We Are All Cosmic Travelers Wearing Human Suits

It's so weird being a channeler. Not for the obvious reasons - like talking to Jesus and unicorn visitations at three in the morning (though that's plenty weird, thanks) - but because, when I'm in the zone, I know all this stuff I say on the internet to be true. I feel calm, at peace, loved, and all is right with the world. 

But after I'm done with the channeling and back to the human stuff of making breakfast and paying bills and driving through rush hour with every other lunatic on the road (yes, I'm one of the lunatics), my brain cranks up the volume and is all THAT COULDN'T POSSIBLY BE RIGHT, LOVE AND LIGHT MY ASS, WHAT ARE YOU THINKING, HERE HAVE A CHOCOLATE CROISSANT. 

Sometimes I can take a big enough step away from the chatter to remember that my brain doesn't have all the answers. It says a lot of things, it makes a lot of noise, but just because my brain says it doesn't mean it's true. 

Last week, I decided to release a meditation album on the spur of the moment. That's the fun part about this job - being blasted with inspiration while you're hanging upside down and all the blood is rushing to your head, and being able to just do it and see what happens. 

Because there's so much forking construction in my neighborhood (and it makes me want to throttle the world), I had to record the meditations after six at night or before eight in the morning. A few days ago, I woke up at six, turned on the microphone while wearing my flannel moose pajamas, and started receiving a whole bunch of meditations about tuning into your intuition, following your soul's path, balancing your energy (I put one of the meditations up for free - if your energy feels wonky, check it out!) and it all felt awesome. 

But after I stopped and made myself an egg sandwich, all the doubts and anxieties and oh GODs started flooding back in. 

My challenge at the moment is hooking back in with that calm, loving, here's-the-handy-guidance space more often. Hour by hour, minute by minute. Keep honoring the feels and the crazy humanness while reminding myself of the truth and course-correcting my brain. 

Living this way is like eating salad or being in AA. You can't do it once and then be done for the rest of your life. You have to work the program. Over and over and over and over again. Every day.

It does seem to get easier. Eventually new pathways are created and it becomes easier to dwell in the land of ahhhh... rather than the land of FUCKING HELL EVERYTHING ABOUT THIS PLANET IS THE WORST I WOULD RATHER DIE.

Smug statue says "I'm cool, no problems here."

Being a cosmic being of infinite light in a human body - as we all are - is a daily flow. I wanted to say challenge, but I think it's just a practice. Like, practicing the piano can be a challenge but whatever you just show up again tomorrow and the next day and eventually you get so much better you can't even remember the time you got stymied by the dumb flamingo song. (Pianos just don't sound like flamingos and there's nothing anyone can do about that.) (Yes, I had to learn a dumb flamingo song in elementary school and apparently it angers me to this day.) 

Honoring the feels without getting bowled over by them, feeling the pain without drowning in it, observing the worries without getting stuck in them, noticing the negative thoughts and remembering the truth and putting the train of thought on a new track. Being human. Being cosmic. Same thing really. 

This feels like a good place to leave my favorite quote of pretty much all time: 

You are a ghost driving a meat coated skeleton made from stardust riding a rock floating through space. Fear nothing. 

My Job Description Involves Angels. So...That's Weird.

In the pilot of Newsroom, one of the main characters says, "America leads the world in only three categories: Number of incarcerated citizens per capita, number of adults who believe angels are real, and defense spending."

When realize you've entered a category mocked by Aaron Sorkin, you have some thinking to do. 

Raised in the church of hippie, with a brief dip into Christianity every December, I certainly had a passing acquaintance with the idea of angels. But I never gave them much head space. Because I was an adult with an education, a reasonable grip on reality, and a slight allergy to feeling stupid.

In a Portland bookstore years ago, I passed a magazine rack boasting CHANNELINGS FROM METATRON and made a rude comment. Possibly accompanied by a snort. 

Five years later, everything I dismissed in that bookstore has become part of my daily lexicon. Because I am a channeler. I can ignore it or embrace it, but either way, it's part of me. And, while I'm still not 100% sold on the name Metatron, damn can the dude balance a chakra. 

Aligning my sarcasm with my healing, my channeling with my East Coast education, my love of words with the challenge of capturing these experiences in language, and my tendency to curse while tapping into the divine has become something of a quest.

