Category: joy

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Limitless

I have spent most of my life trying to figure out how and what it means to be limitless.  Despite hours and hours of hard work as a pre-teen and teenager, I made little progress in increasing my vertical jump, let alone dunking a basketball at the height of (almost) 5’4″.  Actually, I most likely stunted my growth by using an eating disorder as a coping mechanism.  Stil limited, I thought.  Currently, I would like more than anything to run 20 miles in the mountains with my dog, yet that sounds both painful for my Achilles and a little more than Pacer would want to do.  I have not learned how to magically heal my Achilles or prevent Pacer from getting physically older, despite doing my best to pretend otherwise. 

Still limited, so I think. Helpless, so I feel.  

What am I doing wrong? Are we not supposed to be able to do whatever we set our minds to?  

“You’re not living up to your potential.”, fear says.

But what about when our minds are not aligned with our hearts?

No one told me as a kid that when I practiced basketball, I was doing it wrong…  I was working instead of playing. Because if I’m playing and in joy, then the physical doesn’t really matter.  The outcome, the achievement, the goal doesn’t really matter. If we withhold love from ourselves because of physical limitations, then we are bound by them. Yet when we allow joy to rise, we transcend them.

You see, the physical body and our physical reality may have limits, but the soul does not.  

When we perceive physical limits as true limits and let ourselves become upset by them, we cage our soul and prevent ourselves from experiencing the bliss of the present moment. 

What I have come to realize in my wanderings is that the energetic world is more real than the physical world that we, at some point, chose to temporarily come down to visit.  Not only gravity but dense emotions weigh us down, while our soul always wants to rise. And while it is our emotions that point us to truth and give us this beautiful shared experience of this thing we call humanity, it is expressed emotions in the absence of mental stories that bring us into connection and frees our soul to move into higher states of peace and joy. This is the integration of the human and divine experience. 

So, it is when our souls rise above physical limitations, when we choose to be happy despite the situation or circumstance and earthly reality, that we are no longer trapped by the wants of the mind and are truly free to experience the limitless of our true selves. 

In summary, to transcend and become limitless is not to overcome physical barriers and the density of human emotions but to allow our energy to rise above it.  To feel joy in the midst of failure, to love after loss. The body may be ruled by gravity but the soul is free to wander and expand. (You are not your body, you are not your mind.) All that matters is that you are enjoying the process, the journey- the adventure of the human experience. 

It is only in that transcended state of joy that one may actualize potential, for it is when we understand the laws of energy that we can bend the rules of gravity. 

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Innocence: Lost Magic (Part 1)

What if innocence is the magic we all lost?

The belief that everything and everyone is good? That we are always loved and inherently enough?

That people act poorly not because they are bad but because they have forgotten love. That we act poorly because we have forgotten who we are. That we have been treated poorly not because of our own fault, but because others have forgotten too*.

Innocence, as @the.alchemist recently said, is different from naiveté. We don’t hang around people who are going to treat us poorly. But we do believe they are inherently good.

Innocence then is, in a sense, freedom. Forgiveness is embedded by innocence. We forgive others for acting out of fear (in particular, the fears of being unworthy, unlovable, and not enough) and forgive ourselves for the same. When not weighted down by fear or shame, we are given the ability to fly. Even in the physical limitation of gravity, our density is less because we let go of the heaviest of emotions, giving ourselves the ability to know that as we move through life, nothing is real besides Love itself.

It is out of innocence that we are born and back into innocence that we will die… (more in part 2).

*Young children often quickly forgive their parents for hurting them, be it emotionally or physically. While some may believe this is bad, it’s often what saves a child from further harm and allows them to move through difficult situations. The problem is that the mind creates a story on how the child must be bad to deserve such behavior and this belief can be carried on to adulthood if there is not quick intervention in childhood.

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Brave

I am the most brave when standing still.
When I am writing reflections through tears under the fire of a lamp,
or feeling the feels and weeping into my dog’s fur.
I am the most brave when I ask for connection.
When I share my feelings with a lover,
knowing at any moment he could walk away.
I am the most brave when I walk into my therapists office,
making sure no secret is left hidden, no emotion left unfelt.
I am the most brave when I shine my light within.
When I witness my wounds
and kneel before my heart.

****

Like Pacer, you can be brave and still be scared of thunderstorms. You can hide under the covers and paw your Mom for comfort.

Why?

Because bravery has little to do with external actions and everything to do with one’s ability to go within. To shine a light on the fear that drives them.

