Joyful Inconvenience

Humaning. Obviously a bane to the existence of unicorns, or you'd see more of us around. Another related word: Adulting. Compound that with "Techological Difficulties" and then seal that last one with the word "Intractable," and you have a recipe for a frustrated unicorn. An inconvenienced unicorn, kicking up her hoofs and blowing air from her appreciably flared nostrils. Yes, having to operate in a three dimensional world where things kind of plod along and and various factors external to one's control feel like an unwelcome pull on reins I didn't agree to. Sovereignty. A unicorn value. Divine Surrender. Another.

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It is nothing like a tragedy or a disaster. And I know the world is facing every possible kind of difficulty, including lots of tragedies and disasters. Here is how I relate to that: on an individual level, if I meet a suffering person, I hold them with deep compassion. I stop for strangers crying, I ask them if they are okay, I ask if I can give them a hug, I listen to the and offer to help if I can. If, as an empath I am "feeling" what is in the collective, I spend time in surrender, surrounding myself with golden light so that is what I surrender into as I allow all the emotions to be accepted, and yet to move through and gently, naturally realign without effort. Other than that, I figure somebody needs to make sure this world is fueled with a viable long term fuel. And that is why my first commitment is to co-creating love, gratitude and joy in the world I inhabit, step by step. And to make those steps a bit more joyful, add cute boots! I bought them last year for the DAIS fashion show. I had a friend who modeled back in the days I was a figure skater, and she told me slightly scornfully, but not intentionally meanly that I was too short to be a model. It left me with a bit of insecurity I had never felt about being short before that. Not that I ever wanted to be super tall. Being short never bothered me. I was only ever bothered when other people seemed to have some weird reaction to it, like either using me as an armrest or calling me shortie or telling me I could never model. Anyone can model, because we are always showcasing our values - not only in what we wear, how it is sourced and how we look in it, but in how we carry our light, our love, our dark, our struggles, our judgments and our truest, most dominating qualities of being. The ones that shine through are the ones we cultivate. Which wolf do you feed? Everyone in my family's looks are profoundly influenced by how we are doing on the inside. It's just a strange fact about us. We look better when we are shining our beautiful inner light strongly, and our looks just dim when our lightbulb needs changing, or we've just forgotten to switch it on, or someone has been pressing the "off" switch and we haven't bothered to kick them out of our space yet. The light we "are" can't actually be turned off, but the amount that shines through our human electric form can be turned off, put on dimmer, or allowed to shine and illuminate everyone in the room. Yes, that is a power we all have! And I was really nervous to walk down the runway in the DAIS fashion show, not because I am afraid to let people see my light, but because I was really afraid, seriously afraid, of literally falling on my face. Although I had a twinge of insecurity left over from that old comment about my physical stature, my main issue was seriously that I can be super klutzy when walking, especially if people are watching. At summer camp one year when I was 14, I walked straight into a telephone pole because there was a cute boy walking behind me. My worst figure skating injuries always just klutzy moments, not during challenging jumps. But I walked the runway to support my favorite fair trade store and a charity that helps women who have experienced Domestic Violence. I did it. I did it. I got out there on the runway for a good cause,  and I got lots of compliments on my cute boots. Most of the other ladies weren't nervous about falling down, but when I started dancing backstage, it took them a while to realize it was okay for them to groove as well; however, pretty soon, a ton of us where dancing - realizing it's okay to have fun, that modeling didn't have to be serious. And neither does modeling a joyful life, even when inconvenienced!

I cannot begin to describe all the wonderful things that happened to me just walking around Hilldale mall, but let me try. The music. I love the music they pelt from speakers mounted next to shop awnings. It's always something upbeat...something I can walk to, feeling in my element, something I can even dance to sitting on a bench. Which I did. The pumpkin and cornhusk displays are so pretty, and the sky always looks great to me from the Hilldale Mall, whether it's cloudy or sunny. And the Apple Store. And the People. Yeah, there are a few zombies. But I meet so many people who return my heartfelt, invigorated smile of joy; so many people who let me glimpe their gorgeous soul for a precious moment of human divinity. I have never seen shop owners happier to see someone who doesn't even buy anything than when I peak my head in and just smile and maybe make a joke, give a compliment or tell them I'm just around to spread some joy and some love. It is amazing to watch! People are so starved for that! And many are ready to play there - and often not the people you'd expect. So if you're feeling frustrated with the people in your networks or "circles" - try. going outside them. You maybe joyfully surprised where you find synergy and alignment where you'd least expect it.

