Wisdom From the Trenches of 2018

"Once in a while you get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right." ~Grateful Dead

January: Loss. An extraordinary, but complicated friendship ended. Our soul contract had ended years prior, and maybe I should have seen it coming--we've done this for lifetimes. I sent out a prayer of gratitude and burned the last of the damiana. I also lost my bank card and a bit of my sanity. But such is life.

February: Excess. Between two jobs, teaching yoga, tarot classes, writing workshops, and coven gatherings, when do I have time to just be? I will tell you: In the moment. Just be present. Be the eye of your own hurricane.

March: Release. What would happen to my life in Chiang Mai if I quit the job I moved here for? All I know for sure is when a void is created be mindful of what goes into all that empty space.

April: Connect. I landed on Bali with Meno's question lingering in the back of my mind: How will you go about finding that thing the nature of which is totally unknown to you? Through the alchemy and magic of human connection.

May: Allow. What would it be like to move out of the city and into a rustic little hut in the jungle? Step carefully. Ease into this new life and let the ever morphing nature of Chiang Mai fill in all around.

June: Stillness. I've nothing to do most days except sink into the still quietness of this jungle life. This is where intuition strengthens and the journey to other worlds begin.

July: Expansion. In what new ways can I move out of my comfort zone? My soul knows better than I do so I head to Vietnam. Challenging and eye-opening and at times shocking, I adapt and I learn to navigate through this strange new energy.

August: Discover. Epic rides along the coast and through the jungle--the freedom of the open road sparks inspiration and ancient memories. I didn't just discover hidden layers of Vietnam, but a story tucked deep inside of me that began to inch its way out.

September: Integrate. Detox, meditate, integrate, repeat.

October: Alignment. My third birthday on this magic island in the Gulf of Thailand. I'm lured back here each year to reevaluate and realign, to walk the labyrinth and ask more questions. Hammock naps hold the answers to everything.

November: Discipline. Thirty days and 52000 words later I have a very rough draft of a new novel. Discipline is not just mindset. It's also structure and a solid, supportive community of friends who are on the journey too.

December: Healing. Sometimes it takes extreme circumstances to bring me back to point zero. Some times it takes going off grid into the heart of Laos and falling off a motorbike to get me there. Lots of rest and recovery. It took three weeks for my body to fully come out of shock--and to finally heal.

I slid into 2019 with ease. I was asleep well before midnight and woke up to a new year. A calm blanket of peace washes over me as I move slow through this first week of January. It is going to be an amazing year of curiosity and creation and, of course, magic.

I dare you to tap into your unlimited potential and work it to your advantage this year. What will you create? What magic will you cultivate? 

No Map Needed

"There was a map of Vietnam on the wall of my apartment in Saigon and some nights, coming back late to the city, I'd lie out on my bed and look at it...That map was a marvel especially now that it wasn't real anymore....That's old, I'd tell visitors, that's a really old map." ~Michael Herr

Wandering the Old Quarter of Hanoi, the streets narrow and fill with picturesque alleys and railways and images ripped from history. No stop lights or stop signs, weathered buildings, muted colors, people and motorbikes fill every inch of space. I look down at my phone and see a blue dot. You are here. 

I slip into a cafe complete with a piano, a floor to ceiling wall of books, and soft jazz music playing in the background. Immediately, the Murakami section catches my eye, and I pull a book from the shelf--Hard Boiled Wonderland & the End of the World. My entire existence in Vietnam has bordered on the surreal from the start. I've not read any Murakami lately so I hadn't considered the Murakami factor, but it could explain a lot.

If you've ever read Murakami, specifically this novel, perhaps you'll understand how a couple days later I ended up in a unicorn themed cafe sipping coffee while wearing a pastel unicorn onesie. Or how seeing pieces of a B52 jutting out of a pond in an upscale neighborhood seemed the most natural thing.

I first read Murakami in a tent somewhere in the interior of Alaska camped out on the median of a deserted highway. The nameless narrator slipping between worlds--one of secret labs and tunnels running through underground Tokyo, the other in a magical realm full of unicorns and stolen shadows. Somehow, an accumulation of all the choices I'd made in life had lead me to that moment--in a tent, somewhere Alaska, reading Murakami. No map needed.

Perhaps we wind up in the most interesting places by not following any sort of map laid before us, but a built in navigation system that we create by tuning into the divine and allowing guidance. Allow the magnificent and surreal and wild to fill your essence and watch it become your reality.

