Here are some raw deets. It doesn't start off so pretty, but it gets nicer later, promise.
Last December I spent a few sticky weeks in hometown Chicago, my longest stretch in years, to be supportive for my closest someone whom I thought was in an intense depression. She happened to be high on crystal meth the entire time. It was morose; I had no idea why.
This year breast cancer showed up for my mother. The first surgery didn’t take care of it. They had to go in again, and then of course, months of radiation.
A few months ago, the drug addiction my father had been battling and we’d been waltzing with for years came to a head, when he was beaten up and checked into a hospital. He was there for nine days and wouldn’t leave—too terrified to go home, too proud to admit what was going on or ask for help; he remained there as we scrambled remotely with police dealings and how to get his BMW out of the impound. My sister had to pull to the side of the road to manage panic attacks. My mother walled up.
The first relationship in years where I came close to someone I thought I could love for a while abruptly exited my life. I had no say in it.
…and for the first time in years, I went into debt to get by.
Anything that I thought I could hold onto, that could support me, was taken away.
Those are the facts.
Here’s the story.
The last two days I have felt my most intense connection with the world to date. I’ve had glimpses of this in the past, and I’m pretty sure it’s not here to stay, but I see the divine joke in it all. My hand in the matrix. I was walking up 6th Avenue the other morning, looked at a hotdog cart and understood that it came from me. Not intellectually. I made the cart. I was the cart. To have this kind of obsequious understanding about something so, not only ordinary, but dirty, seemingly incongruous with your life, is quite simply, everything. I try not to use the word ‘oneness’ because I don’t want any vocabulary so present in my life that I think it encompasses the answer, but really, there is no better word for it.
A person cannot know what this is until we experience it. I know I’m starting to sound like an MP3 stuck on repeat, but it’s true. And it’s a tricky little bastard. We start this journey, we get pushed or pulled or thrown in, for a little respite from our suffering. Yoga makes us feel better. Deeksha lifts our spirits. Perhaps we glow a little bit, in turn start to take better care of ourselves. But then… then, once you have an experience of the supreme understanding, you are pretty much f*%@ed. Because then, there is an involuntary evolutionary pull toward that day when you are That, and you know it, and every cell of yours vibrates with that truth.
And the ride sucks. It’s hard. There are many times that you want to throw your hands up in the air and you wish you could rewind. “Stop the World, I Want to Get off” is not just a droll name for a 1960’s musical, you feel it and you want to go back… to that bliss of ignorance. But you can’t. You’re on the road to the Ultimate Bliss. And you certainly can’t explain it to anyone who’s not there yet—your family, that guy you wanted to be your boyfriend, your boss when the work you’ve been doing up to now just isn’t cutting it anymore. “I’m sorry I’ve been out of sorts lately, I’ve just been consumed with learning who I am on the road to Ultimate Bliss.” I’m on that path and even just rereading that sentence makes me want to punch that person in the face.
Here’s why it’s all consuming. Because the love is so ridiculously vast. Once you have a glimpse of it, and you see that’s what there is, everything else is just so very unimportant.
And the paradoxical beauty is the side effects are miraculous. Relationships develop MORE meaning, not less. You saw my laundry list of less than stellar happenings above? They just happened. Emotions rose, and they dissipated. There was deep feeling, but there was absolutely no drama. Not coming from me anyway. And when it came at me? I did not participate in propelling the dramatics forward. To have that kind of equanimity when literally the sky is falling around you is an incomparable feeling.
I tell you this not to stir up any kind of empathy from you, I have no interest in that, and it doesn’t serve me; quite frankly, it would only be wasted if you had it. I say this to show you (and I purposefully laid it all out here, no vague veiled poetic metaphors about my circumstances, cleverly disguised for blogland) this work can and does have a direct correlation with our levels of suffering.
I experienced it; I was solid throughout. The family dramas?—I was like a little Buddha in the middle of it all, amazed at my innate tranquility. The guy? Well, that was the tough one for me. I really really really really wanted to play the blame game on that one. But I watched as all the emotions rose and fell, watched what the process of life brought up for me to see, watched how and why I created it for myself and it went by.
