keeping time

It’s winter now. December is quickly fading away. Time passes faster and faster around me. It feels like. When I wake up, and I’m in that in-between sleep and wakefulness, I feel the fragility of peace. My heart isn’t pounding. My mind isn’t racing with thoughts about the day or all of the things I’m supposed to be doing or panicking with the reality that I actually don’t know what I’m supposed to be doing. I have been talking to my therapist about the structured sense of time I grew up in. The conversation ebbs and flows between sessions. I recall the feeling of rigidity and intensity. The relationships between peers facilitated by ringing bells and classroom identities—a microcosm of societal hierarchies.   

It is taking so much time to re-locate my own organic rhythm. I think I lost it in the womb. Petocin, Male doctors, Cold hospital beds, Metal railings, Saline in plastic tubing. I was birthed into an urgent world with prescribed timelines and standardized outcomes. The matrix of expectations cradled me and my first breath with its guarantees, and so I was subscribed to its logical trajectories. My life force hooked up to the machines like IV’s. Over and over again, I have traded my creative power for the promise of security. And when I run out of fuel, I quit, restore my power, feel the insecurity, and then I dive back in.

 This year, I quit my “safe jobs” for what feels like the millionth time, and I stepped over the familiar threshold of insecurity and stayed there. I have whole entire days to myself now. I am the arbiter of my own time in the purest sense. No one else is charged with arranging my schedule. I am in deep collaboration with the world around me. I wanted it that way. And many days, I wake up in pure agony over how to set and meet my own expectations. The safety of a workplace is not only found in its financial security, but also in the structure and sense of purpose it provides. Because how else can we define success? Survival? Contribution? Belonging? Value?

 And how do you define those things within yourself? It’s not like the many systems in my life turned to me and asked “now what do you want?” The practice of turning inward to remember myself is a skill that I had to develop on my own time. Which raises the question, whose timeline have I been living on if not my own? And what is “my time?”

The need to feel integrated into a collective material runs deep. I need connection. I need belonging. A solitary, individualist motivation is practically non-existent. I “do” because I am connected to you. Because I want to be connected. Because I need to survive. Because we are all in this together. In many ways, I don’t do anything for myself. I receive, and then I do for others. I am attempting, with great effort, to receive and do in a way that is softer and more natural for me. I wonder what it looks like to integrate into a collective in a way that really honors individuality. I wonder what it looks like to be valued for who I really am.

And so I also wonder what collectives am I part of? I am a microcosm of a macrocosm. As within, so without, or whatever. What are the rhythms of life which am I attuned to? Where and how does my body naturally sync with the expansion and contraction of life? How do I flow with the seasons? The cycles of the moon? The waves of collective opinion and emotion? The weather? I realize I am desperately attached to the earth. To the desire to be connected to the raw shifting of the planet. To my body. I want to be deeply, deeply embodied.

When I was little, my family lived in Michigan. We visited Denver infrequently to connect with extended family. I have a core memory of looking at the Colorado sky right outside the Denver airport. It felt so expansive, I was almost frightened. I can still feel that deep sense of awe ringing in the core of my being. I have expanded around it, and when it rattles around, instead of fear, I feel like I’m vibrating into opening. The mountains stare back at me in stoic majesty, and sometimes it feels like I’m almost daring them to topple me. And maybe they do. It’s easy for me to walk down the gridded streets of the city and forget my sense of place. And my sense of time. I look west, and the illusion of busy-ness and productivity falls down around me. People keep asking me how I like Denver now that I’ve lived here almost 3 years. I don’t ever know how to answer them, but I wonder if maybe the mountains are the gift my time and place here is giving me. It’s startling to think about how much they’ve seen. And how little this city and its machinations matter to them in the grand scheme of things. They’ve been around for a long time. Maybe that’s also why just a glimpse of them can be so grounding.

All of the fucking “skyscrapers” and sweeping, metallic city buildings go up bragging about their importance. I really hate all of this fucking urgency. By now, I think I understand my own contempt quite well. But I can’t figure out how to unhook myself from the stupid machine that perpetuates it. How am I supposed to make money if someone isn’t giving it to me out of charity or making me do some kind of elaborate, performative dance? I’ve been told (multiple times through multiple sources) that my income is connected to my self-worth. Sure. Now what?

The need to fix things expeditiously comes over me. Everything is falling apart! I’m not making the timeline! I’m running out of money! The razor thin line between pushing my growth edges and tipping over into apocalyptic urgency taunts me. Balancing myself squarely atop this tightrope requires a trust in myself and others that I tend to lack. I’m supposed to talk better about myself, but I also have all of these feelings. Every day. The wellness industry and all of its mandates are stalking me. Therapy. Meditation. Walking. Self-talk. Self-love. I have anxiety; something is wrong with me; I have to fix it; this wellness industry knows how to do it.   

