273

the stairwell.

for many of us, there came a day we were plucked from the playground and thrown into a dark, narrow stairwell. the door slammed shut and with nothing to do but climb, we started slowly, hands on the banister until we could take the steps two at a time.

you meet all kinds of people in the stairwell. some are happy for a chat, some will keep pace for many floors, even as others fall away. you discover a lot on the stairs. there are drugs that can make them go faster or slower, some that make you forget the stairs even exist.

but when the stairs end, everyone disappears and there’s nothing but wall. you’re in the best shape of your life, and now this version of you, who climbed by sheer force of will, adrenaline, identity and joy, finds herself stepping into an elevator for the first time.

the elevator does not want you jumping to stimulate movement. no pushing random buttons just to see what happens. no more smoke breaks or eating too much or drinking too much because that just starts to feel bad.

there are no windows, just like in the stairwell, but you can’t feel the floors. and this is extremely disorienting. you can feel your body deconditioning. and that’s how you know a part of you has to die. as you grieve, you become the version of you who trusts. the one who receives. the one who steps into the being that follows the becoming.

272

coursed.

there’s really no wrong way to enjoy a meal but you should know the meal will be coursed.

are you the type of person who fills up on appetizers? that might construct an entire meal of bread or tiny pickle plates? that’s fine. life is all about the simple, small pleasures. but you might one day become someone who understands that takeaway exists, though not for the mains and desserts meant to be enjoyed plated, and at specific temperatures or textures.

even the simplest meal is a ritual. meals are produced and prepared, served and received, spontaneous or planned, and always intended. just like the holidays, meals have an advent, the moment, and return to daily life. as children, we may find the advents and in-betweens to be extremely long, dreary and miserable. participation and agency tend to increase with time and age, and then we have the opposite problem: the magic fades.

but what if we could remember that this life, like a beautiful meal, is coursed? like any holiday or ritual or story, it will continue to reveal itself by the hour, by the season, by the day. nothing is late, nothing is missing, and that you are what makes life complete as it unfolds?

271

the answer.

why is breathing always the answer? why does “expanding to hold nothing” strengthen the function? why do little gulps of air accomplish less, even if it seems faster? why fewer and deeper? why “to the limit?”

trust happens over time but we can only ever exist in the present. and this is why the breath, how we take in the air, the nothingness, today, builds what we can receive and how we learn to move in this reality.

tell me, how is the biggest, deepest breath you’ve ever held in your life, expansion and contraction at the same time? it’s a difficult concept but the body understands. swimming below sea level and climbing high altitudes demonstrate the logic.

in this space, where habit and meditation compress existence and decision into the same moment, that’s where breath becomes the teacher. why would you need a book or guru or a coach if the way you fill your lungs is the answer to everything? not the solution. just the answer to the question.

learning to exist continuously, not just getting through the day or making it to the weekend or existing between hits of pleasure or pain … that can be a lot for the mind, a lot for the spirit. but the body is a sacrament, a blessing, and its modality is the breath.

270

palate cleanser.

some days, some phases in your life feel terrible because they’re meant to cleanse the palate. the trash is out; chaos has left you. it’s not fun anymore, even when you invite it back in. so you keep trying. even if you hate what you used to enjoy or used to distract. you can’t seem to get through anything even if the worst is over. it’s hard to believe the best is yet to come. and before it can arrive, they don’t need you hungry (that was part of the problem) but they do need you able to register what’s next.

so you fast. you abstain until your body stops fighting and can finally agree with the mind that nothing is missing. you resist the past so the future can land. your heart and soul know there’s more but both mind and body need to stop climbing and grasping and grabbing.

you get rid of what was hurting you. then the painkillers stop giving relief. you rebuild, allow space and then wait. it’s this waiting that will cleanse the palate. but not if you keep trying to solve what wants to be flat, still and empty.

the static was something. but sometimes you just have to find an empty frequency. hold the line. don’t move too fast. make sure everything is quiet and settled so you can hear the music just as soon as it begins flooding in.

269

true today.

when the past and future don’t feel great, remember what is true today.

i don’t know what’s next. no one does. experiencing life as it unfolds is extremely human and quite common. you won’t always understand what’s happening as it happens. and time does not assure that you will understand what’s passed. understanding arrives and evolves with consciousness. so that’s the part we work on. not the trying to know in advance.

i am a menace. this is the exact hardware and software of the moment. upgrades are available but this is today’s operating model and technology stack. you might have a look around and notice there’s someone who keeps doing all this and running the same loops and it’s almost like they can’t even stop. that’s right. you’re you and you’re not done. let it be ok.

i love me. even if it doesn’t feel good. even if it means going against desire and the facts and decades of habit. loving the self does not always feel the way you would want or expect. but you know it’s happening when you do it anyway, whatever that means for today. knowing you persist over time, and that sometimes, “not making it worse” can be enough, for now.

i love me. i am a menace. i don’t know what’s next. and that’s enough for today.

