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Morning musings.
Sitting here looking at a beautiful pillow of Frida Kahlo, bathed in sunlight, in front of my Christmas tree, while looking out the window at the cabin. This is my favorite room. This is my favorite place to sit. This is my favorite kind of a morning.
There is a light-filled spaciousness and, an emptiness. An ease, and an ennui.
The day after….
Christmas.
Vacation.
Holiday.
Anything.
I sit her in a kind of ease, and ennui.
The thing is over. It went well. And now there is space.
But what does ‘went well’ mean? And does there always have to be the intensity rising beforehand?
This year I made the questionable choice to take a vacation before the vacation. To take an international trip, in the middle of December. In the 'we don’t know what part it is' part of a pandemic.
I also made the decision just pre-holiday time to purchase a ‘maniscripting’ journal. That’s right. Put manifest, and script together, and you’ve got #maniscripting.
A little about that…
I believe that the totality of existence is made up of energy, and that our mind has the power to affect that energy. Emerging science in the arenas of neuroplasticity, polyvagal theory, and quantum physics, just to name a few, are all catching up to these concepts. For my life, it is simply relevant that I believe it to be true, and that my life experiences continue to validate this belief. Think Henry Ford. “If you think you can or you can’t, you’re right.” Or the Buddha “What you think, you become. What you feel, you attract. What you imagine, you create.”
I believe these things. This belief causes me to be intentional with my thoughts and feelings. But I get lazy and fall asleep, or go unconscious on the job. Not really lazy so much, as powerful unconscious drivers take over and body snatch me. It is as if heavy machinery that I have not yet learned how to disable, suddenly takes over my brain, body and experience. See polyvagal theory for more on this. Or Freud. Or anything in between. But at any rate, a couple of things are true...
It is a fact that spending time imagining how I would like things to be, believing in the possibility of those things coming into being, and feeling the feelings of what that would feel like, is not a bad way to spend my time, even if I am wrong about some of it. The practice of doing it, of spending time there, even if I can not yet create a clear picture for myself, feels good and is worthy. The fact that I am spending some time feeling good, when I allow myself to go there, changes the biochemistry of my body. It is a feedback loop, where the mind affects the body, and the body affects the mind, and so on and so forth.
Outside of not doing outrageously bad things to other people, it is the thing I believe in the most. And I am trying to spend more intentional time there.
I believe what you think affects how you feel. I believe how you feel affects everything. And I believe you can change how you think, and therefore, you can change everything. And I hold myself accountable to this process.
Even if I am wrong, it ain’t a bad way to spend your time. It keeps you out of trouble, and might even make you feel good. Which again, the science is catching up to say, is not an insignificant thing.
A bit before the holidays this year, I was running to the end of one of my ‘create your life the way you want it journals,’ and I found this ‘maniscripting’ journal, and thought I’d give it a shot. I am always in a journal, made by someone else or otherwise. And I wanted to up my ‘intentional living’ game. I was trying to take this whole situation to the next level. So I bought the journal.
Think a little bit of ‘this time will be different,’ with a healthy dose of ‘just keep on keeping on.’
I told myself to take it slow and be authentic, as in don’t force it or expect miracles. But of course, always expect miracles.
Well, I really am going kind of slow, and the little fucker has tripped me up.
I’m trying to get really, really, REALLY clear about what I want. And you would be surprised how hard that is.
Try this:
If you could be or do or have anything you want, and you knew you couldn’t fail, and that no one would be mad at you; you absolutely couldn’t fail, and you wouldn’t piss anybody off, not even a little bit, what would you, be, do or have? (Pause. Try.)
Seriously. Think about it. I hate these exercises when I’m not in the mood. But humor me. Just try.
(Try it.)
It is harder than you think. And it all starts there. What do you really want? If you can even think of an answer, fan-fucking tastic! Go spend all your time imagining it in great detail. Spend all your time doing that, all the time that doesn’t blow up the rest of your life pre-maturely, or hurt anybody else. You win. And I hate you. Just kidding. But I do a little bit.
Now, If you started to get a little bit of a picture in your mind at all, or a total picture, be honest, how long did it take the self-sabotaging creepers to show up? The limitations, the buts, the people you would disappoint, the talent and resources you don’t have, the selfishness of your vision? The selfishness of others that get in the way of your selfless vision? Or again, the simple lack of ability to let your mind wander to possibility?
It’s hard, isn’t it?
