"But if you tame me, then we shall need each other. To me, you will be unique in all the world. To you, I shall be unique in all the world . . ." – The Little Prince
What is the most loving choice you can make for yourself today?
For your body? For your heart? For your soul? For your inner child? And yes, for your mind?*
My understanding of “love is the answer”, after months of pondering, finally made deeper sense to me today and I was both reviewing a past free write journal entry and starting a new free write. (Society may label me a “slow processor” and call that a bad thing, but really, it is such a gift. When I come to truly understand something, it is at more than just a logical level…its a deep knowing in my bones. I believe it is from that place, only, that I can write and teach about the topic in a way that allows others to understand concepts at an embodied level as well.)
The reason why summer was such a challenge for me, the reason why I was so uncomfortable, was because I had made the choice, to choose and love myself (and Pacer) first. It is the choice I have rarely made in my life…too many times, I have pushed through a race or up a mountain while tired and in pain, studied too hard for a test to get the “A” that didn’t really matter, done the thing to look and feel tough for a moment, or woke up way too early because I believed that is what I had to do to be successful.
But it is only the mental, never the heart choice, to push through pain in search of success.
The uncomfortability was a sign I was on the right path. That I was breaking free. The panic attacks were simply a sign of my ego cracking.
(Personally, my anxiety often first comes when I feel like I have to do something scary or something I don’t really want to do to serve my mind. I have panic attacks when I make the choice to follow my heart…which is basically the pain of my fragile ego cracking and the energy of my soul saying “let me out!”)
Loving myself is resting. Loving myself is not forcing a goal to happen. Loving myself is serving my core needs of acceptance and connection to my own body and soul. Loving myself is not doing the scary or painful thing. Loving myself is allowing beauty and love in. (Other people’s brains may be wired in a reversed way as compared to mine. I come from a society, family, and church that stems from the toxic wounded masculine- control and work, work, work to prove your worth. I know other people who come from the disempowered masculine and the fear of trying something new or putting themselves out there can be paralyzing, which looks like laziness to the untrained eye. )
In this process of asking ourselves “What is the most loving choice I can make for myself today?” we are both starving and serving our minds. Again, the path becomes uncomfortable (anxious sensation in our bodies) when we choose to side with the heart over the mind. However, the mind ultimately wants to be at peace…so choosing what is at first uncomfortable actually leads to greater freedom in the end, once the mind realizes it is now safe when allowing the heart to lead.
While I hope my examples are helpful to some readers, the nuance is that our minds our wired differently and our egos have developed different protection mechanisms, so there is nuance in what might be right for me is wrong for another. The commitment is getting to know one’s truest Self at the deepest level possible.
I have a lot more coming on the topics of bravery, panic attacks, ego, listening to the heart, and choosing joy coming up!
***For those people who have worked hard their whole life, what I’m noticing with a lot of women now (although this probably goes across genders) is that when the person gets a cold or a little niggle of an injury, the body isn’t asking the person to just take a week off, or even a month off. The body (which communicates for the heart once our connection to the heart voice has been blocked) is asking the person to take months, a year, or even years of rest to re-harmonize the body. Once we let go of our resistant thoughts to rest (and keep trying to push through), healing can begin.
*******
This was my Instagram post that preceded this blog:
Why do we work so hard to resist who we really are? Why do we hide the gifts that come naturally to us?* Or rather, from the gifts that come from our spirits.
Blatantly put, I am a cancer** sign made of light. My purpose is to bring people back Home to themselves.
The manifestation of this comes easy to me as a therapist and writer. It just kind of flows. To those who know me, they may have unapologetically (okay, maybe a little…I’m still working on coming Home to myself) heard me say “I’m really good at my job”, which is something I rarely to never say.
Of course, I’m also very true to myself as a therapist, writer, and coach. Unique is a very accurate word…unique and a little eccentric, which is why I think my clients like me. Me being weird allows them to be themselves. While I’ve read almost every therapy and spirituality book I have time for, I tend to just blend it all together with a touch of intuition. Actually, I’ve really just re-defined my job as mental health therapist and switched to using “psycho-soul therapist” instead.
Yet I tried, at least for an extended break, to walk away from these “jobs”, or callings. I thought other professions were better and more exciting (ie. more travel, more free time- but free time isn’t the same thing as freedom). Or, at least, they get more validation from parents, extended family, and Instagram followers. My mind believed all of this, even as the rebel in me rejected the office job, nice house, marriage and kids ideals. Really, I simply just trapped myself in another world from the ideals of other rebels and adventurous types, rather than just listening to my heart and creating something new altogether (or, even if it was “old”, staying true to me).
