Hello lovely, please come visit me now here: http://margaretnichols.com/
It's fancier.
x
mags
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
Monday, March 7, 2011
rude awakenings: trading the small for the All
If there’s anyone out there that doesn’t want to believe things are a changin’, they are in for a bit of a rude awakening. Well, for all of us awakening may turn out to be a bit rude, because to paraphrase modern brillz sage Adyashanti: we don’t want awakening, we want our version of awakening. Rude, is therefore perhaps, inherent.
And although those who are actively seeking, or at least actively considering a clumsy tango with this potential beloved (those, such as yourselves) are awake enough to see that it is unfolding whether we want it to or not—although we may seem to choose it, it is becoming increasingly apparent that this is dropping (Snoop Dog) “like it’s hot”—our mom, our boss, our neighbor is going to begin to lose it too. We’re waking up.
Again Adyashanti offers in “The End of Your World” :
“’Oh, yes, let me sign up! I’m willing to lose my whole world.’ But when your world starts to crumble, and you start to emerge from unimaginably deep states of denial, it is something altogether different. It is something altogether more real and gritty. It’s something that some people sign up for and some people don’t.”
That sounds pretty sh**y right? Mags, why would I want that? Um, I’m ready to have wintry meditative hibernation scootch over-- Yankees spring training has already started, lady.
Sorry sweets, I’m telling you, it’s gonna happen. It’s happening.
Not just in my circles—other friends who are spiritual visionaries in their own right, on paths and teachings I’m not associated with, have been espousing higher versions of themselves recently.
My fave button-pushing, rogue, self-dubbed “cybernetic yogi” Everett Bogue checked in via twitter and between cities. We both agreed, we’ve “upgraded.”
“The new me is not fitting into old forms...” was posted on Facebook by a dearest, a longtime student and teacher of the Self. He is not sitting barefoot, in white, on a floor in India. He is a New York Senior Vice President in a global public relations firm.
The time it is taking for me to organize, vision, support and care within my own community has become all encompassing. Without my choosing it, it is suddenly: “ok, I guess I’m doing this all the time now.”
I don’t need to tell you. You know. Otherwise you wouldn’t be reading this.
What I want to talk about is one tricky aspect of this transition. There can be a sense of loneliness as this awakening starts to, for reals, sweep over our lives. What we’re doing is letting go of any attachments to what we think we are, and in turn, the Source of all that is fantabulous takes over instead.
Now, we’re always going to be the same “person.” I’m not going to awaken and become a unicorn walking around; that would super weird, make it difficult to get restaurant reservations and it'd just be a horrible waste of a spectacular wardrobe.
But, instead I become not defined by said wardrobe, or for that matter, by anything in my world. Whether positive or negative, nothing sticks. And in a way, this can come coupled with a type of mourning, because we are not our family, our lover, our job, the life we thought we so carefully constructed. Those shapes no longer provide us with comfort. They can present great joy, love, happiness, but it passes by in a warm flourish; they are not carried with us to buoy when a crap day rolls around.
Lonely is not the appropriate word for it. I think of a Polish word, smutný, which technically translates as sad, but for me has almost had a bit of a bittersweet meaning. If there were a positive word for lonely, that would be what it is, and perhaps we need to invent one. I bet the French have a word for it; they always vibe with those black and white, emotive juxtapositions.
As definition drops away, in tandem, things are taken away from us so that at times life “forces” this process of letting go, and that can (depending on where we are in terms of our ascent) be a painful and an outwardly seeming: totally unfair.
We lose ownership of anything in our lives, replaced instead by the Presence of experiencing it fully in the moment. I described it in an email to a girlfriend as “giving up the small for the All.”
This can be incredibly discombobulating, even frightening, which is why the process for most of us is a slowly unfurling organic flowering towards That Huge Understanding, rather than one big, dramatic, trumpeted BANG. If we woke up one day, just suddenly able to experience EVERYTHING, absolutement, it could be too much, on a very basic physiological level.
Because that’s what it is, experiencing EVERYTHING. Every cell pulsates with the present. To be anywhere other than exactly where you are would seem preposterous. No, that’s too strong a word—because the idea to be anywhere else, would simply never cross your mind.
In the courtship with our Awakening, we have it and we lose it. Over and again. And much like avoiding our suffering, if we have it and we lost it, we naturally reach to have it again. We reach for the love + comfort, because, obvi, we want it, always.
So life keeps things out of our reach so that we can experience uber-uncomfortability. It gets edgy out on the outside, so that we keep digging or wood-shedding or opening to that place of the main Truth that is our core.
Two of my closest friends, who I happened to marry about six months ago, are apart for the first year of their marriage because the gorgeous wife is on a Broadway tour. Theirs is one of the greatest loves I’ve seen. One could list any number of reasons, excuses, choices for their separation… she’s living her dream, after all.
I think the world has bigger plans for them.
There’s a depth and a solitude that needed to take place for their spiritual growth that wouldn’t have been able to happen in the newlywed year of marital bliss. Life has a larger Bliss in mind.
Although they are outwardly hottie pattotie rockstar creatives not to mention incredibly generous and loving and ridonkulously fun individuals, they are also serious students of this trot to Awakening. Life is saying, sorry, you can’t just spend all day Saturday practicing bringing the next little awesome version of you to this world—there’s more.
This is the overlying truth for everything. Life is this spontaneous unfolding that we are a part of, but we do not have control of-- a very tricky thing for our minds to wrap around, because for us to “understand” it, we need to be out of the mind.
Once we experience Reality, the moments of disconnect can be extraordinarily painful and, as I said earlier, lonely, as we settle into a new way of being and the old forms, relationships, comforts, identities no longer make the grade. It might for some moments feel like a disconnect, but what happens eventually and paradoxically is the ultimate *connect* because we feel more sensation, yet no possession of our bodies while in turn, connected to everything else.
It’s tricky because it’s not a choice—it just happens.
And there are actually two aspects of the loneliness I’m speaking to here.
1- loneliness in the process
2- (insert the positive version of loneliness) upon seeing
Loneliness in the process is the disconnect.
"Loneliness" upon seeing, is having it all, and knowing you didn’t do any of it.
Your business? Not yours.
Your partner? Not yours.
Compliments, praise, gratitude? Like eating a spoonful of New York Super Fudge Chunk, pleasant at the moment and then it dissipates into the past—it does not inform you, build you up or make you more than.
...not yours.
The contradiction that coexists is that there is more of all of it: you just don’t get to “have” it.
We, the world, will continue to unfold and extend until we are in that place permanently. The awesome thing is-- when we’re in that place of Being, and we see what it is, and we’re not scared of it, it IS the ultimate flow.
It is having everything we want, being provided for entirely and fully encompassed by purpose and love. Whether you're an executive vice-president, a Broadway dancer or a barefoot hippie.
No one can do this for us, so we may have to, for a time, learn to be lonely. It’s then and only then that we reach for the nourishment that really fuels our fire. And when we get there? Well, we’re going to have to find that new, positive definition for loneliness, because how can you possibly be lonely when you have it ALL?
And although those who are actively seeking, or at least actively considering a clumsy tango with this potential beloved (those, such as yourselves) are awake enough to see that it is unfolding whether we want it to or not—although we may seem to choose it, it is becoming increasingly apparent that this is dropping (Snoop Dog) “like it’s hot”—our mom, our boss, our neighbor is going to begin to lose it too. We’re waking up.
Again Adyashanti offers in “The End of Your World” :
“’Oh, yes, let me sign up! I’m willing to lose my whole world.’ But when your world starts to crumble, and you start to emerge from unimaginably deep states of denial, it is something altogether different. It is something altogether more real and gritty. It’s something that some people sign up for and some people don’t.”
That sounds pretty sh**y right? Mags, why would I want that? Um, I’m ready to have wintry meditative hibernation scootch over-- Yankees spring training has already started, lady.
Sorry sweets, I’m telling you, it’s gonna happen. It’s happening.
Not just in my circles—other friends who are spiritual visionaries in their own right, on paths and teachings I’m not associated with, have been espousing higher versions of themselves recently.
My fave button-pushing, rogue, self-dubbed “cybernetic yogi” Everett Bogue checked in via twitter and between cities. We both agreed, we’ve “upgraded.”
“The new me is not fitting into old forms...” was posted on Facebook by a dearest, a longtime student and teacher of the Self. He is not sitting barefoot, in white, on a floor in India. He is a New York Senior Vice President in a global public relations firm.
The time it is taking for me to organize, vision, support and care within my own community has become all encompassing. Without my choosing it, it is suddenly: “ok, I guess I’m doing this all the time now.”
I don’t need to tell you. You know. Otherwise you wouldn’t be reading this.
What I want to talk about is one tricky aspect of this transition. There can be a sense of loneliness as this awakening starts to, for reals, sweep over our lives. What we’re doing is letting go of any attachments to what we think we are, and in turn, the Source of all that is fantabulous takes over instead.
Now, we’re always going to be the same “person.” I’m not going to awaken and become a unicorn walking around; that would super weird, make it difficult to get restaurant reservations and it'd just be a horrible waste of a spectacular wardrobe.
But, instead I become not defined by said wardrobe, or for that matter, by anything in my world. Whether positive or negative, nothing sticks. And in a way, this can come coupled with a type of mourning, because we are not our family, our lover, our job, the life we thought we so carefully constructed. Those shapes no longer provide us with comfort. They can present great joy, love, happiness, but it passes by in a warm flourish; they are not carried with us to buoy when a crap day rolls around.
Lonely is not the appropriate word for it. I think of a Polish word, smutný, which technically translates as sad, but for me has almost had a bit of a bittersweet meaning. If there were a positive word for lonely, that would be what it is, and perhaps we need to invent one. I bet the French have a word for it; they always vibe with those black and white, emotive juxtapositions.
As definition drops away, in tandem, things are taken away from us so that at times life “forces” this process of letting go, and that can (depending on where we are in terms of our ascent) be a painful and an outwardly seeming: totally unfair.
We lose ownership of anything in our lives, replaced instead by the Presence of experiencing it fully in the moment. I described it in an email to a girlfriend as “giving up the small for the All.”