I've been told by many fellow healers and intuitives that it's time to stop waffling and step the fuck up. "Allow yourself to be seen." "Own your magic." "Learn to embrace your gifts."

I still don't know exactly what that means and if one more person tells me to do it without telling me how I'm going to shriek so loudly they cringe in Timbuktu. 

Here's what I can say, even though stating it so bluntly still makes me nervous: When you tap into the energy of the angels? Holy whoa. You feel your body shift on a cellular level and this sense of peace descend from seemingly nowhere. Sometimes it's a gentle vacuuming of the icky feels hanging out in your stomach. Sometimes it's like getting hit with a horse tranquilizer.

But, and here's the catch: it can't be understood intellectually. Even the word is just to give our human brains something to wrap around. This energy has to be experienced viscerally - and we're a world that lives in its head. 

Straight Up, My Actual Job Involves Angels

Today, I woke up at 3 am - not on purpose, I assure you - and by 4:30 a.m., I was trekking back and forth to my altar to fetch whatever crystal called to me for the person I was working on. I'd plop down on my big red chair, feel into their energy, and the name of an archangel would pop in. So I'd grip my crystal and call on that angel, asking them to send healing energy to land in the person's body, emotions, mind, or energy - wherever they most need it. 

Whenever I'd double check the timezones to make sure the healing landed when the client had requested it, I'd get an angelic eye roll, like, "Woman. I am an unfathomable being of light and power. I've got this." 

Fair enough, angelic being of unfathomable light and power. 

This is maybe a fourth of my collection. I might have a problem. 

Yes, I'm every new age cliche that has a meme on Facebook.

Here's the thing: This using-the-energy-of-angels-to-heal-people-across-the-world thing totally works. Which shocked the hell out of me when I got the text from my first guinea pig.

I can sit in California with a crystal I bought for three bucks and, in ninety seconds, send energy in someone's direction to land hours or days later - and they feel it. A lot of it. Right at the specified time. 

These suckers have cured migraines, helped people sleep the sleep of the well-drugged, helped them feel lighter and happier and more prepared to move through life.

Really. It blows my damn mind. 

I didn't know I could shift energy like this until about a year ago. I didn't know I could call on angels to do healings - whenever and wherever I wanted - until a few months ago. And the discovery was as simple as, "Hold on. Other people can do this. So why can't I?" 

So I did. 

We can all access this kind of power. Especially if we choose not to worry about getting mocked by Aaron Sorkin.

We're a culture that's learned to live detached from our bodies, our hearts, our intuition. Since these things can only be experienced in the body, in that lump of muscle beating in your ribcage and the tender energy that surrounds it, angels can't exist until we learn to tap into these places.

But if I can tune in to this unfathomable light and power, so can you. 

I think that's what I'm here to do - remind people of this. To remind them of how loved, and precious, and needed they are.

And if I can lay aside my well-crafted sarcasm to commune with angels and only feel a little bit silly, so can you.

So until more specific information around "owning my magic" comes through, admitting to the internet that angels are part of my job description seems like a reasonable next step. 

What Happens When You Meditate For An Entire Day

Spoiler: Nothing. 

Nothing happens when you meditate all day. Sweet, blissful nothing.

You go in with an agenda, because of course. You are a human being and if you're going to spend all day staring at the wall, you'd damn well better get something out of it, thank you very much.

You walk out having no idea what your agenda was or even that you had one, because you’re all pumped up on peace endorphins.

We all want the answers. We want to know that our actions will yield fruit, that our life is headed in the right direction, that we are safe. 

But sometimes we have to realize that it's not time for answers. That there is absolutely no way we can take a wrong turn in life. Because there is no right path or wrong path. 

My brain is already kicking in with OF COURSE THERE'S A WRONG PATH AND YOU HAVE OBVIOUSLY TAKEN IT, EVEN IF YOU'RE NOT IN THE GUTTER WITH A NEEDLE, WHICH IS ANOTHER WRONG PATH. OF WHICH THERE ARE MANY. 

Why meditation can be really nice. Especially a day of it. Because, after two sittings where my brain spun mercilessly, it finally wore itself out like a three-year-old after a birthday party with Spider Man, a piñata and multiple rainbow-frosted layer cakes. 

And then there was silence. My need for answers quieted. My desire to be safe quieted because I am safe. In this moment, I am always safe. My path is just my path. It just is. 