This is what wanderlust is all about…not traveling, not going adventures, not exploring new places. It’s about walking the path that is unique to you and yours alone. It’s unknown, and that is the wilderness.
*Okay, okay. Of course I know the answer, at least partially, to this question. The mind takes over when the heart has been invalidated. Anytime a child has their emotions ignored, goes unseen, is told how they feel or should act, a child’s flame is being dimmed. This goes much deeper than someone telling a kid that their dreams are unobtainable, although that can certainly play a role. We can read all the parenting, teaching, therapist/coaching books we want, but our only job as adults who have kids in our lives is to keep their inner flame burning bright. It’s just really hard to do when our own lights have been dimmed. So we all must ask ourselves the questions “Who am I?” “What are my divine gifts?”, and do the work to get back Home to ourselves.
**Cancer zodiacs are water signs and some astrologists relate cancers to preferring being at or around their physical homes. My belief is that may or may not be true and that cancers are more accurately about connecting their inner and higher selves, which also connects them back to Spirit.
The heart and body are in direct communication with each other. The heart is the voice of the soul. If you are not living in alignment with your soul, your body will let you know.
[In reflection of my own journey and others who share a birthday close to mine, my theory is that anyone who is a Cancer zodiac sign (especially for females), a natural born empath and sensitive (attuned to energy) soul, has in some way been directed towards this message this year, perhaps through an injury or illness, if she is not already living 100% heart centered. (I would love to know if this is true for you if your a Cancer sign!)]
The message the body is revealing may be slightly different for everyone. A good starting point is checking out Heal Your Body by Louise Hay, where she listed out the spiritual message of various injuries and illnesses based on body parts. Then, if you have an injury, you can further explore the message based on what side of your body is injured. The right right side gives voice to the ego (or masculine), while the left side speaks for the spirit (or female).
For some people, the most uncomfortable part will not be the pain of the injury or illness. It will be in the deconstruction phase of the ego as it is the ego-who we believe we are- that block us from listening to our heart. Many of us “think” we know what we want but the heart does not speak through thoughts. The heart speaks through feelings, emotions, and the body, especially when the soul is really trying to get our attention.
The deconstruction phase asks us: Are you willing to let go of all that you think you are?This may be attachments to past memories or labels that we or others have given to us, such as athlete, cashier, hard worker, or even “Type A” person.
The deconstruction phase may represent the “chrysalis phase” of the transformation process (where our insides turn to mush) or it may represent the “coming out of the cocoon phase”, as the ego represents the outer shell.
There is both a letting go and a fight. A surrendering of who we think we are, while also fighting not with but through the ego so as not to turn back, to return to the old version of ourselves that lives from the mind and not the heart.
How do we trust our hearts when most of us have been give the message we must fear love and trust a voice outside of ourselves to gain “salvation”? Yet trust is the essential piece. Every time doubt comes in, we must fight to come back home to ourselves, to trust, to allow the light to shine through. (We don’t fight the darkness, we fight for the light).
When we go through the deconstruction phase, you may literally feel like you want to crawl out of your skin. As others have reminded me, I will remind everyone here: this is a sign that you are on the right path. Growth is uncomfortable. Yet it is in breaking through her shell that the butterfly gains the strength to fly. It is in pushing through harsh conditions and rocky soil that wildflowers gain their vibrancy. This is the message that life gives us, the signs from the Universe that we are on the right path (sometimes the Universe puts up with me when I ask for a “signier sign”).
We must trust the signs, trust ourselves and step into the flow of life. Once we break through the ego, peace and ease will follow. Yet we have to push through the discomfort to allow the joy to come through. If you take my hand, we can make the leap of faith together…
Normally I hate a candid photo, but this ended up being a very authentic photo of me in my deconstruction phase.
First off, let me start out by saying that I love Susain Cain. I think she’s brilliant. When I read one of her books (Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking; Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole) I think “That’s me!”.
But… maybe bittersweet isn’t me. Maybe it’s just my state of mind, and my mind is more of my ego than of me. So why am I often full of melancholy after a holiday? Why do I look out at the mountains with a such a deep sense of longing?
As Cain states and I fully agree, feelings of sadness and melancholy can bring people together, to connect us, in a world where many of us feel separate. In fact, this is usually how I recognize people that are “like me”, the others who are highly attuned to pain and who don’t feel like they ever really fit in. Now I believe this is all an illusion.
The false belief is that we are separate. Not just from each other, but even more so, from ourselves.