268

the tree of desire.

there is a version of you who sits beneath the tree of desire. give me shade. give me relief. give me the fruit i have seen others eat. let my lovers and companions find me here, that they may know me by my desire. see how pure and strong and true it is. feel how much love i have to give. let my prayers and persistence and insistence change the world. let me serve, soften and shrink if it will help them to see what i see. give me what i desire so that i may leave. what i want is simple, and for the good of all. let me live peacefully in a world made right. bless my efforts and give me what i desire.

know that this is not the same version of you who stands suddenly to leave. still obviously unfed, though not quite as hungry as before. no longer seeking relief, and largely unmet. not healed, not hollow, but willing now to walk. mouth closed softly, in neither a frown nor a smile. you got what you wanted or were blessed by your own efforts. when the day came that wanting finally exhausted itself, it laid open whatever it is that exists beyond want.

when desire can no longer be summoned, you will find the one who leaves is the one who arrives.

267

where they love you.

the world will tell you who you need to be; the universe celebrates your fullest expression.

the world will budget what it can afford to lose; the universe will always give more than you ask.

the world exacts compromise; the universe lets you feel the price.

the world will tell you what to think; the universe will remind you what you know.

the world can pay you for your time; the universe will bless your existence.

the world will make you explain; the universe will let you explore.

the world defines its terms; the universe lets you decide.

the world will teach you to consume; the universe reminds us to create.

the world will map the trade route; even as the universe invites us for a ride.

and while the world evaluates your outsides; it is the universe that sees the world through your eyes.

266

final moments.

who do you want there with you in your final moments? who do you want, holding your hand and wishing you peace as you depart? who do you want with you as your body declines? in sickness and health, as they come and go in the twilight?

you want a self that loves you. a self that learned to stay. a self that can now sit quietly with you, as you, in the present, without running away. the self that got you through every unbearable thing. the one that still cries for every long-awaited blessing that finally arrived. you want a self you can trust. and you start building that self now, in this moment. a self that truly loves you is not an easy journey. may as well start now.

next to this self, you want God, the beloved. not a God to whom you’ve begged and pleaded your whole life for more or different. a God who knows you. the one you’ve been in conversation with for decades now, because you realized one day there’s actually no one stopping you speaking directly to God as a friend—the friend who never leaves. the one who watches over you when you sleep and when you’re behind the wheel with the windows down. the one who listens to your favorite songs on repeat and watches every comfort show, even as you scroll your phone. the one who loves you anyway.

and now, who did you want with you in your final years? not knowing which years or how many? someone good. someone true. someone that can know you when you’re beautiful and scared and ugly and brave. someone willing to know you through all of it, and all of you.

265

going home.

after a while, the only thing that feels better than going back to food and cigarettes and smoking and drinking and shopping and scrolling and the pleasure of anger and the dissociation of overwhelm …is returning to yourself.

how do you do this?

you’re not going to “go home” to it if it’s still scary to your nervous system. this is probably why you’ve been trying to camp out in your own front yard this whole time. you have keys but no interest in the door; your own house might be confusing or not what you signed up for. that’s fine. it might have a lot of rooms you don’t like or rooms you don’t even know about. this can be unsettling and intimidating. much easier to stay outside. also fine.

either way, you’ll be invited to do a bit of cleanup. maybe take out the trash. look at old photographs, toys and mementos. once you establish a few walking paths, you start to realize that “home” is not the structure. it’s the one who goes up and down the stairs. the one who makes the bed each morning and turns the sheets down at night. the one who enjoys the collections, libraries and furnishings. the one who tidies up throughout the day. the one who watches the water boil and the tub fill and doesn’t let the house burn down or overflow.

home is your own awareness. home is how you return to the observer within.

264

so must you.

will i survive a world that misunderstands me? yes. you will and you have. that’s not what matters. what matters is whether you survive the misunderstanding of self. and the answer is no; you won’t and you don’t.

unfortunately, when the world misunderstands you, you carry double. you endure punishment, over-utilization, under-utilization, impostor syndrome, exclusion. lots of uncomfortable things. but when you misunderstand yourself, eventually, you disappear.

you become the ferrari running a bus route or showing up to home depot for bricks and lumber. you become a golf cart losing her mind trying to survive the highway or the flurry of formula 1. when you misunderstand yourself, you erode who you are beneath the legibility you adapted to survive. and sometimes, you do need the years as fish out of water. to see if you can grow legs or if maybe you always had them. fine. but do not linger in legibility. do not insist on control. do not make it your responsibility for limited systems to read you accurately.

so take back your walks. take back your showers. you do not have to rehearse the explanations that will never be heard because they were never actually owed. you can stop explaining to them and explaining to yourself. we already know that detachment and indifference are extremely uncomfortable in the body.

but the horrors persist, and so must you.