I took a reiki course at the beginning of the pandemic in 2020. It was a stunningly brief online course, but I got attunements. And it was like $27. The PDF manual that came along with the course had useful frameworks. The online teacher gave a particularly profound piece of advice in the introduction of the manual that has stuck with me: “don’t diagnose your client.” Drunk on new, spiritual power and high vibrations, it is easy to slip into a seat of authority over others rather than securing a sense of authority within ourselves. It is easy to “know” what the problem is and therefore become the sole source of solution. I didn’t understand at the time, but that directive to avoid “diagnosing my client” followed me because I was doing this to myself. It was difficult to discern the difference between trust and giving my power away. I think I still wonder what the difference is.

 And I think the thing about spirituality is that it is so easy to gaslight people into this abusive power dynamic and to fall into it ourselves. Cults are not a one-off, easily identifiable entity until it is too late for its supporters. Someone tells us something is wrong with us, and they have a way to fix it if we just listened to them! And before we know it, we are trading our creative power for a sense of security. We do this all the time in small and big ways. Maybe we’ve been doing this since we were born. What I want to say is that we are all be victims of them. And there but for the grace of god go I. Because practices of expansion, of evolution, or growth, of magic, that deal with power require so much trust. This trust is intrinsic to the practices. And we need these spaces and practices in our lives. We are so cut off from the wonder and awe and grace of the universe. We need that connection to god. And we have been disconnected for whatever reason. Personally, I’m still asking why, and I don’t care to know the answer particularly. Only that I wish to create more space for myself and for others to re-connect.

 And a diagnosis of “what is wrong with you” is a stick in the spokes of your forward motion wheels. A diagnosis, in the case of this spiritually-focused journey of inner knowing, is just another external assertion of power into your own internal journey. Inner knowing is a self-surfacing path towards your freedom from these external structures. And these external structures are only there to hold us in growth. Like soil for a seed. Greeting what rises to the top, what comes to your consciousness in its own time is the whole entire point.  An external diagnosis leaves your precious subconscious in the hands of another, while you attempt to wrestle your problems into concordance with their judgment. Your subconscious doesn’t need someone to tell it what’s wrong, it needs care. It just needs nurturing. Like a seed. We don’t tell plants what they are so that they grow. We water them. We nurture their environment. And they grow on their own. Discernment is a tool of awareness that aids us nurturing their environment in more skillful and refined ways. So that they can grow on their own. A good healer, a good teacher, a good guide gives you the space and the frameworks that support your growth.

 Blah blah blah. I step off of my soap box now. I rant towards the proverbial “you” and realize it’s me who needs to be reminded. There’s only so many directives I can receive (that I asked for) before I want to claw my eyeballs out. Only so many diagnoses before the feeling that I will never be ok again overcomes me. The virulent, rotting opinions of internet gurus (of all genres!!!! doctor gurus, tarot gurus, wellness gurus, education gurus, all of them!) continue to worm their way into my porous belief structures every time I open an app on my phone. Because I want to know! I want to know the truth! I want to know how to fix myself! Urgently! Please! I am open. I want to know what’s wrong with me. Why am I not getting what I need? Why am I not connected?

And just like that, I replace connection with correction. I just need to connect. Why aren’t we connected? I want to feel like I belong in the vastness that is this universe. To step in time to the rhythm of whatever massive heartbeat is at the center of everything. To connect to anything is to become present in time and greet whatever is around me. My breath. My body. The ground. Plants. The sky. The mountains.  

As the year starts to wrap up, I am reflecting on the difficulty of it all. The intermittent cold, freezing weather feels like it is intermittently freezing time long enough for me to look back on everything. This year was really hard. I was really hard on myself. And the year was really hard on me. It also passed by so quickly. I wonder if that’s because I’m also getting older, and years don’t carry the same weight anymore. I wonder about the structure of how I keep time. My age. My educational degrees. My hormonal cycle. My daily routine. Colored rectangles on the grid of my Google calendar. I wonder if it makes more sense to me to keep time in a different way. With the seasons. With the moon cycles. With my breath. With the sky. With the mountains. My rent payments will keep coming on the first of every Roman calendar month. I will still have several clocks that keep 12 hour time. My Google calendar will still keep all of my appointments.

I’m still plugged into the grid searching for connection, trying to sync up the rhythm of my own heartbeat to the blinking light of my wifi console and the uncanny, oceanic sound of car tires on asphalt outside my window.  I am desperate to breathe with the undulating wind coming over the mountains. To let the ebb and flow of conversations create their own songs. To dance alongside them, watching them grow with the seasons. Small steps. Turning off the metallic clang of calendar alerts and text messages. Opening my eyes to face the moon. Turning my head west to let the mountains face me. It’s so much easier to write about than to actually live the poetry. In the meantime, my affirmations will be: I don’t need to fix anything. There’s nothing wrong with me. There’s no urgency.

All in my own time.

break down to break through

Lately, I’ve been starting my days with difficulty and disbelief. My current challenge is to re-write negative self-talk and cultivate abundant, life-giving energy. I’ve gotten to the point where I can tap into the energy of gratitude and self-love with ease. There was a time in my life where this was impossible. Cultivating this self-love has taken time, ritual, and the guidance of community and teachers. It took small steps that grew into bigger leaps into what I know understand as the boundless well of love that lives inside of me. Now I just have to remember to tap in.

