self-love on a friday.

sitting here, scrolling through social media with sleepy eyes, something is stirred up in my soul.

there seem to be infinite how-to articles in my newsfeed concerning interaction.. with both others as well as the self. 

a friend of mine challenged the need for these fast-food-type articles & thus my gears started turning. while he is right about how disheartening it can be to realize that people cheaply regurgitate the advice by "sharing" & "re-sharing" without delving any deeper into the essence of why these articles are churned out like mass-produced merchandise.... still, i argue that on some level we should be grateful for even second-rate how-to-live lists & the enlightenment these could potentially bring to some of us. after all, ram dass, a great spiritual guide, says "when you know how to listen, everybody is the guru." everyone can be a guru just like everyTHING can be a crucial rung to climb on your ladder, (if you need to see it as an uphill trek in order to make progress.) we each need a unique set of experiences from which to draw out our inner self.. the 'self' that is actually completely inseparable from the 'one'.
these experiences or happenings in my life have ranged from huge dramas such as my divorce & all the un-forgiveness that sprung up from it, to minuscule moments of noticing a crack in the sidewalk or overhearing two friends tell one another good morning. seriously. it is not only the "big" moments that have defined my journey. sometimes my presence is practiced & other times i am gently persuaded to open my eyes & sometimes i am rudely shocked back into reality. whatever it takes; that's the way it is.

if something seemingly terrible is happening to you right now, stop. take a deep breath. let it out with tears if need be. curl up into the strangely familiar fetal position & let all you think & feel resonate deeply. then smile. let go of what you perceive to be good or bad. there is always time to set your sights on a different path. in our most hopeless of moments, we often find our strength. yours is greater than you are aware. ALL WILL BE WELL, especially if you can't see how that could be right now. 

society places insane standards on us, but we don't have to buy in. what works for you? get yourself free of the system & do what you love. love yourself & love others, that's key. money & failure are all an illusion. YOU ARE EXACTLY WHERE YOU NEED TO BE in order to get where you're going. change your perspective; change your life. i love you & i will be here for you however i can. <3

i leave you with some life-shattering & rebuilding truth that my guru imparted upon me this morning:

"Now does working on yourself have anything to do with whether you protest, march, drop out, drop in? No, it has nothing whatsoever to do with that, because at any moment you are consciousness involved in a nature package. That nature package includes your heredity, your environment, all of your personality characteristics, all of the opportunities that exist at this moment, all of your attitudes, all of your predispositions – the whole package. That package is functioning under the laws of karma or the laws of the universe. In other words, that package is unfolding. It’s just lawfully working itself out. As you get more conscious, however, every act you perform increases the amount of consciousness in the universe, because the act itself conveys the consciousness. In other words, I could tell you the greatest truths of the world but if I don’t understand them inside, forget it, because all I’m doing is taking it from there and giving it to there and I’m not giving you the key that allows you to use it, which is the “faith” in it, which I can only convey through my own success in whatever I’m doing.

So, then with all of that said, it’s quite apparent that as you work on yourself, on your consciousness, you continue to do whatever dance you’re doing or that dance evolves. As you are conscious, you begin to see how the acts you perform can become more and more optimum to the conditions. That is, when you’re about to change a law in the country you begin to understand the way the whole system works as you stand back one bit, and you see what the optimum act you can do is, and you go and perform, and you perform it totally without the emotional attachment to that act, but with an awareness of how that act works in the whole system. You hear what I’m saying? In other words, it’s the ability to sometimes have delay of gratification, if you will, the ability to stand back, to do what is the more optimum response. Sometimes it’s the immediate thing to do. In other words, a parent may or may not slap the child. The parent may or may not be emotionally involved in slapping the child. The parent may or may not understand totally how many ramifications are involved in slapping the child. These are all different places which they can work at.

So finally the general rule applies to all action no matter whether you tell me that the world is going to end tomorrow or in five years or ten years or the bad guys win or the good guys win, or it’s all up to me, or we’ve got to get together and do something. All of that leads me to the same response: I will work on myself, since the work on myself is going to be the highest thing I can do for it all, since I understand that as man up-levels his own consciousness, he sees more creative solutions to the problems that he’s confronting. Therefore, it always feeds back to the same place. But working on myself is just like this. This is social action at the moment. And yet this social action is totally without attachment. I can’t be concerned with whether you can know this or not. I can only do what I do because the minute I’m concerned, I’m caught. The minute I’m caught I can only catch you.