What I’m learning is that most of us are disconnected from our true selves. We don’t realize it because the split started within the first few years of life, when the world started to shape us rather than allow us to grow into our highest potential of being (not doing). In order to survive in a conditional world, we split from our true selves, from the joy, love, and light that create* our souls. Another way to say this is that our shadow selves block our light, and if we are disconnected from light (we could also say Source, Spirit, etc) we will always be filled with longing.
*Another popular argument that Cain makes (argument isn’t exactly the right word but the best I can come up with) is that those who experience depression or melancholy are often creatives, or artists. I actually think that we’ve only touched on the creativity possible because the emotions of disconnection block it.
My longing isn’t for the mountains. My longing is for me.
My longing is to return to the Home inside myself, where light, love, and peace reside. The mountains-the beauty they hold- simply bring about the feelings of freedom and joy within me, but in my natural state is just that. I’m just usually disconnected from my natural state because of the my shadows, constructs, and the ego voices that fill my mind.
(Again, this where I wholeheartedly agree with Cain that bittersweet emotions can lead to transcendence, as we learn to rise beyond the ego.)
Therefore, the quest in life isn’t to go in search of connection, creativity, or love, but to find it within oneself. To be able to look at oneself with a sense of awe and wonder for the magnificence within. Only then can life truly be an adventure, as we allow opportunities and experiences to come to us rather than force anything to happen.
It is in sitting still and listening to our hearts, while kindly asking our minds to quiet down, that we can begin to return back Home to Self.
**I totally may have gotten a few points wrong from “Bittersweet”. I read it at the end of last year, so I may-probably-have forgotten many of her insights. I also don’t think Cain could have written this chapter as the science of spirituality is relatively new and there isn’t a lot of a research on the topic. Regardless of any of this, Bittersweet is a wonderful book that I highly recommend.
When I was a kid, I would use my imagination to escape the fear-based reality given to me by adults. The rules, the sins, the “eat your lima beans or you’re not leaving the table.” Of course, using one’s imagination was deemed inappropriate not long after age 6, reserved only for books* and movies, so I kept most of my day-dreaming to myself. The woods were full of fairies, magical creatures, and talking trees. I was happy to wander for there for hours.
*Perhaps why I have always found solace in books and was THAT kid in school who would be found reading while walking down the hallway.
My own fantasy land right in the middle of the grey skies and the unhappy adults of Ohio.
But now…
…I wonder if I’ve had it all a little backwards.
Maybe my fantasy world IS reality.
And what I thought was reality is all made up. Maybe it’s still in physical, tangible form, yes, but created from the perception of a fear of an unconscious mind.
Are you following? If not, take a moment to let your mind play and your perception shift. (No, you do not need to take drugs to do this. Really, this is what all the spiritual teachers talk about it, I’m just simplifying it a bit in my own way.)
I may not have yet met a fairy, but there are literally butterflies everywhere this summer. I’m also positive that I know several human angles in my life that are supporting me on my journey, allowing me to fall but never break. Obviously, I live with a magical creature (Pacer). And science proves that trees do talk! (Thank you Suzanne Simard and the many other wonderful scientists/researchers exploring the inner lives of plants.) I’ve also got something better than castles…really, why would I need 500 rooms? To hoard more stuff that will only ever keep me trapped? I’ve got mountains, open space, and stars that wink to me in reassurance. Places to run free.
Pacer, the magical Narwhal of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains.
Sure, there are some villains and demons out there. Most are in my head. Or created from someone else’s head.
In my college dorm room, I had a printed piece of paper hung on my wall that said “Life is what you make of it.” I think I’m starting to get it.
Reality is what you choose to believe in. It’s not ignoring the bad stuff…I’m still going feel my heart sink each time I hear about another school shooting. I’m still going to vote, donate to animal rescue organizations, recycle, and support women’s rights advocates. Yet I am going to choose to believe in love and joy over fear and hate.
Because when I can sit still long enough, let my thoughts settle, and calm my anxiety, I know at my core that love, joy, and light are the basis of reality.
*I’ve want to give credit for this post to my Reiki therapist, who gave me the prompt for this and then told me “now go home and write the rest.”
I am at a waterfall. I am meant to go through. The answer is on the other side.
Why am I hesitating?
Fear.
Fear of what?
I know joy and peace lay just beyond the water’s permeable walls…
I fear myself. My perceived unworthiness. I need to suffer more- to erase the shame- to prove my worthiness.
I need to walk a thousand miles with bloody knees- no, sweating blood as Jesus did. I need to be so tired and broken- having given every once of myself- to deserve to walk through the falls. I am only worthy when in pain.
