Grinch of Las Vegas

My heart grew three sizes this weekend.

While I’m definitely the Grinch of Las Vegas - my 70-something mom and aunt both out-gambled and out-drank me - it was more than just fleeing the Strip for the rocks and the lakes.

Vegas has nice rocks. 

It was seeing my brother happy. It was exploring caves and riding a train with a stuffed fox-toting seven-year-old, and buying his love with vanilla ice cream. Sitting by a lake in the twilight while bugs hummed, kids ran, and a new baby kicked.  

Some people go to Las Vegas to gamble. I go to sheep-gaze.

It was wholly unexpected and so perfect. My heart definitely grew bigger, and that gives me more faith in myself and my capacity for love.

Before I left, I was telling a friend that I 100% expected this trip to be epic, I just wasn't sure what that epic would entail. Las Vegas epic makes most people think of slot machines and unexpected marriage certificates under an empty tequila bottle on the bedside table - not freshly-hatched babies or a field full of big horn sheep. But that's the kind of epic I prefer these days - and it doesn’t even require a hangover.

But going to Las Vegas with your family will definitely test your empath boundaries. I started to see where some of this grief I've been carrying around for years isn't my own, and realizing anew how hard I have to work to stay clear of what's not mine. When you feel it, you assume it belongs to you, especially if you've been sponging up other people's pain all your life.

It's the challenge of the empath - to remember to ask to whom this emotion belongs. Even when your brain can logically assimilate it to your own experience, pointing to a specific event and saying, "This. Yes, this is why I feel this way. It makes perfect sense." When, in fact, it isn't yours at all - and there's no sense to be made. 

God love you, smart empaths. It's not an easy road. Someone told me recently, "You're very smart. But more often than not, your brain completely fucks you." Well...yes. 

Luckily, having a stuffed therapy otter in your purse helps.

As we circled Las Vegas, getting ready to land, I got the hit that my father had just reincarnated in India, because he doesn’t want to miss this time, this rebirth of ancient wisdom that's beginning to sweep us clear of multiple dark ages. He hit the re-set button and landed back on planet Earth, ready to go. 

Honestly, who knows. As with most intuitive hits, they’re impossible to fact check. You just have to trust - and realize that, in the eternal sense, it ultimately doesn't matter. But it was fun to think about, in those last moments before we landed.  

We're all connected to our people - those we know and those we don't yet remember - on this plane and beyond it. It's like my relationship with my brother - fathoms deep and about half an inch wide. Like, we had no idea he had a girlfriend. He just...showed up with her. There was a lot of frantic rearranging of facial expressions, let me tell you. 

In the small talk sense, I know more about most of my first dates than I know about my only sibling. But it ultimately doesn't matter - I can feel his heart and so it makes my heart happy when his is happy. 

Maybe that's the reward for being an empath. I got to be so happy this weekend in Vegas because he was so happy. When there's that much love gathering, each heart reflects it like a hall of mirrors reflecting a lightbulb. And I got to feel it all - and feel my heart expand with it. 

Going to Mount Shasta So Jesus Can Roll His Eyes at Me

Mount Shasta has been tugging at me for months now. Sometimes my soul gets really insistent, and I've found that it's best for everyone if I give it what it wants. So last weekend I drove five hours toward what I've been told is one of the biggest energetic centers on the planet. 

Most of me is on board when I hear things like that, but there's still a small portion of my East Coast lineage and education that says, "Yeah, okay, whatever." 

My still-clinging cynicism was firmly chastened when I hit the town of Shasta and got so dazed that I almost hit a pedestrian. 

Whoops! Sorry! You're right, that was a crosswalk! I'm very glad you just got mad instead of covered in tire treads!

Between the sun in my eyes, an unfamiliar town, and the kind of energy that I only experience after I've been channeling for long periods of time - after which I have to walk and eat mashed potatoes and not be around other humans - I most definitely should not have been driving a heavy metal box. 

Once after a healing, one of my clients said "This is my favorite drug." That's the kind of energy infusing Mount Shasta. So deeply healing that you feel like you just popped a horse tranquilizer. It's the kind of energy that lifts you out of your body and into another dimension. A lighter, far more awesome dimension, unless the you in this dimension stops obeying the laws of traffic and common decency. 

Wandering around Lake Siskiyou, I gazed at the light playing on the water and was so entranced, I felt like a three-year-old who got into the pot brownies. I kept listing sideways, tipping into walls, people, and almost over a cliff. 

