your way begins on the other side. become the sky.

take an axe to the prison wall. escape. 

walk out like someone suddenly born into color.

do it now. 

~rumi

i hold this to be the highest task

for a bond between two people:

that each protects the solitude of the other. ~rilke 

The biggest lie you ever told


Your deepest fear about growing old 


The loneliest night you ever spent 


The angriest letter you never sent 


The girl you swore you’d never leave 


The one you kissed on New Year’s Eve 


The sweetest dream you had last night 


Your darkest hour, your hardest fight 


The saddest song you ever heard 


The most you said with just one word 


The loneliest prayer you ever prayed 


The truest vow you ever made 


What makes you laugh, what makes you cry 


What makes you mad, what gets you by 


Your highest high, your lowest low  

~lyrics from ‘Inside Out’ by Trisha Yearwood and Don Henley

 The more two people open to each other, the more this wide-openness also brings to the surface all the obstacles to it: their deepest, darkest wounds, their desperation and mistrust,and their rawest emotional trigger points. Just as the sun’s warmth causes clouds to arise by prompting the earth to release its moisture, so love’s pure openness activates the thick clouds of our emotional wounding, the tight places where we are shut down, where we live in fear and resist love.

~ John Welwood 

Your body needs to be held and to hold, to be touched and to touch. None of these needs is to be despised, denied, or repressed. But you have to keep searching for your body’s deeper need, the need for genuine love. Every time you are able to go beyond the body’s superficial desires for love, you are bringing your body home and moving toward integration and unity.

~ Henri Nouwen

i have found human touch to be one of the most healing forms of love available, by nurturing us in ways that solitude can not provide. our worries seem to disappear when we fall into the arms of a loved one, when we open our hearts to receive love, when we allow ourselves to feel the love buried deep within.  

the following video reminds us how difficult it is to let love in. we build walls around our hearts; we shield ourselves with armor assuming it will protect us from harm when in reality we are only depriving ourselves of the powerful force we call love. we push it away because we are afraid of becoming vulnerable, fearing that we will be seen as weak. it is only through vulnerability and openness that we find our true power. loving another takes strength and absolute courage. we forget how beautiful life can be with those who see through us, who take the time to understand us, who offer us a piece of their heart.  

“we think that poverty is only being hungry, naked and homeless. the greatest poverty is being rejected, unwanted, unloved, uncared for, having forgotten what is human love, what is human touch.” ~ mother teresa
 

why on earth does this little thing called ‘ego’ have so much power over us when it has absolutely no relevancy to reality? instead of ignoring it and seeing things as they are, we choose to believe all the fictitious stories it concocts.

i’ve spent quite a bit of time observing my distorted mind (ego), watching the way it moves, studying its strategy. after years of getting tangled up in its wild web and crawling on my knees through the dark to find my way back out, i am beginning to see just how it works. 

it doesn’t wish for our happiness. it wants to manipulate our every move, control our every choice, until our actions are no longer genuine. it starts out wanting something, seemingly simple, from our external environment. next thing you know, we have to have it, can’t live without it, whether it be money, success, fame, approval or a relationship with a particular person. we begin putting all of our energy into capturing this ‘something’ we are craving, convincing ourselves we will be happy once we get it. this yearning becomes an obsession. before long, we become a slave to our ego’s appetite, allowing it to feast upon our freedom. 

our worth is not determined by how much money we make or by our reputation among others or by our position in society. we are enough just as we are. there is nothing to ‘get’ out there. that ‘something’ we want (and feel inferior without) will not bring peace to our minds or love into our lives. it will only leave us wanting more…more of what we don’t have…more of what we don’t need. these desires are our primary source of anxiety and fear: anxious to grasp what we feel is within reach and fear of losing it once we get our hands on it. 

letting go of expectation and trusting things as they are, opens us up to a world of possibility, allowing for the unexpected to occur rather than clutching so tightly to what the mind originally planned for itself. everything happens for a reason. what we lose always comes around in another form. it may not look like what we envisioned or come to us at the exact time we are expecting it, but it will come, arriving even more beautifully than we ever imagined. 

