A working manifesto of Free Will
I am a sovereign being who has the ability to advocate for myself. I choose experiences that are consciousness and life-expanding, and I say NO to all energy drains and life-shrinking experiences.
I do not need a priest or a shaman to communicate with the Divine.
I can wear any mask or play any role I want, I do not have to participate in the victim/perpetrator storyline if it is pushed on me.
My angels and spirit guides are there to advise me when asked, but I do not have to make any choices I am not ready to make. I can ask the flow of consciousness to slow down and take my time to integrate at my pace.
Psychic protection practices are my spiritual right. This includes crossing my arms to pull in my aura and protect my solar plexus.
I choose to not shrink away from darkness, but instead expand my light to shed awareness on these natures and realities. I reach toward a consciousness that embraces opposites.
I create my own reality based on my principles, values, beliefs and divine intuitions — and these are allowed to change as I explore consciousness and other realities. I am allowed to transform.
I respect every human and creature’s free will and boundaries. I do not force others to live in my worlds or attempt to break down their deep internal structures of reality. I meet every person where they are at emotionally, physically, mentally and spiritually. I see the Divine in every human being.
I’m aware that my consciousness participates in other realities and that there are other species of TIME, yet I deeply respect the linear flowing of time and this one reality we choose to create together.
I accept myself as an active participant in a shared reality. I believe that only I am responsible for my choices and I do not make self-destructive choices. I choose to support the spiritual evolution of my soul and heart and that of others.
I believe in both Free Will and Universal Laws. Paradoxes exist on all planes of Reality. We alter all timelines — past and future — by the choices we make in the present.
If I can accept the consequences of my actions, then I am truly free.
Reality Debrief, 11-20-2023
💭 Thought Fragments
Motion in dreams serve as energies to embody to loosen up the rigidity of our mental frameworks. For example: I dream I am 40 and I am jumping up and down as mode of travel down a street. I come across a younger woman and I say to her, “Here’s a secret for when you turn 40. When you’re 40 you’ll want to jump everywhere!” And I jump away. In waking life I’ll be 40 in about six months, but in the dream I already knew that after 40 I will no longer walk or run to get from point A to point B, I’ll jump there. Maybe this symbolizes leaps in growth or judgement or jumping to conclusions, or maybe this is what wisdom represents, that I have earned a certain amount of life or leeway and I can now get to a space or arrive at a state of mind via a faster method.
The purpose of Media in integration. I feel guided by books, films and music as if they are alive energies or media spirit guides nudging me along the path. The next book is always the perfect book. I practice bibliomancy every day and the passage I read always confirms what I dreamed the night before. Films often fill in the blank spots and questions I have about my dream content. It’s like the dream imagery comes first, and if I have no answers for it, the media will resolve the questions. Right now, I’m slowly watching Defending Your Life with Albert Brooks, which is making sense of all my Interlife / Above Earth memories and dreams.
Reality Debrief, 11-15-2023
WHAT’S ABOVE ALIENS?
“Humanity wants to reach for the stars but very often cannot even reach for the hand of its neighbor. …As much as humanity might want to meet its cousins from the sky, they will not initiate an open contact program until humanity can embrace its brothers across the street. It is up to this planet. It is humanity who is calling the shots. ”
What’s above or beyond aliens? Only prime matter and source energy. The consciousness of creation. Infinite possibilities for new planes of existence and realities.
What's important is not the communication with ETs or higher beings, but the transformation that happens within you as a result — and the art form is in the translation of these higher dimensional messages.
Reality Debrief, 11-14-2023
💭 THOUGHTS I HAD TODAY
Music can transmute emotions instantly, pulling you out of whatever mood you're in. Letting go of grievances and judgements creates space for the Universe to surprise you. This morning while showering this song came on and instantly wiped the slate clean from any feelings or expectations I had toward the day.
There are multiple timelines and continuums. We interact with aspects of ourselves from different timelines in dreams. Staying aligned with our divine purpose keeps the timelines straight. Related dream
The role of a Lightworker or an Energy Healer can be simply described as holding a high frequency. This is how — one by one —we can affect mass consciousness and change the future.
There are heavens and utopias where the soul finds respite, yet we come back to Earth or this 3D Reality to grow through challenges. There is no FINISH LINE, only periods of rest in a continuous cycle of growth and evolution.