The next day, I met up with a friend and we went to the mineral baths and dunked ourselves in the freshly melted river. I felt myself leaving heartbreak in creek beds and felt old patterns and beliefs melting into the mountain. It was like a car wash for the soul. 

I also had the most literal Come-To-Jesus moment of my entire life. 

Now, Jesus has been showing up a lot lately. He made an appearance when I was walking down the street a few months ago. I was asking for information about the next round of Activate, the six month group healing thing I run, and he stepped right in and waved and said he was one of our guides. My reaction was basically "what the fuuuuuuck?" As you'd expect when Jesus walks up to you and says, DUDE, WE'VE GOT SHIT TO DO. 

I always thought Jesus was pretty cool. Whatever thought I gave him was split between being deeply annoyed on his behalf at the way his work got twisted up by power-hungry patriarchal agendas and being super into Christmas. Not just because of the presents and cookies - though I never turn down presents and cookies - but because it always feels infused with love. Christmas actually does feel holy to me, and also I like Christmas carols. Like, a dumb amount. Sorry, anyone who has ever spent time with me in December. 

That was about it until he basically accosted me on the street, because that was apparently the only way to get my attention. (He notes that I'm being melodramatic again - there was a gentle wave and zero accosting - and I say, Who's telling this story, you or me?) 

Like any good light worker and way-shower, I've been dutifully ascending. Dealing with all my old shit - and a lot of other people's old shit, damn it - so that I could be good and ready to do my work here. Because I'm here for some pretty specific reasons. You are too, if you're reading this. 

Apparently, if you do your energetic housecleaning well enough, you start having visions of Jesus. 

Yes, I do hear myself when I say these things. But I figure if Jesus takes the time out of his busy schedule to show himself to you as you're walking down the street, more or less minding your own business, you should probably pay attention. 

So I started paying attention.

(Though, apparently, not enough attention. One of the biggest messages from my Shasta trip was Jesus telling me that I haven't been listening. Damn it. SORRY, JESUS. I thought I was listening, but there have been some things I admit I don't want to do. Mainly in the area of eating vegetables.) 

When I do let him in, he does a stellar job at lifting me out of my drama and getting me back on track. A few weeks ago, I was driving and feeling super cranky. Until Sly and the Family Stone come onto the radio, and I get a vision of Jesus lip-synching "Everyday People" with the Marys (Mother and Magdalene) as backup dancers and I start laughing so hard, I almost had to pull over on the freeway. My entire energy and mood shifted to absolute joy in a hot second. 

But apparently, he's got a lot to tell me about my work and I haven't been paying attention. I'm like that annoying co-worker who ignores your emails until you have to get up, walk over to their cubicle, and smack them upside the head. Maybe that's why my soul was so adamantly shoving me toward Mount Shasta. So Jesus could smack me (gently, of course) upside the head. 

After a guided meditation at the base of the mountain, the friend I was with said, "It's like you're homies. Like you and Jesus have lived lives together."  Insert wide-eyed emoji right here. The energy she got was that we were friends and coworkers. Family. "Whatever he's been telling you to do, do it." 

According to the messages she received for me at the base of the mountain, I've only just begun to scratch the surface of my powers and gifts - and now it's time to get serious.

Unfortunately "get serious" seems to mean "stop it with all the fried chicken and TV." Give your body what it really wants. My body wants running lots of miles and green juice. My brain wants naps and fried chicken. But I am serious about this, so vegetables and miles it is. 

Besides the "be healthy" thing, I do tend to get confused because the messages I receive are along the lines of "Have fun! Have sex! Have more adventures and write about them!" Sex is my spiritual assignment? And road trips? Really? Well, that sounds too good to be true. 

And then I remember the broccoli. And Jesus rolls his eyes at me because he didn't specify broccoli and I know it, and if I'm going to go around telling people that Jesus is making me eat broccoli he says he can't help me. (Yes, I think I'm hilarious.) 

But basking in the powerful and pulsing healing energy of that mountain, where I'm so much lighter than I'm used to being, I remember that writing is the basis of my work - and writing my joy has always been the way I've moved into that lighter space, with or without Jesus and big mountains. 

He says, "Write. Write your adventures. Write whatever sounds fun. Because writing is where your love flows and you are finally loving yourself fully. So writing about yourself in the service of others is one of the best things you can do right now." 

Then I say, "Thanks, J-Dog" and he rolls his eyes again and told me I am the whitest individual ever and what is up with all the pink shoes. I say the pink shoes make me happy and he says, "Well, that's okay then." 

The veil really is getting thinner and I am so very thankful for that. It's reminding me that the density of this reality isn't all there is, and if I keep moving - if we keep moving - toward the light, we'll all get lighter.