This can be incredibly discombobulating, even frightening, which is why the process for most of us is a slowly unfurling organic flowering towards That Huge Understanding, rather than one big, dramatic, trumpeted BANG. If we woke up one day, just suddenly able to experience EVERYTHING, absolutement, it could be too much, on a very basic physiological level.
Because that’s what it is, experiencing EVERYTHING. Every cell pulsates with the present. To be anywhere other than exactly where you are would seem preposterous. No, that’s too strong a word—because the idea to be anywhere else, would simply never cross your mind.
In the courtship with our Awakening, we have it and we lose it. Over and again. And much like avoiding our suffering, if we have it and we lost it, we naturally reach to have it again. We reach for the love + comfort, because, obvi, we want it, always.
So life keeps things out of our reach so that we can experience uber-uncomfortability. It gets edgy out on the outside, so that we keep digging or wood-shedding or opening to that place of the main Truth that is our core.
Two of my closest friends, who I happened to marry about six months ago, are apart for the first year of their marriage because the gorgeous wife is on a Broadway tour. Theirs is one of the greatest loves I’ve seen. One could list any number of reasons, excuses, choices for their separation… she’s living her dream, after all.
I think the world has bigger plans for them.
There’s a depth and a solitude that needed to take place for their spiritual growth that wouldn’t have been able to happen in the newlywed year of marital bliss. Life has a larger Bliss in mind.
Although they are outwardly hottie pattotie rockstar creatives not to mention incredibly generous and loving and ridonkulously fun individuals, they are also serious students of this trot to Awakening. Life is saying, sorry, you can’t just spend all day Saturday practicing bringing the next little awesome version of you to this world—there’s more.
This is the overlying truth for everything. Life is this spontaneous unfolding that we are a part of, but we do not have control of-- a very tricky thing for our minds to wrap around, because for us to “understand” it, we need to be out of the mind.
Once we experience Reality, the moments of disconnect can be extraordinarily painful and, as I said earlier, lonely, as we settle into a new way of being and the old forms, relationships, comforts, identities no longer make the grade. It might for some moments feel like a disconnect, but what happens eventually and paradoxically is the ultimate *connect* because we feel more sensation, yet no possession of our bodies while in turn, connected to everything else.
It’s tricky because it’s not a choice—it just happens.
And there are actually two aspects of the loneliness I’m speaking to here.
1- loneliness in the process
2- (insert the positive version of loneliness) upon seeing
Loneliness in the process is the disconnect.
"Loneliness" upon seeing, is having it all, and knowing you didn’t do any of it.
Your business? Not yours.
Your partner? Not yours.
Compliments, praise, gratitude? Like eating a spoonful of New York Super Fudge Chunk, pleasant at the moment and then it dissipates into the past—it does not inform you, build you up or make you more than.
...not yours.
The contradiction that coexists is that there is more of all of it: you just don’t get to “have” it.
We, the world, will continue to unfold and extend until we are in that place permanently. The awesome thing is-- when we’re in that place of Being, and we see what it is, and we’re not scared of it, it IS the ultimate flow.
It is having everything we want, being provided for entirely and fully encompassed by purpose and love. Whether you're an executive vice-president, a Broadway dancer or a barefoot hippie.
No one can do this for us, so we may have to, for a time, learn to be lonely. It’s then and only then that we reach for the nourishment that really fuels our fire. And when we get there? Well, we’re going to have to find that new, positive definition for loneliness, because how can you possibly be lonely when you have it ALL?
Monday, February 21, 2011
Ultimate Love: keeping the crazy in our pants
I’m gonna talk about love. And not a “take my hand,” “pinch my behind,” “flowers on Valentine’s,” “hold my hair back when I have the flu” kind of love. I’m talking about the highest love. Ultimate Love. Infinite love, and why living from the place of trying to hold that truth can be a treacherous, tricky and sometimes bogus business.
This morning Marianne Williamson offered up via Twitter:
“Love is a Divine creation. It is Who We Really Are. Everything else is a mortal hallucination, and will fall away as we remember who we are.”
It irked me. If you saw that tweet feed, pre-coffee, post fight with your boyfriend, or waking up with a crink in your neck, it might irk you too.
I love me some MW and went through a huge phase of her sassafrass, gorgeous depth about six years ago. She was one of my first chosen woo gurus and I inhaled her audio recordings and books on daily stretches of six-mile walks one summer in Vermont when my world was in a very different place.
MW teaches on “A Course in Miracles” which is super-long text laid out in teachings of a one-year course, slowly crowbar-ing our eyes open to the highest Truth. Although MW was raised Jewish, the course comes from a Christic perspective. I’ve studied it, but never got through the whole thing.
It so very rightly postulates that there are only two things in this world, love and fear. Our consciousness, as over-arching Brahman, in the perfection of every moment as it is, is only love. But we don’t see that. That’s our “misperception.” Our ‘original sin’ as a species, if you will.
The course leads you through this realization delicately, but others I find cheerlead to always look for the love. Look for the LOVE (exclamation point, smiley face, heart emoticon) which is Nettly McNettlesom to hear if: a) you don’t feel like lookin’ for the love, or b) you can’t find it.
People cheerlead for love because it’s more marketable. Happiness, peace, money, sex!!! Comeandgetit!! If I titled lectures, courses, as “come join me and be with your suffering” that would be uber-depressing.
Things have been evolving ridiculously quickly in the last few months; both in my personal life, and if I can be so bold to speak for others—as a human race. Outrageous things happening and with those things people and events come in tow, which I lovingly (and sometimes not so lovingly) refer to as: crazypants.
I use this word so often, that my closest friends and I use the abbreviation: CP—this makes texting efficient, and a possibility to reference crazypants in perhaps a public setting where the word might not be the most generous to lob out.
CP refers many times to zesty people or events that I can’t yet, for instance, reference to my mom. And it’s not necessarily negative. I have TOTALLY been CP myself; I would happily wear a t-shirt labeling myself “Miss CP 2011” especially if that designation came with a ribbon and a tiara.
Particularly when we are on this path we will have glimpses, stretches into this Ultimate Love, into seeing the world as it truly is, and naturally we want to express and embrace that moment as it happens. Bring it on.
However, when we're not there... over-enthusiasm can be annoying. There was a moment when I was last in India, futzing with something on my laptop in the “dorm” room, when a woman who I adore came in, brimming with the light a high state, arms outstretched, stopping dramatically in the middle, proclaiming “ohmigosh—do you FEEL this?? There is SO much LOooooooVE in this room.” I didn’t roll my eyes. That would be rude. I internally rolled them.
I wasn’t in that space, and so I wasn’t feeling it. I certainly don’t want to squish anyone’s self expression and I absolutely value spreading love, 100%, spread it everywhere, tattoo it on your wrists, point it out when you see it. I only want to mention that we are not always living in the state of the highest Ultimate Love, so we’re not collectively ready to make that our parking spot.
People come to me with heart-wrenching stories of suffering, heartbreak, loss, confusion, that are very very real to them in their present moment. If I were to say, “oh just feel the Ultimate Love” pat them on their head and send them away in crisis, that would be not only irresponsible as a teacher, but as a human being.
It goes the same for any of the highest teachings. At the top tier nondual level, none of this exists. You don’t hear me talking about that so much, because how practical is that to us at this moment? Um, it’s not. Friends of mine have found enlightened Advaita masters and then gone into self-proclaimed six-month couch potato periods… what’s the point if it doesn’t exist?
The access to the love is through the present moment. I’m telling you. Don’t reach for love. Don’t waste your time. Don’t waste your efforts. Be where you are. It comes.
The Ultimate Love, and all other juicy phenomena such as compassion, right action, bliss are naturally and organically present when we have glimpses of, experiences with, and (one day soon) collectively reside in a permanently awakened state. When in this state, there is absolutely no need to reach because it is all that there is.
There could never be anything else and so in a way, it doesn’t have to be a celebration, because it is so vast and all-encompassing if we celebrated every moment that it happened there wouldn’t be cakes enough in the world to underline its sweetness.
The love I’m speaking of is a merging, the oneness with anything in front of you. It is a devotion, attention and care you would give to a slammed left elbow combined with a simultaneous marvel that the elbow exists in the first place. However the “Tao that can be named is not the Tao.” These words fall so hopelessly short of this Reality.
Something happened to me last night for the first time ever, so I’m going to round off with a short crazypants example. I first had glimpses of this about five years ago but now they are coming more and more regularly, without any reaching on my part, so I share this experience with you.
There’s a way that we can communicate with each other, without words. (This is total sci-fi movie stuff and I wouldn't have believed it until it started happening to me, so please bear with me...)
It is a kind of telepathic understanding and my experience has been thus far that it’s not through the mind, its highway is the heart. We merge with someone and we see who they are, what their thoughts or feelings are, their experience becomes yours, you know them.
It’s like what making love can be at its most intimate, but you don’t have to be naked, sweaty or even know the person. It doesn’t need to be preceded by a fancy dinner, four-inch heels and flirty SMS.
So last night I’m at an old stomping ground. One of my fave Italian spots in the city, at the foot of a downtown hipster New York hotel. I’m with someone I know and love very well (someone definitively not *spiritual*) and myself having been in hibernation, whom I had not seen for some time. We’re having a lovely long meal and at one point, I’m sitting across the table and give over some news about a person very close to us both.
His face is absolutely self- posessed, seeming even, to not register what I said. In the same instant, I, across the table, suddenly feel a punch in my solar plexus and it churns, deeply. It rips open with an ache of loss, hurt.
I am taken aback. Huh? What is this? This is not my emotion. I had/have no attachment/charge with the news… where is this coming from? The reaction is not mine. “Mags” is not feeling this. What the CP-ness is this?
His face is placid, but a moment later he tells me:
“That’s the worst news I’ve ever heard.”
A great businessman, his pokerface did not betray his emotion. I, across the table, experienced what was happening inside of him.
It was not an empathy, because I had no idea of his mental reaction until he told me. I did not at any preceding moment know I was going to share this news or anticipate what he might feel. I could never have expected he would be so hurt by it— frankly, I wasn’t aware that he cared that much. Ours was a registering, an understanding, a communication of the heart. I did not chose to feel it, it arose spontaneously. I could not lay claim to it—it was not mine.
