Musings

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Swordswoman

Would you believe me if I told you I was an expert swordsman in a past life?

That I became so skilled, in fact, I learned to disarm my enemies rather than harm them?
(I guess I’ve always been an empath.) That I continually grew in honor and rank until…until I realized that I really just liked being with everyone else?

Whether the psychic was speaking metaphorically or not really doesn’t matter*.
And she wasn’t just describing to me my past. She was telling me my future. All of our futures, really.

*If anything is egotistical, wouldn’t it be bragging about a past life?

Maybe I’m one of the many leading the charge against darkness, fear, and evil, using my sword not to fight but to disarm. I’m just sharing my pain, what I’ve learned about it, my light of awareness that grew from my journey through the dark, and my love. 

We’re at a time where so many people are beginning to realize that attacking, criticizing, and killing other people solves and heals nothing. That in hurting others, we’re only hurting ourselves.

Instead of using your own sword to attack or defend*, can you use it instead to disarm?
*As in, defend your position, your view point, or how you protect yourself from love.

Instead, can you love so fiercely that the other person feels safe to put down their shield and shed their armor? Can you shed your armor, too?

The paradox (more on this soon) is that the more vulnerable we become, the more invulnerable we are. It’s the opposite of armored. The more stripped and exposed we become, the more we can get know love and our true selves…and once you remember who you are and what is real, nothing in this physical world can hurt you. 

(My therapist trick: When I want to judge, it helps me to remember that fear creates evil, that underneath hate is fear. In the fear is a scared inner child that has been exiled, that is really just looking to be loved. There may be a small few, I’m not sure, who have managed to completely annihilate their inner child, their innocence (pure love)…but in 99% of people we want to judge or call bad, I believe this to be true.)

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Beauty Pain: A Gift

Beauty Pain: Waking up to the knowledge that life is both beautiful and fragile. It’s seeing the hate and fear, but realizing there is even greater love. It’s the awe and the tears encompassed in the breaths, the limited breaths that mark our beginning and our end, while watching a golden-pink sunset. It’s what you feel both in watching a new life enter the world and a life surrender to death. It’s the lifespan of a dog. It’s the bittersweet feeling of a holiday party full of loved ones- full of love-comes to an end. Its the overwhelming gratitude when a once met friend pays me 8x the amount my book is worth. It’s my sobs seeing god in everyone and everything, even when others do not, and the most innocent being killed. It’s forgotten love. It is the acknowledgement of feeling. It is the acceptance of being human.

So many of us spend so much time rushing and worrying that we miss the beauty of what surrounds us, be it the people, animals, or nature, only to later realize that our time on Mother Earth is limited…which makes life all the more beautiful.

It’s hard to use words to define the term “beauty pain.” Perhaps I described it better in past posts that more so provoked the feeling rather than tried to define it:

Still, I think my older sister said it best in her journal, the few words she wrote in her dying year: “Life is beautiful…even when it’s not.”

Each time I come back to this term, I come to understand what it means to be alive a little more. I come to more deeply know myself.

“What if your ability to feel pain is the most beautiful thing about you?” I scribbled in my journal.

What if?

What if my biggest weakness is actually by biggest strength… my capacity to love?
It is in my heightened senses, the depth of my emotions, that makes me so human and so alive. And yet, I feel and have felt so deeply that I have tried to numb my pain and attempted to reject my humanness, claiming my want to leave this planet, with doG (Pacer) always grounding me back.

Maybe it’s because I grew up in the midwest to baby boomer parents, loving but mostly unemotional (outwardly), that I learned to deny pain, thereby rejecting myself. Showing emotions wasn’t really accepted in my family. My mom got laughed at (with me as one of the perpetrators) for crying during a movie. No one was there to tell me that my depth was my power.

Eventually, I learned to carry and hide so much that I learned to fear it, to fear my pain.
Honestly, I thought it might kill me if I let myself feel it all.

Yet, maybe…

Maybe I don’t have to fear pain, because pain is just love. Maybe it’s sometimes wrapped in a cloak of fear or tinged with sadness, but it is still love. And maybe my pain, my love, is my gift to the world, because my pain carries my light. In fact, pain is a big part of the reason I chose to practice psychotherapy (what I know call “psychosoul therapy). I didn’t want others to have to feel what I felt. Now I know they both do and they don’t… They just have to accept their pain, because their pain is love and shines a light on “wrongness”, the wrongdoings created from darkness. The worst part of pain is actually resisting feeling it.

