135

reminders.

repeat after me: i am not responsible.

i am not responsible for what people see when they see me. i am not responsible for what people feel when i am near. i am not responsible for whether people allow my help. i am not responsible for other people’s chaos. i am not responsible for anyone else’s journey. i am not responsible for other people’s opinions, beliefs or judgments. i am not responsible for what other people think. i am not responsible for what people do or don’t do, say or don’t say, choose or don’t choose. i am not responsible for other people’s limitations.

they are only mirrors, as am i.

i am not responsible for saving the day; i am only responsible for doing my best. i am not responsible for other people’s decisions or their ways; i am only responsible for mine. i am not responsible for the state of anyone’s consciousness other than mine. i am not responsible for changing anyone’s mind; i am only responsible for changing mine.

the only reason i keep finding myself in confusing situations where i’m not sure what’s mine, or where i begin and end, is that i am meant to feel and fail my way through until i stop abandoning myself. if i try to make the bad feeling go away as quickly as possible (and there are so many earthly salves and distractions) i am most certainly signing up for more of the same. when i sit with myself, i can pray for clarity and find my way through the unknown. what i see on the outside won’t change until what i see on the inside changes.

embodiment means things take time. the spiral is meant to tire us out. we’ll be shown the same thing over and over until our eyes start to see differently and we start choosing differently. isn’t it funny that we get these bodies along with all the ways to leave it? all this power in a world that shames us into giving it away? you wouldn’t even have to feel what it is costing you, at least, not right away. the trap door closes slowly, gently, with hardly a sound. the trap is an invitation to sit with yourself until the body surrenders and the soul remembers how to walk itself out.

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the emptiness.

what happens to the soldier after the battle of his life? who is he beneath the armor, separate from the spirit of war? who is the actress after she has given the performance of her life? having emptied herself to serve as a channel for art, for the story, what now?

there’s a moment after the last encore and closing ceremony that the silence makes clear: they each must now go home. the world has no use for them now that the mission is complete. like the soldier who leaves it all on the battlefield, the actress leaves her dressing room only to find herself back at the flat. nothing has changed, home is as she left it; it just feels a little less real than before. the soldier has a look around, in the privacy of his own dwelling, glances down at his hands and into the mirror, and asks, “who am i, now that i’ve answered the call?” who was that in all the fighting? who was that onstage?

to stand now in the stillness, not unlike the deserted battlefield and now-silent playhouse, the despair of the faithful is in this space that is neither action nor waiting. integration calls only for embodiment of presence; and it is a most unfamiliar and unsettling unknown. this is the role between the roles, the deployment between the deployments. the heat of battle and height of the performance have now made way for a space, an emptiness that doesn’t even know if it wants to be filled.

133

all you want.

after a while, you’ll be emptied of your desire to fight all the battles and solve all the problems. it’s not that you shouldn’t do what you need to do for yourself. it’s more like your own persistence and even the satisfaction of winning will lose its lustre. if you’re lucky, you’ll tire of yourself and your small wants. sooner rather than later, you’ll realize that all victories are hollow in the end, and the only peace you’ll find on this earth is in divine grace and forgiveness.

fighting all the time has finally hollowed you out. you’ve lost your taste for blood. and now you’re just a wretch seeking rest. this is how you’ll finally understand that every time you pull a punch, you allow the divine to unfold for you.

do you want your solution to the problem? or do you want the divine’s solution to the problem? it’s up to you to leave it up to God. you must answer when called and you must call upon the light in the dark. only the unknown can save you when you’re done with everything you’ve known. maybe the answer comes once you admit you have no idea what the answer could be; when you don’t want what you want anymore, and all you want is the grace of God.

before you’ve fully surrendered, the imagination assumes there will be a lightness to the experience. but it’s not like that. surrender feels heavy because you finally feel the weight of what you’ve been carrying the moment you realize it must all be set down. and maybe that’s the secret: peace on earth is possible and it happens inside you.

132

nothing else.

does it seem too difficult to soften into this harsh reality and with the people around you? do you stay armored up? are you in full battle gear at the dinner table with your family? on a tuesday conference call for work? they say we must surrender and soften to receive what’s good, but this seems not only impractical but impossible in the heat of battle.

where do we put all of our disillusion and misplaced trust? the hurt doesn’t disappear with time. it’s hard to soften in the same world that made us fight to survive. even as the fire loses its immediacy, the embers of resentment still glow.

maybe we aren’t meant to trust the people around us or the situations we find ourselves in. what if we aren’t meant to trust what we see or even what we feel? what if it’s not about trusting them or it or this? what if we are meant to trust in God, instead? what if the only way to transmute the pain and resentment of “why” is to instead, ask, “what?”

