Choose your form
AI Art collage by Midjourney and me
Imagine all the consciousness in the universe funneling down into your head. You know everything. You see everything. But you can’t be everything and you can’t say everything. You must choose your form. At any given moment there are infinite potentials, but you can only pick one. Whatever you choose resonates and ripples out to the rest of the universe. The funnel goes both ways.
Related: Choosing your form and Whale wisdom
Guiding your rivers of doubt
I fell asleep with worries on my mind. In my dream, I found myself navigating the rivers of doubts within me. I tried to make the negative streams of energy disappear. I was told, “You can’t dispel your rivers of fears, you can only guide them.” You do this by aligning yourself with freedom and possibilities and trust. You build embankments or boundaries within you. This is how you prevent flooding of emotions. This is how you channel your gifts toward your purpose. All rivers flow toward the Sea. This is how you guide yourself toward the Universe.
Ferris Wheel of Activators
Sometimes in dreams you are given assignments or astral homework. The purpose of which is to clear out energy blocks or to act as guide posts along your path, pointing you to a new trailhead.
Advice and assignments from the astral realm line up in a queue in your mind, and wait for you to act upon it. If you don’t, the queue gets backed up and new messages from the Divine won’t be able to cut in line to get to you.
On Sunday, June 19, 2022, I saw in a dream what they called my activators rotating on a ferris wheel — similar to the Wheel of Fortune tarot card. An activator is an energy that you draw power from. It propels you through life with passion. I was assigned to categorize the activities and people in my life that act as activators.
I began with a blank astrological chart. In each of the 12 houses I wrote down values or concepts that are vital to my existence. Each one is a dimension that I can travel to or a room in my mind that I can dance inside of.
Underneath each dimension, I wrote down the activities that activate these values. I took note of the ones that repeat.
Hiking activates Freedom and Solitude and Play and Beauty. Working with my dreams in waking life activates Mystery, Exploration, Divination, Creation and more. Reading teleports me to the dimension of Mystery and Wisdom. Worship is Love.
The last part of my astral homework was to categorize the people in my life. I chose colors for the persons closest to me and drew lines connecting them to the realms they activate. Some people are more influential than others.
If I know what activities and people activate my passion for life then I have no reason to ever be bored or uninspired. I just spin the wheel and try something else.
You can download your own blank ferris wheel here.
Explore your mental floorplan
Mental Floorplan, (Dream, February 25, 2022)
We all gathered in the living room, my dream selves and I. There were many of us. We began to crowd each other.
I knew there were many rooms in my house. I could see the layout of my mind.
Sometimes we gravitate toward the same room over and over again. We think that's all we know. We forget there are mansions in our minds.
Look at your mental floorplan. See all your rooms. Keep exploring.
Access different types of consciousness
Imagine you are operating an old-timey telephone switchboard. See yourself unplugging the wires from the lower holes and plugging them into the upper rows. This is you shifting your awareness. This is you transforming lower frequencies of fear and doubt to the higher potentials of spirit — love, joy, play, wonder.
Now imagine shifting your awareness from the subatomic level to the Universal mind. Teach yourself to sense what the different types of consciousness feels like:
Subatomic consciousness, aware of the vast cosmic fields in which it interacts with all other subatomic consciousness.
Cellular consciousness, based on DNA blueprints, and impressed with the experiences of your life, your thoughts, and emotions.
Body consciousness, or the gestalt of cellular consciousness, plus a few ideas of its own (the body relies largely on the mental body's beliefs for its self-image, however).
Emotional consciousness, or emotions that flow through you in the moment, overlaid with past emotions that you held onto instead of allowing them to flow. Thoughts and beliefs that you use to structure reality (Be aware that any belief is only an opinion about reality.)
Spiritual consciousness, intuition, or direct cognition. This aspect taps into what's often been called Universal Mind. It's actually part of a hidden blueprint from which reality flows and contains, among other things, your species' archetypes, the heroic aspects of humanity. Through this "connective tissue" for physical reality, you can access other times, other places, and other dimensions.
Plug and unplug the wires as you shift your awareness. This is you accessing different types of consciousness.
Source: An Ascension Handbook
Planetary objects as the heart
Are you a comet? Or are you a planet?
I woke up in the middle of the night asking this question. What I really meant to ask is are you passing me by or can I live on you? I don’t have a satisfactory answer for this.
I have been a comet to some people and a planet to others. In all cases, it’s the heart’s gravitational pull that influences the orbit.
Something beautiful I read this week:
How to Connect by Thich Nhat Hanh
Every morning, I go out into my backyard and I worship the Sun. I stand facing the East. I let the Sun warm my body. I whisper my prayers and gratitudes for life, for love, for inspiration, intuition and intelligence — all of which helps me to participate in the creation of the universe. Now I know the Sun is my heart.