Toss your maps of yesterday away and create a new one. Old roads destroyed, new ones created, boundaries always shifting. There are parts of me that no longer exist and parts that I have created and parts that I have refined. Looking into my past, like a map, in awe at where I've been--a marvel, now that it's not real anymore.

How do you navigate your life? Was your map laid out for you by society or do you create your own as you move through the world? Tune into how you feel about where you are and where you've been. You are here. Look down on that blue dot. How you feel about it will tell you all you need to know.

Ten weeks in Vietnam--stunning, indescribable landscape, shocking, war ridden wounds, and an intense energy unlike anything I've ever felt. It feels good to be back in Chiang Mai, back in the jungle, but I look forward to creating more Vietnam adventures down the road. 

What is a Miracle?

Entering into September, things slowed down considerably for me here in Vietnam. I traded in motorbike adventures for a week of detox and moving slow. And in these slow movements, I can focus on those new routines that I'm cultivating in my writing life and yoga life.

But amidst my attempts to focus, I can't stop thinking about the story my amazing soul-sister Sadie told me recently. After sitting in meditation with her dad, she asked him if he'd had any insights. What's a miracle? he asked her. And she told him about me.

What is a miracle?

According to dictionary Google, it is an event not explicable by natural or scientific laws, in other words, a divine event. It's something external that we can witness. Whereas this can be true, I believe most miracles are far more subtle and work deep in the folds where we typically aren't looking.

When my entire life as I knew it in California crumbled around me into something I couldn't make sense of, miracles were at work. They were helping to restructure my world so I could realign with my soul's path--though at the time, it seemed like the opposite was happening in every direction I looked. Only now can I see how obvious they all were.

According to A Course of Miracles, a miracle is a shift in perspective from fear to love, when that "tiny, mad idea" that we are separate from each other and God dissolves. This perspective shift is not one that you simply think in your mind because it does not come from the mind--it comes from the heart, and it must be felt. This can only happen through complete forgiveness, compassion, and gratitude. It happens through surrendering and letting go--sometimes leading us to places where we are forced to face our deepest fears and buried emotions.

I have learned that miracles are those things that move us closer to our core values and soul alignment--even if it means ripping us from the foundation we've spent our life building. Because the more aligned we are, the more at peace we are, and the more at peace we are the better we are able to process emotions and the world around us. And the better we are able to process, the more fine tuned our intuition becomes and the clearer we can see everyone and everything around us.

The miracle is being able to stay fully present with a profound understanding and knowing that we are sovereign souls meant to live in alignment with why came here--and those reasons will be different for everyone as we are unique, energetic expressions of source.

A miracle is coming into the awareness that the past and the future do not exist and that only our minds give them life. It is the ability to re-frame our past and the stories we tell ourselves. It is the ability create our future with the present. And that, my friends, is a powerful miracle!

What do miracles mean to you? Have you experienced any in your life? Tell me your stories!

The Great Unlocking (or Lessons from the Hanged Man)

Each night long after dark I walk down the wide, expansive beach until the city noise and light pollution fade into the distance and all I can hear is the ocean roar. I need a sign. I need this energy to move. I needed a sign on what to do about my dilemma. I had planned to be in Da Nang until the end of August, but within the first week, my nervous system was already shot.

There is a sense of urgency and unrest that permeates every facet of Da Nang, and it unnerved me to the core. Each passing day became a test of patience and tolerance from the non-stop jackhammer outside my apartment window to the blasting music around every corner and relentless horn honking down every road. I expected this in the big cities and even in the city center of Da Nang, but here on the beach?

My life in this coastal city was not unfolding as I had planned. I had envisioned digging deep into my novel revision and the new practices I wanted to cultivate. But like the saying goes, make plans then allow something better to happen. Maybe that's not a saying, but it should be.

On my walk back to my apartment one night, I got my sign--literally. It was the sign outside of a bar on the street where I live. Lit up and glaring--the Hanged Man.

If you practice Tarot, you already know where this is going. The hanged man represents a clear sign to stop trying to control situations and to slow down and listen and let go and allow natural shifts in perspective--allow the universe to keep you suspended in mid-air, upside down. And from this perspective, where parts of the mind unlock that would have otherwise not, is where light can shine in the dark and the unknown can be discovered.

