We Are All Cosmic Travelers Wearing Human Suits

It's so weird being a channeler. Not for the obvious reasons - like talking to Jesus and unicorn visitations at three in the morning (though that's plenty weird, thanks) - but because, when I'm in the zone, I know all this stuff I say on the internet to be true. I feel calm, at peace, loved, and all is right with the world. 

But after I'm done with the channeling and back to the human stuff of making breakfast and paying bills and driving through rush hour with every other lunatic on the road (yes, I'm one of the lunatics), my brain cranks up the volume and is all THAT COULDN'T POSSIBLY BE RIGHT, LOVE AND LIGHT MY ASS, WHAT ARE YOU THINKING, HERE HAVE A CHOCOLATE CROISSANT. 

Sometimes I can take a big enough step away from the chatter to remember that my brain doesn't have all the answers. It says a lot of things, it makes a lot of noise, but just because my brain says it doesn't mean it's true. 

Last week, I decided to release a meditation album on the spur of the moment. That's the fun part about this job - being blasted with inspiration while you're hanging upside down and all the blood is rushing to your head, and being able to just do it and see what happens. 

Because there's so much forking construction in my neighborhood (and it makes me want to throttle the world), I had to record the meditations after six at night or before eight in the morning. A few days ago, I woke up at six, turned on the microphone while wearing my flannel moose pajamas, and started receiving a whole bunch of meditations about tuning into your intuition, following your soul's path, balancing your energy (I put one of the meditations up for free - if your energy feels wonky, check it out!) and it all felt awesome. 

But after I stopped and made myself an egg sandwich, all the doubts and anxieties and oh GODs started flooding back in. 

My challenge at the moment is hooking back in with that calm, loving, here's-the-handy-guidance space more often. Hour by hour, minute by minute. Keep honoring the feels and the crazy humanness while reminding myself of the truth and course-correcting my brain. 

Living this way is like eating salad or being in AA. You can't do it once and then be done for the rest of your life. You have to work the program. Over and over and over and over again. Every day.

It does seem to get easier. Eventually new pathways are created and it becomes easier to dwell in the land of ahhhh... rather than the land of FUCKING HELL EVERYTHING ABOUT THIS PLANET IS THE WORST I WOULD RATHER DIE.

Smug statue says "I'm cool, no problems here."

Being a cosmic being of infinite light in a human body - as we all are - is a daily flow. I wanted to say challenge, but I think it's just a practice. Like, practicing the piano can be a challenge but whatever you just show up again tomorrow and the next day and eventually you get so much better you can't even remember the time you got stymied by the dumb flamingo song. (Pianos just don't sound like flamingos and there's nothing anyone can do about that.) (Yes, I had to learn a dumb flamingo song in elementary school and apparently it angers me to this day.) 

Honoring the feels without getting bowled over by them, feeling the pain without drowning in it, observing the worries without getting stuck in them, noticing the negative thoughts and remembering the truth and putting the train of thought on a new track. Being human. Being cosmic. Same thing really. 

This feels like a good place to leave my favorite quote of pretty much all time: 

You are a ghost driving a meat coated skeleton made from stardust riding a rock floating through space. Fear nothing. 

Blogging Like it's 2005 and I Haven't Aged Twelve Years

Shasta is one bossy mountain. My boyfriend and I went up last weekend and we caught the first snow fall, which was pure frozen joy - even before the golden retriever in a bright orange jacket started bounding ecstatically through legit winter wonderland.

Legit winter wonderland. Well-suited to ecstatic bounding.

In addition to the snow and donuts - not to mention the snow donuts that my race car driving companion took it upon himself to pull at the top of the deserted mountain, scaring the absolute shit out of me, because he didn't share his plan before starting to spin out - the mountain also gave me an assignment. (See: bossy mountain top.) 

Stop everything and write for 21 days straight. 

Also some stuff about silencing my brain and drinking green juice and exercising and, let me just say, I have not been as diligent as the bossy mountain probably intended. 

Mostly because all of this is terrifying. Doing nothing but writing when you're self-employed and "doing things" is where your money comes from is terrifying. Moving after months of sloth is terrifying. Writing after being in a creative funk for years is terrifying. Silencing my brain is terrifying. (My brain does not enjoy being silenced and becomes exponentially more obnoxious whenever I try.) 

Drinking green juice is actually pretty easy so that's fine. 

At this juncture, I should probably note that I am a super sensitive human and as diligently as I try to unhook myself from the collective emotional energy, sometimes I still end up in fear and, ya know, faintly hysterical terror. 

That said, getting back into this writing game is not going smoothly. 

Pushing myself doesn't seem to be working. Starting yet another novel and getting four pages in before abandoning it doesn't seem to be working. Journaling mostly just turns into all-caps yelling as I let my brain throw a tantrum to unleash all the feeling I've carefully hoarded thanks to that aforementioned sensitivity - so that doesn't seem to be working either.

