Work To Do

Nothing like a global pandemic, human hooliganism, and rampant uncertainty to make you feel powerless. While also reminding us that all we can ever do is pay attention to this moment, and do our best to positively effect moments to come.

Questions I keep asking myself:

1. How can I take care of myself in this moment?

2. How can I help today?

This is what we can do now: Take some small action to either help ourselves or help others, while remembering that helping yourself helps others and helping others helps you. (Well-played, universe!)

Big change wants to happen. Big change in the world and big change for each of us individually.

I’ve been feeling the big change breathing down my neck for years - especially around the summer solstice. For some reason late June is always when I take a good hard look at my life - and occasionally blow something sky high.

Right now, it feels like everything in my life is up for grabs. Where I live, who I spend my time with, what my life will look like from here. It’s unsettling, but it also forces me to do my work. Spend time really checking in to see where my soul wants me to go from here, heal anything left unresolved so the same patterns don’t keep repeating, take care of my health - mental, physical, emotional, and energetic - so I have the ability and strength to do whatever needs to be done.

I have a lot of work to do. The world has a lot of work to do.

It can be hard to do that kind of work when we’re all so tired. So self-care has become more important than ever, just when it feels the least possible or the most selfish. But that is when devoted self-care becomes imperative. Resting, taking time for yourself, time to do whatever nurtures you and makes you happy. This is on longer optional. Because 2020 is not letting up and we need to meet it as best we can from a space of being filled to the brim, not depleted AF.

We need to trust ourselves and trust the course of our lives. Which, again, feels like one of the hardest things to do, especially now.

So this is my new mantra, one that I may need to tattoo on my forearm so I don’t keep forgetting:

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?