I could ski down a double black and still be a coward for giving into to my need to impress for the fear of not being enough.

Or, I could be brave and ride my mountain bike slowly down a green, even though I know my riding partner thinks I’m slow and scared.

Maybe I will give a speech to a room full of strangers, because my heart wants a microphone even though my conditioning tells me its safer to stay quiet.

Brave is the step I take- or don’t take- when following my heart.

Fear can be considered physical survival, but many psychotherapists now call that instinct.

What most of us think of as overcoming our fears is actually an ego-survival mechanism. If I do this, I am great. If I achieve this, I am successful. If I don’t do this, I am keeping my small-self identity in place.*

*This is very much a “know thyself” topic. Type A’s and Type C’s tend to be does and could find value in stillness. Type B’s can obviously find great value from going within, but may also need to take an actionable step.

Plus, as Dr. Ellen Langer writes in her book The Mindful Body we don’t often account for risk assessment when we label someone as brave. My bike riding friend, to me, appears to be fearless. And maybe he does care less about crashing then I do. But really, he’s a much more skilled rider, and what I often see as huge risk is a small obstacle to him.

As I’ve studied bravery over the past year, I think I’ve finally started to understand what it means to be safe, to be fearless. In a human body, there is always risk. Risk of being physically wounded, and the perhaps worse risk of being emotionally hurt. But it is the parts of ourselves that have learned to protect our human vulnerability that carries the fear.

We will all die.

But Love will always be there.

And if we can do, or not do, and know that we will and are still love, we will always find safety within the shelters of our mortality.

My confirmation name is “Joan”, after Joan of Arc. At 13, I picked this saint because I saw her as tough, and Sebastian (the Parton Saint of Sports), was either not allowed or I didn’t like the name enough (I don’t remember). But 20+ years later, I believe her. Joan wasn’t being tough when she stated “I am not afraid. I was born to do this.” She was being brave. She knew who she wasn’t and who she was. She was brave in the face of both physical and ego death.

Brave is the step you take when following your heart,
The only truly brave act is being completely oneself in a word of people who have forgotten who they truly are. 

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Yin-Yang

We’re all a little yin and yang.
Light and dark.
Conscious and unconscious.
Masculine and feminine.
Sun and moon.
Found and waiting to be discovered.
Known and unknown.

Good and bad?
That one, I don’t so much agree with.
We ALL have the capacity, in our forgetfulness, fear, and greed, to act poorly and with hate. But I believe we are all good inside. If only the light could shine upon the shadows.

To light up our own shadows, to remember who we are.
Because I am not who you think I am.
You are not who I think you are.

I have been a product of my programming.
Age 0-7, we are in a hypnotic state, simply absorbing the information around us.
The training continues after, plus the rebellion of the programming, which is often still a byproduct of the messages learned and rarely pure of heart.

Yet we need not disown our programmed parts, our human self.
We simply must remember the light and dark of who we are.
Our divine self and human self becoming one.
An embrace.
Being moved by the energy that which we are, allowing the human self to actualize the love in physical form.
Beauty made manifest.

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Letting Go of Gravity

The hardest part about letting go…
…is actually letting go.

It’s not waiting for someone or something to take my thoughts and low self-esteem away from me, saying “I’m ready! Take this [shitty thought and sadness] from me!”

Instead, it is an active choice.

To say “I don’t think like that anymore, that is not how this me feels”.
It’s not being judgmental towards that old version of myself. It is having compassion for her, knowing that she was doing the best she could. But it is letting go of my attachment to her, her thoughts, her beliefs about herself, her projections, her old stories, and her weighty emotions.

And, it is in letting go, that I break free.
I let go of gravity, and free fall deep into the unknown.
I expect a crash. But instead, I fly.

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The Search for Freedom

I have been on the search for freedom for nearly my whole life, intensely for the past two years, with a balanced measure of both dedication and desperation.  

Yet I live in a privileged country, am of white ethnicity ,pretty enough, able-bodied, and grew up solidly middle class.  I’ve also been somewhat rebellious in conforming to societal norms.  

So why did I feel so trapped, like a bird in a cage?  Or like the elk I saw with a fishing net trapped in his antlers?  Or the cows I see trapped behind wired fences that surely aren’t there for their safety?

