223

the exact course.

one day, you’ll look back to see the exact course you charted from exile to existence to essence to presence to impermanence. and guess what? you made it enviable.

that’s why no one turns to you; no one chooses you for the team. because we can’t admit that the only way to win the game is to leave. we play to the death. each day a fresh turn at extracting perfume from the wilting rose.

you’ll have friends for the task and it’s ok when they can’t stay. connection is not belonging; it’s merely a glimpse. friends become family but family is not home. your life is the house that becomes a home through daily devotion. you sweep the floors and wash the dishes and make the bed and tend to your meat suit. this is where the soul comes to live on planet earth. not among men, but in this body. and in this body, your body, is the entire universe experiencing itself and longing for more, for the other, for another.

exile is the illusion. existence is now. essence is how. presence is the breath beneath perception. and impermanence is everything running away from you; as soon as it arrives, it’s already gone. the only way to have is to become.

222

the other side.

the light within you will illuminate the world around you. you’ll uncover beauty in the grotesque and flaws beneath the façade. the lack you see will meet the lack you feel so it may be released. the fear you can smell will meet the fear lodged inside you so it may be integrated as courage. we see what we know and we see what we are. pain comes up to burn off; it’s just weakness trying to leave.

slowly but surely, faith forms the invisible path that walks you to what’s yours. every time you allow yourself to receive experiences, without grasping or attaching to them, you step into the version of yourself that can choose the unseen over the seen. and why would we want to do that? why would the invisible be more valuable than what’s visible? what’s wrong with the bird in hand? nothing wrong. just know that faith is your vessel for light and it grows in size and strength every time you choose certainty in your vision over physical sight.

faith is what expands you to hold more. doubt is what will keep you small. “what if this is already the best i can get?” keeps you from receiving everything. today’s projections are a natural limitation on the future. faith is your integrity. it codes a tomorrow with more than you could have imagined yesterday. not as a vehicle for dissatisfaction, but as the only way you would ever learn to trust and receive all that is truly meant for you—before it arrives.

the dark of the woods has an exit. the years in the desert will end. it’s your own faith, your own light, that will see you out. you will no longer romanticize the dark after you make it out of the woods alive. you will no longer romanticize your own thirst after you’ve crossed the desert to the other side.

221

one more day.

there was something you had always wanted as the old version of you. when it never came, that old version slunk back into the dark to be held by your shadows, and a new you emerged.

when you wake to find what you had always wanted now standing quietly at your door, know this is a choice between who you are now and what (old) you always wanted. it’s what you always wanted versus what has always been yours. you will make a choice between the old you and the new you.

when you bring your shadows into the light, old you has nothing left to hold. so it returns in the form of a question, asking one last time, me or you? this or that? past or future? will you accept a ribbon just because you’ve never held a medal? or are you willing to wait one more day for gold?

don’t listen to the old songs; sing a new one. the call is coming from behind; keep walking into the future. what’s meant to meet you is coming this way. and it won’t ask you to choose anyone or anything over yourself. it will be how you choose yourself. it’s what can only come when you choose you; and this is when what chooses you can finally come forward.

be your first choice, your only choice. no more settling for second place in your own life. you don’t need those small tokens or trophies anymore. the big one has taken as long to forge as your new self. and it will soon make sense why you had to be emptied. so many times. so thoroughly. you will see you were being tested to hold emptiness for just one more day. and how you needed both hands open for what’s coming.

220

same coin.

wholeness and longing are two sides of the same coin. the one who stirred your longing came only to remind you of your own wholeness; this person does not make you whole. God makes you whole and the longing is your call to remember. it rains when it pours because anytime you begin to forget something so important, you will be made to remember, again and again, until it sticks or until you learn your way home.

question and answer are two sides of the same coin. the one who raised the question came only to remind you of your own certainty; they are not the one from whom certainty is derived. God is the source and to whom your certainty must always return. the doubts, questions and lack that arise are the loving call into your own remembrance.

you’ll be made to stumble in the dark, on hands and knees, until you can see, “i know what this place is, now.”

you thought life was a restaurant (order what’s on the menu and starve while you wait) until you saw it was a school (no holidays and only the headmistress who hates you) and finally recognized it as a temple (every day a devotion and ritual of love) that returns you to the divine.

219

just before.

