Sequoia 5

Dear Sequoia, they say it's the darkest before the dawn.  I think that is meant to give us hope in the most bleak of moments...and...I also hope that it also is just true.  Let the madness give way to the sunshine.  Let the intensity give way to the play.  

I was thinking about you today, and I thought about you yesterday as well.  I was watching a man hold his daughter and I felt into what he must be feeling, and it made me laugh.  What a crazy feeling it is to feel that kind of love and devotion.  This little girl was ready for anything, ready to take on life and show us the way.  I feel like that's how it is right now, I look to you for guidance. You are the the beacon in the distance.  I look towards you and feel grounded, you ground me.

I am about to graduate from graduate school, my life is in huge transition.  I don't know that my life has ever not been in transition.  It seems like everything I do is leading me radically to the next thing, only this time i can't imagine what is coming next.  Life is a wonderous unfolding of the most random of events, you just never know what you're going to get, who you're going to become.  I wonder what kind of world I'm creating for you....i mean the world at large, the world you will live in, but I also mean the world in me.  I hope I am becoming the kind of man that can be the kind of father that will give you the kind of life that you want to live.

I can hear you laughing at me.  You're wondering why I'm being so pedestrian about how i see life and children and parents when you know I don't actually see it that way.  I don't know.  Because...sometimes the traditional roots me enough to make the practical happen.  If i didn't root into any tradition I might just float away like embers.  But I know that you are coming with an agenda, like we all do.  I know you are going to be on the earth in the way you need to be.  I know that my role will be to not get in your way and support you in every way I can as you explore and unfold.

I have learned a lot about the journey of being human, and I so hope it will be useful to someone.  Every step I've walked has mattered.  Every minute I've wasted was worth wasting...because in truth, it has all mattered.

I don't know where your Mom is right now.  I will be seeing her tomorrow, she is coming for my graduation but she is on another planet...unreachable to me.  Please send her love and light, support and inspiration, kindness and generosity, openness and a desire to use it.  She needs you.  She doesn't know you like I know you, but she needs you more than she knows.

Okay beautiful girl, I have to go to bed.  Whatever comet you're riding on, be safe, be free, be wild, and come to me when you're ready....and when I'm most ready for you.

all my love,

mikey

Surrender

Life and love, play and work, passion and talent, simplicity and complexity, large goals and small achievements....what happens when you come to a place in your life when it all just opens up?  i mean what do I do when suddenly the path is completely open.  What has needed to be done is done, what has needed preparation has had it.  The ground is set to step in any direction.

I was thinking the other day about how we are not actually free beings.  We are born onto the earth and are hopefully told that we can be whatever we want to be when we grow up.  But that's just not the way it is, because it's not the way of 'things'.  While we may not be determined, we are specific.  Have you ever looked more deeply into your astrology?  Pick up an astrology book and read through all the signs of the Zodiac, there will be one or two of you that will feel like they are describing your personal autobiography.  There may be one or two others that you kind of resonate with if you're a open person, and the rest of them will feel foreign.  This is because we aren't, and cannot be all things in the human form.

We incarnate not to be all things.  In the world of god and light, angel and spirit, soul and cosmos, all things are One, probably in the most literal sense of the word.   There is probably the feeling of the most profound interrelatedness even amidst our also present individuality.  Here, individuality is why we're here.  We are here to have certain experiences the soul is longing to have to evolve as a spirit being....which all of us are.  Our 'choices' then are not limitless, we cannot be whatever we want to be when we grow up, we are actually drawing from a relatively small pool of available reality when we make the choices we make.  the rest of it doesn't interest us.

This is good! Feel into this for a moment.  What if it were true that literally everything interested you and everything were equally available for your to pursue via your talents, passion, and interest.  How would you ever make a decision in which direction to go?  The inherent limitations that your soul gives you is actually freedom designed to give you peak experiences in what is really a very short life.

So what happens when you have harnassed, cultivated, pursued, broke down, tuned up, prepared the parts of you that are yours in this lifetime?  So, what i mean is, there is a whole lot of YOU ready to take a next step but the path still isn't clear because now there is an ease about how you feel about 'what you want to do' and you're just kind of open?

For me this is where the rubber meets the road, this is where it really gets interesting in terms of cosmos meeting incarnate.  This is the time when, i think, it takes the most spiritual presence and listening that you have ever mustered in any of your explorations.  Because, in a way, it doesn't matter what you do.  You've been prepared to do whatever it is you're meant-to-do and it's time to make yourself available to just do it.  'Meant to do', for the record, is not an easy concept for me to accept.  I don't like the idea of meant-to-do because it rigidly implies that we are not the captains of our own ships....not really.  It implies that we are fulfilling some kind of an agenda of someone/something else.

That is one valid way of seeing it.

Feeling into it another way though, if we are souls playing around in the Oneness, and we do incarnate for the sake of furthering our spiritual beingness, and our 'choices' are limited because we are coming here to experience certain things during this particular incarnation, then why wouldn't it be that we are meant to be doing something? Meant to be, in that sense, then is the culmination of why we came here in the first place.  So while it doesn't feel like it is entirely 'our' choice from the mortal perspective, from the perspective of the spiritual Self, from the soul level apriori incarnation, it makes perfect sense.  Who we are did not begin here in the flesh.  Who we are, was, before we were born, at the behest of who we Are in the realm of soul and spirit.