Grounding oneself and reconnecting with reality can be a powerful tool in managing emotions and perceptions. This involves not making assumptions about others' moods or expectations, but rather focusing on the present moment and the infinite possibilities it holds. Remember, reality is far more interesting than our worries and fears.
Reality Debrief, 11-13-2023
BYPASSING THE “MIND SENSE”
I’m becoming more aware of the shortcuts my mind takes to create reality. My brain pieces everything together so quickly — before my other senses. I’m practicing letting my other senses guide me throughout the day. Grounding myself and energy from moment to moment.
MY INTEGRITY POINT
A book highlight that resurfaced today. Rest in peace Antero Alli.
"C-1 Task #1: Locating an I.P. (The Integrity Point) Determine where, in the course of your daily life, you can say with total honesty “I can stand behind this 100%.” Call this area your I.P., your 100% integrity point. NOTE: an I.P. can be almost anything—your love for your dog, your favorite theory of everything, your car, your genitalia, your internet addiction, your God or Goddess, your morning cup of coffee."
(Antero Alli, The Eight-Circuit Brain)
I tagged this as #to-do. Today my Integrity Point — something that I can stand behind 100% — is Introspection as a form of spiritual evolution. Introspection does not lead to individualism or narcissism. Individuation is an element of the Introspection process, but what I have found is that Introspection leads to integration of polarities and brings me closer and closer to Unity.
DREAM SNIPPET
Trying to control the timelines but everyone keeps making dumb ass decisions. A man convinces himself he’s going to become Houdini before Houdini becomes Houdini, just because he looks good in a top hat.
LINKS
Dreaming is how we collect the lost parts of our souls lost in other realms. We dream ourselves awake. Jung and the Woman Who Lived on the Moon
NOPE. Scientists Are Researching a Device That Can Induce Lucid Dreams on Demand
Dark Earth Goddess and the soiling of the Soul
I’m headed to Ireland in a few weeks. I’ve been summoned there by my dreams. I find it to be true that once you set an intention to travel or commit to a future event in your life, you can begin to pull energy from that future moment.
Here is a dream that was set in Ireland, both in a mythological past timeline as well as in this linear future.
Dream, June 1, 2023
My Mother or Fairy Godmother or Past-Life Mother tells me a story. She says, “All my Daughters have Dark Earth within.”
I see my human body woven with grass and muddy earth.
It’s ok to make mistakes of varying degrees, she says. Sometimes the darker the regret, the closer we are to Mother Earth’s forgiveness.
These are human lessons to learn. In Heaven there are no mistakes. This being human is a gift— how else will we grow?
I see the seams of my body sewn with soil.
The soul “in a sense” is soiled when we incarnate. This is how I will grow.
Something I will learn in Ireland.
Subtle-body sermonette
What my body truly wants is the freedom to expand and contract without any outside judgement. Without my own judgement. Every month, I shrink and bloat with the moon. My body is alive and mutating and aging and no, I will never punish my body. This is my spaceship. It carries me forth. I climb mountains with it. I align it with my other bodies – subtle or otherwise. My head, heart and gut are all priests in the same temple. I breathe into my spine, set boundaries, widen the stillness within me, stand barefoot on the grass, soak up the sun, leap past man-made intelligences. One body feeds the others. We set off to other worlds.
All of my self-questions from 2022 so far
I copied and pasted all of my diary and dream entries into Clive Thompson’s only the questions online tool. Questions propel and expand your consciousness. Master the art of asking yourself questions.
What are the next god/guide posts? What did I learn in that lifetime and how can I bring that here? How to merge dimensions? What portal am I creating? What form are you holding now? Where is the rest of me? What is my soul reaching out toward? Am I still a stranger to myself? Why does love do this? Was that unkind? What are the consequences of love? Can my heart be boundless? Why does it hurt? Will there be love? Who is guiding me? Am I pure? What is this wilderness inside of me? What does a new beginning mean to me? What is true freedom? Who should I confess my sins to? Or can I have sovereignty over my heart, mind, body and spirit? Can I be absolved or is the freedom from needing to be absolved more than enough? Whose rules am I living by? What is worth fighting for? Is this a mistake? When is the next moon phase? He is still on the first rung of the ladder and where am I? Why do I have to get my footing again and again and again? Why can’t I start from where I was last time? Are you a comet or are you a planet? Is there anything you've been working on for many centuries? Do I have a stupid heart? What is the one thing I can control? What have we unearthed here? What kind of worship is this? What was the whale I threw out the window? How many times can I transform before I die? What is the difference between human love and divine love? How do you pray to a dead God?
