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.

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.