Even if Jesus has to spend a lot of his time rolling his eyes at me. (Heh.) 

Living in the Crucible

I am so, so, so ready for a change. 

When you feel stuck, it’s often because something energetic, emotional, physical or spiritual needs to be unraveled before you can move forward.

But unhooking the threads of karma that bind you is no small task. It’s like picking apart a tapestry and re-weaving shadowy demons into white dragons. You can’t leave any loose threads or they’ll form a pathway to let the shadows to walk back in.

We’re entering a six month cycle of great change and, in order to be ready for this change, I’ve been deep in releasing mode. I’ve been burning things, tossing things into the ocean, doing rituals, and throwing a few hissy fits in the general direction of god. (Or in the general direction of my bed pillows, but if god is everywhere, it’s basically the same thing.)

People have been telling me for years that I have self-worth issues. I mean, yeah. I get it. But unearthing your self-worth from the landslide that buried it often means digging without a map - it can be hard to know where to aim your shovel. You have to rewrite the stories you’ve absorbed from others, untangle the knots of normalized abuse, peer at the karmic baggage you may have grabbed - and empaths are so much more likely to carry other people’s bags as well as their own. For the first three decades of my life, I was basically a martyred hotel porter.

When I look at the Facebook highlights of the past ten years, it looks like a litany of loss. Death, miscarriage, getting fired, trying-and-failing-trying-and-failing, getting fired again, breakup after breakup after breakup. My ego has been thoroughly thrashed.

When I scan through the loss litany, relatively unbroken by brag-about-able triumph, my life starts feeling like a crucible whose only purpose is to burn me down to the bone. 

Where I go when the crucible feels extra searing. 

But the up side to all that fire is that I've gotten really good at transmuting dark into light. 

Diving into the depths of the bubbling muck of your soul and swimming around even when you’re afraid you might suffocate and hitting the same problem over and over again from every angle will show you what you're made of - and I'm made of pure tensile strength, baby. I am whittled down. Sometimes I feel like I'm two taps away from breaking, but I haven't broken yet. I've bent, I've danced, I've sobbed like a broken doll, I've set fire to the branches, and I'm still standing. 

I’ve gone from unconscious empath to understanding that if I’m angry for no reason, it’s not because I’m slowly and methodically going insane, it’s because I just sucked up that anger from someone else. I’ve gone from hating myself for being too sensitive to recognizing that sensitivity is my primary superpower. From words that were funny but flagellating to being able to write my story from a place of deeper, if less amusing, compassion. From trapped in the hell of my own head to relatively accessible joy.  

If it took that litany of loss to get me to a place where I’m mostly free of the hell my brain spent most of every day re-building, it was worth it.

But I'm not here to swim in my own stuff forever. I'm not here to heal everybody else. I’m here to feel joy. I’m here to share what hits me in the solar plexus and expands from my rib cage. I’m here to be a gift to the planet, just as you are.

So I’m re-weaving the patterns of my life, unraveling the threads of the images that don’t serve me and tying off all the loose ends. It’s not easy to keep track of all those dangling knots. And just when you think you've tidied everything up, you find a whole new room full of yarn. 

But we can’t be that gift until we see ourselves as that gift. So that’s where my effort is going now. Into the day-to-day process of keeping my energy and gratitude and joy high. Not to heal myself or anyone else, but to know that ascension from the hell of your own head is possible. Because it is. And it’s required.

And sometimes that means spending the evening watching TV and eating ice cream straight from the carton so you can get up in the morning, light the match, and ask what the crucible has for you today. 

Best Defense in a Cheeto Battle

Tomorrow, the day a human-size Cheeto takes to the Oval Office, I will be doing none of the things a concerned/enraged/pick-your-modifier citizen should be doing.

I will not be writing a letter to my senator. I will not be marching for anything. I will not be gnashing my teeth over the state of the world.

Instead, I will drive over the Golden Gate Bridge and down the coast to Half Moon Bay, where I will get a haircut, a massage, and gaze at the ocean. The way we do in California. I will have dinner with magical friends. I will take care of myself.

To do my work for this country and for this planet, I have to take care of myself. I can’t show up in the world from a place of fear or anger or pain because if I do, that’s what I'll spread. 

Enough fear, anger and pain has already been spackled on until we’ve built ourselves a robust cement cage - and wonder why we feel trapped.

We’re not trapped. We have voices and intelligent curiosity and our own gifts to share, gifts that will shift the world in the direction we long to see.

But we have to take care of ourselves so that we can unleash those gifts, that light and that love, in the world. 

