55

learn your own lessons.

the person you love the most: they’re not like you? good. why would you want them to suffer as you do? everyone is not the same, and for good reason. anytime you want someone to be more like you, ask yourself, “would i want this person to have the same problems as me? to worry as i do?” if not, then no. let them be who they are, with the problems they chose, and a stranger to each of yours. while we are intimately familiar with our own miseries, we must not wish them upon others.

think of the acquaintances, neighbors and colleagues that have become your best friends because you share a common enemy. it’s amazing. you found one another. now what? there’s two of you with the same problem; even more pressure to solve it. no more excuses! what you’ll find is that everyone has a different level of tolerance for their problems and the problems of others.

remember that God is not trying to show you everything that is wrong with the world; he’s trying to show you to yourself.

you’ll be happier when you allow your own pace and progress to humble and soften you, as it’s meant to, not withholding God’s own compassion for yourself and others. if the universe wanted you different, they would have sent you down to bless the earth as angels and not as mere mortals attempting grace. shape your clay as best you can.

54

what is belonging?

our children belong to God before they belong to us, before they belong to the world, and before they eventually belong to themselves. our parents belong to us, then they belong to the world, and sometimes they can even figure out a way to belong to themselves. our animals belong to their litters and to the streets before they belong in our homes and go back to God. our lovers belonged to their pasts before they ever belonged with us, until it comes time for us to release them.

and you have to ask the right questions. it’s not, “do i belong to this place? or to these people?” it’s, “does this place belong to me? does this person belong to me? or do they belong with someone else? is it for someone else to tend to them, and not me?” do you want to know who you belong to? ask yourself today, “am i a star, a planet or a black hole?”

black holes will take anyone and anything; they gobble everything up and are always hungry for more. there’s not enough light in the universe that would make them whole. black holes belong to no one but themselves.

planets do not belong to one another; planets want stars. because they don’t make their own light, they need stars to experience day and night. planets belong to their stars.

stars are on fire, glittering the entire universe. stars don’t see planets. they are burning too bright and too far away to know or even care whose lives they illuminate. stars are lonely in this way but that’s how stars belong to one another. what you will find, at the end of the day, is that belonging is beloved.

53

choose what’s yours.

what are you listening to? you can tune the radio to any number of frequencies: high, low, and many in between. the broadcasts play simultaneously and you may only listen to one show at a time.

what will it be today? is it the mom & dad show? everything your parents judge, believe and hold dear? you might not recognize it as such because it comes through in your own voice half the time. but this is the station you’ve tuned into the longest, since you were a child.

or how about the friends & enemies show? these are the perspectives, affinities and opposing views that anchor your egoic persona into your current social circles. you tune into this station to navigate daily interactions as the character of “acceptable” you. other times, you’ll turn up chores & obligations radio to lock in and get things done.

each day, we start over. we jump in the car for yet another ride to the usual destination or to drive someplace new. the trip is not optional but you can choose: radio or silence. find an outside frequency or sit in a bit of quiet to explore your own vibration, even if tuning into yourself is not as easy as a radio preset button.

here’s the thing. everyone broadcasts a signal, knowingly or not. you can’t control any of the external frequencies; only whether you tune in or tune out. people are tuned into you even if you are not tuned into yourself. and yours is the only frequency that matters.

52

that’s how you know.

the first valentine was a saint. funny, that. because love doesn’t want saints, heroes or martyrs. anytime you want to be a hero in love, you will lose the relationship. the price the martyr pays is her life. while love is sacred service, the saint’s reward is asymmetry.

the matrix is in your mind. so of course, no one will stop you from using love to stay small and trapped, always having to be the bigger person, never learning how to be truly vulnerable or how to receive, instead of living in love as a garden where your soul is safe to bloom, grow and flow – a sacrament to honor all that is both human and divine in you.

of course no one will stop you thinking that the most important thing you can do in relationship is to define which half of the chores is yours, that there’s a mommy or daddy out there who will be a perfect fit to forever parent your inner child, and to make sure you can take what you need. no.

relationship is a meal we cook together. relationship is how you unlock the next version of you. it’s where the masks come off. you find a partner who naturally, lovingly and unhesitatingly protects your heart so that ego can rest from a job for which it was ill-equipped. i keep you safe from the rest of the world and from all the parts of me that still need healing. you let me live out the consequences of my actions. together, we are the strongest and most free we will ever be.