- Ram Dass, excerpt from The Only Dance There Is"

pain.

what exactly is pain?
to me, it is waking up breathless & doubled-over with fear & doubt. it is that hollowed-out feeling in your solar plexus, that bleeding feeling in your heart, that ache in your throat that often leads to tears. it is what you experience when your attachment has caused you to perceive loss of some kind. although the perception of "loss" is part of the illusion, the portion of our being that exists on this physical plane cannot help but feel so connected to the pain & pleasure these Ego-bodies experience. while my first instinct is to fight tooth & nail with the pain while gluttonously stockpiling the pleasure, i have found this is not the way (for me). instead, i am attempting to operate from a place of higher wisdom. from this place, i can dance feverishly while the tears fall & hold loosely the happy moments without suffocating the life out of them.
the reality of impermanence is something i have faced my entire life. it is a lesson that pervades my every experience. i have lived in four states and over fifteen homes. i got exceptionally great at making new friends & losing old ones. besides this, i have been through a divorce and birthed a child (& now know what it is to have my heart forever go walking around outside of my body). who hasn't experienced these things, or at least similar things? likely no one. on a biological level, we all experience impermanence with every passing moment. our cells are dying & regenerating. we are getting older every day; we are changing in appearance and mindset. one thing is for certain-- life is always changing. but yet this impermanence is such a source of discontent for us as human beings. even though it's happening every single second!

to find peace within such discord is what i am seeking.

one morning recently, i woke from a terrible dream. in this dream i lost someone who's become very important to me-- someone i often cling to & hoard. i raged against the sad feeling, i buried myself deep in the blankets, & felt hopeless.
all because of a dream? yes, & also because the dream reminded me how much i fear reality & loss of control.

in response to this, i think my guru would smile knowingly & advise me to recognize my recurring lesson. he would say, "keep working on yourself. it's all you can do. you have no control over anyone other than you. keep doing mantra & strengthening that place where your witness resides. don't be in a hurry to learn, time is relative. play your part in the drama but understand that this is only an illusion."


here's to our many human moments when the illusion seems so real that it becomes insurmountable. let's remember that we can always take our power back. this ability lies within our here&now-ness, in our remembering our godliness & our connectedness with all things. you're more resilient than you think!

a wednesday.

i am forever reaching. being here now.. even accepting this whole thing as a journey, rather than a means to an end.. i nonetheless find myself grasping for a greater consciousness. even when i am up to my ears in my own bullshit, judgments, & apathy.. even when i can't see the forest for the trees, i am building my awareness. i am cultivating my energy even when i am wasting it, because there is no waste. there is only grist for the mill.
when i lose sight of my guru & succumb to my thoughts.. these are the moments that can perhaps build us up the most. this is not a race, "we're all just walking each other home," as ram dass puts it. this isn't a competition; i don't want to beat you. i want to enjoy the scenery, hold hands, & do mantra together.
the reason that i reach, though, is because stretching is good karma for the muscles of the soul. when i cease pushing or testing my limits, i begin to atrophy.

so i listen for soul-speak in the morning when my four year old son chatters the entire way to school. i listen when he's happy & i listen when he's cranky. when i see myself growing more impatient & agitated, i see where I have work to do, not where HE has work to do. i listen for soul-speak when i cross paths with strangers. i listen to their smiles & i listen to their sad eyes. what they have to say is so important, if you have the ears to hear & the wisdom to slowwww dowwwn sometimes. i listen for soul-speak inside my own head when i sit apart from my thoughts & watch them flow to understand the origins.

this morning i feel a little sad. a little irritated & a little lonesome. a little too connected to my Ego, & the losses it must experience. but i'll feel my way through this & continue to honor myself, no matter how difficult it can be when i feel as though i am faking it to make it. i accept my humanness & will love myself no matter how ugly i feel on the inside or the outside. i will reach and reach until i am stretched to my limits & then i will reach some more. namaste.