So rather than steep myself in outrage (not that I ever object to a little well-placed anger and I fully accept that it may crash my little Self Nurture Party tomorrow) I'll be nourishing myself, and hopefully losing some of these goddamn persistent knots in my shoulders. 

There are no shoulds here. Yes, you want to show up for the world in the way you most believe in. But there’s no one right way to do it. 

For those of you who are marchers and impassioned letter writers, I salute you. For those of you who build movements and change the world for the better with your whirling energy, I bow in your direction.

For those of you who are easily overwhelmed, who know that marching would drain your reserves and somehow never get to the “write letter to congressman” box on your to-do list, fist bump. I'm with you.

Here's something we can do instead: Participate in www.First100Ways.com. 100 small actions that can be done in 100 seconds over the first 100 days the President is in office. After saying for months that I wish someone with my values who understands political action would just tell me what to do already in a way that wouldn't fry my cortex, I was over-joyed when this landed in my inbox. 

(Meaning, I'm pretty sure I invented this. The same way I invented the iPod and iTunes. By grumbling about how I had to wait until morning for Tower Records to open up so I could buy a whole CD to get the one song I wanted. By saying, "I really should be able to magically get this one song right now." LO AND BEHOLD.) 

Know that whatever you do, it’s enough. Know that showing up for yourself and your family and your community is enough. The last thing we need to do right now is beat ourselves up for any perceived failing or lack. Because that’s the energy that helped get us into this tangle. If all you do is help yourself feel better, raise your own energy, you will raise the energy of the world. I promise. From that place, you can take action that will have massive impact, whatever it is.

I love you, fellow Americans, fellow humans on this planet. You are enough and you do enough.

And if you are marching, make sure you bring mittens and a snack.

New Journey Requires Old Pen (Or: Blogging Like It's 2006)

Writing about myself was how I learned myself. Before I understood my extreme sensitivity, before I knew that I was sucking up everybody else's emotion and making it my own, before I had any notion of my own operating system. In those darker years, I would take the mess of my life and feelings and start writing a blog post. By the time I was done, I had cracked open the cement box of whatever was weighing me down and let in some light. 

I adored blogging. Back in 2006, I started a blog called Moose in the Kitchen to help me write everyday. It was my thing for years. Talking about squirrels and feelings helped me sort through the tangles of my life. It helped me feel less isolated in whatever prison I had built in my head. Words were the only real power I wielded at that time. Some of my first channeling came through in that space, though I didn't know to call it that. 

In the years before all this intuitive work, my writing was funny and self-deprecating and, more often than was probably healthy, self-flagellating. But it was a sacred space. My sanctuary. Writing myself to answers felt like magic. It was magic. 

Social media came along and blogging was no longer the only way we could interface via screen. Blogging started becoming used in business and boundaries got confused. Self-sabotage kicked in, as self-sabotage does. I stepped away from writing to focus on my intuitive work and amusing self-deprecation cannon-balled into rampant earnestness. 

But life just doesn't work as well when I'm not playing with words. When you're a writer who doesn't write, the wheels start coming off the bus. It's not noticeable immediately, but after awhile you're hopping down the road in circles, like a dizzy three-legged dog. 

Blogging like it's 2006 means not taking myself so seriously, not taking the words so seriously. I wrote thousands of words every month and none of them had an agenda. Words are here to be played with. Because play is where the magic lives. Magic tends to run screaming when I decide I need my writing to be a certain way or do a certain thing for my life. 

Enough with that, self. 

I want to find the sweet spot between the wild polarities of the blogging 20-something who hated herself because she was locked in a brain that tried to put her in the context of the normal world and the intuitive 30-something who sees so much bright light that she gets a bit overbearing at times. I've been trying to think my way there, but thinking rarely works. Because our brains, wondrous machines though they are, are only capable of spitting back canned recordings of where we've been. They aren't capable of navigating unknown terrain.

Only in the space of imagination and play can that new terrain begin to unfold. So it's time to write myself into a new space instead of trying to think my way there.  

So I'm going to blog like it's 2006. For me. For whoever might want to read it. Not to establish myself as an authority in anything (I am quite literally an authority in nothing except my own journey, and I often need other people to tell me things about that journey). Not to further any quest or agenda I might have. Because agendas are exhaustingly unproductive and quests never lead where you were expecting anyway.  

Since trying to guide my life and my story toward where I think it should go has left me dazed and wondering where seven years went, I'm just going to tell my story. I'm just going to show up to the words the way I used to, the way I love to do, and let them tell me what I need to know.