Taking Each Moment As It Comes

I’m sitting on our freshly-planted grass and hoping a bee doesn’t land on me. I like bees, I just don’t like them anywhere near my skin with their stingers.

Sonoma County just re-opened its beaches for properly social distant activities and this excites me even more than the buttermilk I bought for Saturday’s pancakes. Sand and sea keeps me sane and showers and rubbing salt all over my skin haven’t been sufficient.

I was off the internet for almost a full month to make some big life decisions. Getting off social media helped a whole lot more than expected. I love social media, but sometimes it’s like taking a cheese grater to my soul.

(If the internet drives you crazy too, here’s something that will help.)

In the midst of those big life decisions, I had to get very present. Sometimes that’s the only way to curb the anxiety spiral. Be fully in each moment as it’s happening, and trust the future to take care of itself.

Taking each moment as it comes is practically a requirement when the world is spinning enthusiastically off its axis. It soothes the nervous system to just notice what’s going on around you - the sound of the sprinkler hitting the grass, the smell of barbecue, the cat hiding in a flower pot to better stalk rodents. From that point of peace, we have a better connection to the small voice that knows what’s next, and can guide us there.

No mouse is safe.

Climbing Off the Struggle Bus

This morning I was crying in bed, something that happens a lot, which could mean many things, but I like to think it means I’m listening to my therapist when he said “You need to cry every day.” He later added, “You need to be with a man who lets you cry on his shoulder,” which seems reasonable and I try to keep that in mind whenever the To Be With Or Not To Be With question presents itself.

So I was following my therapist’s wellness advice this morning and crying in bed on my boyfriend’s shoulder because I felt so overwhelmed.

Our two cats had long since vacated the premises (because I sneezed which, at this point in our collective history, means I’m either going to die or infect the world with coronavirus so I guess we can forgive the cats for fleeing), so it was just me, my tears, my boyfriend, his shoulder, and the posed question:

“What’s below the tears, overwhelm, and worry?”

After a lot of talk about money and work, and do we mean enough money to buy an island or enough to not worry about bills or food and also maybe get a massage every so often? (I seemed to come down on the side of the island and he came down on the side of Less Worry), I finally got to a nice tangled knot that needed unraveling.

Turns out, my ego and identity are based on struggle.

If I’m not struggling, I won’t exist.

All the things that make me a worthy human, all the things that make me me, require sacrifice and struggle. Writing, helping, making enough money to live where I want to live and do what I want to do - my brain has made it all very hard. Practically impossible. Certainly not going to happen any time soon. Which means that I am not me because I am struggling, but I can’t be me without the struggle.

If that doesn’t make any sense, don’t worry. Screwy belief systems rarely make sense in the bright light of day. What seems so pressing and real when it’s suppressed suddenly seems ridiculous when it becomes conscious.

So let’s just let the main point sink in for a moment: If I’m not struggling, I won’t exist.

Yes, that right there is belief system designed to result in a crappy life tied up in a bow.

It was kind of a lot for a Tuesday morning before coffee.

So I made coffee and climbed back in bed with my notebook and made a bunch of lists, which is the appropriate response to profound epiphanies like YOU WILL BE A SHELL OF A HUMAN UNLESS YOU ARE SUFFERING ALWAYS.

Ultimately, I decided that I need to treat my ego and her need to make us both miserable so that she can stay alive like a friend. A misguided friend, but one who has your best interests at heart even if she calls your boyfriend to break up with him for you and then calls your boss demanding to be fired. She meant well, she just wanted to save you pain, but she went about it in an ill-conceived manner.

Me and my ego sat at the beach for awhile (the beach in my head, not a real beach, because real beaches are closed right now so humanity can stay alive?) and we came to a new understanding. She can insist that suffering is vital and necessary and I can remind her that there are other options and maybe we can find them together.

She seems to like that. There’s a lot in the spiritual community about transcending your ego and wrestling it to the ground or eradicating it completely, but that seems to be missing the point. Your ego is just another part of you. You don’t have to let her run the show (stop it, Amber), but letting her speak her piece and then reminding her that there are other ways, ways that will make everyone happier, allows a wholeness and a gentleness that we all need right now.

Meditation Broke Me

All I did yesterday was lie on the couch meditating.

(Where “all I did” also includes eating, petting cats, falling asleep while meditating, and watching Outlander.)

For the past few days, I kept getting “go in” “time to meditate” and “stop procrastinating, Amber”. So I finally collapsed onto the couch four separate times and went down into the quantum layers of my being. Which is a fancy way of saying “lying on the couch doing nothing.”