surrender to the moment. detach from future results. the outcome makes absolutely no difference. live each moment truthfully, with love and compassion. make all choices from a place within. everything else will effortlessly fall into place.

to thine own self be true: six well-known words of wisdom strung together to make a very profound statement. i remember hearing those words for the first time as a child. they held so much meaning for me. immediately, i began to question the way i was told to live my life, the beliefs that had been ingrained in my young mind and the endless options that adulthood would bring me once i got out on my own. i felt myself being pulled away from home into a new world of unknowns and possibility. knowing i would one day be able to speak and choose exactly the way my spirit desired was fascinating and beyond my wildest imagination.

when i turned 18, i left home (geographically), ready to spread my wings and fly off to some magical land that would transform life as i knew it. i soon discovered, as the song communicates, it is a wild world out there. life repeatedly offered up the unexpected on a silver, and sometimes tarnished, platter. eventually, reality hit me like a ton of bricks and assured me i would have to leave my comfort zone in order to become my true authentic self.  

inquisitive by nature, i started questioning all the things i had been taught up to this point and realized i would have to unlearn everything i knew and start all over again, forming my own ideas, creating my own philosophy. it was not going to be the easiest task i ever had tackled, but by far the most rewarding. where would i start? i do not believe what i had been told about religion, i do not believe marriage will make me complete, i do not believe in following the respectable road that had been mapped out for me and i absolutely refuse to conform to the expectations placed upon me as a woman. 

it took a while, and much disappointment, to find the courage to completely abandon the belief system i was expected to trust. i was leaving the only place i had ever been. i searched high and low, looking for some kind of answer. i was lost and lonely and confused as i made my way into uncharted territory. i felt like running back to what i knew but something deep inside told me to stay, to pave my own path. i listened to the sweet voice of my spirit speaking ever so gently to me. 

i began reveling in my solitude and savoring silence. i was no longer seeking approval from the people around me or depending on things outside myself for happiness. i was learning to trust myself. i was learning to love myself unconditionally. i was learning that the answers to every question i have lies within me. 

in our over-stimulated society, we are all too often conditioned by dogmas that lead us astray. we have the freedom to accept those theories as our own or find out for ourselves who we are and what we want to do with this precious life we’ve been given.

you already have what you need. paint your own picture. listen to your true nature. follow your own way.

about 2 miles away from my house and 25 minutes into my walk, the light drizzle turned into an intense stream of water. my first reaction was to squint my eyes and try to shelter myself from the pouring rain beating down on my baseball cap. when i came to the realization that the resistance wasn’t protecting me from getting wet, i decided to open my eyes and walk tall through the rainstorm. after all, it’s what i had been wanting. i had been looking forward to the rain since i heard about it coming a couple of days ago. finally, it was here and i was going to enjoy it, let it fall on me any way it wished. 

by the time i got home i was soaked. i sat in my house listening to it beat upon my roof, watching it drip fiercely on my wooden deck as it fell from the sky. i was smiling from ear to ear as though i was seeing it for the first time. it reminded me of children playfully running through mud puddles and then looking through the window eager to go back outside after being sent into the house.

i’m from texas. we have huge downpours throughout the year. i grew up with thunderstorms. BIG (as everything in texas is) thunderstorms that would last for hours as bolts of lightning flash across the sky. you can smell the rain before it finds its way into the atmosphere. i miss them dearly. out here in southern california, a mist is considered rain. i call it a tease. i always want more. the clouds become dark and i instantly feel the storm moving in. i imagine going home and lying under my quilts with some hot tea while the massive shower does its dance. then all of a sudden, in the middle of my daydream, the clouds disappear and the sun is shining brightly again without even so much as a tiny trickle. what the hell? what just happened?

today, i got my rain. i feel renewed.