Maybe the solution of my bright-eyed twenty-something self will work for me now. Back in 2005, at the virtual dawn of personal internet musings, I started a blog as a way to write daily. It worked and I loved it. But that was when we were just talking about our lives without much expectation and our friends were doing it too. It was a big ol internet party in those sweetly naive pre-social media years. 

I mean, the technology still exists. Where did we all go? What happened? It feels like it wants to come back. Some of the bloggers of yore are at it again - and some never stopped. (Who's still doing this? If you are or know of people who are, please share.) So here I am too, doing my utmost to silence the plague o' self-doubt and use my voice. 

Going back to conversational writing and less curation sounds like a goddamn breath of peppermint-flavored arctic air. Overthinking is choking the life out of me and my poor beleaguered words. 

Who would want to read this? - my brain 

You've lost your special spark and I refuse to subscribe to this claptrap. - person who unsubscribed to my newsletter and felt it necessary to tell me why

Should I be talking about this? Am I complaining too much? How is this adding to the world? - my brain

HEREBY BANISHING THE BRAIN HAMSTERS. AND NEVER READING PEOPLE'S REASONS FOR UNSUBSCRIBING EVER AGAIN. There. Problem solved. 

We'll see what happens. Whatever it is, I will do my utmost to squash the brain hamsters, unhook sticky emotion, and speak what is true and loving. And possibly annoyed and cynical. But that's the beauty of not over-thinking. You get to just be. 

So here's to just being. Like it's 2005 and we're in the first flush of internet sharing and I don't yet have that alarming trench between my brows. 

Grinch of Las Vegas

My heart grew three sizes this weekend.

While I’m definitely the Grinch of Las Vegas - my 70-something mom and aunt both out-gambled and out-drank me - it was more than just fleeing the Strip for the rocks and the lakes.

Vegas has nice rocks. 

It was seeing my brother happy. It was exploring caves and riding a train with a stuffed fox-toting seven-year-old, and buying his love with vanilla ice cream. Sitting by a lake in the twilight while bugs hummed, kids ran, and a new baby kicked.  

Some people go to Las Vegas to gamble. I go to sheep-gaze.

It was wholly unexpected and so perfect. My heart definitely grew bigger, and that gives me more faith in myself and my capacity for love.

Before I left, I was telling a friend that I 100% expected this trip to be epic, I just wasn't sure what that epic would entail. Las Vegas epic makes most people think of slot machines and unexpected marriage certificates under an empty tequila bottle on the bedside table - not freshly-hatched babies or a field full of big horn sheep. But that's the kind of epic I prefer these days - and it doesn’t even require a hangover.

But going to Las Vegas with your family will definitely test your empath boundaries. I started to see where some of this grief I've been carrying around for years isn't my own, and realizing anew how hard I have to work to stay clear of what's not mine. When you feel it, you assume it belongs to you, especially if you've been sponging up other people's pain all your life.

It's the challenge of the empath - to remember to ask to whom this emotion belongs. Even when your brain can logically assimilate it to your own experience, pointing to a specific event and saying, "This. Yes, this is why I feel this way. It makes perfect sense." When, in fact, it isn't yours at all - and there's no sense to be made. 

God love you, smart empaths. It's not an easy road. Someone told me recently, "You're very smart. But more often than not, your brain completely fucks you." Well...yes. 

Luckily, having a stuffed therapy otter in your purse helps.

As we circled Las Vegas, getting ready to land, I got the hit that my father had just reincarnated in India, because he doesn’t want to miss this time, this rebirth of ancient wisdom that's beginning to sweep us clear of multiple dark ages. He hit the re-set button and landed back on planet Earth, ready to go. 

Honestly, who knows. As with most intuitive hits, they’re impossible to fact check. You just have to trust - and realize that, in the eternal sense, it ultimately doesn't matter. But it was fun to think about, in those last moments before we landed.  

We're all connected to our people - those we know and those we don't yet remember - on this plane and beyond it. It's like my relationship with my brother - fathoms deep and about half an inch wide. Like, we had no idea he had a girlfriend. He just...showed up with her. There was a lot of frantic rearranging of facial expressions, let me tell you. 

In the small talk sense, I know more about most of my first dates than I know about my only sibling. But it ultimately doesn't matter - I can feel his heart and so it makes my heart happy when his is happy. 

Maybe that's the reward for being an empath. I got to be so happy this weekend in Vegas because he was so happy. When there's that much love gathering, each heart reflects it like a hall of mirrors reflecting a lightbulb. And I got to feel it all - and feel my heart expand with it. 