This was a form of the Ultimate Love. Because even in experiencing its pain, that was the raw truth of the moment, and the connection, the oneness it provided, however “unpleasant,” was real. It was authentic and that made it beyond beautiful—that made it the ultimate beauty: life.
Why do we want this? Why do we want to get to this place? Because it’s f*ing awesome. Any rah rah ‘live your best life’ rhetoric you’ve heard? Bleached Benjamin James china white by comparison. It’s not even the same ballpark, much less the same sport as this Ultimate Love.
Love in every moment, no matter what it looks like. In angst, in grittiness. This is why I adore New York with its dark corners and debilitated sidewalks. Its millions, its masses, all with the greatest potential for that infinite love. How far experience can soar between our dark lounges and dramatic skyscrapers—how thrilling the latent probability of an impending Ultimate Love in its dirt.
Love is being where you are. We might not see it as that in the moment, but it will reveal itself… one day soon that will merge for us all. Bliss isn’t only shiny, it’s dirty. Let’s open our eyes to the possibility of not knowing what that will look like. That is truly opening ourselves to love and all its crazypants.
This morning Marianne Williamson offered up via Twitter:
“Love is a Divine creation. It is Who We Really Are. Everything else is a mortal hallucination, and will fall away as we remember who we are.”
It irked me. If you saw that tweet feed, pre-coffee, post fight with your boyfriend, or waking up with a crink in your neck, it might irk you too.
I love me some MW and went through a huge phase of her sassafrass, gorgeous depth about six years ago. She was one of my first chosen woo gurus and I inhaled her audio recordings and books on daily stretches of six-mile walks one summer in Vermont when my world was in a very different place.
MW teaches on “A Course in Miracles” which is super-long text laid out in teachings of a one-year course, slowly crowbar-ing our eyes open to the highest Truth. Although MW was raised Jewish, the course comes from a Christic perspective. I’ve studied it, but never got through the whole thing.
It so very rightly postulates that there are only two things in this world, love and fear. Our consciousness, as over-arching Brahman, in the perfection of every moment as it is, is only love. But we don’t see that. That’s our “misperception.” Our ‘original sin’ as a species, if you will.
The course leads you through this realization delicately, but others I find cheerlead to always look for the love. Look for the LOVE (exclamation point, smiley face, heart emoticon) which is Nettly McNettlesom to hear if: a) you don’t feel like lookin’ for the love, or b) you can’t find it.
People cheerlead for love because it’s more marketable. Happiness, peace, money, sex!!! Comeandgetit!! If I titled lectures, courses, as “come join me and be with your suffering” that would be uber-depressing.
Things have been evolving ridiculously quickly in the last few months; both in my personal life, and if I can be so bold to speak for others—as a human race. Outrageous things happening and with those things people and events come in tow, which I lovingly (and sometimes not so lovingly) refer to as: crazypants.
I use this word so often, that my closest friends and I use the abbreviation: CP—this makes texting efficient, and a possibility to reference crazypants in perhaps a public setting where the word might not be the most generous to lob out.
CP refers many times to zesty people or events that I can’t yet, for instance, reference to my mom. And it’s not necessarily negative. I have TOTALLY been CP myself; I would happily wear a t-shirt labeling myself “Miss CP 2011” especially if that designation came with a ribbon and a tiara.
Particularly when we are on this path we will have glimpses, stretches into this Ultimate Love, into seeing the world as it truly is, and naturally we want to express and embrace that moment as it happens. Bring it on.
However, when we're not there... over-enthusiasm can be annoying. There was a moment when I was last in India, futzing with something on my laptop in the “dorm” room, when a woman who I adore came in, brimming with the light a high state, arms outstretched, stopping dramatically in the middle, proclaiming “ohmigosh—do you FEEL this?? There is SO much LOooooooVE in this room.” I didn’t roll my eyes. That would be rude. I internally rolled them.
I wasn’t in that space, and so I wasn’t feeling it. I certainly don’t want to squish anyone’s self expression and I absolutely value spreading love, 100%, spread it everywhere, tattoo it on your wrists, point it out when you see it. I only want to mention that we are not always living in the state of the highest Ultimate Love, so we’re not collectively ready to make that our parking spot.
People come to me with heart-wrenching stories of suffering, heartbreak, loss, confusion, that are very very real to them in their present moment. If I were to say, “oh just feel the Ultimate Love” pat them on their head and send them away in crisis, that would be not only irresponsible as a teacher, but as a human being.
It goes the same for any of the highest teachings. At the top tier nondual level, none of this exists. You don’t hear me talking about that so much, because how practical is that to us at this moment? Um, it’s not. Friends of mine have found enlightened Advaita masters and then gone into self-proclaimed six-month couch potato periods… what’s the point if it doesn’t exist?
The access to the love is through the present moment. I’m telling you. Don’t reach for love. Don’t waste your time. Don’t waste your efforts. Be where you are. It comes.
The Ultimate Love, and all other juicy phenomena such as compassion, right action, bliss are naturally and organically present when we have glimpses of, experiences with, and (one day soon) collectively reside in a permanently awakened state. When in this state, there is absolutely no need to reach because it is all that there is.
There could never be anything else and so in a way, it doesn’t have to be a celebration, because it is so vast and all-encompassing if we celebrated every moment that it happened there wouldn’t be cakes enough in the world to underline its sweetness.
The love I’m speaking of is a merging, the oneness with anything in front of you. It is a devotion, attention and care you would give to a slammed left elbow combined with a simultaneous marvel that the elbow exists in the first place. However the “Tao that can be named is not the Tao.” These words fall so hopelessly short of this Reality.
Something happened to me last night for the first time ever, so I’m going to round off with a short crazypants example. I first had glimpses of this about five years ago but now they are coming more and more regularly, without any reaching on my part, so I share this experience with you.
There’s a way that we can communicate with each other, without words. (This is total sci-fi movie stuff and I wouldn't have believed it until it started happening to me, so please bear with me...)
It is a kind of telepathic understanding and my experience has been thus far that it’s not through the mind, its highway is the heart. We merge with someone and we see who they are, what their thoughts or feelings are, their experience becomes yours, you know them.
It’s like what making love can be at its most intimate, but you don’t have to be naked, sweaty or even know the person. It doesn’t need to be preceded by a fancy dinner, four-inch heels and flirty SMS.
So last night I’m at an old stomping ground. One of my fave Italian spots in the city, at the foot of a downtown hipster New York hotel. I’m with someone I know and love very well (someone definitively not *spiritual*) and myself having been in hibernation, whom I had not seen for some time. We’re having a lovely long meal and at one point, I’m sitting across the table and give over some news about a person very close to us both.
His face is absolutely self- posessed, seeming even, to not register what I said. In the same instant, I, across the table, suddenly feel a punch in my solar plexus and it churns, deeply. It rips open with an ache of loss, hurt.
I am taken aback. Huh? What is this? This is not my emotion. I had/have no attachment/charge with the news… where is this coming from? The reaction is not mine. “Mags” is not feeling this. What the CP-ness is this?
His face is placid, but a moment later he tells me:
“That’s the worst news I’ve ever heard.”
A great businessman, his pokerface did not betray his emotion. I, across the table, experienced what was happening inside of him.
It was not an empathy, because I had no idea of his mental reaction until he told me. I did not at any preceding moment know I was going to share this news or anticipate what he might feel. I could never have expected he would be so hurt by it— frankly, I wasn’t aware that he cared that much. Ours was a registering, an understanding, a communication of the heart. I did not chose to feel it, it arose spontaneously. I could not lay claim to it—it was not mine.
This was a form of the Ultimate Love. Because even in experiencing its pain, that was the raw truth of the moment, and the connection, the oneness it provided, however “unpleasant,” was real. It was authentic and that made it beyond beautiful—that made it the ultimate beauty: life.
Why do we want this? Why do we want to get to this place? Because it’s f*ing awesome. Any rah rah ‘live your best life’ rhetoric you’ve heard? Bleached Benjamin James china white by comparison. It’s not even the same ballpark, much less the same sport as this Ultimate Love.
Love in every moment, no matter what it looks like. In angst, in grittiness. This is why I adore New York with its dark corners and debilitated sidewalks. Its millions, its masses, all with the greatest potential for that infinite love. How far experience can soar between our dark lounges and dramatic skyscrapers—how thrilling the latent probability of an impending Ultimate Love in its dirt.
Love is being where you are. We might not see it as that in the moment, but it will reveal itself… one day soon that will merge for us all. Bliss isn’t only shiny, it’s dirty. Let’s open our eyes to the possibility of not knowing what that will look like. That is truly opening ourselves to love and all its crazypants.
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
authentic listening=the more direct urbandaddy
My dad caught me on either end of my LA conference. Going in, an 8am phone call as I was crawling the side streets of only marginally familiar Venice Beach, peeking for parking. I was distracted, annoyed, in my rental compact.
Why is he calling me so early? He never calls me in the morning. Is there anywhere to park longer than an hour?.. What a racket.
Simultaneously squinting to discern small letters on parking signage, while maneuvering questions about my pre-breakfast general well-being, didn’t make for a friendly, focused, familial exchange.
In a huff, I told him I’d call him back. I was pressed for time. In two hours I had to register at a weekend conference as an “advanced spiritual teacher.” Ha.
I learned innumerable things that weekend. My mind emptied, my heart was bedazzled and it was a fast and furious explosion of awareness that I’ve already written about here. But I’m going to take the woo down a notch and speak about a simple lesson that showed up beautifully and (as a city girl, I always appreciate this efficiency) immediately.
It was about true listening and here’s the teaching:
“When listening to the other, you are paying attention to what is happening within you without judgment.
As you are listening, you will feel a want or need, this is what the other person is wanting or needing.
True compassion naturally arises from doing this because you experience yourself as the other, their need is now your need.”