Catching myself in the negative thought loops has been quite the surprising practice. What I once thought of as indelible truths about myself and the world have turned out to falsehoods written by a cruel, invisible hand. The self-imposed brutality was so deeply subconscious, I didn’t even realize it was happening or that I had any control over it.

There were, of course, signs. And the feedback from others about my inability to love myself seemed to abound. So it wasn’t that I didn’t know that I lacked love, I just had no idea how to resolve the issue. And I really didn’t understand the depth or dimension of the problem.

It wasn’t until I started doing energy work that things started to really shift for me. The gentleness of the practices I engaged in and the gradual clarity lent to me by my teachers was vital in my growth journey.  I feel like it can be easy for folks to dismiss the material effects of spiritual work mostly because immediate effects tend to be subtle and gain momentum with repetition and time.  In short, it takes commitment, openness, and practice to see real, tangible outcomes. This can be a dangerous proposition when the only proof you have that something works is someone’s word. I mean, this is what makes cults so sinister and why it’s so easy to scam people when they feel desperate.

It was truly by the grace of god that I wasn’t drawn into a cult when I first started testing the waters of spiritual work. I know plenty of people who end up a part of or in close contact with cults. In fact, I’m fairly certain I attended several church services in college that were cult-adjacent. The point is that skepticism is warranted. And any practitioner worth their salt will encourage you to stay in your power and trust your own instincts.

I’m glad that I trusted mine because they lead me to practices that are now changing my life! But I suppose when I say “change my life” it doesn’t feel so dramatic. It feels peaceful. Through the grace and insight from sessions and classes with masterful practitioners, I found my center. And I continue to find it over and over with the tools and reference points that I’ve been given.

This morning, I woke up for the hundredth time with the same dark migraine that had developed the day before. Getting out of bed was painful and the morning was already starting to prove disappointing. I had planned on working today. Aggrieved and anxious, I attempted to push through it so that I could get productive. This did not work.

It took me some time to realize I was being harsh with myself, and it dawned on me that I couldn’t take care of other things before I took care of myself. I started to take out the tools in my self-love toolbox; I journaled; I cried a lot; I took a shower; I meditated; and then I promptly fell asleep. When I woke up, my body felt weak from the intensity of the last 24 hours, but the pounding in my head was gone. Ideas and inspiration started hitting after a bit of food and water, and I set up to work with a clear head. And by work, I mean write and create things on Canva in my papasan chair in my pajamas with my blanky. It’s light work.

the all important chair and blanky ;)

This is not the first time this cycle of breaking down has led to some kind of breakthrough. And I’m starting to wonder if my anxiety and frustration is what motivates me to take care of myself in the first place. Rather than ominous harbingers of rumination and spirals, they have become little warning bells that it’s time to take a seat, take a break, and take a look at what’s going on with me. I’m in awe of my new ability to cry so freely. I grieve more openly. I feel softer. It takes less time to come back to hope and truth.

As I endeavor to be and express my most authentic self, I wonder if this practice is not just important, but actually essential. I know, I know. Everyone says this. Take care of yourself! Be kind! Be gentle! Love yourself! But actually practicing love and care is so different than what has been popularly presented to me. The practice has required my presence and my time and my understanding and my willingness to be in pain and then let it go. This love goes deep, and it is what is breaking through deeply ingrained patterns standing in the way of my creativity and peace.  

I want to imagine where I will be in 5 years with these exciting new tools, but if the last 5 years of my life have demonstrated anything to me, it’s that we can never know what will happen next. My only wish is that I can continue to create this gentle space inside for me to just be myself. And I hope that I can create that space for you too. <3

The Land Gave Me Security

A while back, I was listening to a podcast with an energy worker named Daniel Foor talk about animism and ancestral healing work. He commented that we often think about other humans fulfilling our needs, but that we rarely think about how the rest of the natural world is uniquely positioned to fill needs that other people cannot. I had been doing energy work processes with earth and universal energies for a while for the sake of healing myself, but this conversation spurred a deeper sense of commitment and security in what I was doing.

Doing guided visualization and “energy work” is one of many forms of connecting with the world around us. And for me, it has dignified my understanding of the consciousness of everything around me. I am in relationship to it all, and this relationship connotes exchange.

In August, I hit a tough financial spot and had to make some decisions about where I was investing my time, money, and energy. I ended up releasing a significant intention I had been carrying with me for over a year. The decision to let it go made an unexpected and crazy amount of space to re-invest and re-commit myself to other practices that I felt were more aligned. I could feel the physical weight of it all fall off of my shoulders. This cascade of energy moved me to release another long-held intention I had to move out of my apartment. The decision to re-sign my lease felt like another crazy and intense opening that allowed me to re-invest my energy into something that was already feeding me: where I already live.  