Quiet.  

My inner guidance has been prompting me to meditate two hours a day. Obviously, my brain thinks that’s bullshit, so I haven’t been doing it.

But absent other answers regarding my life, I’ve vowed to follow my internal guidance and trust it, even when it doesn’t seem logical - which, frankly, is most of the time. So when a friend invited me to a day-long meditation retreat on Sunday, it sounded like exactly what I needed. So off I went. 

It was held at a beautiful home in the Oakland hills - complete with pool, mountain view, and strategically placed Buddhas - and the day was run by a man with luxurious locks of the Inigo Montoya variety. He also had a duck wing to wave the smoke of burning palo santo on us.

I admit, I did wonder where he got that duck wing. Is there a one-winged duck moping around in a field somewhere?

I also wondered how everyone else kept their lower extremities from falling asleep. I had to do the awkward attempt-to-slowly-and-subtley-stretch-my-legs-out-in-front-of-me as my feet get caught on my skirt and I almost tip over, while everyone else is a marble sphinx of enlightenment. 

What I learned from a day of meditating with my body: Healing can be easy. (Except for the feet thing.) 

It doesn't have to be this elaborate ritual of energy clearing and slightly-frantic prayer and lists of things I have to do daily in order to stay sane. My god, no wonder I burned out. My perfectionism even got my healing in its sticky grasp. 

Sometimes, allowing ourselves to just quiet down and rest is the very best healing there is - the very best thing we can do for our brain and our body and our life. 

What I learned from driving to Oakland to meditate with my body: Men I have dated are everywhere.

This is the problem with being single for a long time. At some point, people you once dated become impossible to escape. Driving to the house on Sunday, I drove past the street of one of my poor dating decisions a few months ago. (The one who yelled at me a lot, if you happen to remember that.) Then, on the table at the retreat center, I saw the face of a guy I dated years ago staring up at me from his business card. He's now, apparently, a Tantric sex coach. It was too good not to share, but we were on a silent break. It almost killed me not to wave the card in my friend's face so we could die over it together. 

Anyway. 

Your mission, should you choose to accept it: Is not to meditate two hours every day because that's still crazy talk. But do pay attention to those little nudges - the ones that are prompting you to a new habit or a new creation. They're gentle, they're quiet, but they're so very worth listening to. Listening to your intuitive nudges is the easiest way forward in this time of uncertainty and change. 

Bumblebees On Yoga Mats and Other Signs from the Universe

A few days ago, I was in downward dog when I noticed a bumblebee ambling slowly down my purple yoga mat. Not buzzing around in flight, just...walking. Straight toward my left foot.

I admit, bees make me skittish. A perfectly reasonable response, given that they are quite capable of piercing flesh and any part of me they touch swells to four times its normal size.

Once, on a camping trip as a kid, a bee landed on my ham sandwich. In my usual oblivion, I bit into the sandwich anyway and the bee, trapped inside my mouth, bit me. I yowled and spent the rest of the afternoon being deeply unhappy.

After a few more such events, I came to the wise conclusion that if a bee decides it wants to share my airspace, I will cede the battlefield and scurry for the nearest indoor haven.

But with the bee on my yoga mat in my living room, there wasn’t really anywhere to go, except into the bathroom. So, as we gingerly shared floor space, I remembered that this wasn't the first bumblebee recently.

After managing to avoid bees for at least twenty-five years, I'd had three visits in less than a week.

A few days earlier, I was eating on my deck when a bee decided it was deeply interested in my lunch. Rather than argue over who gets the potstickers, I picked up my bowl and went inside with a  "good riddance, sucker." The next day, another bee decided it was curious about my lunch. But this time, I was inside a restaurant. To get to me, the bee had to abandon the safety of the great outdoors, fly through the door, navigate the counter and past any number of tables and other people’s presumably tempting food, before getting to me and my shrimp curry. I shrank away like the coward I am and eventually it buzzed off. 

It took a bumblebee strolling down my yoga mat to finally get my attention, walking in a straight line all the way down the long side of my mat - quite a trek for an insect - before wandering off.

I’ve been asking the universe for signs lately. I do that, especially when I’m feeling in the dark. Nature is pretty smart - it knows how to make mountains and construct the human hand, after all - so I figure it has a better grasp on my life than I do.

Three bumblebees in three days? All right, universe. I’m listening.

