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.

235

let’s talk.

from the very first moment, we both know i hit the ground hard and fast, feet first. for decades i fought, navigated the maze, and fell into every trap. consciously unconsciously reaching for people, places and things to create obstacles between us.

maybe i was angry. angry to be separate; angry this is what it meant to exist. either way, the fire became a flood and my fuel to burn. but nothing worked. none of the fixing, pleasing, achieving, not even the pain and not even the pleasure. no distraction, no semblance of purpose, no earthly delight could stand. everything always taken away. everything with a truer face to be revealed in time. sometimes a game, sometimes a test, sometimes training, though never punishment.

there were times of forgetting. times i thought the pursuit was mine. not true. the pursuit was you. i’d been running and i didn’t know who it was that chased. but i know now. it was you, the Beloved. seeking me, wanting to talk. you already knew it would have to wait until i was good and ready. and now i’m good. and now i’m ready. so let’s talk.

it’s not that you found me. i just finally stopped in my own tracks long enough to turn and see you. you’ve been so patient. you let me strive. you said nothing, even as you kept close. so tell me what it is, then. i’m done running. you can tell me anything now.

234

the clearing.

you’ll be lonely for people until people make you lonely; that’s one way to solve it, even if it’s not what you had hoped for.

it feels strange walking up to the counter and realizing your claim ticket is not the same as the others’. you don’t get the usual assortment, gleaming containers of light in a milk basket. you get all of it, in every form, in everything around you. the light of creation can all be yours (for free) but only if nothing is yours (that you, yourself, remain free).

there is the certainty (beyond these five senses, beyond human logic) that all is unfolding for the good. you notice that other people’s deepest secrets and urgent pleas, private conundrums and many questions, wants and needs, hopes and dreams, dying thirst and ravenous hunger –the unending minutiae of it all– are not what nourish you, even as they are laid ever so gently, like prayers at your feet. these offerings, while humble and true, are not reverence. they beg for devotion, providing none.

you’ve lost the desire to be needed. to be wanted is dull. you understand now that holding vulnerability and witnessing pain, meeting others in the exact places only you can help, these privileges are not the same as being met. intimacy is still a warm, special place where you stay hungry and unseen. you can live there and love there, invisible in the dark, still holding your own hand. it’s ok. this is the darkness where seekers find God. your loneliness shares in the loneliness of God. this sudden clearing in your own consciousness is where you meet the divine within and the divine without, again and again.

233

greatest hits.

you are already living your luckiest, most blessed lifetime. it’s this one. you’ll know it by how everything gets taken away. sometimes it’s slow and sometimes it’s sudden, but you’ll notice that everything ends, everyone leaves, everything breaks, or you didn’t ever get the thing. and not for lack of trying. not at all. that’s how you’ll know it’s this lifetime.

everything in your story is an echo from lineages and lifetimes past. you’re only here because of karma. you’re still just a soul, participating in the cosmic balance of cause and effect, growing into your own shoes. when you see your life playing out like a “greatest hits” of every possible thing that could be painful to you, that’s when you know you’ve arrived.

instead of marrying your sweetheart and taking care of them until they were old and gray and dead, that same dynamic was just a blip in this life. your early heartbreaks were just the first in a string of pearls: you quit waiting around for people to do what they promised, you quit pouring into cups with holes in them, and you quit pouring into those with nothing to give but their own thirst and empty cups. all this so you might finally allow yourself the experience of true love.

diverted from the toil and cloistered prestige of mastery through apprenticeship, a path you’d already charted over dozens of previous incarnations, this is the one where nothing lasts and everything fails and you had to start over (and over and over) just to experience how the empire you build inside becomes power you could only have manifested in this day, this age, as this version of yourself. you’ll laugh. the lifetime everything gets destroyed is the lifetime everything happens; nothing happens in the lifetimes you get to keep everything.

232

allowing not absorbing.

surrender your confusion, despair and disgust. dissonance and pain ask only for witness; they need not be watered. when you stop feeding the negativity, you allow it to serve you through contrast. you won’t know peace until after you integrate the chaos. you will sample every flavor before you meet your favorite. how would you know, otherwise?

there is no truth (or full-body “yes”) until after we’ve lived the anguish of every “maybe,” every shred of potential that eventually revealed the lie, so we could finally and fully embody the hard and fast “no.”

do you ever wonder at the texture of your own darkness? it was your light that cast the shadow, and always yours to explore, but it’s not where you belong. God only knows, if these problems were yours to solve, you would have done it by now.

what’s for you is to love and resolve the perturbances in your own heart. why do you think people piss on what’s good and deny what’s gone wrong? why do you think we busy ourselves chasing reflections of light (in people, places and things) instead of connecting directly to Source? instead of revealing the light? let people live, even as they block your path; the obstacle is the way. we will all have as many laps as we need. you don’t know how many lifetimes a soul requires.

all is one beneath the illusion of separation. all is now beneath the construct of time. all is light beneath the distortion and distraction and temporary unknowing. why hurry? why rush? be still. allow the unfolding.