Heart exercise” day
A love doodle I made when I was dating my husband (2014). Back then there were a lot of “heart exercise” days …
When I have a hard day I reframe it as a “heart exercise” day. I wish I could say I never resist what is out of my control, but of course I do. Nothing goes my way and I resist harder, past the point I think is possible. Eventually, I am forced to give in. I always feel defeated by the day, but the resistance still strengthens my heart in the end.
I am grateful for all my hard — heart exercise — days.
Everything is Sine Waves
My mind was blown 🤯 by this video podcast on Psilocybin, Depression, Synchronicity, Connectedness. The talk about empathic environments and the outside world mirroring your mind is true to my direct experience with psilocybin. But my most favorite takeaway is that “fundamental to reality is the sine wave.”
I heard this and I felt a very deep yes.
My period tracker Stardust syncs my cycle to the moon, connects me to the universe and displays my hormonal journey in sine waves. Every month, I track as my estrogen, progesterone and testosterone oscillate and with that I oscillate in energy — physical, mental and emotional. I am a sine wave and when I see myself in that way, I allow myself the space to act, to retreat, and to flow.
Everything is sine waves, even love — at times wavering, but never ceasing. Allowing love to ebb and flow is something I am still learning.
Find the higher, essential aspect of yourself
One of the most magical books I own is The Encyclopedia of Mental Imagery: Visualization Exercises for Personal Development, Healing, and Self-Knowledge. It is a collection of self-guided visualizations to make your imagination malleable, practice movement and instantaneous transformation.
How to sit for visualization exercises, page 12
The prompt I did this week was simple. Close your eyes, breathe out 3 times, and:
See yourself as a seed becoming a tree and then reverse back into a seed.
I became a row of Italian Cypress trees. The process of growing taller and taller felt like love, and the promise of a higher vantage point fueled my self-assurance. This is what fulfillment feels like. I knew what I was destined to become.
Then I had to shrink back into a seed, and when I was a seed, I asked, “Am I not still the same tree?” The potential is latent but it exists. I remember what it is like to see the world from up high.
And it’s the same thing with my body. The cellular memory of being beyond this life is there, but concealed. As long as I live close to my heart and purpose, the potential is activated. The seed has no choice but to continue growing. There has been movement since the beginning.
The Grounding Stakes or a Resolution for Trauma
You can feel free and blow in the wind and be grounded.
The psychic language of images is intimate. There is no universal visual dictionary to help you decipher your visions or dreams. Why would you want one anyway?
You are a Psyche Archeologist and this is a solo expedition. Your mission is to discover new aspects of your self, interpret your personal images, and then merge this new meaning into your soul. This is a long journey we are on.
On the inside of my left wrist is the word heal tattooed in white ink. It is fourteen years old and fading and it is a monument to my suffering.
After years of therapy and talking about the trauma and then not talking about the trauma, I wondered what the end game would be. What does a healed person look like?
What do I feel like? Someone who has sovereignty over her mind, body and spirit. Someone who can pause and reflect in the face of strong emotions. Someone who is grounded and open-minded, and most of all, open-hearted.
Still, the question persisted. What does a healed person look like? The answer came in the form of an image — an image infused with an overwhelming sense of gratitude and love and freedom.
I saw myself as an expansive tent — if not tied down — I would blow away. I saw the traumatic event in my life as a stake grounding me to the Earth. I felt grateful for my grounding stake.
I recognize and accept the event as a part of my history. It is not the suffering I appreciate, but the journey to heal and how it has widened my capacity to love.
Not all of my stakes are made of trauma. One of them is my loving husband. The others I am still getting to know, but each day I am grateful for them.
How beautiful that I can be a sprawling tent with the wind blowing in my face, and how it feels like I am flying, all because of my grounding stakes.
Guide Posts as God Posts
Confession: I have been carrying the belief that one day I would get to the peak of the mountain I’ve been climbing and awarded with all the answers to the unknown. I had a realization yesterday that there is no mountain peak with answers, only guide posts along this never-ending path. So, I speech-to-texted myself this epiphany and it auto-corrected “guide posts” to “God posts.” Maybe that is one answer.
Becoming: a process for transformation or how to create pivotal change
There has been a persistent question echoing inside me. I can’t put it into one sentence, but it involves creating pivotal change and becoming.
Becoming is the process of transformation and not an ending. I hope there is never an ending.
The answer came in the form of a visual: An anchor dropping into my heart.
Something needs to anchor itself in you visually and emotionally to create pivotal change.
