255

leaky vessel.

one day soon, hopefully, you’ll realize that you don’t need to convince, chase, explain, rescue, disarm, perform, play small, act tough, be heard, entertain, be more, be less, be the same, be different, make them laugh, kill them with kindness, do less, do more, smile more, be right, be wrong, stay useful, die on that hill, bleed out, sink with the ship, or give because you gave. you don’t have to endure your own life just to be safe.

you can walk away. why? because now you can see: it didn't work, the prize never came, it came and didn't feel like you thought it would, it didn't last, or you had to be the one to come up with it yourself anyway.

"the worst" has already happened. and still, you survived. you're here. your worst fears came true, slowly, over time. and you can see plainly now: you didn’t die. the facts don't match the hypothesis. you expanded the data set and it shifted the distribution. your data drifted. the mean shifted. something else clicks into place. and just like that, the vessel stops leaking.

254

protect it.

do you want to be free? well, you’re gonna have to stop giving it away for free. the thing you do reflexively. the thing you never run out of. the thing you use to feed everyone before you feed yourself. the thing that makes you available to others and unavailable to what’s yours.

this “thing” has a name. you have to be the one to name it, price it and protect it. and you know what? it’s all the same thing. “the thing” is your specific expression of the divine energy that flows through everything. …that thing. and maybe you’ll have to live for 40, 50, maybe even 65 years before you have enough lived experience to see, from the outside in (and inside out) what “that thing,” “your thing,” “what you are and who you are” even is.

i’ll give you a hint: it’s what the world gobbles up just as fast as you can plate it. it actually happens so quickly that it takes a lot of repetitions for you to actually be able to see what it is on the plate. and the good news is once you see it, you can’t unsee it. you cannot unknow it.

and you’ll realize: i am not the product. i am not the food on the plate. i am the one who plates it and that makes me the one who must protect it. the one who gets to price it, no longer the one that reflexively and warmly gives it out for free, just as soon as people start coming in with their empty plates and hungry mouths.

253

rising tide.

the fantasy of dry land breaks when the tide rushes in, lifting you off your feet and pushing you under, into the wave. you panic until you realize, “oh! i can swim.” tears merge with saltwater. fear and shock dissipate. reality is fluid, unfathomable, even as it holds you. this is how the body moves into new gravity. you leave behind fantasy: a shallow, sandy beach, eroding beneath your feet.

even if you don’t ever remember the moment of decision, of consent, reality still came for you. it crashed straight into you exactly when your capacity could match the energy that was always there, into what’s next.

the ocean had always been moving towards you. slowly at first, taking bits of sand, bits of the fantasy away, testing your feet and your knees and your legs, your foundation, early attachments to life on planet earth, your stance to what felt good and solid and real, to all the ways you learned to survive.

waves would come crashing in, you’d laugh and lose a bit of footing, and the tide would then rush back out. when you don’t retreat, when you keep going instead of changing your mind and working on your tan, the ocean will continue to draw you further, until one day, you’re halfway in, halfway out. that’s when the big wave comes, the one that carries you away from shore forever, away from every last bit of the old fantasy, and into the deep, into what’s real. where grains of sand become pearls and are no longer mistaken for safety.

252

seasonal menu.

when you learn how to feed yourself, you can stop fighting with the menu and arguing with the waiter.

it is not fast to learn how to cook.

this is ok.

the restaurant does not fail just because one customer wants it different.

the menu is limited to keep things simple.

not everything has to make sense to you.

there is no such thing as saving a lot of heartache or avoiding a lot of heartbreak.

lucky for you, a plank is much easier to remove than a splinter. put your tweezers down and enjoy the meal.

what do you think we were meant to do here anyway?

251

which reality?

you have to ask yourself, “what is my relationship to other people’s consciousness?”

am i trying to change it? is it expensive for me? do i subsidize it? what is my job there? does it give me permission to exist as i am? does it show me who i want to be? does it reveal my wounds? help me heal my wounds? am i seen? am i met? am i beautiful there? am i monstrous? am i conscripted into service? does my own consciousness have to shrink, perform or deny itself?

a person’s consciousness reflects the world they want to live in. do you want to live in a world where you’re always right and protected and held and provided for? a world where you are never wrong, you always know the answer, you’re never scared, you never have to be the one to protect or reciprocate, and where you are never excluded, ridiculed or misunderstood? that reality doesn’t exist. and if you want to live there, you will live there alone, apart from everyone you know and love.