“what is the Creator trying to show me through you? through this? what light am i meant to reveal today?”

here’s the benefit: life is easier when you aren’t worried about whether this person or that person is trustworthy. it’s easier when you know that even if you can’t trust them, even if you can’t trust yourself, there’s divine design in a universe that is still unfolding for you. that, you can trust, if nothing else.

131

what you believe.

to understand yourself, you have to understand your life. turn off your television and start living some, or keep doing what you’re doing, and when you’ve had enough, you can begin.

the fact is, you’ll never know why you’re here. why are you here, on this earth, looking like this, feeling like this, thinking like this, and behaving like this? you’ll never know. and that’s why all you will ever have is belief. you will have to find a system of belief that explains, gives structure, logic and meaning – even if it’s the meaning of “no meaning” or “no logic” or “no structure.” believing in chaos, that everything is random, and that it’s all a big nothing – is a belief. either way, and eventually, you will have to pick a side or accept that you’ve picked a side. so, what is your belief?

humans are simple. they just want to know whether heaven exists, and if it does, is it available on earth? or does it come after? there are three options, and you’ll feel much better after you decide (or accept) what it is you actually believe. whether: [1] heaven is not real (that there isn’t one and/or we are meant to be happy never), [2] heaven is real and it is possible after death (meaning, it’s ok to be unhappy in life because the possibility is available after all is said and done), or [3] that heaven can exist on earth (that there is a way to be happy in this lifetime).

“heaven” and “happy” are the simplest terms we can understand (or at a minimum, are able to refer to) “what’s good” (which can be an extremely complicated topic, if you want) and you can choose one of the three beliefs. they are mutually exclusive and accessible with or without religion. all humans believe in something, and whatever you believe, you’ll be right.

130

new you.

when you change, everything changes. the things you did to survive will go away or you’ll begin to adjust (to a different experience of or relationship to) them as you learn to thrive.

it must all be learned. you learned to survive and you’ll learn how it feels to finally thrive. it won’t always be what you expect. the body and spirit are in overdrive during survival; everything you’ve got gets pushed to the front, to the top, as you fight for the light. and one day, when you can turn and bless the darkness for chasing you there, you’ll feel your world suddenly stop and fall silent. it’ll feel like a death –because it is one– and this will call for grief. grief for the pain and grief for the ending of that pain.

when you stop running, some of what you had to save for later will come find you – to be felt and seen from the new safety. is it terrible and humbling and embarrassing? sometimes, yes. everything is hard. blooming and dying will shock the system.

it’s ok. you won’t need anything but to be grateful and to allow the space that has opened up to hold (differently) all that came, and to welcome (for the first time) all that was waiting patiently for you to arrive.

129

a fighting chance.

we all do this: we arrive having forgotten. we don’t know the lifetimes we carry until we are awakened to them. we go for awhile, wondering why we are beautiful to some and ugly to others. only the people who love us can see past the mud on our faces. they provide compassion, connection and receptivity as we work through the layers and build-up from lifetimes of journeying.

when people get a sense for the strength in what we’re carrying, they tend to unload everything they’ve been carrying. this doubles our load, even as we are barely awakening to the lifetimes we brought with us into this one. while all this weight makes us stronger, the heaviness is tired and miserable. we eventually have to stop carrying what’s not ours. we have to stop unconsciously pumping our loved ones with the chaos and negativity that was unconsciously loaded onto us over years and that we pick up unconsciously in the day-to-day. we must be so careful to avoid negative speech because it feeds (rather than heals) our wounds.

we wake up to others’ pain and then we wake up to ours, which is how and why and the extent to which we unconsciously agree to accept others’ pain into our energetic bodies. we have to compost all this negativity, so the flowers that were meant to blossom and give fragrance in this lifetime, have a fighting chance to do so.

