I’ve decided to take publicizing and sharing my book, Finding Starlight, into my own hands. It’s a little crazy. Here’s how I explained it on FaceBook:

🖤 I’m about to do something kinda crazy 🖤

My book, “Finding Starlight,” is just about done – final edit in progress. And I’m about to share it with the world, for real.

Do I have an agent? Not yet.

You can find the replay of these videos now here on this website, or on YouTube, or on my FaceBook page. If you like it, please share it – especially with Reese Witherspoon. Thanks 🙂

I see you in the water
I hear you in the sky
and no matter how fast
or far, or high

I run
to forget how to breathe
to feel a different kind of pain
to seek for exhaustion
or silence

trees whisper your name
like an affirmation
or an apology

(the earth herself feels like you) – bb

There is a dichotomy in the center of our souls, and it is perhaps the essence of transcendence versus humanity – as though that battle cry should even be uttered let alone fought.

I always say that I am – we are – here not to transcend our humanity but to transform within it. To embrace that which makes us real and raw, whole and wholly human. We are spirits in human form for a reason, and transcendence is most often not that reason.

Perhaps the times are changing, now that we’re in Ascension, becoming higher dimensional Beings more able to carry light and love, more fully embodied with forgiveness, compassion, and those super cool intuitive and energetic tricks that once only belonged to mystics. Perhaps now we are expected to overcome our humanity in some way; but I would rather believe that we get to take the humanity with us as we rise.

In any case, I digress.

The dichotomy – the battle within us – centers most certainly around love.

Brené Brown says, “We are biologically, cognitively, physically, and spiritually wired to love, be loved, and to belong. When those needs are not met, we don’t function as were meant to be. We break. We fall apart. We numb. We ache … The absence of love and belonging will always lead to suffering.”

And yet, we upon The Spiritual Path are to strive for non-attachment, to anchor our joy, our love, our very essence within ourselves and know that we are whole – alone. Yes, community is great and we are free to connect with and embody love to others . . . but, the always-present Spiritual Truth is pretty staunchly rooted in the belief that we must – and will, upon “doing our work” – find bliss within our very own selves. That is true happiness. True love lives within, already, always present and available if only we seek earnestly and purely.

Unfortunately, in this moment, tonight, I am being called to do a very human thing and disagree with that philosophy. Even though I teach it – and even though I do believe it.

Yes. Bliss, peace, love, wholeness, divinity, and light DO dwell within each of us. We ARE, in fact, whole on our own. Our spirit, which we embody, is overflowing with more love than we could even fathom.

But, my dear loves, we are here in our human bodies, on our very human planet (let’s not delve too deeply into that right now), with a raging dichotomy that is literally screaming out from our heartspace for love and belonging. We are whole and enough on our own . . . but we were never meant to BE on our own, not down here, not like this.

Perhaps the most beautiful part of our humanity is our capacity – and longing – for love. We are able to love, forgive, nurture, connect, embody . . . so, SO deeply.

So deeply do we crave this love that it breaks us when it is denied.

But love is never denied us – it lives within . . .

Yes. Okay. It does. And we can access it, if we look for it and can manage to clear out all the brokenness, pain, lethargy, negative self-talk, and utter despair that inconveniently gets in the way when we are shattered by suffering.

But the fact that heartbreak and a sense of not being loved, or belonging, or connecting, can so shatter us speaks to the depth of our humanity, I think.

In other words, the very fact that our hearts can (and do) break makes us even more human. Which is kind of the point of Spirit wanting to become human in the first place, isn’t it? To grow capacity for love?

I’m writing about a deeply troubling snag in spirituality in a really detached way right now, ironically, in order to think through heartbreak rather than continue to surrender to it.

But that’s the issue, isn’t it? How to detach from attachment in order to surrender to the spirit within when the heart is begging for connection (that feels a whole lot like attachment) and is so deeply nuanced in subtle programming that every cell in the body becomes burdened and blocked by the psychological war of trying to “spiritual” our way through this very “human” thing.

