t expect it in others. Part of me doesn’t even believe it’s possible, so who cares? I am as much a healer as a psychic, and if you’re not up for it, that’s fine with me. 

So I sat in meditation for a bit, looking for ways to reframe what was essentially unreframable (that’s totally  not a word). Teasing the strands apart, I saw what she had brought to it, what I refused to take on, and how it had inflamed the situation between us. I saw that I had few other options, really, and so I chose not to take it any further. I don’t need to be right; I need be heard, and to at least be granted the opportunity to make my point. If it’s not received, I can’t help that. I can only release with peace, refusing to bring any more suffering, and wish her well. 

Sweetness & Light

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.