What you are meant to do is complete what you started long before you came here.  No one was 'meant' to work at Walmart.  Walmart or the post office or thousands of jobs that people show up at to make money to afford to life or raise their family or whatever.  The circumstances of their lives are meant to provide the platform to connect them to the Self they are in the heavens.  And this is where choice is radical:  you have to do your work.  In this lifetime, you have to do your radical preparation/exploration work in order to get to the meant to place.

So what do you do when you come to the place of having it all laid before you?  how do you next choose?  it seems like the choices have come to a kind of cadence?  this is where you call upon yourself as Spirit in the most profound and direct way you maybe ever have before.  Maybe it's time for you to meet your spirit self, and let yourself be lovingly guided to whatever it is you're meant to do.  Because you're right, it doesn't matter what you 'do' from the perspective of how your mortal self feels about it.  at this point, you are beyond the need for that kind of satisfaction.  the choice you have to make isn't a choice to be made from the mortal level, because you have in a very real sense merged with your spirit self, and it's only your spirit self who has the grand picture of YOU, and what you're up to in this incarnation clearly in its sites.

This is a new kind of trust, a new kind of leap, and the next step for you.  Feel into the radical spirit being you are, and let your future emerge from it.  There is no going back, i'm sorry to say.  That's just the truth.  And you wouldn't want to knowing everything you now know.  Yes this place you're in is uncomfortable, and somewhat frightening, but aren't all places of real growth kind of unsettling?  we get very used to who we are as whatever beings we've come to see ourselves as.  To let that go for what might be emerging, is quite a gesture of love, surrender and trust to greater picture of all that is, evolution itself, the destiny of life, and how your little role in it makes a profound difference.

Dear Sequoia 4

Dear Sequoia,

It makes me happy just to write to you.  To think about you, to write to you, to imagine you.  I wonder what it will be like when you read these letters?  i wonder if you will know the journey your Mom and I went on to come to you?  It is the most important thing i've done in my life....this journey to you.  In making the journey to you, I am making a radical journey to me.

I am in San Francisco right now, finishing up my last month of graduate school. I'm getting my masters degress in Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness.  I wonder if you'll be interested in this kind of stuff on day?  The Universe, Creation, Cosmic play, great thinkers who have tried for thousands of years to understand the nature of reality.  We try to answer the big questions, about purpose and meaning.  

But you know what?  it's funny, since you came into my life, those questions matter less.  My whole i have been interested in those kinds of questions and I think I always will be.  But you know what else?  What i've also noticed my whole life is that at the end of each day, what matters most is Love.  It's funny writing this to you because I don't know what it will sound like when you read it one day.  What will it sounds like.  Love.  The importance of Love.  Will it mean something?

As much as I love what i'm studying, as much as I love traveling around the world, and playing, and as much as I love the adventure, i love Love more.  i love your mom more than I can express to you.  And it is our love for one another that is bringing you here to us.  Isn't that amazing?  We are drawing you forth right now by our loving each other.

Your Mom is in our home in Los Angeles right now, we are still taking space from one another. But I want you to know I saw her last week and when I did she said 'i was in the bathroom the other day and i looked up at the painting on the wall that you and i painted and i felt how perfect that painting is going look in CeCe's room.'  Your Mom calls you CeCe.  Although I don't know how we're going to spell it yet.  But I just wanted you to know she's thinking about you, she loves you so much, and just like me she can't wait for you to be here.

Love, Sequoia.  I hope I can teach you that.  I hope your life teaches you that and I hope your Mom and I always put love first....love for one another, for our friends and family, for you, and for the Earth.  Love really is the only thing that creates lasting change and healing, the only thing that can radically transform, empower, melt, and inspire.  Just the thought of you inspires me.  I am sending you love across time, across dimensions, across probabilitites, across the universe to where you're waiting for us.

i love you CeCe!

me

Heart Wins.

I still think of you, relative to everything.  I don't know why.  It can't be love.  Love isn't present enough, not in anything besides the fantasy anyway.  The fantasy is strong, oh so strong; soul-cripplingly strong; stop me in my tracks and thrown my life into a tailspin strong.  What is the love then?  is it love?  Can it be that I just don't want to loose?  loose you?  or just loose?  how can it be love if the love isn't returned, if we're standing on unkindness and untruth?  how can it then be love?

Does love require maturity to be real love?  If it does, then what is it before it's mature?  not real?  tell that to a kid in high school who has his heart broken for the first time.  Tell him that his love isn't real because he's not mature enough to experience real love.  Maybe it's not about maturity, maybe it's just about one person, and another person, and their ability to see one another instead of just seeing themselves.

What hasn't been said about love?  what hasn't been felt?  what hasn't been described because it's always been indescribeable, just out of reach of words or even music.  I don't know now, the decisions of my head, if they should be trusted over the feelings of my heart.  my heart doesn't censor, my heart just IS, fully and beautifully, in this dance of life.  It tells me what it feels, and because of the nature of MY heart, the very lucky nature of my heart, it will always make room for the goodness, and let the badness melt away, slip away, slip into the background as if it never happened at all.  But that isn't happiness.  That isn't happy.  What is it?  It's a way of feeling deeply the truth of the heart while not acknowledging the truth of life.  We don't, can't, live on heart alone.  That isn't the experience of life.  It's not what life IS.  we ARE heart.  But we are also Mind, and Spirit, and Soul.  We are also a composite of our collected experience in this lifetime and others, and all of this matters when we make choices about how to live.

