Reclaiming My Space & Life

After several weeks of overworking, I slept for 14 hours last night. It felt great to sleep until I woke up.

I realized something over the last few day. I've been feeling hungry all of the time. At least that is how I've been explaining my feeling. But I realized that what I'm feeling is my metabolism at a higher rate. It has to do with energy and not with hunger or appetite. But my instinct is to want to eat.

Now that I realize this, I'm free to reframe the experience and think about it differently.

I think I could munch on carrots if I'm really having a physical reaction and want to deal with it on that level.

I can choose how I want to experience this. Cool.

So when I got up, I went into my office. I had this vision for sorting through a few of the notebooks on the shelf above my desk. I wanted to organize my webinar notes, too. I dove in and went much deeper. I tossed a lot of things, and sorted out a lot of things that are not important any more.

At one point, I had so much going on that I started to get a little overwhelmed. So I stopped and shifted gears. I didn't get back to that task today. But I'll wrap it up tomorrow. It's good to make so much progress in one day. Or weekend.

Piece by piece, my life is coming back together.

Releasing Memories

I'm awake much later than I would like. Tonight, I feel this is caused by working too many hours for too many days without enough time off. My mind is full of words, ideas, and memories.

A few minutes ago, I found myself having an angry conversation with someone in my past based on things that happened in the past. I was being firm and telling that person the truth of my experience of him. It wasn't pretty dealing with him. I understand that he was a vibrational match for me at that time. And I know that is the same reason why those times and events are back in my mind tonight. It's really about me and not about him.

When things like this happen, when I realize that I'm rehasing the past with new clarity, I'm always grateful to realize the moment. It is always a good moment, especially when I have the awareness to jump in and process the moment. I'm always happy to get new clarity, to release something, and to make a choice about who I want to be.

I let myself talk this thing out with him. At one point, I could feel myself start to spin deeper into it. I actually wanted to call him and continue the conversation in real life. I was getting deeper into that energy and not releasing it. That's when I knew it was time to shift. That's when I decided it was time to write about it.

The person and the story are not what is important. What is important is that I made a choice to release him and those events. It's not who I want to be from this moment on. I'm not the same person I was back then. I've had years of experience since then, and I've had years of practice at being a different person. I'm so grateful that I understand that I get to choose who I am going to be by deciding who I want to be. I'm constantly improving myself. I strive every day, sometimes every hour, to be a better person that I was in the past.

I'm so grateful that I've really learned how to live in the moment and to use my power to shift my focus and attention from what I don't want to what I do want.

I want to be a person who is calm at the center because I understand who I am and how I fit into the universe. I live by faith that the universe is a supportive and nurturing place where all things conspire to fulfill my wishes before my eyes. I feel the power of the universe in every cell of my being and it gives me the courage, the fire in my belly, to be my self. My best self. My true self. My natural self. Everything I want, everything that occurs to me, is my birthright. I can be happy and fulfilled in every moment as I stay connectd to this deeper understanding.

I want to tell the story about how my life transformed before my eyes once I connected to what I wanted and could feel the strong knowing that it was mine even before it came to pass. Tonight, I can feel the power as I share that story, my story, of what is happening this month, this week, tonight, even this very hour!

Solstice

I'm feeling so many things tonight that I feel I need to type my journal entry. There's too much to say to hand write tonight.

For the last week, I've been feeling drafty or exposed in my life. Like I'm trying too hard to be heard or appreciated. Like the people I'm reaching out to don't want as much of me as I'm offering. It's such a subtle thing, but I trust my instinct. The primary person is someone I like, someone of high quality, someone I would like to have as a friend. But it feels like I want this more than she does. So I'm going to pull back by choice.

At the same time this is happening, I'm feeling a need to examine her and figure out why she isn't a good match for me. To find out what is wrong with her, or at least, wrong for me. I don't know if this is a smart thing, or something I'm doing out of self defense. I do feel at some level that this is a follower, someone who doesn't feel capable of having her own backbone, creating her own life and business. She wants to follow, to be part of the respected entourage of someone famous in the petri dish. While I understand this, it isn't a quality of a person I really want in my own inner circle. Especially because of the galaxy she has chosen. There is a real disconnect here. And yet, for the most part, I do know that she forms her own opinions and speaks her mind even in that geography. And good for her.