Going to Mount Shasta So Jesus Can Roll His Eyes at Me

Mount Shasta has been tugging at me for months now. Sometimes my soul gets really insistent, and I've found that it's best for everyone if I give it what it wants. So last weekend I drove five hours toward what I've been told is one of the biggest energetic centers on the planet. 

Most of me is on board when I hear things like that, but there's still a small portion of my East Coast lineage and education that says, "Yeah, okay, whatever." 

My still-clinging cynicism was firmly chastened when I hit the town of Shasta and got so dazed that I almost hit a pedestrian. 

Whoops! Sorry! You're right, that was a crosswalk! I'm very glad you just got mad instead of covered in tire treads!

Between the sun in my eyes, an unfamiliar town, and the kind of energy that I only experience after I've been channeling for long periods of time - after which I have to walk and eat mashed potatoes and not be around other humans - I most definitely should not have been driving a heavy metal box. 

Once after a healing, one of my clients said "This is my favorite drug." That's the kind of energy infusing Mount Shasta. So deeply healing that you feel like you just popped a horse tranquilizer. It's the kind of energy that lifts you out of your body and into another dimension. A lighter, far more awesome dimension, unless the you in this dimension stops obeying the laws of traffic and common decency. 

Wandering around Lake Siskiyou, I gazed at the light playing on the water and was so entranced, I felt like a three-year-old who got into the pot brownies. I kept listing sideways, tipping into walls, people, and almost over a cliff. 

The next day, I met up with a friend and we went to the mineral baths and dunked ourselves in the freshly melted river. I felt myself leaving heartbreak in creek beds and felt old patterns and beliefs melting into the mountain. It was like a car wash for the soul. 

I also had the most literal Come-To-Jesus moment of my entire life. 

Now, Jesus has been showing up a lot lately. He made an appearance when I was walking down the street a few months ago. I was asking for information about the next round of Activate, the six month group healing thing I run, and he stepped right in and waved and said he was one of our guides. My reaction was basically "what the fuuuuuuck?" As you'd expect when Jesus walks up to you and says, DUDE, WE'VE GOT SHIT TO DO. 

I always thought Jesus was pretty cool. Whatever thought I gave him was split between being deeply annoyed on his behalf at the way his work got twisted up by power-hungry patriarchal agendas and being super into Christmas. Not just because of the presents and cookies - though I never turn down presents and cookies - but because it always feels infused with love. Christmas actually does feel holy to me, and also I like Christmas carols. Like, a dumb amount. Sorry, anyone who has ever spent time with me in December. 

That was about it until he basically accosted me on the street, because that was apparently the only way to get my attention. (He notes that I'm being melodramatic again - there was a gentle wave and zero accosting - and I say, Who's telling this story, you or me?) 

Like any good light worker and way-shower, I've been dutifully ascending. Dealing with all my old shit - and a lot of other people's old shit, damn it - so that I could be good and ready to do my work here. Because I'm here for some pretty specific reasons. You are too, if you're reading this. 

Apparently, if you do your energetic housecleaning well enough, you start having visions of Jesus. 

Yes, I do hear myself when I say these things. But I figure if Jesus takes the time out of his busy schedule to show himself to you as you're walking down the street, more or less minding your own business, you should probably pay attention. 

So I started paying attention.

(Though, apparently, not enough attention. One of the biggest messages from my Shasta trip was Jesus telling me that I haven't been listening. Damn it. SORRY, JESUS. I thought I was listening, but there have been some things I admit I don't want to do. Mainly in the area of eating vegetables.) 

When I do let him in, he does a stellar job at lifting me out of my drama and getting me back on track. A few weeks ago, I was driving and feeling super cranky. Until Sly and the Family Stone come onto the radio, and I get a vision of Jesus lip-synching "Everyday People" with the Marys (Mother and Magdalene) as backup dancers and I start laughing so hard, I almost had to pull over on the freeway. My entire energy and mood shifted to absolute joy in a hot second. 

But apparently, he's got a lot to tell me about my work and I haven't been paying attention. I'm like that annoying co-worker who ignores your emails until you have to get up, walk over to their cubicle, and smack them upside the head. Maybe that's why my soul was so adamantly shoving me toward Mount Shasta. So Jesus could smack me (gently, of course) upside the head. 

After a guided meditation at the base of the mountain, the friend I was with said, "It's like you're homies. Like you and Jesus have lived lives together."  Insert wide-eyed emoji right here. The energy she got was that we were friends and coworkers. Family. "Whatever he's been telling you to do, do it." 

According to the messages she received for me at the base of the mountain, I've only just begun to scratch the surface of my powers and gifts - and now it's time to get serious.

Unfortunately "get serious" seems to mean "stop it with all the fried chicken and TV." Give your body what it really wants. My body wants running lots of miles and green juice. My brain wants naps and fried chicken. But I am serious about this, so vegetables and miles it is. 