51

you will heal.

what is healing? healing is working through the discomfort that arises without dissociating or projecting. you dissociate when you numb into your addictive tendencies. you project when you blame the people around you, the places you may be stuck or the situations in which you find yourself; these are not what is hurting you. by staying present, you are not “letting in” the pain; the pain is coming from inside, not outside. and you’re not meant to keep it. the event or trigger that brought the pain to your attention is helping you bring it up and out of your system, to be felt by you and then released. it’s a process of “letting out” and “letting go.” healing is surrender.

think of the common cold. it goes around every year and it’ll always eventually be your turn for a cold. the germ gets inside of you and there you are: coughing, congested, miserable, stuffy head and stuffy nose. you can drink water and lay around, but there will be no denying or avoiding it. this time is for you to be a body and to heal at a pace not controlled by the mind. all you can do is be gentle with yourself, lest you prolong the cycle. the symptoms are the release. the pain is not the problem. it’s just telling you that something wants out. and you have to feel it to heal it. you cannot think your way out of a cold or a heartbreak or grief.

think of a broken bone. how do you heal it? you don’t. the body knows the process better than you do. you go to the doctor because they will tell you how to allow the body to heal itself: protect it, rest, don’t be a dumbass and re-break it while it’s vulnerable, and then you can have that limb back after it’s reconstructed itself stronger than the original. the coach is not the player. doctors and gurus are not the healer. the healer is you.

50

your power.

what does it mean to be sovereign? a king or queen does not know the future any better than the rest of us. sovereign is not fortuneteller or soothsayer. rather, the monarch is a guide, chosen to lead. the guide takes fellow travelers through unknown territory. no one knows what the adventure holds or what even the next few minutes will bring.

the queen does not complain. she may say, “i am struggling to find the will, the words, or the way.” but she uses her voice to state the truth and not to lament it. she seeks wise counsel and gets the help she needs to fulfill duty to self and others. if you are complaining on the journey, you are not the leader; you are last in the party, trailing behind. and guess what, every situation is new; everything is the unknown. are you protecting and guiding yourself through it or are you allowing yourself to be led, to who knows where?

the king does not try. he is either thinking or doing. he may not say, “i am trying to [do the thing].” this is because his responsibilities are far too great to merely attempt. he is permitted to fail but trying is not leadership. peasants try and fail or they may try and get lucky. the king does everything he can and does not stop until he is successful.

the king has a hard job and that job is not to make everyone happy. “everyone happy” is incidental to “what’s best.” imagine your job is to figure out “what’s best” and “get it done.” maybe everyone will be happy but also maybe everyone will be unhappy. too bad. they’re not the king.

49

it’s you.

you are your own responsibility. your inner child, your insecure teenager, your unlimited genius, artistic expression, physical gifts, your magic and your power belong to you. they are your sole responsibility. you are the person whose task it is to sharpen her edges before the battle finds her, and you are the only one that is qualified to wield the blade that is you.

now, how do we find this out? short childhoods and growing up too fast. experiences that tell us we are ugly and unwanted, almost perfect but simply not good enough. teachers and adults that failed to light the path that would best serve us in career or education. bullies that said our words were stupid, that our songs were silly and that our drawings were bad. the people who left us on the bench when it came time to pick teams, who did not offer the minor adjustments that could help unlock our potential. the relationships that used us and drained us, and the circles that closed themselves to us.

anyone that made us feel small, told us we were born to serve, insisted that we were the problem, a burden, and nothing special —this is how the magnitude of our energy actually made them feel while in our presence— except they didn’t know it and we didn’t know it, either. for a long time, we unconsciously participated in this mistaken belief, this lie, right alongside them. but now you know that your power was always too vast and too precious for anyone else to diminish or take for themselves.

someone will come along that cherishes your inner child, drives your inner teenager to that concert and to the mall, engages with your unlimited genius, is moved by your artistic expression, sees your physical gifts, protects your heart, and honors you without fear, envy or hesitation. but before you meet them, you must first meet yourself. before you meet your king, the queen must rise.