and then your consciousness becomes a place where your fragility, your humanity, your vulnerabilities, your hopes and your dreams are centered. exclusively. your reality will automatically give everyone a job and assign everything a role. your consciousness becomes a closed system that charges a fee for entry and maintenance. it becomes a place where no other realities can exist. and you’ll know by how hard you defend it. you’ll know it is hostile to other realities by how threatened you feel when people, places and things come to challenge it.

maybe you’re charming and charismatic and generous, with only the best intentions for everyone involved, but if this is the system you’re running, the only reason people stay is they don’t mind the fee. it’s negligible or they prefer your reality over their own. that’s when the crown becomes heavy. because all of a sudden, everyone’s coming to your house because they don’t like their own house, and even if everything goes exactly the way you want because it’s your house, now you have a job. but don’t worry. people will leave as soon as your reality becomes too expensive to help you maintain.

250

the hard way.

if you are lucky, you will learn in a single lifetime that your soul is not held by your home. or body. or mind. or family. or partner. or spouse. or job. or career. or mentor. or community. or best friend. or circle of friends.

or things going the way you want.

not even by promises you make to yourself.

all of these can be broken.

even your hopes. even your dreams.

all of these can fail, falter and disappear.

you can be desperate but they will resist you.

you cannot insist. and bargaining won’t work.

this is what you might have to learn the hard way or even all at once (if you are lucky) and then it will be just you, alone, in the dark. finally available to the fact that

your soul is held by your breath.

that’s it.

+ all is one.

+ creation happens in the void.

+ love is what animates all of it.

+ you exist without permission.

249

more than before.

certain blessings come into your life so whole, complete and beautiful that all you want is exactly what came …and for it to never leave. it delivers you back into the body and gently into the present. all is well, even if not much else has changed; life is still life, but that’s how it heals you.

this is the power of a prayer finally answered. a prayer so ancient and threaded so deeply into the soul that it doesn’t need words. if you asked once, you probably asked 1,000 times, so you don’t ask anymore. the desire is present in every breath; the universe already knows. and if you’re lucky, eventually it comes, unannounced and unplanned. by the time your prayer has become nothing more than a distant ache, a limp no one notices, not even you, the blessing arrives like a fog that lifts suddenly and all at once, rendering life in prismatic technicolor for the very first time. all of a sudden, everything makes sense.

that’s why, when it has to leave, all that registers is betrayal on every possible level. and now you’re presented with a choice that somehow is not really a choice at all. because you made it this far. you had it for a little while. and it’s gone now, even if you can’t understand. you can’t pretend that you won’t go on. so you do. in spite of yourself. for an intolerable number of days, minutes, hours, until it dawns on you: had this blessing rooted too early, it would have capped your desire. you would have been happy (so happy) but you would have wanted only that, and nothing more. your only desire would have been that your blessing remain and that it remain with you. only when it leaves do you get to have everything. it’s only in the aftermath that you can want what you want (what you always wanted) and better, and more, and all the universe intends for you.

grief gives way to expanded desire and it clears a channel for more. confusion becomes art. loss becomes clarity. pain becomes hope becomes faith becomes devotion becomes more than you were before.

248

in the body.

hidden in the memories of every day you ever lived are the lifetimes that brought you here. that’s why it feels so heavy. continuity of self, the self that walked all the way to where you are now, is held as a frame. what’s too big for the mind finds its way into the body, where everything lives, at the level of identity. and when you realize that you are who you always ever were, you can feel every earned minute, every dollar, down to the cent.

you were allowed to finish what you needed to finish. now that you’ve arrived, unpacked and settled in, yes it’s quiet, yes it’s what you always wanted, and no, this is not how you thought it would feel. when the masks you wore to survive and the armor comes off, you’re just a person. skin and bones. meat on a stick. even if it’s for the first time (and it feels lighter and less) and it’s your own face looking back at you, it’s ok to not be impressed.

you come home to your farm, to your little plot of land, and you remember, “this is what i fought for.” the memory, the dream you carried inside you. and even if you aren’t as fearsome or dazzling in this sudden nakedness, the armor lives now under your skin. even with nothing left to keep you warm, even if you had to dissolve the illusions that let you sleep at night. you earned it. it’s yours.

the warrior makes himself over time. you wear the armor until it sinks into your skin. you go from heat and hammering to cold and still. the soul is forged. the gold you want must be formed, not mined. you will be the same but not unchanged. and that’s how you will carry yourself. as a weapon. trusted because it’s been tested.