She's connected to another person that I had wanted in my life in a larger way. This other woman has limited her access with me very clearly. It's so funny... when we see each other, when we speak, she says that she wants to spend time with me. But when I initiate contact, she diffuses it. I realized with her a long time ago that her actions are not in sync with her words, and listened to her actions. These two women are connected, that's partly why this other woman is coming up for me now.

But really, I'm feeling the pattern. I'm feeling the other times I've felt this energy with people. I know I have a lot to say tonight, but I truly don't want to just vent about these uncomfortable feelings. I really want to move beyond this level of processing to reach a new point of clarity. But I'm willing to explore and see what is coming up, with the intention of releasing it and moving on.

I think I've almost always felt either that the people around me don't want so much of me, or that the hollowness around me is good because it is honest and there isn't really anyone who wants in. I wonder if this is a true understanding of this experience. I'm certainly open to a new way to see this, and to reach a new point of healing on this. Both of these are extremes related to feeling disconnected, one while surrounded by people, the other while being alone. That's certainly a theme of my life. And yet, it contains profound truth at the same time.

But what catches me here tonight is that this is about the duality of life, and I really want to transcend duality when possible. I know that transcending doesn't mean I won't still breathe in and out in this world of the illusion of separation and duality. But I can step into the space where I recognize duality and find the oneness solution point. I may not be able to live in that space, but I can make it a habit to return there when I find myself outside it.

Tonight, I also starting retreading the worst professional experience of my life, the worst points of the entire two year time I spent in that job. I know that tomorrow's event is triggering this memory in part, but it is also related to this feeling.

Perhaps this hermit life, this connection/separation lesson that I have come to believe is part of my life lesson, perhaps this is actually little more than a myth that I've taken on as a mantle, and that I can cast off just as easily. Perhaps I wrestle (that's too strong of a word) with this because I expect to wrestle with this.

I dozed on the couch tonight, and when I awoke, a PBS special was playing. It talked about how people are frustrated, how they feel beaten down because their business efforts and financial life during this economy are not what they expect. I found myself listening, and taking a strategy. I thought that if I could take this knowledge, this position that people are reaching, and accept that it is real, that I could find a way to transcend it. As I woke up, and as I observed this thinking, I was first disappointed with myself, and then, I felt enlightened. I was disappointed that I would allow other people's experience of their lives to limit what I believe is possible for my own life. That I would accept this assemblage point for myself. And then I realized that my strategy involved finding a way that I could feel good in the midst of this feeling bad. It was me trying to find alignment in the midst of misalignment. That's something I can celebrate. The entire strategy is flawed because it started out from frustration and lack of vision, but the fact that my entire being is oriented to finding alignment, a way to feel better and more powerful in my own life--that's something to appreciate and celebrate.

As I lay in bed reflecting on these many experiences around this theme, I realized that I had some things to process (hence the writing) and that the most helpful thing I can do tonight is to meditate. To clear my own mind, to find my alignment with my own dreams and aspirations, to gird my loins with my own vision and empower myself to launch fresh tomorrow. And every tomorrow that follows. That's true alignment, and the greatest path to my own empowerment.

People. Relationships. Space. Silence. Doing it my own way. Stubbornly, sometimes. Dreaming. Working hard. These are the themes of my experience so far. I suspect that I can just drop many of them and they will melt away like a mist around me. I feel that as I stand here this morning in the near solstice pre-dawn hours, that I'm reaching some deep core place inside me. That's I'm seeing what is essential with x-ray vision, and that I can step forward when I'm ready, when I feel compelled to step, into a fresh life, a fresh vision. Unencumbered with baggage. Strengthened with clarity and courage. Inspired by my own dreams of what is possible in my life.