I have spent quite a lot of time in my life engaging in fantasy, wishing I was somewhere else, wanting to travel around. When I left Michigan in 2016, I had no idea I’d spend the next 6 years in Washington, DC bouncing around to different neighborhoods and houses. In fact, I haven’t spent more than 2 years grounded in one place since I moved out of my parent’s house in 2010 to go to college. This may seem like an exaggeration. You might think that bouncing between dorms and my parents’ house isn’t technically like living in a different place or moving around, but when I contrast the last decade or so of my life with where I am living now, I am astounded at how difficult it is to feel rooted in your environment when you shift even the smallest of distances and watch as the people you live in close proximity to shifts dramatically. Maybe when you’re young it makes more sense to move around like that. There was so much excitement and energy to burn in my 20s. I wanted to experience lots of different things, and I did.

Landing in Denver in my 30s (and in the middle of my Saturn return I might add) and heading into my 3rd year in the apartment I live in now, I feel an ecstasy that is difficult to describe. I have had a million different jobs here, but my surroundings have largely remained the same. I even see the same faces at the grocery stores and cafes I frequent. I don’t know these people. I don’t even know most folks names, but maybe I will one day. And to feel recognized and to recognize by just being is a gift that I didn’t know I needed to receive.

I credit the land with this newfound, relational security. I don’t know how to describe why exactly. It’s like the fact that there are plants and trees and landscape that remains present in a cycle has mirrored back to me what it means to remain and change. To be in cycle. To be different and the same. To show up in all of my different forms yet remain rooted.  I am accepted by the land. It remains while I remain. I am learning that if I stay in one place for long enough, I don’t have to do anything to be known. To be seen. To be understood. To have history. Maybe this is what it means to be post-Saturn return or “in my thirties” or being an adult. But I’m grateful to feel like I’m healing a sort of “attachment wound” with aid of the earth. I’m not attaching to a human, but to a sense of place. And this sense of place is remaining as I remain. It is growing as I grow. And it is doing it slowly, but surely. And wow, I am so grateful for this change of pace.

I Love The Panic!

Since I decided to quit my safe job and launched full-time into running this business, I have experienced what I’ll call cycles of panic. I’ve been anxious for probably my entire life, but since I’ve mostly released all of my external coping mechanisms and safeties (drugs, parties, distracting relationships, my savior complex, dead-end jobs that I hate), the anxiety is the freshest and most pure I’ve ever felt it. I love the taste of unadulterated panic. Lol.

In the last several months, I’ve woken up in the middle of the night, heart pounding, mind racing, feeling completely and utterly like nothing will work out.  Riding the waves of panic has invited me into new ways of regulating and self-soothing. It’s really testing my skillset and, frankly, my creativity. Last night, I woke up with that familiar feeling of sheer terror. I felt the waves of it electrify my heart and mind, and as I started to take deep breaths, I asked myself what it would say if it had words. “Nothing will work out, nothing will ever work out, I don’t deserve for anything to work out.” The familiar scripts of self-loathing and “I’m not enough” materialized in front of me. There have been times, maybe most of my life, where I have fully believed these scripts. They have driven my decisions to take jobs I hate, stay in toxic relationships, and do things that make me feel like shit.  

In September, I finally started therapy, and talking out my concerns with her has lead to some deep healing and integration. I feel like all of the practices I’ve been doing in solitude—the meditation, the energy work, the tarot readings, the rituals—are starting to get legs. When I heard those familiar words and phrases of self-loathing, I remembered what Rachel said about doing different things to shift myself out of the cycles of rumination. I started implementing my practices. I started to muster up the feelings of compassion and love I have been cultivating through different self-care rituals and practices. I took a shower; I ate food; I imagined myself as a kind, compassionate, elder version of Kandin holding space for the fear and panic inside of me; I literally held my body gently; I took deep breaths; I reassured myself that everything, no matter what, was going to be ok. Stabilizing this state of compassion took both a mindset shift that began with me asking myself “What if you’re wrong” and also took deliberate action in my physical reality that anchored me in the present and in my body.  

I think this is the essence and the consequence of ritual: change. By bringing our minds and our bodies into union , we create an energetic shift in our realities. Some of us may be thinking, well this is how life works. We plan, we act, things get done. And of course. We do rituals, knowingly and unknowingly, every single day. Everything we do is an act of magic. The real revelation is opening up to the possibility of creating ritual and intention through everything that we do, understanding that its impact goes far beyond just the physical reality. Our rituals impact our emotions, our inner child, our past self, our future self, our communities, our relationships. Your ritual does not need to be dictated by the authoritative, external, expectations that you grew up with. You can create your own, internally motivated practices where you intentionally shift the reality that you’re living in. You can, in fact, love yourself more deeply than you ever thought was possible. You can have fulfilling and loving relationships. You can see the value in yourself. There are so many ways we learn these things, and one of my favorite ways is ritual.