I LIVE.  it's true, i so passionately live, so deeply and boldly live, and  feel my heart beating and being torn apart and then soaring, and then being crushed and wrenched, and then being saved and held and loved by strangers.  but not by you.  and it doesn't matter if it's by you, because you always win.  you will always win....because that what my heart says should happen.  It says that you should always win, and so you do.  will i then be forever unhappy?  or will everything change one day?  Am I betting everything on one game?  or am i learning from this one game in which I am betting everything, how to LIVE?  I may loose it all.  And I may win it all right back, in the most miraculous of transformations.  What am i willing to risk?  I suppose everything?  right?  what else would be the point of being alive?

I look so forward to playing in consciousness.  but will the game be as alive?  this is alive what i'm doing now, and more uncertain than anything i could have bargained for, but it's without joy.  I never wanted....this.  not like this.  so why do I stay playing this kind of game if it's not what i wanted, and it's not what i want, and i know it so clearly?  because, love wins.  the heart, wins.  love will always win.  the heart will always have the final say....until i have learned that true integration is not just with another person to form a healthy partnership, but true integration is with the Self.  all parts of me, all the time.  what will be given up meanwhile, will be so many things i don't want to give up.  but what i will gain, will be numinous, electrifying, because it will be the purest the universe has to offer because everything else will have been turned away.  now it's just me and the universe.

Still though, now, and always, magic is possible too.  What magic can happen must be given space to happen in.  time and space, patience and trust.  magic can, will, does, show up and transform, it is the way of things.  great leaps for unknown reasons.  Yes, it happens, yes it's real, yes.

Yes....and.

Dear Sequoia 3

Dear Sequoia,

Your Mom and I haven't spoken in three weeks.  I can't tell you how strange it is.  I received a painting from her though, and it's dedicated to you.  She sends me paintings to let me know I am still in her heart, while she takes this break, but she wants to remind me of her and of you in the paintings she sends me.  Isn't that beautiful?  you are going to love her.

She loves you so much.  You can't know right now how much she loves you, but if you could, you would be overwhelmed.  What she is doing right now, in being apart from me, she is doing for you.  She is becoming her Self. She is living in the world of mystery and uncertainty.  She is risking everything, in a way, because she really doesn't know if I'm going to be waiting for her when she's done.  And by risking me, she's risking you.  But she's doing it because she loves you so deeply.  She knows she needs to become the person she needs to become, and the person you need her to become in order to be your Mom, and she can only do it through these fires and trials of life she's taking on.  Isn't that amazing?

I think of her all day long....and the days are long while we're apart.  But what i see when I think of her is a being so courageous, so full of heart and adventure, that getting to be born to her you are going to come into a life that is going to blow you away.  I think of you every day my sweet baby.  I can almost smell your skin, like I can smell your mom's.  your brightness is blinding, and I have no idea how to express to the universe my gratitude for you.  You are the greatest gift of my life.

love,

me

Love, Lost, or Not At All

Is it better to have loved and lost, than to not have loved at all?  that comes from a poem written in 1850.  well, it's kind of sentimental Hallmark-y, here in 2009, in our age of new-cynicism and reality TV.  But I bring the question up because I just kind of said something similiar out loud, randomly, in reference to my partner, who is apart from me, on her journey, doing whatever she's doing, somewhere in the world without me.  I just sent her a text and told her 'I wish I could hug your heart tonight.'  And I probably won't get a response from her....because she's on her journey....and that might sting....and no matter how I show-up....we might not end up together....but....the thing is....I LOVE.  I love.  Love is a choice, and I choose to love.

It's hard to articulate this.....because it's so....seemingly doormat-y.  It gives her, or anyone else who might attempt this path, room to be whatever kind of asshole they want to be.  I don't know what to say other than....there is some kind of wisdom, some kind of gift, some kind of strength and courage in giving someone ultimate space.  There is nothing easy about it....although...I suspect that it may get easy after doing it for a time.  you just keep on keeping on with the love and space and allowance.  You keep on keeping on while checking in with yourself to make sure you are not selling your soul down the river meantime.

I have sold my soul down the river.  I have done the sacrificing thing while paying the price of spirit stripping, eye sucking, expectation of some kind of return.  The 'trick' is, if it can be called a trick, is to find the space in yourself where what you're doing, you're doing because you you believe it is a way of being in the worthy of scrutiny, a way of being that will stand the test of time, a way of being that is based on the higher good and the greatever evolution of everyone involved....no matter how crazy it seems.

Everyone wants to tell you to get out, you don't deserve this, you are a great person and should be loved, lots of stuff that has to do with what's yours and what's coming to you.  But what is YOUR life based on?  what do you want to communicate through your spirit to the rest of the world?  the doormat thing is not not-real.  There is a point where we can recognize a loosing battle or that we are being taken advantage of....BUT....there is all kinds of space before then where your partner can unfold in a very fucking difficult reality that even THEY can't articulate as they're trying to go through it.  There is space you can hold, there are choices you can make that are life enhancing.  You can hold them in a greater idea of what they may become in their exploration than you currently what to hold them in.