247

unwinding the plot.

some of it will come just so you can learn how to let it go. some of it will make you wait until you lose all concept of time and identity. you go from “waiting a long time” to “have i been waiting all my life? who am i if it never comes?” to who you really are. the one who has everything. and then it shows up (or it doesn’t) but your own arrival is what matters.

life will give you enough time alone to understand the plot backward and forward, to live it from the inside and see it from the outside, as the person you’re now becoming. you will receive just enough illusion and confusion to close your eyes and feel what’s true. you’ll receive clarity and forgetting in equal measure. the sun will rise on your steps forward and set as you crawl your way home.

you will understand everyone’s story and carry their beliefs until you start living your own.

you will retrograde with the malefics and benefics in a journey that feels more “alone” than “together,” more “lost” than “found,” until you find more faith in the unknown than the known. that’s what happens. you receive to release. release to receive. and it goes on like this for no reason other than to pass the illusion of time and explore the limits of separation.

246

everything you want.

everything you want will be just out of reach; by design and as a function of time and fear. transcend time and transcend fear, and you will have everything you want.

when you are no longer afraid of what people say about you, what they think, how you make them feel, and how they treat you —because you’ve heard it all and suffered it all and still somehow survived— it’s just you and your desire. when you stop fearing the enormity and unlikelihood, afraid of the fact that what you want might not be so big or special at all, that you might just want what everyone seems to have access to except you, the door opens and you can finally let yourself have it.

when you remember that time is not real and the person you were from six, seven, eight, twenty-one to forty is still the same, you will see how easily and suddenly you can reach out and bring what you want into your reality, on a tuesday, without hesitation. why? because the only person standing in your way has now stepped aside. everything is easier for “future you” to do. why do you think we procrastinate? because it’s easier to assign all the hard stuff to a “different” version of you.

and once you collapse time in your mind, trusting the divine spark that has animated you since day 1, you see how time is running out … and you just do it. you go for what you want. and when the time is right, there is no resistance. you become the person who has the thing who was trying to tell it to you this whole time.

245

come to earth.

it’s so fun. you can laugh, cry, sing and dance. you can fall in and out of love. you can start a company and lose the company. you can play and pretend. you can get a job and then get fired. you can lay around, watch the world go by, run marathons, walk in the woods, hike and climb and strive and sweat. you can break and stretch. sail the oceans and follow the stars. stay and go and travel and rest. you can hurry, you can rush and you can wait. you can fight and hide, learn and resist. make friends and make enemies. soften and forget. harden and regret.

you can be afraid, you can be proud. you can eat first or you can eat last. you can ruin everyone else’s meal, if you wanted to. you can be the foot or you can be the neck. the hammer or the nail. put things together and break them apart. you can guard the gate. you can open the door. you can embarrass yourself. you can set yourself free.

change your mind and write a poem. have a favorite song. watch the moon rise and the sun set. you can drive and fly and scream and swim. you can be lonely, empty and full. you can hurt and heal. persevere and begin again. be humbled and lost. you can seek and be found.

you can decorate. eat snacks. cook dinner. love an animal. be clear, be confused, insist, miss the point entirely, and still forgive. you can grieve and you can give. you will die. and you can live.

244

this version of you.

take a moment to remember the version of you that prayed to be where you are now, to live as you do, and now you’re here. you are the miracle. a younger version prayed for you; she prayed for this. and now you exist.

even if things are still terrible, it’s what your soul called in to help you become the next version of yourself. a version you didn’t know how to pray for so your soul had to do it for you; a better life, a better you, is on its way. your soul leads you down the path and then you have to walk it to the other side, to what’s next.

life matches who you are. this version of you is not going to have a better life. when things get better, it will be enjoyed by the better version of you, not who you are now. so if you want things to change, you’ll have to change. and then you’ll have to watch the past fall away. it’s not easy and it’s not painless. life is its own tattoo. it will mark you. what’s inside will rise to the surface, for good and for bad.

do you feel like you’re dying? yes. let the old identity die so the new one can come online. are things falling apart? good. that means you chose yourself. keep doing that. what needs to fall apart, will. and if you don’t let it, if you stand in the way, you’ll be the one to fall apart. you’ll keep your current job and all your old relationships, with your friends and family and entire identity intact, and you’ll be what breaks. either way. stay and break. break for better.