(However, I can lessen my pain. Here I realize I’ve used the word “pain” in different ways in my blog – thank you for giving me the space and grace to process and shift. Sometimes, what I mean is really “distress” or “suffering”. What has helped me a great deal is learning to check in with myself when my emotions feel heavy and then bring awareness to the thought I’m thinking.  Usually, my thought is far, far away from love. Additionally, I’ve learned to “tap in, tap out”, a great skill for any empath. It’s an amazing gift to tap into someone else’s shoes, but it is neither helpful for the empath or the other person to get stuck in the other person’s energy field. Switching to compassion helps me help others.)

It is my pain that makes me mortal and it has been my fear of pain, my resistance to it, that has kept me from Love. It is Love that makes me immortal. When I resist pain, I resist both my humanity and my divinity. When I accept my pain, when I accept my beauty pain, I accept my humanity and my divinity.

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Joy: Our Connection to Spirit

Joy is our connection to Spirit.

This doesn’t mean we will all start hearing the voices of our angels or guides*, because when we’re in joy, we don’t need to. There aren’t any problems to ask about or find our way out of. We’re simply matching the vibration of higher realms, and that’s enough. It is the energy that speaks. 

*Some of us may, but more likely, you’ll feel closer to deceased loved ones. 

The days I get to spend out in nature, moving my body, with Pacer and family are the joy triple whammies for me. My worries go away. I truly feel like I have everything I need. Nothing more could make me happier. I both feel loved and I feel great love for others, be it humans, animals, or trees. Joy is the magic that brings me to that place…the place inside myself where I am fulfilled and at peace. 

It doesn’t make me ignorant or blind to the pain of the world (I am an empath, afterall), but I can see it without my energy getting drawn in, or rather, down. Which ultimately, is a much better space to think and create from. 

And in my heart, I know everything is going to be alright. That I am alright. That we are alright. 

Joy comes from our inner being. It’s when the heart feels expanded and the mind quiets. It grows in play, connection, creative endeavors, and exploration. (If you’re like me and have an “inner Josh, or “inner gaslighter”, do be a little careful of doing things that you feel “should” bring you joy). There’s definitely no fear involved in joy. Joy and love aren’t exactly the same, but doing things that bring forth your joy definitely leads you to love. 

So, if we “do” anything, we “should do” what brings us joy. In a world still partially cloaked in darkness and in dire need of more light, it is of the utmost importance, to our inner selves and the lives of everyone on this planet.

#joy

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The Choice

In all the best movies about light and dark, be it Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, or Harry Potter, the protagonist always asks themselves the question: What if I am just like them?

What if I am just like Darth Vader? What if Im just like Lord Voldemort? What if Im just like Sauron?

The wise teacher usually replies with something like: Well, it’s your choice.

Do you want to believe in fear? Or do you want to believe in love?
Which is the same thing as saying, do you want to give your energy to the darkness?
Or do you want to give your energy to love?

Most of us, at some level, have already made that choice. We’ve chosen to, to the best of our conscious ability, to be good friends, good neighbors, good partners, and good community members. Some of us have taken another step and chosen to be good to the earth and all the animals that inhabit earth. Yet most of us have forgotten to look at how we treat ourselves.

In order to look at that piece, I believe the better question is: What if they, the villains, are just like me?

What if Darth Vader is actually just like me? What if he simply just chose to believe in fear, and in doing so, shut down to love? What if he killed his own innocence before trying kill everyone else’s? Because…he got so scared that he thought he had to dominate the planet in order to feel powerful, because he had actually lost his own true power when he left his innocence and creativity spirit behind?

In the end, we don’t have to fight the darkness. We just have to make a choice. Darkness is just forgetfulness, which invites in fear and we create these crazy stories in our head of not being enough and unworthy of love. When we shine the light of love and truth on darkness, when we choose to love ourselves even when we’ve made a mistake- a choice that wasn’t in alignment with love, darkness can’t survive. Darkness was never real in the first place, just made up. Instead, we can put our own light energy into the belief, the deep knowing, that we are all enough and all deserving of the highest form of love. 

The choice is yours: Will you believe in your own light?

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Hidden

Just because there are clouds hanging low from the sky doesn’t mean the mountains (or sun) aren’t still there.

Just because we can’t see our emotions doesn’t mean we are not experiencing them, or that there isn’t peace underneath.