Yet my heart (Pacer) pulls me forward, anyway. I dig my heels into the ground, breaking against her pull. She tells me it doesn’t have to be this way. Pain isn’t the way to joy. Joy is the way to joy. Pain simply shows us when we’re not in alignment, when we’re separated from Love, joy, an our true selves.
She tells me, “Those false beliefs that have been ingrained in you, your family- it is your Light that is meant to break the illusion, for you and those you love.”
I remember the beginning lines from one of my favorite Mary Oliver poems:
“You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.” (Mary Oliver, Wild Geese)
So I let my heart pull me forward. Through the waterfall that has transformed into rays of light. I step through and exhale…
And then for a moment I step back out. “Actually, what if it’s not that good?” I wonder. “What if none of it’s true and there is still pain and suffering on the other side?”
I guess there’s nothing to lose…
I try again, Pacer impatiently waiting (“patience” is her least favorite “P” word).
All there is is light, even as I keep walking. It just keeps going, almost holding me even as I take another step. It feels like safety and I just want to collapse and rest for a bit. And so I do.
I’m not sure if it’s moments or days later, but eventually I wake up. Pacer and I shake out our sleepies together, but I have the feeling she was watching over me the whole time. Suddenly, we’re at the edge of the fall of lights. I can see the blurred other side through the rays. This time, I let my heart (Pacer) pull me forward without hesitating.
It’s all the same, really. Almost.
Just brighter. Vivid. More intense. Yet the colors don’t blind me and the love doesn’t overwhelm me. It feels like Home.
I am the same too. Just brighter. Clearer.
Okay, maybe I’m a little taller too.
Joy, emanating off my form. Clarity. The worry lines on my face have disappeared. Here, I Know.
In attempting the CDT, I journaled my intentions: following Sunshine (joy, intuition, Pacer) and being a witness to the beauty of the world. It was a combat to the shadow part of me that felt ambivalent about life. If I was going to live, I was going to LIVE. My older sister, and I say this in the most loving way, feared life. I was going to embrace the fullness, the magic of it for the the both of us. Plus, I thought attempting to hi across the country mightbe cool to do in a lifetime. I also wanted to embrace my FREEDOM- that I could make such a brave and bold choice for myself. And, while hiking for potentially several months didn’t exactly fit my all of my 4 core values (kindness/service, family/friends, growth, adventure/freedom) I thought I was at least being a good example for my clients. I wanted them to know that they too should follow their hearts, despite what others thought.
Only I’m not 100% I was following my heart.
I don’t think I could have knew that in the beginning. I needed to learn the difference between listening head and versus listening to the heart.
Perhaps I needed to start out by highlighting the areas of my internal world where I still wasn’t free.
“I thought the brave thing to do was try…but the braver thing to do was to listen to my heart.”
Don’t get me wrong. I love spending all day outside with my dog and cuddling with her all night. I don’t mind sweaty hair and 5 days worth of dirt caked on my body. Completing the Colorado Trail with Pacer is still one of the highlights of my life, even if I romanticize it a bit (or maybe a lot…to my credit, it’s impossible not to with the backdrop of the San Juans).
But I do enjoy a hot shower. Modern conveniences. Fresh food and going out to eat. A good glass of local wine.
I also enjoy..am filled with joy…going on runs with my sister and Pacer. Those days are always the best parts of my summer. My year-round happy thoughts. Really, I was just hiking to get back home: the Collegiate West into the San Juans.
My intuition knew this, asked for the re-route. Pacer new this. I made the decision to stop (after an anxious week) running downhill in Glacier National Park. My sister, Sandi, and her partner, Sage, were ahead running a loop. I had just finished hiking 90 miles in 2.5 days the day before and just happy to move without the weight of a pack. It was my 35th birthday. At the time, the decision FELT free, my body at ease.
It seems as though 35 is leaving me no room for bullshit. I wasn’t meant to be among a group of people who were mostly finding themselves. “Ray, you already know who you are. You and Pacer are Magic and Sunshine. You are Ray of Light. It’s time for you to go BE yourself, not to shine in hiding*, but SHINE for everyone to see.”, was my interpreted message from the Universe.
*To my credit I did have some good conversations with other hikers, particularly Day Hike and Happy Endings (trail names).
Right now, a week after my birthday, this is all coming through clear. At the moment, I am once again feeling free and at ease. I’m at the end of the waves…
…because as much as I would like to say everything is easy once you choose to follow your intuition, it’s absolutely not (although I am assuming it gets better with practice). My ego (fear, doubt, endless “what if”s, compulsive thoughts) fought back, HARD.