For example, before the DAIS fashion shoe, I was really not into shoes. In fact, I judged people who were. I associated them with New Jersey materialism. The same people who complimented my new Prius and came over to petted it, while ignoring my new babies seemed obsessed with shoes and handbags. The mothers with designer diaper bags and strollers who seemed to center their conversations, well, designer things generally, as if they were actually important. Which deepend my commitment to shopping only at thrift stores and owning fewer than four pairs of shoes total at any given time. I've since realized anything we reject, we'll get the opportunity to befriend. Since I needed to go to the Apple Store, but there was this cute shoe store on the way, on a whim, or maybe a whisper, I pulled on the golden brass door of glass and walked inside. There was a woman and a man working there and there eyes shone bright. Real unicorns, I tell you. There was a cute pair of shoes...they didn't have them in the color and size I wanted, and I wasn't really there to buy shoes anyway. Just to share smiles. When they brought over a pair in a color I wasn't jiving with in my spirit, I said, "I'm just not feeling it" and they were completely embracing of that and just super happy I came by. I didn't have to buy to befriend. Then again, someday I may be seen in those designer shoes if the moment strikes and the size is right. Because it doesn't matter. I am the same in my ratty pajamas or my "put together" outfits, or the outfits that are so outrageous they set the standard for not caring one way or the other. It's all the same, and I've found increasingly that as I own that, people treat me the same regardless of what I'm outfitted in. Sometimes I shave, sometimes I don't. I wear whatever the fuck I want - or more accurately - what I want that aligns with my Spirit. Occasionally my personality has a thought of what I want to do or wear or say and my Spirit nixes it. I'm okay with that. Personal sovereignty without divine surrender is like a cancer cell - it's just egos on a self-aggrandizing rampage that ends of harming the overall organism. We all need our growth checked by our higher power to ensure it is growth that is helpful to the wellbeing of whole and not ego-personality cancer, out of control and usurping our lifeblood to make more of its harmful dysfunction. On the flip, I do my very best to ensure the higher power I check with is not that of conditioned society, which loves to stamp out new ideas that threaten the status quo, like a caterpillar that thinks "caterpillar" is a permanent state of being and resists climbing the tree, building the chrysalis and surrendering into the goo, trusting the emergence of the imaginal cells latent in its own encoding to re-create its form anew as a magnificent flying, ascending, pollinating thing of beauty, otherwise known as a butterfly.

When I finally made it to the Apple Store, I brought bunches of smiles and was invited to have a seat to have a go at the internet. While there, I witnessed something beautiful: a seriously awesome manhug. From all the looks of it, platonic, yet deeply valuing of one another, comfortable in the hug; really, genuinely glad to connect with one another profoundly. Fuck yeah. I smiled. I had nothing much to do while my files uploaded, so I eavesdropped. I think I really started paying attention to their conversation when I heard Harry Potter. It turned out one had come late to the Harry Potter world and the other said something about how if you weren't a fan, some people would say that makes you not a good person. I piped up, "My daughter would agree with you on that. She is horrified by anyone who is not a devoted fan." And I shared that I too was a latecomer, because I don't really tend to buy things when they are fads. I bypass altogether or just scope it out on my own terms in my own time and way. The two men resonated. I also shared with them how much it meant to be me to witness positive, authentic masculine affection, and how healing I think modeling that is for our culture. One of the man smiled a robust smile and said, "I'll hug him anytime." And the guy nodded and said, "Oh yeah," in a deep, manly voice. No compromise of manhood. Just a braver, more heart-filled version expressing itself. Hallelujia.

Which reminds me, we watched How to Train Your Dragon the other night. A brilliant treatise on reinterpreting masculinity, courage and integrity...so many adult lessons in a kid flick about a boy and a dragon and huge viking men. Hiccup is one of my heroes. He isn't a wuss. He's driven my compassion instead of rage or fear, testosterone or tribal identification. His courage is willingness to risk his own life, yet it refuses to take another. Reminds of a few other heroes of mine. Can you list them?

So there's all this great juju between these two burly, kindly, sparkling-eyed men and between all of us as we groove on Harry Potter, and on healing the masculine in our culture. It's awesome and...they gotta get back to work. One is a consultant, the other is a genius. Or something. I just think of all the Apple employees as geniuses. And technologically. compared to me, well they basically automatically are, at least relatively to me as the reference point. I don't mind. I like asking other people for help and receiving it, just as much as I like sharing my gifts with others who need them. We all need each other. Blessings multiply when shared, just as sorrows are halved by those who know how to hold space in in love and give a hug, a compassionate look or a kind word that is timely and delivered free of projection. Yes, that's key. Getting free of projection, or as close to it as possible. I hardly ever tell anyone about my problems because most people want to either give unsolicited advice or they want to project their own experiences and end up telling a story that makes it about them, without realizing they've diverted and gone off into their own territory, trying to drag me along. I do the same things to other people, but I try really hard to catch myself and shift back to being the listener I want to see in the world. It's all about practice, not perfection. We got this.

