A Case for Voting, Even if You’re Too Spiritual

For those who, like me, seek to move beyond the duality illusion, today is powerful. Today, we can participate in a ritual of intention.

Many of us “see through the deception” to the point that we no longer participate in the system: we do not consume mainstream media, we do not own or watch television, we are not part of organized religion or politics, we do not eat from the hand of industrialized agriculture, and we do not love within the confines They have built. We are, in so many ways, free.

But let us not confuse this sovereignty over self with freedom from service to our world and our fellow earthlings. Let us not confuse our often hard-won state of inner peace with an exemption from participation in the community of humanity.

We have chosen to be human, now, for a reason.

We are spiritually compelled to usher in the ascension in whatever way our passion allows. We are called to participate in the healing of our fellow humans, and of our earth, and we are destined to do so in big, big ways.

This calling speaks to the difference between transcendence and transformation. We are not here to transcend. Not anymore. This is the time of transformation!

So use your magic. Use your passion. Be a light IN the world, not shining from far above as though you are already a celestial, unattached, spiritual Being existing somehow above your own humanity, but down here in the body, amongst the masses, lighting up the world you LIVE IN.

Why not vote? Why not use this intensely powerful ritual to INTEND the world you desire to create? I am not suggesting voting for the duality. I am suggesting breaking open the oligarchical farce of duopoly by exercising a “right” that was won by sacrifice, blood, and tears.

How in the world could I believe in the power of the “vote” when it is so clearly, so obviously, a construct to satisfy our illusion of participation (when in fact we are slaves at worst and serfs at best)? Because I believe in the collective consciousness. I believe that participation is required to ascend as a planet and a People. I believe that there is magic in ritual.

So break the duopoly. Vote for literally anyone that you believe aligns with your own personal truth. Vote like that ballot is a magical object imbued with the blood, sweat, tears, and intentions of our ancestors – because it IS. And exercise your voice, impart your will, SET your INTENTION to be FREE. And then cast that spell – whoops, I mean vote – with all the gumption of your fiery spirit.

You wouldn’t let a full moon pass without a little magic. Why waste this day of collective power all tRanSCenDed, like you somehow are above anything or anyone?

Whether you “like it” or not, you’re still in it. We all are! And we rise TOGETHER. Or not at all.

Showing up for Death

We aren’t showing up for life, so death is showing up for us.

It started gradually, when we normalized cancelling plans in favor of solo Netflix nights and the quirky cuteness (?) of voluntary self-isolation. Social media and texting took the place of hangouts and phone calls. We got used to the solitary connection of virtual platforms, and with our pills and our memes convinced ourselves it was preferable.

Then it snowballed, just a little, when we heard there was an impending threat of death, like it came from absolutely nowhere rather than the insidious decay of connection. For some, it was a justification of anxiety and poor health, a chance to be utterly comfortable in the discomfort of dictated necessary isolation. For others, it came as a relief: they were already drowning in busyness, near collapsed from fatigue, hopeless and overworked – and now they would get a break. For many, too many, it was welcomed, this seemingly identifiable enemy of life, this threat of painful, quick, viral death, because it was something we could fight.

And we all knew there would be a fight, someday soon, didn’t we?

So we welcomed it, or we fought it, or we collapsed or relaxed into it, because it was temporary and necessary and, frankly, mandatory. Fourteen days to flatten the curve, and then we’d see. Fourteen days to take a break, let the earth heal, spend time at home with our wine and weed and Netflix.

The snowball turned into an avalanche when righteous compassion was levied against thoughtful contemplation or justifiable outrage. Those who wanted to show up could not. The hush money ran out. The weight of exhaustion, unidentifiable fear, anxiety, and isolation rose up again from the temporary box we’d put it in, stronger now for its fuel.

Death itself became the hungry chaos of nightmares, and we began to embody it on the streets, in our newsfeeds, and with our weapons whatever-they-may-be.

Oh, yes. We showed up for death, didn’t we? En masse, we arrived. Ready to fight for this chaos, this separation, this death.

Two Christian ideas come to mind to help explain what I mean here. The first is an old Jehovah’s Witness adage that hell does not exist; it is simply being imprisoned in the grave, separate from God, for all eternity. The second is that “sin” is simply the turning away from and absence of God’s Love.