48

here’s the thing.

here’s the thing about wrong, imperfect and flawed: once you see it, you can’t unsee it. once you see how unhappy you truly are, you cannot not solve the problem. from that point, you delay the inevitable: you will find the solution or the solution will find you.

this is why people refuse to see; why they choose to strengthen their denial and allow the locks to rust shut. this is how we continually choose our own bullshit over the people we love and over our own freedom. “i do not know what it is to thrive, but i do know how to survive, so let me just stick to what i know.”

remember that your doubts, your fears, your feelings of being small and unimportant –your limitations– are not only illusions; they do not belong to you. as loudly as you claim them, as fiercely as you protect them, as staunchly you defend them, as often as you choose them, and no matter how far you have carried them or how long you have insisted on them, they are not yours. so whenever you decide to set them down, know that you are merely saying goodbye to now-familiar strangers, houseguests that overstayed their welcome. they taught you, they tamed you, and now you know that heaven and earth belong to all that is wild and free inside you.

47

of course.

we often tell ourselves, “this divorce would be easier if kids weren’t involved. i wish i didn’t have cancer. this addiction is killing me.” no. without your kid, without that disease, without the addiction, you would never know what “i fought the hardest i ever fought in my life” means.

and this is how everything that comes to you is a gift. some gifts just need to be unwrapped. your soul is like that, too: perfect, God’s gift. wrapped and covered in layers that must eventually be discarded, not because they are “bad,” but simply because they are obscuring the gift, what’s perfect, what wants to shine: your true self.

you didn’t come to this earth, as a diamond, that was meant to stay buried. no. and here’s how we help one another: sometimes it’s someone else who starts the digging that you, yourself, and only you, must finish. they can see the diamonds before you do. reveal your own diamonds, my friend. find the precious, find the love, find the warrior, find the queen within.

46

it’s worth it.

that which you are compelled to do, exactly the way you do it, even against your better judgment? it’s the right thing to do. why? because that’s the only way you will see: [1] how beautiful you are and [2] what it is you came here to learn.

you won’t know what’s inside until you see yourself doing it on the outside. you need who you are to be reflected back to you to know who, exactly, “who you are” is. do you know what your left eye looks like? no. not until you see yourself in a mirror. do you know what tattoos do? they merely bring to the surface certain energy and experiences so as not to be forgotten.

now, the universe doesn’t care how long it takes for you to learn what you need to learn, just so long as you learn it — even if it feels like wasted time. your soul knows that time isn’t real; time is just one of the perceptual constraints inherent to your meat suit. so what’s more important? “saving time?” or honoring the integrity and perfection of your soul through aligned action? what about doing what you think is right, even if it goes nowhere, even if the only person who would see it is you? why should we waste time making “perfect” or doing the ultimate if “good enough” is good enough?

because your best comes from God. how would you like to meet your maker on judgment day and say, “i gave just enough, not too much, and was sure to waste none of my time while on this earth. i made no further effort beyond my actions as a ‘good enough parent,’ ‘good enough spouse’ or ‘good enough friend.’” no. that’s not why we are here.

the perfect and the good are enemies. it’s a funny kind of war, but you must be sure to pick the right side.

45

it’s faith.

what is love? love is faith. love, in fact, is the strongest form of faith. why? because it’s this: believing that today is good, that the future exists, and that it will be a good future. and love, in its purest form, just like faith, is forever. i’ll tell you how:

when you love someone, even if you’re disagreeing, even if you’re fighting, even if one or both of you is sick, you find the strength to believe that today is still good because you are together. this is the person you get to fight with, that you get to exercise this perennial disagreement with, that you get to love so hard that you would always choose having loved them even as you are, each day, losing them to death (inevitable), even as disease steals them away before your eyes (the hardest), and even as you find your paths diverging at a crossroads.

notice how love makes death the best case scenario, because it means you got to have them until it was no longer possible. love shows you forever when you realize that there’s no untouched future version of you. and love reveals itself as faith when you choose to believe that this now makes every future, with or without them, a good one.