So there I was. I went back to staring at my screen as my stuff uploaded, but hardly a few moments wafted past before a lovely older gentlement smiled from across the rectangular lightwood table and said that he liked my horn. We entered into a dialogue about what my horn means, and about his work as a graphic designer, and somewhere in there he asked if I was American. I said I was, and that I have a pretty universal heart. I asked him the same. He replied, "American." I told him he had a bit of an international flavor to him, at which point he shared that his parents were from another country. Now my first thought was Italy, but then my rational mind jumped in and wondered if perhaps his parents were missionaries. He answered that they were not missionaries. He gave me a hint: "It's an Island in the Mediterranean. "Greece?" I asked. Wrong on me. During the time of our conversation, at one point I had removed my horn. It caught him off guard and he missed it. I told him it's always there whether you can see it or not. I put it back on. Then removed it and asked him if he could see it. Finally, he said "Yes, I can see it now." I said I needed a similar bit of help to learn him, and that he would need to tell me where he was from. "Sicily." he said after a short span of waiting to see if I would get it first. Of course I didn't. I absolutely suck at geography. I love people from other places but I haven ever been able to fall in love with maps. Not ever. It was my worst subject in school when I was young. "Ahah!" Said I. "My first guess was going to be Italy." And he looked at me straight in the eye and said, "And I would have said no. Because I am Sicilian." "Yes," I said, "Because you are Sicilian." And we laughed. By then my files were uploaded and I was off. A security officer grinned at me posing for a picture in front of a gathering of bright sun-colored little flowers, and two young black men very respectfully complimented my smile on the way to my car. I went home to my children and my husband and was greeted with vegetarian sushi, hugs and a heart full of joy, love and gratitude.

Inconvenience was thick that day, but joy was prevailed. FUCK YEAH!

The mundane was the catalyst for the magic I co-created out and about. I would never have had so much fun or brought joy to so many people - from the man in the purple tie who was sadly smoking a cigarette alone, to the old woman with the pretty periwinkle jacket who was totally not expecting a compliment and a big smile, eye to eye, soul to soul - if I hadn't been deeply inconvenienced, with no sign of respite for 48 or more hours trying upload a video I made to help the world. If you want to watch the videos, click on "shop" or go to "free videos" to see the one that is available free, just because you are awesome and I do my best to spread awesomeness like it's contagious. Because it is. Love you!

Narinda's shades go up

I was sitting on the leather couch in the hotel lobby where my love and my son were playing in a tournament. I am entirely surrounded by Indians. Which is not surprising since chess originated in India, and a large percentage of the chess junkies in our geographical area happen to be of Indian descent. An elderly Indian woman sat looking out from eyes that seemed glazed by a somewhat stranded, blank expression, interrupted only by tapping away on her phone. Several times I looked up and smiled. Nothing back. Blank stare. No willingness to connect. I tried three times, with no response. Normally I'd move on. But some inner impetus stood me up and walked me over to Narinda. Well, I didn't know her name at the time - of course I didn't .I am only psychic about the names of stuffed animals, and only once in a blue moon. I bent over, almost kneeling and asked her what her name was. Immediately the lights went on. The window shade that had been blankly drawn to keep out the outside world and whatever it meant for her lefted abruptly and with obvious relief. She lightly reached for my hand and grabbed it ever so softly. "Narinda." We smiled at each other long. She told me about her grandaughter, Simran, playing in the chess tournament, and how she always comes. I told her about my son and husband playing. She told me that Simran means "One who seeks God." And I told her how my oldest's name, Nika, means "belonging to God." And she kept holding me hand and looking into my eyes. She said, "Thank you. Thank you."  And then she asked me where I was from and I said, "What do you mean?" I never know how to answer that question. I can be comfortable any place in the universe where people smile at strangers and make soul contact as a way of life. But home? I just don't know. I nearly answered, "The stars." "What city do you live in?" came her answer to my request for clarity. "Madison." She thanks me again and we hugged.

I have noticed lately that it is a tiny bit harder to reach out to connect soulfully with people recently. More people walking through life in a zone that is different enough from mine that they more or less experience me as invisible, and on the flip, I can't access the place in them that I normally can find in people; the place of spirit meeting spirit. Namaste. That word always makes me think of telling a dog to stay. Nama, STAY!. But you know what I mean. Soulful contact is what makes life more than flesh tubes eating, pooping and pressing against each other to exchange genetic information and make slightly variant flesh tubes to to more eating and pooping and pressing. For real. Is that all there is? Soulful connection includes and transcends biological existence and it's preservation through biological propogation via tube pressing and smaller tube insertion into squishy opening for the pulsating generation of a new file of data to be used for making the tube of life.

It is so easy to see people we can't immediately get a human reaction from, or those who are different from us "those people." The ones we get to wrote or dehumanize as bonies - those so consumed by the plague of calicified hatred, intentional ignorance and a lack of morallity or even the bleeding remnants of compassion that they really do need to be neutralized for the benefit of humankind. But in the temptation of relegate people too quickly to this category, we miss the kind in humankind.

I've talked about bonies in other forums. I get the concept from Warm Bodies, which, if you haven't seen, I recommend. My oldest daughter says the intro has too much "cheese" and as far as genre, it's really a love story. Without giving too much away, there are two kinds of zombies: corposes and bonies. And corpses can be healed and "exhumed" into heart-beating, brilliant aliveness through the power of witnessing connection.

Later, Narinda found me again. And she sat down next to me on that brown leather couch and told me how she loves to cook for people...how can make the food really good, and how she sometimes brings it to the people at her son's workplace because it makes them happy and they really like it. She told me about a little girl who used to come to her apartment long ago when she first moved to the states in 1998, and how that child used to stay with her whenever the mother was working late or away one trips, and how the little girl loved her food and called her "mom." And she told me that if I lived closer she would cook for me.