263

pharaoh’s jail.

a blade does not belong in the forge. it belongs in battle.

pharaoh’s jail is not real. joseph does not belong in a cell in egypt or in the underground of the omelas. he belongs next to the king, understanding reality, interpreting dreams, reading the future. and the test is that you are going to sit in pharaoh’s jail until you remember it is not real and you know where you belong, even if you’re not there yet. until you know who you are, past all forgetting and remembering, even if a lie, a mere distortion, was enough to sentence decades of your life.

it is a temporary but hard test to be illegible and alone.

the lesson is this: “remember me to pharaoh” kept joseph stuck for even longer. putting your freedom, putting your recognition in the hands of those the system recognizes first, is not what saves you. it’s not what frees you. you free yourself, you recognize yourself, you surrender to the illusion, to the lesson, to the unfolding, and then what’s yours comes to you.

the exact puzzle, crisis, confoundment or obstacle that only you know how to transform, dismantle and reconstruct into the next reality—this is the key that turns the lock; this is the alchemy of exile.

262

not every creature.

there are plenty of creatures in the sea that cannot make a pearl. but there are the ones that do. where others become versed in camouflage, evolving into predator or prey, swimming alone and in great schools, there are those that sit quietly in the deep.

even if it takes all kinds, what does it even matter? it matters insofar as a grain of sand matters. if sand is just the ocean floor, fine. if it’s how the beach moves between your toes, fine. but when you’re an oyster, the grain of sand matters. random or not. all your effort goes into that reality. changing it until it changes you.

and no one knows. no one knows until the halves break open to reveal the pearl. the irritant that became jewelry. the pain that became purpose. the object of the deep sea diver or the culturist’s efforts. the story found you, you lived it, and now you can produce the treasure they seek.

261

house of God.

when we expand the definition of “the house of God,” then it doesn’t just make sense that temples and mosques and churches should be beautiful. that they should be honored because they consecrate where the divine meets the material, where prayers are made and answered.

this becomes true of the human body …unless you experience God as separate and outside of the body; that God is external to you.

this becomes true of the home, the dwelling place …unless you experience God to be somewhere else, outside your home.

this becomes true of the space that opens in every relationship, in every connection, no matter how brief, no matter how fleeting …unless you do not experience relationships as the place where the divinity in me meets the divinity in you, where divinity communes with itself in a prism of refracted light.

this becomes true of the workplace, no matter how humble, no matter how grand …unless you experience God as outside and separate from the places that only exist because of your handiwork, the fruits of your labor.

if the house of God is one place, then that’s the one place it makes sense to honor and bring beauty. if it’s every place, then everywhere gets to be as beautiful.

260

two-way glass.

do you know that you exist behind a two-way glass? that when people interact with you, it’s themselves they see and speak into? that your existence can reflect others back to themselves? i think you already knew.

i think you could begin to see the difference between the ones that like what they see and the ones that don’t. it would be easy to assume they’ve been responding to what they see in you. but that’s not often the case.

have you ever noticed people start to sound like they’re just talking to themselves about themselves? even if you haven’t left? that what they’re saying doesn’t really have anything to do with you anymore? it’s ok. it’s not anything you can really control.

that you show them something about themselves, an internal framework or perception or value system. that’s what they see and feel. you give them a view of the self, reflected. you get to witness how they see themselves (not how they see you) from behind this two-way mirror. even if you’re standing right there, in plain sight, concealing nothing, you’re protected by the glass.

ask yourself, “are they seeing me? or are they seeing themselves reflected?” the answer is sometimes lonely, sometimes not. you don’t have to be for everyone. but sometimes, without warning, the glass comes down. you find yourself there, with a person who sees you. and you see them, too. the interaction reveals itself as a shared frame, a shared reality. this is what a miracle feels like. when the mirror dissolves, you’re just two people. not talking past one another. not a pair of reflections. not a monologue in pantomime. it’s sacred. and it’s real.