243

your own adventure.

it takes time to choose your own reality. even if this is the incarnation you find yourself with the actual consciousness to do it, you won’t know how many lifetimes it took to get here. the soul evolves on a journey of consciousness that takes place in a body, on a planet, bound by time.

everybody shows up in their own movie and everybody does their own casting. the soul orchestrates human connections that give us the opportunity to try on different realities; these are the supporting roles in films starring family and friends, clients and colleagues, enemies and acquaintances. we play our part, finding ourselves in all kinds of roles. in some, we are responsible for just one line in the movie, a single scene. there are others where we end up carrying just as much or more than the lead actor.

it goes on like this for a while, until we tire of it. the awards and accolades stop mattering, the critics are no longer relevant and there’s no amount of money that can reasonably justify all the crying alone in our trailer for anything less than top billing. it comes time to return to our own reality, to our own movie. but we have to choose it. and somehow, it’s always the last resort, the final stop. we always want to find out how much it costs to win the oscar for best supporting actor in a film we hate and as a character we don’t enjoy. and then we do. and then it’s fine to walk off the set. it’s fine to get fired, recast. we finally understand the truth: you have to give yourself full creative control. it will never come from the star or the executive producer of someone else’s movie. and it will never come with permission or consensus or blessing. not if you’re any good and not if you’re too good.

just remember: your own movie will never get made if you’re too busy supporting everyone else’s story. you have to choose your own reality if you want to create your own reality.

242

let God reveal it.

sometimes the divine will let you in on a little secret, a sneak preview that perhaps does not belong to you, and is not for you to share. you will not receive these clicks of clarity if you allow them to spill out of you. if you cannot hold them with care.

how do we build lung capacity? expand and hold. hold and expand. when these glimpses appear to you, and only you, consider whether you ought to keep them to yourself, in stillness, a humble participant in the expansion of your consciousness, allowing reality to unfold in due time.

not everything is meant to come rushing out of your mouth. let God say it to them, let God show it to them. let them tell it to themselves, let them see it for themselves. the truths you hold dear: did they not come to you directly and exclusively? or do your deepest convictions come from someone else?

for now, hold your tongue. especially as the truth rises up inside you like fire. if and when you are meant to deliver, God’s own truth will flow out of you like water, in no hurry and with no resistance. unrehearsed and undeniable. let the blade slice away from you and not towards you.

241

don’t quit.

your identity, who you are, is a curriculum that unfolds as your life. you can’t change your life, for better or worse, from the outside in. it happens from the inside out. you have to complete the curriculum. you have to exhaust the old identity. every main quest, every side quest, every gift, every understanding your soul signed up for? you have to live it out.

you don’t like how things are going? too bad. it’s not over until you’re done. until you break. the new car doesn’t drop out of the sky until the old one breaks down and you are completely empty. so live hard, live well and keep going. because if you don’t, what might have been meant as just a chapter, or the first half of your life, could easily turn into the whole thing.

you want things to change? it’s not affirmations. affirmations are prayers of gratitude for when cycles complete and old identities expire. they do not move you into the next versions of yourself. you do. your devotion, your surrender and your humility will keep you from you from getting stuck. even if it feels like you are rewriting and rereading the same passages.

rote memorization will become lived experience and then you won’t have to “quit.” that version of you will sunset. and the next version, the one that doesn’t do the same things or need the hard lessons that used up the old one, she will take the wheel. the road will feel different. that’s how life changes.

240

live your lessons.

you’ll live your lessons until they kill you. but you have to be brave enough to let the old you die. you know, the one who believes she has to perform miracles, like making blind men see or bestowing hearing upon the deaf, not understanding she is already the miracle.

even so, there is nothing she can do to pry their eyes open. they cannot hear her because they are not listening. but she is the one still trying to pay her way and make herself useful to service what feels like the crushing debt of her own existence; she can’t understand that her ticket is already paid. she belongs on this train, just like everyone else. and just like everyone else, she is allowed to sit down. to quit living this life as an apology, with service as her contrition.

that’s why she’s dying. and if you don’t let her go, if you cannot put her to rest, your soul will drag her tired corpse around until life becomes a horrorshow.

every morning, she’ll jump out of that deathbed, pray to God, repeat her affirmations, find the will, and dig into her own flesh for a vein she can empty into work, family and everyone she loves. there aren’t even very many left. and the problem is that her lifeblood is your lifeblood, too. the crises and assignments don’t end, but life as an unpaid intern is becoming too expensive. it’s costing your peace and you’re almost too tired to be proud. that’s why you have to let her be done. she is you. you are both out of gas, this is the wrong road, and now you know better.

just have the funeral. it doesn’t matter if no one attends.