Last summer, I read an Instagram post that said “You can’t find freedom in the same place twice*.” I simultaneously felt a resonance with the message and with an internal “fuck.”  Again I had been going to the mountains to find freedom and to my dog for happiness, with a painful Achilles heel that said “You can’t keep going to what’s outside of you to experience what’s within.” The gateways to the experiences you want to have are not the experience themselves.  I had caged myself in the wide open, and trapped the being I love the most. Pacer is meant to be my teacher and the Love I am guardian of, not a need to fill what I feel I lack. 

But of course, when going on any inner journey with a destination “in mind” (freedom), contrast is usually first experienced.  I had to come face to face with all the things that held me down, that kept me from flying: my thoughts, my past, all my old beliefs that cause anxiety, depression, grief, and deep fear.  The scariest thing about going into those depths is feeling the impossibility of getting out. It wasn’t long ago that I tearfully told a friend, “I feel so trapped.”  I write about this so openly and vulnerably now because I believe this is the dark side of the human experience.

While this part of my journey isn’t quite over, I sense perhaps a shift.  A shift in perception.  A slight release.  A willingness to see and choose differently.  It’s taken journaling, meditation, shadow work, allowing life to reveal to me what’s unconscious, tracking my emotions, parts work, friends, books (rec: A Course in Miracles) an almost constant stream of positive messages through podcasts and channelers, and holding on to the belief that “only love is real.”  I look forward to recounting my journey as hopefully a guide for others to become (remember) free too. 

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Confused: The (Beauty of a) Divergent Mind

Does anyone else get confused when someone asks, “How do you do?”, or “How are you?”, “How was your day?”

To an on looker, it would appear that I freeze for a moment, a moment too long. It’s why most would say I’m quiet, while I pause, debating if I should say what’s on my mind or how I’ve been trained to respond, with an “I’m good” or “fine.”

What I really want to say… 

No, maybe it’s too much…

But maybe not…

In my head I’m wondering…

Do I tell them about all the ideas running through my mind and about all the stories I want to write? Or maybe I should tell them about the white horse I watched running through the field from my window. And the cat! Oh, how I laughed, because it was not our field cat that I saw sneak out of the shed, not the one who’s food was inside. Maybe I say that? Or what about all the things I felt? The deep love I felt while watching Pacer nap. My delight in once again ending up at Brenda’s register at Natural Grocers and how, even though she can have a tough exterior, that I find so much joy in giving her the space to smile. Maybe how I felt it in my body when the sun moved behind the clouds? Or do I reveal the tears I cried watching Good Grief? …WhichI mainly viewed because I like Daniel Levy, and thinking that maybe because I knew the plot from the preview, I wouldn’t cry. Do I say how I teared up watching Alice in Wonderland too, because it made me understand myself and my purpose a little more? And the cows! How, as I rode my bike past, I wished my soulful friends a good day, pedaling away before they could sense the fear and sadness I felt about their futures. Is that too much? Ah! Maybe I talk about the snowflakes. How, in the reflection of the morning sun, I became mesmerized as I traversed up slopes of sparkles that took me Somewhere Else. Or the love… the love I felt, the love I released, and maybe the love I found. That reminds me of…can I say it? The guy I once dated, just a few precious times but felt our energies intertwine. How he told me I spoke too elusively, like I was keeping a secret, not understanding that ethereal is my native tongue? And maybe if he tried to, we wouldn’t have grown so far apart?

Or, maybe I talk about the fear I felt before I could catch the thought that caused it. Then I can describe, to help shift their energy as well as mine, how all my fears became forgotten, how they just melted away, like Frosty on a sunny day returning Home, while watching another sunset. How I once again got lost in the beauty of it all, and in the lostness was my expanse.  Or do I talk about the deer, who greeted me and Pacer soon after the sun said goodnight? How I know they are my spirit animals, always protecting me and turning me towards my own spiritual self. Maybe, maybe, I just say “It was a magical day.”

But by then, just a few seconds after processing this all, all I see is a shoulder and the back of head.
My time has passed. The stranger is still a stranger. I say a quick “I’m good”, as we both continue down our different paths.

Yet now, now at 35 and years of inner work, I still feel okay rather than overlooked. I’m grateful for my courage to diverge from the normal way. I know there are others like me, who crave depth and run from superficiality. At heart, I actually think that’s what we all want, the neurodivergent and those who are not. We aren’t meant to all be strangers. We are meant to connect. To see ourselves in one another, a soul behind a face. And no, it doesn’t mean I have to leave my solo nature and animal time behind. I can still be an introvert and wish for depth that can be shared, harmonizing the two.

I’m still a little awkward at it, being me. But I am freer than I ever was. 

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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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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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