Here I am, standing in stillness amongst the trees in the mountains, trying to become like the trees! Another self-love ritual. Reminding myself that I am a part of nature! That we are all earthlings, that we are all connected! <3 

What kinds of rituals of care do you have for yourself? Can they hold you when you start to spiral? How can you introduce one ritual of compassion into your life today? Maybe it’s making yourself a cup of nourishing tea in the morning, maybe it’s going for a walk, maybe it’s calling a trusted friend; maybe it’s taking a shower. Choose one ritual and start making it a habit out of love. Imagine yourself bathed in the light of compassion as you do this one thing. You may find that this one thing snowballs into mountains of love.

It’s All Art

It’s mid-September y’all! Thanks for joining me on my little adventure. I went on a roadtrip to Elizabeth, CO today, which is about an hour away from Denver. My precious friend allowed me to borrow their car, and off I went to gather pounds and pounds of petrified wood and other peculiar gemstones and rock specimens. I, of course, was overly ambitious with the bounty I was fit to carry. It took me 6 trips between me and the car to carry everything back up to my apartment. As I stare at the hard pieces of earth that are now scattered around my living room, I am wondering why I chose to take so many home with me. As I was collecting them from a sweet friend’s home, it made sense to take as many as I could (perhaps all of them). She said that the city had purchased her lot and was likely to pave over the whole thing. I was aghast at the thought of all of the precious stones being rolled over with asphalt. It is most certainly my aversion to grief that has led me here. Ah yes, letting things go. I would rather literally move the earth than leave something behind. Denver is full of beautiful, mountainous rocks that are probably just fine being compressed into the cyclical, archaic layers that the earth compresses into over time anyway.

the drive there was so beautiful, but i took shit pictures because it seemed fruitless to try to capture the fleeting beauty of it all anyway

I think I see consciousness in everything, and that’s why it’s so difficult to let things go. I have an emotional attachment to even the memory or thought of something. The other reason, I believe, is because I am afraid of making the wrong choice. Very briefly, I worked at a butcher shoppe; it was the first and only back of house job that I have held. There, I learned a very visceral lesson about making choices. One of the butchers was a young, 20-something year old, and he was just learning how to make the proper cuts. But as he had been a cook for several years, he had experience that gave him confidence and quite a bit of knowledge. He was also a bit of a hothead, which I found endearing only because of the earnestness of his youth. Watching him butcher parts of a cow was like watching some kind of extreme sport I didn’t understand. He made decisions swiftly and sometimes abruptly, but always with a sort of confidence that was completely startling to me. I learned later that he frequently made mistakes, and the juxtaposition of his ability to make choices and fuck all the consequences was a total revelation to me. He was a true artist in every way, and it didn’t seem to matter that he was wrong. He was just making choices, and that’s all anyone cared about. Sometimes the brutish way he threw himself around the space (literally bumping into people, pushing past others, etc) was completely aggravating, but it was also inspiring as I was mostly afraid to make any decisions at all. 

I remember having this realization one day after working with him that “art is making choices.” That’s it. It’s exactly like butchering a cow. Every cow is unique; every cut of meat is different than the last; each fiber, muscle, and bone growing relative to diet, exercise, and environment. We aimed for percentages at the butcher shoppe, not absolutes, e.g. get 70% of the breast of the chicken. It’s probably impossible to cut 100% straight off the bone, also who has the time to precariously and delicately cut off every last fiber of meat from every small bone that exists in an animal. Percentages it is. And it’s for this reason that butchering is an art. Over time, you get better at making more graceful and refined cut. It is a craft that is honed with practice. There is no perfectionism when it comes to the flesh. Everything is woven tightly together because it’s supposed to be. Veins and fat and bone and muscle latch together to become something greater than the sum of its parts.

When we cut it apart, we create something new, something different than what we started with. And that’s the point.

This past Friday, I cut my own hair into a new style for the first time (outside of the times I’ve buzzed it all down, I don’t count those times). I have been growing it out as an experiment, allowing myself to take my time and get a little unkempt. This is a theme I’m noticing within myself as of late. I’m just making choices and learning from them. It occurs to me how many times I’ve stopped myself from doing something because I thought I was doing it wrong, or someone else was supposed to do it right. When people used to tell me “we’re all just making this up, no one knows what they’re doing,” I really didn’t understand it. But this shifting perspective is starting a fire inside of me that is changing the way I see the entire world. If we’re all making this up, I can cut my hair any way that I want to. I can cut up a chicken in whatever way makes sense for me. I can create the life I want to.  And suddenly a world of possibilities opens up before me, and even more, it opens up for view of humanity. We’re all making this shit up together. What kind of wonderful, incredible things do you think we can do? I can see a blurry outline of something beautiful in the void of the unknown.

i am sharing this image with you because hopefully some of you can relate…i might not even do these dishes tonight….

I look at my sink full of dishes and my armchair full of laundry and let out a heavy sigh. There is no perfection, just an endless cycle of doing my dishes and putting away my laundry. I attempt to squeeze out more love and affection for myself and my inability (and general resistance) to doing my chores every day. There is always something to do, always more to learn, always waves to ride. We are on a giant, magnificent, abundant rock, and we keep picking up rocks, moving them around, making cuts, and setting them down again. I guess it’s kinda funny when you think about it like that. But to me, it’s all art.