Just because we can’t see energy doesn’t mean it’s not the force that keeps all physical things, including our bodies, in motion.

Just because it gets dark doesn’t mean the light isn’t on.

Just because there is fear doesn’t mean there isn’t even greater love.

Just because there is pain doesn’t mean that there isn’t healing underneath.

We can accept, love, and validate what presents itself, while also knowing the truth of what is currently hidden.

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What Survives

If we can still love those who left us, who broke our hearts, who moved away, and who passed on, does that not prove love’s infinite existence?

The greatest act of love I have ever witnessed is watching my parents saying goodbye to their eldest daughter. My older sister had spent a long two years fighting cancer, and when it came to the point where she was clearly closer to Somewhere Else than here on earth as well as looking more peaceful than she had in weeks, they didn’t say, “You’re my daughter. You are supposed to outlive me. You have to keep fighting, because I need you.” (Let me be clear, I do not judge anyone who has said that to a loved one on their “deathbed”.) No. Instead they said. ”We love you. We don’t want you to be in pain. You don’t have to hold on anymore. You can go.” And while my sister did hang out until after my dad’s birthday (I know that was her choice) and I believe my parents, as well as my twin sister and I, releasing our attachment to her physical presence, is why she was able to pass peacefully in her sleep a night later. Letting go was an act of unconditional love.

When she died, all that was left was love.

Personally, my greatest fear (I don’t think I’ve ever admitted this before), is losing my* dog. (Well, her and my twin sister.) To be honest, I’ve never been sure I could survive it. And there is something inherently beautiful and almost innocent** in that, that my greatest fear is in losing unconditional love. Specifically, the embodied presence of unconditional love that has been almost constantly by my side for over a decade now. While I still hold onto the hope of her living to 20 (not unheard of for an Aussie), I can only free both me and her by accepting that in most cases, a dog’s lifetime is significantly shorter than their humans. (Maybe this is because dog’s are already so close to God/Love and as furry angels, are more helpers to humans wanting to evolve.) And, even though Pacer is still happy to have some big adventures with me in the mountains, I also have to admit that she prefers snuggle time and getting doted on by her aunt and uncle even more. I’m so grateful, too, because she already physically thrives beyond other pups. So, when the time comes the most loving thing I can do for Pacer is let her go back Home. Of course, if she is ever sick, I’lI do anything I can to help her heal. But I don’t want her to have to stick around because I need her and I’m lost without her. Because that wouldn’t be love on my part, that would be fear. 

*Again, this word “my” is part of the problem…the possession of another being that is also not actually separate from us. 
**Innocence predates fear. It is love without fear. My feeling comes from more of a child who recently lost her innocence.

Could I…will I…be able to survive that? Love will always survive it.

In truth, I know energy doesn’t die… especially an energy like Pacer’s (this is the first law of energy). I know that part of Pacer’s purpose in coming to earth was to remind me of the love that always surrounds me and that is within me. I’m usually just too blind, too unwilling, to see it. I also absolutely know she will always be with me. I truly believe we’ve always been together in some way.  It’s the fear and lie of absence that always gets me. That and the amount of pain I know my body is capable of feeling. Really, I’m not sure how the skin around my 5’4 frame has survived the amount of pain I’ve held on to in the past. Yet I know I can hold more love then I have yet tested, because of all the times I’ve allowed pain to break me open. All I can really do right now is keep seeing the fear and loving it, not away, but anyway… that and snuggling with Pacer.

Love is the only force that can survive death. In death, only love will remain. 

*Note: Because we are human, it is essential that we love ourselves when in pain. In doing that, we can also realize that pain is an occurrence that happens when we feel separated (by our minds) from Love.

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More Poems on Love & Dogs

I love my dog so much, it hurts.

And this is my new hope for 2024:
To love each day, so much, that it hurts.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Love So Much

I love my* dog so much, it hurts.
Leaving her for a grocery trip, I feel the pang of absence.

I love some people so much, it hurts.
Sometimes, my gratitude for connection comes out in tears.

I have loved some people so much, it hurts,
especially when they died or left me.

I have loved the Earth, the mountains, the rivers, the animals,
the Sky, the birds, the sun, and the moon so much, it hurts. 
I don’t ever want to leave.

Rarely have I ever loved myself this much, so much, that it hurts.

Usually, it hurts because I don’t love myself at all.