Here’s what else. I speak more to my mother every week than I do anyone else. I grew up angry at her, and since our relationship has blossomed, for the first time I have magnificent women in my life. A whole entourage, of the most gorgeous, giving, level-headed fabulous women in Manhattan. I dare anyone to find a sparklier group. This new level with my mother was not cultivated—it just happened.
My neighbor told me the other day every time he sees me ride around my bike it looks like I am in a little bubble of positivity. He said it really looks like that. And that’s what I feel. I am happy. Happy for no reason. Certainly not happy because the circumstances of my life are the best they have ever been, and yet I am beyond grateful. So grateful with all the beauty that surrounds me…. Because the beauty is in the dirt. When the angry or the sad day comes up, I pull out the dark lipstick, repeat Edith Piaf on my iPod, hope that it’s raining to support my mood and then I live in that aspect. It’s the sad scene of the movie. I’m the star, and it’s so much fun.
I’m well aware that I probably lost half of you with this post. If you haven’t yet started the ride, or are unaware you’ve started it, you will dismiss me, you will say I am not living in reality. And it’s quite literally the opposite. Reality is all we have. This is it. Now. All of this, all of this wading through suffering and stretching uncomfortably toward understanding is so that we can experience it, fully, without fear, with incredible amounts of compassion and love.
We don’t need to have catastrophic events to feel the suffering. I like to live large, so apparently my dealings prefer to be marvelously dramatic. Suffering of an “ordinary” level is just as painful—being trapped in the mind is just as constraining whether we are faced with drug additions or boy problems. Breaking free is just as remarkable, whatever and however mundane the circumstances appear to be.
The people around me are leading spectacular lives. Because they are real. We are all going to be there sooner than we know. You don’t have to take my word for it. You won’t, until you see it yourself. But I will say it anyway, it’s so so so much better when it’s authentic. And being authentic brings the bliss.
Thursday, October 28, 2010
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
heart to hearth: cultivating generosity
Hyannisport. Mid-May, pre-season Cape Cod. The multi-million dollar home is a stone’s throw from the Kennedy Compound; its lawn nuzzling the Atlantic Ocean expansive enough for six shoulder-to-shoulder croquet matches. While relishing in the surroundings, post shower one afternoon, I wrapped myself in the softest towel I had ever experienced. Wanting to procure it for myself, I looked at the label: Neiman Marcus. Of course. Later I researched: $135 a bath towel. There were seven grand worth of towels in the house alone.
My ex and bestie is one of the greatest of all time, but he doesn’t have a mind for logistics. Or rather, he doesn’t have MY mind for logistics, which when thrown a potpourri of information will have it immediately organized, people inspired and bossed around, and all data cross-referenced and color coded in detailed printouts with back-up digital copies on the always carted Blackberry, just in case.
So when his family bid on the aforementioned private mansion at a charity auction and were unable to use its seven bedrooms for a week away, natch I was called to step in and figure out who went where. We weren’t quite given enough notice allowing peeps to plan proper vacation time off, so it became a hodge podge of guests; a puzzle of room arranging that required (in my mind) spreadsheets.
The bestie and I had just departed from a “woo” weekend workshop when we learned of the house. Needless to say, we were particularly open. I ended up inviting two people to join our vaca who were strangers pre-workshop. One was tall, gorgeous Katie. She radiated. I literally thought: Amazon woman, Greek goddess. Katie seemed like too confining a name for such epic female form. She and I complimented each other in the bathroom and came back to our seats only to find we were sitting side by side. We watched each other pull out a green juice from our respective bags with a manicured hand, at which point I looked her in the eye and said, “We’re going to be new best friends.” Once I found out she lived close to me on Perry Street, the deal was done.
Her own bestie in tow David was a handsome, quiet man with an unwavering groundedness and one of those bodies that is incredibly well cared for. (That’s the PC version of: really super yoked.) We didn’t speak as much, but in my mind, I grouped them together. I immediately adored the outgoing gal, and by default, trusted her entourage. They were shortly thereafter invited to the Cape with ten other friends.
In the road trip up, I gave the breakdown of that weekend’s guests to the guy I was dating at the time. (This was a fairly new relationship, and he did get mad props for being game to join. A dozen people he didn’t really know? Our first weekend away in a house that was provided by my Ex-husband? Creative and spiritual types that he had absolutely no close relationship with in his own world? Mad props.)