Why?

Because.  At the end of the day....no matter HOW you slice it....what it comes down to...in the ideal version of life and love is....what Jesus or any of the great teachers would have done....Allow and Love.  The thing about allowing in loving is that you have to find a space in yourself that actually let's you do.  So you can't 'do it' AND at the same time be resenting doing it.  It actually has to be there fully, with full resonance, so you can fully participate.  This come from seeing the world, reality, life, spirit presence, with such a wide angle lens, with such vision, that the small machinations of someone's 'actions' don't effect the way of spirit, the way of the warrior.  you are choosing this because no one else is choosing it.  it is a gift beyond measure, to yourself and to the person on the other end other end of the receiving....and the example it is to everyone around you.

But you do it because you believe it...because you CAN do it.  it's like playing the violin or painting, you do it because it's your gift and you're meant to use it.  I wish the best for you, i hope it all goes your way at the end of the day and your investments pay off, and your journey is colored with great love and shiny life and beautiful people from these high, high, choices you're making.  That may or may not be so.  I wish it so for you, and give the universe gratitude in advance that it works out that way.  But if it doesn't, the path that you choose is as vital as it is no matter what.  Nelson Mandela was in jail for 27 years before he became the president of south africa.  that time....what probably more than a quarter of his life.  Was it a waste?  did it pay off because he became president?

l love because I love.  I choose to love because my love follows where my heart leads and my Self chooses to go.  I love her because i do.  I want her because I'm meant to.  I show up because my greatest challenges come in her eyes.  I am allowed this lifetime because we're meant to do this dance, and I see that, i feel that, and I want that, no matter what.  so of course i give her everything, of course I offer her years, of course I offer her the more raw and barest parts of myself.  Of course i will hang, and dangle, and swing, as she uncovers the language of her soul for the first time.  Of course I will.  Why wouldn't I?  is there anywhere more interesting in the world to be?  maybe, but i only have eyes for her...because I am looking with the eyes of my heart...and what they see is the unfolding cosmos, wrapped up in the pink and black and white of perfection.

Scalding Sidewalk in New Jersey

Right.  okay.   I always forget how hard the first week is without her.  it's with drawl, like from some kind of serious drug.  she is crystal meth maybe, and I can't help but feel the pain as her smell fades from my room, as the feel of her cheek in my hand becomes slightly less visceral, as our energies separate.  and since I can't have my meth, I have tequila.  don't know which one is worse....or better.  it's a funny thing to be in love with someone...to feel that sense of addiction to them....to want what you want FROM them....instead of just being WITH them.  that's why situations like these are invaluable, they are so instructive because they keep the dynamic REAL.  

I mean to say that because of this situation I am kept real.  I am not allowed to fool myself into believing that I am just easefully in love.  No, I'm not.  I am in love for sure, but I am also attached, I am also addicted to 'getting' something from her that i 'need.'  Is this co-dependence? Co-dependence smacks of desperation, it heralds in the devouring sense of my-life-makes-no-sense-without-this-person;  And while from an esoteric point of view that's true, she and I have always had our own lives, experiencing reality in separate ways, and include each other only some of the time.  I THINK in the face of loosing each other...we have become MORE co-dependent....in the sense that dependence is somewhat hinged on desire.  We WANT to be together, so there is a dependence on taking care of the 'us' while the 'I's' are doing what they need to do.  It is a kind of protection, knowing that life does/is/tries to always give us more.  MORE is often misleading, and when you know what you want you just don't want to be mislead...at least not hopelessly so.   Loosing her, loosing us, loosing our life together....I don't fear that anymore.  I do get caught up in what life can do, will do, must do at times.  Even still, I think we're going to wind up together, make it through this.  But what comes up for me now is how?

I'm not really asking 'how'.  There's no way to imagine how the universe will work it out...it will be astonishing, I get that.  So what I mean by how is, how am I going to BE/LIVE/DO my life in the next year while all of this unfolds.  Not having the drug will get easier, it always does after we're apart for a while.  But....the deeper feeling there is how will i live into me....when 'I' stand still, still wanting to be with her while she's journeying? 

 What does sadness speak?  the yearning of a pure heart?  the wail of an unrequited clarity?  or is 'sadness' a default more reaction to not getting what I want?  As deeply as I feel for her, there is also a sense that all my sadness is unnecessary and could in fact be its opposite.  Allowing is giving.  To love is to free.  To let go is to evolve.  All of these are causes for celebration not sadness.  No love is lost in the process, in fact more is born through the act of self-less beingness.  'Self-less' not in the martyr paradigm but in the sense that the self is not making the choices here, rather the Self is.  The 'S'elf is actually self-LESS because the Self holds big picture vision and chooses from the greater love and experience of Oneness than the 's'elf is able to conceive or hold.

My heart breaks at the idea of loosing my baby and soars at the idea of my baby gaining herself...everyday a step closer to the possible reality we might share.  but even if we don't, she still gains herself and flies in the face of traditional world values by the very nature of her courageous journey, and my joy is living the edge with her, if i can just find the joy in it.