So, fast forward, book-ending the weekend, in some kind of innate father sonar hone-in that could only be chalked up to grace, my dad called me as I was driving from the conference to elsewhere in LA. He called on the way in, and he called on the way out. He didn’t call in between. And I was in LA, so of course both times he called, I was in a car.
“So what are you going to be doing there with the rest of your time?”
“You know Dad, just seeing some friends out here, keeping it low key.”
He told me about the Hollywood walk of fame and insisted I must see it. "Marlene Dietrich has a star there, you know." I assured him I have previously been there.
He listed one or two other hopelessly touristy jaunts, forgetting apparently that I lived in this city for six months a decade ago.
“Have you been to the Roosevelt Hotel?”
“No Dad, I have not been to the Roosevelt hotel.” I sighed, what after all, could my father, not having been to LA for a solid 25 years have to teach me (well-informed New Yorker, 2nd lala trip in a month) about all things cosmopolitan in LA?
“Promise me you’ll go.”
“Ok Dad…” I laughed, dismissingly.
He was insistent. “Promise me.”
Then, twixt a pause and a blessed breath, popped forth the aforementioned listening teaching. Here I was, being a total a**hole with my dad, and not even realizing it.
What need or want did he have? He wanted to feel a part of the scene, to be in the know, to have a sophisticated understanding and comfortable connection with one of the world’s glitziest cities. He wanted to be able to show/teach something to his daughter, the intrinsically magniloquent Mags. He wanted to be my Dad.
“Promise me you’ll go.”
Something shifted in me when I saw myself truly listening, and I found my lips replying, in complete resolve: “Ok Dad, I promise.”
I had an over-booked 36 hours left in LA, plans for both evenings elsewhere and I told only three people I would be in town because I knew I just did not have the minutes to spare… One of my dearest friends in the universe didn’t get facetime. The soul sistah I was meeting in Venice beach on the way in to the conference? That ended up being a two-minute drive-by on the edge of said boardwark. The Roosevelt hotel? Why did I promise that? Notgonnahappen.
The next night it was midnight after a spectacular set of music with some wickedly talented, genius even, successful besties. If you think I use any of those words casually, please be advised, I don’t.
We all conglomerated after in the restaurant adjoining the dark venue, brainstorming on where to traipse for the post-show cool down. Our sights were set on a lounge with which I was familiar when one of my friends lobbed out: "How about the Roosevelt Hotel?"
“Wait... what did you say?”
“The Roosevelt Hotel.”
(Everyone reading is well aware, I'm assuming, that LA is a city of millions of people and that there are, let's say at least thousands of opportunities for various places to eat, drink, be merry... so, tossing out the Roosevelt hotel? C'mon. More than a coinkidink.)
“YES. We’re going there.” My tone made it clear to the others that was the only current option. Was it open? Quick group iPhone check and yes: It was open 24/7—yes, we were going there.
Less than an hour later we were ensconced by a swank diner; its gut reno retro rendition and dark design landscape ubiquitous with late night Hollywood. There was a huge party in the adjoining club which looked my worst nightmare, but in a chocolate vinyl (pleather?/leather?) oversized banquette were some of the people I love most on this earth, a new face or two and someone who fancied me… (never a bad thing for a gal to have adjoining her when sitting late night in a Hollywood booth.)
I drank the only alcohol I’ve had in the last six weeks: pinot noir served in a Riedel tumbler. We ordered milkshakes and onion rings. Others had the best burgers in LA. Mine was veggie; it was the size of my face and it was phenomenal.
The performers and artists were tired. It was a calm late-night feast and we all ordered too much. Even in its sleepy simplicity it was one of the loveliest evenings I’ve had. Great friends, good food, the perfect ambiance.
And I never. ever. would have gone had I not taken the time to truly listen to my Dad. To tap into what he was needing. To let go of any view I had of the world and what it was supposed to look like and what I thought I did or didn’t know. To allow an open and authentic, fresh exchange even with someone I have not known life without. To allow him and myself the possibility that I had not outgrown his wisdom.
It’s been a month and ironically, enough other things have happened that there hasn’t been a moment for me to tell my father that I actually went, living up to my promise. But somewhere, on some plane of the woo that is so mysterious and holy in its elusive tango away from a cognizant understanding, on that lowest three-levels-in an “Inception”esque subconscious working, there was a kind of healing. I don’t know yet whether it was for him or for me. Seeing as we’re inter-connected, I expect it was for both, as well as for us all. Listening to my Dad: my most hipster healing yet.
Why is he calling me so early? He never calls me in the morning. Is there anywhere to park longer than an hour?.. What a racket.
Simultaneously squinting to discern small letters on parking signage, while maneuvering questions about my pre-breakfast general well-being, didn’t make for a friendly, focused, familial exchange.
In a huff, I told him I’d call him back. I was pressed for time. In two hours I had to register at a weekend conference as an “advanced spiritual teacher.” Ha.
I learned innumerable things that weekend. My mind emptied, my heart was bedazzled and it was a fast and furious explosion of awareness that I’ve already written about here. But I’m going to take the woo down a notch and speak about a simple lesson that showed up beautifully and (as a city girl, I always appreciate this efficiency) immediately.
It was about true listening and here’s the teaching:
“When listening to the other, you are paying attention to what is happening within you without judgment.
As you are listening, you will feel a want or need, this is what the other person is wanting or needing.
True compassion naturally arises from doing this because you experience yourself as the other, their need is now your need.”
So, fast forward, book-ending the weekend, in some kind of innate father sonar hone-in that could only be chalked up to grace, my dad called me as I was driving from the conference to elsewhere in LA. He called on the way in, and he called on the way out. He didn’t call in between. And I was in LA, so of course both times he called, I was in a car.
“So what are you going to be doing there with the rest of your time?”
“You know Dad, just seeing some friends out here, keeping it low key.”
He told me about the Hollywood walk of fame and insisted I must see it. "Marlene Dietrich has a star there, you know." I assured him I have previously been there.
He listed one or two other hopelessly touristy jaunts, forgetting apparently that I lived in this city for six months a decade ago.
“Have you been to the Roosevelt Hotel?”
“No Dad, I have not been to the Roosevelt hotel.” I sighed, what after all, could my father, not having been to LA for a solid 25 years have to teach me (well-informed New Yorker, 2nd lala trip in a month) about all things cosmopolitan in LA?
“Promise me you’ll go.”
“Ok Dad…” I laughed, dismissingly.
He was insistent. “Promise me.”
Then, twixt a pause and a blessed breath, popped forth the aforementioned listening teaching. Here I was, being a total a**hole with my dad, and not even realizing it.
What need or want did he have? He wanted to feel a part of the scene, to be in the know, to have a sophisticated understanding and comfortable connection with one of the world’s glitziest cities. He wanted to be able to show/teach something to his daughter, the intrinsically magniloquent Mags. He wanted to be my Dad.
“Promise me you’ll go.”
Something shifted in me when I saw myself truly listening, and I found my lips replying, in complete resolve: “Ok Dad, I promise.”
I had an over-booked 36 hours left in LA, plans for both evenings elsewhere and I told only three people I would be in town because I knew I just did not have the minutes to spare… One of my dearest friends in the universe didn’t get facetime. The soul sistah I was meeting in Venice beach on the way in to the conference? That ended up being a two-minute drive-by on the edge of said boardwark. The Roosevelt hotel? Why did I promise that? Notgonnahappen.
The next night it was midnight after a spectacular set of music with some wickedly talented, genius even, successful besties. If you think I use any of those words casually, please be advised, I don’t.
We all conglomerated after in the restaurant adjoining the dark venue, brainstorming on where to traipse for the post-show cool down. Our sights were set on a lounge with which I was familiar when one of my friends lobbed out: "How about the Roosevelt Hotel?"
“Wait... what did you say?”
“The Roosevelt Hotel.”
(Everyone reading is well aware, I'm assuming, that LA is a city of millions of people and that there are, let's say at least thousands of opportunities for various places to eat, drink, be merry... so, tossing out the Roosevelt hotel? C'mon. More than a coinkidink.)
“YES. We’re going there.” My tone made it clear to the others that was the only current option. Was it open? Quick group iPhone check and yes: It was open 24/7—yes, we were going there.
Less than an hour later we were ensconced by a swank diner; its gut reno retro rendition and dark design landscape ubiquitous with late night Hollywood. There was a huge party in the adjoining club which looked my worst nightmare, but in a chocolate vinyl (pleather?/leather?) oversized banquette were some of the people I love most on this earth, a new face or two and someone who fancied me… (never a bad thing for a gal to have adjoining her when sitting late night in a Hollywood booth.)
I drank the only alcohol I’ve had in the last six weeks: pinot noir served in a Riedel tumbler. We ordered milkshakes and onion rings. Others had the best burgers in LA. Mine was veggie; it was the size of my face and it was phenomenal.
The performers and artists were tired. It was a calm late-night feast and we all ordered too much. Even in its sleepy simplicity it was one of the loveliest evenings I’ve had. Great friends, good food, the perfect ambiance.
And I never. ever. would have gone had I not taken the time to truly listen to my Dad. To tap into what he was needing. To let go of any view I had of the world and what it was supposed to look like and what I thought I did or didn’t know. To allow an open and authentic, fresh exchange even with someone I have not known life without. To allow him and myself the possibility that I had not outgrown his wisdom.
It’s been a month and ironically, enough other things have happened that there hasn’t been a moment for me to tell my father that I actually went, living up to my promise. But somewhere, on some plane of the woo that is so mysterious and holy in its elusive tango away from a cognizant understanding, on that lowest three-levels-in an “Inception”esque subconscious working, there was a kind of healing. I don’t know yet whether it was for him or for me. Seeing as we’re inter-connected, I expect it was for both, as well as for us all. Listening to my Dad: my most hipster healing yet.
Thursday, February 3, 2011
a tale of the world’s most spectacular cookie
“I want the one with the raspberry middle and the sprinkles.”
My fingers poked to the bottom of the white baker’s box
reaching for the aforementioned suspect.
“Oh you found the good one, it has both,”
an enlightened person replied to me,
as half a dozen of us stood
casually snacking around a Midtown West kitchen table.
Going in, the cookie was average.
At first bite, something shifted.