44

this is how.

every whenever, you will be called to start a new life. some new lives start on the outside, like switching jobs or moving cities, which will change you eventually, from the outside in, while others will move you from the inside out.

these new lives may arise unbidden, they may have been prayed for over a period of years, while others will be experienced as initiations that arrive suddenly, like a thunderclap that jolts you into the next scene. the curtain rises and there you are, a deer in the headlights, set pieces in shambles. the entire next act is having to put your life back together, with everyone watching from their seats.

some of your new lives have been desperately waiting for you to build the conviction that you are, in fact, ready for the leap, while others couldn’t come soon enough for you to fly on untested wings. you’ll learn what it’s like to be old and unwilling to close a chapter and what it’s like to be young and ready to write an entirely new book.

these new lives are all around us and within us, like little sprouts budding out of the soil. you might look around and not know what’s new and what’s worn its welcome. deep inside, you’ll feel both: the stirrings of what’s to come and gratitude for what has now bloomed into harvest. and this is how we honor the seasons of our lives. we allow the energies of winter and spring, summer and fall, to visit us in their own time. you turn the wheel and the wheel turns you.

43

what is it?

what is surrender? it means accepting zero control over the outcome, the process and the timing. it means conforming your will to take the next steps that are presented to you and demanded of you, unfamiliar steps you’ve never taken before, while knowing nothing and understanding nothing.

surrender means finally allowing something greater to hold you, to carry you, so that you may eventually learn to hold and carry yourself with all the love that you sought to wrest from people, places and things external to you. surrender is forcing yourself to find everything you ever wanted inside yourself, at your own house.

and how does surrender make you stronger? if you already have everything you need within you, then all of the begging, borrowing and stealing you used to do can finally end. when you nourish yourself, you will find that the world comes now to eat out of your hand. when you find the benevolent creator within, you become a benevolent creator without.

42

it means you want more.

does your life have an ache? good. pain means that whatever it was that hurt you is keeping you alive. that’s what it chose. now, what do you choose? should the pain end you even if the hurt didn’t?

ok but keep me alive for what, you might ask. keep me alive for more rain? yes. keep you alive for more rain, keep you alive for more rainbows. rain and rainbows are your angels: memories of rain are meant to sweeten your rainbows and memories of the rainbows are your comfort in the rain.

on the path from child to adult to sovereign, we are meant to learn first, how to live within limitations; second, how to allow those limitations to strengthen us; and third, when to exchange those limitations for how we expect life to meet us as we pursue our dreams. we set down what does not belong to us so that we may draw closer to what does.

41

already perfect.

you are perfect. there is nothing you need to do to be worthy of your dreams or to deserve that which you desire. because only God can make perfect, you must also believe that God only makes perfect.

your ability to receive must be perfected. tell me what it sounds like when you receive a compliment. are you even able to? or is it, “this old thing?" how do you respond to a bit of good luck? do you try to explain it away until all of a sudden there's no such thing as luck? there could still be some work to do. because if you want big, if you want a lot, if you want "unlikely" and it makes people laugh in your face, you will need to strengthen and expand your ability to receive that exact thing, or better, and more. start small, begin where you are, and keep going.

your perfect [what you want] exists. it will be perfect by the time it reaches you. it will lock on when you lock in, and for now, it is still on its way. trust yourself, trust in the unfolding, trust in the divine, and know these are one in the same.

40

it’s not more magical.

manifestation is not magic. even if it were, manifestation is not more magical than a car ride, tidying up your desk at the end of the day, or looking through some old photographs for an entire afternoon. you are a manifestation. someone wanted you; if it wasn’t your birth parents, students, or self that called you here, it was the universe that brought you into existence and made sure you showed up.

maybe you’re lucky and it’s easy for you to remember how incredibly wanted you truly are. but for everyone else, here is your reminder that this is how you were manifested —like magic or not— you were wanted and now you exist. that’s how it works: you yourself are a divine manifestation and that gives you the power to manifest. manifestations beget manifestations. magic makes more magic, if you will.

why do you think you have dreams and desires? how do you find yourself with them? how does what you want show up in your reality? you were desired. you are desired. you are someone’s dream come true. if you are not exactly feeling this way, look into the mirror and make yourself remember. there’s only one person that needs to be reminded, and that’s you. because this was the first true fact about you, and it’s probably still the only truth that really matters, even now. this truth is the foundation upon which all the other truths and all of your manifestations have been and will ever be based.