Make yourself holy and loud again
I’ve been living in my heart chakra for the past month. I grew a new chamber in my heart. I didn’t know I could do that without becoming a mother — which I consciously chose to not be this lifetime.
It’s painful to have more space in my heart. It feels empty at times, unfurnished. There is a lonely echo.
I thought I needed someone — a God, a Master, a King — some sort of ruler to move in and reign over this new territory. But I was wrong. The pain I feel is the original sin — separation from the divine.
I think about Adam and Eve after God withdrew from the garden — how we forgot we were made from each other. How we continued living as if we were separate beings, at times enemies.
Misunderstanding, suffering, repressing. None of that belongs in the heart.
The full moon in Virgo is all about purification. Putting your life in order for the purpose of purifying your heart.
In my meditation this morning, I saw myself windexing a two-way mirror. On the other side was also me — but at multiple points of existence. I was a two-year-old hiding in tall grass and I looked scared. I was 8 and whispering to old oak trees, begging them to open up their portals. I was 11 and I was crying in bed and wishing I could die. I was 17 and I was burning all my old diaries so I could become someone new. And these versions of myself continued on like that — some were sad, some were in love, and some were shameful.
I kept windexing the mirror glass — wiping and cleaning this supernatural view I had of myself. I saw myself as energy with imperfections and impurities woven in since birth. I saw what some people would call sins and I made them beautiful and holy again.
A confession: When I was young, I went through a short phase of stealing perfume bottles. Two. I stole two bottles. One from a store and one from my best friend’s older sister (and I gave that one back). I couldn’t afford them myself and the scents were so intoxicating and they made me feel feminine and magical, and the bottles were made of colored glass, like potion bottles, and my senses were enraptured by the feel, the smell, and the sight of these perfumes. I had to possess them. This is godly too.
We desire with our senses, I salivate, I ache to touch, I stare, I can’t keep my eyes off of all the divine, beautiful things I want. I forget that all that beauty is inside of me already.
I hope you can heal yourself the same way. Windex your own two-way mirror. See clearly the incessant flowering of your soul since birth. You came in as a pure and holy force and have been muted along the way. Unmute yourself.
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.
My Kingdom of Heaven
My mother was a cult. Spiritually liberal and Bipolar. I was dragged from dogma to dogma, church to church. I’ve been baptized at least 10 times that I can remember. If you ask her, by the time I was two I had bible verses memorized. We walked door to door as Jehovah Witnesses on the hunt to convert. I remember the books and pamphlets we would hand out — the depictions of Heaven — I would get lost in those images.
I remember asking if there would be sharks and if I would have to swim with them, and being told Yes. I tried to wrap my baby brain around this ecological paradox. I truly felt this would be my heaven, but I was terrified of it at the same time. Now I understand the importance of accepting these polarities — pure love.
From Kabbalah and the Power of Dreaming: Awakening the Visionary Life by Catherine Shainberg:
…sink into the body of the experience, the domain of the subconscious mind, where two seemingly opposite tendencies can co-exist. It is in this cauldron of paradox that "something other" can emerge…
… Having brought all the elements together we can only "let go and let God!” In the experimental alembic that is the womb or the mind is formed the new creation, a mixing of two seemingly incompatible parts…. The mix confuses the eye, amuses, astounds, disjoints, and unbalances our preconceived notions. Our hearts leap at the surprising freedom of the creative force to break inflexible boundaries, to mix incompatible forms. The shift, so shocking, so exciting, liberates our "True Imagination."
Imagination purified, pure love.
ISAIAH 11:6-9
The wolf shall dwell with the lamb,
The leopard lie down with the kid;
The calf, the beast of prey, and the fatling together
With a little boy to herd them.
The cow and the bear shall graze,
Their young shall lie down together;
And the lion, like the ox, shall eat straw.
A babe shall play
Over a viper's hole,
And an infant pass his hand
Over an adder's den.
In all of My sacred mount
Nothing evil or vile shall be done;
For the land shall be filled with devotion to the Lord
As water covers the sea.
Diary excerpts from 2021
A year in review. Here are fragments of my life in 2021. I pulled them from diary entries.
