If You Want Something New

If you want something new, ask for it. Don't ask some external authority for what you want. Ask yourself. Ask yourself what you truly desire, what you truly need now. Ask what your soul needs and what your life needs before you ask what your bank account needs. Ask what will bring you joy now. Even if that joy doesn't make any sense in the quote-unquote real world. Sometimes the joy of walking a friend's dog while they're stranded on the couch with the flu will take you into a new part of the city, where you meet just the right person. Sometimes going to the fancy grocery store with the best peaches will introduce you to some new idea that will lead you somewhere you couldn't have imagined.

Joy is like a breadcrumb trail toward what you truly, deeply desire. If you follow the small bits of joy, they will lead you somewhere so much greater, even if you don't understand the path. Especially if you don't understand the path.

Trust where true joy leads you. Trust that if you spend a weekend making something you're excited about rather than updating your resume, it really will help you on your job search. Trust that when you're taking care of yourself, you're also taking care of your loved ones. Trust that when you allow yourself to feel joy, other wonderful feeling things can't help but be drawn to you. Joy is magnetic. Joy will alchemize the world around you to begin providing you with what you need. 

So ask yourself again, what do you want now? What would you like to be fresh and new in your life? Feel how that might feel - feel the joy, the safety, the love, and the lift. Follow that feeling and trust that it's taking you precisely where you need to go.

When To Ignore Your To-Do List

When the blue sky calls. When love notes need writing. When summer sun beckons. When something else sounds like more fun. When your favorite person lights up your phone. When night is falling and eyes are drooping. When you know that you already have everything you need. When you realize, finally, that it's not about doing - it's about being. 

Listen To Your Body

What doesn't feel right is an opportunity for investigation. All too often, we don't listen to our feelings, our gut instincts, the sensations in our body. Sometimes those physical sensations are subtle - a slight pressure on the chest, a warmth in the belly, a tingle in the hands. Sometimes those physical sensations are a spiritual approximation of a mallet to the head. Sometimes it actually is a mallet to the head. (Try to avoid those.) But our feelings and sensations are information. Not information that tells you, "If it feels bad, don't do it." For that is not always the truth. Sometimes it feels bad because you have emotion or circumstances to process to move forward. Sometimes it feels bad because there is resistance that you must conquer before you can continue. Everything you feel is an opportunity to know yourself better, know yourself on a deeper level, to develop a new relationship with yourself.

For example, if you feel something pressing against your chest, give that feeling permission to leave. If it doesn't leave, ask it for its message. Allow yourself to hear the answer, whether it appears immediately or takes a bit of time.

Feelings and physical sensations are a way to glean information that can't quite penetrate the walls of our brain. Our brains can only repeat what they already know, so if new knowledge needs to find you, it won't always choose your brain as its best point of entry. Your brain may ignore something, but your body never can. 

Because Money Freak Outs Happen

What is money? How does it come to you? Money is just like everything else - a flow. We've assigned it great importance because in this world we've made money mean security. Money to most of us means a roof over our head, food in the fridge, and a sure future. But money is no different than anything else. Money begins in your mind. Money shows you the truth about yourself, about what you've made the flow of your life mean, where you are and aren't allowing yourself to receive.

Love flows to you when you let yourself feel love for what's around you. Peace flows to you when you decide it's okay to feel peace. Money flows to you when you've decided that you can allow yourself to have what you need, what you want, what you truly desire. Money heightens these lessons because we've attached so much importance and so much of our wellbeing on the amount of money we have. We choose the amount that makes us feel safe. Some feel safe with ten dollars, some feel safe with ten thousand or ten million dollars. It is arbitrary. Money is arbitrary.

Money is not our security or our savior. Money is only a means, a means to know ourselves better, a means to get what we want. But money is not the gatekeeper to love or security or freedom. We can have these things with or without money.

Money works best when we share something we value - our art, our time, our knowledge - and receive in return. Money is simply an idea, an idea that works best when it feels fun, when it feels like simply another way to accept in the flow. You send out, you accept back, in an infinitely looping figure eight.

