Brighter Diamonds on Haight-Ashbury

I moved to San Francisco 3 weeks ago and am filled with gratitude. The way that took me here has been winding, filled with adventure, and absolute heartache. But I’ve come to realize that we are the ones holding ourselves back from our horizons.

11/16/2021 Haight-Ashbury, San Francisco.

We block our light because we don’t believe in our own brilliance. We are more than cobwebbed echoes floating through eternal space. We are brighter diamonds, sparkling in the deep night sky. ✨✨

Love on Haight, San Francisco

We are vast beings beyond our physical bodies and minds. We are consciousness born anew every day. It’s startling to witness & difficult to understand. True being can only be lived wild and unfettered- out beyond our finite comprehension.

Freedom feels dangerous because we’ve been conditioned to fear the strength of our own dreams. The ways to awakening are before us at every moment.

In each attempt to create the best version of yourself you actually become that person. Through every act of conscious co-creation we bring Earth into greater expansion.

For we too will one day be buried, and all of this will have become so beautiful.

In that final moment what will your last thought be?

Perhaps we are here simply to guide each other along the conversation of life. Pieces and people come together when you are ready for them to be put into place. Inspiration arises organically when you surrender to your dreams. Walking every arduous step led you to now. 🔥

All of us is everything and everything is us. Separation is an illusion. Nothing is greater than being the love that changed you. Everything which came before was preparing the way to your calling. Become your full potential. That is how the light gets in. Go to where your destiny is taking you. That is how you change the world. 🖤🌈🌏❤️✊🏿✊🏾✊🏽✊🏼✊🏻🥰🙏✨

There is No Dark Future! Part 2: A poem & photo series.

A poem continued. An offering of hope. Like so many of you I have been on a spiritual journey the past year and a half. New Wisdom has been given to me. Words of truth our souls are aching to know. Thank you so much for reading these frail words which are spoken through me. May you be uplifted. I love you all!

Lightbringers, grow not you weary! 

Break Powers of Impotence! 

Deny Inequities of Intolerance!

Free your Vibration!

Go to places your Soul Sparks!

Emerald Lake, Colorado w/ Violet.

We are here to ask

the questions

no one else is asking!

There is no Judgment!

There is no Dark Future!

There is only LIGHT

and gradients of its absence!

Emerald Lake, Colorado August 2021.

Revolutionaries,

Ascend

the Cosmic pathways!

Transcend

past the

old Revelations.

Rino Arts District, Denver, Colorado. August 2021.

Your love upends

Egoic Ambitions

Your soul

speaks through 

Religious Cacophonies.

We Burn Walls

built by men and

Systemic Oppression!

Rino Arts District- Denver, Colorado.

Demolishing the Walls

We’ve Built

inside and

surrounding Ourselves!

Rino Arts, Denver, Colorado. August 2021.

Denver, Co- Santa Fe Arts District. August 2021.

In each breaking;

Parallel Promises 

Abound in your

Bright Future!

Mount Adams, Washington. August 2021.

Painter, You are broad strokes. 

You are the hero 

of your own life. 

You have every right 

to be on this planet.

You are the soul of Earth 

in human form.

Now Crack Your Acrylic Open!

The Future is Female, Violet, & Dara in Denver

Cheetah Power! Rino Arts District. Denver, Colorado.

Lana in an art gallery. August 2021. Denver, CO.

Seeker, come forward

walk out from your solitude!

This has been the year of 

Sirens Singing us 

the Subtle Signs.

Synchronicities are

Silent Directions

Guiding you through to

Your Higher Dimensions!

Me at Mount Adams, Washington. July 2021.

Humming, “Om mani padme hum,

shravanam;

amen” and-then

’round again.

Violet meditating at Rocky Mountain N.P.

There is no Judgment!

There is no Dark Future!

We are all just Stars,

Just Colors breathing.

Just Gradients between 

Momentary Absences 

of Light;

Going back ’round 

and to god Again.

Lana, me, Violet, and Dara. Denver, Colorado.

Shoshone Falls, Idaho; June 2021.

All things are

merging together 

into greater

Perfection!

Humming, “Om mani

padme hum
Kwakwhay,

Tao te

and amen”

The whole world’s

Going back ‘rou

D

Jut

Rino Arts District, Denver, August 2021.

Dara and I at Underground Music Festival Denver, CO. August 2021.

Bear Lake, Rocky Mountain National Park.

