You Send Me by Sam Cooke

Sam Cooke’s voice reminds us of a time when there was apparently less to worry about.  And as much as we want to call days like that, days like The Sandlot and Aretha Franklin, “easier”, they sure as hell were not.

It’s the melody of the most romantic voice, and a time when even during a rough era, people were not afraid to be REAL – to be their TALENTED selves. The association of one-liner mantras and repetitive stanzas from these times proves songs like Sam’s have a one-up on us.  Like, how did they figure out the simple answers to life and love when here we are with crazy technology and PHD’s for days!?  The truth is, we have it so much easier, that it’s actually a detriment to our well-being.

Love, which seems to be one of the most complex concepts to most people and particularly to this generation, is very simple to me.

I still base it on how I taught my students to treat one another.  Respect.  Honesty.  Patience.  Empathy.  Like how you love your family, is how you will love your partner.  There’s no other way around it.  You can’t get through life just being attracted to someone, otherwise we’d all be single forever, and just bouncing from one person to the next (not a bad idea, right?)  Naw, you gotta be able to kick it, when you finally choose someone.  You gotta be able to sit on rocking chairs and rock a while.  You gotta be able to lay on the sand and chill out.  Say nothing.  Do nothing.  But still be around one another.  And the simple answer to why most people don’t want to do that?  Because most of us keep trying to do that list above with someone, when we haven’t done it solo yet.  If you do it solo enough for a while, you will finally appreciate the other person in your life and not feel the anxious need to find someone else.

Today, there’s just too many questions, preferences, and customizations, like we’re cooking up some kind of perfect match.  The idea of meeting the “right person”, the “hottest person”, the most “creative person”, the “bravest person.”  It’s all just a parallel to where we are at in life.  And let’s face it, we’re not the most mature people if that’s all we got so far.  In reality, who you are and where you’re at in life will depict the person you end up with or are with currently.  Your maturity matches their maturity, plain and simple.  And if it does not, then you haven’t ripped the bandaid fast enough.  So if you want to be with someone better or more at “your level”, then BE BETTER and move on.

When you know yourself, you are completely at ease with who you are.

You are able to believe in someone else without controlling them.  You can be the most compassionate, loving companion to anyone and be incredibly patient and understanding even in the most frustrating of times.

I just got back from New York City.  Days of hangin’ in Central Park, and eating good food with the family.  Though I have been there about 3 times and have seen all the touristy sights, this was the first time I truly saw and felt New York.  I connected with it.  This moment I had with the city made me realize that my own love connection with the city is a parallel for being ready to accept love from another person on a whole new level.  One that I have been trying to understand for years.

There was a sense of comfortability when I was in the city, that was not there before.  I could walk the streets and felt very much a part of it.  I could see my life there, even if I never move there.  Love and life are connected in that very same way.  That comfortability only comes when you’ve done some time alone and brutally faced who you are, what you like to do, and what you crave to accomplish.  How else can you share yourself with someone in a way that is not manipulative, controlling, or just for the time being?

Beyond knowing and understanding who you are, I believe moments like this one in NYC are when all the dots, or fixed points in your life, connect.  Where for the first time, you can see why you went from A to B or are interested in X, Y, and Z.  From my most painful memories, to my most joyous, loving days, I feel and see how it all is a foundation for something much greater than I could have ever expected.

If you’ve read my backstory, you would think my life would have sent me down a very negative route.  And every day since that painful chapter, I have often wondered why it did not.  Which is why I write.  To get to the truth.  I have sorted through every chapter of life to articulate some kind of path or guide for others.  I have used Bloomified to show how most people do not tap into the resources they already have, in order to truly bloom; to become exactly what they want to be, inside and out, bringing success, self-respect, great relationships, and strong family, faith, and friends into their lives.

Why shouldn’t you have it all?

To have it all, comes with a price. A reasonable one to be honest.  Facing yourself to the core, seems pretty realistic to me.  It does not take fancy therapy, or constant medicine.  It just takes sheer guts to face the simple facts of life that are right in front of us all, all the time.  Just depends on whether you want to see it like that or not.

Life is the REAL LOVE you are craving.  It is not found in the comfortability of being with someone, or even in family being physically close to you.  Though those aspects in life make us feel a little better and inspire us to dig deeper, they still are more like a strong bandaid compared to the love of knowing, appreciating, and understanding yourself.

Life is about YOU.  And YOU have to be about Life.  It’s a relationship, in itself.

Your dreams pave the way for others.  Your dreams bring you closer to the ones you love.  Your dreams take you to the places you crave to go and to the people you want to meet.

Within those dreams are rocky roads and challenging times, but knowing yourself allows you to believe in what is greater.  To have the faith.  To do things right.  To be a good person.  To forgive.  To love.  To take care of others.  To have patience.  All the while, striving for what you feel you are meant to do in this life.  If good intentions are the foundation, all will be blessed.  No doubt.

It is hard to do the right thing daily, but it is the more fortunate route for the body, mind and soul.  Have you ever felt good after Lying? Cheating? Manipulating?  You might get what you want when you commit such actions, but it is not long term happiness.  It is limited.  Even worse, you end up having to commit the same terrible actions over and over to maintain the lifestyle you so-called “want” and your relationships are far from genuine because they are giving back exactly what you put forth.

If you’ve gone down that path already, then it’s been a long time since you’ve felt what it’s like to get what you want AND be filled with radiant love that positively affects every part of your life without even having to be in the driver’s seat.  How tiring is that?  Having to be in control all the time?  It doesn’t last.  You crash eventually or need a lot of supplements, to say the least.

The kind of loving energy I speak of not only helps you financially, but helps others too.  It is limitless, unconditional, forgiving, fortunate, almost child-like, and transcends into everything you do and say without even thinking about it after a while.

Those are the two roads in life.  Those are your only two choices.  It is that simple.

And every time we take a step in the wrong direction, we feel it.  It builds up like crap on top of crap.  It eats us alive even when we think we are not aware of it.  And when you wake up to see the load of disgusting layers built, it is that much harder to forgive yourself, to forgive others, to be honest, to be genuine and to turn to those you love for help.  You have to start from scratch at that point, teach yourself how to be REAL again, and scrape off all the layers day by day.

Save yourself the trip through Hell and let life SEND you, like a love song made in the fifties.  Let life SEND you to those you need to call and say sorry to, to the people you need to be honest to, to yourself in the mirror to face, forgive, and heal, or to your family members who need you or want to give you more love.

When we stay utterly true to doing the best we possibly can even if it’s tough, it pays off immensely.  Life becomes less worrisome, because now we are on autopilot to being true to ourselves in the most genuine way.  Where every day feels like spring in Central Park, or like a first kiss as the snow is starting to fall on top of the Empire State Building.  Thanks to the East Coast, I don’t have to dream about these things happening anymore.  Life has SENT me here and it feels pretty damn good – like being in love every single day.  And life will continue to SEND ME to other places, people, and things.

Blueless Bird by Joni Fatora

Mermaid Mantra by Bloomified

Breathing in life’s undertow

Never needing to even know ….

Deeply, entrenched; engulfed by walls

Trapped in secrets; myths told by all …

Within – the only place where she can start

Luscious locks and eyes controlled by the heart …

Impossible to grasp – slippery to the human hand

Never craving to come up for air – disgust for troubles of the land …

The curls run wild – they are who they are

A paradox of joy and pain, defining her bliss thus far …

Forever a mystery, to her, and to you,

A heart of deep waters, refusing to let, just any human through.

In many ways across the country and in the world, we are called to be more than human.  In order to do this, we must go inward and listen to the heart.  When I first decided to analyze my own heart, the journey took me out of a lie I was living and into the truth of who I craved to be to the core.  Since then, I have learned to connect on a level that protects me from evil, conquers the wicked, and protects those with good intentions.  I craved this kind of shield, so that I could be ME to the max without getting anxious, and then show others how to build that fortress of love as well.