That being said, once I mentioned the two new additions to our group, he pretty much told me he thought I was out of my mind.
"You mean, you don't even know these people?”
I looked at him, all puppy-eyed and innocent (a recently cultivated look,) “I’ve never met them, but I know them.”
(Hm. Now looking back on it, this might have been the moment that the relationship took a turn toward its expiration.)
“Wow, I just don’t know anyone who would ever do that.”
“That’s how we roll. I can see they’re good people. What’s the worst that could happen?”
Well, lucky for me, so this story may somewhere, sometime veer near a point, only the best happened. Katie and David turned out to get gold stars for the weekend; their generosity was bountiful. An unecessary boon to all of us, for sure, and a windfall that was not even karmically mine—the house after all had nothing to do with me, I was merely the company manager for its arrangements.
After a couple of days of David and Katie’s general fun-loving magnanimous attitudes and deep awesomeness, even the guy I was with admitted, "I misjudged him. I’m touched that he would be so generous without knowing me.” The guy was given a book from the local Barnes and Noble and some excellent free therapy that he was enthusiastic about at the time, but that I’m not sure he ever heeded.
David and Katie grew to be good friends in separate ways. Katie was always great for a bright smile or a no frills soul excavation, and made the cut to the short-list roster for a “girls night” crew—my own “pink ladies” of Manhattan. I began to work with David as my network chiropractor and his insight and wisdom continues to floor me every time I think I can get away with a choice that’s less than what I ultimately deserve and he calls me out on my own sneaky ego-ic b.s. When I needed a space for my first Goddess weekend workshop, he offered his office flatiron loft with a generosity beyond measure: “It’s your first time, just give me whatever you want for utilities.”
Unbounded generosity from a heart-centered hunch and a pinch of faith. This… this is how I would like to see the world starting to work on a large scale. What if we trusted people more? What if we left places/spaces/events better than when we found them, to hold the integrity for having faith in that trust?
Jim Carrey spoke recently about how the “news has the media condense all of this negativity in one place and is not representative of what the world is, or what the world wants.” We have a misperception about the goodness of life. People are starting to shift that perception, because celebration is truckload of a lot more fun. Call it a vanity of self expansion: Faith makes you prettier. Integrity offers peace of mind. Generosity keeps the flow of abundance open.
Financially my friends run the gamut. There are a few who are by anyone's designation: wealthy, most are very well off and then I have peeps who have given up the exec life opting for something simpler, and those who have yet to get to that place they deserve in terms of prosperity.
I’ll tell you this much, what I see first hand, is that happiness is directly equated to what you give. Rich or poor, retired by 40 or juggling a day job to support a higher artistic vision, the people who give are shinier, happier people.
You can call it “pay it forward” “you give what you get” “as within, so without…” it’s not how much do you give, it’s DO you give? And in what spirit do you give? Reluctantly, because you feel like you should? Do you take into account how much others around you have and make up the difference because you know you can afford more? If money isn’t flourishing, do you give in other ways? There’s no wrong, it’s not a quiz, but really… look… do you give?
Money is just energy. It’s all just consciousness. And as all the “good” work we try to do on ourselves is not a one-for-one exchange, neither are the karmic backlashes of those times we remain tight-fisted out of “reason.” Greed, apathy, hoarding, these are unconscious exercises that lead to cancer, shutting down, a hardening of the heart. Our media only exacerbates the situation with it’s constant fear-inducing dramatics. Turn down the volume.
I’ve been (pardon the pun) on both sides of the coin. Even very recently, taken out by friends when things were tight, and I have in the past gratefully footed the bill when I know it’s tough for someone else. But it’s not about money is it? It’s about love, and with a card, a phone call in hearing someone out when you really have ‘better things to do,', making the choice to put someone's needs in front of our own when it may not be the comfiest response... what you give is what you get. When you gamble on the good, life will not let you down, and cultivating generosity will morph it into a natural practice.
The people who own that insanely awesome Cape Cod house are hugely active philanthropists. Their home (it was at least their 2nd, maybe even 3rd?,) covered in family photographs of smiling faces. They have the formula figured out, and you can see it in the walls—there is no end in sight to the richness of their lives. Prosperity consciousness always starts from within. Heart to hearth, that’s the path.