Here’s what I interpret as Quantum Being Layers: I would shut my eyes and be taken somewhere - to a crystal cave, to the depths of my shadowy here’s-where-I’m-going-to-stuff-everything-I-don’t-want-to-deal-with, to a field where my guides would show up and say things. Basically, I just try to shut up my brain and let my soul take the wheel and show me what needs to happen.

The first meditation was great - I loved all the orphaned pieces of myself until I felt whole again. The next two meditations were murkier - I fell into old patterns of feeling like I had to manipulate light and fix myself (implying that I am broken) and generally just working really hard, rather than resting and receiving.

After I trudged into the kitchen after the third meditation - looking a lot more bedraggled than before I started - my boyfriend said “I think meditation broke you” which was fair.

So for the last meditation, I did my best to just love all the bits of myself that I want to shove away and blame for the parts of my life that I don’t like so much.

This is a time for us to quiet. To rest. To return to ourselves and the deepest layers that are asking for love and attention.

(It’s also a time to watch Outlander and pet cats.)

There’s no way to do this strange moment in time wrong. Just keep asking to be shown and given what you need, and trust that it will show up in the right way at the right time and, yes, I really hope that also works for toilet paper.

When Things Feel Better and It's Confusing

My anxiety has dissolved like a sugar cube in hot tea this week.⠀

My experience of peace has dialed way up. If I drop into something that doesn't feel good, I bob right back out again. Almost effortlessly. In the past, where the past was a week ago, if I got knocked out of my feeling-good place, I would have to work damn hard to regain it.⠀

It's like everything I've been practicing and working for has finally clicked into place - like all the power tools I've been frantically throwing in my mental health toolbox finally got plugged in and turned on and now they work the way they're supposed to.⠀

Nothing about this time makes sense. Everything my past experience has taught me says that I should be dragging and / or feeling all the things and / or panicking.

Instead I feel like lightning is coursing through me. I feel energized and able to get things done without my usual rounds of second-guessing. In this moment, I feel happy, energetic, and stable. Which is not what I would expect from global pandemic energy.

It doesn't make sense, but I don't need it to make sense. If it lasts, I will be thrilled. If it doesn't, I know that Feeling Peaceful For Five Whole Days In a Row is something that exists in this world.⠀

Or maybe this is something else. Maybe this is ascension. Maybe 5D is already here. Maybe this isn’t what we believe it to be. Or maybe I’ve just used up all my anxiety and fear for one life time already and so now I get a break.

Honestly, I don’t know. My job right now seems to be to stay in the moment, roll with and enjoy what is, and let things unfold.

If anyone else is having a similar experience right now, I'd love to hear about it.⠀

If this is not anywhere close to your experience, I will just say that this is available to all of us. I know that for sure, even if I don't know what your personal route might be.

But you know how to get there. Even if you don't yet know that you know.⠀

xo - Amber

Wait, what is this feeling?

Where's My Montage?

Like so many of us, I’ve been trying to write a novel for, oh, thirteen years now. 

My first attempt was so long ago that the technology needed to access that draft no longer exists.

A few weeks ago, I took a class on plotting your novel, because I have a terrible habit of writing ten pages of some story that occurs to me and then forgetting about it completely. 

It’s not even giving up - giving up implies some form of active plan. Instead it just vanishes from my mind, like I’m a goldfish with a laptop. 

Having a plan in this area of my life might serve me well, even if plans do very little for me otherwise. So I show up to the class with my brand new Harry Potter moleskine and diligently take pages of notes.

When the instructor started talking about the crisis point that leads into the third act of a novel, I felt a deep sense of relief unwinding through my being.

I thought, “I’m not failing at life, I’m just at my crisis point.”

Someone please print that on a t-shirt, and make it available in pink.

I’m not sure why this was such a revelation, but I have an Instagram account and so maybe can be forgiven for thinking that life needs to be an endless upward cycle of victory.

Sure, my crisis point has lasted about a year - approximately 51 weeks longer than the crisis point in most movies (or maybe life isn’t served up in montage form, though it should be) - and instead of reaching a resolution, it seems to be extending itself via world circumstances and socially-isolated lockdown for the foreseeable future because apparently our lives have turned into a dystopian novel. (I never realized those were supposed to be instructional.) 

I’m now realizing that maybe I was in preparation for this moment. Maybe that’s all my crisis was about. I’m not sure why preparation had to be “Learn the lessons early” rather than “enjoy your last months outside with friends” but the universe works in mysterious ways. 

As for my novel, I’m not forcing anything right now. I’m going to let myself write for fun, write to entertain myself. Write something I would like to read, rather than something that feels Important. Because we are not required to write King Lear right now, plague or no plague.