Hard choices were made to put this heart on blast, and like a marathon, I had to train my mind, read a ton of books, listen to the ocean, play certain songs on repeat, write until I couldn’t stop, and finally submit myself to God.  God was the hardest part in the journey in the end, because He is not as popular as you think; believing in Him is a challenge in itself.   But staying true to this code of collective data that I have been researching for years and storing up in my heart, is the only thing that allows me to consistently live in peace and radiate with new ideas, passion, and zest for everything in this life.

People think love comes naturally.

They think you were born nice and personable.  They think you inherited it from your parents.  No.  In fact, it is the exact opposite.  Most of the time, those who choose love become very isolated.  You feel so alone at first and would rather live somewhere in the woods all on your own.  At one point, I had even made a pact with myself that I was a lone mermaid.  But then, this journey comes full circle as you enter the next stage of love.

As it gets more challenging to stay true to this evolved version of yourself, you learn to accept the even greater challenges ahead.  You know within that you’ve built up such a foundation of love and respect for yourself and others, that when pressured to stick to the goodness of this world, you JUST WILL.  This understanding of being able to trust the love within you, is a form of faith in God, or faith in yourself.  Faith is stronger than trust.  From dealing with terrible people to turning the other cheek, from doubting yourself to seeing the dots align for your dreams to come into fruition, it takes belief in this inner love to have faith that it is all coming together.

Love makes you feel bad for the false actions you’ve committed and crave to do better all the time.

Most people don’t want to feel bad for the way they’ve acted or even confess for that matter.  But every time you come through with humbling yourself in such a way (especially for the little white lies you tell all the time), you grow ten times more in this realm of love.  When you humble yourself, life seems to cut you a break for genuinely owning up to your faults.  BUT THE TRUE TEST AFTER CONFESSING SUCH FAULTS IS … DID YOU CHANGE AFTERWARD?  You cannot own up to something and keep being a liar, or manipulator, or whatever your go-to list of BS is.  Your faith in this Inner Love will help you fully transform; fully change and choose to do good.  This moment of evolving will naturally happen if your heart craves to define what is good.  Another note to add here is that you cannot own up to a fault only to receive something in return.  Love is not a genie; it doesn’t bargain or make deals.  Your intentions must be real and pure.  You will know your intentions are pure because these types of loving reactions are not premeditated one bit.  This is not something you have to teach yourself.  Those good intentions are already in there – YOU just need to move out of the way and let them come to the surface.  (Prayer and meditation does help bring these good intentions to the surface more.)

Once you’ve reached a more consistent way of behaving out of love, you will naturally radiate when people are trying to hurt you.

Like a signal of some sort, love protects you from people functioning at lower, petty levels looking out for only themselves.  It prepares you to stand up to such bullies of the world, where you magically find the right words to say, reflecting goodness and truth as a weapon.   After a while, this Switch of Love cannot be turned off.  It will be there for you to rely on in every situation, no matter how difficult or uncomfortable.

To understand the skills and effects of love, you must allow yourself to be pummeled at least once in life.  You must admit you are not in charge.  This is usually when people get on board with God, whether they already had a relationship with God or not.   I was pummeled by life and grew up Catholic.  During my rough time, going to counseling was out of the question because I had no insurance, so I really had to figure it out fast.  In a practical way, God was free.  After much work on myself that did not cost a penny, I finally came full circle to admitting that I was not in charge.  God paved a way for me to find my way back to myself, to the child I always was and am to this day.  It was the most resourceful thing I ever did.

This kind of Love I speak of allows you to dream with no limits and accomplish anything you see yourself wanting to do.

You do not control the universe nor your own fate, but if you tap into Love like this you will begin to ride the wave of just following the dots toward what you crave.  Not being in control does not hinder you in any way, but at the core of this way of living, love is still more powerful than everything you are.  It has to be because it is the force behind all opportunities, decisions, trust, patience, and respect.  What seems to be a list of easy 1st Grade values to master, is actually the hardest list of concepts for adults to fully embrace.  We have been serving ourselves for so long that we have pulled together our own little philosophy of lies to prevent us from having to be even meet the bare minimum of honesty or the bare minimum of reflection.

If we learned to trust the loving force behind all we do, we wouldn’t lie, cheat, manipulate, bargain  or disrespect family members, co-workers, spouses and ourselves.  Love takes looking at yourself in the mirror and applying all you say and do to YOU and ONLY YOU.  Nothing else helps you function at a higher level.  And after all is said and done, you will have to still work at maintaining this higher plane of living, constantly failing along the way, but here and there finding consistency.  Until one day, you realize, you don’t want to fight the battle anymore.  So, you submit yourself to Love all the way.  For me, that submission was the moment I actually admitted I believed in God.  I literally opened up my chest more, breathed in effortlessly, and trusted that everything I truly crave and need will come into being so long as I stay this course of trying to be honest with myself out of love.  When you let God in, or even admit in the tiniest of tiniest forms that you want to see Him in your life, you will begin to see Him all the time.  You will see Him in your place of work, in your family, in the people in your life, in the connections you make along the way, in signs on the road.  Like doors opening magically, they will continue to open for you.

It doesn’t matter if you believe in Him or not which is the best part – which makes writing so easy.

Love is simply there all the time waiting to be tapped into.  It is the ultimate foundation within all of us.  It is there lurking inside.  YOU are the only barrier.  We either choose to give in or not.  Some days are harder than others.  To make it easier for me to accept this love we for some reason are all given, I imagine I am still swimming in the ocean back at home.  And in those times of peril when I was getting crashed on or swimming super far out, I did not fight the wave.  I had to trust the sand below me, to pop me up, or trust that something bigger was at play.  That soon, I’d catch a wave in.  The current was always there for me, even in the worst of times.  These times in your life seem like patterns of moments when God saves you.  That’s when it naturally clicks, and this love of God, or love within you comes alive in a whole new way.  It becomes a foundation you can count on.

Don’t let the world around you or the people in it get you down.  You are protected from it all if you believe you are.  You are able to change and better yourself if you want to.  You are able to love and be loved if you choose to.  These decisions come from within – brutal – but necessary to live a life at a higher, more peaceful level, where accomplishing your dreams is not hectic, but enjoyable, blissful, even heavenly.  Find that love within yourself, so that you can be more than human – maybe even part-mermaid.

My Trigger by Miike Snow

God is my trigger.  There’s nothing I can do or say to pull me astray.  Ever since before I can remember, I’ve craved deep, dark, long moments with God.  I am addicted.

It took me a while to admit this to myself.  It took me even longer to realize I believed in everything about God without even knowing it; without trying; without having to be told.

Many of us are this way.

We appreciate silence.  We transform when the seasons change.  We die to winter, we come  alive in spring.

We enjoy music.  We crave to create something with our hands.  It kills us when we lie to someone or hurt someone.  We are truly trying to do better every time.

God is the path to always trying harder.  He is the fuel for the road, and for some of us, that is harder to admit.

Moving from the West Coast to the East Coast has made it easy for me to finally see these answers.  Living along the Pacific my whole life, I was able to have conversations with Him so conveniently.  Under the desert stars.  On long road trips by myself.  In the water.  On the sand.  Under the waterfalls.  In the cabins, surrounded by snow.

But now, the seasons come to me out here in beautiful Maryland.  The birds chirp because God told them to.  The flowers sprout because they are called to.  And I must pray, because I crave to.