JANUARY
Have I been circling the same shallow depths for so long?
After a call with my journey guide:
She asked me to share about myself, specifically what has brought me to this moment — what has made me want to do a journey. What came out of my mouth was a word jumble of bad things that had happened to me. No, not happened to me — the bad circumstances of my life. I was born to two teenagers… we moved around a lot … my mother left us … she is bipolar … I never had stability … I had suicidal ideation since I was 11 … and 14 … and 22 … and 24 … and 26.
All this changed when I turned 30 and went on a vision quest, spent more time in nature and committed to therapy. I described how my entire childhood I bounced from one dogma to another, and how at 30, I finally cut the cord with my mother and created myself as an adult. How my career, my husband and choosing to be childfree are the best choices I ever made. But also, how I feel like I have no creative voice.
Later I realized, my voice is lost because I cut the cord with the narrator. The narrator who wrote all those poems in the past is gone. She’s no longer depressed or dark and as much as I miss that voice, it’s not coming back. I can’t summon her. I think it’s time I get to know my new narrator. This woman that I am.
FEBRUARY
I try to break free from the expected everyday.
An oracle card reading:
I pulled The Cauldron card, which says, “We become integrated and mature by watching, waiting, and trusting that all these insights and impressions will be added to the cauldron and will, one day, be fully cooked.”
This year is about creating the space. About following what ignites my heart and trusting it will guide me somewhere better. It is a waiting game, but I am the cauldron. I am the witch brewing my dreams.
A dream I had in February:
Last night I dreamed that they kept showing me an ultrasound of my womb and why I could never get pregnant. The energy that was supposed to latch on just kept “floating away,” like the smoke that comes out of my oil diffuser. The souls just kept diffusing. But I was OK with it. I don’t want to birth children. I can be a mother in other ways.
The back and forth of integrating trauma:
This day is displaced from other timelines. It feels new. Or maybe I am new. The years are piling on like dust on top of dust. I am being buried under patterns, synchronicities and routines. New goals. New Year. Resolutions. Old habits break through. I lose myself in other people and the ticking of the time hand. And like the trees lose their leaves and then return, I think that the same thing is happening to me, but no, it’s not. The opposite thing is happening to me. The leaves only fall and don’t regrow, and every new day is different and I am on a path I can see and sense, but ignore anyway. I see other people have one foot in reality and the other god knows where, and they uproot their minds and fly away so easily, yet I keep treading this darkness one step at a time. Only now I can see the form. I know I can.
….. I lean into the darkness again, this time more protected. There are no shadows. All the unknowns are outlined. Nothing scurries or brushes past in pitch blackness. Nothing groans or howls. Except for me. Darkness, I am enveloping you. It is a momentary eclipse. We’ll become the same, but I'll still keep my shape.
MARCH
I will no longer dull my edges.
On being the older sister:
My therapist told me something last week that stuck with me. My sister came into this life with a different purpose and journey, and her journey to evolve is different from mine. I am her friend and her sister, but I am not here to save her. Her journey does not have to look like mine.
On my dead brother’s birthday:
My brother Steven would have been 36 years old today. He only lived one month. Why do they come and go and where is his life force today? What happens to these short spirits?
SHORT SPIRITS
A light cuts through briefly
flowers limbs and bones
sprouts from nothing
gathers dust, disappears
again, leaving my mother
holding the bag,
a palmful of ash is enough
to spread grief for lightyears
APRIL
Anyone who goes digging into their subconscious is a witch, attempting to make sense of everything in her cauldron.
Life came to me in pieces. Slowly I could see that I had long been trying to make sense of it. Since birth. Since crawling. Since hiding. Since discovering dark rooms and hidden agendas and bad people and secret dreams and imagination and in the safety and sacredness of solitude.
A description of how I feel:
Myself — loosened
spread all over
in another time
unanchored from now
A lesson in a dream:
I found myself hanging from a high cliff because I had climbed up the wrong way. I was about to blame the dream people for leading me astray, but they didn’t know any better. In the end, it turned out that the easier climb was just inches away from where I started. If I would have just taken a few steps back before climbing, the other option would have come into view. This is a reminder to trust myself, stand back and consider my options.
Automatic writing on Easter: How to ascend (a growing list of ways to elevate your energy)
MAY
I dust off my aura, I protect my aura.