Besides the "be healthy" thing, I do tend to get confused because the messages I receive are along the lines of "Have fun! Have sex! Have more adventures and write about them!" Sex is my spiritual assignment? And road trips? Really? Well, that sounds too good to be true. 

And then I remember the broccoli. And Jesus rolls his eyes at me because he didn't specify broccoli and I know it, and if I'm going to go around telling people that Jesus is making me eat broccoli he says he can't help me. (Yes, I think I'm hilarious.) 

But basking in the powerful and pulsing healing energy of that mountain, where I'm so much lighter than I'm used to being, I remember that writing is the basis of my work - and writing my joy has always been the way I've moved into that lighter space, with or without Jesus and big mountains. 

He says, "Write. Write your adventures. Write whatever sounds fun. Because writing is where your love flows and you are finally loving yourself fully. So writing about yourself in the service of others is one of the best things you can do right now." 

Then I say, "Thanks, J-Dog" and he rolls his eyes again and told me I am the whitest individual ever and what is up with all the pink shoes. I say the pink shoes make me happy and he says, "Well, that's okay then." 

The veil really is getting thinner and I am so very thankful for that. It's reminding me that the density of this reality isn't all there is, and if I keep moving - if we keep moving - toward the light, we'll all get lighter.

Even if Jesus has to spend a lot of his time rolling his eyes at me. (Heh.) 

Living in the Crucible

I am so, so, so ready for a change. 

When you feel stuck, it’s often because something energetic, emotional, physical or spiritual needs to be unraveled before you can move forward.

But unhooking the threads of karma that bind you is no small task. It’s like picking apart a tapestry and re-weaving shadowy demons into white dragons. You can’t leave any loose threads or they’ll form a pathway to let the shadows to walk back in.

We’re entering a six month cycle of great change and, in order to be ready for this change, I’ve been deep in releasing mode. I’ve been burning things, tossing things into the ocean, doing rituals, and throwing a few hissy fits in the general direction of god. (Or in the general direction of my bed pillows, but if god is everywhere, it’s basically the same thing.)

People have been telling me for years that I have self-worth issues. I mean, yeah. I get it. But unearthing your self-worth from the landslide that buried it often means digging without a map - it can be hard to know where to aim your shovel. You have to rewrite the stories you’ve absorbed from others, untangle the knots of normalized abuse, peer at the karmic baggage you may have grabbed - and empaths are so much more likely to carry other people’s bags as well as their own. For the first three decades of my life, I was basically a martyred hotel porter.

When I look at the Facebook highlights of the past ten years, it looks like a litany of loss. Death, miscarriage, getting fired, trying-and-failing-trying-and-failing, getting fired again, breakup after breakup after breakup. My ego has been thoroughly thrashed.

When I scan through the loss litany, relatively unbroken by brag-about-able triumph, my life starts feeling like a crucible whose only purpose is to burn me down to the bone. 

Where I go when the crucible feels extra searing. 

But the up side to all that fire is that I've gotten really good at transmuting dark into light. 

Diving into the depths of the bubbling muck of your soul and swimming around even when you’re afraid you might suffocate and hitting the same problem over and over again from every angle will show you what you're made of - and I'm made of pure tensile strength, baby. I am whittled down. Sometimes I feel like I'm two taps away from breaking, but I haven't broken yet. I've bent, I've danced, I've sobbed like a broken doll, I've set fire to the branches, and I'm still standing. 

I’ve gone from unconscious empath to understanding that if I’m angry for no reason, it’s not because I’m slowly and methodically going insane, it’s because I just sucked up that anger from someone else. I’ve gone from hating myself for being too sensitive to recognizing that sensitivity is my primary superpower. From words that were funny but flagellating to being able to write my story from a place of deeper, if less amusing, compassion. From trapped in the hell of my own head to relatively accessible joy.  

If it took that litany of loss to get me to a place where I’m mostly free of the hell my brain spent most of every day re-building, it was worth it.

But I'm not here to swim in my own stuff forever. I'm not here to heal everybody else. I’m here to feel joy. I’m here to share what hits me in the solar plexus and expands from my rib cage. I’m here to be a gift to the planet, just as you are.

So I’m re-weaving the patterns of my life, unraveling the threads of the images that don’t serve me and tying off all the loose ends. It’s not easy to keep track of all those dangling knots. And just when you think you've tidied everything up, you find a whole new room full of yarn. 

But we can’t be that gift until we see ourselves as that gift. So that’s where my effort is going now. Into the day-to-day process of keeping my energy and gratitude and joy high. Not to heal myself or anyone else, but to know that ascension from the hell of your own head is possible. Because it is. And it’s required.

And sometimes that means spending the evening watching TV and eating ice cream straight from the carton so you can get up in the morning, light the match, and ask what the crucible has for you today.