And as we showed up for death, so much more visibly and vocally than ever before, with our masks and our riots, our guns and our pontifications, our unfriendings and namecallings and public lynchings both literal and metaphoric – the chaos that is death that is separation rather than Love showed up for us.

We see fires with smoke so thick our masks don’t work. We see mothers drowning in anxiety and the airlessness that arrives when our roles become greater than the bonds of our motherhood. We see the fabric of our society ripped apart by utter commitment to righteousness, and our children suffering behind computer screens and smileless masks and daydrinking and adults glued to social media arguments that aren’t even real and where did playgrounds go and when will they hug their friends and why can’t grandma bake cookies anymore and and and

We stopped showing up for Life.

Like it was easy. Like it was necessary. Like it would … save lives.

And now we try to eat at our favorite restaurant because we cannot bear another round of dishes and the color of our own walls, but the restaurant is mysteriously closed. And we finally decide to get back to yoga, to our practice, and we find that the studio has drowned. Or we reach out to our healers to learn they have vacated our sanctuaries, or drowned – themselves – in empathetic overload. And we see our small businesses and the owners who are our friends drowning, too, and we wonder what will be left when the smoke, both literal and metaphoric, clears.

And it is death we find, wherever we look, instead of life.

This terrifies us, doesn’t it? It makes us want to fight, to stand up and shout or stay home so it finally ends, or to comply so we stop being punished or to hold fast to our rights lest noncompliance become truly more criminal than it already is (and how could that even be, when noncompliance is a death sentence for black men and brown women and the ones in Beirut who were bombed on camera but we believed it was a warehouse of fucking fire crackers like are we blind or do we just NOT CARE) –

Terror fuels death, which is chaos, which is separation from Love.

And the only way to stop it is to show up for life, instead.

I used to have a dream, a recurring dream, as a child. It followed me from bed to bed, from trauma to trauma, from homelessness to addiction to abuse and back around again, wherever I went, this dream. It went like this:

I was so afraid my heartbeats were drums in my ears, so loud in fact each drumbeat heart-thump shook the very earth around me. Consumed with terror, I ran and gasped for air and all around me tornadoes burst into existence. They were horrifying things, consuming everything they touched, the trees I loved and all my safe spaces and maybe even my little sister if I didn’t protect her – so I ran, but every footfall was fuel for the tornadoes, I realized. They grew exponentially with each panicked step I took. Eventually, I knew I had to force myself to stop running and to be as still as I possibly could (which is very difficult for a terrified child to do) (but I am a strong child, so I would do this thing). I stopped, I became still. And the tornadoes would lose some of their size, but each time they moved closer to me or grew a little darker, I could not help but gasp and my heart would pound and this, too, would fuel the funnel. So I learned to slow my breath and calm my heart and . . . . eventually, I found a way to extinguish the onslaught of tornadic fury with my own peaceful stillness – even in the face of my fear.

And, eventually, the dreams ceased their haunting.

What will this avalanche of chaotic separation-death consume? Restaurants, yoga studios, businesses – we can rebuild these. Liberties, laws, jobs – we can remake these. Smiles, memories of grandma’s bosom scent and the way a toddler learns to walk, and what kindergarten can be like and how high can we swing before we flip over the bars, and what it was like before he killed himself and remember when mommy didn’t drink all day or had a job or what it was to have a community . . . perhaps these, like dreams, can recur.

What we show up for comes for us with gusto, I know that much.

Chaos is a hungry beast. Love is a generous God.

From which will we separate, and what are we willing to give to our righteousness to see it through? And who is even asking these questions, and will anyone answer, or are we too attached to our memes and our screens and our weed and wine and what we kNow iS RiGHt?

From where I sit, dreaming yet awake, I see a lot of showing up for death going on, and a lot of tornadoes manifesting with flames and smoke, this time.

But I will always find that peace, and in my stillness – even in the face of fear – I know that the power we have is innate, and is pure, and is waiting behind the chaos. I know what it is to show up for life. And I know love as a result.