There was nothing I could do about my environment, not right away anyway so I allowed something better to happen. I got out of the city and discovered Vietnam in a way I might not have had things unfolded as I planned.

Driving around the Son Tra Peninsula for hours, taking long coastal routes all the way to Hue, hiking into untouched, magic jungles--this is where time stops and the infinite power of the present lingers, this is where egos diminish and all that's left standing is the soul in awe of its sovereign existence.

From the road, taking in the landscape--the inescapable beauty of deserted jungle roads, breathtaking coastline views from mountain passes, quiet, surreal villages--this is where clarity resurfaces, visions crystallize, and my soul remembers why I was brought here.

There is something about the expansiveness of the ocean and open road that bursts me open to receiving messages and gifts and energy. It puts me at ease and fills me up so I can go back into the world and live and write and simply be.

When we stop trying to force things to happen in our lives or even wish for things to be different is when the better path, the better plan presents itself. It is an alchemical process of co-creation with the infinite that can't so much be explained but only experienced. I know this lesson all too well--it's what got me here, on the other side of the world, following my curiosity. It's what keeps me moving forward in a perpetual state of awe and gratitude.

Have you had experiences where instead of forcing your life to work as you planned you simply surrendered to a new perspective and allowed magic to unfold? Tell me your stories!

Fear & Loathing in Saigon

Relentless traffic, hard stares, unforgiving intense energy that curls itself around your body and squeezes--this is Saigon. I don't feel unsafe. I feel uptight. I feel the weight of war and devastation and extreme poverty. There aren't many places here in the deep south of Vietnam where it isn't in your face. The doors to this country have only been open to US citizens since 1995. And from what I've seen and felt and experienced, I'm surprised they were opened at all.

You can turn a blind eye to it like you can most anything and find the charm and beauty behind the pain and tough exterior. The comforts of a soft bed in a cute city homestay. The picturesque charm of the villages throughout the Mekong Delta. The architecture of the tall, thin old buildings squished between new, shiny skyscrapers. The pieces of light escaping through the dark scars.

Within my first 24 hours in Saigon I got crazy lost, locked out of my homestay, and for the life of me, couldn't communicate with anyone--google translations as foreign as I was. And for the first time in my 2 years I've been in Southeast Asia, I actually felt like I was in Southeast Asia, a foreigner in a very foreign country. The Western world kept at an arms length distance hasn't infused its way into the culture here like it has in other places. Or it has, but not in a way that makes you all that comfortable. 

I stared at the pictures for a long time--real-life once-removed by a camera. Hanging on the walls of the War Museum are pictures of freelance photographers killed or long gone missing because they were chasing a passion for adventure not one of war. Romanticized characters filtered through the lenses of writers and film makers. That's all I know. That's all I can know. All roads lead back to literature.

None of these writers or visionaries paint a pretty picture of Vietnam so what is it that gets lost in translation from real life to page or film? Michael Herr's memoir reads more like a drug induced walk through the jungle than the story of a man caught in the throes of war. In the novel the Beach, Richard's obsession with Vietnam and war hinge on the delusional. Walking carelessly through an armed area of a Thai jungle Richard can only think: the only missing element was a Doors soundtrack. 

All roads lead back to literature. The horror, the horror. It doesn't seem to matter when you're so far removed from the horror. It becomes art. It becomes the source of light escaped through the dark scars. Richard never did get the reference the horror, but he reminds us at the end of his story that he's left with a thousand-yard stare and a lot of scars.

I think about the horrors I've witnessed and experienced in my life, and I often wonder how they will come across when I begin to write about them. Ultimately, you can't control how others will interpret your story though you can certainly try to manipulate how they will. Perhaps luring all the magic and miracles from the heart of darkness instead of the horror is simply how I've learned to deal with human life.

My last night in Saigon I stand on the corner at a busy intersection where the sheer volume of people and traffic and noise is dizzying, where homes and closed businesses hide behind cage-like gates and people watch you through the thick bars. I walk back to my homestay along the Saigon River and through narrow, winding alleyways that dead-end. Lost again. A woman steps out from the shadows of her home, and I show her my map. She smiles and points left, straight, left again, and I find my way back.

This post does not end in the horror, but in a peaceful walk along the river, the kindness of a stranger, and in a cozy homestay nestled in a narrow alleyway offset from the intensity that is Saigon.

How does art and literature skew your view of reality? Are you able to see the art, the light escaping through the darkness of the subject matter?