128

what are you willing to give?

the thing(s) you want most – what are you willing to give for them? all your money? time? energy? integrity? your body? your truth? your light? years, decades of your life, even? would you be willing to give your soul for what you want most?

first, you need to stop running around, giving everything away just to survive, just to get through the day. sit and have a think so you can get clear as to what you want. is it love? peace? safety? abundance? to be received? met? chosen? these are big-ticket items; the price will be high. but here’s the thing: it’s not what you think. they lie to us. you don’t have to exchange anything of value for what you value. it’s not rumpelstiltskin asking, “what will you give me?”

it’s what you must surrender, which is everything you don’t want: your old self, your old life, your doubts, fears, limitations and insecurities. the old stories, cycles and lies. everything that is not in alignment with what you want has to go. it must be surrendered to make room for everything you do want.

how do we know this is true? all the times we gave away our treasure and our worth, the world was more than happy to take it. but eventually, we found it wasn’t enough; if we could buy, sell or trade for what we wanted, we would have it already. when you gave away your sovereignty, what did you get? when you gave them all the second chances in the world to make things right, did they? when they named their price and you paid in full, did you get what you needed? no, you didn’t. and that’s how you know.

127

what would it feel like?

what if this lifetime was meant to be the reward for all your previous lifetimes? what if this was meant to be the easy, beautiful and abundant one? where you would experience what they call “heaven on earth” and “true love forever,” despite all evidence and logic to the contrary?

there are ways you could begin to tell: the early part of your life would have been hard, years of living in the dark, to echo what you have fought over entire lifetimes, reminding you how strong and deserving you are. because what if this could be the lifetime your soul overcame it all, so as to finally fully enjoy everything available to us in this specific body consciousness: from a good cry to chocolate cake?

you would start by learning to navigate the balance between letting it happen and fighting for it. “letting it happen” is allowing what wants to flow in and out of your life to do so; allowing what comes up to be felt or seen—to be felt and seen. the “fighting for it” is refusing to give up, even when it’s hard, even when it hurts, is frustrating and offers zero clarity.

eventually, you learn to tell right from wrong in your body, not your mind. you learn to listen to your heart for the answer, and you begin to live as if that answer mattered. as if you were doing it for someone you loved. for someone who just wanted to experience what it would feel like, look like, and be like.

126

needs and wants.

what does it mean to align wants and needs? it means you don’t want people to listen, validate you, hold you, see you, or understand you anymore. you just want what they’ve been giving you this whole time because you know it’s what you need: for them to not understand, to not listen, to not remember, to not stay, to not grow, to not change, to not protect, to not support you, guide you or meet you.

you don’t need anything different from what they’re already giving or how they’ve been showing up. every time it happens, let it remind you that you’re already getting what you need from them in that moment. are the people and situations around you disappointing, annoying, hurtful, frustrating? good. that’s what you need.

it needs to feel bad enough to wake up the divine, sleeping giant inside you. the divine, sleeping giant who wakes up laughing because he knows nothing can touch him and that he already has everything he needs. now that he’s up and moving about, he just wants to make sure he doesn’t accidentally hurt anyone smaller or weaker than him.

125

the unfolding.

we didn’t come to earth to be comfortable. we came to earth to grow. everything grows. even the days grow; the construct we use to make sense of everything, it grows. did you notice we have weather down here? that weather is a thing? weather just means, “someone’s not gonna like it.” weather wouldn’t be a thing if we all liked it; if it was always comfortable.

what does it mean to make everything the best thing that ever happened to you? it means: instead of trying to change the other person or situation, you use your energy to change yourself. it means: be creative. create a version of you that hasn’t existed before.

things happen that dredge up big feelings of pain and resistance. what will you do with that energy? will you use it to create a new version of yourself? or will you use it to fight them? fight it? fight everyone? when you choose yourself, you only have to fight one battle, and then it’s done. you can live. but if you want to fight everything and everyone, you’ll never finish. it won’t end. they outnumber you by design. but you should do what you want. there is no wrong answer. either way, you will start to realize that what you want, the gap, distance you want closed, the progress you desire, is the internal one.

some people like to garden. let them remind you that we each were planted into the soil of this earth, into this darkness, so that we could find our way into the light, to blossom, bloom and die. the perfection is in the process. there are no outcomes other than death; until then, it’s just us + these invitations to witness and participate in the unfolding.

124

remember to live.

what is reunion with self? it’s when you remember everything: that you are love embodied. that you are light embodied.

that love is not meant to be earned and cannot be earned. if it’s conditional, then it’s not love; it’s your wound. it’s what your soul brought here to have others awaken for you so that you could feel it and heal it. it’s not the long list of how everyone hurt you and disappointed you and abandoned you. it’s the movie that they had to keep playing over and over until you finally realized that you were watching the story of your own wound, faithfully and unfailingly enacted for you. the movie never changed so you had to change.

you remembered that light is not chased, it is revealed and received. you become your own sanctuary when you realize you were in a prison of your own making.

every ache or struggle in your life points to a place where you’ve splintered off from yourself. where there’s a part of you that’s blocked off from the rest. it doesn’t matter who did it or when. those details matter only insofar as they help you understand more about yourself. it’s not to decode them. it’s the clues you need to decode you. and when you bring all of you back to you, that’s when your real life begins.