I've been putting up with a lot of things in my daily life that I just don't like. I've gotten used to wrestling with them. I'm ready to step out of this cloak into the fresh new day that awaits me. That my soul longs for. That I've been dreaming about. The space around me begins to fill up with the things that are a match for me now. Now. Now. As the universe responds to who I feel I am. Who I choose to be in this instant.

I stand waiting, eyes closed, mists whirling around me in the darkness. Feeling goosebumps of anticipation. Waiting for the moment when that inner nudge says it is time to step into the magic of who I choose to be.

A New Understanding

I've just had one of those amazing experiences. Something important has shifted and I can't quite explain it. I know for sure it has happened, but it happened on a level where my brain can't quite process it with words. Yet I find myself here, trying to use words, to capture the importance of this moment and this realization.

Suddenly, I see glimpses into my recent history with understanding. Things that haven't quite made sense as they were happening now seem completely reasonable and knowable from this vantage. I understand now that I'm always going to be walking through the fears and insecurities and mistakes of this life because those things are part of being human. And yet I know I am much more than merely human. I identify with the larger part of me, the part that transcends these things. It like I forget that I can't live my life at that level, I must live my life as a human. But I am guided by the wisdom and understanding of the higher level. I have conscious access to that part of myself, what a gift that is.

What understanding I can have in the midst of human level confusion. What wisdom I can employ when making decisions and choosing my path between conflicting opinions. I can tap into the higher perspective, and I can do my best to live from that higher perspective. But I can't maintain it. I live on the bridge between these two worlds. I can live in the higher world for moments of time, and I find myself living in the human world for longer stretches, but in truth, my life is on the bridge.

I haven't understood this in this way before, even if I have used the same words, they now mean something different to me. My soul has had an experience that changes everything, coming outward from the core of me.

Was John my soul mate? It's a very good question. In my imagination, I can adjust the details of our interaction and he becomes a more profound and more intense interaction. Is that true or not? I believe I can change my experience with him so it is true. I can rewrite my history, tell a different story, and it becomes a different history, I become a different person. Perhaps it impacts John in the same way. Perhaps it allows him to become the man he wanted to be at that time, the man he had a vision to be, but in his humanness, he didn't quite manifest with me. If that is the case, it is a gift I give to both of us.

The story we tell is indeed important. It sets us free to be the person we want to be and perhaps it even allows for those who interact with us to be free to choose to be the person they also want to be. Maybe it is never too late to have a happy childhood, as someone once said.

I see the people in my life very differently as well. I see that I need to step back from them all as much as possible. I need to receive whatever they have to give and not ask things of them that they can't give. That's what I have done in the past, whether I meant to or not. Oh, guide me so that I can find my way on that path because I have stumbled so many times. Show me how to be that person, the one who mostly assesses correctly what is fair to ask of others. I'm willing to continue to make mistakes, but please show me how to master this part of myself so I can be more effective when I don't make a mistake.

Show me how to ground this energy and work with it. Show me how this changes me forever. Show me how to live my life as this person I see clearly tonight. Show me because I want to be a deliberate, conscious person. I want to travel a path of intention with intent, and I want to share what I learn with those around me. I want to be effective in working with myself and with others. I want to honor the essence and truth of who I am. I want to honor the path that I walk. I want to live the truth that I know, not just hold it in my head, but live it, breathe it, and let it radiate from every cell of my body with integrity. My soul knows how to be, I want to live in harmony with my own soul. I want to be true to myself.

Thank you for this experience tonight.

What Do I Want Now?

I dreamt tonight that I encountered Philip and he did something to me. We were in approximately the same area, we noticed each other, and he seemed to be quite willing to talk. As time wen on, I ended up talking to him face-to-face. He was talking me through something, not exactly on the physical level. I was explaining to him that I didn't start talking to him so he would work with me. At that time, I noticed a flare of bright white light in his right eye and my left eye responded by opening up wider. The energy built up in his eye for just a second, and then he released a huge ball of white light energy into my left eye. I reeled a bit from accepting it, but I did accept it and it integrated with my being. I was still saying that I didn't expect him to work with me when it all happened again, except this time I was paying more attention and noticed more about the light. It was blueish white light. It looked like a fireball. It went directly from his right eye into my left and was absorbed into my energy field before it entered my physical eye, but it happened so fast that I didn't notice this distinction the first time.