Join me, before there is nothing but wasteland filling this space between what was and what can or will be. Join me in connection and presence. Join me in stillness, and notice that connection seeps in when we are here. It just IS. All we need do is allow it.

“The broken year will make no change
Upon her wise and whirling heart; –
She knows how people always plan
To live their lives, and never do.”

– Mary Oliver, from A Letter from Home

It’s the Ascension

The thing about Ascension

– which, by the way, means stepping into a new dimension of humanity … literally being part of a new earth that sparkles with colors we can hardly describe and energy that feels like magic … living in full embodiment of our Gifts, using all our senses, understanding ancient truths and the power of love as an expanded consciousness transcending all the dramas, shadows, and pain we’ve come to think of as “normal,” but which are really just illusions of separation from that very same loving-living consciousness –

The thing about Ascension

is that it comes upon us whether or not we are prepared, or open, or ready. And the less prepared, open, or ready we are, the more scary it feels.

Ascension is the lifting of the Great Veil that separates us from each other, from our own Higher Self, and from the truly IMMENSE capacity for consciousness that is the essence of our humanity.

Ascension is becoming fully spirit WHILE remaining fully human.

Ascension is recognizing that we *are* divinity inhabiting a human body – and realizing that the human body is capable of truly miraculous feats.

Ascension means remembering that we are ALL psychic. We are ALL capable of healing physical, mental, and emotional ailments in ourselves and others. We are ALL capable of – and indeed MADE TO – do amazing things like: transcend hot and cold (think Wim Hof), levitate, live vibrant healthy lives well into our 100’s, manipulate and work with the elements (control fire, wind, water, earth), communicate telepathically, astral travel, have out of body experiences … and more. More that I can’t even describe or imagine!

It is written. Not just by me, today, but since ancient times.

And the time has come. Ascension is upon us.

(But it might feel like you’re coming undone a bit if you haven’t prepared yourself for this. Hell, even if you have been preparing for this for a long, long time – many of us have – it still feels like coming undone.)

How to prepare for and ease your personal Ascension:

Eat clean, high-vibe, healthy, fresh foods.

Drink a TON of room temp water all day.

Like a lot of water.

More than that.

Yeah … a LOT OF WATER!

Meditate every damn day – just try. You’ll get there.

Feel your frickin feelings, all of them, and allow yourself to have them and understand them. They’ll pass through you, and you’ll get stronger … I promise.

Say you’re sorry to those you have hurt, are hurting, and will hurt. Forgive yourself for hurting people. It’s okay. Be gentle.

Forgive those who hurt you, even if they didn’t, or will never, apologize. (Forgiveness means to be free of your anger & resentment, not to suddenly be friends again.)

Drink a ton of water.

Spend a lot of time soaking up sunlight.

Spend a lot of time outside, especially barefoot, especially touching plants and trees.

Interpret your dreams – each symbol means something and it’s a message about how to ease your personal ascension.

Drink a LOT OF WATER.

Signs that you are experiencing Ascension:

You *feel* things differently, like you’re more aware and awake than ever before.

You have and remember vivid dreams.

Sometimes your vision becomes brighter, like you can see light streaks, rainbows, and sparkles out of the corners of your eyes.

You feel psychic in new ways.

You feel connected to the spirit realm, and are having experiences like seeing angels/spirits/ghosts, are getting signs from loved ones who have passed, or sense that your angels/guides/guardians are close at hand.

You crave water and fresh, healthy foods.

You no longer have interest in drama.

You recognize your emotions and move through them more quickly (i.e. you don’t stay mad or sad for as long as before).

Weird synchronicities happen to you all the time! You think of something or someone and BAM! There it/they are!

You need to have a spiritual practice, such as yoga, meditating, divination, gardening, hiking, tai chi, or writing.

Everything feels easier and more okay than before.

You can FEEL the earth in a new way, like a pulse or a buzz of energy when you go outside.

The moon and stars really affect you.

Everyone seems familiar, like you just *know* them somehow.

Lies no longer “work” on you – you see the truth and seek it out in all situations.

Your body feels better, stronger, healthier, and like it heals faster.