I wonder what this means,
that I can love a dog, another being, the mountains, so much that it hurts,
but it also hurts that I can’t love myself the same.

If I loved myself like my dog,
it would mean I could be weird and make any wrong,
and I would still love me.

If I loved myself like I loved my dad, my sister, my mom,
it would mean I didn’t care what I did,
I would just want me to be happy.

If I loved myself like my sister who passed,
it would mean I would love myself through death.

If I loved myself like the lover who left,
it would mean I would love myself,
even after breaking my own heart.

If I loved myself like the mountains, the rivers, the sun, the moon, and the stars,
it would mean I found both expanse and home, everywhere I go.
I would never have to leave.

I would love myself so much it hurts,
and turn around and love again,
realizing love is limitless,
that I have only mistaken pain for love,
another for myself,
life for death,
and see that it is only Love that remains.

*It always feels a little bit wrong to use the word “my” with a dog, like we can own such precious, loving energy. Really, I prefer the Hawaiian phrase “animal kahu”, meaning I am the guardian and protector of these enlightened beings.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Remember

I love Pacer so much I could snuggle with her for hours.
Wouldn’t it be great to live life this way, to snuggle with Love for hours?

Yet I rush through both, snuggles and life.

Why?

Have I forgotten all that matters?

Actually, I think that is precisely it.

Remember.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Love as a Phoenix

Have you ever loved someone so much that you would die for them?

I have done this for Pacer.

Not physically, of course.

Instead, I threw my fears, my ego, into the flames.
It was a slow, painful death.

She never asked me to do this.
In all my destruction and false identities, she would have kept loving me.
Even if I hurt her, as I did and almost did… she never took an ounce of love away.

You see, I could not give her the conditional love I offered myself.

I could only love her, unconditional love in physical form, back with unconditional love.

So out went the conditions of my ego-
And truly, I almost died.

She still loved me, even when I had no honor to my name. 

In fact, I felt shame.

For not being enough. I felt unworthy of love.
Still, she loved me all the same.

I tried to figure this out,
to sort through all the pain,
to find a reason why,
why was I still worth loving?

Of course, dogs don’t speak in words.
Dogs only speak the language of love and light. 
I received a snout sighing on my lap,
and felt message that said,
“My Love, you have always been worth loving,
anything else was a lie,
I am the only truth.”

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Expand

Love so much, that it hurts,
Let it hurt so much that you break open.
And find your freedom.

Understand that you had to break.
That fear was just a shell.
The love inside your heart was always beyond it too. 

In breaking, you expand. 


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Can You Love the Unlovable?

(I originally wrote this for my psych-soul counseling Insta page @wanderlustcounseling, but thought it was worth sharing here too.)

Can you love the unlovable?

Can you love the innocent, vulnerable, emotional, and soft part of you that doesn’t want to do hard things, that just wants to feel safe and loved? Can you love your inner child?

Can you love the part of you that oppresses your creativity and joy?  Your inner critic, you mean coach, your Judgy McJuderson. Can you love your abuser?

For some of us, it will be harder to love the inner child, because we have deemed her weak.  Or rather, the inner abuser has deemed her weak. We’ve learned that it’s better to be strong and tough in a “hard knock life” kind of world.  But is it?  Or is that the world we created from beliefs and stories of fear handed down to us, that creates comparison, hate, and war.  That is the belief of the inner abuser (yes, I am using this word intentionally). The inner abuser lives… feeds off of fear, believing the world is not safe and that he’s gotta look out for himself.  She doesnt just protect, she is protected…but not from anything bad, from everything good.  That part of us that shames us, that’s literally tried to obliterate the inner child inside of us…he’s just scared. He hides behind his defenses. And yea, she’s done some things he’s not proud of.  Can you forgive him? Knowing that he’s only abused, harmed, and killed out of fear? Can you see the scared child underneath the armor? The part of you that just wants to know he’s still loveable.  Can you love the unlovable?

*Did you know that Hitler actually wanted to be an artist. Something churns in my stomach when I read his biography: https://www.history.com/news/adolf-hitler-artist-paintings-vienna

**I used he/her for simplicity’s sake, partially having to do with energies, but please use the pronouns you see fit.  

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Limitless

The best moments in my life are often the quietest. The most peaceful and joyous moments, the simplest . The most beautiful, the most mundane. Too often in the past I have gone out seeking more…more adventure, more joy, more love…something more. “there has to be something more”. Never have I found that “something more” out there. I have only found it within me, and right in front of me, when I am not blind enough to see. For me, knowing Pacer feels safe and loved (especially because in her past, in both of our pasts, we have been anxious and on guard), is enough. Knowing we are both safe and loved is enough, satisfying the core needs of my heart. Now of course, my soul also desires to be matched with the purpose of my fate, to spread some light in the world. Yet what I have learned is that I can only actually do that from a place of safety and love (aka, a regulated nervous system). Otherwise, I create from fear.

