Clarity in a cluttered world.

Good morning lovies. Here is my newest on the beautifully inspiring virtual world of Rebelle Society. 

“I have been and still am a seeker,

but have ceased to question stars and books;

I have begun to listen to the teachings my blood whispers to me.” ~ Hermann Hesse

Meet the unknown. The frightening part. The part that we think we’d rather not step into or consider because it makes our stomachs turn with one part butterflies, one part overwhelmed and two parts nausea.

When you actually must face the unknown, it often feels like hard manual labor, too dirty and sweaty and maybe even so unbearable that you’ve convinced yourself it’s actually easier to swiftly turn around and dive back into the comfort of the familiar because at least you know you can handle that kind of pain.

You already live it every day.

Remaining stagnant  just seems more reasonable than a major life shift, despite the daily weight of your most glorious idealisms attempting to eject life into your tired heart, calling out furiously and begging you to listen. In this chaotic modern world where so many distractions beckon at every turn, many of us have actually forgotten how to listen to ourselves. 

However, without expectation or explanation, sometimes, those what-ifs catch us off guard, and flood us with an ancient wisdom that often reveals itself on some idle weekday afternoon when we are immersed in our dreadful daily routines.

This wisdom is called clarity.

Shocking, dizzying clarity. When it arrives, the secure ceiling will lift, the floors will fall out from underneath your firmly planted feet, and the light will sweep in from somewhere that looks like sky.

Before you can digest it, touch it, or know what is happening, your vision will come in so sharp it will feel as though the entire world is suddenly crystalline, and your eyes can see above and beyond what has been, what is now, and what will be.

Your soul’s passion will pass through your body like a wild flame, igniting your spirit, and rendering you breathless with answers and seemingly unstoppable determination to finally do what you’re meant to do.

And then, just as fleeting as it appeared, the moment will pass, and the flame will evaporate into a lingering trail of smoke, swirling alongside the all-too familiar drizzle of  paralyzing thoughts that begin to quicken with such intensity that soon enough they’re pouring and blending together to morph into one giant and roaring storm of “I cant’s” and “No’s” and “I’m not capable” , “It’s too difficult” and 99 other ridiculous excuses you’ve become so conditioned to produce and drown in.

All at once you find yourself right back to where you started; feeling so drained and far removed from living the seemingly unreachable life you were actually meant to live.

The white light moment of clarity happens to us all, but it’s hard to make it last. Too many of us will dismiss it as another passing, meaningless daydream that slips away from sight before its significance is ever fully realized.

This is now me speaking to you. I am staring unflinchingly into your eyes, human to human, and I’m going to tell you to take slow, deep breaths, trust your moment of clarity, and then go romance the hell out of it because it is one of the most beautiful and true things you will ever come across in your lifetime.

"You will have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. What you discover will be wonderful. What you will discover will be yourself."
-Alan Alda

Imagine your clarity as your soulmate, lover and muse, screaming from the rooftops in order to get to you in any way possible to find yourself again.

It’s a miracle you are here, and with that, you are powerful and worth the extra work because the only thing keeping you from the life you want to live is you and the lies you keep telling yourself as to why you cannot achieve it.

Now, once it slips out of your grasp, clarity can be an elusive lover. So how do you get it back, and hold it close on a daily basis so you can be in tune with the important small choices you are faced with each day that lead to your vision and purpose?

1. Let go of your own imaginary boundaries you’ve carefully compiled block by block by block until the walls were suddenly too tall to climb, too rigid to push, and too heavy to lift. Break them, astounded by the strength you didn’t realize you possessed.

***

2. Dissolve the paranoia that stiffens the movement of your precious, aching joints until they can once again find the very beat it takes to continue dancing.

***

3. Release the linear parts of the mind that poison you with worries; worries that weigh down your head and spine and hips to the point of exhaustion from leading a dreadfully predictable life that feels as though it’s becoming a tortuously slow erosion of emptiness with each passing year. 

***

4. This one is brought to you by the lovely Anaïs Nin:  

“To change skins, and evolve into new cycles, I feel one has to learn to discard. If one changes internally, one should not continue to live with the same objects. They reflect one’s mind and the psyche of yesterday. I throw away what has no dynamic, living use.”