Your “old stuff” is all coming up to be healed – this can feel like you’re going insane, or like everything you didn’t want to deal with is suddenly coming for you . . . and it can feel scary and hard! But this is the “sloughing off” of the old to make room for the new. You DO have to deal with your “stuff,” and it will happen very rapidly. But, you’re ascending. So it’s okay.

Signs the Earth is Ascending

Natural disasters are more frequent, cleansing the earth of the damage we’ve done to her . . . this is the earth’s “sloughing off” phase.

People everywhere are “waking up” to higher truths, seeking spirituality and ancient practices, returning to the earth and seeking more simplistic, sustainable lifestyles.

Systems of control are being exposed and collapsing; the old paradigm of “society” in which many suffer so few can rule is no longer viable nor desirable.

Magnetic poles shift.

Water sources return to states of purity and their natural flow.

Protectors of the earth begin to make headway and “win their battles.”

Drastic natural events cause societal structures to pause, stop, or collapse.

Astrological events become common knowledge and are known to affect people.

Astrological events (meteor showers, star and planet alignments, solar flares, etc.) become more frequent and palpable.

Animals unite and behave differently, more compassionately toward each other and with less territorial division.

More people decide to stop eating animals or to eat more plants than animals.

The natural world begins to rebound – wolves return to places they’ve vacated, species flourish that were on the brink of extinction, new species are discovered, chemical farming techniques begin to fail while organic and sustainable methods succeed.

Disclosure has begun – governments admit there are aliens and that we’re in contact with them. People largely accept this as truth and become less afraid of the concept.

People and communities become more sustainable and cooperative on local, small scales without regard for overarching systems of control.

… and there is so much more, but this is plenty to get us started today 🙂

Happy Ascension, y’all. I love ya. So, so much.

You’re doing just fine. This will all be very, very different – very, very soon.

I’m psychic. I should know.

Testing my Faith

Building faith is a trial I didn’t expect. I’ve been called for the past year or so to “have faith.” It’s been spelled out for me so clearly in divination, meditation, energy work, dreams . . . and is certainly not my strong suit. That may sound surprising coming from someone with such a devout practice and whose life is built around spirituality. But faith is not the same as spirituality.

Ishvara Pranidhana in yoga means “surrender to a higher power,” or: have FAITH. And as I’ve written before, it is my least favorite tenant of spirituality. It feels too uncertain. I’m all about communing with Higher Power – with Spirit, ancestors, gods and goddesses, and/or whatever else we want to call the Source energy and its various iterations. I practice divination daily. Divination means “communicating with the divine.”

Two years ago, I was tasked with trusting my heart, body, and intuition to lead me. I made the commitment to focus on those senses and follow them. And it has been a beautiful journey, in many ways. Transformation abounds. My life looks radically different than it did two years ago. So trust was not easy; but, it was a journey I embarked upon willingly – and, in almost constant contact with the Divine, as it were.

Then, about a year ago, things shifted again. I was asked to have courage and faith. And I thought, “Great! I’m ahead of the game. These are my best assets!”

Turns out, I had a lot of growing left to do.

Shadows a-fucking-bound in this journey. Building courage means facing fears, means feeling afraid and moving through it. So what does the Divine give us to build our courage? Opportunities to develop courage. AKA – shit to be afraid of.

I had an ego death, faced my biggest fears (the idea that I was “becoming my mother,” utter heartbreak, desperate loneliness, and a thousand other things big and small that I don’t care to list), and had to truly develop COURAGE to face myself. Courage to remain clear-headed, strong, and centered.

Then it was time to emphasize faith . . . and, as much as I’d like to say that means I’ve been given all sorts of “unbelievable” face-to-face moments with the Divine – that’s not how any of this works. Wouldn’t it be cool if building faith included, like, sitting down with the gods and discussing human affairs? How easy to believe in the Divine when it comes knocking on the door!

But that’s not what’s happening at ALL. It used to happen to me almost all the time. I have had hundreds of visions, prophetic dreams, conversations with Guides, Angels, Gods, other planetary and dimensional Beings . . . like, a lot. Which, I suppose, is how I built the foundation of faith and spirituality I needed to . .  . evolve? Into the next level of “testing” or “realization” or whatever-the-fuck this is.

Because, now, my faith is being tested in silence.