Spiritual Border Control or How to Share Space with a Stranger:
I build a wall around my aura. This is my space. This is allowed. This is not discriminatory. We are all part of the source, but your energy is yours, don’t siphon mine. I am allowed to say mine, because this is my journey. This is my consciousness.
When I was younger I would go out to bars and bump up against others, and kiss strangers, and bond drunkenly in bathrooms, and then wake up feeling empty. It was so exciting until it wasn’t. Then you learn to conserve, that there is a balance in connecting and sharing space. You are allowed to be selective.
On revisiting old diaries:
I forget there is treasure in there. My subconscious bleeds out of me on to those pages. There are 15 years of confessions, dreams, wishes, changes, mistakes. I find it’s easy to get lost in that space, that time. What was I so desperately wanting? Not men — Life. I was desperate for life, it seemed.
A note about my grandfather’s ghost:
Somewhere embedded in the fabric of my reality is my dead grandfather. He comes as white butterflies, and in dreams. The weight of his consciousness I could not tell you, it is heavy, maybe tons. Like a whale, but he is just one dead person.
A freewrite about the moon/life/process:
I try to stay connected to the moon, whatever that means. I cut myself in slits. I am waning, I am waxing, I am growing myself whole. I am becoming bigger than I am. I follow the folklore, nothing should be planted on the full moon, only cut your hair on the new moon, banishing spells when the moon is large, any love spells should grow with the crescent moon. I watch myself expand and shrink in the matter of weeks, like the ocean, my body bloated with salt. I hide away when the sky is dark. I am brewing something magical inside. When the moon is bloated like my body, I bleed, and the process begins again. This constant shrinking and expanding wears on me, but I realize every 28 days I become something new, something bigger than I was before. I head toward the sun and the end of my life with hair as white as the moon and sun spots from the universe. I am spinning with the earth toward death, growing closer to my body, to the mother earth, blossoming and withering at the same exact time. This is the process destined by the heavenly bodies that govern us. So yes, of course we are connected to the moon.
JUNE
There is no completion to life. It just continues.
How hard it is to be human sometimes, to not neglect any part of my being — physical, mental, emotional and spiritual. … I can only be on one side of the dodecahedron die at a time.
Birthday trip to Sedona:
On the road headed toward Arizona, trusting we will meet our life somewhere along the way.
Fragments from a psychedelic journey:
It began with doors opening to the sacred chapel of mirrors. Climbing the stairs of my grandmother’s apartment building in Morelia, it transformed into a temple. … They kept telling me the imagery does not matter. The universe expanded into a bismuth stone. So many dimensions, so much work that is unseen. They kept repeating “The imagery doesn’t matter.” They kept telling me I was focusing too much on form, and my form kept shapeshifting into something else. I became gooey and shapeless and I called out, “I don’t want to be gooey and shapeless, I want form!” I want this body, and yes I will honor it. They were showing me: this is what clairvoyance is. You see the lineage and archetypes and the chakras people get stuck in. Astrology, tarot cards, breath work, these are just tools, they say. They showed me the dimension where play takes place and said all art comes from this place. Play here. Pull from here.
JULY
I am trying to exist below the surface of everything.
A dream question:
In another part of the dream, I was in an old neighborhood from my childhood. Through the window blinds, I peeked out on a group of women walking. I recognized them as children I had met and played with briefly, before moving again to somewhere new. The possibility of life-long friendships was never in the cards for me. I woke up with a question on my mind: How do I root myself in a past I never had?
On Reality Tunnels:
I wake up with the message: they’re only going to show me what I can handle. In a dream, I see myself seated on an alien tapestry, like a magic carpet. On a wall of the universe, I see messages reflected in Space meant only for me. I see others seated on their own magic carpets, tuning into their own private screenings, I take a peek. They tell me those messages are not meant for me. Stick to your own reality tunnel, they say.
AUGUST
You’re never going to lose touch with the world because you are the world.