39

as long as it takes.

how do we shift from building to being? from the external to the internal work? from moving the mountain to gazing softly from its peak? can you master both the masculine principle of building and the feminine principle of being?

we will be called to do both, even as humans tend to use these modes to distract from one another, and as society privileges visible over invisible work: valuing what is seen over what is felt. it’s not that one is easier; we merely find ourselves more practiced in one over the other. you might come to the end of 40 years spent building, having taken the entire time to learn how. when your task shifts to the being, you may not know exactly how to do it on day 1.

so how do you go from concerning yourself with shelter and sustenance to tolerating your own solitude? the answer is, “however long it takes, whether in months, years or lifetimes.” and when you have faith in your desires, you will be able to sit with yourself, in the house that you built, with the strength to wait patiently until it arrives at your door.

38

ask the question.

if you ask for sustenance, the universe doesn’t always send abundance straightaway. it will likely give you everything you need to teach yourself how to never ask for it again. if you ask for clarity, the universe may send you sudden insights, or experiences that burn themselves into you, because there’s nothing more clear than living into the answer.

if you ask for love, you may first receive everything that is not love so that you can learn to distinguish love from its impostors, together with everything you would need to remove each of your internal and external barriers to receiving it. these obstacles might not show themselves out of your life or your heart so easily, and may require a grieving period; we are free to allow this process as long as it takes.

we tend to plead as we ask, doubting that we will be heard. but the universe is always listening, and we have to understand the difference between good questions and bad questions. what’s a good question? how am i blessed? why do i get to have so much? what do i need to know? what do i need to see? why are you showing me this? what’s a bad question? why am i sad? why do i lack? why can’t i have what i want? the answers are always forthcoming, so be sure to ask the good questions. try asking, “why am i happy?” and see what comes. know that bad questions are merely a habit, ready for breaking.

37

contrast is the gift.

the heart breaks in two ways: now you know that you can hold big and bad just as you can hold big and good. first, they showed you what love was by showing you what love isn’t. then they showed you what love was by showing you what love is. this is because you have to be able to see through the illusion before the truth can be revealed.

and now that you can hold all that happened (love, after all, is a mystery, in all forms, in and of itself) the miracle can come. you can now ask the universe to bring it to you, your ultimate desire. “universe, bring me the good. i’m ready.”

what is abundance, anyway? it’s to have what you need while not needing what you have; having what you want and wanting what you have. and what is certainty? it’s knowing that any void that is created must one day be filled. the void, the empty, is the space that the light of your blessings need to be able to come in.

think about your dreams. do you think they would have been created the same day you receive them? no. just like you, they started from seed and needed time and nurture to mature and thrive. so they are already here. they exist right now. and they will flow into your reality when you’ve made enough room (tolerated the void) and adjusted your vision (believed before seeing) and softened the urgency of ego.

we don’t know the future until it’s present; clarity of faith is how blind men see.

36

you will receive more.

would you like to have more or fewer senses? i’m talking about extra-sensory perception, embracing embodiment and knowing things before they hit your bodily receptors.

you begin by using the senses you have. and not everyone has the same number. but if you can hear sounds using your ears, open them and learn to listen. if you can use your eyes to perceive the world around, then learn how to see and not be distracted by how things look.

does your nose register smells? learn to separate the scents and to smell what’s different, what has changed. can your mouth distinguish between delicious and disgusting? refine your palate and begin to take in food slow enough for the energy and your appreciation to sink in.

your skin is your largest organ. is it able to bring in data from the world? does the hair on your arm stand up for you? experience the difference between silk and burlap, cotton linen and cashmere. get in touch with what’s around you so that you can learn the difference between “full-body yes” and “absolutely not.” use what you have and you will begin to receive more.