So as Spring makes its way out here already in February, I am compelled to finally put my faith into writing.  It is so evident in the love that I cannot control for people, in the way nature lights me up every year out here, in the way writing reveals the truths of my heart, and comes alive through the coffee of my close, tight-knit community.

But now, the basics must be known, if not for others, FOR MYSELF.

You can do great things when you are uncontrollably honest with yourself.  And that ignites passion in others.  It awakens the deepest parts of other people’s hearts.  We all can sprout like the little bud on the tree.  We all can creatively hack at our passions in the still of the house, getting hit with spring showers of lightning and killer thunder from overhead.

God is in the silence of these moments.  He is whispering those subtle thoughts behind every action and before every action.  He is painting those quick visions in your mind, elaborately, as you subconsciously go on with your motions, choosing to ignore or choosing to let the picture become clearer and clearer.  Listen to them.  Meet the whisper and the visions earlier on!  They are real.  You are ALREADY hallucinating.  You are ALREADY hearing what you need to hear.

AT LAST by Etta James

Life is painful most of the time.  Your body hurts.  You’re tired.  The things people do and say hurt you or the world around you.  And the worst part is, it’s all just one giant distraction keeping you from staying focused on your dreams.

There are so many ways to handle pain.  And you did not invent the wheel.  These strategies have been around since the beginning of time.

We run.  We work less.  We work more.  We find our passions.  We laugh.  We make jokes.  We write jokes.  We crave balance.  We pursue new dreams.  The cycle seems to repeat.

But internally, is where the pain grows and festers.  Where the impatience stirs.  Where the fears get in the way.  Where the confusing distraction of things that you don’t even care about, get in the way of you being you.  Internally is this tiny nucleus of a nugget where the tweaking must happen to change the output of how you live your life and perceive it.

When I lived in California, I used to sit on the sand or float in the water, for hours.  When I moved to the East Coast, I was terrified that I would not be the same without this subconscious ocean routine.  How will I go at life in a place that does not have all the sensory inspiration?  I once feared.

To make that transition easier, I surrounded myself with people similar to my California lifestyle.  I paralleled my old routines, with ones out here such as running, teaching, improv, cafes, meditating, and prayer.  I created my very own California life on the East Coast and that helped me adapt, as well as get a good sense of my new surroundings.

When I was finished establishing this, it felt as if I had caught up to where I was on the West Coast.  And then, life happened.  A health concern forced me to have a hard conversation with myself that went something like this:

 “Well what am I supposed to do now?  I proved I can survive in new surroundings.  I proved I love going at life and seeking adventure constantly.  I proved you don’t have to be married or have kids to be completely happy and fulfilled.  How do I take this life to the next level?  Bloomified wouldn’t be Bloomified if I didn’t use this way of living to accomplish my dreams.  So what are my dreams now?  What do I truly want?”

These thoughts led to a thorough investigation of all the dreams I have ever craved and how they all came true.  Like a tracker, I went back in time and analyzed each one, watching where my decisions led to the dreams happening or why the dreams were not delivered to me in the way that I wanted them.  Like when people say, “God answers your prayers in His own way.”  Well yes, that is true, but if you play all your dreams backwards you can see you got exactly what you wanted and IN THE WAY THAT YOU WANTED.   You just had to accept the growing pains that came along with some of those accomplishments.  The reason I mention this is because when you make dreams, you have to be realistic.  You have to know that they don’t just happen, and they have consequences just like any other action.  They require focus, faith, patience and determination.  And in order to craft some pretty great ones, you should know yourself quite well in order to maintain who you are along the way and be true to others.

As I went back in time to study how my dreams have come into fruition, I saw how my hard work, focus, and faith played into it all.  Then I went back even further to the moment I first laid out what I wanted to pursue.  In that moment where the dreams seem to fly into the air and ignite more ideas for the future, there was this strong sense of which ones were going to happen no matter what.  Trusting that dreams will happen or will play out is not a made up thing.  It’s real.  There is a feeling and guiding force present helping you take the risk of embracing the calling to achieve whatever you are set out to do. There is simply some responsibility that comes along with carrying the process out.

Today, the new set of dreams that I have for myself are spread out in many different parts of my life.  I believe some will happen very soon, and some will happen much later.  There are some dreams that will happen in California, here on the East Coast, and in other countries.  How do I focus on what is now, and how do I make sure I do not control or force dreams that require patience?  The dreams from Cali to here only got me so far and taught me so much.  I now plan to use that knowledge to go further down this rabbit hole of where I am in life, to maintain who I am as a person and what I want to accomplish.

For this next chapter of life and dreams, I had to get on board with not being able to go home to California to ignite the flame or confirm the feelings I have on the inside for each goal.  And I don’t want to have to do that every time of course.  I want to know I can confidently go after what I know to be true and important from my own inner being.  With that, I decided to trust the foundation I’ve built out here, submit myself to the present more, and make this life even stronger before dreaming more specifically.

In order to solidify this foundation out here on the East Coast, I decided to create my own inner ocean in a very captivating way; a form of checks and balances, if you will.  I remembered how I used to sit in the middle of my Santa Monica studio on a yoga mat, with a lit candle, on days when I could not bear to go outside even though it was perfect weather.  I remember not knowing at the time why I wouldn’t just go outside and play like usual.  There seemed to be this internal unrest; a battle of wanting to be inside to focus, but wanting to be on the sand at the same time.  Subconsciously, I was teaching myself how to live without the ocean, little bits at a time, for the day it would not be there as I pursued the world at large.

Now, worlds apart, with snow outside my basement studio in Hyattsville, Maryland, I lit a candle on my yoga mat and mimicked what I used to do in Santa Monica.  Turning off all the lights, I sat down criss-cross applesauce and placed the flame below my face on the mat so that I could look down at it and feel the heat of the flame on my cheeks.

Immediately, something felt very familiar.  Like being in two places at once, but in a very happy and content way.  My eyes were open during this meditation session.  It was much easier to get to a state of steady prayer and meditation as I looked down at the flame instead of closing my eyes and tilting my head up to the ceiling.  I kept thinking, This is what looking down at a crystal ball must be like.  Haha.

As I looked down at the flame, I began to trance back in time.  I immediately saw myself having a very, vivid meditation sesh like this, right before I moved to the East Coast on this same yoga mat in my old apartment.  For some reason, I had blocked out how effective it was.  Sitting in silence and staring down at the flame out here just seemed beyond me or me beyond it.  But here I was, letting the silence take over and finding the comfort in this little world I love to turn to.  I simply sit there for however long it takes to understand what I need to accomplish per chapter of life or for those to come.  (For building endurance to sit in silence, see Lake Shrine Temple Meditation Hours on Friday Nights, or sit in silence for 30 minutes at a time, until you can do this for 2 hours straight.)

Staring down at the candle, many different scenes from my past sort of continued this story for me.  There were flashbacks to specific moments of sitting at my favorite spots on the sand in Cali.  It seemed I was supposed to figure out why I was reminiscing about these meditation sessions on the sand.

I saw one of my most favorite memories and spots on 11th Street in Newport, where I met a great friend who helped me get through the second stage of divorced life.  That chapter was integral in rejoining the world again and being positive about dating.  Then, I saw this cozy nook near some cliffs at Crystal CoveI where I used to ride my bike and plop it on the sand super early in the morning just to watch this one surfer who crushed this spot all on his own.  I learned how to be comfortable reading the Bible here and pray the rosary where no one was around.  Finally, this little trip took me to this isolated spot in Will Rogers where I would get away from the racket of Santa Monica and just zone out.  This is where I decided I wanted to leave California.  It was the only place I could admit and tell the ocean that I needed to go.  I could feel the pain all over again as I meditated so hard, feeling as if I was really in that exact spot on the sand, memorizing each set of waves and their patterns like I used to.