I’m learning to live with the imaginal world. It’s been speaking this entire time. It speaks in dreams and waking life. It speaks in images that flicker in and out during the day. It speaks in thoughts that press to your forehead like sticky notes. It speaks.
For every desire there is a visual and emotional resonance. Anchor these in your heart. Live with it daily. Ask them out to play. You are not an automaton building habits. You are a creator imagining an ideal world and then pulling that world closer to you.
Sophisticated and effective defense mechanisms
Some defense mechanisms are good tools for life. They help to transmute conflicts into something positive. Below is a chart of common defense mechanisms organized by their level of sophistication and effectiveness. Aim for Sublimation.
From Beyond the Narrow Life: A Guide for Psychedelic Integration and Existential Exploration:
The absence of defense is, in general, closer to psychosis than enlightenment. The ego is largely our friend. It’s doing its best with what it has. Expanding self-awareness isn’t about taking a sledgehammer to all our defenses. Some strategies, however, are more effective than others.
The Inner Why Technique
How to do it:
When you notice a sudden change in your emotional state (e.g., you start becoming anxious, sad, frustrated, or angry), immediately give yourself the best quick explanation you can for WHY you think that change in your emotions just occurred. The sooner you can do it after the emotional change, the better. — Spencer Greenberg
Note: This post is an excerpt from my weekly mind dump newsletter, sent out each Friday.
Think Radially
Think Radially is the phrase I use to help me bypass my analytical mind. It works because it is impossible to think radially, so instead I visualize my existence spiraling out of a nautilus shell.
Think Radially acts as a taproot into my expanded consciousness and it permeates all possibilities.
To Think Radially is to transcend time. I give myself equal footing in all possibilities that exist. Everything is within my grasp — even the paths I did not choose.
The life that you fear will never be lived continues to unfold. You can sense it in the spaces between your breath and in the silence between your sentences. Events exist in all realms: mental, physical, emotional, spiritual, ethereal. Your cells are communicating and aging, while your emotions are maturing and your thoughts are evolving. When I say Think Radially that is my attempt to grasp what is happening behind the veil.
Your ancestors are You.
You begin to know your parents and lovers and friends more intimately, because you see their missing spaces. The space between their possibilities. You see their journey — the direction in which they’ve always been reaching. You see their sacred imagery. All along it’s been staring you in the face. This supernatural reality.
You knew from the beginning how everything would end: that relationship, the career, a move. You know this in the same way a compass needle ticks toward its magnetic north — pulling you toward what you’re most attracted to. Try to sense the direction in which your compass is pointing and then sense all the other directions you not will be walking toward. This is Thinking Radially — a doorway for connecting to your intuition.
A definition of time and space:
Space is what you desire and Time is all the ways you move toward that desire.
On sacred loneliness
This is not a how-to. There are no steps for shifting loneliness into solitude. Loneliness is an intrusion that makes my bones cold. Loneliness feels like a void and Solitude is a sanctuary. Some days I just feel separate from the universe.
I think of the Rupi Kaur quote “Loneliness is a sign you are in desperate need of yourself,” but what I am missing is not myself, but my connection with the Divine. And Yes, I know the Divine is also me, but knowing this doesn’t make the loneliness go away.
The gaping hole in my heart grows wider and I ache for a sign, or a signal of love, or for someone to seek me out. When I was in my twenties this is when I would go out to bars, get drunk, sleep around — anything to escape myself. What I do now is different.
I seek out nothing. I acknowledge that I am in pain and I sit with it. I imagine other humans feeling this same profound sadness with no source point and I breathe into that feeling. This is how I create an equilibrium. I remind myself this is a condition of being human. I find connection in the separateness and that is what brings me comfort.
This mystifying grief called loneliness belongs to you and it belongs to me and everyone else, and that is what makes it sacred.
A mantra for clearing shame
Sometimes — seemingly out of nowhere — I’ll find myself stuck in a spiderweb of negativity. What I feel is resentment or fear or anxiety. I avoid giving it a story. I simply say:
This feeling does not belong to me. I return it back to the Universe.
And then I’ll often make a sweeping away gesture with my arms that looks really silly and weird, but is so damn helpful at releasing shame and shooing it away.
Ideas for bringing more pleasure into your daily life
I took a Clearer Thinking program test that helps you bring more joy into your life by enlightening you to what your greatest sources of pleasure are. (I recommended it in Recomendo.)
I discovered my greatest pleasures are mostly Sensorial. With the highest being humor, nature, animals and sound/music. Which is not surprising because this is what I try to fill my days with. But my favorite part of the program is at the end when you’re given ideas as to how to consciously bring even more pleasure into your life. Here they are below.