On boredom and loneliness:
For a moment, I’ve abandoned myself. I can feel the negative space that it leaves and I think this is what you call loneliness. Ten degrees to the right and it would be solitude and it would be sacred, and I think of all the ways I can veer off course to my true north. Since birth this has been a solo voyage, so why am I aching for something other than myself? Turn your compass inward. The needle vibrates and spins out of control. You’ll need to figure this out on foot with no equipment/tools/compass. You do not want someone else, you do not need another voice to speak for you, to guide you, to hug you, to love you, to accept you. You only need yourself. Turn the compass inward. What are you feeling? The words that come up are uninspired, bored, aimless. You feel like you need a spark. What could it be? Inside yourself there is no light on, if only you turned on the light you would see a treasure trove of ideas and inspiration and love and epiphanies and revelations — so many that you would never want to come out. Investigate. Be curious of yourself. Close your eyes. See an image that has been haunting you.
A moon poem:
I am the crescent light of the moon
cradling my own shadow
each day I look inward
brighten the darkness
inching my way toward wholeness
SEPTEMBER
I dress myself in dream imagery.
On my ancestral mothers, and the start of what would become A New Temple:
To build a new temple means to create a new language for my bloody, muddy mothers. I have been pieces of them throughout my life. In the beginning they felt like shards of glass piercing through my skin, manipulating my body like a grotesque Pinocchio. Breaking me into pieces with their suffering - but now I see what they made me — a mosaic of mirrors to see all of my soul.
Something my journey guide said:
There is no rush. Just be aware, honor what you are shown. Celebrate yourself.
A reminder:
Reminder: I get to participate in life today. Work. Create. Write. Make something out of nothing. Connect with the world.
OCTOBER
The great mystery of life is a gift.
Dreams symbolizing mental constructs:
The balcony fell down. We sat all of our friends in rocking chairs we made and then it crashed down. The children were playing in the room and pushed the bunkbeds off which created a tremor and the balcony crashed down and I thought all the older people were injured but they were not. This was the second dream about balconies falling off. I know these symbolize shedding mental constructs. In the last dream, I was sharing war stories with a stranger about living in Oakland. He said the terrace on his apartment was so poorly built that it had broken off, but it was OK because he still sees it from time to time. I asked “how?” He said a homeless man must have picked it up, because every once in a while he’ll see it in a shopping cart rolling on by.
A dream about past perspectives:
I am in an empty parking lot in Mexico. I intentionally sit facing a cliff and look out upon a vast and unknown territory that is my home. A rear view mirror appears to be growing out of the cracked concrete. I gaze into it and see the magical blue sky behind me, the clouds marching. I see a mariachi band walking past. A walking celebration of life. I can’t stop gazing into the rearview mirror.
A case against compartmentalizing:
All last week I pulled the death card. An aspect or construct of me died. The construct is the idea that I can compartmentalize these aspects of myself. If you lob off a side to a prism it becomes less luminous. We are all multi-sided, messy and beautiful humans. I sit here spiraling in my thoughts, a multitude of voices chiming in, wanting to say things, ask questions. This morning I meditated and I met an angel in my sacred space, and she held me and I asked her how can I be more myself and yet be pure. She said the answer is desire itself. I am allowed to be complicated and dark and scared and guarded and hesitant and still be pure in that sense. Yes, I am a spirit having a human experience, but I have been so, so, so, deeply human in my errors and ways and it is the intention of my desires that pull me closer to my pure self.
NOVEMBER
What is this individuation process? I thought I was supposed to be getting clearer and now it feels like I’m getting more complicated.
A dream about shadow work:
In a rented room that I share I try to put together my dilapidated furniture. I broke a mirror trying to move it. My furniture is old, chipped and from my childhood. I see other rented rooms designed so extravagantly. I wish my room was swanky and stylish. I keep rearranging furniture, trying to design something beautiful and minimize the space my shadow furniture takes up.
On controlling the expansion of consciousness:
My gray hair was growing in. At first I was happy, this was the mark of living. It said to the world, I am still here and I am sticking it out and I love every minute of it. On a closer look in the mirror I saw that my grays were growing in the opposite way, from end to root. I felt a desire to control it or cover it up. I didn’t want to be vain. I woke up with the message that we cannot control where awakenings and wisdom choose to appear.
How to get closer to heaven:
My hope is that by the time I leave this life I am closer to heaven, by the way that I love, by the way that I walk the earth, and by the grace that I gift myself.
DECEMBER
For the first half of December, I do not journal. There is no excavating of my psyche or logging of my dreams. I put all my energy into completing this small book of visions, poems, dreams and animal spirits that I call A New Temple. It is dedicated to my ancestral mothers who appeared to me last August during a psychedelic journey. It is an artifact of my subconsciousness and it is available here.