Me and Emily, Denver, Colorado’s

Dara and I, Underground Music festival. Denver, Colorado.

Mural, Santa Fe Arts District

Thank you for reading!! Have a great day!!!

Beyond Thunderdome 2

Get out of your thunderdome! You get to create the rules and tools to get you to the next part of your life. Beyond the ideas we’ve been programmed to believe. Past our personal and societal impositions.

Belief in your future before it has happened is the most powerful instrument in your toolbox of creation. When you continue to walk in the direction of what you want and what you are being called to the way presents itself to you. You are always walking on your path.

I’m coming to learn the detours just means you are in the process of creating what you really want, and hopefully finding the fun of it all along your way forward.

So I began to settle into the beauty of the desert. Letting go of the fears of possible outcomes I cannot control. Realizing my brief fear of camping in the desert was also symptomatic of unconscious fears of my upcoming future.

Much of our anxiety comes from previous trauma or unprocessed past events. Once you are able to pinpoint the source of uncertainty you can be guided to a solution.

I am leaving my career soon. Moving from Portland at the end of June. Taking a break before moving to San Francisco. Again the next steps of my journey unclear. Ready for this record of unsure futures to be taken off of repeat.

I reminded myself that are many subtle signs from the Universe I am going in the right direction even if I can’t perceive it all right now. The unsure are new steps to pathways I haven’t crossed yet.

This is true for all of us. The more we learn how to communicate with the Universe and are open to guidance- it will be revealed to you. Our finite understanding says more about us than it does of Universal limitations.

I sat present in a Utah desert canyon. Watching with the land as sunlight fades. Being present & mindful wherever you are guides you to finding beauty in places you would not have dared to go.

I did some grounding work. Deep breaths and opening of the root chakra. Opening of the mind and heart. I was reminded we are part of this planet and we each have a right to here. The anxiety began to fade as I watched the sunset slip beneath the horizon.

Out here you see the Earth for who she is without a facade. Rugged, unyielding, resilient. Life goes to incredible extremes to exist. Without the assurance of trees, water, and trappings of civilization you also see yourself for who you really are in that moment.

The desert teaches anyone who takes time to be present with her. You find love that transcends the physical and material world. A love that one must take time to observe, to appreciate, desire and allow.

The more purposeful you become in your expansion- you can attain most anything you desire or put time into creating. For I found that there were trees, and scrub bushes, and small animals- rabbits, lizards, even deer living out here.

If the smallest of creatures can find a way to survive- how much more prepared for survival we humans must be? There is much brilliance in this world of which we are also a reflection.

The challenges you face may be larger than a desert or more long term and discouraging. Systemic injustice is so prevalent and larger than anyone of us alone. How can we achieve our goals and societal transformation with so much outward oppression?

There is no simple solution or answer to our ceaseless quandaries. But we must know that we are always part of the Earth even if it seems she has forgotten us.

When we feel this way it just means we need to take a breath, let go of the fears, use the tools we have to get us to the next moment, remember our true power, rinse, and repeat as necessary.

When you surrender into the acceptance of your present reality- that’s when true freedom comes. Releasing the resistant thoughts and feelings about your own life and about others will free you in ways you didn’t even know were holding you back.

The journey to our freedoms have all been individually tarried and carried often alone. Those of you who are on difficult journeys remember your light. Be encouraged that life exist everywhere.

The edifice of true beauty will always remain even after the surface is washed away. It is in the crucible, the mortar pestle, you find who you really are. Isn’t that a great place to be?

Once I let go- camping in the desert ended up being my favorite part of this roadtrip from Portland to Texas. A reminder that your whole life is out there waiting to be lived and great possible futures ready to expand into reality.

Beyond Thunderdome

I didn’t know I had fear of camping in the desert until confronted with the reality of its stark dry silence. The solemn landscape loomed with limestone and clay towers. Canyons leftover from a former ocean.

Approaching the desert, I suddenly became claustrophobic, small, and unsure. Surprised by my reaction, I thought,“those feelings happen in the city. Not out in the sanctuary I’ve found inherently in Nature.

I took a puff from my emergency inhaler, long breaths. AC on blast. Windows down. Whispering affirmations. Just real sexy adventurer stuff going on.

My personal wilderness street cred crumbling. A mild panic attack creeping on the edges and being quickly held at bay. Then a thought flashed: “OMG Furiosa would’ve left me out on Fury Road.” A laugh bringing a brief return to normalcy, grounding, and humbling of self.