“Oh my God, this cookie is amazing.”
The cookie was not amazing.
The cookie was white flour and processed food coloring.
Give me a decent chocolate soufflé and I’ll write you a sonata about it.
Crème brûlée gets a cantana.
This kind of cookie was not musical inspiration.
And yet,
this was the most marvelous cookie I had ever seen.
The taste was (Katy Perry rendition) fireworks in my mouth.
More fascinatedly, its constitution was remarkable.
Small multi-colored sprinkle dots- magnificent!
A gooey, thick, marma-laden raspberry button center—genius!
The juxtaposition of the crumble as it cascaded my tongue,
licking my lips and lingering there like a lovers lazy morning,
embedded in my lip gloss... groan. yum.
This little bod’s a foodie and a snob about it.
Much to my family’s chagrin,
I cannot help that a discerning palate was bequeathed to this tongue.
The cookie was not good due to its sophisticated merging of ingredients.
Despite being hauled from the lauded Veniero's,
it was in fact, a simple Italian sugar cookie.
Here, it was spectacular because of its mere existence.
Most spec.ta.cul.lar.
Giggles came.
They would not stop.
Which looks crazypants when everyone else is standing around
having normal conversation over falafel and aloe water
and you are against the wall,
eyeball pressed to a cookie, giggling.
I stepped into the other room, trying to sequester my giggles.
They kept coming.
I noticed people were now staring at me bemused,
but really there was nothing to be done.
Obama could have been present
and the giggles would not stop.
All at once heat blasted my body.
I looked around as though the answer to its sudden appearance
would be found in the air around me.
“I’m schvitzing.” I announced. To no one in particular.
“I’m schvitzing!!”
I took the cookie, now only perhaps 37% eaten, with me into the kitchen.
I had never eaten anything more slowly in my life.
It was impossible to ingest the cookie at a more rapid tempo.
and
it was very very VERY important to not lose the cookie.
I knew what a toddler felt like clutching a biscuit.
The cookie was everything.
A decade ago I had considerable experience with MDMA,
otherwise known as the drug ecstasy.
This was what this felt like.
This was what this EXACTLY felt like.
I shuffled to the kitchen and
stuck my head in the freezer.
Sweat bundled to break through on my lower back and the cold felt:
winterfresh.
Look! Frozen peas!
I grabbed them.
(This was not my home. I grabbed my friend’s peas.
The thought to ask did not cross my mind. The pea package was just so pretty, and I?...)
“Oh gosh, so hot.”
It felt perfectly reasonable to hold the frozen peas against the back of my neck
and reach for the sink greedily refilling a too-small Dixie cup of water,
precariously balancing these items
all the while being extraordinarily careful that I did. Not. Drop. That. Cookie.
I cooled down.
The kitchen counters became parallel bars.
This was a spontaneously brilliant idea as I set a hand on each side to lift myself up.
Did I mention that this was an entire home full of people and I was not alone?
The cookie was carefully set on the black granite countertop to the left.
My legs swung to and fro.
“This is so fun! I wish I had this in my apartment!
You could, like,
wake up and have a morning workout
like an Olympian on the parallel bars.”
With knowing raised eyebrows,
two dearest near me let me be,
as they talked and I interjected in conversation
while I played on the countertops.
Blah blah blah blah, “iPhone, Verizon, next week!”
Blah blah blah blah, “rememember how they used to make us do one pull up in gym class as a measure of fitness? I still can’t do that.”
Now, there was nationwide conference call with our spiritual community,
so gingerly we were ushered to gather in the living room.
I sat on a couch I’ve sat on a dozen times.
I picked up the silk striped pillow I have seen 50 times.
“It’s so soft! Look how beautiful it is. Has the pillow always been this beautiful?”
I asked my hostess, knowing full well as the words came out of my mouth
that the pillow had, in fact, remained the same.
Uh oh. Momentary panic.
Where is the cookie?
There it is, 3/5th’s eaten. It’s right there on the arm of the couch where I just set it.
Phew.
For reals. PH-ew.
Look at my fingertips.
They were stained from clutching the cookie,
its sprinkles leaving rainbow kaleidoscope hickey dots
like seven different ballpoint pens
made out with my fingerprints.
Naturally, I ran to show my hostess in delight.
“Look! Looklooklooklooklook. The sprinkles stained my tips!”
She gently assured me that soap and water have magical powers of cleaning.
Settling in to an hour-long call,
out came a flurry of hiccupped burps and giggles.
I made an "oopsies!" face.
They eventually subsided.
When there was a pause in the call,
I happily finished the last 1/6th of the cookie.
Afterwards, in the foyer,
as I was trying to balance putting on my snow boots
and someone gave me a chair to sit down so that I didn’t fall over,
my hostess asked:
“Are you going to be ok to get home?”
I assured her. “I remember what’s it’s like navigating the city on drugs… I can handle this.”
This was my experience after an hour with four awakened people.
I’m off with these peeps to a whole weekend of this.
We, collectively, are on the brink of this, as life, but with balance.
As reality.
As a new world.
This seeing.
This wonderment.
World...
Man your bakeries.
*************************
"If you only knew what the future holds
After a hurricane comes a rainbow
Maybe you're reason why all the doors are closed
So you can open one that leads you to the perfect road
Like a lightning bolt, your heart will blow
And when it's time, you'll know
Cause baby you're a firework."
(yes, I went there)
"Firework" 2011, as sung by Katy Perry,
and written by the Stargate team
My fingers poked to the bottom of the white baker’s box
reaching for the aforementioned suspect.
“Oh you found the good one, it has both,”
an enlightened person replied to me,
as half a dozen of us stood
casually snacking around a Midtown West kitchen table.
Going in, the cookie was average.
At first bite, something shifted.
“Oh my God, this cookie is amazing.”
The cookie was not amazing.
The cookie was white flour and processed food coloring.
Give me a decent chocolate soufflé and I’ll write you a sonata about it.
Crème brûlée gets a cantana.
This kind of cookie was not musical inspiration.
And yet,
this was the most marvelous cookie I had ever seen.
The taste was (Katy Perry rendition) fireworks in my mouth.
More fascinatedly, its constitution was remarkable.
Small multi-colored sprinkle dots- magnificent!
A gooey, thick, marma-laden raspberry button center—genius!
The juxtaposition of the crumble as it cascaded my tongue,
licking my lips and lingering there like a lovers lazy morning,
embedded in my lip gloss... groan. yum.
This little bod’s a foodie and a snob about it.
Much to my family’s chagrin,
I cannot help that a discerning palate was bequeathed to this tongue.
The cookie was not good due to its sophisticated merging of ingredients.
Despite being hauled from the lauded Veniero's,
it was in fact, a simple Italian sugar cookie.
Here, it was spectacular because of its mere existence.
Most spec.ta.cul.lar.
Giggles came.
They would not stop.
Which looks crazypants when everyone else is standing around
having normal conversation over falafel and aloe water
and you are against the wall,
eyeball pressed to a cookie, giggling.
I stepped into the other room, trying to sequester my giggles.
They kept coming.
I noticed people were now staring at me bemused,
but really there was nothing to be done.
Obama could have been present
and the giggles would not stop.
All at once heat blasted my body.
I looked around as though the answer to its sudden appearance
would be found in the air around me.
“I’m schvitzing.” I announced. To no one in particular.
“I’m schvitzing!!”
I took the cookie, now only perhaps 37% eaten, with me into the kitchen.
I had never eaten anything more slowly in my life.
It was impossible to ingest the cookie at a more rapid tempo.
and
it was very very VERY important to not lose the cookie.
I knew what a toddler felt like clutching a biscuit.
The cookie was everything.
A decade ago I had considerable experience with MDMA,
otherwise known as the drug ecstasy.
This was what this felt like.
This was what this EXACTLY felt like.
I shuffled to the kitchen and
stuck my head in the freezer.
Sweat bundled to break through on my lower back and the cold felt:
winterfresh.
Look! Frozen peas!
I grabbed them.
(This was not my home. I grabbed my friend’s peas.
The thought to ask did not cross my mind. The pea package was just so pretty, and I?...)
“Oh gosh, so hot.”
It felt perfectly reasonable to hold the frozen peas against the back of my neck
and reach for the sink greedily refilling a too-small Dixie cup of water,
precariously balancing these items
all the while being extraordinarily careful that I did. Not. Drop. That. Cookie.
I cooled down.
The kitchen counters became parallel bars.
This was a spontaneously brilliant idea as I set a hand on each side to lift myself up.
Did I mention that this was an entire home full of people and I was not alone?
The cookie was carefully set on the black granite countertop to the left.
My legs swung to and fro.
“This is so fun! I wish I had this in my apartment!
You could, like,
wake up and have a morning workout
like an Olympian on the parallel bars.”
With knowing raised eyebrows,
two dearest near me let me be,
as they talked and I interjected in conversation
while I played on the countertops.
Blah blah blah blah, “iPhone, Verizon, next week!”
Blah blah blah blah, “rememember how they used to make us do one pull up in gym class as a measure of fitness? I still can’t do that.”
Now, there was nationwide conference call with our spiritual community,
so gingerly we were ushered to gather in the living room.
I sat on a couch I’ve sat on a dozen times.
I picked up the silk striped pillow I have seen 50 times.
“It’s so soft! Look how beautiful it is. Has the pillow always been this beautiful?”
I asked my hostess, knowing full well as the words came out of my mouth
that the pillow had, in fact, remained the same.
Uh oh. Momentary panic.
Where is the cookie?
There it is, 3/5th’s eaten. It’s right there on the arm of the couch where I just set it.
Phew.
For reals. PH-ew.
Look at my fingertips.
They were stained from clutching the cookie,
its sprinkles leaving rainbow kaleidoscope hickey dots
like seven different ballpoint pens
made out with my fingerprints.
Naturally, I ran to show my hostess in delight.
“Look! Looklooklooklooklook. The sprinkles stained my tips!”
She gently assured me that soap and water have magical powers of cleaning.
Settling in to an hour-long call,
out came a flurry of hiccupped burps and giggles.
I made an "oopsies!" face.
They eventually subsided.