My ex and bestie is one of the greatest of all time, but he doesn’t have a mind for logistics. Or rather, he doesn’t have MY mind for logistics, which when thrown a potpourri of information will have it immediately organized, people inspired and bossed around, and all data cross-referenced and color coded in detailed printouts with back-up digital copies on the always carted Blackberry, just in case.
So when his family bid on the aforementioned private mansion at a charity auction and were unable to use its seven bedrooms for a week away, natch I was called to step in and figure out who went where. We weren’t quite given enough notice allowing peeps to plan proper vacation time off, so it became a hodge podge of guests; a puzzle of room arranging that required (in my mind) spreadsheets.
The bestie and I had just departed from a “woo” weekend workshop when we learned of the house. Needless to say, we were particularly open. I ended up inviting two people to join our vaca who were strangers pre-workshop. One was tall, gorgeous Katie. She radiated. I literally thought: Amazon woman, Greek goddess. Katie seemed like too confining a name for such epic female form. She and I complimented each other in the bathroom and came back to our seats only to find we were sitting side by side. We watched each other pull out a green juice from our respective bags with a manicured hand, at which point I looked her in the eye and said, “We’re going to be new best friends.” Once I found out she lived close to me on Perry Street, the deal was done.
Her own bestie in tow David was a handsome, quiet man with an unwavering groundedness and one of those bodies that is incredibly well cared for. (That’s the PC version of: really super yoked.) We didn’t speak as much, but in my mind, I grouped them together. I immediately adored the outgoing gal, and by default, trusted her entourage. They were shortly thereafter invited to the Cape with ten other friends.
In the road trip up, I gave the breakdown of that weekend’s guests to the guy I was dating at the time. (This was a fairly new relationship, and he did get mad props for being game to join. A dozen people he didn’t really know? Our first weekend away in a house that was provided by my Ex-husband? Creative and spiritual types that he had absolutely no close relationship with in his own world? Mad props.)
That being said, once I mentioned the two new additions to our group, he pretty much told me he thought I was out of my mind.
"You mean, you don't even know these people?”
I looked at him, all puppy-eyed and innocent (a recently cultivated look,) “I’ve never met them, but I know them.”
(Hm. Now looking back on it, this might have been the moment that the relationship took a turn toward its expiration.)
“Wow, I just don’t know anyone who would ever do that.”
“That’s how we roll. I can see they’re good people. What’s the worst that could happen?”
Well, lucky for me, so this story may somewhere, sometime veer near a point, only the best happened. Katie and David turned out to get gold stars for the weekend; their generosity was bountiful. An unecessary boon to all of us, for sure, and a windfall that was not even karmically mine—the house after all had nothing to do with me, I was merely the company manager for its arrangements.
After a couple of days of David and Katie’s general fun-loving magnanimous attitudes and deep awesomeness, even the guy I was with admitted, "I misjudged him. I’m touched that he would be so generous without knowing me.” The guy was given a book from the local Barnes and Noble and some excellent free therapy that he was enthusiastic about at the time, but that I’m not sure he ever heeded.
David and Katie grew to be good friends in separate ways. Katie was always great for a bright smile or a no frills soul excavation, and made the cut to the short-list roster for a “girls night” crew—my own “pink ladies” of Manhattan. I began to work with David as my network chiropractor and his insight and wisdom continues to floor me every time I think I can get away with a choice that’s less than what I ultimately deserve and he calls me out on my own sneaky ego-ic b.s. When I needed a space for my first Goddess weekend workshop, he offered his office flatiron loft with a generosity beyond measure: “It’s your first time, just give me whatever you want for utilities.”
Unbounded generosity from a heart-centered hunch and a pinch of faith. This… this is how I would like to see the world starting to work on a large scale. What if we trusted people more? What if we left places/spaces/events better than when we found them, to hold the integrity for having faith in that trust?
Jim Carrey spoke recently about how the “news has the media condense all of this negativity in one place and is not representative of what the world is, or what the world wants.” We have a misperception about the goodness of life. People are starting to shift that perception, because celebration is truckload of a lot more fun. Call it a vanity of self expansion: Faith makes you prettier. Integrity offers peace of mind. Generosity keeps the flow of abundance open.