Hurricane Flats, Utah

After two years of living in a lush pacific rainforest, I was struck by the seemingly barren landscape outside Zion National Park. The vegetation and landscape across southern Utah swiftly becoming arid, cracked. All moisture was sucked from the whipping 50 mph winds. From my breath. It’s like Earth had suddenly shed her brilliance and exposed the fragility of life just a few exits down the highway.

On a conscious level- I knew I could survive in the forest for several days if stranded or lost. I’ve picked up wilderness skills the past couple of years and could survive out in the mountains for several of days if needed. (Pick me for your Zombie invasion Team!)

The desert is a different ballgame. It’s you against the elements. There’s no direct access to water. No forests to provide protection or berries, fish, or other immediate food sources.

What you bring is all that you can carry. What you don’t have you will not find it in here. Was I ready or responsible enough for that? It is okay for a moment I was too in my head about all this?

And there was no one else who could help me were I to need assistance. I was camping solo. Just me out in the wilderness. Just as I have been a lot of times since leaving Texas. Mostly due to necessity and convenience. I travel the way I live: with a loose knit plan going a million possible directions at once.

Yet, in those anxious thoughts one can remember to access our mental health toolbox: mindfulness, meditation, medication. As well as employing holistic coping strategies like actually calling your support system and being open to guidance.

Some of the strategies which work for me may also work for you: reaching out to my support system, affirmations, remembering how much I’ve overcome while also being present, letting the feelings wash over, not attaching myself to thoughts or outcomes, radical forgiveness, attempting unconditional love, forgiving myself when that doesn’t happen.

I called my sister for reassurance. She said she could talk, but was on her way to pick up her son from daycare. I told her just hearing her voice was enough. She spoke affirmations to me. She told me I could leave the desert. That it would be okay if I kept moving. She told me I would also enjoy it if I gave it a chance. I listen to her talking to the daycare as she picks up my nephew, placed him in the car, and while she goes to pick up the dry-cleaning. She kept apologizing for having to interrupt our conversation. I told her it was perfectly fine- to just keep me on the phone. It was comforting to hear her perform these every-day tasks. It grounded me to Earth to myself to family.

Even with our recent disagreements and misunderstandings- our love for one another transcends the differences. I listen to the sound of family in a different room. Because that’s all that we are when we’re away from each other right? We’re on the same channel just on a different frequency.

Maybe that was one of the lessons I was supposed to learn in the desert. This part of the Earth is still the same Earth. Life and landscape existing and abounding in different ways. I needed to adjust my perception and unpack fears of the unknown.

Take the break which life is giving to you in the moment of your discomfort. A pause is just an opportunity to prepare for your next adventure beyond things like fears, and desires and personal Thunderdomes.

Angel’s Rest at Zion National Park

We Are Natural Mystics

There are pockets on Earth that no human eye has seen. Great mysteries of life are hidden in riddles and rivers. Ancient secrets sag in the marrow of oil.

If we have not been able to catalog and observe all parts of our planet, then how do we bound in all of this together, know how it all works? The limits go as far as we are willing to wonder.

The brilliance of human ingenuity has taken us farther than those who came before us. There are still myriad of seas to ride, underground cave systems to navigate, rain forests to keep virgin, and so many sacred mountains to ascend.

There is so much data and raw information coming to us every day that we can barely scratch the surface to ever knowing anything. We do not truly fathom how really big our world is in relationship to other people and how closely are values align. If we were to stretch all 7.8 billion people in a line across the planet it would take countless years just to say hello to each one of them.

We limit ourselves to our realities based just upon what we can see within the scope of our influence.

We do not truly fathom how really big our world is in relationship to other people and how closely are values align. If we were to stretch all 7.8 billion people in a line across the planet it would take hundreds of years just to hello to each one of them.

There are vast deserts to traverse, people in Papau-New Guniea we’ll never see, species we haven’t even conceived of are out there living undiscovered. There are long spans of human history we cannot account for; and many records have been intentionally altered, transliterated, and destroyed.

“I think therefore I am,” Descartes once implored. But thought does not necessarily translate to knowing. We are electromagnetic beings of consciousness and flesh.

It is we who are the avatars. We keep being told not to peer at the one who pulls the strings. We are lulled into this broad illusion by the dullest of means.

What is it to know oneself when for generations we have been cloaked in the trappings of conquerors and colonialists? When do we know who we really are? At what age do we become the culmination of circumstance and events that have brought us to this moment?