LIFE is PARADOX.  The MIND is NOT the HEART.  The EGO is NOT the SPIRIT.  Mind and Ego hold tight to patterns and wishes and it takes concentration and deep desire for life to LIVE IN US differently than those forces allow.  HEART and SPIRIT will give and allow and free and celebrate.  Mind and Ego will demand, deserve, and entitle, and 'make sense' of the situation.  And so this journey of heart and spirit is solo and audacious, without acknowledgment and maybe too without reward or practical fulfillment, rather the fulfillment may be in some kind of progression playing out years or decades or lifetimes from now.  that's why finding the JOY in my choices (sinking in to heart and spirit) has to be the reward in itself, somehow knowing that eliciting a greater sense of beingness is where we want to go as individuals and as a culture.  Love isn't love.  Love is LOVE.

God, I love being in love.  I resent my dysfunction and non-clarity around it.  But even when it's not clear it's still GREAT.  can you imagine what it would be like in all it's true depth and clarity?  i barely can.  I don't know if I've ever experienced it.  But I'm here for it now, stripping my layers and laying naked on the scalding sidewalk in July in New Jersey, having the cosmos bake it out of me...all of it....all that needs to go in order to make room for what the transformation is offering to bring in.

Dear Sequoia 2

Dear Sequoia,

I had a crazy thought about you today, about us. I dreamed, day dreamed, that you were taking me on a tour of a day in your life. You were in school, I think grad. school, and your were running me down the street up to the door of your school where you couldn't wait to show me what you've been up to.

You have long dark brown hair, not as black as your Mom's but a lot darker than mine. It's funny, I can see your spirit much more clearly than I can see your face. You are so bright. I hope you got the best of me and the best of your Mom. I hope my weaknesses aren't too much of a burden on you as you grow and turn into the extraordinary woman I see in front of me. I could not possibly be more proud of you, more curious about you, more in love with the life that you are carving out for yourself because I can see how much YOU love it.

We haven't seen each other in a while. Your Mom and I live somewhere else from where you're going to school. And I get the sense that she's not in town with us right now...I came to visit you on my own. I get the sense that these are are magical times for us, somehow recharging and healing for both of us.

Be patient as your Mom and I work things out to eventually come together to invite you here. Know that I hold you in my heart, and love you more than I can express.

Love Wins.

i haven't written in a long time, i know, almost a month. Sometimes I dont' write when life is too busy taking my attention. Although I have written in other places, not the blog. i'm still getting used to being this publicly open....not that anyone is even reading this. Also, I go through periods where what I have to say is more in process than it is in practice. Like I can describe a practice of Unconditional Love, holding space for my partner while she's in New Orleans with her lover. That is a practice.

She came home by the way, and when she did she was full. She had an amazing experience, synchronisitic experience, play and wonder, exuberance, challenge. And when she came to me she was still clear that she wants to spend her life with me. She still wants us to have a 'break' from one another but in the end find each other again. So we're figuring out the details of how this can work for us. I have no idea. We are taking it day to day. Today is not a particularly good day, I woke up missing her and it's noon and I am still missing her. Mornings are the hardest, usually the light of day warms everything up. Today I just miss her and I can't imagine how I'm going to spend the next few years 'without' her.

I am actively inviting adventure back into my life. I have asked the Universe to present the people, experiences, and joyful challenges that will bring me back into a sense of myself and my journey, rather than my journey revolving around her. One of the difficulties I've been dealing with is WANTING my journey to revolve around her and NOT inviting the Universe to present new breath into my life. So this is a step for me. Feeling into how to hold her close while also letting my life open up again, is new territory. But i feel like it's also necessary if we're going to make it through this.

It's so strange from this end, having a kind of knowing that we will be on the other side of this one day while LOOKING AT IT FROM HERE and having no idea how it could be possible. She has such a distance to go to find her way back to me. The things I need to do I can probably do with or without her. I don't know actually, I haven't let go enough to feel into that. But seeing it from the other side, what a journey we will have been on together, what a distance we will have come, what a foundation of trust we will be standing on. And it's helpful to feel into that because it helps me HERE release into the creation of, creative process of, the unfolding future. Holding that vision in mind, of the three of us, she, me, and our daughter, it's almost shocking in its clarity. By visualizing that, i am connected to it...like, directly. And it eases the confusion, frustration, and occassional hopeless feeling of the current moments of transition.

The questioning that is caused in me is good questioning....and I'm sure the same kinds of questioning that she is going through. The pro's and con's of each other, timing, life path, are any of the con's too immense for me to really want for the rest of my life. Is any of this fantasy rather than what I really want? These are crucial questions for anyone on the path. Can my partner, will my partner, enhance my journey or detract from it. Do we bring out the best in each other on a daily basis? Am i willing to allow the Universe to bring in the 'righter' person if she isn't it? or will I hold on because I KNOW best what is right for me? How much, how hard, how long, will i fight for her? Is fighting antithetical to the spiritual path of cosmic unfoldment of journey and purpose relative to everything else that is also unfolding in the universe? How come I am willing to let almost anything else in my life 'go' in favor of the greater journey but not my love? not my relationship? If it's because love is RARE, and the MOST important thing to me in this incarnation, is that a good enough reason? or should I STILL defer to the Universe. What does co-creation end and ego begin?