I woke up soon after. I know that this really happened. In fact, I' considered contacting Philip in real life to ask him about it. But my sense was that he would say I already knew what happened. Isn't ti strange to have him appear in my life now, at this time when I'm considering so many options for my life?

In the dream, before he started to work with me, I was telling him a little bit about the options I was considering, that they were huge, life course changing events. And he kept repeating something like "well, isn't that odd/unexpected" as if to say, "Of course you are, look at what is hitting your chart."

All of this has left me wondering what is in my chart. But as soon as I had that thought, I suddenly questioned his motives and wondered if he appeared in my dream to get me to buy a reading. Isn't that strange? Don't I have better protection than that?

Now I am wondering.

I feel like my thoughts about this possible life change are very important. But what matters most, I'm starting to think, is the positive power I put into my next big vision for my life. I've had a smallish vision for myself. I wanted to keep myself employed, and I have done that. I could have had much greater success if I had asked for it. Now, I want it. I don't have to make a huge life change to just bring in more success to the life I already have. But this is the perfect time for me to consider what I want to do next, and to dream a different dream in every way that I want something different. But I can just dream a larger vision of the same dream with a few changes.

what do I want now?

"You Need to Deal With This"

I woke up this morning and the first thought on my mind was: You need to deal with this. I had dreamt about my situation with TW and the situation is what I need to deal with. I know this. I just don't know what to do.

In the middle of the night, I went for a long drive to think about some things. I asked that the wind blowing through the truck would wash away the clouds and confusion so I could see things clearly. It was an insightful drive. One of the things I pondered was my situation with TW. I have no idea how to fix what is broken inside me to really resolve the whole thing. The only thing I know to do is to deal with symptoms in the meantime. I can do that. I can remember what I want my behavior to look like and remind myself to follow that. But my heart and mind are a different matter. I find myself wanting to be pulled into that world, wishing it we already so. It's like an addiction. The only thing I know to do is to stay in my center and be calm when I feel its pull on me. I can't stop wanting that, but I can stop acting on it.

Other things that came up tonight were quite interesting. I'm considering submitting a proposal to speak at a conference next spring. I've never considered doing that before. It suddenly gave new importance to a couple of the activities on my schedule at the end of October. They could almost be seen as practice events.

I changed my avatar on several social media websites tonight.

I am feeling a bit of pressure about current events because I'm starting to think that they are critical for the future. They may be important, but nothing is critical and there is no reason to feel any pressure. I do appreciate realizing that the time now is important. But I don't need to worry that I might mess up things or that I could blow the future. Yes, there could be consequences for decisions I make now, but if not that future, another comparable future. I need to really chill with this.

Dream Window to My Soul

My dreams have been quite rich lately, but last night was especially vivid and full of images.

I was visiting my mom at the house where I grew up, only it was different from my real home. Mom was working in the yard, working to manage the land. She landscapes and manages it, maybe I should say manicures it, into submission. There was a side of the house with almost an alley that I had never been down. I walked down it and realized that it opened up to a large field, and that were was a series of these large fields that turned corners and traveled a path between open farm land. I wasn't traveling between crop fields, but open spaces of land with grass, like a plain, and trees, and along the edges of thickets.

I set out to walk to the end of the property, and it was several miles away. There were some farm houses, and from my perspective, they seems to be landlocked, but they had long, winding driveways. I never encountered a road, only this open space land and some trees. I was walking mostly on grass the entire way. When I reached the end, the land came up between two homes, and a woman came out of one home. I watched a mother and daughter walk up to the other home, and knew they maintained a garden on that land. The woman asked me who I was because she knew everyone who belonged on the land and she didn't know me. She said the people who belonged there were so close that they participated together in a blood drive. I told her my relationship to my mom, and immediately I was accepted.