What about our thoughts, and days of laughter and inside jokes with friends; what about those plans we have laid in our unknown futures? Clues of where we’ve come from are written in genetic DNA. Couldn’t answers of our future be found there too? They’re somewhere muddled up and tangled in parts of all of we have become.

We have exchanged our power for fast food answers and back-seat spirituality. The American Dream brought to you by fast cars, loaded ammunition, student debt ambition, and qualified immunity.

If we have not individually fully fathomed our greatest personal potential, then we have not come into our true power as a human race.

What miracles we could accomplish if we lived out our personal visions daily? The paradigm would completely shift if everyone knew we could. “Teach one. Reach one,” like Letha said. Let’s decide to be miracles to each other. In doing so, we’ll all be forever changed.

Part 2

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We are being held away from our own answers because we were taught to ask the wrong questions.

Everything about our world is set up to do other people’s work and live out other people’s value systems.

We look not to each other because our ties to community to the land to our own families to ourselves have been severed. Whether through war, enslavement, purposeful reconditioning of the human being during the conformity Assembly made mentality of the industrial era.

Who determines the rate at what things cost? The exchange of an ideas has been given value based on some else’s and generational assertion.

We are taught to live in constant states of disconnection to self. This in turn disconnects us from each other. To keep the cycle of oppression going- the oppressors need to create more oppressors.

Those who are oppressed must continue to believe and see that they are being oppressed. They must not be allowed to wield the magnificence in their minds.

The limitations are systematically manmade and reinforced through generational betrothal of a system to its populace whose members are scarcely aware of its motion.

We can break these limitations and the false scarcity with the sheer power of our spirit and the willingness to just be open.

The more of us who awaken will bring the future we want to come. These rumblings in our world are signs they are happening. The paths to freedom are only road blocked within our hearts and minds. I’m really starting to understand what that means.

Yes, There are other forces running the show, but Spirit cannot be held back by plastic, a racist police state, or even your manicured facade of existence.

The idea that there is more to your existence also dwells somewhere inside of you! Your true nature is worthy and good. You are wholly evident and valid based simply on the fact that you exist. You have a right to be on this planet. You have a right to be exactly who you are and want to be!!

“I am who I am.” The profundity of that message is that it was secretly an affirmation of our own worthiness all along.

We have each have callings birthed deep within our spirits. Some have developed along the way from childhood and youth, others which are unfolding along the way. Some dreams stretch out on lost canyons crossing chasms- scaling breakdowns and breakthroughs we don’t fully know we’ll cross.

But between Nature and time and forces we don’t understand, the gaps are filled in. The knowing comes as quickly as we are able to ascertain its delivery. The pieces of my own life are coming together into clearer view, because I allowed my purpose to manifest even though I don’t know what that’s all supposed to be yet.

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There there must be a reason we don’t know what’s farther down the road. We don’t know where we came from, and where the hell are we all going? But it must be something about the wanderings in between the struggle and the turnpike.

Like Bob Dylan sang, “Feel like my soul is beginning to expand
Look into my heart and you will sort of understand.

You brought me here, now you’re trying to run me away

The writing’s on the wall, come read it, come see what it say.”

Sometimes our calling is pulled taut like a drum ready for our moment to come. In moments of abandon we become guided by the blind-faith clarity of our higher purpose. Sometimes a higher consciousness surges through us in the form of creative bursts and materializations; dancing like pagans, to the rhythm of unknown ancestors.

We are natural mystics.The knowledge lives within us. If leave room tiny illuminations will catch flame.

Thoughwe don’t have all the answers. We are not alone out here. We are asking the same questions together. We are as brothers and sisters clothed in forest and nurtured by streams.

For we are all linked and intertwined together Within the earth itself and across vast distances through civilizations, some which have never known or been seen by our post modern eyes, we are connected with the same lineage multiplied and refracted through the various ethnic and diverse communities in groups of human beings spread through six and sometimes seven continents.

With all of our great declarations of conquest andIndividual and generational achievements, we all go back to the earth or into dust.

And Somewhere on Earth the sun is always shining.

Mountains rise above us to reach into a deeper sky. Out there the stars are distant voyeurs witnessing infinity spreading anew.