When there was a pause in the call,
I happily finished the last 1/6th of the cookie.
Afterwards, in the foyer,
as I was trying to balance putting on my snow boots
and someone gave me a chair to sit down so that I didn’t fall over,
my hostess asked:
“Are you going to be ok to get home?”
I assured her. “I remember what’s it’s like navigating the city on drugs… I can handle this.”
This was my experience after an hour with four awakened people.
I’m off with these peeps to a whole weekend of this.
We, collectively, are on the brink of this, as life, but with balance.
As reality.
As a new world.
This seeing.
This wonderment.
World...
Man your bakeries.
*************************
"If you only knew what the future holds
After a hurricane comes a rainbow
Maybe you're reason why all the doors are closed
So you can open one that leads you to the perfect road
Like a lightning bolt, your heart will blow
And when it's time, you'll know
Cause baby you're a firework."
(yes, I went there)
"Firework" 2011, as sung by Katy Perry,
and written by the Stargate team
Monday, January 31, 2011
detoxing my mom: the juice between crazy and sexy
My mother twirled (she is 62, had two breast cancer surgeries this past year, I couldn’t remember the last time I saw her twirl… wait, have I ever seen her twirl?) round in a super cute, black, wooly Paddington bear-style duffle coat that looked new to me. It was six degrees outside, she was damn well gonna need it.
“Where’d you get that mom? It’s super cute!”
Still: twirling, in our marble foyer, which has floor-to-ceiling mirrors in its entrance and an angular modern chandelier. (My parents bought that house in the 80’s—I’m not sure that “subtle” existed as an interior design choice at the time.)
“Do you know, Margaret, I haven’t worn this coat for years?? I used to wear it just open—I can’t remember the last time I was able to button it up!” Her eyes were delightedly fixed on herself and her twirl.
We were the first day out of what was supposed to be a three-day cleanse that stretched itself to ten. My mother was admiringly reaping the benefits of her own dedication, and I could not be more proud of her.
The plan was to lead them through, mom and sis. I arrived in Chicago in early December and straight to Bed, Bath and Beyond to buy a juicer and two grocery carts full of organic greens, maca, spirulina, cacao, coconut oil, etc. that were diligently replenished via Whole Foods to our fridge.
Mom went in full force, but sis showed up the night we were supposed to start, stoned, and made plans to be out with her man the following evening. She was welcome to join us, but it’d be sort of like showing up to church drunk, or to Six Flags with the flu—you could get through it, but kinda beside the point…
So when mom was feeling (totally surprisingly, totally amazingly) awesome after three days, and I was not quite back to my pre-birthday (two coasts, two weeks, three cities, copious amounts of celebrating) svelte self, we decided to juice onwards and let sis catch up.
I mentioned my mother had cancer, she also recently left behind anti-depressants and we spoke of how they “dulled” everything in her life. She didn’t feel sad, but she didn’t feel joy either. There was a level, consistent “kinda okay” feeling. Mom said all she wanted to do was to be able to cry, and six months ago, finding out about the cancer, having to undergo multiple surgeries, not a tear was shed.
I gave them a thorough warning: it’s all going to come up. Cleanses will bring to the surface buried emotions so that we can experience them. They’re perfect to do in a transition period, or when we need to get back to ourselves. These days when something throws me for a loop, I cleanse, so I know I can remain grounded, stay true to the moment and veer away from self-pity and martinis.
I knew that my mom processing her emotions was an important part of her healing, and the moment that I was able to watch her stand, in her pajamas, mid-cleanse in our living room, with tears streaming down her face, blissfully crying out, “Margaret what are you doing to me?” was magic. Just magic.
My sister, a gorgeous young thing that is (damnit) taller than me, with a long torso I’ve always coveted, and a Mira Sorvino meets Brooke Shields vibe happening, has had her toughest year to date. Turning 30 brought a sh** storm with it. The first weekend I was in Chicago, she was also in tears, thankful that I was there—I provided some kind of safety for her, some version of love that has been missing. It was so the kale.
Of course I was the bossy boots in the midst of it all, lecturing them, telling them what to do, what to drink, why to drink it, why they shouldn’t complain about it, but at the same time, I was strangely distanced. I wasn’t doing it. There was some other force moving me and I was along for the ride. Even the compliments, their tears of gratitude, were pleasant to see, but they were just that: pleasant. They did not fill me with any kind of pride; it was just loveliness and I was there witnessing it. Like a documentary. Over 10 days I made hundreds of juices; for the month, I cooked each and every meal. Move over cancer. We'll take it from here.
But I was also cleansing—and we were extending. The sh** was going to hit the fan… it always does.
The blow up between my mother and I, sure ‘nuff, came.
There were other times that she was irritable and I was such a good little Buddha… waves of nonsense and insults flowing by me, I, so unperturbed. So zen. So much so that I arrogantly texted my best friend, comedically, yet seriously: “I think I might have Jesus Christ consciousness right now. Later I’m going to try to turn tap water into Chateau Lafite.”
This time? It was so my fault. I felt it coming. Like a tidal wave you see approaching and have no control of stopping.
It involved the shoe section of Neiman Marcus, after a 3-hour shopping trek that began at Nordstrom Rack.
We had not eaten solid food in a week. We had already been to FIVE different shoe stores.
I feel I gave her ample warning. “Ok mom, let’s go, I’m starting to lose steam here.”
“I can feel the irritability setting in.”
In ended up being too late. The irritation swept over me like a inconsolable tide of bitchdom. An older version of me showed up, that I thought I had upgraded past. Nope—she was still there. That sure was a fun, melodramatic explosion to surf. Yelling, apologies, tip-toeing back to even keel: all part of the detox.
Anyone who is used to cleansing might say that I was beyond sado-masochistic to choose to cleanse with my mother, no matter how much love I hold for her in my heart. My daily fare these days would be a cleanse for most people in America, but for someone a touch less experienced with green juices and superfoods, it’s just like any other consciousness raising endeavor: yoga, meditation. You gotta see the ugly, embrace the pain. If you’re Polish and have been eating primarily ham and vodka for 50 years, plus you have six weeks worth of radiation sitting in your body that’s just desperate to get out, well, you can do the math… getting out the gook is not going to always be an attractive picture.
Kris Carr’s instant bestseller “Crazy Sexy Diet” shot to #6 on the New York Times list in its first week last week. I’d been waiting for this book to come out for months; Kris’ documentary was on the itinerary as the ‘entertainment” portion of our cleanse in Chicago. Although I have yet to own it because Amazon sold out in the first day and I am in full-on hibernation mode, a breeze through the table of contents reads like the lecturing I gave my mom and sis. Green juice, probiotics, dry-brushing, veganism (don’t get all up in arms, it’s just a conversation), even trampolines. Every entrepreneurial, sexy and spiritual woman I admire on the web is friends with, and has interviewed Kris. Just sayin’. She's everything I look for in a spectacular woman: smart, sassy, sexy. I sent my mom a copy and mine is enroute.
There’s a prana, a life force, coursing through our bodies at all times. Yogis are intimately attuned to moving this business about but most can’t feel it every day. There are times when I’ll have a touch too much New York City, and a day of green juice taps me back into the force. Once you get involved in subtler energetic realms, you can feel different foods affecting and raising or lowering your vibration. Pretty trippy stuff.
And I’ll be dead honest—before all those delish energetically discerned side effects started happening, my motivation was absolute vanity. I looked around, saw who looked amazing at 40, 50, 60, 80 years old, and who was doing it naturally, and then said: I am going to do that. I want to look hot and feel amazing 30 years from now. Fork over the green juice.
Synchronistically, my mother had doctor’s appointments bookend our cleanse. Her glucose level dropped from dangerously borderline diabetic to a normal range in ten days. Her doctor was shocked. “What did you do?” He asked.
My sister did end up cleansing with us for the 2nd weekend. She looked brighter, she dropped a couple of pounds and I noticed her singing around the house again. I asked her for a blurb to describe what she was feeling:
“It really helps you focus with everything… I don’t know, it gives you a clearer sense of direction, you know?”
I’m paraphrasing a fortune cookie I have framed in my New York apartment: “When the mind is clear, there is no fear.” (Wow, that was a bad paraphrase; its much more zen and elegant, ironically enough, on the fortune cookie paper.) When we clear away the gunk, positive thought and action arise naturally. Just another tool for getting out of our own way. And the side effect of the marvelous ass that I will still have at 40, 50, beyond? Yeah, well let’s just say, green juice, my future husband thanks you.
“Where’d you get that mom? It’s super cute!”
Still: twirling, in our marble foyer, which has floor-to-ceiling mirrors in its entrance and an angular modern chandelier. (My parents bought that house in the 80’s—I’m not sure that “subtle” existed as an interior design choice at the time.)
“Do you know, Margaret, I haven’t worn this coat for years?? I used to wear it just open—I can’t remember the last time I was able to button it up!” Her eyes were delightedly fixed on herself and her twirl.
We were the first day out of what was supposed to be a three-day cleanse that stretched itself to ten. My mother was admiringly reaping the benefits of her own dedication, and I could not be more proud of her.
The plan was to lead them through, mom and sis. I arrived in Chicago in early December and straight to Bed, Bath and Beyond to buy a juicer and two grocery carts full of organic greens, maca, spirulina, cacao, coconut oil, etc. that were diligently replenished via Whole Foods to our fridge.
Mom went in full force, but sis showed up the night we were supposed to start, stoned, and made plans to be out with her man the following evening. She was welcome to join us, but it’d be sort of like showing up to church drunk, or to Six Flags with the flu—you could get through it, but kinda beside the point…
So when mom was feeling (totally surprisingly, totally amazingly) awesome after three days, and I was not quite back to my pre-birthday (two coasts, two weeks, three cities, copious amounts of celebrating) svelte self, we decided to juice onwards and let sis catch up.
I mentioned my mother had cancer, she also recently left behind anti-depressants and we spoke of how they “dulled” everything in her life. She didn’t feel sad, but she didn’t feel joy either. There was a level, consistent “kinda okay” feeling. Mom said all she wanted to do was to be able to cry, and six months ago, finding out about the cancer, having to undergo multiple surgeries, not a tear was shed.