Financially my friends run the gamut. There are a few who are by anyone's designation: wealthy, most are very well off and then I have peeps who have given up the exec life opting for something simpler, and those who have yet to get to that place they deserve in terms of prosperity.
I’ll tell you this much, what I see first hand, is that happiness is directly equated to what you give. Rich or poor, retired by 40 or juggling a day job to support a higher artistic vision, the people who give are shinier, happier people.
You can call it “pay it forward” “you give what you get” “as within, so without…” it’s not how much do you give, it’s DO you give? And in what spirit do you give? Reluctantly, because you feel like you should? Do you take into account how much others around you have and make up the difference because you know you can afford more? If money isn’t flourishing, do you give in other ways? There’s no wrong, it’s not a quiz, but really… look… do you give?
Money is just energy. It’s all just consciousness. And as all the “good” work we try to do on ourselves is not a one-for-one exchange, neither are the karmic backlashes of those times we remain tight-fisted out of “reason.” Greed, apathy, hoarding, these are unconscious exercises that lead to cancer, shutting down, a hardening of the heart. Our media only exacerbates the situation with it’s constant fear-inducing dramatics. Turn down the volume.
I’ve been (pardon the pun) on both sides of the coin. Even very recently, taken out by friends when things were tight, and I have in the past gratefully footed the bill when I know it’s tough for someone else. But it’s not about money is it? It’s about love, and with a card, a phone call in hearing someone out when you really have ‘better things to do,', making the choice to put someone's needs in front of our own when it may not be the comfiest response... what you give is what you get. When you gamble on the good, life will not let you down, and cultivating generosity will morph it into a natural practice.
The people who own that insanely awesome Cape Cod house are hugely active philanthropists. Their home (it was at least their 2nd, maybe even 3rd?,) covered in family photographs of smiling faces. They have the formula figured out, and you can see it in the walls—there is no end in sight to the richness of their lives. Prosperity consciousness always starts from within. Heart to hearth, that’s the path.
Monday, October 11, 2010
when life chooses for us
There was one full day that my iPod repeated Kelly Clarkson’s “Since You’ve Been Gone” a solid seven times. I pulled the rebounder/trampoline from underneath my bed and with some fierce fist-pumping, seriously bounced it out. In fact, I have an old iTunes playlist dubbed “screw you” which came in super handy for about 48 hours. The itinerary that week was: shock/pasta/wine, bouncing/punching/kicking and then my inevitable green juice cleanse/turn in/give it up/let go/figure it out.
One moment everything was perfect and the next I was jilted; inelegantly, impolitely and unconsciously. I did my best to not add any drama to the “story.” Still the (unsolicited, unanimous) response from my friends at the scene of the crime was clear: “what??” “are you serious??” “not ok” “game over” “done.”
There’s a Sioux legend that states: “The longest journey you will make in your life is from your head to your heart.” Here I had the reverse situation. My head, my friends and even my (usually zen and silent) hairdresser clearly pointed out the red flags and danger, yet still, my silly heart wanted it. Thank you, Kelly Clarkson, for bouncing me straight.
When my own emotional dust dissipated I was left with the question that had come up immediately, and finally the clear-headedness to approach it: How did I bring this to myself? What is it in me that caused this to happen? Am I really that dumb or is there something that hasn’t been cleared yet? And I sank in, I went deep, I unearthed a past hurt I thought was over—a trauma from my childhood I thought in all these years of “woo” I had worked through, and there it was, its sad little face, whimpering, “Hey, I’m still here.“ I pulled her into an embrace of acceptance and love… I hold this. I take responsibility for it. I bring the ugliness to light and so the story changes, NOW.
I’m sure I don’t need to tell you, there is something major and unprecedented up with the world as of late. There is quite simply no one I know who is on solid ground. Looking around at my friends, those close to me, anybody who is really working on figuring it all out whether though yoga, therapy, parenthood (rather than just blindly forging ahead in a chosen surface ignorance) is struggling/unsure/unclear in a major aspect of their life. Monstrous curve balls are being thrown in our faces, rugs pulled out from under us, or we’re stuck in patterns of indecision, restlessness, pain and almost everyone has really just about had enough.
A friend of a friend described it as constipation, which I think is most appropriate. We are on the precipice of something great but we can’t see what that is, and right now it feels like everyone needs a huge dose of emotional, spiritual or financial Ex Lax.