239

take your ball.

are you willing to take your ball and go home? home to the ghosts that haunt you? where being alone is quieter than out and about, still lonely? the home where no one waits? where younger versions of you scream like starving stray cats? you can hear them from a block away. it’s so embarrassing. but the neighbors say nothing; so it doesn’t matter.

you go home to where the mess is. where the only helping hands are the ones you grow out of the stubs they guillotined. many years ago, you held them out, but it was the wrong time and the wrong place (and they were in no mood) so the hands came off swiftly. ceremoniously or unceremoniously, you were rid of them, either way.

sometimes you wonder how it might feel if you still had them. you were so young back then. imagine what it might be like to walk around with all original parts? maybe like a brand-new barbie, jewelry complete with both pairs of shoes. maybe you’d still have that baby-soft skin you molted out of a hundred times by now. so itchy! and every time, you had to burn the old diary and begin writing anew, lest you make an accidental dwelling in that cold, blue-gray bathwater.

it was easier, for many years, to learn the new way: hands for giving, hands forgiving. until one day, you took those hands, picked up that ball and walked the other way. you might have hesitated for half a second but no one seemed to notice. that’s how you know it was right. they didn’t come running. no major upsets. and now it’s just you: sink empty, laundry folded, doors locked, lights out, windows wide open to the breeze. it’s twilight. the sun is gone. still too light for the stars but you don’t need them anymore. you’re already home.

238

call to battle.

everything good about you is a call to battle. how will you answer? will you rise up to protect, serve and honor yourself? or will you join with the other side as they demean, deny, denigrate, diminish, extract and siphon your gifts?

a soldier emerges into consciousness at the front of the war and not from the sidelines. the battle often finds him far from home and fighting now for his life. but from which side?

the war continues until we understand both campaigns as necessary to forge the warrior inside. that’s when the fighting ends. the smoke clears and you begin to move through life as a dance, no longer an offensive. the people around you are brothers-in-arms. they made you who you are: who you were always meant to be, the version your soul can now recognize.

the ones who fed you lies and the ones who shared their rations were all the same. they kept the real you alive. and now you can bury your dead. go to the temple to be cleansed of the war. allow your daily devotions to deepen your breath. return to village life. and now, when people come to you, ask if they, too, have returned as heroes of war. “in the battle against yourself, did you win?” understand that not every struggle ends. if the conflict is active, do they call out to you as captives? as prisoners of war? do you risk conscription into the fray? or will you allow each man to prove his own valor?

237

all parts.

children are beautiful, simple and complex. bright little buds in tentative, exuberant bloom. they are all of us in miniature. exploring the world with big hearts and small hands, messy and imperfect. do not edit the manuscript as it’s being written. children just want to be loved. and they need to be held. look at me; see me. teach me; i want to learn.

the animals just want to survive, to see another day. their rules are simple: live and let live. even as they eat one another and tear their own limbs to be free. earth, water and sky; this is all they need. hunt, forage and scavenge; they eat from the ground, out of the trash, taking what they need, though never to steal. have mercy, for the world i know is cruel. even as the seasons and cycles bear no malice.

the enemy you find in family, and within your own ranks, seeks only for weakness. helping you break so that you may heal. how else would you learn? i’m here to make you stronger. you do not know who you are without your adversary.

holding tight to their hopes, fears and dreams, people reflect and regret in the privacy of their own lives. planting seeds and reaping the harvest. they learn and grow, even if it’s slow. even if the lessons are few and hard-won. facing the horizon with eyes to the sky, we are the bits and pieces of God, wandering flotsam and jetsam, strewn loosely about the earth.

and you? just be a person. within all of us are the children, the animals, the enemy. hold each part gently, with love and every kindness. you do not need to solve the mystery, only to see it without breaking.

236

will to live.

have you lost the will the live? perhaps you can finally admit that you never had it to begin with. it’s ok. you don’t need it.

even as lack gives chase, you will lose it forever or it will find you (as the strongest, fastest, most beautiful version of yourself) and it will force your presence. you will find your earthly purpose and this will heal your soul OR you’ll remember your cosmic purpose and recognize your soul.

do you have the humility to receive the gift of the self?

the egoic will to live is simply the divine will to give hiding in plainclothes. without ego, the will to give (your faith and willingness to participate in giving and receiving) walks naked, for all to see. your light is unsheathed. everyone can see how beautifully God gives to you and through you.

that’s why life is your teacher and loss, your oldest friend.

how else would you know if you’re a pipe or a pot? we see how you do when you are hollowed out, continually emptied and scoured clean. that’s how. of course, every vessel on earth is a channel. each day an invitation to reveal and share in the light. and for those whose willingness is not diminished, but strengthened in letting go, they receive in every moment, consciously surrendered to divine flow.