She joined me and started talking to me about the land and about mom. Later, we were joined by another woman from one of the farmhouses I had passed. She also knew mom and told me that she was having financial troubles and I was to keep that information to myself. She was trying to sell some land to turn her situation around. She told me there was something I should see. We walked just off mom's land to a sort of thicket of sycamore trees. They were so tall I had to lay on the ground to take in the height of them! They were about 300 feet high! The second woman had worked to get this piece of land a special designation to preserve those trees for future generations.

The whole time I was walking, I kept thinking that mom will be happy to know how nice the rest of the land is, but that she will overextend herself to control it and manage it so it is as manicured as the rest of her land. I remember that as I was walking out alone, I originally thought that she should fence off her land to protect it, but realized after a while that some of the beauty of the area was from the openness and that fencing it was not only not necessary, but it would diminish the beauty.

The snakes. While I was with mom, I had three separate snake incidents. First, there was a huge snake that turned towards us and I feared we would be bit so I killed it by slicing it with some papers I had in my hand. I picked up the pieces and took the carcass to the trash. Later, there was a garter snake that I saw but was going to ignore until it starting flying through the air and on its second pass, flew right at me. I grabbed it, and pinched it behind the head. I think I decapitated it, or it stranged, because it was dead also. There was a third snake in a pile of dried oak leaves, but I walked in a different direction to avoid it.

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Blogger lost most of this entry. I spent a lot of time interpreting this dream and it is all lost. I'm going to recap what I learned, but the magic of what happened in that time is lost.
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There is a classic Jungian dream where your home is suddenly larger, and it signifies that you have made a leap in your consciousness into a larger world. This is my ancestral home, so I believe it relates to my core, the deepest and oldest part of myself. The fact that it takes place outdoors instead of inside the house indicates that it is part of my instinctual nature. Jung makes a distinction between domestic and wild animals, and I'm drawing the same sort of parallel between indoor spaces and outdoor spaces. The expansion is not part of the person I've learned to be, or that I've been socialized to be. It is within the part of me that came into this world. Could this mean that more of my self is present in my daily life? That would tie in with my latest round of heartbreak and healing, releasing old energy that fit the pattern of disappointment and heart break that allows more of me to be present. I have to believe these things are related.

The fact that the land is cozy, not the desert where I live, means something to me as well. The desert is a great teacher, but she is not a place where you go to refresh and recoup. This land, with the openness and naturalness (not farmed) filled with grass and thickets of trees, this is the kind of land that embraces you and allows you to explore and feel safe. In the desert, you must maintain vigilance at all times.

I walked to the end of the land alone, and then was joined by two other women in my return trip. Women I didn't know. One told me about her financial challenge and her plan to alleviate that. I'm not getting anything about that.

The whole "blood drive" bit is also somewhat confusing. It seems to indicate a blood bond between the people, a family of choice perhaps. The mother and daughter were there to garden, to work the land, to be fruitful. That draws up the image of nurturing and being part of the larger cycle of life.

The large trees could be phallic, but it seems more that they represent the growth of a person. The roots providing the grounding, and the branches showing a reaching towards the heavens and enlightenment. They were extraordinarily tall, and they had just been designated as a trust so they would be saved for future generations.

The snakes are another story. The snakes represent transmutation, and I remember thinking that when they appeared in the dream. Jung also says that snakes represent a conflict between the instinctive nature and inner person. It echoes the outdoor setting for the dream, something about my instincts not being in synch with who I truly am. That is a natural effect of personal growth. The instincts are developed through experience, and they are a bit slower to change because they hang on to past experience. I can't remember ever killing a snake in a dream, or even being attacked by one. I think this image is about fighting my instincts, about not trusting them. There is so much change going on in my life right now that I often observe my instincts and impulsive behavior and hold them before acting. Most times, after a little time passes, the wisdom from within me bubbles to the surface and I realize the folly of the original thought for a course of action. That is being deliberate instead of impulsive.