Gushing in secrets and other eternities, perhaps the Universe is bringing us exactly what we need to grow. Our eyes are tiny voyagers catching truth in glimpses of what we’ve just begun to see & ideas we’ve yet to even conceive. ✨

Radically Rooted in 2021

I asked what my mantra for 2021 should be & found a black diamond run named “Radical” while skiing yesterday. It seems sort of obvious considering my Instagram name/other account which was inspired by the BLM & social justice revolution in America last summer. The revolution for human rights which continue today.

The label “Radical” has come to be to designated as “political extremists” as “perverse, “unpatriotic,” or “terrorists.”

It is counterintuitive and maddening that the human race is pitted against one another instead of being mutually cooperative.

If believing in simple human rights for each other means “radical views” than myself & many others will hold these beliefs & that label forever.

But the word #Radical has many other meanings and a long linguistic and genre-spanning history than what political overtones the word has come to be associated with these days.

According to Webster’s “When something is considered extremist or very different from anything that has come before it, call it radical.”

The earliest uses of radical are indeed all about literal roots, hinging on the meaning “of, relating to, or proceeding from a root.”

Being radical also means something that is “Markedly new or introducing revolutionary change.” By going to the roots and re-structuring, building new, becoming a new creation from the roots up.

From Webster’s- None of this will surprise the botanists: they know that radical leaves grow from the base of a stem or from a rootlike stem, and radical tubers grow from a plant’s root.

And linguists know that a verb’s radical form is its root form. In medicine, radical surgery is surgery that’s designed to remove the root of a disease.

And mathematicians and students of mathematics know that the radical sign—√ or √⁻—is used when you’re finding the square root of a number or formula.

Root itself is a familiar element in metaphoric language—we talk about “the root of the problem,” “putting roots down,” “a family’s roots”—and so perhaps radical was destined to develop figurative use too.

Radicals can also be political or societal groups. I.e. Radical feminists view society as fundamentally a patriarchy in which men dominate and oppress women. Radical feminists seek to abolish the patriarchy as one front in a struggle to “liberate everyone from an unjust society by challenging existing social norms and institutions.”

This idea and many like them gave birth to LGBTQ liberation and movements.

The Black Panther Party has been denigrated by the White Capitalist government to draw on White fears of rebellion, changing the status quo, and armed black men and women- when instead they were mostly non-violent and created social initiatives to help those within the Black communities- whom had been marginalized and purposefully forgotten.

The founders, Huey Newton and Seale drew on Marxist ideology for the party platform. They outlined the organization’s philosophical views and political objectives in a Ten-Point Program.

The Ten-Point Program called for an immediate end to police brutality; employment for African Americans; and land, housing and justice for all.

The Black Panthers were part of the larger Black Power movement, which emphasized black pride, community control and unification for civil rights. That continues today in the work of Black Queer Feminist social activism most notable in the Black Lives Matter movements across the world this summer and which continue to this day.

Perhaps the most interesting & important of all the multiple iterations of this word may lie in the idea and practice of “Radical Forgiveness.”

(RF) has the ability to shifts one’s perspective on life by fundamentally seeing struggles through an altogether different lens. From the RF perspective, life’s events happen ‘for’ us, rather than ‘to’ us.

Radical Self-Forgiveness/Self-Acceptance takes the embodiment of unconditional love & gives it a sort of framework. When You feel a negative automatic thought or emotion you accept & redirect it- similar to Cognitive Behavioral therapy.

“I’m not OK, you’re not OK; but that’s OK!” RF captures the truth about who we are and the fact that we were never meant to be perfect. If we were, there would be no one to create opportunities for us to experience forgiveness. Our perfection lies in our imperfection.

I also love the following definition of Radical Forgiveness, which is along the same lines: It is the unconditional acceptance of what is, as is, because that’s how it is meant to be.

Putting the two together then, we can say Radical Self-Forgiveness is accepting the consequences of being ourselves, just as we are. Period.

The challenges presented by 2020 have affected us all across the world. But maybe 2020 was the year we needed- to truly empathize with one another,

To see that the old ways were not working. That we needed a revolutionary change.

Radical “is something is considered extremist or very different from anything that has come before it, call it radical.”

The problems we are facing globally, societally, in our communities, personally are different and more complicated than those that came before in recent collective memory.

A challenge also presents the opportunity for solutions. When we open ourselves to the possibilities of fulfilling our true purpose the way will make itself more known. Fulfillment in our role to each other, to our planet, to our destinies are being clarified and prepared in the midst of chaotic and uncertain times.