To what I thought was the end of a healing trip down memory lane, there was one last portal of a memory lingering.  It was as though I didn’t want to relive it.  Like I had been ignoring it for years, letting it sit there frozen in the front lobe of my brain.  I chose to let it come to life, and what I saw gave me so much peace.

I was sitting on the floor in my room in front of my nightlight as a kid.  I remembered how after my mom would put me to sleep, I’d get out of bed and sit in the dark staring down at the light as if it was a candle.  It was my safe place to talk to myself, to talk to God, and just dream endlessly about all the things I wanted to be when I grew up.

I slowly came back to the present.  I sat there for a while on my mat, piecing together all the memories, and drawing important conclusions about life and living.  Ultimately, I realized how good it felt to just “sit on the sand” again even though the sand isn’t outside my door anymore.

Beyond the sand, that nightlight memory triggered the strongest sensation and strongest foundation I forgot is naturally instilled in me.  I realized, that this inner way of being is literally how I tick, how I face life, and where I find the answers I constantly crave.  This is where I find God.  This is how I overcome frustration.  This is how I make sense of the world.  And the good thing is, I can do this anywhere, very easily, without sand.  Even, without a candle now.

I felt very grateful for having this moment on the mat, finally identifying this part of me . . . of all of us!  At last.

It seems this place in our hearts has pieces of everything.  It is your own inner home, as I like to call it, where we can see the ocean vividly if we need to, where we can recall memories that remind us of who we are, or where we can dream and dream and dream, endlessly about the things we want to accomplish or be “when we grow up.”  For the sake of annulments, they use this tactic in the Catholic Church as well, to go back in time and heal your past.

So then, why even write about it?

Well, for starters, it’s frustrating when people tell you to, “Create your dreams!  Go at life!  Just believe in yourself!” but then they don’t care to teach you how to do all of those very uplifting things.  Like we’re all supposed to just keep reinventing the wheel or something.

Maybe the patterns and tactics will not be the same for you as they have been for me, but through Bloomified, I attempt to convey the steps of how to believe in the visions of what you want for yourself, by showing mine slowed down frame by frame.  I also believe that if you can teach yourself to sit in silence and find this inner home, then you are less afraid to dream big.  Big dreams will simply be like many broken-down small ones leading to one huge amazing result of an accomplishment that will help you and the world around you.  It’s simply hard to navigate when you only focus on the big dream – you need mini ones to get you there.

The teacher in me sees myself as one of my own students, and what I did for them, is what I try to do for myself.

People say you cannot control the things that happen, or that the world is simply chaos.  I’m not so sure about that.  When it comes to people, they have the ability to decide on who they are, how they think, and how they act or react to every moment in their lives.  There is no excuse for a bullshit move – you just need to admit that you pulled one and move forward according to different patterns.

I don’t believe in controlling things for the sake of commiting horrific actions or even slightly manipulating others to do wrong, but I do believe you can submit yourself in a thought-out way, to goodness which is technically a way of manipulating yourself for the sake of others and your own benefit.  Through this submission to goodness, you can then dream with what feels like clarity and freedom.  And from these accomplished dreams, comes the beautiful ripple effect of positivity and inspiration on our communities, on the youth, and on ourselves.

If you do not believe in God, or find it hard to wrap your mind around believing in such an idea, then read up on how to establish an informed conscience.  At the very least, when one pursues to achieve dreams, remember that your actions will affect others, and thus, I would hope you have good intentions not just for yourself, but for the world around you.  Some of the most successful people by default benefitted a multitude of others, which is probably why we are aware of their grand mark on the world in the first place.

In short, an informed conscience is simply deciding on how to keep yourself in check in order to use your skills for good, based on an internal moral code you discipline yourself to abide by.  Granted, most of this literature is backed by the lives of the saints or by Ignatius Loyola, a teacher and educator within the Jesuit community of Catholics.  He was brilliant.  He was da man.  Whether you’re Catholic or not, he teaches how the inner mindset works for trancing out in order to pray effectively, and living a life according to practical means of just being a good person on the regular.

Once you are able to consistently live a life with good intentions, your actions can be trusted to always filter out the bad in a natural way.  Thus, also helping you when you come into the presence of a person who makes hurtful decisions that affect others negatively or puts others in a state of manipulation.  It takes time, mistakes, tracking patterns, and being honest with yourself to do such a thing quite consistently and to detect it in others in a mature way.

Volunteering with the homeless, volunteering with our youth, teaching, praying, confession, and writing has helped me practice the latter everyday.  I prefer to work in communities as well, so that I cannot get away with lying, manipulating people in my life, or living a double life where I say one thing and do another.  We all have these tendencies.  We all make grave mistakes.

But there is a way to effortlessly make these mistakes less, therefore having a greater impact on our communities and on ourselves.

Bloomified has always been a place where I can conclude the findings after researching such concepts.  And in a sense, I confirm it to the public so that I practice these findings regularly and pursue them in my ordinary life leading me to more credible conclusions.

The beautiful part about creating such a pattern of checks and balances for yourself is that, YOU also benefit greatly from it.  For every inch you evolve, the people around you evolve.  You will notice a change in how people talk to you or receive your ideas and ways of living.  You become less anxious and more focused.  More confident and self aware.  You are able to be more creative and less worried about the world around you because you are already actively trying to do your part.

The last benefit is how the world around you changes for the better.  It’s as if you and your community begin to jive together, are on the same page, and accept the growth as one without even having to admit it.  I believe that the more people consciously live this way, the more people can accomplish what they want in life together.  And isn’t that what most of us desire anyway?  Honest and Reliable Friends.  Close Family Members.  Loving and Committed Spouses.  Strong Community.  Love.  Passion. and Peace.

At Last.

Lonely Cities by Tigertown

Most of your everyday anxieties are just jumbled up nervous energy hitting you all at once.  We’ve grown up with a certain amount of this energy given the fast-paced, competitive culture we generate year after year.  Shit hasn’t changed and it’s not going to.  Americans are motivated and pumped to create new things, think outside the box – and we crave to have it all.

Many of us from this generation either grew up playing a healthy amount of sports or a little too much.  Thus, it is natural for us to turn to running, sports, cardio, yoga, or anything of that nature to keep ourselves sane.

However, RUNNING is one of my most favorite forms of releasing nervous energy.

Running makes the rest of the day easier.  It clears the mind.  It opens the heart.  You can be just as productive without it, however, you have to fight the mind a lot more throughout the day.  Everything just seems that much harder without it.

Running or cardio, does not have to be done every single day in order to reap the mental benefits.  When I trained for marathons, you only run about 3 times a week and then add a long run onto Saturday or Sunday.  During training, I was at a very consistent rate of productivity, rational thinking, intuition, awareness with others, self-awareness, and very focused on the bigger picture at all times.  Training ultimately taught me how to be this way regularly and how to teach others to function this way as well.

So trust me, to quote my friend who has run just under 100 marathons, running a few times a week is, “do-able.”

As I adapted and switched from career to career, I had to find that balance again and make room for running that is realistic to my life and schedule.  I had to adjust from my previously, very routined life as a teacher to the spontaneous hustle-like nature of my life now.

I enjoy my schedule very much.  It fits my personality more as a person and it allows me to freely decide when to run, pray, meditate, see my family, call my friends, be with my friends, work, and so on.

With that freedom, comes a whole new way of looking at life.  It reminds me a little bit of my summers as a teacher where I would tutor for a couple hours and then had the rest of the day to myself to write, socialize, volunteer, travel, pray or what not.

When I switched careers and also adapted to the seasons on the East Coast, I quickly noticed how much I enjoyed Fall and Winter.  They are the cooler seasons, obviously, but with that comes more motivation to run and craft workout regimens, which I thoroughly have enjoyed since I was a kid.