Care for it, love it, share it, send it back into the world for things you love and value - that's when money can truly do its job. Money doesn't need to be a receptacle for our shame and our fear and our disappointment. It can be, if that's what you require to learn what you've decided to learn. But money can simply be another tool that allows you to play in the world.

No moral value or judgment is attached to money. Receiving what feels like a large amount of money for value you put into the world does not carry the weight of "good" or "bad" - it's simply the product of a decision you've made. But the decision can't simply be made on the surface. The decision of what you're worth must be made within your deepest, darkest depths. By accepting and loving those deep, dark depths you can integrate them into the wholeness of your life, your soul, and your experience. When you do not judge yourself or others, you will not judge money. When you do not judge money, you have removed enormous blocks to allowing yourself to have it.

Money is like love - it comes to you when you allow it, when you welcome it, when you prepare yourself for it. Preparing yourself for it does not need to take time, it does not need to be another barrier. Preparation is simply something you have previously assigned yourself.

If you don't have the money you think you need or want, rejoice. You have just been accepted into the PhD program of your choice and you are about to learn how to conquer the world. As you go through the process of learning how to accept and have the money you would like, trust that you won't be abandoned, you won't be left, you won't be assigned to suffer. Allow yourself to have what you need without money and trust that as you step forward, one step after another, you will learn all you need about money - that it was never about money and it was always about yourself. 

There's No Need To Hide

Hi. Hello. I see you in there. Whether you're fully in the world or a moss-lined hermit, there may be some aspect of yourself that you're hiding. Because you're afraid, because you feel it should be different, because you're ashamed of it. Maybe it's your financial situation, maybe it's your relationship, maybe it's that you aren't doing what you truly feel called to be doing with your life. Maybe you haven't found a calling, maybe you have more money than you need but you spend it in ways that don't feel peaceful.

Come out of hiding. When you do you will see that there are so many others who are hiding that precise thing that you've tucked away and guarded so closely. Maybe you can help each other. Maybe you can begin to see yourself as whole, even though you aren't perfect, even though you aren't who you thought you should be, even though your life isn't where you thought it would be by this moment in time.

Emerge from the bushes, shine a flashlight into the shadow, talk about the thing that you're most afraid of. When you open your vulnerability up to the world, you will be surprised by the love and support and acceptance that flood back to you. For we are all afraid, we are all hiding some part of ourselves. We all have something that we wish would just die off already and leave us in peace. But peace is found in fully accepting that piece of ourselves. Building a relationship with it. Allowing it to provide us with more connection, rather than less.

If each of us pull out the monster hiding in our rib cage or our solar plexus or the back of our skull, we will lift each other up and the world will shift in indefinable but measurably great ways.

Show us your monster. We will love it, and we will love you. For you are one of the greats, monsters and all. 

How To Get Bigger

Expansion is simple. It begins with thinking about what you love most about your life, what you most appreciate. As you notice what's good right now, feel what arises - in your chest, in your stomach, in your hands. Let the thoughts slip away and allow the feelings to expand. Let the sensation fill your body. Now send it beyond the boundaries your body to fill the room, to fill the house. Let those sensations expand to encompass the city, the state, the country. Imagine those sensations wrapping around the world and filling it up.

Feel how big you are?

For You Are Bigger Than You Know

Don't fear the unknown. Walking through the unknown will show you to yourself. It will show you where you are strong and where you need help. It will show you how to ask for help. It will show you where you must have faith in yourself, faith in others, and faith in the road you've chosen. But all you fear is that lack of knowledge, and the only way to know the road is to walk the road. Don't fear the untrod path, whether it's one you missed or one you hope to take one day. All paths are leading you precisely where you need to go. Yes, you can choose the rocky side path rather than the scenic high road. Yes, that path might trip you with unseen branches and fling you into the mud. Another path might take you the long way, through the fields and past a desolate lake. But you will always get where you've chosen to go. It may take so long that you forgot where you were aiming. It might take far less time than you dreamed was possible. But you will get there. Just keep walking.