Should I just step away until all these questions don't need to be asked and the energetic is just clear because it IS.

I've known for a long time that love isn't enough, but I didn't know what was enough. What it seems to be is a combination of radical allowance, radical letting go, and radical centering of Self...in the midst of a great love that consistently offers itself. If all of those qualities can be present, and if it can be mutual, and if can sustain itself in the uncertain dynamic of the presence of all of those for as long as it needs to, then 'love' wins. And you will have a greater love than you ever imagined in the beginning. Your hurting heart, your bruised ego, your parenthetical thoughts about the welcoming of death, will have long evapoarted because you will have moved to a new plane of connection with a human being. But you DO have to take that leap, if that's what's being asked of you. AND maybe it is radically relevant to your purpose on the planet to have such a profound connection with your partner. IT'S NOT FOR EVERYONE. but if it is what's presenting for you....then maybe it's important for you.

What have I written so far? i dont' go back and read it. This is a radical path. I know it's something about that. Radical trust, radical allowance, radical radical radical. Get out of the ego and into the cosmos. You're not crazy, you're living, you're really alive.

Why I Keep Coming Back

The reason why I keep coming back for more, keep coming back to get kick in the balls one more time, is because I want to be the kind of person who is okay with what's going on.  I want to be the kind of person who really appreciates the moment, who can really be with what shows up.   I get to spend this weekend with her, then next week in New Orleans he gets to spend the week with her, and then the week after that I get to see her again. And that's...it.   It's kind of amazing to think about....being that calm.  Seeing it from her perspective, this weekend she gets to spend the weekend with me, and then next week she gets to spend the weekend with him, and the week after that she gets to spend the weekend with me.  What a wonderful life, if we can really see it like that.  Being that calm, that noiseless, that free, just being with what IS. There is such a beauty in embracing life from that place, loving with all my heart, supporting with little effort but with all my strength and presence, and being blissfully, joyfully, on my own journey.

Things are happening around me, and they are okay too.  This is different than a meditative state of beingness, it is an active, deeply, accepting and sharing and allowing, and surrendering to what spirit is bringing state.  THAT IS THE KIND OF PERSON I WANT TO BE.  And she keeps providing me opportunities to be that person.  And I keep wanting to step into those shoes.  I really, really, want to be that person in this crazy, beautiful world, and live in such a huge expression of love and acceptance.  And so I keep showing up to what she presents because I need the craziness of it to stretch me.  But how can I grow from it??  like.... hoooooowwww?  Will IT grow ME?  How will I even possibly grown in it if I DON'T attempt to practice it?  If I can't 'choose' how to grow in it, will whatever IT is eventually break me down or build me up or turn me over or do whatever it needs to do so I expand and become the person I want to be?  Is it just a mental flip switch or do some parts of my heart and soul need to be rewired?  How can I re-wire them without maybe shocking them out of the place they were in in the first place?

I want to really love this weekend with her, because it is the beautiful moment of now, and she loves me and is with me.  And when she's not, she's out in LIFE doing and loving her Self.  How right that is, right now.  For her, for us.  My claim is to me, and me alone.  IF I cannot love her always and forever and also let her go, then do I really deserve her?  What kind of partner would i be if I speak of freedom, radical expression, living on the edges of ourselves, to the fullest, and yet somehow have restrictions on my partner?  How do  I make myself big enough to FEEL all of this to be true?  Because these are mostly just words.  Even if I totally feel them fully right now.  I feel so because I am in a moment of great clarity.  If moments of great clarity resonate at a 10, then my normal state is probably around a 7.  How do I live the energetic of a decision I make when I am feeling 10, in my 'normal' or regular state of 7?  Can I possibly shift enough that one day the shift will become permanent?  I've seen many kinds of love in the world, practiced many kinds of love myself.  Can I be open to this one?  Can I just be full and grateful with what IS?

Dear Sequoia One

Dear Sequoia, I try not to picture you to often.  You are intoxicating into total distraction.  I could sit with you for hours and just stare at your beautiful eyes and perfect face.  Each line and ridge and expression, I recognize.  But what really overwhelms me is the sparkle between us, the shimmering knowing.  Oh, how I can't wait to hold you again.  Sometimes it's just too much to feel you, too wonderful, too perfect, too much to believe is possible.  Is it possible?  Are you waiting? Are you coming?  I know time might not mean everything, but with you on the horizon oh how i wish for time to wind its magic boldly, and quickly smooth out whatever rough edges need tending so you can come.  Just know how much love and true knowingness is waiting for you.  And I will be brave for you, strong for you, keep faith, and keep trust even when it seems impossible.  Because you know what dear Sequoia?  Nothing is impossible, not in this beautiful world and perfect Universe.  We are always becoming, and therefore infinitely possible.  I love you impossibly.  

yours,

me

Choice

Dearest, hi, I hope you're doing well holding all of this, it's a lot you're experiencing right now.  I can't tell you how much what you're going through resonates with me, and with situations I've been in....almost exactly.  It's a strange thing to be in love with two people at one, it's quite an exploration of Self, and the nature and meaning of love.  

We are expansive beings, the heart is capable of loving more than one person at once no doubt.  We are beautifully transpersonal and more complex and mysterious than our conscious minds will ever really understand.  But one thing I've realized as I work through this, in my experience because love is limitless, because we are infinite beings, because we are capable of such inclusion, 'choice' then is the Matrix upon which our lives ACTUALLY stand.  