Granted, now, I run at the gym the way I used to  when growing up in Anaheim Hills, where the desert heat will kill you if you run outside for too long.  Out here on the East Coast, I jump on the treadmill and immediately trance out to some of my most favorite running paths and memories throughout life.  It is my sacred time, where I completely forget about the world around me.  And every time I get going, I always see myself just crossing the Starting Line and heading out on a nice 4-hour journey with other marathoners alongside me, especially my dear running angel, Christy Turner.

It’s so amazing how those feelings of marathon euphoria and getting hyped at like mile 16, never leave you.

After running marathons, you tend to always internally see people with posters cheering you on, and the feeling of being about 2 miles away from the Finish Line can teach you so many life lessons in just one race.  All of this comes back to me when I am on a running high.  It’s like being in a coma for short period of time, but then being allowed to come back to life again and again.

This blog was founded upon the concept of running to very specific playlists, set to shuffle.  To this day when running, certain songs can take me away to the most nostalgic high school memories.  Sometimes a song will provoke my days of dancing and partying in my twenties, galavanting around Hollywood, finding food trucks at 3am when they were just getting popular, throwing on some crazy outfit for Vegas, or roof-topping all over Sunset, Santa Monica, and Venice.  Then, I see myself running along the Pacific, next to the waters of Venice, Laguna, Santa Monica, Manhattan, Long Beach, and Malibu.

Always fantasizing about where life would take me – that it could take me anywhere.

AND NOW, I am fortunate enough to associate running with watching my warm breath hit the 28-degree weather or feeling the crunch of snow beneath my feet and the crisp air on my face.  Or trekking through the neighborhood and watching my shoes bounce through bunches of fall leaves and then running faster to make them blow all around me like mini-tornados.

It seems, my whole world has come together through running.

If you read my backstory, you will learn more in detail how I used music and training for marathons to allow my mind to reach very difficult memories that triggered real pain or aspects of life I feared to admit to myself.  Today, I am not in pain, but as I run, I get so pumped to write.  I get so deeply inspired and grow more passionate about finding new ways to articulate to my generation how to conquer fears and anxieties through the most natural and free resources around us.

When I run, I also fantasize about my most favorite memories with the people in my life and those who have been there for me.  This is my way of embracing where I am in life, sending gratitude out into the world, and enjoying being in some sort of sweet spot of life.  And the best thing about sweet spots, is there will be more of them.  Life is full of them.

But what good is a sweet spot – a slice of heaven on earth – if you can’t even feel it?

We cannot control what the world – what God – is trying to give us.  If you are open to it, He will give you everything you truly crave.  And so running, is where I meet God face-to-face and completely let Him take a hold of me.  After a run, it feels like I just watched a movie of my own life, where He shows me exactly what could happen or will happen.  Then, I walk away accepting what I felt and saw, knowing that it will all come true if that is where my heart truly lies.  And only He and I know where my heart truly lies.

I believe these moments of clarity and euphoria are easily accessed through running prayer, meditation, writing, and nature.  But just like anything else, you have to do it more than once to get the hang of it.  It takes some practice and getting used to.  Our generation wants to rely on so many other things to cure the battle of fear and anxiety, when most of the healing power is already within you.  And that should be a relief to hear.  After about a week of training your mind to handle the task of relying on yourself, it becomes this whole new way of living, where you no longer need to pay for help.  You no longer doubt that you can help yourself creating a self-sufficient strength.  Thus, it comes full circle, to where you can help others, because you have built a strong foundation for yourself.

You simply become your own foundation.

So for now, if you can make time for the following either all in one day or throughout your week, you will notice a huge shift in your mood, energy, and love for yourself as well as those around you.  It will go from tense, to relief, to less chaotic, to more organized, to productive, to focused, to balanced-happy-and-fun!

The important thing to remember is: Do not lock yourself into a routine.

Routines are unrealistic.  Life is always evolving; constantly changing.  You must learn to love that part of life!  Routines can be used for starting a new habit or focusing on a skill, but this is a mindset we’re trying to create here.  So think about this type of life style and mindset, like when you’re cooking.  You don’t actually need the recipe!  You can read it, look it over, buy all the ingredients, make it your own, and then continue to adapt it over time!  It will still be Spaghetti Carbonara, but with your own flare and energy added to it.

Goal:  Be able to run 3 times a week, write everyday, reflect every night, pray everyday and apply what you learn from these strategies to your actual life.  Don’t be the dope who prays and then acts like an asshole.

This Week:  Try to incorporate the following:

• Run 3 Miles by the end of the week
• Write 3 pages of nonsense in a yellow notebook some time before work or after (date it or label it according to months)

• 1 time this week, make two columns in this yellow notebook of yours; one side is for negative thoughts, the other is for what you deem as the opposite of each of those negative thoughts (the opposites will end up being little truths or affirmations for yourself that you should believe and listen to)
• Pray/Meditate – I prefer to pray the rosary once a day, but try to pray or meditate once a day in your own way; get a book about the Bible or on meditation, or even sit in silence with a candle for 30 minutes

• Family – see or call at least once to twice a week
• Friends – do something fun with your friends at least once
• Nature/Travel – go into the city, or be in awe of something like a monument, statue, the ocean, any body of water, a fountain, a tree, art; once this week  (at least 15 minutes away from where you live)

• Go Nuts – if you like to drink, sip on whiskey; if you like coffee, go to a new cafe; if you enjoy wine, get a glass;  I believe in a healthy amount of letting go and it is necessary to be a normal freaking human being who still does good in the world.

• Music – make a running playlist, a meditating playlist, a driving playlist, a playlist that reminds you of your family, or work and so on and so forth; music is healing, but specifically use it when writing to access parts of yourself you crave to articulate.

• Shows – (this is monthly not weekly) see a live show, a play, a movie, or an art show of some sort; it is natural to crave the Arts and to get hype from it; it will inspire you and remind you why you are doing all of this in the first place

Enjoy yourself and be honest and kind to others as well as yourself.

Flying Overseas by Theophilus London

Playing that song you love over and over.  Those are the best days.  You’re running, you’ve got the song on, it’s getting you up and over hills, it’s igniting that momentum and you’re practically singing and dancing as you turn corners.  You could be driving, and you’ve got that song on blast, slightly rockin’ your head and shrugging your shoulders like nobody’s looking.  You decide to go skate, pretending to be in this little world you’ve created, bending low and feeling the ground like it’s the ocean water and carving down hills like this is all you’ll ever do in life.  That is the feeling you want permanently.  THIS IS ALL I EVER WANT TO DO IN LIFE.  Well, there is a way to do this.  There is a way to make this a permanent setting in your life.

Vibes.  They are real.  We all emit them when we encounter one another.  This is my favorite part about interacting with peeps.  Whatever song I was jammin’ right before I saw you, is probably the energy being emitted when I see you.  That’s a match pitch method of interacting – like in singing.  Singers will hit a note and if you can sing that same note, match it, then you’re both on point together.  The same is with music and vibes.  You can match pitch a song, or someone else’s vibe as well.

This comes in handy when you know someone who’s got a really good vibe going on.  Or maybe you’re looking for what you want your vibe to be like.  So you start to mimic.

After a while, you crave to create your own vibe.  You crave that consistency and control.  Like, “I want to see if I can maintain the same vibe without anyone else interfering with it.” You know, because we all have bad days.  So how do you maintain your own vibe?  How do you make sure that you cannot only keep your cool, but ARE cool, like it’s built into your DNA or something and can’t be messed with.  You crave to get it to where it will always be your level-headed self, and no one can get in there and mess with that mental state you’ve created.