231

landing the plane.

what does it feel like to finally land the plane? after lifetimes of seeking and searching, and circling for hours? those that have, say it feels like loving everyone but liking yourself the best. it feels like not having anyone to text you “landed!” retrieving only what’s yours at the carousel and slowly walking yourself home; no car service and no one waiting at arrivals. you hadn’t told anyone you were leaving so no one knew when you’d be coming home, not even you.

and now, walking in the door, eyes taking in your little domestic setup, it feels like “chop wood and carry water” is going to be the vacation. you won’t have to leave to feel like yourself anymore. you don’t have to call or make plans to hang out with the version of you that you actually like. she is you. you’re the only one you want. and that’s what finally brought you back.

you had enough sunrises and sunsets with the people who found you. you looked into each marketplace and museum mirror, and saw every person you used to be. you know all the faces, especially the ones the kept coming back, city after city, under different names. you met everyone where they were. then one day, you finally met yourself. and she told you, “you know you’re already home. go back to your house and wait for what’s yours. new love will find you there, where you belong.”

230

where everybody lives.

your consciousness is a house where everybody lives. everyone you’ve ever been, everyone you’ve loved and anyone who’s ever hurt you lives in that house. your family lives there, too. even if you’ve just now built a new wing for them that you take care to avoid altogether.

people come into your life for a reason. and when they do, they take up a room in your consciousness. some of them (the ones you love and the ones you hate) are rooms you used to visit often. maybe checking in several times a day (or several times an hour)! but when it’s time to be done, to live and let live, you’ll find there are no evictions from this house. the house just has to get bigger. you gotta start adding levels. or move people into rooms a little further from center.

because everyone who arrives is merely a reflection. they’re showing you who you used to be, what you used to do (maybe over lifetimes), who you might become, and what you don’t want anymore. that your house has all these separate rooms is illusory. other people only come to remind you: “they are me.” they stay living with you because of your compassion and because it’s true.

here’s the thing: you just need the house big enough and rooms the right size. “letting people go” as chapters close, and as they help you heal and release past versions of yourself, means putting them somewhere good, trusting them to walk their paths now without you, and giving them enough space to exist outside your day-to-day.

229

no place like home.

you wake up one morning to find yourself alone. there’s an empty table. no chairs. you set the stage, your offerings to the world laid out in careful arrangement. strangers approach and the magic begins. but somehow, the razzle doesn’t dazzle. you can tell they don’t care about your dog or your pony. still, it doesn’t feel good when the audience leaves early, so you learn how to entertain. but the show feels empty; you’ve made your life performance and not a communion. yours were the only gifts on the table. you left no room for others to offer theirs. you went hungry even as you laid out a feast.

you realize you’re done with the table. it’s boring. you can’t shake your grief. your stomach is growling. eyes tired from crying. you’re done making pilgrimage for love. building bridges where the banks won’t hold.

you’re remembering —and recognizing for the first time— that you’re already home. there’s nowhere to be but in the present. in your body. in this day that the Lord has made. nothing to do. nothing to fix. nowhere to go. you don’t have to make it to the end of the day, the end of the week, or the top of the hill. you’ve already arrived.

and when you make it back home, you can finally enjoy your desires again. you don’t need anything from anyone. so your desires become your pets, your earthly delights, anchoring you to the rhythm of daily life. no longer conflating desire with need, your desires are no longer screaming mouths to feed. they become presents under the tree: ready, wrapped and waiting for you to reveal the light.

228

when chaos leaves you.

love can come when chaos leaves you. abundance arrives after scarcity departs. peace settles in when fear is gone.

why? because the chaos inside you is what calls in more chaos. so it has to leave for love to be your only vibration. and that’s when love can come in.

the scarcity inside you is what calls in more scarcity. so it has to leave for abundance to be your only vibration. that’s when abundance can come in.

because the fear inside you is what calls in more fear. so it has to leave for peace to be your only vibration. that’s when peace can come in.

when chaos comes to find you, you have to love it. when scarcity arrives at your door, you must greet it with abundance. when fear grabs a hold, offer your peace.

accepting what arrives and arises allows what’s not yours to leave, and what’s yours to come in. gratitude for what arises, for what arrives, is what helps you get to the bottom, to the very last drop of what’s not yours, so it may gently release. and what’s yours has room to stay.

what you want does not wish to live with the version of you that felt she didn’t deserve it. or believed it would never come. or thought she had to give up something good to get something good. no. what you want wants the version of you that holds herself dear. what comes to you will want to be held with the same reverence you hold yourself.