In the afternoon of my birthday, I was in the shower when I first heard my ego start to chime in again. With both my fingers in my ears and shouting (well, shouting in my mind…I didn’t want Sandi and Sage to worry) “I’M NOT LISTENING!” Now, I’m not one for suppression of emotions or shunning any parts (internal family systems reference), but I wanted to show my ego who was boss. And I wanted to enjoy my birthday dinner.
Really, I was doing well until the next afternoon. Then, heading back south and driving past CDT signs, my fear voices got louder and louder. What if I made the wrong decision? What if I should have at least tried? What if I’m missing the opportunity of a lifetime to have this adventure with my dog!? What if, what if, what if…over and over and over.
I wish I could say that I was able to return to my center, trusting myself, and knowing that regardless if there even was a right or wrong decision and I made the wrong one, that I would be okay…but that is not quite the case. Although I did still have the newly developed unshakeable self-love to fall back on, even admist the chaos in my mind. In actuality, I worried, stressed, and while helpful…texted and called way too many people. (Thank you especially to my guides Sandi and Tara). I cried after calling my dad, who was at a family party. He had been following my gps tracks and I felt a tinge of disappointment…not necessarily from him, but from myself. I hadn’t realized-or at least admitted- that even in my 30s, even after going off the beaten path since college, I still craved my parents validation.
I even called the aforementioned ex-lover* (from part 1 and part 2 of this series). I’m still not sure if it was intuition or impulse.
*I should mention, he is a good guy and I trust his thoughts and advice. Actually, I’m lucky enough to have dated several good guys (well maybe besides the one, who jus had too many demons inside eating away at his good) that I am still friends with. Knowing they care about me and Pacer, I’ll often seek their advice.
My former landlord (I’ll call her Carol for now since I didn’t get permission to use her name), whom I’ve started think of as a bonus mom, helped settle me more. Being an avid hiker and adventurer herself, plus former search and rescue member and a dog mom, she tends to understand parts of me better than my own parents. Often, I think my parents see me as an alien, questioning “Who is this child who refuses to live life by the status quo and talks about emotions, who has never saved a dime for a house but makes sure she buys her dog expensive vegan kibble? Where did she come from?” I’ve also always admired Carol’s inner strength and intuition as well, so when she said “Better safe than sorry.”, I knew she wasn’t saying it how the way most midwesterners say it (“Play it safe. Never take risks in life. Stay inside the lines.”), but in the way adventurers, explorers, and dog moms use the term (“Before taking a risk, remember what is most important in life, and consider what you are risking.”)
Still, this ego attack* lasted for the better part of several days, and I regretted stopping in Idaho and Utah on the drive home from Montana. When lost trying to find a trailhead in La Sal Mountains, I thought “I just need to go home” and drove until 9pm, passing through the end of the Swatch Range and back to Salida, to Sandi and Sage’s home.
*An ego attack is similar to a panic attack, but with the flair of existential crisis.
The funny thing? I KNEW I made the right decision. I knew by both facts and feelings. That voice, the one who knew, what I will call my intuition, was always there, just often drowned out by the SOS calls of my ego.
Why was my ego freaking out to this extreme?
I can’t remember if it was before or after hiking through Glacier*, but I remember saying to my sister, “I don’t want my ego to win.”
*Which I am very grateful I got to do…really, between Glacier, having previously gone to The Winds in Wyoming, and backpacking the Colorado Trail, I’ve done all the prettiest parts of the CDT.
And, while this wasn’t the first time I followed my heart, this did mark one of the first times in my life I didn’t listen to my ego, my fear (which surrounds my not-enoughness wound). This insight allows me to easily forgive myself for hurting my body earlier in life, first with an eating disorder and then pushing myself to long-term damage in ultras, because honestly, I wouldn’t have been able to handle the internal turmoil inside. Of course my ego was going to freak out. You see, it had protected me from so much pain earlier on in life, been with me since I left the god-like state of infant to toddler. All those attachment wounds, being misunderstood, my little empath self not knowing how to handle the confusion of the world on my own. My ego had kept me safe, and now, here I was, telling it I didn’t need it anymore. So I changed strategies and softened my tone when I felt the tightness in my chest and the “what ifs” creep back into my mind. “I know you’re scared”, I told my ego, “but I’ve got you.” “You’re enough as you are. We’re creating a new life. One full of endless love of and magic.”
The other message I received was that I was meant to “transcend my ego”. (“I don’t want to do it! It’s too hard!” I told a friend during one of my panicked moments.) By transcend, I simply mean “rise above”. By rise above, I mean that it was time to energetically put my heart before my head, to trust the voice within and not the voice of fear.