There is a process for accomplishing such a thing and it requires a lot of fun experimenting and hard work, of course.  First, you must understand, you have to crave to be this way.  If you don’t crave it, then you’re not even reading this.

If you are not all in with the process, then the outcome will be very inconsistent.  And it hurts you and others harshly when it is inconsistent.

You will have explosions and days when you’re feeling really good and then you’ll come down from that high, and it will all be gone.  You will feel very low and sometimes nothing will make you feel better.  It is so frustrating and feels like a state of hell.

I’ve hit these lows from experimenting with all of this.  So after that, I researched all the ways to “make yourself happy.”  From the ocean, to nature, to people in my life, to partying, to exercising, to books, to love, to careers.  And none of it is consistent.  None of that will fully define you.  Only you can define yourself, inside and out.

These things in your life can help define you, but you must put it all together and sculpt it very specifically, just like an artist honing in on her craft, in order to make it permanent and consistent.

When I was searching for happiness, I started with a person.  We grew up together.  We learned things from one another.  We grew very close.  We adopted things from one another like family or a mini-tribe.  And I learned quickly that you must already have a system built into yourself if you want that love to grow and be a true part of your life that adds meaning.

Then, the ocean came next.  The ocean taught me the most.  The water was already in my life, but I began to go to it on purpose instead of just by habit.  I learned how to meditate in front of the water and harness myself on days when I needed to get grounded or remind myself of who I was.  But here again, I needed to physically be in front of it.  I would burst on the inside and have like a mental freak out if I wasn’t in front of it, feeling every ounce of the absence of the Ocean Drug.

I saw this dependency building so, I altered a few things.  I added more elements, like trying to specify my role at work, being more selective with friends, and going on trips.  Then I adjusted my schedule throughout the week and made sure I was partying enough in ratio to how much I was working.  We’re gonna need more whiskey starting on Wednesdays and I’m going to need to stay out until 7am instead of just 2am.  Let’s throw in Vegas!  Haven’t been there in 3 months and the itch is building.

It’s all the same thing, this work-life balance and play-hard study-hard mentality.  I wouldn’t say it gets old, but these are the thoughts that forced me to find a more consistent way of living:

Who am I without all of these things?  

Do I define myself, or do I let these elements in my life define me?

If I could sculpt my life from beginning to end, what would that look like?

It was time to set it all on fire and see how real happiness works.  Part of why I left everything I know and love, was to feel the absence of every dependency I grew up with and still bloom; from family to teaching, I needed to know that there is this innate line in yourself that you can form to keep you blooming no matter what comes along.

As it turns out, I have been fascinated by this concept for a long time.  Through the research done in my own life, happiness is not just a choice.  And even more mind-blowing, it’s not happiness we are actually seeking.  It’s STABILITY.

You are constantly looking for a way to be yourself in every situation.  You are constantly craving things that define you or match pitch your energy.  And when those things are not consumed enough, you don’t know how else to bring back that feeling or create that “happy” stable life again.

You’ll see glimpses of it in the things that you do and the days that you have, but how do you get it to be real all of the time?

Like substances.  You need that feeling again and the only place you can recreate it is by taking something, or something better than the last.  You feel yourself learning from these moments of feeling superbly good, and comparing it to the come down that can really, really suck.  It hits you hard because you wish you could create that amazing world all on your own.

For me, substances are many things, not just actual drugs or drinking.  I was one of those people who loved all the substances of the world.  I was obsessed with learning about them as well, because I learned early on how to make those insane trips, a real one in my every day life.  But since these little visionary things I do in my head happen naturally, I yearned to learn how to teach it and put a hold on it for myself.  The problem is, there is more than you think that goes into teaching basically how to keep a natural trip going.

Similar to the concept of taking something, I needed to climb a tree or jump off the pier to keep that feeling going.  My body would physically ache in places if I didn’t go out enough or do something nuts that night when I was out and about in the city.  I craved those highs of life and there are moments when I still do in a way where I can’t function unless I go and be and do.  It’s not about not doing these things, it’s pointing out how these experiences are not strong enough to maintain your STABILITY – they are not supposed to be the foundation.  These experiences are too inconsistent and we become too dependent upon them.  They need to be experienced without needing them.

So now, the recipe for how to create and maintain STABILITY.  There are 3 main factors in life that taught me how to craft STABILITY and they are not going to look the same in every person’s life, but maybe my equation will help you match pitch a tad.  For me, the most brief equation I can give you is the following:

Divorce (Life Lessons).  Teaching (Passion).  God (Fuel).

Divorce (your life lesson).  I chose to be divorced.  Yes, there were a lot of red flags from the get-go and the culture in which I grew up was going to shit on me for getting divorced.  But I made that decision despite losing all my friends, losing the person I depended on the most, losing all my money, and ending an entire life – the only life I knew.  The fact that it is a life lesson, is important.  There are many life lessons that are just waiting for you to acknowledge them, but until you learn from one, there is no life lesson.  So be aware!  You have to make the choice to be honest with yourself to even admit something is a life lesson.  There are many people who do not own up to the mistakes they’ve made or humble themselves to the world around them.  Living in denial can feel easy, but one day you will wake up and realize you spent your whole life living a lie.  And that’s Hell in a nutshell.

So divorce: it was terrifying starting fresh at 23.  Having missed out on major growth periods because I had been tied to the same person for most of my growing years.  I didn’t even have a job because the teaching world laid off everyone under 9 years of teaching in Los Angeles.  But the craving to live without dependencies was there.  And deep down, the life of starting over was better than being dependent on someone who also needed to find his own way. It begins with a choice though, and no matter how hard the choice was, it had to be made.

I had this fear of being homeless my entire life.  I was the youngest of three and grew up with this innate fear of always being on my own for some reason.  I wondered what it would be like if my entire family died one day.  What would I do?  How would I survive?  Where would I work?  Where would I live?  Growing up in a family of older brothers played into this as well.  I saw how they were charging at life, making all the varsity teams, winning ASB positions, were charismatic, funny and popular; natural born leaders to say the least.  I knew I would have to do the same or become something more to really make my mark in the world.  I put all this pressure on myself very early in life, figuring we’d all be on our own very quickly or something.

I was constantly trying to find a way to live on my own, support myself, or succeed right away just in case everything around me was gone one day.  Though this is something you definitely need to go to therapy for, this fear in me made me a very motivated person.  It forced me to make difficult decisions faster, like ripping the bandaid or figuring out how to pull the chute later.  It actually helped me end the marriage faster too and weigh out the level of comfort from the marriage versus what I could become on my own without that relationship in a very realistic way.

Making the decision to be on my own without any money or a job or a place to live was like finally figuring out life as if I didn’t grow up with the family I had.  I was finally going to face all those questions I used to fear.  Like, How does each person “make it in life” no matter their foundation?  If you didn’t grow up with the support of your family, what would you do?  What decisions would you make?  How would you find your way?  Would I have always been a teacher?

From getting started at life this second time, but on my own without all the comfort of the suburbs and money, my dreams began to come into fruition.  I believe that dreams catalyze more in an unstable upbringing than in a super secured suburban life because you are constantly trying to get creative with finding a way out.  You have to define yourself in some form early on in order to beat the system, since your home life didn’t have one in a way.  That’s why some of the most successful, creative minds came from totally shit backgrounds.  It’s what they did after they “made it”, that may have gotten a little skewed; hence why we need the STABILITY factor.

One of my favorite books to read is Sick in the Head by Judd Apatow.  If you don’t know Judd, get a hold of yourself.  If I could choose a celebrity mentor, it’d be him.  And if I could worship a mentor, it’d be him.  In his book, he interviews all these super successful comedians throughout the last 60 years even though he is probably in the top 3 of most successful comedians throughout history.  He didn’t even pursue stand up that hard, and I don’t blame him given the fact that he and Adam Sandler were besties.  Through the vulnerable, off-the-record type interviews, he reveals the way in which the comedians became comedians and how comedy actually is like a peep hole into the truths about humanity.  Something we all struggle with greatly.