Don't fear change. Change signifies growth. Change signifies a tearing down for a more stable rebuild. Change is at the very heart of the human experience and it pumps the blood that keeps it healthy. Don't fear the things you can't see, don't fear the untapped future or the pained past.

Expand yourself to hold all of it - the fear, the unknown, the future, the past, the trust, the long winding road, and those who will help you along the way. You are greater than you can know, and you can hold everything that has or will come. Embrace what's coming now. And know that you can hold it, for you can hold the world. 

Homework For a New Age

We are all here for a reason. We all want to help. We all want to be seen and heard. But not everyone has the tools. Those who do have the tools can share them. Those who have felt seen and heard can open up to hearing and seeing others. Those who have been helped can help others. But those who have received little and can open up to others and see in them what they would like to see in themselves are to be admired. To see without feeling seen is to evolve. To hear without feeling heard is to step into something greater. To show others the way we have found without believing it’s the only way is an act of courage.

Finding your reason, finding your way to help, finding your way to see and hear and feel for those who are like you and who are not at all like you - on the surface - is the best way you can spend your time.

Here is the value of stories - of books, of television, of radio, of any means that humans can begin to understand one another. We understand the other as we understand ourselves - because very little separates us.

All that separates us is our belief that we are separate. We see others as we see ourselves, we hear others as we hear ourselves. That’s why the greatest job any human has is to listen to their own quiet voice, their own deep desires, the space where they have pain. To investigate where they lock that pain away - with walls, with substances, with fear.

The farther we can each dive into our own pain, our own fear, and realize that it does not own us, that it is not us, that it is only one piece of this experience - a piece that can lead us to other experiences - that is how we can begin to shift everyone forward.

As you shift, everyone shifts. As you move, everyone moves. As you evolve, everyone evolves. Because as you begin to see yourself as the bright flame that you are, you begin to see others the same way. As you begin to see your own potential, you begin to see the potential in others. As you see your own value and beauty, you see the beauty and value in others.

See yourself. Hear yourself. Know yourself. You have complete power over the being that you are. Realizing your own evolution and potential will help us all rise into something greater.

When Bad Days Strike

When bad days hit, it's easy to wish them away. To wish them into oblivion, into the nearest deep cave, to any place but the one you're currently occupying. But bad days are part of the wholeness of life. When we're in the wholeness of life, we experience everything fully - the good, the bad, the indifferent, the annoying.

Bad days can show us where we judge. Where we judge one situation as better than another, that person as better than this one, this aspect of ourselves as better than another - judgments that rarely serve us.

Days are sometimes seen as bad because we need to process something painful to move forward. Maybe we need clarity around a certain situation, maybe we need a blow up to clear the air. Maybe we need a bad day to show us where we aren't taking care of ourselves. Maybe a bad day is precisely what we need, even if we can't yet see it.

When a bad day shows up out of the blue, ask it what it needs. Ask yourself what you need. Ask those in your life what they need. Taking care of needs - first your needs, then the needs of others - is one of the best ways to realign with what you truly want. If that feels too daunting, ask what the house needs. Sometimes doing the dishes or tidying clutter will bring the answers to you.

Don't worry about the bad days. Don't let your cunning little brain use it as proof that you're doing things wrong. You're doing nothing wrong. Don't let yourself veer into the dark and tangled weeds. Or if you do, sit in the weeds for awhile. Revel in it. Roll around. Wonder about it. Ask yourself why you're in the weeds, ask yourself what you need to get out of them, ask yourself why you like it there and why you're staying.

Curiosity is the first step. Finding the joy in the situation is the second.

Maybe if you're in the weeds for awhile, you can get some time to yourself. Maybe if you stay in the weeds when your brain is telling you that you need to fix this toilet and finish that work spreadsheet, you'll emerge from those weeds with better ways of solving and doing and being.