There are answers to generational longings that are coming into being through the year of questions and uncertainty. It’s okay that we are weary and saddened by the suffering of others. This must encourage us to keep up the fight that we are currently in.

We must not grow complacent. And we are not alone. We are always in the process of becoming. We have the chance to become something more beautiful and radically different than came before and that’s exactly what all this shifting and sorting of humanity has been about. We are going to be greater than ever before because that’s where the Universe, this Pandemic, the fight for social justice, for police and authoritative accountability, where global prosperity, where the hearts and souls of our children and humanity is leading us towards- just as it always has. 💙

Rider of Waves (Part 2)

In the process of becoming unconditional, you become like water. When living your truth in resilient flexibility you will start setting yourself & others free.

Spiraling up doesn’t mean you aren’t going to have downs and breaks downs. It’s part of the progression to moving your life & dreams along the ineffable way. Sometimes your trials may be someone else’s blessings.

In the process of becoming unconditional- Bipolar disorder will no longer take my inner joy. I’m learning to accept & give love to and from others without strings attached. You don’t need a commitment to be in love with life at any moment. I am steadying my sea-legs by understanding what’s beneath the sea.

Perhaps that is our task- to become so free & unfettered those around your begin living their highest truth too.

Everything in known existence draws from only 118 elements. We all come the same initial Source/Big Bang. We are fulfillments of genetic promises brought forth from union of the first primordial cells.

In the process of becoming unconditional we see no separation between the natural world and that of the spirit- because they are bound together. Each brook a tributary paying homage to the rivers from whence they were poured from.

We get the choice to stay in the comfort of our squalid complacency, or arise to the dawn of new creations spread out before us. Like mountains piercing to the heavens.

Those who stay vehemently attached within their cultural milieus are living in the hierarchical rat-race constructed to live. Unless you awaken you are still just a by-product of Consumerism & religion of the country you happened to be born into.

Because in becoming unconditional- you acknowledge everything you can’t control and choose to love anyway. All of the frustrations you feel are valid. The vapid squalor society makes you feel like the one who’s fucked up.

For throughout time there have always been people who have been pushed behind, swept aside, cast out, forgotten, enslaved, ensnared, erased. Someone else’s struggles might be someone else’s blessings.

We are taught self-care and acceptance, coming together as diverse communities, inclusion and equity aren’t as important than the goals of a dominant culture built upon intimidation and mass production.

Perhaps some of our ancestors would see we have collectively made some progress forwards and together. Banded, abandoned, Hearts barbed and tender, brought back in circles six wide feet apart.

In becoming unconditional you become unafraid to speak the truth even if no one else will read it. In becoming unconditional you are becoming stronger and more self-assured.

For each condition that breaks us, for each limitation that blocks our path to becoming, in each moment of valid frustration there is a new pathway opening- a new door being opened, another path to be unlocked, unsheathed, and unshielded from ourselves.

We are water in waves looped forward, gushed upwards, and crashed onto the back of cliffs planted in seas. All must swing through that mortal coil and out we must also go.

In becoming unconditional life and death are equals. Mania and depression are 2 coins in the same brain. The pendulum never hits both sides at once. We will be here and we will be gone.

On that day,

each one will say,

“I am

become elsewhere.”

And lovingly fade back

into all of Creation.

Sunshine Laundromat

Columbia Gorge has finally reopened. The river itself a glacier’s million-year pet project eroding earth out to the Pacific. Call it Nature’s version of “will they or won’t they?” (Sorry Sam and Diane.)

The Columbia feels ancient and powerful perhaps because this river wasn’t “supposed” to be here. It was carved into the marrow of Earth as it will continue to do for centuries.

The views alone are stunning. I find myself wanting to capture every moment but also being present. It’s damn near impossible to find ourselves living in the moment without also needing to reflect on what we just experienced.

The 30 mph wind gusts made it hard enough to take a decent photo. I didn’t notice there were bees on the flowers until after the snapped image. And how were these tiny insects still holding onto something as delicate as flowers without Mary Poppins-ing their way on out of here? Life is funny that way.

That’s the hardest part about mindfulness or meditation. Being present is a balancing act, an arbiter between the past and future.

We need “the pause” to process and reflect back to relive that time loop or that mind-blowing fuck, or being haunted by things you cannot change.

And with that reflection you begin deciding what you do and don’t want. You become the idea of who you still yourself you are everyday. It’s like dressing for the job you want not the job you have. The negative statements and beliefs we keep reliving or saying to ourselves will only perpetuate that spiral-down pattern.