I gave them a thorough warning: it’s all going to come up. Cleanses will bring to the surface buried emotions so that we can experience them. They’re perfect to do in a transition period, or when we need to get back to ourselves. These days when something throws me for a loop, I cleanse, so I know I can remain grounded, stay true to the moment and veer away from self-pity and martinis.
I knew that my mom processing her emotions was an important part of her healing, and the moment that I was able to watch her stand, in her pajamas, mid-cleanse in our living room, with tears streaming down her face, blissfully crying out, “Margaret what are you doing to me?” was magic. Just magic.
My sister, a gorgeous young thing that is (damnit) taller than me, with a long torso I’ve always coveted, and a Mira Sorvino meets Brooke Shields vibe happening, has had her toughest year to date. Turning 30 brought a sh** storm with it. The first weekend I was in Chicago, she was also in tears, thankful that I was there—I provided some kind of safety for her, some version of love that has been missing. It was so the kale.
Of course I was the bossy boots in the midst of it all, lecturing them, telling them what to do, what to drink, why to drink it, why they shouldn’t complain about it, but at the same time, I was strangely distanced. I wasn’t doing it. There was some other force moving me and I was along for the ride. Even the compliments, their tears of gratitude, were pleasant to see, but they were just that: pleasant. They did not fill me with any kind of pride; it was just loveliness and I was there witnessing it. Like a documentary. Over 10 days I made hundreds of juices; for the month, I cooked each and every meal. Move over cancer. We'll take it from here.
But I was also cleansing—and we were extending. The sh** was going to hit the fan… it always does.
The blow up between my mother and I, sure ‘nuff, came.
There were other times that she was irritable and I was such a good little Buddha… waves of nonsense and insults flowing by me, I, so unperturbed. So zen. So much so that I arrogantly texted my best friend, comedically, yet seriously: “I think I might have Jesus Christ consciousness right now. Later I’m going to try to turn tap water into Chateau Lafite.”
This time? It was so my fault. I felt it coming. Like a tidal wave you see approaching and have no control of stopping.
It involved the shoe section of Neiman Marcus, after a 3-hour shopping trek that began at Nordstrom Rack.
We had not eaten solid food in a week. We had already been to FIVE different shoe stores.
I feel I gave her ample warning. “Ok mom, let’s go, I’m starting to lose steam here.”
“I can feel the irritability setting in.”
In ended up being too late. The irritation swept over me like a inconsolable tide of bitchdom. An older version of me showed up, that I thought I had upgraded past. Nope—she was still there. That sure was a fun, melodramatic explosion to surf. Yelling, apologies, tip-toeing back to even keel: all part of the detox.
Anyone who is used to cleansing might say that I was beyond sado-masochistic to choose to cleanse with my mother, no matter how much love I hold for her in my heart. My daily fare these days would be a cleanse for most people in America, but for someone a touch less experienced with green juices and superfoods, it’s just like any other consciousness raising endeavor: yoga, meditation. You gotta see the ugly, embrace the pain. If you’re Polish and have been eating primarily ham and vodka for 50 years, plus you have six weeks worth of radiation sitting in your body that’s just desperate to get out, well, you can do the math… getting out the gook is not going to always be an attractive picture.
Kris Carr’s instant bestseller “Crazy Sexy Diet” shot to #6 on the New York Times list in its first week last week. I’d been waiting for this book to come out for months; Kris’ documentary was on the itinerary as the ‘entertainment” portion of our cleanse in Chicago. Although I have yet to own it because Amazon sold out in the first day and I am in full-on hibernation mode, a breeze through the table of contents reads like the lecturing I gave my mom and sis. Green juice, probiotics, dry-brushing, veganism (don’t get all up in arms, it’s just a conversation), even trampolines. Every entrepreneurial, sexy and spiritual woman I admire on the web is friends with, and has interviewed Kris. Just sayin’. She's everything I look for in a spectacular woman: smart, sassy, sexy. I sent my mom a copy and mine is enroute.
There’s a prana, a life force, coursing through our bodies at all times. Yogis are intimately attuned to moving this business about but most can’t feel it every day. There are times when I’ll have a touch too much New York City, and a day of green juice taps me back into the force. Once you get involved in subtler energetic realms, you can feel different foods affecting and raising or lowering your vibration. Pretty trippy stuff.
And I’ll be dead honest—before all those delish energetically discerned side effects started happening, my motivation was absolute vanity. I looked around, saw who looked amazing at 40, 50, 60, 80 years old, and who was doing it naturally, and then said: I am going to do that. I want to look hot and feel amazing 30 years from now. Fork over the green juice.
Synchronistically, my mother had doctor’s appointments bookend our cleanse. Her glucose level dropped from dangerously borderline diabetic to a normal range in ten days. Her doctor was shocked. “What did you do?” He asked.
My sister did end up cleansing with us for the 2nd weekend. She looked brighter, she dropped a couple of pounds and I noticed her singing around the house again. I asked her for a blurb to describe what she was feeling:
“It really helps you focus with everything… I don’t know, it gives you a clearer sense of direction, you know?”
I’m paraphrasing a fortune cookie I have framed in my New York apartment: “When the mind is clear, there is no fear.” (Wow, that was a bad paraphrase; its much more zen and elegant, ironically enough, on the fortune cookie paper.) When we clear away the gunk, positive thought and action arise naturally. Just another tool for getting out of our own way. And the side effect of the marvelous ass that I will still have at 40, 50, beyond? Yeah, well let’s just say, green juice, my future husband thanks you.
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
holy sh** i’m going to be enlightened
I realized this today. I. Am. Going. To. Be. Enlightened. Like, in this life. Like, soon. Holy shit. And for those of you that think that comment is blasphemous, well it’s not. Because everything’s holy. Including sh**.
This took me by surprise, because you may find this hard to believe, but this was never a goal. I have not been doing all of these things, to get to THAT place. The trips, teaching, yoga, stillness, ecstatic insanity, green juice, loving with abandon has all just been kinda fox-trotting me along automatically. Feeling better and better and better, and fabulous, and unstoppable and totally stress free… and knowing my body? I don’t want to get too brag-y, so, anyway, you get my point… why stop? If you’re happy and you know it—keep following the happy.
I say this here not because enlightenment is some huge amazing thing for me, quite the opposite in fact, as it stands “me” will no longer exist, but it is a HUGE amazing thing for all of us, because if this snarky, bossy, prissy, fruitcake of a tiny firecracker known as “mags” can become enlightened, then you, my fine friend, you who (trust me) has probably not seen or gotten into a fraction of the shenannigins I have tangoed with in this short life, well then you are so most definitely on that choo choo train as well.
One morning this week I woke up, my visage swollen painfully shut with goo. 12 hours later, then the next day, then three days later, the goo still oozed, its pain throbbing through my swollen glands of red poof, hereto previously known as eyelids. I haven't seen “Black Swan” because I'm too much of a baby, but right now I feel like that creepy part in the preview where Natalie Portman has blood red eyeballs and pulls a black feather out of her back. If this is transformation, my swan damn well better be white. Or purple. And I’d like a pond please. This is what it feels like, like some sticky, painful slime of cocooning and rebirth.
Here's the thing-- it's not pink eye, it's awakening into enlightenment, into oneness with all that is.
Hear me out.
The same exact thing happened last month in Chicago after a super powerful meditative process that was on the night of the full moon eclipse and the winter solstice. (Those are each, in their own right, weird energetic thingamabobs, and together, well they make for madcap woo bedfellows.) During the meditation I went into some pretty awesome states previously unknown to me without help of outside substances and shamans or college boyfriends close at hand. The next morning I awoke eye swollen shut. Like Rocky Balboa, post fight. For reals.
I instinctually thought it had something to do with processing energy, but it hurt like crazy and I wondered if it might be an allergic reaction, so I went to the doctor with my mom. (Um, thank goodness I was at her house. Going to find an eye doctor blindly in Manhattan lookin’ all totes McGross may have been too painful to bear. Seeing as though I’m not enlightened yet, my ego may have in fact prevented such a healing endeavor.)
Chi-city doctor told me: not pink eye. Something viral. All I could do is warm compresses and Advil for pain. I don’t get sick. Something else was up.
The current week’s malady happened also the day after full moon, also after a weekend of woo extreme. Coincidence? You know I don’t believe in that word.
Here's the thing-- in the last six months I've had eye irritation come up with any kind of higher consciousness processing juju stuff. Whether I was learning or teaching, in India, in the Flatiron district, my eye would start to get all wonk-sters and there was the instinctual knowing—this is not dust, or a saggy eyelash, this is processing. Up until last month they were small little irritations, redness, enough to make me chuck the pair of contacts I was wearing. This, though, this elephant-man-like swollen scariness, was new business.
“You Can Heal Your Life” Louise Hay’s classic, find-the-root-cause-of your-symptom bible is a go-to text for my any and every health ailment. Hay looks at the human body from a whole perspective and postulates (as many do) that negative emotions can generate disease. She designates eye problems as: not wanting to see something in your own life.
I also lost, not one, but three pairs of very (OUCH) expensive sunglasses, that I have had for years, all in the last month. Two in Chicago. One in LA. No one can find them. Clearly the world wants to squeegee the gunk away, lifting Maya’s veil of illusion from my eyes, once and for all.
I’ve spoken before about how infiltrating our little nervous systems with onslaughts of energy can bring an unfamiliar recalibration process. I have the eye thing. A girlfriend of mine can’t hold anything down. Others are overcome with narcolepsy or insomnia.
I don’t want to frighten you. Obviously these side-effects are for the hard core. My point in bringing this up is that more important than the Rocky Balboa gross-ness that kept me confined to my West Village studio for a solid five days, I got a knowing: this is happening. This is really happening.
That’s really great Margaret, so super happy for you, but seriously what the frick does that have to do with me and my enlightenment?
Ok, everything is picking up. It’s getting faster. There are quantum leaps happening and this can be disorienting. Jobs, relationships, physical ailments/changes, are all part of it. I have yet to meet one person who tells me that 2010 was smooth as molasses.