259

the temptation.

there is a temptation to bleed out. to give it all away. why? because we want expansion to feel one way when half the time, expansion requires a contraction or constriction.

poverty logic is a common mindset because you only live once. but that’s why you learn to go without or you will how learn to take yourself back, to stop bleeding into the abyss, before expansion can manifest.

a full tank leaks out just the same as a quarter, if you don’t seal it. if you can’t hold a little bit without gambling it away. unknowingly trading your gold for copper will force a cognitive dissonance that what you bring buys nothing — when that’s not the distortion.

it’s that you’re still trying to make your home at the grocery store. the store stocks what it stocks. you’re trying to make your home at the office. the job is a job. you’re trying to make your home at the mall, where you can buy what you like but they don’t carry what you need. you’re trying to make your home at someone else’s house. when your home is at your own house.

258

watching the sky.

in the days before the flood came to wash away his reality, noah watched the sky.

he watched the sky as he walked through the woods. he watched the sky as he selected his trees. he watched the sky as he transported lumber. he watched the sky as he framed the ark. he watched the sky as he nailed down the planks. he watched the sky as he went about his work. he watched the sky as he chewed his food. he watched the sky as he inventoried which animals. he watched the sky after explaining to his family. he watched the sky even as the neighbors laughed.

he watched the sky as the seasons turned and regular rains fell. he watched the sky for years, already an old man when God spoke to him. he watched the sky turn from blue to white to gray. he watched the sky even as the earth remained dry. and as soon as he could feel the flood begin to arrive, he was ready.

he had been ready. probably since before he was born.

257

only one.

it only takes one. one person to say:

that harelip? i bet we can sew it together.

this disease? i bet we can turn illness against itself.

that outlier? i bet it’s pointing to the true mean.

this confusion? i bet it has intelligence.

that delay? i bet it’s by design.

this broadcast? i bet there’s a transmission hidden inside.

do you hear that noise? i bet there’s a signal trying to come through.

this pain? it’s probably optional.

it only takes one person to connect the dots. to understand that while today’s wounds may have been inevitable, tomorrow’s are not.

256

listen to yourself.

“listen to yourself” is not listening to the thoughts in your mind. it’s, listen to the truth in your body. identity lives in the body. identity builds the life, the current timeline, the curriculum that is completing. you cannot change your identity, your life or your timeline by changing your mind. things change when your identity changes.

how do you change at the level of identity? identity changes when the body can no longer carry it. when the new identity is ready. so the body will send signals that it’s about time. but if you’re not listening to your body because you don’t know how, or the world is too loud, or you’re habituated to overriding or numbing …then the signal gets louder and louder until it begins to manifest outside, because it’s not registering or you don’t know how to read signal from noise.

so then what? you feel the signal coming from inside or you wait for things to start breaking on the outside …and then what? change your mind and change your life? no. you change from your body. you start doing differently and living differently. you can think “different,” experimental hypothetical runaway thoughts all day but things won’t change until you change.

when you start showing up differently, identity begins to shift from the outside in, and your life will begin to shift from the inside out.

255

leaky vessel.

one day soon, hopefully, you’ll realize that you don’t need to convince, chase, explain, rescue, disarm, perform, play small, act tough, be heard, entertain, be more, be less, be the same, be different, make them laugh, kill them with kindness, do less, do more, smile more, be right, be wrong, stay useful, die on that hill, bleed out, sink with the ship, or give because you gave. you don’t have to endure your own life just to be safe.

you can walk away. why? because now you can see: it didn't work, the prize never came, it came and didn't feel like you thought it would, it didn't last, or you had to be the one to come up with it yourself anyway.

"the worst" has already happened. and still, you survived. you're here. your worst fears came true, slowly, over time. and you can see plainly now: you didn’t die. the facts don't match the hypothesis. you expanded the data set and it shifted the distribution. your data drifted. the mean shifted. something else clicks into place. and just like that, the vessel stops leaking.

254

protect it.

do you want to be free? well, you’re gonna have to stop giving it away for free. the thing you do reflexively. the thing you never run out of. the thing you use to feed everyone before you feed yourself. the thing that makes you available to others and unavailable to what’s yours.

this “thing” has a name. you have to be the one to name it, price it and protect it. and you know what? it’s all the same thing. “the thing” is your specific expression of the divine energy that flows through everything. …that thing. and maybe you’ll have to live for 40, 50, maybe even 65 years before you have enough lived experience to see, from the outside in (and inside out) what “that thing,” “your thing,” “what you are and who you are” even is.

i’ll give you a hint: it’s what the world gobbles up just as fast as you can plate it. it actually happens so quickly that it takes a lot of repetitions for you to actually be able to see what it is on the plate. and the good news is once you see it, you can’t unsee it. you cannot unknow it.

and you’ll realize: i am not the product. i am not the food on the plate. i am the one who plates it and that makes me the one who must protect it. the one who gets to price it, no longer the one that reflexively and warmly gives it out for free, just as soon as people start coming in with their empty plates and hungry mouths.