It’s awful. To be honest.

How truly baffling to be so “hard wired” for connection that the very denial of it “breaks” us, and yet experience that while on a path toward “wholeness” that can only be embarked upon “alone” and relies on non-attachment to outcomes, others, or even the idea of wholeness or attachment.

I leave you with this description of the madness that is a certain kind of love:

Loving you was throwing an anchor into a tornado
and expecting not to be broken

Like holding onto the wind
amid a dust storm
in a field of thistles
driven mad by itching
welcoming the taste of blood

Believing a lie
that feels like truth
and, in fact, is true
despite the sentiment of the liar

Walking unarmed into no-mans-land
on the day of surrender
with the terms in hand

Loving you is trusting a dream
that was real
but not yet

_______

…. P.S.
See my video “Connection vs. Attachment” that I made back when I had a bit more reason and a bit less emotion between my shoulders. I do understand that there’s a difference . . . and, yet – hearts break. They were meant to. There is more to this whole thing than what I’ve laid out tonight, but sometimes it’s best to just sit with our questions and be in the humanity of it all. Or so I hear.

Yesterday on the equinox, under the full Aries moon, I awoke from a nightmare just before midnight. I knew it would come … I took precautions, like bandaids, before I fell asleep.

My fear, anger, and hurt had been coming for me for weeks … ever since that last rejection rolled in, I knew. I had let my life’s work turn into my ego, and it housed my hopes and worthiness like a prison as it sat mostly unread in a file no one could see. Writing it was cathartic, passionate, purposeful. Waiting for it to “become” has been torture.

And I am the torturer. With each rejection, I felt my conditioning spark into a negative self talk smolder. Quiet, at first, and a bit philosophical, like a new understanding of poverty mentality or the sensation of lack. Then it grew louder, and began to feel like grief in my chest. And, still, I fed the fire.

“My book is garbage,” I decided.

A friend shook free these embers, combed them out of me like a healer who sees images of shadows upon the wall of a cave. He said if I refused to do this work, to look at my emotions, they would come for me harder and harder … and I knew. I felt it rise up, there at the cafe, and I knew what I had to do.

But I did not do that.

So I awoke more terrified and tired than I have been in many, many years. And there was still time to do the work, to give it up to winter and allow spring to flow – the Aries moon demanded it of me.

“Get up,” I heard, more like a tug than a whisper.

“I can’t move,” I begged, more like a whisper than a sob. “Please, just let me sleep.”

“Do it now.”

Through the paralysis of near-midnight nightmare fear, I crawled. I lit my altar and kneeled before it. The flames were unsteady and insistent, demanding more of me.

“You don’t remember what it’s like to be down here, to be human,” I began as the tears flowed down my face. I poured out my anger at the goddesses, my mistrust of Spirit, and, ultimately, my grief. “I’m scared,” I said, “that I have failed myself.”

When I begged for their compassion, they demanded more. I had to release, to move through the paralysis. I called instead upon my guides, and saw them at the edge of a clearing under the same moon, waiting. I understood they were there but would not come nearer until the goddesses were finished.

Saraswati showed me the way: a chant.

Despite my exhaustion and the late hour, I reached with eyes closed for the sandalwood mala upon my altar, and began.

“Om mani padme hum,” my voice, lower than usual, thick with emotion, declared. I am worthy, I heard like a lie in my head.

One hundred and eight times I chanted these ancient, healing words. Somewhere in my trance, my voice became clear and the weight in my chest broke up – like a spring river remembering its flow. The tears never stopped.

When I was finished, I opened my eyes to steady flames. They accepted my offering, I knew. But, more than that, I felt movement and strength in places that had grown cold and weak. I felt the light creep in.

With gratitude and that shaken uncertainty of one who has just done a crazy thing out of total hysteria, I stood up and walked back to bed. My guides met me there, took up their vigil