Trust yourself in the bad days. Trust yourself to keep putting one foot in front of the other, trust yourself to keep moving forward. Or trust yourself to sit quietly, let the bad day flow around you, and stop labeling it as better or worse than any other day. Sometimes the worst days are what is needed to get us where we want to go. Sometimes the worst days draw us closer together. Sometimes the worst days point you toward what you've been longing for.

Sometimes a bad day is just a bad day. And that's okay.

What To Do With Worry

Some days, worries creep in to tug at you. Some days, worries bop you insistently over the head from the moment you awake. Some days, worries feel easy to blow up and send away.

If today is the former, remember that you always have the power to offer up your worries and let them be taken from you. You always have the option to expand those worries out like a great bubble so that the still exist but they aren’t knocking around inside your skull. (Sometimes, letting go of worries completely doesn’t feel like a good idea so you resist it. But you can always push out the boundaries so that they don’t impede the joy of your day.)

Worry is something we feel we need to cling to for protection. We all know that worries do nothing but ruin an otherwise lovely rainy morning, but our hearts and our soft animal innards are not so easily convinced. So play with worry. Approach it like a friend. A friend who sometimes annoys you, but only has your best interests at heart. (But, like most friends, worry doesn’t know you the way you know yourself. So its version of your best interest may be understandably skewed.)

Play with worry. Collect all your worries into a ball and hurl them into the atmosphere. Approach each worry separately and light it up like a firework and let it surprise you with the great exploding dragons and balls of colorful flame in the sky. Imagine a great church, thousands of years old, where you can walk through the vestry under that high arching ceiling and lay your worries down on the altar, knowing that when you walk back out the door, your worries will be cared for and won’t follow you.

Worry is simply a protective mechanism designed to keep us safe and then left running in the background long after our software has been upgraded and what was designed in the past is no longer necessary. Now it’s just eating up space and memory.

Delete the program, play with it in new ways, allow it space and give it love. Worry can be another way to know yourself in a deeper and more intuitive way, if you approach it like something that can be loved rather than a dark monster intent on ruining your day.

Sensation Is Information

We are all here. Here. Right now. Here.

Where are you? What does the room you're in look like? What does it smell like? What's over there to the left? What are you sitting on? What do you feel in your body? Does the air feel cool on your skin? What does it feel like to breathe it in? Are there any sensations in your chest, in your stomach, in your throat? Do you feel any constrictions or blocks?

If so, what do they feel like? Does an image or a memory float to the surface when you investigate? Is there a message for you in that block, in that constriction?

Sensation is information. If you feel something and it feels like it's asking to be noticed, put your focus on that place. Don't judge it or wish it away, simply give it attention. Ask for what it wants. Often, it just wants acknowledgement or a little love. If you no longer need it, imagine wrapping it up in light and sending it home. If there's something you need to know, imagine that message unscrolling in front of you. If it's simply a call to be kinder to yourself, heed that call.

Heed yourself. Heed the messages you are being given every day. Bring yourself and your body and your surroundings into focus and allow that focus to guide you. Feel your way through whatever is presented to you. If an emotion arises, feel it until it floats away. If an idea surfaces and keeps bumping at your edges, acknowledge it. Follow it, if that feels right. If you feel something in your body, simply allow it to be, without judgment or wishing it to be other than what it is. If it persists, ask for its message.

Our bodies are our best guidance system. Aligning yourself to its wisdom will help you more than any thoughts or plans or goals. Instead of thinking your way through a problem, ask your body what guidance it has for you. The more you attend to your body, the faster you'll realize that there are no problems, there are only fresh opportunities to make a new choice.