In summary, I think the images of this dream are talking about the large change taking place in my life. I feel it confirms my own thoughts and awareness that a deep and important change is happening from my core outward. I do see some awkwardness in my daily living and awareness as I try out new behaviors and put myself in new situations. I can't trust my instincts yet, they are tied to old patterns that I'm choosing to change.

Anger and My Angry Friend

I have an angry friend.

The reasons my friend is angry has nothing to do with me. It's part of what he is going through in this stage of his life. He's a good guy, and quite aware, so I'm sure that he is going to figure this out and heal the wound and the pain that plague him now.

When I'm with him, I feel uncomfortable hearing his anger. His thoughts are distorted. He thinks in black and white, condemning everything he things about. From what I observe, he stubbornly clings to his anger with self righteousness. He feel justified to be so angry. And yet his actions and choices and thought only handcuff him to more of the same. He is really unwilling to release himself from this self-made prison.

I am a different kind of person. I can't ever remember being that angry. My heart was always more teachable than his. Even at times when perhaps I should have been angry and used that anger to stand up for myself, I didn't. I always felt that I was being taught something by the circumstances. When I do get angry, it blows white hot and then passes quickly. Once it is gone, it is gone. I don't hold a grudge, or even remember being angry later.

Perhaps I learned to be teachable in part from my father, who would get frustrated and rage at anyone around. He didn't strike anyone, but he yelled and verbally attacked. I learned at an early age the importance of moving away from the focus of his anger. Like me, he would blow hot and it would be over. No apologies, but it was truly over. I see my brother doing something similar, but I give him complete credit for this: he apologizes for his outbursts.

I think my mutable water nature is mostly the reason for my lack of anger. I also have very little fire energy. So more than the environmental factors, I think I am just cut from a different bolt of fabric. This also makes it harder for me to just sit with my friend's anger. I know the benefit of releasing it and moving on. But I can't help anyone else. I don't know why I can't remember that when I'm looking into the eyes of a friend who is suffering. I can only answer questions when they are asked. I can't provide clues or answers before then because they only appear as annoying noise.

I can completely separate myself from his anger and his state. Even being with him, I don't feel influenced by his anger. I also feel safe. I know that even if he gets frustrated with me, I'm safe with him. That is important. I feel detached from him and his anger in the same way I feel detached from a friend who insists that the waiter return their meal to the kitchen several times. It's not met, it's them. I'm very clear about that.

I've realized the last two times I've had lunch with him that I really don't know how to act in this situation. I really fumble and don't know what to say because nearly everything I say ends up frustrating him. I'm not afraid to be his friend through this phase, I just don't seem to know how to be his friend right now.

So today when I got back, I wrote him an email and said that I didn't know how to be his friend right now, that I realize what I'm doing is adding to his frustration, and that I want to know how to be his friend. I got back a very sweet note from him about his appreciation for my friendship. His advise for me, as I summed it up, is to just listen and don't talk. Don't try to comfort him. Don't be logical. I can do this.

I'm not sure if I am odd with my anger, if most people are like my friend, or just how it plays out. I've not been around such anger before. It's not my favorite thing (as I'm sure it is not his favorite thing). We process our emotions very differently. I'm grateful for this opportunity to learn something new. I find myself really hoping that I don't need to use it very much in the future. I prefer to spend time with people who are more like me, who are geared to learn from situation, to submit to the higher wisdom of myself in challenging situations. I don't want to be an angry friend to people, and I hope I always remain the kind of person who seeks the growth opportunity. I'm sure I won't do that perfectly, but it is my goal.

Quick Update and Look Forward

What a difference a day makes.

Since I last posted, so much has changed. I'm so grateful that I've learned how to embrace my negative feelings, be grateful for them, and focus on the fresh, new desires they birth inside me. In writing that post, I shifted my energy from treading water in my pain to facing the future with gratitude. Within hours, things started changing. My vulnerabilities were addressed by people who initiated the conversations. I don't feel any need to dwell on the mechanics or details of this, only to report that this is what happened.

Today, I find myself even further along that road. I actually feel excitement and enthusiasm for the potential of the future. I'm eager to have fresh work, new experiences, and try out even more new behaviors.

