The Legacy House
n. a property that has maintained its historical and/or cultural significance over multiple generations.
My “legacy house” was run-down and boarded up. I walked a long way in the dream realm just to stand guard in front of the house and protect it.
Squatters had broken in and ruined all the plumbing and stolen all the copper. Nothing worked inside and it was unlivable. But still, I stood guard.
I knew my family had forgotten this house. They no longer stopped by for their shifts.
I wanted to gut the place, pay for someone to come and haul all the trash away. But then I was told, “It’s not your responsibility to clean up your family’s mess. They can help too.”
This was never just my house. It has gone to shit, but I am not responsible for protecting or preserving it.
Then I woke up.
Sailing stones
We were two stones sleeping in the desert,
when I woke up you were miles away,
I asked you why you left,
you said a strong wind had stolen you,
I asked if you still loved me,
you said yes and no,
I wanted to throw myself at you,
you said you and the wind were in love,
I asked what that felt like,
you said like sailing.
Updated: Nature Timespiral
This depiction of all time and all life since the Big Bang is the Universe’s subconscious manifested. I have been using it as a visual meditation. I close my eyes. I breathe in deeply. I breathe out a timespiral of my own life on Earth. I populate the spiral with everything I have created in the past 37 years. The energies I have manifested with my words and my actions and my emotions. I ask myself what is missing — what still needs to be expressed. I want to live my life with as much creative force as the Universe.
The history of nature from the Big Bang to the present day represented in a spiral with notable events annotated. Each billion years (Ga) is represented by 90 degrees of rotation of the spiral. The last 500 million years are represented in a 90-degree stretch for more detail on our recent history. Some of the events depicted are the emergence of cosmic structures (stars, galaxies, planets, clusters, and other structures), the emergence of the solar system, the Earth and the Moon, important geological events (gases in the atmosphere, great orogenies, glacial periods, etc.), emergence and evolution of living beings (first microbes, plants, animals, fungi), the evolution of hominid species and important events in human evolution.
How to challenge your fear
“You must challenge fear and ask it what it means to say. As you go into the fear with eyes open, heart open and courage flowing freely, you will see that fear is only an empty room. Fear is only as strong as your avoidance of it. The greater your reluctance to see the fear, to accept it and embrace it, the more power you allow it.”
— Emmanuel's Book: A Manual for Living Comfortably in the Cosmos
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.
When you find yourself flooded with Egypt
When you find yourself flooded with Egypt / the gold in your bones begins to sing / close your eyes / we made portals for this / let your blood dissolve / become stars in someone else's galaxy / in death we inherit wings / in life only your heart can fly
Flooded with Egypt created by AI Art Machine
This poem was inspired by a passage in Antero Alli’s book Angel Tech:
To the Western world of the latter 20th century, Egypt circa 3,000 B.C.E. is a most exotic, magical kingdom of great knowledge and power. A remarkable surge of human identification with this era has unleashed torrents of psionic information from the Akashic Archives.
Your ethical responsibility is to return and help your bodies become more intelligent. Teach them as if they were your children, as they are, and express the denser sides of yourselves. Have patience with their anxiety and ignorance, for without each other—they will grow lonely and you, dear lost souls—will not grow at all—visit their little minds in dreamtime and show them who you are. If they are flooded with Egypt, appear as KA—the bird-human symbol for the soul from Egyptian mythology—but appear!
A definition of time and space:
Space is what you desire and Time is all the ways you move toward that desire.
The Catfish Museum and All Points of Possibility
Catfish: Points of Possibilities created by AI Art Machine
I am given a tour of an underground water museum. The tour guide takes me to the catfish exhibit. I see a catfish swimming toward me and I see it’s skeleton and how it forms and grows.
I can see sound waves and the potential of energy before it is “activated” in the water. The potentials appear as dots or points. I see the catfish navigate all the possibilities at once.
A propeller appears in the exhibit and it is churning my subconscious, like the deep waters.
At the end of the tour the guide gives me a jack-in-box toy made out of paper, but instead of a jester it is a catfish that pops out. I ask a lot of questions and the guide pawns me off to the exhibit programmer who is disinterested in telling me more. He mumbles something and turns his back toward his computer.
I take my folder of informational pamphlets and my paper catfish-in-the-box and I say I am ready to leave. This dream is an invitation to see the potentials of my life and desires.
There were poems inside this
Old hand-bound journals I made using repurposed fabric, found paper and ribbon.
Oh my darling demons!
Oh, my darling demons
I love you
I love you for all the drinks
and the flings
and the hearts you break —
including my own
But mostly, I love you
for the words you write
words wearing masks
and carrying machetes
and these words
are always so charming
even when they undress
to show the ugliest bodies
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.