What is enough?

            The question throws me in a spiral. I get up and sit down again, wandering over long days wondering wondering wondering when will my mind find what it needs? When will I do enough? Is this enough? Am I doing enough? I quit my job in April to find something else. I needed to be my own navigator instead of relying on other ships to save me. I need to build my own ship and be my own captain.

Well, my ship is barely floating. There are holes springing up left and right, and I haven’t quite gotten the skills to fix them yet. I wonder if I will figure this out. I have to figure this out or I’m sinking. I don’t want to jump onto another ship just yet. I want to decide where I’m going. I want to go somewhere. I am getting so much out of building and fixing. I don’t know where all of the holes are coming from or if I have enough material to fix this ship. Water fills up the bottom of the boat, and I am just chucking it out with a bucket as I go, thinking up different solutions to the same problem.

            Some of them work, some of them don’t. I worry that I will never get the boat to maximum capacity. I wonder what that kind of success even looks like. I realize that my boat could look like whatever I want if I’m the one who’s building and driving it. A new question arises then: what’s driving me? And the fact that I’m not totally sure how to answer this question is disconcerting. What is driving me? For now, it’s freedom. The choice to go wherever I want. The freedom is hard won. I have to learn so many things. Most importantly, I have to work. I have to work, as in, I have to show up fully in my capacity. I can’t allow others to do the work for me.

That’s not to say that I am a poster child for some kind of cruel and ignorant individuality. I am surviving only because of the support I have from those who came before me. The blueprints of the ship, the material I’ve gathered, the knowledge that I have that keeps me going, all of it comes from those around me. The fact that I know I can do this is because I see people all around me doing the same thing. We’re all fishing and sailing in the same sea. We’re all creating alongside each other. I am only learning because someone else is figuring it out too, and we’re teaching each other.

We’re all sailing into the unknown. What’s driving me? I can’t give a concrete answer. Something secret drives me, and all I can do is trust. The only way to keep going, to keep reaching for this liberation is to trust.

            I trust that at every moment I will fully show up. I trust that when I do my work, others will do theirs, and most importantly, the universe is doing its own work too. I release responsibility to make everything work. I release the responsibility to make everything work. I trust that it will all work out. I trust that it will all work out. I just have to let go, to let things happen, to let things follow along the glorious and magnificent laws of the universe, that I don’t need to have everything at my fingertips. That I don’t need to have everything, to hold everything, to feel everything. I just need me. I just need to fully show up as me.

            That’s all that’s required of me. Everything else will work itself out. If I do my work, I trust you will do yours, I will do mine, the universe will continue on working unto itself. I trust, I trust, I trust. And as I trust, I will let go. I will finally, finally, find peace. Everything will work itself out. I will let it take its time. I will allow things to unfold. I believe. I will lean into the edges of my growth, into the void of the unknown, the screeching discomfort of something I don’t know, something I’ve never seen the other side of, can’t hear, smell, or taste. What if it all works out? What if it ended the way that it should? What if I held my doubt? What if it all turns out to be good? Release control. Trust in the compassion and great expansion of the universe. Trust in something bigger and more beautiful and more vast than I could ever be. I let go of everything I’m holding. It’s all working out. I’m trusting. I will see the bigger picture when I release all of the shit I’ve pressed up against for comfort. Let the space fill with new and wondrous things. I will see the bigger picture eventually. I release.

five of pentacles

I’ve been feeling overwhelmed and anxious about how to live abundantly and create wealth outside the frameworks I grew up with, all the while I’ve been intermittently tasting the sweet fruit of a life without them. My fantasy is to live artfully: practicing with patience and slowness the things that I love. I allow the things I love to grow on their own timeline, trusting that what I need will come to me. I fear that my easeful acceptance of the beauty around me enables a languid effort from me towards all things. It is easy to be happy. I go outside, I sit in the grass, I watch the clouds grow and shrink, I feel the sun on my back, I feel slowly. The core belief that everything we need is already here grows. We have food, we have water, we have sunlight, we have shelter. What’s missing?

            Why isn’t our survival this simple when conceptually, it shouldn’t be this hard? This is my question of the day.

            And then I try to bring myself back down to reality, I must do what is expected of me. And then I feel like I’ll never be happy. Always reaching for something that doesn’t exist. Only imagining my own peace. It’s not fair. I almost refuse to accept this fate. That I must always be doing something that drains me, that the people around me will never afford me value to do what I love. That we don’t value the things that I love, that I care for, that I work for. And do I even want to work?

I search for the resolution of the thing I can’t even name. I become angry, frustrated, and defeated. I feel devastatingly defeated. What if my dreams never come true? What if I am stuck on this hamster wheel forever? What if I only get to dream? And even when I try, it simply doesn’t matter. Maybe that’s my biggest fear, that even if I try, I won’t get what I’m aiming for. And I’ll be wrong to be hopeful all along.