Oh, one last thought about the feeling I could trace back to high school. I think that I had figured out back then how to gauge my energy from the feedback and how to figure out new behaviors to try. It wasn't clean and pure, I still blamed myself for the feedback because I didn't have my power clear in my own heart. But I had already figured out the basic mechanics of transformation. I just wasn't giving myself credit for the great places I was reaching and didn't realize the importance of what I was doing.

I was doing pretty well back then. I can see that today.

Vulnerable and Willing

Here I am, hot tears again, and feeling the need to let it out through my words.

I don't know if my feelings are right, but I'm feeling not liked by a group of people I've embraced. It might be right. I am no stranger to people not taking to me. I'm trying to stay calm and figure out what is really happening here.

First, I'm feeling a bit vulnerable lately. I've been acting out a lot of new behaviors and having great results. But even so, the result is that I'm feeling a bit out on a limb with all of the newness. And there is my revelation yesterday, and I'm not going to recover that ground now.

Second, these people are all busy with their own lives. The small actions/inactions that I'm taking as slights are small things, and from people who are busy. Their actions are much more about them than about me. I know that in my head, of course.

Third, I haven't really learned how to be warm and cozy with people, so some of what is going on could really be feedback to me about how I'm coming off. I'm intense and impulsive, not the best combination, I know. I have been guilty of trying too hard in the past. Maybe I am just hearing that message again, and need to make some smallish adjustments.

But the largest thing in all of this is that I just want to be loved and appreciated. I really don't care who loves me or appreciates me. I mean that in the right way. I don't have any hoped pinned on any one of these people. I don't care if any one of them likes me or doesn't like me. I just want to find the ones who do like me. And this ties back beautifully to the first point... my vulnerability.

My gawd, this feels like high school where I was always trying to figure out how to be less intense and be just enough to pull in people. Some things never seem to change in my life. I wonder about that. I wonder if that is because I realized early who I am, or if this is an entire pattern of behavior that should just be released.

OK, here's what I'm going to do.

First, I'm going to just feel all of this emotion running through me. Of course I'm feeling vulnerable. Of course I want to be loved and appreciated. Nothing wrong with feeling all of this.

Second, I'm not feeling people warm up to me, so I'm going to take this as feedback. I have no way right now to know on a case by case basis if this is because it's a wrong match for me, or if I'm just too intense. Either way, the feedback seems to be that my energy in these directions is misplaced for right now. I need to be quiet and watch what happens. I may get a chance to ask some of them directly, but I'm not counting on that. I will be direct if I get the opportunity.

Third, the real heart of this issue is inside of me. I know that as long as I am feeling unloved and unappreciated, that is the kind of energy that is going to come right back to me. I need some time and space to process this by myself. More than anything else right now, I want to learn how to balance my energy in a stronger way. I want to learn how to feel the love and appreciation of the universe for me, and my own love and appreciation for myself. This is the antidote to what I'm feeling.

Oh Great Spirit, I see the road opening up before me, and I willingly commit to walking this road. I take this first step in faith, and I face the unknown, the mystery that will be revealed to me as I travel this land. I intend to explore this territory and learn what I can, and to apply myself to mastering the gate that will give me access to the next challenge before me in life. I offer my vulnerable heartscape, and the fallow ground it still contains, to hold the beauty of the world and of myself that I will encounter here. It is so.

Monsoon Surfing

Over the last few days, I've felt really strong emotions that have brought me into a more alert place. I've been aching to talk to someone about what I'm feeling, but there is no one. (That thought is not exactly correct, but there is no one I felt I could call tonight to talk this through.) I thought tonight that perhaps I should return here and write about what is going on as a way to process it.

Before I started this post, I read my last few posts. Very interesting. Apparently, I thought I was going to keep writing here about the things going on last year. I can see why I thought it would be helpful. But the reality of the last year was that I was learning new ways to process my life, and writing wasn't primary. I learned how to process things using my right brain instead. No linear strings of verbal meaning. Images. Pictures. Dreams. Focused energy. And the writing I did was from a different place. It was more about sucking the marrow out of the dreams, living them as if they had already happened. Things like feeling the wind on my face while I drive around in my new SUV with a moon roof. Things that later came to be because I dreamed them.