Most of the comedians actually came from nothing.  They came from either not so good home lives to really bad ones, but just happened to meet all the right people along the way.  They followed this sliver of a dream of loving to laugh or going to night clubs just to get one laugh.  They bombed every single time on stage prior to their successful chapters.  An interesting note after studying so many comedians, the more successful ones such as Seinfeld, Steve Martin, Jimmy Fallon and more if you read it, either took up TMs (Transcendental Meditation), forms of believing in God, or stopped taking drugs (or never did) all together.  The ones that kept going strong on the drug train eventually died or their careers ended badly.  All in all though, they all started out with a strong creative sense of trust in the beginning.  They made it out of conditions they were in, and then the paths diverted into either STABLE lives or not.

During this divorce recovery phase I was going through, I had a similar start-up experience where I allowed myself to be as creative as possible with my future, because in a sense the worst had happened.  I was carving my way out of a really bad situation.  All the while, my humor and true identity was forming.  I can relate to these comics in many ways as my bold and brave personality began to come through.  And I didn’t stop it.  I only did more to fuel it and see just how crazy or just how funny I could get.  This ultimately led me to not being afraid to dream big.  To dream very, very big.  And something that helped with dreaming big, was having no plan.  I was living off nothing and had absolutely no plan for like one solid year.  The dreams were unstoppable during this time frame and I basically mapped them all out in a linear format and said, “I will do this by the end of this year, then this in two years, then this in five, and then this will split off somewhere over here and okay, now I’ve got these 3 other dreams, I’ll just put them over here for later once I’ve accomplished these first five things.”  (Teaching how to trust and craft dreams to come.)  At the end of a certain checkpoint of achieving about 3 to 5 dreams, I had to teach myself STABILITY.  Because I learned that tough times were still ahead, and I was going to need more than just a work-life balance to achieve it all as well as stay sane.

Which brings me to the second factor in the equation of achieving STABILITY:  teaching (your passion).  My dad had always taught in the inner city of Los Angeles.  My mom taught in an equally dangerous spot in Orange County called Santa Ana.  However, he would come home with the craziest stories about chasing down kids who brought weapons to school or having real talks with them like he was Edward James Olmos in Stand and Deliver.  The only times he had nightmares, were when students had been killed.  There was this one I will never forget.  One of the boys came to school with a gun hunting down his ex-girlfriend.  School police had already been tipped that he was coming to kill her.  She was sent home to stay with her grandma as a way of protecting her.  He found her at home and shot her through the window while she was sitting with her grandma.  These moments haunted my dad.  He grew up in these areas and even he had it better than they did in some form.  He was trying to find every way to save these kids too and show them how to create their own futures.  How to focus on something bigger, give them purpose so they could think beyond all the craziness in their homes.  He was one of the first principals in Los Angeles to make home visits.  He’d show up at your door and be like, “Why aren’t you at school? Huh?”  Attendance on paper was nothing to him, he was at your door knocking – sense into you.  And sometimes, it just doesn’t get through.  Sometimes, you have to let it all go.  And so the nightmares …

These were real stories I grew up with day in and day out.  My dad was and is this hero in my life.  I already had a natural knack for teaching and I knew I could chase down those same kids every day for the rest of my life, whether they were real students of mine or people in my life.  Both my parents came from a completely unstable life.  They wanted to create stability for us, but they never wanted us to not know what it would be like without that love at home or simply a house over our heads.  So I am grateful, of course, and that gratitude is built in for life.

We’d go to Dodger games and my Dad would take the scenic route through parts of LA he wanted to share with us.  I was used to seeing the craziness of that life, but I didn’t have to live in the thick of it.  He would leave the window down when we’d get gas in Watts just so I had to understand how to handle crack heads walking up to the window to ask for money or stare you down like you’re the crazy one.

And we are.  We are the crazy ones.

Early on, I wanted to figure out how to live both lives.  I didn’t want the comfort of Orange County.  I wanted to know how my parents really grew up.  I wanted to know why we lived so far from everything.  My brothers and I all ended up living in Los Angeles through our adult years, probably for these reasons.  It didn’t look like such a conscious idea back then, but in hind site, we were craving to understand our family, our roots, and the world around us.

My first year of teaching was hard for many reasons, but nothing got in the way of that dire need to create the most amazingly, loving atmosphere for those kids.  The energy to stay at work all day trying to puzzle piece how to create this utopia was effortless because you were hearing day in and day out about a child being abused at home, or you were meeting with a parent for a conference who was barely making it by financially and mentally.  These stories can be way more specific and the worse stories took place at the public school I taught at within the first couple years of teaching.  We’re not talking just getting slapped.  We’re talking rape, molestation, getting whacked with actual tree branches, not being safe in your own freaking home.  Little girls were being taken advantage of at the age of six, and crying during reading time because of complete and horrific emotional terror in combo with physically permanent damage to their bodies.  Their world was completely shattered, so I had to maintain.  I had to find myself quickly so that there could be some sort of light in this room of things caving in all around.

Some people get mad when they see horrible things go down.  They say things like, “I can’t believe this parent did this!”  “I can’t believe she’s high and she’s pregnant!”  “I can’t believe that Dad came in here and threatened to beat the living day lights out of his six year old in the middle of my math lesson!”

Nah.  Those people don’t understand.  The world around us has been breaking since day one.  This is not the first time horrible things have happened.  It’s like the lottery.  You got to know how good you have it even when you don’t grow up in the burbs sometimes.  And as a teacher, you are there to not right the wrongs.  You are there to create a world where each person (not child, each person) can find his or her own STABILITY, so that she can overcome every single angle of heartbreak that is going on in his or her life.  And for some who reach that grand level, they start to not even see the heartbreak anymore.  It’s all just good, even when things look bad to others around them.

So that became my mission in life.

How do I instill this utter confidence and faith in a person so that nothing can break her?  How do you get someone to embrace this type of belief in herself so that it’s like unshakable DNA in the bloodstream, so that no matter how many times they are disappointed by the world around them, they can STILL be who they crave to be.

I thought the teaching bug would disappear when I left the literal classroom, but then when I got out of those 4 walls, I saw the bigger classroom.

And man, it needs major help.  We all need major freaking help.  Which is why community is vital.

The classroom was always my mini community.  But communities exist everywhere and can be strengthened.  I found a mini community playing pool, there are communities in cafes, in the things you do like running, skating, and painting.  Miracles happen in communities because people learn how to be more authentic.  They  learn how to share themselves on a daily basis without hiding behind superficial mantra.  And you have to be real, because frankly you see each other so often.  The surface level conversations get checked at the door.  And a community that gets stronger simply challenges you to work on yourself so that you can contribute something more to the every day grind of it all.

I watched my students take on this STABILITY factor as we spent more time together.  Respect, love, rules, and consequences are built in to help this process.  We became a tight family every single year, where Ms. Contreras would always be their mother for life.  And like saying goodbye when your older brother leaves for college, I had to say goodbye, knowing I would always think about them and possibly never see them again. It feels like a piece of heaven when I hear they are going to college, becoming who they crave to be, saying yes to creative internships, volunteering in their neighborhoods or pursuing that crazy craving to dance, skate, paint, travel – you name it.