  Despairing and desperate, I pull out one of my personal tarot decks. After shuffling the deck maybe once, the 5 of pentacles (of course) and the 9 of cups in reverse fall out together. Talk about defeat and despair. In my personal deck (I use the Thoth deck), the 5 of pentacles has the word worry at the bottom. I am worried. I am worried in a soft way and then an angry and fiery way. When I feel myself soften, I feel the gravity of reality slipping in, and the heaviness of grief finds its way to the surface. What if things never change? What if my chaotic and unfocused and draining life remains. What if nothing changes?

            I wonder what I want to achieve. I want to be self-sufficient. I want to give back to my community. I want to feed my community; I want my work and who I am to contribute to the whole. I want to make us better. I am afraid that I am not valued. I don’t know what I contribute. Or how to put it into words. I don’t know it what form I contribute. I wonder what I have to give.

    And here is the crux of the 5 of pentacles. The figures in the traditional deck are hobbling past a church building, outside in the cold. It reminds me of the story in the bible where that woman tithes a penny or something, but Jesus scolds those who scoff at her. She gives what she has, and that is valuable. More valuable, in fact, than those who give millions. This is my disconnect, I think. The idea that spiritual value is separate from “Earthly” value. What those recognize in me as valuable is not what my spirit recognizes as valuable. The point is that we are valuable, what we contribute is valuable, but there’s some kind of disconnect between the idea of value and our reality reflecting this value. Some have commented that the figures in the five of pentacles card could simply walk inside the lit church. The idea is that they would not be cold if they just opened their minds to the possibility of walking inside, perhaps ask for help, that the church is a place of refuge. The only barrier to entry is their scarcity mindset, their desire to stay in the victim position. 

            I struggle with this concept. I have had a multitude of experiences which support the idea that my mind creates my reality and if I intend good things to happen they will. And I have also had the experience when things don’t go my way, and I’m at a loss. Unfair and unjust things happen to me, and there’s no resolution, they remain unjust. I happen to the world, and the world happens to me. I wonder what the five of pentacles is asking of me. I deeply believe that each card in the tarot brings some kind of wisdom to be distilled from it. Our life shows up with these energies, and we metabolize them. What does the five of pentacles need? What does it understand?

            In order to analyze this, I can take several routes. I can look at the context cards: the 4 of pentacles and the 6 of pentacles and see how the 5 sits in this context as part of a story or evolution. I can also analyze the numerological meaning of five and how it interacts with the elements of earth/ the symbolism of pentacles. Finally, I can intuitively seek the meaning by meditating on the imagery of the card that I pulled, noting what I observe for the first time in the card, what jumps out at me: the color, the objects, the flow of the picture, any figures interacting?, what symbols are coming out at me? Shapes? Importantly, I will write these things down in order to flush them out and see my observations with clarity and acceptance.

            I’m going to start with meditating on the imagery of this specific card. The most obvious imagery here for me is heavy concrete disks, which are showing cracks, or better yet, they are showing signs of wear. They seem to be pulled together or are being simply held together by a star shape with points made of smaller disks that connect to the center of the bigger disks. In the background, through the cracks are streams of what look like molten lava. Perhaps preparing the disks to be melted down so they can become something new. This is a transitional card, a necessary and uncomfortable moment of erosion and degradation. The light behind the heavy disks almost feels hopeful, like an alchemical elixir coming to alleviate the weight of our expectations. There’s a breakthrough that’s implied with all of this pressure.

            Before the 5 of pentacles is the 4 of pentacles. In short, the 4 represents holding onto something. It can mean greed, it can mean hoarding, it can also mean saving. The primary motivating force behind the card is stability. The 5 is what comes to shake up this stability: change, and as a result, loss. After the 5 of pentacles is the 6 of pentacles: the card of reciprocity. When we integrate our understanding that losing is a fact of life, we give and take freely, understanding that the ebb and flow is how this all comes together anyway. We live in the cycle. The 5 of pentacles highlights the pinnacle of our change point. It is the uncomfortable moment after devastation. We are out in the cold. We are lacking. We are at a loss.

            To receive something means that we have to give something up that we’re already holding onto. Perhaps the 5 of pentacles is asking us to let go, or rather, it is forcing us to. In the heat of the forge, we give up our form. For what? I think we give up our form for something that can only be seen and understood in relationship to one another. We give up our stable form for something fluid and communal, something vulnerable and mutual.

            I wonder where this leaves me today. Can I give up my previous form to become something softer and receptive? Something that both gives and takes?

This is my declaration. 

            I am soft. I am receptive. I give. I take. I receive. I offer. In the heat of the forge, I give up my form. I offer my form to a greater purpose, to the uplifting of the collective consciousness, to the wholeness of the communal body. I surrender my devices and preconceptions to the divine fires of transformation. I release.