God’s face becomes visible the longer you go without what’s yours, and just before the miracle arrives. when you don’t have what you want, the world appears dark. you look around and what you want is not there or it isn’t for you yet. you’re reeling until you’re reminded you need the light to survive. so you start looking, hard. and you’re looking everywhere.

your eyes adjust to take in the faintest pinpricks. the more light you see, the more light you can see, until all of a sudden you realize the only reason you have this beautiful relationship with the light, always seeking to find, is that you didn’t get to have what you wanted. you didn’t have it to look at, so you struggled and strained to make sense in the dark, until God’s face came suddenly into view.

even as the divine exists everywhere, one must look to be able to see. when the unfolding aligns with your preferences, you have to put effort into staying grateful and humble. to want what you have, understanding it could be removed as quickly as it came and that loss would serve only to deepen your trust. when life is hard, you have to look for the light and for your faith, with everything you have, even as the desert stretches on and your hands remain empty.

the light is always there, this relationship is always, and you wouldn’t know until your faith finally meets God.

218

paying attention.

one day, you realize you don’t just exist when they’re paying attention to you. you exist even when no one is paying attention to you. when no one is looking. when no one is noticing. you stop chasing the spotlight of other people’s attention (always looking for who’s looking for you) not just when you tire of it, but because it gets boring. it doesn’t matter who it is; it’s always the same feeling. it’s always that same version of you that hurries up and is made to wait.

real talk: you don’t need to pay attention to yourself. in all those years (maybe lifetimes?) of watching and waiting for everyone else, fully available for barely a hint or a signal so subtle that it barely registered (remembering how even the slightest glance in your direction could give meaning to your entire life) you weren’t focused on yourself. you were attentive to the other; patient, performative and faithful to the task. you were fine. all those years of no one paying attention to you and you not paying attention to you … it was ok. you’re still here. you didn’t stop existing just because no one happened to notice. you didn’t even notice yourself back there.

but what if you did? what if you started paying attention to you? to your own moods and thoughts, and feelings and hopes and dreams, with genuine interest in the truth behind every passing whim or fancy? what if you directed all that loving energy inward? i think you could try it and see if you like it. see if you could read yourself and feel yourself as well as you do for others. you might all of a sudden become interested in making your every wish come true. you could begin to feel peace and delight weave themselves slowly into the texture of your own life. just as soon as you stop treating yourself like a waiting room for doors too busy to open.

217

not the same.

the version of you that gets sick is not the same as the one who finds healing. the version of you that falls is not the same as the one who rises up. the one they left is not the one they will find, should they ever return. the one that was hurt is not the one who forgives. the one who was so desperate is not the one who detaches.

you don’t let go the sickness and injury and rejection and pain and grasping; you become a different person. you become the one that chooses something else. the one who lives a different life, entirely. it’s not enough to desire differently. the locus of emanation doesn’t have anything to do with anything. we can desire from our couch, as the old version of ourselves: the one laying sprawled there, feeling sorry and not having any good ideas. but the one who jumps up and is suddenly out the door? that’s someone else, someone new.

when we let go the old triggers and cycles, and that same person who kept coming back into our lives behind a different face, telling the same story, we are not letting them go. we are letting go the version of ourselves that needed them. the one that called them in for a lesson only they could bring, for the exact blessing of pain we could only have tolerated from them, and no one else. why do you think God designed them to be so beautiful and compelling? we needed to be drawn in close enough, and for long enough, to force our own admission into the funeral pyre for who we used to be.

216

stop taking the bait.

are you a fish? then why do you keep taking the bait? why do you keep loving on other people’s chaos? does it make you feel alive? does chaos feel like it’s the raw material of life? giving you something to fix, conquer or carry? something important to say? is there a special satisfaction in being the obvious protector and provider and source of consistent integrity and stability in everyone else’s life?

you gotta stop. just stop. even if you love them. even if you love them the most; even if you’re the only one that loves them at all. because why would you give away what others cannot receive or reciprocate? if that’s the dynamic, then no one is gonna have the thing that’s good. if you’re bringing all the safe energy, who’s doing it for you? you’re not keeping you safe and they’re not keeping you safe.

chaos is unsafe. you cannot make it safe. and their chaos is not your problem. it can be your curriculum for as long as you like, but do not claim it as your own. chaos is not for you to master; it would not even be possible. in any given situation, chaos is the master; it’s not you.

the only thing chaos wants is to spread or be released. so whatever you do, you’re choosing one of the two. i recommend the one where you find yourself in the eye of the storm, where you recognize your identity as peace and not in punishing yourself as the forever custodian for other people’s mess.