Discard all forms of clutter such as toxic people and meaningless attachments that regularly fog your path. Remember if you’ve been trying to fill that void with external “stuff,” now is the time to let it all go.

***

5. Refuse to be that person that, like so many others is still driving down the same road, years down the line, desperately seeking to go back in time to be given just one more chance to take the road that they know they should have taken. This is your chance; so take the road now.

***

6. Let go of the idea that the pain of change is greater than the pain of remaining the same, because honey, this is life and life is painful, so things are gonna hurt no matter what road you choose. Dive headfirst into the unknown and change something.

***

7. Practice yoga in your free time. Go for long meditative walks, then go home and fuel your body with vibrant, colorful, nourishing foods. Then sit and feel the energy of health rush through your veins.

Staying healthy is not as difficult as you think, and once your body realizes how wonderful these new ways of loving yourself feel, I promise you, it will begin to crave them daily.

***

8. Become unhinged, unglued, and undone. Learn how be connected to the universe, freed from the chains you had created, and have courage.

Once you reunite with your clarity, let it lubricate your parched soul, be the wave you want to glide on and the energy you give your body to. Allow it be the friend you become powerfully fearless with and the very medicine you need to dissolve your empty parts. Let it halt your restless yearning and lead your beautiful heart.

This  clarity will help you release your passion into the world and once again pour vibrant color into your sepia toned life. Awaken and have trust for breakfast every single day as you allow yourself to be driven by the magnificent force of that one gorgeous dream that keeps returning.

It will not lead you astray.

*Image Source.

*****

Grey skies.

One winter seems to last for years in places like this. 

Grey skies touching grey ground 
Days into nights and nights into days
until the landscape itself
becomes neutrally indifferent.

How restless it is to remain awake

 as the earth sleeps below us.

How easy it is to turn into ourselves

and think too hard for too long

until we too, become indifferent. 

I refuse to become indifferent.

photo source: here & here

Primal heart.

Love is a risk and we are often shattered to pieces by the intensity of the lust, the passion, the breaking, the unraveling, and the falling. The vulnerable"please let me come to you,"no I don't think you should,"what do we do now," and "are we ok?" moments. 

The push and pull, the aches and urgency, the bitterness and the pain, the bliss and the need, the warmth and the crush, the scent of a neck and length of a spine. The goosebumps and lips and frowns and tears and "yes,we are okay"'s.

The holding on and letting go.
The finding and the losing.
The hope and the sorrow.
The beginning and end.

Regardless of what kind of love, you, my messy, confused, beautiful, crushed, imperfectly perfect and yes oh so REAL human friend may be having in your life, this is my promise to you:

So celebrate your every emotion: bright and bold, sorrowful and somber, lovely and light. Then wrap your fingers around each one, hold them with pride, and say,"yes." Yes, because you are incredibly ALIVE and yes because my darling....

And even when you find yourself cracked open past midnight, 
wounded and howling at the moon with your primal, precious heart,

 remember that you can and will love again.

And again, and again, and again.

Because hearts are made to break and mend thousands of times in one lifetime. 
And not only will you will live through this, you can and will love,

once again.

photo source: here and here, here

Gone.

And there we were, dancing around the spaces between us
so large, the distance was now too much to breathe,
 too much to bear and too much to name, 

pushing you and I and us too far, and too fast.

Lost language, numbed senses, and both of us to blame.

We'd been stumbling around those spaces too long.

Until night arrived...

And each of us was gone.

"Cause you're always mine
to keep when you're gone."

photo source: here

From the hearts of dogs.

My most recent piece for the always lovely and inspiring Rebelle Society.

I love my dogs.

There is something about our animals that mends our spirits in ways we often cannot fully grasp, and dogs are certainly no exception. Unconditional love is what most would call it, and we know this because a dog’s love exists without the chains of unspoken criticism and quiet judgment.

But there is something else that I believe they are here to teach us, something deeper and more profound. Sometimes these realizations can be slippery and fleeting, mostly due to the tornado of demands that life spins our way.

However, if we can just hold on to these lessons, I think we will find them timeless and life altering.

  “Dogs are not our whole life but they make our lives whole.” ~ Roger Caras

I share my life with two wonderfully energetic, highly responsive dogs. They are effortless communicators, always effective and honest. They usually respond immediately to my gestures and tone of voice, knowing exactly what I want from them.