(I have heard someone claim they know a spiritual teacher who was able to soley live from the spiritual self, but on the other hand, I also know that friends of Ram Das (Elizabeth Lesser, Broken Open) will tell you that he was still very much human, perhaps until he had a stroke at age 71. My belief is that when you are able to step back, you simple realize that the ego is the human self, imperfect and fallible…and God, what a great experience, to be human.)
This is where bravery turns into freedom. Listening to your heart, trusting your inner knowing, following your dreams…being yourself, these are all THE bravest things you can do in a world embedded with and often ruled by fear. Or, risking getting it wrong, failing…this is brave too, because the ego will come back with the “shoulds” and “what ifs?”. This will be your opportunity to offer yourself compassion and shine a light into the fear. Love is the only thing that can ease the tension of fear, perhaps even dissolve it.
At the end of this brave path, there can only be one thing: Freedom. The ability to live beyond the ego, to live from the heart. Will the fear always be there? Maybe. I am still very an explorer on my spirit-human journey.
I am also still very much in the wanderlust phase, the state of in-between, embracing it. Others may call it “rock bottom”, needing to live with their sister and figure out the next steps. However, I know I’m in good company. Elizabeth Gilbert, Lewis Howes, they’ve been here too. Plus, I’ve been here enough that I know the best thing to do is embrace the opportunity, knowing I have everywhere to go and nothing else to lose. I have love. I have freedom. I have Pacer, family, and a few good friends. And, wouldn’t you know it…I got offered my Jedi Knight/wizard training basically for free (to be paid back when I get my book deal). Freedom, love, and joy. In that, I have everything.
Big Love,
Ray “Magic” & Pacer “Sunshine”
“If bravery is the ability to follow your heart in the midst of fear, freedom is the ability to find peace within yourself no matter the circumstance. Freedom is choosing joy.”
Ego: Feels like: Contraction, fear, anxiety, heavy, dread (often in chest or stomach). Sounds like: Critical, bossy “should”, and/or doubtful, uncertain, confused “What if…?” “Are you sure?”. (The ego is made up of several different parts on either end of the ego spectrum.) Loud.
The next key is to go with your initial feeling. For those of us not used to listening to our intuition, and maybe starting to do so for the first time ever, the initial feeling may only last an hour- or 5 seconds -before fear and panic come in. Remember that it is simply part of the process and to offer yourself compassion as you go through the waves. Remember that you are brave.
Pacer “Sunshine”…my hearts extension, always knew the answer. This allowed me, for perhaps the first time ever, to choose joy over suffering.
“You are a powerful manifestor, Ray!”, said the psychic in an an email after a pet reading, which was half an email about me honing my own energy.
People have mentioned some variation of this to me before, commenting on my intuition or healing energy. “But what do you actually mean!?”, is the shout I often keep quiet in my head. I often feel like a young Jedi Knight or first year Hogwarts student, shooting off my magic without knowing how or what I’m doing.
After all, I don’t have a van (yet), a book deal (yet), or enough money to pay off my student loans (yet).
Yet, I do know I have to be careful about what I say or write down…
Naming my previous car “Surry”, short for “Surrender”, meant I had to learn how to actually surrender. I had a flat tires near Taos ski resort, a dirt road in Salida, and off the highway towards Denver, plus car issues in Leadville and up a mountain road in BV (this is the short list). For those not familiar in the area, I was often in the middle of nowhere, or on a highway stretch that AAA normally won’t help on. Yet each time, it all worked out, with my favorite time being when I met the very friendly elder and his faithful dog in the small town of Leadville. This was years ago, so he may have very well been the sole mechanic around. His garage was so packed with miscellaneous parts you could barely walk through it, let alone get a car in. He sent me and Pacer up the mountain to explore while he first went to lunch with friends and then worked on Surry the Subaru (my current car is named Serenity, obviously my current journey). If I get a tattoo with a meaning attached to it, I better be prepared for the experience to not just understand the meaning, but know it. “You want to know what it means to only respond to the first arrow (a Buddhist teaching) with love?”, my tattoo asks of me. Well get ready… Name my private practice “Wanderlust Counseling”? Well I better get ready to explore the liminal phase completely and hold on to my North Star.
This past January, I completed Gabrielle Bernstein’s yearly Manifesting Challenge. Early on, I wrote my key manifestion hope down in both my journal and on a sticky note, which I stuck to the backside of my Murphy bed. It read “To move (travel) freely while following my heart and serving others.” My human self thought this meant potentially getting a van or a small cabin by the mountains and being able to run the trails pain free. What my soul heard was that I wanted to be free of my ego (fear), free of my human suffering (doubt), free to take risks and fail…free to follow my heart. Michael A. Singer might call this “living untethered.”