All roads lead back to yourself
In dreaming life I pulled a tarot card. I saw myself in a sacred circle surrounded by other versions of myself pointing what felt like staves/wands/arrows. At first I felt cornered — was this something to ward off?
No, my subconscious interpreter said.
This card means that you are never worried about a missed chance. These are all versions of you existing after each road taken. Opportunity after opportunity will continue to arise. All roads lead back to yourself. You are never lost.
10 of Arrows
All roads lead back to yourself
The Labyrinth Theory
What I love about walking labyrinths is that the closer you get to the center the farther you are in distance. Life has often felt that way too.
A brief summary of the past 37 years: I am born to two teenage immigrants who speak no English. As they grow, I grow too. Their mistakes are my mistakes. I am uprooted and left behind. In my earliest memories, I am always alone. I write love letters to God and search for portals in trees. I will be the new girl in school 15 times. Being called “weird” or “poor” will never faze me. By age 10, I am irrevocably damaged and weighed down with worry. Poetry saves me. I write it all down — the dark parts and the dreams. I never stop searching for meaning. At age 17, I move across the country to survive on my own. Besides books and my own intuition — and the occasional Divine interference — there is no guidance. A decade is spent destroying when all I want is to create. After one near-death experience and three suicide attempts — at age 30 — I decide to get off Zoloft and heal through nature and talk therapy. I give up poetry for a brief time. I ground myself in the Earth. I meet my husband — my anchor. I grow beautiful friendships. I find my center. It feels a lot like the wonder and magic of my short childhood. All those years spent in the outer circles, I never knew how close I was to myself.
As human as possible
I scatter your moons like dice on a table. Pick one. You expel spirit animals from your body. The tiger that claws your heart out. The whale who always digs up your dreams. And that damn peacock you refuse to accept is you. We’re not here to be animals, I say. We’re here to be as human as possible. Find out what that means to you.
What happens to hearts while dreaming:
He said he would call me later that night while we were both sleeping, because in dreams our hearts disrobe themselves of muscles and tissues and details of life and they become entangled in light. Light, he said, that twists and forms shadows of every thing, and the shadows of things are not really things, but fragments of things that care for nothing but love.
Every beautiful thing
Before you become miserable in love, remember: not every beautiful thing is meant for you. sometimes the grown-up thing to do is ooh & ahh & walk away. 
Unraveling the Scarcity Mindset & The Soul of Money
Unraveling the “scarcity mindset” installed in me as a child was something I decided to tackle a couple months ago when I was mistakenly billed for a medical procedure. For a moment I thought I had to pay a thousand dollars, and even though I have the money, and more importantly, the ability to earn that money, I had a small anxiety attack that teleported me back to life before my 30s, when I had no money. I knew that if I didn’t deal with my “insufficiency” wiring that no matter how secure or stable I am in life I would never be as free and happy as I deserve to be. As we all deserve to be.
Below is a short poem I wrote — a glimpse into my childhood. After that are excerpts from a book that helped me complete this “soul work” of unraveling the scarcity mindset. Before this book has been a lot of other work: talk therapy, journaling, cutting cords, prayer and stillness. I learned to create a world of abundance and sufficiency. I am more mindful of the flow of money. I am grateful every day for food, a home and a warm bed. If you ever need someone to talk about this, you can email me at claudia@claudiadawson.blog.
“We are not human beings having a spiritual experience, but spiritual beings having a human experience.”
At one point, a womb was enough. Then came birth and all my parents’ fears and failings and flails became mine. I was drowning too. Underneath poorness and not enough. Money came and went like a river in drought. Roofs came and went. Shelter lines came and went. A free loaf of bread and a peanut butter jar could last us all week. Saltines for dinner sometimes. A cup of noodles in tap water warming on a window sill. This had to be enough sometimes. At one point, a womb was enough. Another new school, another first day, I’m 10 and wearing an XL men’s t-shirt down to my knees. I try to make friends, try to be bigger than my circumstances. I carve out a safe space inside of me, follow my intuition. Keep my head above water. At one point, a womb was enough. Then I’m born and scarcity began to build a grave for me.
“Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery it is. In the boredom and pain of it, no less than in the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it, because in the last analysis all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace.”
Once we define our world as deficient, the total of our life energy, everything we think, everything we say, and everything we do—particularly with money—becomes an expression of an effort to overcome this sense of lack and the fear of losing to others or being left out.
The toxic myth is that “more is better”. More of anything is better than what we have. It’s the logical response if you fear there’s not enough, but more is better drives a competitive culture of accumulation, acquisition, and greed that only heightens fears and quickens the pace of the race.