As all dogs instinctively do with their owners, they literally know me by heart, meaning they can feel my emotions intuitively, and a dog’s very nature is to operate from heart to heart.

They don’t know anything different, and every day when I bear witness to the bond these incredible animals are able to hold with us, I stand amazed, never taking their steadfastness and loyalty for granted.

Each morning, when I wake, I’m usually filled with anticipation and ready to jump-start the day.

Lately, I’ve been working hard at mastering a system in which I focus and prioritize, learning where best to put my time and energy that particular day, as I find it’s important to keep life in a healthy balance, and this balance seems to grow more important with each passing year.

But, a few mornings ago, I was tired. So tired. The kind of tired that demands every ounce of strength to merely crawl out of bed, start the teapot, and stretch your aching body. I felt a certain heaviness as though I was walking through fog as went through the usual weekday motions.

At times, we can be homesick for a place we aren’t sure of, or feel broken for reasons we can’t quite pinpoint. I was both of those and more so, I naturally blamed winter, based on my ongoing conviction that our bodies simply were not meant to withstand this type of weather for so impossibly long, and were, therefore either meant to live in warm places or hibernate.

Whatever it was, my usual system of operating simply wasn’t enough, and I was holding on to the promise of spring in the distant future. 

Enters Teddy, my rescue dog.

Having just turned one, has far more energy that his sister Rosie. In the mornings, he’s fairly predictable due to the promise of food awaiting. He’ll run outside, zoom at full tilt ‘round the snow-soaked yard, then bolt back into the house, ready for warmth again.

This was not that day. Hearing my familiar tone, Rosie burst back into the house, but Teddy stubbornly remained off to the side of the yard just beyond his favorite, large tree.

“Teddy, come inside!” I called, simultaneously burning my tongue on the still steaming tea, and glancing at the next few emails that’d suddenly appeared on the screen of the phone that my hand was now clenching. I looked again; he still wasn’t coming.

Frustrated and anxious to begin working, I retreated back into the kitchen, grabbed my coat, told Rosie to wait with a look, then headed out into the dark morning to retrieve Teddy, tensing from the sharp cold air, and wondering why I now live in a place where January feels so long and grey, and you can hardly tell day from night.

As I drew closer, Teddy briefly raised his soulful brown eyes with a brief wag of his tail in acknowledgement.

Then, he casually picked up a broken stick, lowered his lean body to the wet ground, and half-heartedly began to chew. It was as though he was purposely delaying having to go back inside the house by pretending he was involved in something that he actually wasn’t that interested in.

For a brief second I thought I should swoop pick him up and carry all 35 lbs of him in, but instead, I knelt down beside him, quietly devising a different plan to lure him back in.

But the longer I sat with him, the longer I unknowingly began to listen.

Then, somewhere between our breaths, I noticed the silence. It was a sweeping silence… The kind of silence that draws you in the way a painfully beautiful piece of music would, when, for a short time, the world seems to halt on its axis, and time crawls to a standstill. There was no wind, no rustle of leaves, and no echo of cars in the distance. It was just the silent dance of a winter sunrise, lighting rooftops and bare branches with warm golden light, as day began to break.

In that moment it occurred to me, I was feeling a pull of something larger than myself. It was a place of rest, refuge, and acceptance; and exactly what I’d hungered for lately, each time I’d feel the nagging uncertainty of what exactly made me ache.

A dog can bring this important type of peace the way another person may not be able to. It’s this very connection that rebuilds your broken parts, allows you to be moved, and renders you breathless with its beauty.

“There are moments of such pure, sublime, unparalleled perfection that will force you to close your eyes the best you can. Life is a series of these moments. Everything else is just waiting for them.” ~ Iain Thomas

Our lives will yield to the routines we inevitably cling on to with dependence, yet we must allow ourselves to be pulled past those boundaries we ourselves have built, or we’ll forget what is actually real.

Animals are unconditional love, not only because of their endless acceptance of our whole selves, but also because they allow us to recognize these moments that show us what is real.

We  humans see moments, and for that reason the moment always escapes us. A dog sees the moment but cannot see through it, and for that reason, time escapes him.

On that cold January morning, right there in the yard, I realized that I felt whole.

Teddy taught me to be in the moment, because within that unpredictably perfect moment, all I had, as well as just being myself… was enough.