So I did a little research on the symbolism of our furry flying friend.

It’s said that if a bumblebee appears in front of you, it will lead you to your destiny.

Yeah, wish I knew that before I saw all those bees. DID THEY FLY TO MY DESTINY WITHOUT ME? Curses.

Well-trained little service bugs, bumblebees tirelessly pollinate blooms and remind us of the interconnectedness of all living things. Also, stop and smell the damn flowers.  

As signs go, it felt fuzzy. But the reminder to stop and appreciate the sweetness of life is very needed right now. I've been lapsing into fear lately, and it does my life zero good. But I do know that when I stop to notice what's happening here and now, the fear eases. Because there is no fear in the present moment. Fear only holds sway over the past or the future. So if I just look up at the blue sky or the bougainvillea crawling up a porch, everything settles.

It wasn’t until a few days post-bumblebee that I remembered a vision I had in Hawaii a few months ago. Hawaii has a big energy and I was getting downloads every few days. In one of them, I saw my (as-yet-nonexistent) daughter, age nine or ten, dressed as a bumblebee. She was racing around and yelling - goggles strapped on and wings flapping in her wake. 

Maybe that’s what the bumblebees wanted to tell me.  

That everything is on its way and my only job is to trust that it’s all happening perfectly.

May you also feel the sweetness and the trust this week - preferably minus bumblebee attacks. 

The In-Between Is Where Life Happens

My horoscope said that the entire month of July was going to be awesome.

So far, I’ve been dumped by someone I really liked, run out of money for the first time in many years of self-employment, and turned 38. 

Dear Horoscope: I CALL SHENANIGANS.

But I actually do feel better than I have in a long time. Peaceful, calm, and happy. Despite that whole turning-38-with-no-job-no-money-no-husband thing.

Because I’m doing my thing.

We all have our thing. That thing we do to keep ourselves sane, keep ourselves happy. The thing that, if we stop doing it, our life slowly starts to slide off the rails and we’re not sure how or why it happened.

Some of us need to run, some of us need to write, some of us need to garden, some of us need to draw, some of us need to meditate.

My thing - apparently - is diving deep into the center of my soul and my energy, digging around, and seeing what needs to be released and moved around and otherwise shifted.

It settles my head, the head that wants to spend its time making me feel less than, feel unworthy, feel like it’s best that I don’t have what I want because I just don’t deserve it.

It settles my heart, the heart that sometimes hollows itself out under the weight of what it sees and wants but feels it doesn't have yet. 

It helps me feel at peace with whatever is happening in my life, helps me understand that my worth does not rest in external circumstances, and it helps me feel open enough to smile at people I pass on the street. 

The power we wield over our own lives isn’t so much around getting what we want, but in how we exist in the in-between spaces - when we don’t have what we want, when we don’t know what’s coming next, when we just don’t know.

The in-between is where life happens anyway.

It’s tempting to feel like my life will start when I have the job, when I know where my money is coming from, when I meet my future husband.

But that’s just not true. My life is happening right now. It’s happening in this coffeeshop, on this bright California July morning, as I write for you. It’s happening when I go out for a run to the beach or remember that the top on my car comes down and it’s a beautiful day, so I should really just drive out to Sonoma in the open air to eat hush puppies.

The in-between is where we can sink down into our thing - dig in our garden, write our next story, run an extra two miles today. Just because we know that our day goes better when we do.

And all we have is the right now. Literally, that’s it. It’s a relatively simple concept, but it’s one of the hardest things for humans to grasp. We’re constantly straddling what happened last year and what we hope will happen next week. But our only real power, our only real joy, is in what's happening in this moment.

So look up. What’s happening right now?

Is your tea kettle whistling? Is your favorite person or animal in the room with you? Just be with that for a moment. 

I’m sitting in my favorite coffeeshop on the road to Stinson Beach. The sky is blue, the sun is bright, Can’t You See by The Marshall Tucker Band is pouring out of my headphones, and words are finally pouring out of my fingers after staring at my laptop for half an hour worrying that whatever I wrote wouldn’t be good enough.

But it is good enough - as long as one of you reads this and gets something out of it, then it’s perfect.

That’s my life. Right now. And it’s a good one.

May you enjoy each moment of your life for precisely what it is, as it’s happening. Because this is where joy lives. Right now. Right where you are.