I rely heavily on my practices. I have a clear head – I am not drinking alcohol, using marijuana or other . . . helpful herbs. I am getting plenty of sleep, I don’t watch TV or the news, I meditate and practice yoga for at least an hour a day, often more. I chant, I use crystals, I read cards and all the things I’ve learned and fallen in love with.

But I am met with deafening silence.

Unless, of course, I’m engaging in purely benevolent energy work. As in – I’m able to send reiki, even across great distances, even to people I hardly know, and get EERILY ACCURATE feedback. It’s palpable. I can still prophecy for other people, still read cards and minds and interpret dreams and feel/affect energetic fields. I can still inspire people and help them, even talk to THEIR guides, angels, patron divinities . . .

But none of this works on myself or for myself, anymore. I mean, maybe it does. I stopped reading cards for myself because they were so overwhelmingly in-sync and on-message about all my dreams coming true, a time of celebration being upon me, my destiny being realized, my heart being healed, everything I’ve been hoping for and working on coming to fruition beyond my wildest dreams – which IS NOT HAPPENING.

And I’m not complaining. Like, I get it. We’re all in this together. It’s a fucking pandemic. It’s the ascension. Lockdowns abound. People are dying, going crazy, etc. I’m not special in this regard.

But I AM frustrated. So I turn to silence, return to my practice, chant and meditate, do restorative yoga or high energy yoga, go outside for hours (even in the rain), stare at the moon and stars, sleep with a sphere of obsidian clutched in my hand, PRAY, and beg for clarity – for communication – for something to shift for ME.

And the only thing I hear or receive is “have faith. Trust. The Divine has this all in-hand.”

So I’m beginning to realize that building faith means being sorely tested to believe even when . . . that which one is supposed to believe is somewhat hidden or denied. Having faith means believing in something I cannot see or hear or touch – and if the Divine was in fact hanging out with me giving me all the answers and comfort I desire, it wouldn’t be any kind of exercise to believe in it, would it?

Which is kind of bullshit, to be honest.

I’m frustrated. I’m hurting. I feel abandoned and heartbroken in a different way.

So I played with the idea of “giving up the faith.” LOL. Because the moment I had that thought, I realized it was: a) a total bluff, b) impossible, and c) grossly undesirable. My entire life is a testament of faith. It always has been. I am – we all are – but a spark of the divine encased in a physical expression of the divine seeking to return to the source of the divine and understanding each day that in fact there is no separation from the divine at all, except in our perception.

What a mind-loop.

Perhaps it is myself letting myself down that is so frustrating.

Or perhaps I am indeed building faith, becoming unshakable, in this silence. Because I’ve been through this type of thing before – many times – and there IS a marked difference between open lines of “communication” and the “testing field.” I can feel it in my bones, and I am certain that I am being tested at this time.

Am I strong enough to make it back out the other side? Honestly, this time, I don’t know. But I also don’t know what else to do or how else to be.

I could attempt to “turn it off.” Right? I could turn to substances, allow depression and lethargy to take over, stop practicing, submit to fear and anger, watch the news and the TV and “believe” in “facts” or whatever narrative instead. But that nauseates me. Also, it breaks my heart to consider. It just feels wrong.

And I did promise to trust my body, heart, and intuition to guide me. That’s a lesson I’ve very nearly mastered – that trusting.

Is that faith?

Perhaps.

Medication v. Meditation

The line between self-medication and addiction is terrifyingly thin, especially when what we’re trying to medicate is our trauma response. I know this intimately, from repeated personal experience; and, I’m only just now putting into action what I’ve come to understand about it through the years.

Let’s be honest: we’re all out here medicating. We call it “self-medicating” when we do it without the “supervision” of a doctor . . . but I’m not entirely sure doctors are doing our mental health many favors by medicating us, either. Sorry, doc. But it’s my experience I’m sharing here.

I’m here to say that medicating is a slippery slope. How easy it is to enter into it with the intention of easing symptoms only to backslide into trauma-induced addiction, eventually worsening the condition and building a difficult-to-escape cycle.