227

your remembering.

it is a lie that i am “not whole,” as the beloved is not hidden, only veiled by the illusion of time and separation. life on earth is ritual; embodied enactment of the spiral, seasons and cycles. karma is the blind seeker’s dance by which we shed and accept the energetic residue of cause and effect. we feel and fumble our way through discovery and consequence, until the truth is embodied, and the blindfold comes off.

have you ever lost something in the house? do you not circle, from “top to bottom,” to confirm that what you seek cannot be found above ground? only then do you make your unwilling descent into the basement. that’s life. the seeker is called below the surface, under the skin, beneath everyday waking consciousness. what you seek must be remembered before it can be made manifest. what you want hides not in broad daylight but in the dark, illuminated by the moon’s gentler, borrowed light, received in phases from the sun.

no wonder we are unfulfilled in our relationships, greatest achievements and fractured façades. forgetting inner wholeness and abundance, the external rings hollow. it falls flat. unconscious seeds will rot the fruit, so we seek what’s missing in our own shadows, in half-hearted descent. this is what brings chaos. a half-life that stops at half-death, clinging to both in desperation, straddling old and new. you can’t.

compromise never works. you cannot cheat a cycle that wants completion. pure creation wants full destruction. life and rebirth are paid in death. the fool and the tower must fall before the star may rise. never make the leap —or live at the top of the tower— there is no halfway.

226

life talking to you.

you’ll have days where life feels like it’s speaking to you directly. almost like you think a thought and the world responds by bringing it out to you, and into your next conversation, without planning or wishing it or trying.

these are good days. all the other ones are good too, but some days give you more. reminding you that you and the field are one. you aren’t just in it. you are it. the movie is not happening without you. life is not passing you by. it’s you and it’s yours and it’s all happening for you, from you.

so what do you do? what do you do on a day like this? you do nothing. you just live it. surrender as fully to the connected days as you do the disconnected days. surrender to the flow same as you do the friction.

let it remind you that you can be the fool, stepping happily off the edge of your own knowing, and into whatever’s next. you don’t have to be the magician in each moment. the tower doesn’t fall every day. the devil isn’t always calling your name. he, too, must take his rest.

cycles complete and the spiral continues. but for now, let the moment hold you. the way you hold the day is the way the day will hold you. trust, be gentle; don’t grasp, don’t grab. you can discern and not know, learn, falter and have everything.

225

lucky onion.

the lucky onion is the forever onion. the one that keeps shedding a layer, with more layers underneath. the lucky onion doesn’t run out. there’s always more onion when you’re a lucky onion. nevermind that each layer looks the same as the one before. nevermind the sting and the weeping. there’s not always enough heat to draw out the sweetness in the shedding. it’s bitter but you get used to the taste.

you’re a lucky onion because you keep going. you’re not worried you might get to the end, that you might peel and peel until there’s nothing left. until your hands are empty —and you’ve run out— and all you’ve left is a mess. no.

the lucky onion always has more to give. more to live. more to love. more to learn. more to let go. and we keep going like that, through the pain and tedium.

there’s nothing to do but see how you get more and more even as the onion looks less and less.

the lucky onion keeps going because the threat of annihilation doesn’t seem to register. what does it matter if all of the peeling ends up a pile of nothing? can’t be worse than waking up an onion. at least you found out what it was all about.

224

i don’t know how.

i don’t know how to tell you (i don’t know how to tell me) that life is not a problem to be solved. that life on earth —what persists around you and stirs within you— is the only way that a soul learns to surrender. to the humiliations of the body. to the kindnesses and cruelty of man. to the beauty and decay that perfumes the air and haunts us all.

pain triggers logic triggers solving triggers futility triggers humility engenders faith. increasing in order of importance and magnitude. faith is the only way to meet the divine, which exists everywhere and nowhere at once, until the eye opens to see. look around. do you see how life is unsolvable? that’s because life is not a problem. and neither are you. again: if you can’t solve it (and everything you do seems to make it worse) it’s either not a problem or not for you to solve.

if you can’t get there alone, the pain you chose (the pain you choose) will help you. the knot, the tangle, the unending torture, the forever puzzle you have found yourself in, you chose this, whether unconsciously or consciously. you saw it on the menu and you said, “that’s what i need. that’s what it would take. i’ll have that for when i arrive.”

for what, you might ask? and for why? all this, just to see the face of God and build heaven on earth as a mirror image of the kingdom you have carried within you over lifetimes.