More is better misguides us in a deeper way. It leads us to define ourselves by financial success and external achievements. We judge others based on what they have and how much they have, and miss the immeasurable inner gifts they bring to life. All the great spiritual teachings tell us to look inside to find the wholeness we crave, but the scarcity chase allows no time or psychic space for that kind of introspection.
When we believe that more is better, and equate having more with being more—more smart or more able—then people on the short end of that resource stick are assumed to be less smart, less able, even less valuable, as human beings. We feel we have permission to discount them.
This mind-set of scarcity is not something we intentionally created or have any conscious intention to bring into our life. It was here before us and it will likely persist beyond us, perpetuated in the myths and language of our money culture. We do, however, have a choice about whether or not to buy into it and whether or not to let it rule our lives.
By sufficiency, I don’t mean a quantity of anything. Sufficiency isn’t two steps up from poverty or one step short of abundance. It isn’t a measure of barely enough or more than enough. Sufficiency isn’t an amount at all. It is an experience, a context we generate, a declaration, a knowing that there is enough, and that we are enough.
Sufficiency resides inside of each of us, and we can call it forward. It is a consciousness, an attention, an intentional choosing of the way we think about our circumstances. Sufficiency is a context we bring forth from within that reminds us that if we look around us and within ourselves, we will find what we need. There is always enough.
So often we think of “abundance” as the point at which we’ll know we’ve really arrived, but abundance continues to be elusive if we think we’ll find it in some excessive amount of something. True abundance does exist; it flows from sufficiency, in an experience of the beauty and wholeness of what is. Abundance is a fact of nature. It is a fundamental law of nature, that there is enough and it is finite. Its finiteness is no threat; it creates a more accurate relationship that commands respect, reverence, and managing those resources with the knowledge that they are precious and in ways that do the most good for the most people.
Money is a current, a carrier, a conduit for our intentions. Money carries the imprimatur of our soul.
If your attention is on the problems and breakdowns with money, or scarcity thinking that says there isn’t enough, more is better or that’s just the way it is, then that is where your consciousness resides. Those thoughts and fears grow from the attention you give them and can take over your life. No matter how much money you have, it won’t be enough. No amount of money will buy you genuine peace of mind. You expand the presence and the power of scarcity and tighten its grip on your world.
When we let go of trying to get more of what we don’t really need, we free up an enormous amount of energy that has been tied up in the chase. We can refocus and reallocate that energy and attention toward appreciating what we already have, what’s already there, and making a difference with that. Not just noticing it, but making a difference with what we already have. When you make a difference with what you have, it expands.
We think we live in the world. We think we live in a set of circumstances, but we don’t. We live in our conversation about the world and our conversation about the circumstances. When we’re in a conversation about fear and terror, about revenge and anger and retribution, jealousy and envy and comparison, then that is the world we inhabit. If we’re in a conversation about possibility, a conversation about gratitude and appreciation for the things in front of us, then that’s the world we inhabit.
Scarcity speaks in terms of never enough, emptiness, fear, mistrust, envy, greed, hoarding, competition, fragmentation, separateness, judgment, striving, entitlement, control, busy, survival, outer riches. In the conversation for scarcity we judge, compare, and criticize; we label winners and losers. We celebrate increasing quantity and excess. We center ourselves in yearning, expectation, and dissatisfaction. We define ourselves as better-than or worse-than. We let money define us, rather than defining ourselves in a deeper way and expressing that quality through our money.
Sufficiency speaks in terms of gratitude, fulfillment, love, trust, respect, contributing, faith, compassion, integration, wholeness, commitment, acceptance, partnership, responsibility, resilience, and inner riches. In the conversation for sufficiency we acknowledge what is, appreciate its value, and envision how to make a difference with it. We recognize, affirm, and embrace. We celebrate quality over quantity. We center ourselves in integrity, possibility, and resourcefulness. We define our money with our energy and intention.
If you look back on the experience of freedom in your life chances are that it wasn’t when you were measuring the options against one another, or making sure you weren’t getting stuck with a decision. It was when you were fully expressed, playing full out. It was when you chose fully and completely, when you knew you were in the place you were meant to be in, when perhaps you even felt a sense of destiny. That’s when we’re free and self-expressed, and joyful or at peace with circumstances—when we choose them. We bring that freedom to our relationship with money when we center ourselves in sufficiency, choose to appreciate the resources that are there, feel their flow through our life, and use them to make a difference.
Additional Reading:
How to feel like you have enough by Christine Garvey
How am I not myself? T-shirt
I designed a t-shirt dreamed out of a favorite movie of mine, I Heart Huckabees, and put it up on Society6.
I drew the chalkboard art depicting how everything is the same even if it’s different. See: The Blanket Truth — “We’re all connected.”
“How am I not myself?” is from the scene where Jude Law is confronted about the “mayo” story. A reminder that the repetitive stories you tell about yourself are propaganda.