123

big enough.

if you’re lucky, you’ll get everything you need before you get everything you want.

what does this look like? a smattering of homes that don’t work until you find that safe little cottage that’s finally all yours. they don’t see you until you can finally see yourself; when their eyes are forced open, it doesn’t matter anymore. years of sharpening your mind and building the foundation in silence, so that when the real opportunities arrive, you know there’s nothing in the world you can’t trust you with.

how to prepare: [1] do not let the objects of your small, substitute desires take up space and energy meant for the real thing. surrender to the emptiness. [2] wholeheartedly bless those whose blessings are arriving before yours. surrender to divine timing. [3] expand your capacity to receive, so that body, mind and soul can hold the various forms of enormous fulfillment that have had your name etched into them from the start. surrender your fears and doubts.

let the light guide you to what’s yours. what’s yours has always been yours, even as others have been called to keep your blessings safe until you were big enough to receive fully.

122

ask for help.

dear God, please help me to not punish children for being children. even if, and especially because when i was the small one, i was punished for my limitations, resented as a burden and not cherished for my light.

please help me to not judge people for being human. even if, and especially because when i was still growing, not developing as fast as i wanted, i was rejected and rushed and overlooked for not arriving in my final form, even as i held seeds of potential that just wanted nurture.

please help me to not force my consciousness onto others. i remember how it felt to be controlled, for my thoughts and perspectives to be ignored, censured and suppressed so that my individuality might be bent into compliance. i do not need approval for, agreement with, or validation of my reality any more than someone should need me to tell them what to think or how to see. everyone finds their truth in their own time, and better that than prematurely adopting or being subsumed by an outside agenda. i let people live, think and operate as big or small as they want. i can be me and think what i think and see what i see and do what i do. i don’t have to make sense to people and people don’t need to make sense to me. i have more compassion for all of us, now.

dear God, with your help, i think i can be strong enough to give people what they need from me and nothing they don’t. please, let me give this freely and without question. remind me that the universe operates on the highest consciousness of all, and that everyone has their own path to alignment. let me focus on mine, alone.

121

the correct posture.

what is a king’s proper relationship to the peasants?

should he fear them? they certainly outnumber him and could easily coalesce into a mob. should he resent them? they are simple, after all, with few responsibilities outside their roles within the kingdom, unburdened by the duty of leadership. does he ignore them? they are so far removed from the greater preoccupations of a monarch. does he exploit them? what good are beasts of burden if not to bear them unquestioningly? does he curry favor and pander to them by reminding them that kings and peasants have much more in common than not? might be good to keep them neutralized and happy. or does he recoil in their presence? they do lack certain privileges and are vulgar, at times, often busying themselves (loudly) with matters of little consequence.

no. the correct posture is benevolence. it’s up to him to keep them safe, to anticipate their needs and to protect them. to let them be who they are and to provide for them so that they may walk their own paths. they are his children.

the king must embody the Creator’s own posture towards all of us. and that’s why not everyone gets to be the king. he already knows no one can touch him. and not everyone can hold so much smallness with love instead of fear.

120

that’s how.

after awhile, you realize there are no moves left.

your addictions have lost their lustre; there’s nothing more you can eat, drink, smoke, buy, do, consume into your body to push it down or numb out. there’s nowhere else you can go; there’s not a country or place or person on earth where you can go to hide to become someone else, someone with a different reality, a different task — someone not you.

time won’t even do it; the years spent avoiding, the years spent “not talking” or refusing to engage have amounted to nothing. there is no knife sharp enough to excise it from your reality; all the “cutting off” or “no contact” somehow didn’t stop it from seeping back into your life in the form of other people or circumstances with the same exact energy you refuse to tolerate. it’s there with you still.

deep down, you know that what you’re running from will just be there, waiting for you patiently, after the fact, after the trip, after the rush, after the high, after the gym, after the marathon, after everything you’ve achieved and after all the broken promises of “never again.” nothing works anymore. why? it’s to let you know that the internal work is all that’s left.

you came here with it. everyone and everything you’ve been trying to avoid, numb and deny, they were just the messengers. that’s why they keep getting replaced with new ones. the problem isn’t them. and it’s not even you; you are not the problem. you are the way out. the pain in you is ancient and it is the portal. you’ll find that there are two ways to walk through: you sit with it + you keep going. that’s how.