Let me illustrate:

I have historically been on the forefront of promoting the “safe” use of marijuana to medicate depression and anxiety. You can read about it plenty on this here blog. I’ve said that it is the only thing that turns the ~ S C R E A M I N G ~ inside my head from an onslaught to a static din. Which is true . . . at first.

Then, that static din becomes itself an object of addiction – not the substance itself (there are a thousand studies saying it’s chemically nonaddictive, we all know this), but what IS addicting is the static numbness in an otherwise stormy brain.

The ~ S C R E A M I N G ~  doesn’t go anywhere. And the more heavily I attempt to mask it, the more insistent it becomes – meaning more and more “medication” is needed to keep it quiet.

And, at some point, we have to ask ourselves what else are we quieting? For me, it’s intelligence, motivation, ambition, compassion, awareness, self-love, and the ability to connect with others. Yikes. Is that really a sacrifice I’m willing to make?

The ~ S C R E A M I N G ~ lies to me and says yes – yes, your brain is awful, turn it off, turn off your life, you need to look away, nothing good to see here, you worthless, hopeless, sad, angry disaster . . .

So it went, for me, for years. ~ S C R E A M I N G ~ followed by medicating until I realized I didn’t like myself that stoned, then cold-turkey waking up and putting into use some other coping technique. And so on and so forth.

But there’s another way. I started to discover it years ago, which is when I really limited my “medication” moments – I got to a place where I only used it if I absolutely couldn’t bring myself to an alternative.

The answer to medication is meditation. And we know that meditation can look like a lot of things.

Another way to say this is that the answer to NEEDING medication is self-regulation born of self-realization. Which, by the way, is a continual process. It takes a whole hell of a lot more work than walking into a dispensary, doctor’s office, or drug dealer’s living room.

But it works a whole hell of a lot better, too.

Because the ~ S C R E A M I N G ~ goes away. It self-resolves. No longer does it become a distorted, quiet, nondescript buzzing static only to return between doses, or in the middle of the night, or when we’re at our breaking point. It just . . . runs itself out. Becomes silence.

When we replace medication with meditation, we HEAL.

This is what it looks like for me:

Daily practice, to build resilience, so that when a trigger inevitably arrives, I am already in self-care mode. I eat healthful, plant-based foods and avoid nonsense shit things that have mind-and-mood-altering chemicals, drink TONS of water (about a gallon a day) and prioritize getting enough sleep. Every day, I move my body in ways that feel good, like taking long walks, hiking, running, and doing yoga. Every day, I meditate for at least 20 minutes – sometimes that means laying on my back with my legs up a wall listening to calm music; sometimes, it means sitting in silence with my back against a tree; sometimes, it looks like chanting angrily through my tears at the gods.

So, when a trigger arrives, and the ~ S C R E A M I N G ~ returns, I go into autopilot self-care mode. If I’m feeling anxious, or – as I have taken to calling it after a particularly tough year – adrenaline sick, I do something really strenuous like RUNNING a mountain. If I’m feeling low, I reach out to my support group and force myself to go outside, even if it means slowly walking with headphones in while I let tears stream down my face.

The difference, you see, between medicating (quieting) the ~ S C R E A M I N G ~ and meditating with it is that one allows it to process, to come up and out, while the other shoves it down – puts it under pressure – making it stronger and worse.

I don’t care how well you think your medication is working. If you don’t use your medication to get to a place of processing, you will never be free of it. “It” being the ~ S C R E A M I N G ~ and “it” being the need to medicate.

If you can use the temporary quietude induced by the medication to begin a daily practice of self-realization, however, you will be well on your way to healing. On your way to peaceful silence in place of ~ S C R E A M I N G ~ . . . on your way to wholeness.

And, like I always say, if I can do it – so can you. My ~ S C R E A M I N G ~ is loud AF, just like yours. But humans are resilient, strong, determined creatures. It’s in our nature to evolve. Developing new habits is well within our reach. I believe in you.

If you need or want any suggestions or help developing a plan, making a roadmap out of your cycle of medication, reach out to me. I’m not a doctor, but I am an expert in healing the trauma response. I’m not a doctor, but I am a human. I’m not here to tell you to quit anything cold-turkey, but I am here to tell you my story. And to listen to your story, too.

I’m not a doctor, but I’m done with medication.