215

life will be better.

life will be better when i accept that i cannot possess the beloved. i already belong. and the beloved has not misplaced me. when i flail about, feeling wrong or lost, the beloved is there. every time i seek, i am only pretending to forget that love does not hide.

the beloved indulges my need to feel rejected, lonely and unworthy so i may return to love when i am good and ready, not a moment sooner. my urgent need to possess love is a game i play until i exhaust myself and am ready to come home. my hopes, dreams, fears and expectations unfold the path that brings me to love, each and every time. what feels like wandering is just the spiral that shows me the beloved’s many forms. and when i tire of the bright lights and the masks and the drama, love reveals my own face in the dark.

love is there in the arms that don’t reach for me, in the eyes that don’t see me, and the hearts that don’t choose me. the beloved is on either side of the glass. in sun and shade. in sickness and health. in every full house and empty room. in silence and song. when what’s new becomes old and what’s old i finally and bravely outgrew. because when the day comes to remind you there is only the beloved, you will begin to see how the beloved is everywhere and nowhere at once.

214

your superpower.

you have to remember that your actual superpower is turning disappointment into gratitude. and it sounds impossible until you are called to do it every. single. time.

the magician is the fool, initiated. every energetic obstacle must eventually be refined or dislodged before your blessings arrive. rejection is a small door closing to keep you fully and completely available for the double doors up ahead.

the universe will orchestrate your biggest wins to coincide with your sharpest losses. tempering every gain with grief forces the understanding that anything can be transformed into the best thing that ever happened. witnessed enough times, you learn creation from compost, as possibility becomes instruction. the pain is protection, purification and preparation.

what’s lost must always return. and when it does, it will have grown many times its previous size. allow yourself to become so deeply humbled and hollowed out that when the blessing reenters three times larger, your healing has expanded you to hold it in its final form, without leaking or breaking.

213

your art.

you wanted to know what it might be like to live on the surface of your own life. savoring the possibility of one that felt as good as it looks. so you tended your home in earnest preparation for any guests that might stay. even as the universe brought chaos and clearing to help you plumb new depths. how else would you have been made available to your own reflection in every aftermath?

good art conveys experiences made tactile to the eye or imagination. some art walks us out of the dark, while others record movements of light. this is how art tattoos the collective, when what’s inside is ready to be brought to the surface. art is both contribution and relief in not having to carry what is too beautiful or too awful to hold alone.

when you end up just you and your devotion, and your inner experiences are enough to reject the distractions of surface life, reality can finally fully belong to you. everyone just needed to leave your house. the surface of your life can be as smooth as a calm lake once you claim everything beneath the surface. and you no longer scatter pieces of yourself like pennies in a fountain, traded for a wish.

212

the way back.

how old are you now? is that exactly how long it feels you’ve been walking alone? life gave you some harder seasons but when you look back, you realize … all the seasons were the same. what is the difference, really, between this and that layer of the onion? each a translucent and perfect mirror to the one previous.

those three months or three years you gave to that person or project reflects the exact energetic distance you walked away from yourself over the course of an entire lifetime, centuries past. the five days or five minutes it took you to untangle that knot in this incarnation freed you from bonds formed in a life lived five hundred years before this one. the push-pull that dragged you down to your depths closed a contract you signed generations ago. and this is how you collapse the cosmic distance of every possible exile you’ve ever lived. the arrival feels like nothing else.

in his mercy, God will bring you to your absolute lowest, just to show you there’s no one to meet you there but you. and this is where you find yourself in your own arms. you’ll be laughing in the same darkness that held the sobs of your earlier surrenders. you don’t bargain anymore when you come home. you don’t have to promise to be good. your own energy fills the entire field. and when you know your own face in the dark, you’ll only ever trust your own eyes again. no more hopeful glances into mirrors that waste your time.