You may be dubious because you’re not feeling it yet. It’s coming. Was there a shift in your life between November of last year and now? Look back at those months and think on it. I know there was for mine.
The next shift is February 11th of this year through October 27th. Then it’s rockin’ until December 2012 time.
During this time we are going to see average people awakening into enlightenment. I can say this because I see it happening around me. This is not some weird, woo, far off thing. This is happening NOW.
Hold the phone: Within 20 years, all of humanity will be living in an awakened state.
And this is not a state of other-worldliness-- it is a place where our eyes are collectively opened to the true reality of the present moment. We are getting out of our own way, for good.
Sounds nice right? Do you have any idea how f***ing fortunate we are to be living right now!?
But what about the birds in Arkansas and the markets and Sarah Palin and “Jersey Shore??”
What about my business and my husband and my career and my sick mom?
What if all of this isn’t true and nothing happens and a spotlight is shined on the wack-job-i-ness that you are?
1- I can’t speak to every topical reference in one blog post
2- I’m not saying there isn’t work to get to that place, but I will say, it’s gonna happen anyway, and you aren’t gonna have to go all Rocky Balboa, so don’t worry
3- Well, maybe I am a wackjob. We’ll just have to wait and see, won’t we?
So what does this all mean? It means a declutching of the ropes of conditioning from our minds so that we have TOTAL FREEDOM. We don’t lose our minds, we lose attachments to all of those things that are holding us back from optimal use of them. You know that oft-mentioned 90% of the mind we never use? We’re gonna start using it.
It means effortless ease, always.
It means worry no longer happens. Imagine that—NO MORE STRESS, ever… what?
It means things like fighting, wars, cease to exist. Personal responsibility, from our finances to our feelings, takes a front seat. Power gets a facelift as our global societal values undergo a gut renovation to an interconnected eco-luxe status: quality, simple, elegant, soulful, collaborative. Gut renovations can be messy, but the finished product always looks fab.
Peace, love, compassion: welcome.
People have been talking about this coming right now for thousands of years; it’s not breaking news. But since it’s like, ya know, the most miraculous incredible thing to happen to humanity ever, I thought I’d give you my current experience of it.
Um, Mags, I hate to break it to you… you’re not turning into Buddha, you have the flu. Let’s rewind on the crackpot Pollyanna a coupla chapters and instill some rationale back into you. Please leave your apartment and go out into the city streets so that you can get a dose of cold, hard, urban reality.
Ok, you can be all curmudgeon-y and whatevs. I’m not asking you to believe me. I’m asking you to check it out. To open to the possibility. Let’s pay attention. The closer we look, the sooner it happens. 2012: the apocalypse or the rebirth? Your choice. YOU get to choose how to look at it. And the closer we look, the less likelihood that the world is gonna yank those Jimmy Choo sunglasses away from us. The less likely we'll get punched in the face by awakening. We can choose to be on board with the worldwide gut reno. Are you ready for your makeover?
This took me by surprise, because you may find this hard to believe, but this was never a goal. I have not been doing all of these things, to get to THAT place. The trips, teaching, yoga, stillness, ecstatic insanity, green juice, loving with abandon has all just been kinda fox-trotting me along automatically. Feeling better and better and better, and fabulous, and unstoppable and totally stress free… and knowing my body? I don’t want to get too brag-y, so, anyway, you get my point… why stop? If you’re happy and you know it—keep following the happy.
I say this here not because enlightenment is some huge amazing thing for me, quite the opposite in fact, as it stands “me” will no longer exist, but it is a HUGE amazing thing for all of us, because if this snarky, bossy, prissy, fruitcake of a tiny firecracker known as “mags” can become enlightened, then you, my fine friend, you who (trust me) has probably not seen or gotten into a fraction of the shenannigins I have tangoed with in this short life, well then you are so most definitely on that choo choo train as well.
One morning this week I woke up, my visage swollen painfully shut with goo. 12 hours later, then the next day, then three days later, the goo still oozed, its pain throbbing through my swollen glands of red poof, hereto previously known as eyelids. I haven't seen “Black Swan” because I'm too much of a baby, but right now I feel like that creepy part in the preview where Natalie Portman has blood red eyeballs and pulls a black feather out of her back. If this is transformation, my swan damn well better be white. Or purple. And I’d like a pond please. This is what it feels like, like some sticky, painful slime of cocooning and rebirth.
Here's the thing-- it's not pink eye, it's awakening into enlightenment, into oneness with all that is.
Hear me out.
The same exact thing happened last month in Chicago after a super powerful meditative process that was on the night of the full moon eclipse and the winter solstice. (Those are each, in their own right, weird energetic thingamabobs, and together, well they make for madcap woo bedfellows.) During the meditation I went into some pretty awesome states previously unknown to me without help of outside substances and shamans or college boyfriends close at hand. The next morning I awoke eye swollen shut. Like Rocky Balboa, post fight. For reals.
I instinctually thought it had something to do with processing energy, but it hurt like crazy and I wondered if it might be an allergic reaction, so I went to the doctor with my mom. (Um, thank goodness I was at her house. Going to find an eye doctor blindly in Manhattan lookin’ all totes McGross may have been too painful to bear. Seeing as though I’m not enlightened yet, my ego may have in fact prevented such a healing endeavor.)
Chi-city doctor told me: not pink eye. Something viral. All I could do is warm compresses and Advil for pain. I don’t get sick. Something else was up.
The current week’s malady happened also the day after full moon, also after a weekend of woo extreme. Coincidence? You know I don’t believe in that word.
Here's the thing-- in the last six months I've had eye irritation come up with any kind of higher consciousness processing juju stuff. Whether I was learning or teaching, in India, in the Flatiron district, my eye would start to get all wonk-sters and there was the instinctual knowing—this is not dust, or a saggy eyelash, this is processing. Up until last month they were small little irritations, redness, enough to make me chuck the pair of contacts I was wearing. This, though, this elephant-man-like swollen scariness, was new business.
“You Can Heal Your Life” Louise Hay’s classic, find-the-root-cause-of your-symptom bible is a go-to text for my any and every health ailment. Hay looks at the human body from a whole perspective and postulates (as many do) that negative emotions can generate disease. She designates eye problems as: not wanting to see something in your own life.
I also lost, not one, but three pairs of very (OUCH) expensive sunglasses, that I have had for years, all in the last month. Two in Chicago. One in LA. No one can find them. Clearly the world wants to squeegee the gunk away, lifting Maya’s veil of illusion from my eyes, once and for all.
I’ve spoken before about how infiltrating our little nervous systems with onslaughts of energy can bring an unfamiliar recalibration process. I have the eye thing. A girlfriend of mine can’t hold anything down. Others are overcome with narcolepsy or insomnia.
I don’t want to frighten you. Obviously these side-effects are for the hard core. My point in bringing this up is that more important than the Rocky Balboa gross-ness that kept me confined to my West Village studio for a solid five days, I got a knowing: this is happening. This is really happening.
That’s really great Margaret, so super happy for you, but seriously what the frick does that have to do with me and my enlightenment?
Ok, everything is picking up. It’s getting faster. There are quantum leaps happening and this can be disorienting. Jobs, relationships, physical ailments/changes, are all part of it. I have yet to meet one person who tells me that 2010 was smooth as molasses.
You may be dubious because you’re not feeling it yet. It’s coming. Was there a shift in your life between November of last year and now? Look back at those months and think on it. I know there was for mine.
The next shift is February 11th of this year through October 27th. Then it’s rockin’ until December 2012 time.
During this time we are going to see average people awakening into enlightenment. I can say this because I see it happening around me. This is not some weird, woo, far off thing. This is happening NOW.
Hold the phone: Within 20 years, all of humanity will be living in an awakened state.
And this is not a state of other-worldliness-- it is a place where our eyes are collectively opened to the true reality of the present moment. We are getting out of our own way, for good.
Sounds nice right? Do you have any idea how f***ing fortunate we are to be living right now!?
But what about the birds in Arkansas and the markets and Sarah Palin and “Jersey Shore??”
What about my business and my husband and my career and my sick mom?
What if all of this isn’t true and nothing happens and a spotlight is shined on the wack-job-i-ness that you are?
1- I can’t speak to every topical reference in one blog post
2- I’m not saying there isn’t work to get to that place, but I will say, it’s gonna happen anyway, and you aren’t gonna have to go all Rocky Balboa, so don’t worry
3- Well, maybe I am a wackjob. We’ll just have to wait and see, won’t we?
So what does this all mean? It means a declutching of the ropes of conditioning from our minds so that we have TOTAL FREEDOM. We don’t lose our minds, we lose attachments to all of those things that are holding us back from optimal use of them. You know that oft-mentioned 90% of the mind we never use? We’re gonna start using it.
It means effortless ease, always.
It means worry no longer happens. Imagine that—NO MORE STRESS, ever… what?
It means things like fighting, wars, cease to exist. Personal responsibility, from our finances to our feelings, takes a front seat. Power gets a facelift as our global societal values undergo a gut renovation to an interconnected eco-luxe status: quality, simple, elegant, soulful, collaborative. Gut renovations can be messy, but the finished product always looks fab.
Peace, love, compassion: welcome.
People have been talking about this coming right now for thousands of years; it’s not breaking news. But since it’s like, ya know, the most miraculous incredible thing to happen to humanity ever, I thought I’d give you my current experience of it.
Um, Mags, I hate to break it to you… you’re not turning into Buddha, you have the flu. Let’s rewind on the crackpot Pollyanna a coupla chapters and instill some rationale back into you. Please leave your apartment and go out into the city streets so that you can get a dose of cold, hard, urban reality.
Ok, you can be all curmudgeon-y and whatevs. I’m not asking you to believe me. I’m asking you to check it out. To open to the possibility. Let’s pay attention. The closer we look, the sooner it happens. 2012: the apocalypse or the rebirth? Your choice. YOU get to choose how to look at it. And the closer we look, the less likelihood that the world is gonna yank those Jimmy Choo sunglasses away from us. The less likely we'll get punched in the face by awakening. We can choose to be on board with the worldwide gut reno. Are you ready for your makeover?
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