An Ode To The Broken Hearted

Let it hurt. Because the more you feel it now, the less you'll feel it later. Keep breathing. Keep air cycling through your lungs and let that breath reaffirm your life when you feel like you want to die. Care for yourself physically when your emotions are battered and exhausted. Drink water, nap, exercise out the pain and the anger. Keep breathing. Keep feeling. Care for yourself the way you would care for a wounded pet or a beloved child. Know that the shattering of something you wanted is clearing the way for something more, something better. Not a better person but a better fit, a better match.  Know that you are loved, even if it doesn't feel that way. Yes, your heart has been tossed onto the funeral pyre to go up in flames, but the old heart must disintegrate before a new heart can be born.

If you feel like your heart is a blackened, charred cinder of nothing in your chest - congratulations. You tried. You opened up. You exposed your tender bits and even though it feels like a tiger just ripped out your jugular - you won. Because you were brave. Because the only people who find victory are the ones who are also open to taking a beating. Letting someone near your tender, easily bruised heart is the ultimate act of courage.

So lick your wounds and keep letting those emotions rise to the surface because the power of that hurt, that anger, will keep walls from forming, will keep the arteries to your heart from hardening. That means that when the time is right and the person is right, you will get what you always wanted. 

Trust that whatever happens is leading you toward something better, something more suited, something more beautiful. The old and broken must dissolve before the new can sidle in. If you feel that you are the one who's old and broken, allow that to disintegrate too. Because you are as whole and perfect now as you were on the day you were born.

Yes, you loved that person, for their beauty, their foibles, their unique humanness. Of course you did. But they were not the source of that love you felt, they were only its mirror. That love came from you, when you decided to focus it on them and their beauty, their foibles, their unique humanness. Once you've grieved and felt all the painful things we'd prefer not to feel, once you've realized that feeling those feelings makes the feelings dissipate, even if it takes longer than you'd like - that's when you can open up again to the next gorgeous, foible-filled human who catches the strings of your heart.

Love is not limited to one person, one life, one source. Begin to feel love in everything that surrounds you - a home you love, a pet you adore, books that make you happy, the movement of the leaves in the trees. It's everywhere and the more you see it, the more it will find you. Because you were born to be loved and that love surrounds you, even now.

This Is For You

You are loved. The same way you love your favorite song or your favorite book or that pet you adored with such fierceness that his death sent a hot poker through your core. You are loved that way. You are loved the way you want to be loved, the way you dream of being loved. But the love held for you is purer, deeper, more transcendent. New eyes are required to understand the way you are already loved.

It is everything you want and it’s already sitting there. Waiting for you to find it. Everyone has a different path to this love. Some people get lost on that path and find themselves tangled in the thickets. Some people blast through like Jedis on a mission. Some people take it slowly, gently and pause to rest. That’s what the rocks are for. You can blast through them or climb over them or simply sit on them for awhile.

There is no wrong way to approach a rock.

There is no wrong way to deal with a block in your path. You can sit down beside it and scratch poems in the dust. You can climb over it. You build yourself a catapult and hurl your body around it. You can approach the blocks in your path any way you choose. Just know that those blocks are part of your path. They’re part of why you’re here. Those blocks are here to teach you something new about yourself, to show you some way to love deeper. Those blocks are here to help you. So rejoice when you find one, because you are about to become a purer version of yourself. You may get lost for awhile and that’s okay. You’ll find your way back. You will get where you’re going, whether it takes you ten minutes or ten days or ten years.

There is nothing you can do wrong here. Everything you want is waiting for you. Everything you want is waiting for you to choose it. This is most true when you’re lost in the thickets and the brambles are tearing your skin and you want nothing more than peace. Accepting that you’re in the brambles - for now - will give you that peace. And show you where to find the matches. Set fire to the brambles. Launch yourself into the dream you hold for yourself.

We know that it’s aggravating to hear that you have everything you need. Because you’ve been taught otherwise. Your whole life, you’ve been taught otherwise. But nobody else has the something you need. They can guide you to your own knowledge. They can help you find your way. They can show you their roadmap or their stash of dynamite for the blocks and the brambles. But you are always your own best source. You have your own answers. You just have to allow yourself to find them.