211

they’ll be tested.

all your best qualities will be tested. if you’re good, you’ll be punished for it. you’ll understand how no good deed goes unpunished. but you’ll be good, anyway.

if you’re sensitive, everything will hurt. the callouses and scar tissue will make it your daily devotion to somehow stay soft. if you are open, people will come into your house and take from you. you’ll learn when to close your doors and windows while leaving your heart open to the ones who feed you and see you.

if you’re receptive, they’ll overwhelm you with their chaos, opinions and perfume. you’ll share what you foraged in nature and let them win every oscar, tony and emmy for their work.

if you are generous, you’ll see all those christmas presents make their way to the trash before valentine’s day. people tire of what’s good. they want what’s new, what’s next, what they’re used to, even if the real gold never tarnishes.

if your energy is gratitude and abundance, you’ll meet death by a thousand cuts. it will be just enough for you to hate life, and everyone you love, and spoil the taste of everything you put to your lips. you’ll find a way to resurrect your gratitude, anyway. as an idealist, you’ll be dragged down by the realists and pessimists. the optimists will try to join you but you’ll resist the subtle bypassing. they are not your people, either.

why so many tests? because for your beauty to be true, it needs to be rooted in strength and integrity. that’s how you become you, every time they test the dragon’s willingness to abandon its treasure, and are met by your fire.

210

the wolfman.

have you noticed that the wolfman’s garb is that of ordinary men? he comes to us in the nobleman’s tattered waistcoat or the lumberjack’s torn flannel. that’s because he’s not from the woods. his home was not always under the moon. as a boy, they punished the small, scared animal inside him until it could no longer hide.

now, when the night sky is just right, the wolfman breaks his exile. what’s wild doesn’t want the cage or to be made into a circus; it wants softness. it wants a home. but the village exists only to extract and domesticate. why do you think the wolfman is always making away with the livestock and damaging farm equipment? he is trying to set it free.

table manners, etiquette and decorum exist only because human rage, appetite and desire cannot be tamed. the carrots and the sticks are meant to lull us into sedation, limiting the inner world. there’s no actual way to kill the beast. but if you look carefully, you’ll see its face in every cutting remark, stab to the back or twist of the spear. and that’s why the wolfman comes. to remind us who we really are when the sun is gone, the villagers sleep, and it’s just us in the moonlight.

209

the vvitch.

where did God build your house? in the center of town? at the edge of the water? in an ivory tower? everyone has their station, whether found or formed. the vvitch is the one who serves her station where the wilderness meets the divine.

the village made abundantly clear that “none of what i see is for me.” what ordinary men and women share is simple and beautiful, and it’s all around. even if she wanted these same things, the difference is that the ordinary women got to have it and the vvitch got what you get when you don’t.

so she leaves to understand what it is God wants for her, instead. because when heartache reaches the bone, it needs more room to grow. of course, now she has the medicine ready, for when private heartbreak pushes the villagers out into the woods, afraid but desperate to find the vvitch.

the flowers and berries have revealed their names to her in secret, so she knows what to do, even if the truth is that the salve is not in the vial. it’s her. she is the medicine. but she makes sure to administer it with special songs and ceremony, so the villagers can have words for happened, even if healing is just simple resonance with truths too subtle to register above the din of ordinary life.

208

relational.

have you noticed that all horror stories are relational? what is my relationship to this home, to this body, to these people, to the unknown, the land, my past, or this job? will the coven accept me? or am i being prepared for ritual slaughter?

horror stories tell our truths and reveal our fears, even as our fears become our truths in ordinary life. the best horror elevates the mundane into breathtaking operas with the highest possible stakes. we see how our daily motions dance the razor’s edge separating danger and safety. we are all just on the other side of tragedy until the plot is triggered, the monster awakens and the carnage begins.

and there’s always a monster. always something in the dark or hidden in plain sight. that’s the horror. in some stories, the downfall is optional. in others, it’s inevitable only if we continue exactly as we are. some will offer a warning; others attempt to map the exact turns leading out of the labyrinth.

good horror is perfect. that’s what’s so beautiful about it. each piece is precisely engineered to interlock and click shut, trapping us inside, or to fall apart in a single, swift motion so we can run for our lives. they say it’s a good idea to get hit in the face at least once, so you don’t live the rest of your life afraid of what it might feel like. you’d already know. horror invites us to what could be true so it doesn’t have to be.