I learned spider medicine last year. I learned how to spin an idea, a new idea of something that I want, into a web to hold it when it arrives. I manifested so many things in my world since February 2007 that I could never begin to write here to summarize the story. But this is another story, one worth writing about, and it is not the reason I'm sitting here at the computer long after I want to be asleep.

I realized yesterday that my intention to create a safe environment for myself, a place where the energy was clear and good, and I could play and grow in safety, has been accomplished. I sort of already knew that. But what I didn't know is that my strategy for making that happen, and my focus on this caused me to sort of cocoon myself in here. It fit with my natural aversion for icky energy. My hermit tendencies also include a self-preservation impulse, a desire to feather a nest where I am safe and supported. But what I didn't realize is that I've also locked out other people in this process.

This realization happened because I realized I have a crush on a man in my life. It's not about the idea of a future with this guy. It's about me realizing that there are men out there that have qualities I adore, and about realizing that I've created such a barrier that I don't allow anyone with different energy into my circle. Including male energy.

That's a big thing to realize. My instinct to protect myself has ended up isolating me from anyone not exactly like me. I realize that I'm actually hungry for interaction with male energy, and that I miss having a whole, complete, and different person sharing my space and life.

Perhaps this is a bit like my media fast, which lasted almost two decades, and really only ended when I serendipitously discovered that I had developed a sense of protection that made the artificial protection of a fast no long necessary or valuable. Perhaps I have just reached a point in my growth where my sense of self and self care momentum are strong enough to allow other people into my world without causing me any harm. I didn't have to choose to do it this way. I could have jumped in with both feet many years ago and learned to tread water and swim in the deep end. But that's not the path I chose, for whatever reason.

I feel a bit raw tonight. I feel hot tears in my eyes. I feel my thoughts taking a new route, which is a bit strange. I can feel that they have a habit of running one direction (towards regret and blame) and I feel the well-worn grooves of riding that direction, and yet, I'm not traveling that way. I can feel the natural choice to travel a different path, to show myself compassion and find the highest purpose fulfilled by this course of action. That's a pretty amazing realization, also.

I'm at a huge crossroads in my life. I've been making changes, consciously, deliberately, and making huge strides to becoming the person I want to be. My life is magically changing all around me. Most of it is great and fun and exciting. A few of the things that no longer match are a bit of a surprise because I'm used to them, and it feel awkward to consider the future without them. Like my work situation. I really didn't intend to break it wide open as well. But since that area is also in transition, I realize the opportunity here to really embrace these changes as well, and reinvent my work life again, focusing on what is most juicy and appealing to me right now. I don't have to keep doing the same things just because I've got momentum with them. I'm really free to decide to be someone new, someone with my experience who is using my skills in a new way. That's pretty exciting. And only a little bit scary.

In some ways, this feels like the ongoing story of my life. I've always run hard after personal growth, and focused on how to manage my life and my energy. I've always manifested new and exciting things. So this place I find myself contains echoes of past growth and experiences. One change is that I feel like the valve is wide open! It's a river of change coursing through me this time, instead of a babbling brook, or the trickle of freshly melted snow downhill. It's the runoff from a monsoon in the desert floor, a flash flood of change, leaving everything in it's path touched and changed forever.

I know I am safe, I just wasn't expecting this. It's taking a bit of refocus so I can keep reminding myself of how I'm doing very well, and how all of this is what I've manifested from decades of personal growth work, focused with the laser lens of the things I've been mastering over the last few years. There's a lot of moving water, and this is my chance to learn how to surf my own energy. How many hours have I watched the surfers from the San Clemente beach and marveled at their balance and mastery of that environment? Now it is my turn. I'm paddling out into the swell, and catching a glimpse of the wave that will create my pipe, my tunnel, to ride through.