Choice is everything.  The experiencing of being in love with two (or more) people at once is an experience.  It's meant to inform, guide, deepen, strengthen, but I don't think it's meant to be sustained indefinitely.  Again, this is my experience of it.  But in my experience, it's an incredible journey of the confusion and wisdom of the heart.  What is even more powerful though, is to choose.  How do you choose when the heart is pulling you in different directions?

The 'choice' isn't meant to be made with just the heart.  It's not meant to be made with your head either, in the way that your mind might say 'well, this is better for my kids, or my future, or whatever'  The choice is meant to be made with your entire beingness.  Choosing, or allowing yourself a particular direction, allows life to spring forth in a spectacular and specific way, in a way that you can't even see yet because you haven't made the choice.  

The sustaining of multiple worlds is an exploration, not a committment.  It's adventure of the unknown, into very true, very real, very deep lands that a wild open heart NEES to explore.  But true knowledge, true intimacy with your soul, comes from limiting ones options by making a choice.  

Whatever you think you're giving up, what you gain from this kind of 'sacrifice' is infinitely more valuable, beauitful, and transformative because it has the power of your humanity, your free will behind it.  It is a Conscious Creation, it is throwing your faith and trust into an infinitely benevolent Universe, one you believe is listening.  And the thing about choice is, you can always choose again.  You will always choose again.  And the more complex you allow your life to be the more interesting and challenging the choices become.  

Love is infinite, soul is infinite, who we are around these explorations is everything.  Every choice determines who we are, who we want to be in the world.  Choose consciously, inclusively, with deep heart and soul wisdom.  Be willing to give something up, you will be astonished by what you're given in return.

Walking The Edge

Not one bit of me was satisfied that I made you upset. I think I am just really sensitive right now....not because of Ex-girlfriend situation...because of my LIFE transition....into putting my Self at the center of my life and not being treated poorly by people I get involved with...and that includes friends and lovers and partners. i make some weird choices of people I get involved with ESPECIALLY with people I date. it's kind of a ridiculous pattern and it's a long time coming in me choosing to break it....in many ways. She is the catalyst that really is helping me to see that (through no conscious direction of her own of course). But by her disregard and indifference.

I also have ridiculous expectations of the people in my life....honestly...I do. I try and live my life at a high level and i cannot expect other people to make that same attempt, yet I always DO. AND what's even more funny, is I'm NOT GREAT at living my at that level myself! As much as i try, and will continue to try, for the good of all of humanity, and for my own sense of well being, I will continue to try. However, I am moving out of my self-annihilation phase when it comes to relationships/lovers....OF ANY KIND. I am also moving out of my expectation phase of other people to step up.

People have to do what they have to do, be where they are and quite frankly i am tired of having my heart broken, on a big level or on a small daily kind of level. My heart needs to become more generous for the basic fucked-up-ness of humanity. We are basically really fucked up...and I mean people....I mean all people. And San Francisco has really taught me that. And I say that with love, not cynicism. Being human is an enormous responsibility for which we are FAR from being fully equipt. We are floundering, flailing in the wake of our individual lostness…not matter how successful we are, no matter how great our lives are. Just look around your life for the place where it’s most complicated and you’ll see what I mean. ---
I am reevaluating a lot right now. I want to help but I don't know how I want to help. I want to create change while also letting everyone and everything be as it is on it's own evolutionary pace. I want to inspire without being attached. I want to take action without assuming a result. I want to NOT get intimately involved with people, or let people into my inner circle, who will ultimately fuck with heart…because it’s not good for ANYONE. There needs to be a respectful distance kept from certain people and situations. I need to keep them as clients, or projects, or teachers; not as friends, lovers, or partners. Does that make sense? I’m not cutting anyone out really, I’m creating new categories with more strict boundaries I think.

The truth is I am gullible, idealistic, and naive at times. I have very little protection in this area....when it comes to someone being seemingly vulnerable, seemingly loving, seemingly really asking for help or being in ‘willing’ space, I have very little protection to not totally take them in my arms. So I am creating protection through the Gods, asking them to NOT LET THESE PEOPLE INTO MY LIFE. I cannot help these kinds of people and furthermore, it DERAILS ME from helping other people, the people I SHOULD be helping, or be personally invovled with, because I get so emotionally wrapped up in all the drama with these people! Do you know what I mean? --- Anyway, just to be clear, I am NOT saying you are one of these people, far from it. You are one of the most dear, consistent, beautiful people in my life. I think I just misread the situation of the last few days with you because I'm in a really sensitive place.
It feels like my whole life is changing....and in a way IT IS. so I am just kind of looking around....not sure where to find safety or ground of being right now. I DO NOT want to find it in another person, particularly a a woman, a partner, I want to find it in myself and have 'other people' friends, lovers, whoever, there as support. But carefully so. You know, our friend G is really, really careful about letting people into his life. For him to have a 'new friend' is a really big deal. He doesn't let his inner circle or his energetic life be fucked with a whole lot and I really admire that. I've never understood it, and now I do.