I am trying to be really, really, REALLY, clear. And it is really, really, REALLY hard.
So I’m telling myself to go slow. To not force anything. To not force it.
And I’m at the point where I’ve done a couple rounds of imagining, and I’ve tried to be really honest about some of my some of my self-sabotaging blocks. This is hard, because the more you start to notice them, the more they show up. Like those sporty new Subaru’s everyone is buying these days. I can never remember the name, but they’re EVERYWHERE.
Now I have been working on this sort of thing one way or another for most of my life. I just didn’t know what I was doing in the early days. I didn’t know I was doing anything at all really. (I know, it seems I should be further along then right?) So when I ask myself questions like what do you want? (Hard.) What do you really want? (Harder.) What do you really, really want? (Hardest.) And then, I ask myself:
“How am I getting in my own way?” It is like both so easy and yet so impossible to answer.
It is like I think I know these devils so well, and so then I think like, I’ve got this right? I know my demons, my blocks, my lies I tell myself to keep myself small, my portals to the past, my landmines, my hurdles, my shames, my ugly shadows lurking to; my everything just waiting to consume me.
These are my buds, my pals, my dinner table guests. (jk, I eat all my ‘meals’ on the couch.)
Anyway, I think I know, and then like, I don’t know at all. Right? So then is it my fault I can’t manifest the shit out of anything?
Am I still stuck, not able to be real with my own ‘get-in-the-way-ness?’
Don’t be discouraged. I don’t know if I look like a mess to you, or like someone who has it together. In the end that is none of my business, and the only reason it is relevant at all, is to your own journey. The point is, this is a ‘fake-it-‘til-you-make-it’ game, and the process of faking it, is actually the work that will keep moving you along.
It sounds ridiculous, and like it couldn’t possibly be true. But sometimes the messier you feel, the more you just might be showing up and doing the work.
What are we like 5 tangents deep now?
Let’s bring it back.
I took a vacation in the middle of December. Not ‘instead of’ the holiday. But ‘before the holiday.’ A holiday before the holiday. ‘Who does that?!’ Well I did this year. At the same time, I brought my ‘manifesty’ journal along. I didn’t press it. But I wrote in it a bit before, and a bit on the way home. Gotta love airplane time, arrested development. A gift, time that no one expects you to use. It is like falling off the map, for a few peaceful hours.
Anyway, guess what one of my manifesty dreams is? I want to travel and have fun and be joyful, and move with ease and grace in and out of the responsibilities of my life. As one of my teachers once said, I want to be able to move with greater ease along the surface of the planet.
And I want to do it, without having a PANIC ATTACK. Not before, during or after. No panic attack please. No intense messiness. No rushing around, convinced I forgot things, convinced I have the wrong things, fearful of death; fearful of being stranded and bringing destruction upon my house, fearful of financial despair, fearful of sick, fearful of just being wrong, shame, being the wrong kind of traveler, the wrong kind of companion, and when I get home, fearful that I am just a selfish ass-hole who just fucked up her life, and the life of her family. Fearful that I ran from responsibilities, created more financial burden, and that I don't know how in the hell I ever kept my balls in the air in the first place. And now that I managed to keep them suspended and to step away for a minute, not sure that I will ever be able to pick them back up again at all.
In fact now all she wants to do is crawl into a hole and disappear.
But she knows she won’t do that, because she knows that if she lets any of the balls drop, she will just have to juggle about 50 more balls to pick up the pieces of that one dropped ball, so she can’t. Rest. She can’t take a break. And hahahahahahaha. Bwahahahahahahah. The end.
Look at her. Look at how stuck she is. Look at her doing the same dance she always does. And she thinks she can manifest? Who does she think she is?! Obviously she is in her own way in ways she doesn’t even understand. And worse, in a way she understands all too well.
But wait, there’s more, this was the holiday BEFORE the holiday, because she’s a fucking selfish moron. Dude.
So something like that. I wrote on the airplane home, all about how ‘ready I am to manifest my dreams.’ About how 'honest’ I am about 'how I get in my own way.’ And about how totally ‘ready’ I am to unlock the next level of my dreams. And all about how I. Can. Handle. It.
And I can’t even take a fucking well-planned, well-deserved vacation without coming home and not being able to breath for 3 days. Ha. Oh yeah, I’m sooooooo ready folks.
But. And. Here's the thing:
I sit her in the daylight, which has shifted now, bathed in the spacious ease and the ennui of the after. And I can tell you,
I Am. Actually. Ready