The peeps in India say two things—firstly I’ve been hearing for months that there is a giant energy shift in November, another in March and of course the upcoming 2012 brouhaha. Ok, November (jeez, there better be,) almost here, bring it. They also said this week that if we are in the midst of all of this existential suffering, if we are experiencing more of that than physical (i.e.: ‘ow, my bones are creaking, that f’ing hurts’) or psychological (‘why did he say that, what happens if she doesn’t call me, he/she/they had no right to do that, why are my bones creaking?’)—if those thoughts are secondary to a general “what am I doing with my life/what’s the purpose” malaise, then that means we are “guaranteed” enlightenment in this life and we should be celebrating the uncomfortability. Eckhart Tolle and his three years of misery were referenced. Props went out to David Hawkins.
Regardless of all that, we cannot know something as true until we experience it. Therefore, I am not offering you the information above as something I know to be upcoming fact. I’m not a fortune teller, I’m a downtown philosopher with a hole in the big toe of her sock and Lindt sea salt dark chocolate on her tongue, who can’t even fast-forward six hours to make a commitment for dinner tonight. I write it here, so that if it might happen to give you comfort, then that opportunity is there.
The last months, well, years, of my life have been consumed by an enthusiasm for this knowledge; by a desire to share what I have seen and learned most simply and humbly because the quality of my world is so much more excellent having been exposed to these things. The rewards of living a conscious life, again, cannot be known until experienced. Are we going to reach “enlightenment” in this life? To be honest, I don’t really quite care. I’m here. I show up. I’m present for my friends. Even in pain, I am clear-headed, this is all I know to be true. This is what’s real for me.
I was very recently asked by a skeptic, what happens if none of this stuff turns out to be true? What if there is no huge shift in 2012? What if humanity stays the same? What if this is it? And by the way, “you’re beautiful, smart, sweet… I don’t understand why don’t you really go and do something with your life?”
I wish I could say with authority that I chose this… this artist’s life, which is now morphing/merging with an even more amorphous (less practical, less definable, let’s be honest—less “marketable” artist/philosopher life.) Would more credence be given to what I was doing if I were made rich by doing it? In America, it sure would. But we don’t just live in America. We live in a realm bigger than this. I didn’t “choose” to be here, I just followed my heart and my intuition and know it’s not “me” doing it and the joy, the beauty, even in the pain, even in the difficulty, reflecting back at me both pre and post Kelly Clarkson bouncing is something I wouldn’t trade for anything. And I have exquisite taste, if I do say so myself, so that’s no small statement.
I didn’t choose it. It chose me. And I choose to have the faith that this is where I need to be at this moment, and that this moment is perfect. And to my friends who are so outrageously beautiful and inspiring, I say hold fast. The faith isn’t only for myself; it’s for you, for us.
Because even though I can’t lavish the people I love with the material things of this world in the way that I wish I could right now… even though things might be messy and muddy and mascara smeared… even though I’m a tiny woman with a laptop on a chaise in a Village studio, I might be tiny, but I’m not small. None of us are. And so we hang on to that faith, in each other, in something greater around us because we trust the beauty that is our authenticity. We trust that even when it looks ugly, that by choosing to live an integral life, the beauty is on the way. When everything falls apart, we find the courage to be brave, to be raw, to be present, to be real. And that to me, is the most important thing of all.
One moment everything was perfect and the next I was jilted; inelegantly, impolitely and unconsciously. I did my best to not add any drama to the “story.” Still the (unsolicited, unanimous) response from my friends at the scene of the crime was clear: “what??” “are you serious??” “not ok” “game over” “done.”
There’s a Sioux legend that states: “The longest journey you will make in your life is from your head to your heart.” Here I had the reverse situation. My head, my friends and even my (usually zen and silent) hairdresser clearly pointed out the red flags and danger, yet still, my silly heart wanted it. Thank you, Kelly Clarkson, for bouncing me straight.
When my own emotional dust dissipated I was left with the question that had come up immediately, and finally the clear-headedness to approach it: How did I bring this to myself? What is it in me that caused this to happen? Am I really that dumb or is there something that hasn’t been cleared yet? And I sank in, I went deep, I unearthed a past hurt I thought was over—a trauma from my childhood I thought in all these years of “woo” I had worked through, and there it was, its sad little face, whimpering, “Hey, I’m still here.“ I pulled her into an embrace of acceptance and love… I hold this. I take responsibility for it. I bring the ugliness to light and so the story changes, NOW.