It’s been a long year of inner work. I set off in the beginning of the year to get to know my new narrator — the woman that I am now — and I did exactly that. I am ending this year closer to myself than I’ve ever been.
Late night revelations
Sometimes, after weed and wine, I’ll have a “revelation.” Usually, in the light of day, I’ll delete them. Some I’ll keep forever, like this one:
Spirit orbs in Oakland
My studio in Oakland was a hot spot for hauntings. I would often sense when spirits would drop in. This is a photo (2010) of one my ghostly visitors.
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.
Found notes
This note is not dated. Possibly an attempt to time travel. Not sure where the quote came from, but good advice nonetheless.
Dear Claudia of early ‘03 — you will get your heart broken a bunch of times more.
____________
“You should be cooking on all 4 burners.”
Sensory Bathing and Sensory Deprivation
I tried to meditate but it turned into worship. I say “but” when I should say “and.” I am shifting all of my buts and no’s into yes, and(s), because this is where the magic happens.
“I tried to meditate and it turned into worship.”
I realize now that meditation will become whatever it needs to be: breathing, listening, dancing, prayer, channeling — what ever it needs to be.
Right now, I am balancing practices of going inward for guidance and then immersing myself in the environment around me. Here is a practice of sensory immersion I pulled from Angel Tech: A Modern Shamans Guide to Reality Selection:
Close your eyes. Listen, moment-to-moment, to the sounds of your immediate environment. Listen to how your mind may make sense of the sounds: naming, categorizing and figuring them out. Now, give yourself permission to simply listen to the sounds as different energies. You can do this by not associating meaning to any of these sounds and just let the sounds come sweeping through you as currents of sonic energy. Let these sonic forces have their way and go where they may within, around, under and over you. If they like, let them merge forces with other sounds to produce new levels and overtones of sonic resonance. Your sensory task is this: How much can you give yourself over to this experience and let it envelop and encompass you…until you are at one with the sounds?
Grounding yourself with Sensory Bathing
I sit outside in a sunny spot and close my eyes. I listen to each sound and name it. I hear the wind rustling through trees. I hear various birds chirping — different tones. I hear wind chimes, some high, some low. A car’s motor. Loud, nondescript words. A plane flying overhead. Machinery turned on. My dog panting, then lapping water. A horn honking.
Life expanding and contracting.
My perceptive world is all at once multi-dimensional, and I am a part of it. Small and important at the same time.
I am that child crying out. I am the car speeding toward something. I am the rooster crowing. The urgent horn honking. The wind blowing — just passing through.
Going inward with Sensory Deprivation
I don’t deprive myself of all sounds. I use noise-cancelling earbuds to listen to Solfeggio frequencies and soundscapes that connect me with source energy. I put on my eye mask and I go inward. With every breath in I take in energy from the universe and then I breathe out longer than I take in. Every exhale feels like a gift from within. This is how I connect with the consciousness beyond my identity, my physical body and this reality.
Not here. Not the sounds on Earth. No light from this planet leaks through my eye mask.
I go inward — but outside of space and time. It’s dark, and sometimes there are visions, or hallucinations, or imagination — whatever you want to call it.
The things that I see are for me to interpret. And words are spoken — sometimes they make no sound, sometimes I repeat them aloud — messages about me or loved ones or whoever pops into my circle from time to time. In these short moments, I become privy to some arcane knowledge about how the universe works.
I understand how going inward can become addictive. The chasing of enlightenment.
Which is why sensory bathing is needed for grounding yourself. Use whatever methods you need for balance.
High school wisdom
Here are scanned pages from my high school notebook where I collected what I considered to be sage advice and quotes.
A lot of these quotes, which now seem banal, really helped me survive the discomfort of high school and bullies and a broken heart.
Here are the quotes that still resonate with me twenty years later:
“Be tough in the way a blade of grass is: rooted, willing to lean, and at peace with what is around it.” — Natalie Goldberg
"Do you imagine the universe is agitated? Go into the desert at night and look at the stars. This practice should answer the question. The superior person settles her mind as the universe settles the stars in the sky. By connecting her mind with the subtle origin, she calms it. Once calmed, it naturally expands, and ultimately her mind becomes as vast and immeasurable as the night sky.” — Lao Tzu (apparently refuted)
“The greatest unexplored territory is the space between our ears.” — unknown (to me)