The best investment in your future is the time you take out now to plan for it to happen. You are worthy of the life, relationships, career, artistic expressions you want to create, have and will become.

Take 1 second to allow yourself to believe it can happen and then take another one, and another until you feel uncomfortable or doubt it. Then ask yourself where is this fear or frustration coming from?

It’s in those tough patches, the windy stretches of your heart where you must journey. So many of the answers for your life are buried where the questions lie dormant.

Give yourself the power of grace, forgiveness, & love while you are in the “pause.” You don’t have to process or heal alone. But you gotta to do the inner work. It will start taking you to where & who you are becoming.

There’s so many things we miss every moment between IG posts, work, sex, and meditation. Or a gaggle of bees pollinating your fave place along the Gorge.

The only time I can fully flesh out my life is when I am alone. It has been engrained in us to believe that if we are alone then there is something wrong with us.

We’ve been scared into being alone with our own thoughts and selves. What kind of life is that?

Along this recent journey of solitude going against the grain doesn’t scrape so bad as it used to. In fact the solitude has led to me boldly live my truest self more than ever.

I used to party almost every single weekend for years. Now I’m just as comfortable planting flowers or getting baked and staying in, or going on a solo weeknight hike. Welcome to mid 30’s, y’all.

In solitude there is freedom to be totally and authentically who you are. You know pants- off dance-off like nobody’s camming and all that Jazz. We all need an inner-sanctuary. A sacred place to release, to chill the f*** out, and be at peace.

In the absence of external validation of others’ input or need to please we become our authentic self. And that self opens up to higher depths. We can use this time to let our truest self guide us forward. Time is actually the one thing most of us actually have an abundance of these days.

The concept of trusting the process is unnerving but exciting. Like how the fuck you gonna “trust Life” when you know they a crazy mofo who gonna drag your ass through the gutter only to shoot you into the stars. If Selena taught us anything it’s to Trust. No. bitch. And ain’t Life the biggest one of them all? 😂

Partial truths and jokes aside, it’s weird how your life opens up & you become more comfortable putting yourself out there.

Think of how far we have come in two months of rationing our daily pub scenes & hobbies. Ain’t been to the barber shop in a minute but we still out here getting it sis!

And when you think you have done enough work you still find depths within yourself and you keep digging. Life will build the canals around you.

I misjudged someone recently, because of a Republican stereotype I’ve seen played out pretty much my entire life. Without details I felt like an asshole because I hypocritically didn’t give someone a chance. #AndIOop

I’ve realized that all sides have positive and negative things about them. And that is how we should look at all things. The shadow self is the other political party, is the other religion, is the other sexes, the other race, whisky preference, and favorite Curb episode.

For we lie with primordial oppressors pressing up and against each other for validation and degradation. The Earth’s plates rubbed against each other and created mountains.

Every action is in effort to achieve a goal. The hardships and evils in this life must push us to new ways of living. Nature can be volatile, unpredictable, dangerous. Those fears lessen as you discover each one of us is part of this grand creation. You become more mindful in the great outdoors because you have to be attentive. You become more appreciative of living things. you see that plants aren’t static. Trees dance in the wind. Flowers turn towards the sun. Vines stretch their creeping limbs among trees and even buildings. Life is blooming and living all around you, but it is also full of perils and unknowns.

In this sunshine laundromat, you’ll find what and who home is. And it’s never ending. It doesn’t stop even when we arrived to our intended destination.

There will always be something more to want. A new project to undertake, a new orgasm, another birthing of inspiration will come to us. In truth the things and states of being you seek are always there waiting for you to become quiet enough to do the inner-work and allow yourself to begin living the life you dreamed of.

One day the weight you carry won’t be so heavy and you’ll be able to hold enough until the next weight is added. One day you may find yourself surrounded by mountains and snow.

A blue sky stretching out and completely enveloping you. It is what eternity must feel like. This world is magic coming from another room.

The Long Ride Home pt. 1

In 2017 I told myself, “When I move to Portland, I’m going skiing after work.”

I moved here one year ago, and for the past 2 months I’ve been gratefully skiing on the Earth’s mirror, scarcely believing this is home now.

It was one of those dreams we all have like building a house, visiting some far-flung land, getting married, working a great job, wanting to be happy. Often the dreams we most want start from a small place of desire without resistance and without knowing how or if it’s all going to come together.