Shortly after this, I told my new therapist that my goal for therapy was to become unshakeable. “I want to have so much confidence in (love for) myself that I become unshakeable.”
I didn’t mean this in the narcissistic way, where an outer shell portrays a false god-like exterior to the world while big insecurities lay buried deep inside. Although really, I also wanted to know that if I ever happened to see the aforementioned ex-lover (from part one) walking around with a new girlfriend, that I would be unfazed, only wishing the happy couple love.
So to clarify to the therapist, I added “Not so that I never get hurt, but so that I can experience big emotions, let them pass more easily, and still know that I am okay.”
With that statement, I put the ball, or rather the intention, in motion.
Which also meant lots, and lots, and lots of opportunities to practice self-love in the midst of my human foibles.
*****
I don’t think I really realized how little I loved myself, or so conditionally, until I was 34. I had gotten over the self-loathing depression states by my early 20s and felt that I at least liked myself. But love?
Though really, how could I love myself when I was still understanding what love actually meant? Since my parents divorce as a kid, I had been debating for most of my life if love was even real. Between that and some fear-based ideas of love that I was taught in church, my ideas of love were, to say the least, skewed. And greatly, greatly, limited.
By the turning of the year and the words that came out of my mouth to the therapist, learning how to love myself, in the expansive, unconditional way, became my only option for survival. Could I be there for myself in heartache? Could I be there for myself when worried my body would never heal? Could I be there for myself when I rushed into the new tattoo? Could I be there for myself when faced with the doubt of making a big decision? Could I be there for myself, could I love myself, if that decision failed?
*****
Of course, my manifesting powers made sure this was all about to be put to the test with the decision I was about to make: to continue to hike the CDT, or stop and drive back to Colorado. The plan was always to stop if Pacer wasn’t happy. She was still definitely healthy, but giving me more of an “eh” than a “let’s go!” Ultimately, that would lead to my answer, obvious in hindsight…but oh, how my doubt likes to control my thoughts! Brood, re-think, ruminate! “You’re so silly for trying!”( risking clients, income, safety, approval of family…the latter not being a thing, although my ego always seems to think so) as well as “Try harder!” yelled different parts of my ego. Yet a pause, a breathe, allows for some separation… a space to choose between self-hate and self-love.
These times of inner adversity have led me to asking myself a new, soul-level question:
“Can I love myself so fiercely that no matter what decision I make, no matter what mistake, no matter how badly I fail (or succeed), that my love never waivers?” Perhaps it even grows at I watch myself walk through life with the bravery to truly LIVE. “Can I become UNSHAKEABLE?”
“Yes.”, I answer back, quiet but firm. Unwavering. Even though this felt-sense is still a whisper, there’s a deep knowing at my core that I, my higher self, will always have my back. That I always have been and will always be unconditionally loved. No matter what. The way a girl loves her dog. Unshakeable Love.
*****
Of course, after this first decision, my ego mind wasn’t ready to leave without a fight. My OCD part (little on the compulsion, heavy on the obsessive thoughts) that I developed early on in childhood still likes to come out from time to time and chime in. Or rather, try to run the show. But thats another story, the next post of this series on transcending fear. I’ll simply say that later, driving back to Colorado, I had to fight for Myself. Still, I heard the answer in a whisper under the loud noise of my ego, the only answer there ever could be: “Yes.”
In addition to my manifesting, there was also the prophecy-in-poem-format written by my older sister in 2019 before she passed, her last Christmas gift to me:
Determined to be more than just survivors of life, we
Reach for a ray of sunshine in the darkness, and
Out pours strength from those here and gone who love us most.
Peace will find us in our weakest moments and help us
Sail across the sun.
Overcoming our obstacles, we reach the top of the mountain, free and
Fearless!
Journeys of 1,000 miles start with a single step forward, and we find
Unwaivering support from all that surrounds us. But we still
Pray we can live up to and fulfill all expectations.
In times of both turmoil and
Triumph, we
Explore what both amazes and humbles us, ultimately
Realizing not all who wander are lost!