207

the fire.

at first, the fire, it burns you. but when you bring it inside, you can sit down to that breakfast of humble pie, with a heaping side of exile, and a dollop of rejection served in a chipped ramekin. this is your daily bread. it’s what God prepared for you, chef’s special. nothing like just-squeezed grapefruit juice to wash down the bitterness that has now become sweet. you take your coffee black, hot and fresh, or stale from the night before; it doesn’t matter. because this is everything you need. and you send the dirty dishes back clean. breakfast is the morning ritual that grounds you.

the fire burns until you become it. anything meant to smother the flames just makes the fire burn bigger and brighter than before. nothing can put it out, now that you love your fate. amor fati. you know what you’re here to do. the warrior’s only duty is to live in the moment and die with honor, recognized by himself alone. to be of one mind, unattached and knowing nothing. hagakure.

true sovereignty is to serve. at his essence, the good king is a good servant. moral pride is a dangerous illusion; you must meet each day with sharper discernment into the failings of yesterday that must be cleared today. and that’s why you need a breakfast that nourishes you.

206

giving it up.

giving up separation consciousness is the hardest thing you’ll ever do. why? because it’s hard to imagine that the pain is coming from inside and not outside; that the wound is mine and not theirs. it’s easier when we are separate and you are the one hurting me and that’s the reason i am in pain.

it’s hard not to imagine what i want as always outside me, just out of reach, and not inside me, where i am always able to find it. it’s easier when i don’t have what i want, if someone else is holding it hostage, because then it’s not my own fault. i’m not choosing to go without, so i get to feel rejected, and i don’t have to become my own solution. i feel lighter when someone or something else can be my center of gravity so i don’t have to be responsible for the whole thing.

we made it make more sense (even if it doesn’t) to treat the world like a vending machine, than to believe in an unlimited Source that is all around and within us. we don’t like “the entire ocean in a drop” because that level of sovereignty is too dangerous, luminous, magnetic and divinely radiant. how dare we, mere mortals, shine like the face of God?

much better that we devise a hierarchy among men, a dichotomous morality, a separation of self and other, because it circumvents the logical next step: remembering that the illusions of time, space and motion are mere constructs we collectively and temporarily adopted so as to forget there is no actual separation between man and God; that we are not some of us closer and further from the Light. that all of it, all of this, is just us and the Light.

205

simplify your life.

when you truly love someone, it doesn’t matter what they think. it doesn’t matter what they did or what they do. it doesn’t matter what they say anymore. you love them forever, even as they come and go.

now, think about the person you love most. bring them to the front of your mind. do you love them no matter what? or are there 100 conditions on what they think and say and do and did? do they breathe weird or chew too loud? is there a story or joke they can’t ever stop telling? is it bothering you? or do you think you can actually bring yourself to love them as they are, as they were, and as the person they’re still becoming?

unconditional love is the cleanest love. and once you can love the person you love most without condition, everyone else is easy. all of a sudden, you can love your boss and your colleagues, and family and friends and neighbors. they don’t have to be any different from how they are in this moment. you can begin to have compassion for yourself through all the ways you continue to disappoint and fail to understand. this is how you take back your own nervous system.

you’ll find that people start to matter more even as they begin to matter less, the deeper and truer your love. your conditions and expectations are what keep you unfree. separation is anxiety. unity consciousness is simple; it’s just the one thing. nothing and no one is separate. what you want is real. and what you think you don’t want—that’s all part of it, too.

204

everywhere or nowhere.

everything you love, seek and value, you will see it everywhere or nowhere. if you’re still seeing it “nowhere,” this moment is calling forward the version of you for whom it is no longer hidden. there’s a version of you whose level of consciousness allows the Beloved to be perceived in everything and everyone. it exists for you; it exists as you. but you’ll have to dig deep. you’ll have to use everything you have, and everything you are now, to unlock who you are truly meant to be.

because why would your soul bother with an incarnation where everything you want simply doesn’t exist? you can’t believe that; believe it and you’ll fall into despair. did you know a person can drown in two inches of water? in her own pool of vomit? don’t do it. you have to believe that everything you want and need is already here now, waiting to be revealed as you, by you, in this lifetime, and that you hold the key.

what does this mean? it means you will be tested. you’ll be presented with every possible obstacle, inside and out, just before your next victory. the test is whether you believe in what belongs to you and only you before you can see it, not after.

before you receive the love, peace and abundance you desire, you will first be shown the fear, chaos and lack inside you. conquer that and you will then be shown the fear, chaos and lack in everyone else. that’s test #2. after you destroy the lies of the first test, you will be called to demonstrate compassion for everyone you used to be. only then will the third gate of manifestation open to let you in. feel it close softly behind you and listen for the lock to click gently back into place.