Initial desires seem far-fetched at first, but the mere possibility that a dream could actually come into being has spurred on almost every piece of music, and war, building of homes and skyscrapers, each knitting together of a family that has ever existed.

When you’re young you must depend on another to provide your needs and desires. What if there’s no one there you can trust or depend on to make this happen? What if you grew up without a suitable parent to trust? And those of us who did have that initial trust wish we grew up with a trust fund. As we get older all of the responsibilities lay on our shoulders.

Doubt in our ability to attain goals, and relationships, our states of being, begin at a young age because certain experiences ended in a bad way for us, or we watched it end badly for others, or were told of it in Bible stories and political propaganda.

Or because of dead-end jobs and life in dead-end states or series of failed dates and families have shown us that we don’t get what we want. That dreaming is wasteful. That it is easier to live that life you were born into and the chip on your shoulder you’ve been given. The kids and parents I work with often feel this way and they’re not wrong for feeling so. They’ve been betrayed by family members and country for generations.

When I moved here a year ago, my life had recently devolved into chaos and loss. A published book and traveling adventures came at a huge cost. Mental health issues that had been wading in darkness were finally brought forth into light. That glaring light shone upon the frayed sutures holding my life together. I discovered they weren’t there at all.

Relationships fell apart at seams that seemed unbreakable. Upon reflection I was trying to keep together a life that had not been fulfilling with some relationships where I was pouring into others without much in return. It felt like I was pouring myself into others whose wells were bottomless and insatiable. The water ran dry within myself until there was nothing left to give and finally snapped.

I came up here not knowing what was going to happen or if I was actually going to make it. “What if none of this works out?” I asked myself. I could not handle another devastating blow in any sense of the word.

There was literally nothing physically left in my physical possession save my car and everything I had taken on my cross-country road trip and to Mexico. The plans made and money saved to make a smooth transition from Texas to Portland were unintentionally torn asunder by my own two hands and addled mind.

The first 2 months of 2019, were spent in Texas taking stock of what was left and what had ended. Most of what was still true of my life actually remained. Family and friends still loved me. I still loved to hike and be amongst open-minded kind people.

With the proper diagnoses you can then utilize the tools which can help you live a vibrant and authentic life. Medication, therapy, being enveloped with nature, starting almost completely from scratch were some of the tools in my new wheelhouse.

The West had been calling me forward for a long time. Years before the recent schism. So I asked myself, “What if moving to Portland actually does work out?” Some callings are greater than our circumstances.

Slowly, the same two hands and a properly medicated mind created the life I now find myself living. Everything brought me to Now, and I am happy. What good is it to curse the former difficulties?

I strive to make decisions for the highest good, maintaining boundaries I had so easily let be taken of advantage of in the past, pouring into others while keeping enough in my own well. Positive friendships and relationships have blossomed and have begun to flourish. And as is the way of life New challenges are always on our horizons. Sometimes the horizon itself has literally shifted due to where we find ourselves geographically in the world.

PNW winters challenge the hardiest of souls. To go weeks with cold rain and without sunlight cause many of to withdraw inward. The respite was welcoming at first. But as the perpetual gloom lingered I went into nature less and less. Being in nature was part of my healing process and I stopped going outdoors because of the wet and weary weather. Then I went skiing for one of my roommate’s birthdays and remembered how much I loved this winter activity.

At the end of January, I took new stock of my situation and realized “this life up here is working out and I like it.” When you have recovered from difficult periods you begin really appreciating the reasons that make you live. The shift happens when you begin to seek them out.

So I bought my first ski season pass, skis and gear, and it’s unexpectedly changed parts of my life. Skiing has become a passion and one I often do on my own. Learning new skills help to imbue oneself with confidence that translates into other areas.

I’ll be speeding 40 mph down a black in exhilaration and wondering how the hell I didn’t crash.

Then I tell myself, “I’ve done this before, I know how to ski on piste, and how to talk to this client, and I know how to get out of bed and out of debt. I’ve done each many times before.” And I get out of my own way.

There are times I do bite it, are not as scary as the first time and it happened and now I know how to more easily correct myself when shredding powder or craving on ice.

Skiing is a fluid conversation with the mountain. It’s a mind-body, seasonal and multi-elemental connection. Finding ourselves upon mountains, to ski upon them, is honors the mountain within.

There is nothing more alive than when you feel the thrill of living. It’s as close to flying as we can come. The closest to breaking the bonds of Earth- of our frailties and also of our courage.