Within this is knowledge is the understanding of limitations. Limits are never of the body, only of the mind, meaning that if I perceive something my body can’t do (such as running a 4 min mile, or growing to be 5’8″, or fly) as negative, then I am controlled by my mind. If instead I accept my physical limits, then I am no longer controlled by the preferences of my mind and what the mind thinks it wants (which is almost always based in scarcity), and I can then expand out to explore new curiosities and passions of the heart. Perhaps more simply said: When I accept my limits, I become limitless, because I am no longer controlled by the confines of my mind. I then open up to new possibilities for my future.
(And yes… when HEART want is matched with HIGHEST GOOD (and the absence of fear), then our power may be enhanced to beyond ordinary levels.)

With my mind relaxed and no longer in the driver’s seat, I am reminded that only love matters and in fact, only love exists.

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You Are Enough

I originally wrote this for my cousin after I bought her a ring for Xmas that said “you are enough” and she asked me what it meant. As I was writing it (second half in comments), I felt part of my inner 7th grader healing too, so I thought it was worth sharing. (“Coincidentally, my Mom asked me to go through a box of my old stuff and I found these two pics of me in 7th grade.)

My Love,

You are enough.

No matter what you do, say ,wear, or weigh,
you will always be enough.

You are beautiful, magical, perfect, and whole,
exactly as you are. 

You are always deserving of the highest Love. 

When you make a mistake,
you are enough.

When you fail, 
you are enough.

When you shoot your shot and miss,
you are enough.

When you get a bad grade, 
you are enough.

When the boy you like says he doesn’t feel the same,
you are enough.

When your parents get mad at you, 
you are enough. 

People will try to tell you what to do, who to be, and what to think.
Listen and adhere only to what feels true in your heart.

Be you,
because you are enough. 

Commercials, billboards, and Instagram advertisements will try to tell you how to look, what to weigh, and what you need for happiness.  
Don’t listen.
Those people in those ads are photoshopped.  
They miss the beauty in the lines we’ve lived.
Be you, 
because you are enough.

(Btw, the “Koko” side of your family was sold a story that being thin correlated with a woman’s worth.  This is a lie. Your worth is not in any way related to any number. All that matters is how you feel inside.)

Your inherent worth can never, ever, be taken away from you.
No matter what. 
You are never bad. Only good.

As spirits living a human life, 
we just make mistakes (miss the mark) sometimes.
What is more important is that we learn, grow, and evolve.
And don’t despair if it takes several times to learn the lesson.
We’ve all been there.

Not only are you always enough,
you are always loved.

Some people will treat you badly. 
But it is not, it is NEVER, your fault.
They don’t see your divinity, 
and have forgotten theirs.
Set a boundary.  
Love yourself. 

At times, people will get mad and yell.
It’s not because you are bad.
They just don’t know how to process their emotions,
and have learned to control others out of fear.
Many adults just have wounds that they still need to heal.
It is up to them to heal them, not yours.
Your job is to be you. 

As a 7th grader, you may have already had to untangle who you are at your heart versus who you’ve become to fit in and please others.
If you can do that now, 
it will save you a lot of pain as an adult. 

Sometimes being yourself can feel scary, but remember,
you are enough.
Some may criticize you and call you weird.
Don’t worry about them.

Most people who are caged (afraid to be themself)
are jealous of those who are free (act from their true self).

By the way, did you know that weird actually means 
“one who walks the path of fate”?
Walk the path of your destiny, my love.

Your voice deserves to be heard.
Your emotions deserve to be felt and soothed.
You deserve to be seen.
It all matters, 
because you matter. 

You, my Love, 
are enough,
exactly as you are. 

The things we think matter- 
grades, athletic skills, looks-
don’t actually matter. 

What matters is how you feel.
What matters is how you make others feel.
What matters is being kind.
What matters is that you know how to give love and receive love.

What matters is you being you,
because, my Love, you are enough. 

I love you.

Ray (& Pacer)

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