INITIATION

I don’t know what happened before this. Over time, I learned that I had been holding myself back. I went to a bunch of meditations and received energy healing and initiations over the course of three years. And I had big revelations about humanity and existence, and my humanity and my existence. And I challenged my own worldview over and over again. And I felt horrible. And I felt it even more deeply than I ever have. I went into work and felt the absurdity of despair painted against candelight and velvet couches. I can’t explain it to you. It was pure experience. I felt it in my soul. I think. I don’t know.

I still don’t know. I don’t know what anything means. I do know that the experience of life is beyond words. Every time it is. Breath catches against pure bliss, in its intensity and euphoria. I can’t explain it to you: the feelings that erupt in me watching the pinpoint of light through the shade of the leaves. It sounds trite. It is. And it also breaks my heart. Every time it does. I don’t know why. And I don’t have to. I just let it.

Sometimes it hurts so badly, and that’s harder. It’s much harder to let it. This is an ongoing process. Life is easeful occasionally and a force of sheer will at other times.  There are days, months, and years that it takes sheer fucking will to survive, to keep going. And there are moments where everything suddenly falls away, and I am grounded completely. I have a renewed sense of self and hope. It’s like a coming back home. I come back to myself, in my body, in love.

There are things that I almost know. I feel them. I do know that the more I believe in something beyond me, the more I have faith, the easier it is to love. Love is an opening. And some days it’s harder than others to be open. I have a tight fist over my pain, over my death. It is the impending doom of strangeness that overtakes me. And that strange sensation of otherness, is the same one that feeds me love. And the same one that makes its own decisions. And the same one which pains me, which creates uncertainty, and gifts me connection. A surrender to something beyond me is a surrender to pain and a surrender to love. And it is present, not looking back or forward.

When I call out now, I call out to the unknown, the beyond, the other. My perception of god is my perception of my neighbor. And when I find the unknown in myself, and make its friend. I find god in my heart.

Ants

Leave me on uninterrupted countryside

A reminder that the world needs nothing from me to thrive

A morning full of angst and guilt. I went to walk out my worries. I felt pulling all over me,

the obligatory tugs of relationships and society, asking me to do this and that in every particular

way. My needs were unmet. I felt unrest, the very specific feeling of being bound and

energized. I went to walk. My parents live in a scrubby, mountainous landscape covered in

suburban neighborhoods and intersected by gravelly paths and dog parks. Still, the trees stand

proud amidst the clatter of pavement and rubber soled shoes. The soft pastel and green brush

sprouts through every soiled crack in the ground, big or small. It is so beautiful I want to cry.

And so I walk, through the little neighborhoods, and down the streets. I decide to not

make any decisions about my grief. I watch the petals of the trees dance to the ground and the

birds taking off from fenceposts, flying around. I follow a woodpecker for a bit, listening to their

soft and steady rhythm. I follow them into a little wooded area, stepping on twigs and soft

earth. I feel alive and connected. The natural world unfolds in front of me, practically breathing.

Everything is living.

On the sidewalk moving towards my unknown destination, I spot ants, red and plenty. I

lean in closer to observe their small bodies. They are red harvester ants: big heads and small

little bodies. I wonder what they have to teach me. It occurs to me suddenly that they can and

will exist without me, that they carry on in their communities together, not needing any of my

help. The revelation releases me into a sense of incredulous joy and peace. I watched how they

lived and worked together briefly, marveling at their diligence and numbers, remembering how

they can carry many times their weight on their backs, thinking about how they build these

incredible structures for each other to live in.

I have a deep desire to live wildly in nature again. To be a little dirtier, a little simpler, a

little closer to the dirt. In my heart, I imagine all of us living somewhere more simply, mostly

without money and the din of commercial enterprises. I want to live away from the hustle of

transactions and exchanges, closer to the growing intimacy of relationships and a gentle quiet.

I’ve become resentful of cars and tall buildings, and I have a particular bitterness towards

asphalt and concrete. It’s become a symbol of human lust and greed. The way that the cold,

hard slabs of stone sprawl across the earth has begun to feel unnatural. I ask myself who am I

and what are we? I look down at the ant hill and its industrious inhabitants.

It occurs to me that we are very much like ants, building our cities with wet stones

above ground. I am reminded that we are a part of nature; I am a part of the Earth. I feel the

resentment temporarily lift as I lean into this truth. When I pull out to see the whole thing, the

entire picture, I can see how human I am. And how earthly humans are. We are always building,

always together, even when it doesn’t feel like it. We are always feeding each other, always

taking and giving, always breathing, always dying, always connected. It’s the present feeling

again. I can feel my heart breaking. Love is an opening. We are temporary.

I sit in a clearing. I have stopped walking. I look out to a cluster of trees and brush and

birds. The idyllic scene takes my breath away. I sit in silence for a while, worshipping the

splendor in front of me. I feel my heart fill and quicken with questions. The desperation feeling

money gives me overtakes me. They respond “what are you feeding your community?” I am

overcome with my humanity. Money is such a human thing. A way that I show you I care and

value what you feed me.

What am I feeding my community?