****
“Lost paragraphs”: Usually, blogs don’t take me too long. They just kind of flow. Perhaps because I waited so long to finish this one, I struggled with what to include. I decided the following paragraphs didn’t flow:
I had just spent a month on an adventure I called Following Sunshine: Traveling at the Pace of Joy on the CDT, sunshine meaning joy and intuition (main topics to be explored in Part Three)…and my dog. We were still on the 2-week break from thru-hiking after finishing a 150 mile section together in New Mexico. We had planned to flip north since my sister and her partner were running a sky race just past the border in Canada. In the previous week while still on “break” we hiked/run up and down Mt. Elbert, which had been Pacer’s first 14er and was currently one of the only 14ers in Colorado in near summer conditions. Pacer seemed fine, but then again, not 100% herself, meaning that when we reached tree line, she wasn’t trying to herd every single person in front of us. This is when I realized I had a decision to make and fear started to kick in. Would I make the “right” choice? I doubted myself right into anxiety, flipping through every possible scenario and outcome. (I should mention, the plan had always been to stop if Pacer was at all unhappy- but she had done well in northern New Mexico. Still, admittedly, her “meh” was covered up by my self doubt.)
Fast forward to June 23, 2023. Now I’m in joyful tears driving back to the hotel in Alberta, Canada after a hike/run to Haig Lake. I think back to 8 years ago, when I didn’t love myself enough to stop. Instead, I took ibprofen after ibuprofen, somehow managing to finish the 100 mile race with out overdosing, considering I’m just shy of 5’4 and started taking the pills before the race even started (I hard partially torn a calf muscle a few days before). But I loved Pacer enough to stop hiking the CDT (obviously not because of injury-I would have stopped in an instant then- but because of happiness), and in that, I loved myself enough to stop too. To not hold myself in guilt or shame for trying, for risking so much (a place to live, clients, approval, income) and failing. Instead, I could honor myself for my bravery and hold myself in unconditional love. Man, that dog…I knew she was a beacon of light, that I could understand unconditional love because of her…but to teach me how to love myself? doG, I tell you…]
My then boyfriend, now friend, can tell you exactly how I looked when he dropped me and Pacer off to start the Colorado Trail, just a few months after moving to the state and having only done one very, very, short overnight backpacking trip on the AT. He’ll tell you that I looked like I was about to cry, that he could see the fear written around the worried lines around my smile. I actually didn’t know he could read any of my emotions in that moment until he repeated this scene to me a few months ago, because at the time, he knew what he had to do. He remained stoic, not allowing me to linger too long in our embrace, and sent me and Pacer off down the trail.
My tears are usually a mixture of emotions. Sadness, fear, and excitement all wrapped into a ball, moving from my chest to my throat.
The sadness is partially still from the ending that transitioned right into the beginning, but also a grief for the people I can’t take with my on my journey. It’s a love, really. The tears if sadness also mix in with tears from pure fear…a new beginning is stepping into the unknown. And, even while at this point in my life I know all will turn out okay, the fear of the unknown seems to be embedded into my DNA. Its grip has simply loosened. Blending in with the fear then, of course, is the heart of my adventurous soul singing out loud in excitement, for there is surely much beauty to be seen.
So is the cycle of my life. An ending, a beginning, and all the emotions in-between. Beauty in every step.
In the midwest, we like to name the “fun” sections of our routes, like “The Stairway to Heaven” or “The Piano Keys”. If you’re not familiar with Cuyahoga Valley National Park, then you probably at least heard of the infamous “Heartbreak Hill” on the Boston Marathon course.
I like to call this section of the Colorado Trail/Collegiate West/Continental Divide Trail “Death by Switchbacks.” Now truly, this section of the trail is nothing short of majestic, but in these few specific miles, you drop down from alpine via what feels like 100 switchbacks, cross a short marshy section (pictured here- it looks much different in the summer!), only to return to alpine via another 100 switchbacks. If you’re already feeling tired, it’s nothing short of a struggle. The good news, however, is that once you make the death march (hike, run, or cycle) up, you meet heaven. (If headed southwest, towards the Alpine Tunnel and Cottonwood Pass to the northeast.)
The ego (how we feel about ourselves, our self-esteem) death uses a similar model as this section of the trail, although I’m going to offer a reframe that it is not necessarily about a part of us that needs to die, but actually about the part of us that doesn’t want to truly live, or “be here”, as I’ve written in previous post. It’s that part of us that says life is too hard, too painful. It’s the part of ourselves we try to numb and call it depression. The ego death is actually about bringing that part into Light and reigniting your own inner fire. It’s accepting that there is pain in the world but realizing it is not our own. It’s acknowledging that there is suffering, but it is not our truth. It’s reclaiming our authentic expression of self and believing in our divine right to live freely, peacefully, and joyously. This is “fighting for the Light”.
Again, the question is, will you choose yourself (Love) over fear?
A Dog and Her Girl 