I’m sure I don’t need to tell you, there is something major and unprecedented up with the world as of late. There is quite simply no one I know who is on solid ground. Looking around at my friends, those close to me, anybody who is really working on figuring it all out whether though yoga, therapy, parenthood (rather than just blindly forging ahead in a chosen surface ignorance) is struggling/unsure/unclear in a major aspect of their life. Monstrous curve balls are being thrown in our faces, rugs pulled out from under us, or we’re stuck in patterns of indecision, restlessness, pain and almost everyone has really just about had enough.
A friend of a friend described it as constipation, which I think is most appropriate. We are on the precipice of something great but we can’t see what that is, and right now it feels like everyone needs a huge dose of emotional, spiritual or financial Ex Lax.
The peeps in India say two things—firstly I’ve been hearing for months that there is a giant energy shift in November, another in March and of course the upcoming 2012 brouhaha. Ok, November (jeez, there better be,) almost here, bring it. They also said this week that if we are in the midst of all of this existential suffering, if we are experiencing more of that than physical (i.e.: ‘ow, my bones are creaking, that f’ing hurts’) or psychological (‘why did he say that, what happens if she doesn’t call me, he/she/they had no right to do that, why are my bones creaking?’)—if those thoughts are secondary to a general “what am I doing with my life/what’s the purpose” malaise, then that means we are “guaranteed” enlightenment in this life and we should be celebrating the uncomfortability. Eckhart Tolle and his three years of misery were referenced. Props went out to David Hawkins.
Regardless of all that, we cannot know something as true until we experience it. Therefore, I am not offering you the information above as something I know to be upcoming fact. I’m not a fortune teller, I’m a downtown philosopher with a hole in the big toe of her sock and Lindt sea salt dark chocolate on her tongue, who can’t even fast-forward six hours to make a commitment for dinner tonight. I write it here, so that if it might happen to give you comfort, then that opportunity is there.
The last months, well, years, of my life have been consumed by an enthusiasm for this knowledge; by a desire to share what I have seen and learned most simply and humbly because the quality of my world is so much more excellent having been exposed to these things. The rewards of living a conscious life, again, cannot be known until experienced. Are we going to reach “enlightenment” in this life? To be honest, I don’t really quite care. I’m here. I show up. I’m present for my friends. Even in pain, I am clear-headed, this is all I know to be true. This is what’s real for me.
I was very recently asked by a skeptic, what happens if none of this stuff turns out to be true? What if there is no huge shift in 2012? What if humanity stays the same? What if this is it? And by the way, “you’re beautiful, smart, sweet… I don’t understand why don’t you really go and do something with your life?”
I wish I could say with authority that I chose this… this artist’s life, which is now morphing/merging with an even more amorphous (less practical, less definable, let’s be honest—less “marketable” artist/philosopher life.) Would more credence be given to what I was doing if I were made rich by doing it? In America, it sure would. But we don’t just live in America. We live in a realm bigger than this. I didn’t “choose” to be here, I just followed my heart and my intuition and know it’s not “me” doing it and the joy, the beauty, even in the pain, even in the difficulty, reflecting back at me both pre and post Kelly Clarkson bouncing is something I wouldn’t trade for anything. And I have exquisite taste, if I do say so myself, so that’s no small statement.
I didn’t choose it. It chose me. And I choose to have the faith that this is where I need to be at this moment, and that this moment is perfect. And to my friends who are so outrageously beautiful and inspiring, I say hold fast. The faith isn’t only for myself; it’s for you, for us.
Because even though I can’t lavish the people I love with the material things of this world in the way that I wish I could right now… even though things might be messy and muddy and mascara smeared… even though I’m a tiny woman with a laptop on a chaise in a Village studio, I might be tiny, but I’m not small. None of us are. And so we hang on to that faith, in each other, in something greater around us because we trust the beauty that is our authenticity. We trust that even when it looks ugly, that by choosing to live an integral life, the beauty is on the way. When everything falls apart, we find the courage to be brave, to be raw, to be present, to be real. And that to me, is the most important thing of all.
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