There is a way of preserving oneself without protecting oneself or putting up a wall. That’s what I need to work on as well as choosing partners who don’t treat me lake crap in a relationship. Still wondering how/why I allow that...have always allowed it....in every single one of my relationships. It has always been about them, what they want/need/ etc. and I just....well....serve. I guess. I don't know, I don't mean to sound like a martyr, i'm just trying to understand this pattern in me. It wasn't always like that with me and the Ex, she is a deeply loving being, but in a certain way it WAS always like that with her. It was, a lot of the time, all about her. And i let it in the last year go from bad to worse to cruel. I let that happen. I stayed in that energetic. BECAUSE she is so sweet, and is a peacemaker, and we do have this deep soul connection, it was really fucking difficult for me to see the truth of 'us' besides just the good stuff of us.

It has been an epic journey for me to admit this shit and take it on as REAL. Does that make sense? because it changes everything for me, and that kind of change is radically destabilizing, until it can morph into the most profound power....which it hasn't quite done yet. --- Lastly, I am trying something else radical. I am stopping asking the question WHY. I have asked WHY all my life....and more than serve me, it messes with me. There is a certain nature of what it means to be human, what it means to be alive, what it means to be a child of the universe, that forbids the asking of the question WHY. Because the nature of things is change and cataclysm. Things are always breaking apart. And the complex web of all of existence is so intricately intertwined that there is no way to see (and you wouldn’t want to see anyway) how it all works. IT would be like trying to look inside a microchip and see how all the information is processed, or looking at the sun and trying see the all the chemical reactions that make it shine.

We are all one, we are all connected, our reality is all dependent on EVERYTHING IN THE UNIVERSE THAT EXISTS. The WHY is an impossible question, and is crazy making to try to follow it to it's true end....particularly in emotional situations. That's not to say I'm not going to explore myself, go deep, be the ME that I am. but I can really let WHY really disasterously complicate things. Instead, looking into the face of the Cataclysm and saying, ah, yes, this is what IS. This is what's showing up in my life. Great, take me where you mean to take me, I am on board because I am connected to all that is, which is part of what you're bringing me.
The upheaval is finding it's way towards balance, and i'm sorry I hurt you yesterday, I fucking adore you and appreciate you very much. All I can say is I’m walking the edge, and somewhere soon there will be leap.

Does Your Life Have Meaning.

I don't want to argue with you about whether or not your life is meaningful.  You can tell me how crappy it is, how much stupid shit has happened to you, how difficult people are, how much you hate your job, or really just how you can't find meaning.  Your life is still meaningful, you want to know why?  Because you're alive.  You are here and not dead.  It's as simple as that.  incarnating is a big deal.  Staying here, being here, living on this planet is a big deal.  You want to know why?  Because you're alive.  Every thought you have is the part of the matrix of all of being.  This is not hippie dippie bullshit either, it's theoretical science.  The idea is that a thought or thought form is a type of energetic body of it's own.  It takes energy to have thoughts, therefore, a thought itself is a type of energetic body.  Once energy is created it cannot be uncreated.  It can change form, it can manifest into solid structure, it can finally reach a state where it's no longer usable, but it's still energy.  It still exists.  Which means that everything you think is relevant.  How do you take responsibility for such an enormous truth?  I think only very special people can grok the true implications of something like that.   You don't have to try.  All  you have to know is that you are adding to the collective reality just by your being, so your being is so very important.  If you weren't, in a sense, and i don't like using this phrase, but it's kind of true in this special case, 'meant to be here' then you wouldn't be here.  That meant to be is a designation of the co-creative state of the universe and the being that is you.  In other words, you chose to be here, you incarnated, and poof , you are on the planet.  You came here with purpose, and your life and thoughts unfold your purpose, it's just up to you to pay attention.  Your life is very meaningful.  There is great joy in being alive, amidst the chaos, heartache, and everything else.

Follow the Action.

Follow the feeling, your feeling.  Follow the action, their action.  As much as you are loved, as much as your partner tells you they love you and offers dreams of the future, and words with ribbons on them, follow their actions.  It's actually pretty simple.  Where someone puts their action, spends their time, is where their heart really is.  It's not that we're perfect, it's not that we're not going to be self-centered at times, but the larger truth can get obscured behind words.  So gently waiting for someone to invest in you for a minute, a day, or a decision of some kind, is wise.   And if they don't, that's okay too.  You don't have to be mad at them or mad at yourself for spending too much time, but what you do have to look at is how much more time you want to spend in the illusion.  Illusions serve all of us from time to time; dealing with what we're not quite ready to deal with is a big step.  Admitting things we don't want to admit take a kind of courage that's hard to muster.  But I tell you, cataclysm is the language of the universe.  Being confronted with chaos, with the feeling of your life ripping apart is a gift.  Because there is a nugget in the midst of it that is pointing you towards your greatest future.  What you give up now pays off ten fold in what that energetic of surrender will ultimately create.  We need to give each other space to screw up and we need to give ourselves space to know when to step away.  Love isn't love if it's not reflected back in a way that makes you feel good, whole, and acknowledged.  From a friend, a parent or your lover, even from an ex-lover, you can expect more than the time of day without being bogged down by expectations.  There are reasonable expectations.  Wait for an action, be glad to get it, and be humble when you don't.  Say thank you and know either way that your gift has arrived.