119

do your part.

what if everyone’s limitations were meant to set you free? that those limitations would be permanent for them but temporary for you? what if that’s not where you were meant to live?

think of that person, place or circumstance: the one you love; the one you’re struggling with. why wouldn’t they want to meet all your needs? do you not share the strain and the pain?

but what if that was the contract? what if this is their gift to you? what if everything they didn’t or couldn’t or wouldn’t give you is everything they gave you? what if they had to be sure not to meet you or love you or see you or hold you all the way so that you could fully meet yourself? what if they had to be so careful to only give you everything you needed instead of everything you wanted?

think about it: how would you like all of your fulfillment to exist only outside of you? for abundance to exist only in your wallet. to have love and connection only in your relationship. to be valued only by that job. it doesn’t work. how long until you notice that you keep leaving your house and your body, knocking on all the wrong doors, to beg for what you already have at home?

there is a cycle underneath all the cycles you’re in right now; break it. break it so that you can find out what’s next. what’s next after the cycle of abuse? resentment? addiction? pain? you won’t find out what’s next, after all the running in circles, until you set yourself free. you won’t find out until you set them free. you will not find out until you release them from the contract. they did their part and now you must do yours.

118

play to win.

are you building atop a wounded foundation? we find out when things fall apart, as we are naturally disinclined to tear down what we build. and yet, every tower moment, every chapter that closes, comes to us as a gift.

psychology and medicine can offer tools to help us identify the fault lines and cracks pointing us to the source, while spiritual practices are what we use to let it all go. forgiveness and detachment are not mental decisions or emotional behaviors. and the only required consensus is internal: the body has to let it go. the heart has to let it go. the soul has to let it go. we become the version of ourselves that finds and heals the wound, releasing what weighs us down. this is what our soul came here to do.

do you know why there’s no single answer to, “what’s the hardest hurt we humans have to heal?” the variety of hurts are innumerable; many of us have more than one, though much suffering stems from a wound of perceived lack or inadequacy.

and here’s the thing: you’ll not find champions among those who entered the game just to prove they were “good enough.” champions play because they know they can win. if not now, then next time. they compete from a place of wholeness, understanding that we have more to learn from our losses than our wins. there’s a big energetic difference between “winner that plays to win” and “loser that plays to win.”

which one are you?

117

the blessing of your life.

allow everyone and everything to be exactly as it is. the pain is meant to help you detach from everything that is not you. you are love. you are an expression of the divine, as is everyone around you. your resistance to how people, places and things express themselves reveals your internal misalignment and not theirs. it’s your opportunity for growth. not theirs.

the earth school is like a cute compost heap that was meant to receive everything we grew tired of dragging around. so whatever is weighing on you –whatever the pain is asking you to release– just give it back. you’re done with it. let it go.

did you know that “collapsing timelines” means you’ll experience demolition at the same time the new build is going up? that it would be dusty, uncomfortable, and take longer than you wanted until you’re living in the miracle and having to shift your entire emotional posture from surviving to thriving? and that that would involve additional construction? and that a house is never “done,” so you must learn to enjoy it for what it is each day?

they don’t tell you this. you don’t think at all about how aptly named this process is until you’re suddenly living in it: the biggest, messiest and most unexpected blessing of your life.

116

the second half.

for the first part of your life, you may find yourself attaching to everyone and everything, claimed by and connected to no one. in the next half, you would detach from everything, with a deepened connection to everyone.

you might have spent the first part of your life ruled by the rules, and the second half deciding your own. or perhaps this time, it was to reclaim childhood. how do you do that? you have a terrible one so that you can give yourself an adulthood that has everything you need and nothing you don’t want. that could be enough and it could be everything: to give yourself a small, safe and stable life lived just for you. that could be the entire mission. who are we to judge?

if a person wanted to understand parenthood, they might have had absent ones, only to find themselves failing at the same task. how else would we learn the gravity of such a calling, had we not chosen to be humbled twice, by both perspectives? that’s probably what it might take for a person to enter their next life in complete awe of the undertaking, committed, ready and willing to give anything and everything for it.

or maybe, you came just to learn it was safe to be yourself; which is why you started out with people who only wanted you if you were performing, which you did, until the mask grew tiresome. one day, you looked into the mirror, and said it to yourself, “i’ll no longer hide what God made. who am i to judge? who is anyone to judge? i am me. this is what God made. i let me be me.” now, these halves are demarcated in private, though the energetic shift is palpable. you’ll start to feel like it’s finally your time, your turn. that’s because it is.