That love that’s in them to become all of these things could easily have been stripped away from them from watching their cousins die in the middle of the street from a routine drive-by.  I’ve only seen a few people get shot and I didn’t even live in the neighborhood.  When a child died, that was the worst.  I would get so angry and it made that fire of becoming STABLE even more of a driven thing.  But unlike their families, I could drive home to my safe haven and regroup.  Most people don’t have that.  There is no regroup-sit-by-the-ocean book for them.  There is only the day to day.  And in that day-to-day mindset, you don’t get to dream unless someone says to your face, “Yes, what are your dreams?  And let’s make it happen together.  I am here to guide you.”  I loved being that vessel for dreams.  Ms. Contreras had and has that magic.  “What do you want to be?  I will help you.” And just like that, we go on mapping out your dreams and getting all hype together.

Teaching brought my mindset and passion for learning STABILITY to an all time high.

There were days when I just wanted to take off and be Mother Teresa.  It killed me that there was no way to help everyone in the whole entire world or help myself enough from watching so much go down.  I wondered,  Am I even making a difference?  Should I hate myself for having it better?  How are we all supposed to function?

Then, I was sitting in a homily one day at mass and the priest was saying something along the lines of how if you let all those thoughts in, you’ll never live up to your calling.  Calling? What calling?  I had a calling to be a teacher, that was for sure.  I had a calling to write and that made me feel good, almost healing.  I even had a calling to be a sister when I was like 8 and thought, “Man this would be sweet!  Just praying and meditating and traveling the world helping people!”

But, he was talking about a deeper calling; the idea that we are all called to something beyond the title we bear, and that if we stay focused on that part, then no matter our backgrounds, no matter the horrific situations of the world, we can all attain this STABILITY together in a way.

And so, my third point: God (your fuel).  God has been debated over and over and I am not here to sway anyone from one side to the next, but I will talk about the facts.  And the facts are strong.  And the facts about God and what I have come to know, have literally paved the way for greatness in my life – not like blessings for myself, but an ease and love for the world that is unshakable.

Nothing else in my life has come close.  Nothing.  Not the ocean.  Not one person.  Not the best song in the world.

Getting to know God.  What does that look like.  Well.  People are going to say all kinds of stuff.  Like “Once you know God, everything gets better.”  “When you find God, you get everything you want.”  “God allows you to be happy.”

Though some of these things are a byproduct of learning how to trust God when shit goes down in your life, the actual nature of God is so beyond anything we can understand, that you literally have to submit yourself to all your worst fears, dependencies, and nightmares.

To get to know God, you must go through the fear first.  And once you are in the flame, in the middle of your life crumbling and all is being destroyed around you, there is God.

This is probably my most favorite thing about God.  He will never be a fad no matter how hard you try.  No matter how easy they paint it for you, HE is not easy.  Evangelizing in a way is pointless because the truest form of God will slap you so hard, you won’t even know how to explain Him to another person.  My students, reading about the Saints, and traveling to other countries, taught me the most tangible things about God.  But the intimate parts of God I learned from suffering and facing the pain of who I am every single day.  A relationship starts to build.  You feel married to it.  You start obeying in situations when you formally would not.  And then the good part comes when you just start getting used to the feeling of “jumping off a cliff” every morning.  Your mind becomes so trained to putting all your trust and faith into who you are, that yes, it feels like you are jumping off a cliff when you wake up saying YES to the people, places, and things in your life; fully trusting everything it has to offer.  Amazing things seem to fall into your lap, but don’t be mistaken, it took a ton of very hard work and dedicated prayer to get there.  Then, when horrible things happen just as life does promise, they almost don’t feel horrible anymore.  You just start to take it all in and know that there is more to life than the good and bad.  Good and Bad are very superficial levels of living this life, almost an entitled way of living.  There is so much more when you realize you are here for a purpose; a very specific purpose.

One day I was reading that quote from Matthew about giving up your life to have a life …

Whoever finds their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life for my sake will find it.

And whether you believe in God or not, a simple way of showing you how STABILITY is capped with God, is just by choosing the harder route.  If a route comes along and you know deep down it will change you for the better, no matter how hard it is, just take it.  You will get to know God real fast, and at the very least, yourself.

So that’s what happened.  I said yes to the scary life of the road less traveled and I promised to stay on this road from then on.  You see, I hated the superficial person I had become from growing up in a pampered world.  I hated having had a better life than my parents.  I hated that I didn’t just take off to another country and become a nun or have the discipline to at least learn moderation when I was in the heat of a crazy night out.  I hated being addicted to myself and  mad at the world all at the same time.

The shedding of this previous life began with the divorce.  And since then, I learned about how to make those harder decisions over and over until I could gain a sense of strength and STABILITY internally, independent from the world around me.

How else can you face the negative things that happen every single day?  How else can we truly help others or help ourselves?  It’s like when you’re on an airplane and they show you how to put the oxygen mask on.  They say, “Be sure to put the oxygen mask on first, so that you can apply one to the child next to you.”  How is that child going to put that crap on?  Dead.  Dead right away.  You gotta put one on first fool!  You gotta challenge yourself to be something more before everyone else around you because no one is jumping at the chance to face their demons.  Hence why it usually takes a GodSmack or a life lesson to catalyze the road less traveled.  At that point, you’ve been going down the wrong road for so long that it’s obvious to make some changes.  But will you?  There are “harder paths” presented to us on a daily basis, but we rarely take them.  In the beginning, these opportunities are as easy as saying, “I’m sorry, that was my fault.”  Or “Ya, I shouldn’t have asked you to do that, I should have done it myself.”  Those two lines hit the topics of denial and manipulation real fast, and yet those simple self-conscious acts of being honest are just not easy for everyone.

Every single person in this world is that child next to you.  No matter what you’re background.  WE ARE ALL CALLED to help one another.  Not just because you had it better or worse – that is not the case.  WE ARE ALL ONE COMMUNITY.  And the more we start to take that approach for ourselves, the more we are able to actually put ourselves first in a way that we do not need to feel guilty about, because it’s for the greater good.

STABILITY is a choice.  And it’s hard no matter what.

The tiniest of things make me want to just go back to my old ways of living.  It’s like a drug that you want so badly but you are withholding yourself from taking.  And there’s no effing rehab for this.  There’s no pill to make you a better person or a more positive one.  You might think there’s one, and then that thought erases when the pill wears off.  There’s just the choice of making STABILITY happen for yourself and constantly trying to get better at it all the time.

Things that help and make the road easier?  Prayer and Confession.  I finally understand prayer.  There are days when the last thing I am capable of is waking up to enter my day.  My body doesn’t even want to do it.  My mind wants to cry in a million different directions because of the stress of the things coming up and how I know I physically won’t be able to do it all.  And that right there, is the golden nugget lie.  I will get into LIES in another post.  But when that lie comes in, that negative thought of “I know I can’t get through …” , I pray the Rosary and by that last bead, I know exactly what I need to do and say to be true to who I am and where I am going in this life.

Secondly, confession is the bomb.  I used to only go like every 3 months and now I go about every two weeks.  It always felt “amazing” after, but then I finally understood how and why it works.  Because when you have to confess to what a piece of crap you are in the biggest and tiniest ways, you are simply able to see the tainted pieces of yourself and are admitting that you actually want to rid yourself of them.  The other half of confession, is you have to love yourself enough to forgive yourself completely and crave to not keep doing the things you feel bad for.  That’s where confession is fun and healing, but most people hate that last part.  Including myself.  Like I already cussed three times in this blog post alone to get a point across, and I will probably cuss a few more times before 3pm.

If your right eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell.

It’s so true.  Those days when you know you’ve hurt someone or hurt yourself, long term or short term – it eats you alive.  It eats you alive even when you think it’s not eating you alive (classic denial).  And so, I will not allow this type of strain to hold me back from accomplishing what I need to accomplish.  Those tainted parts of your life hold you back from simply being kind to another person.  I mean what kind of thing is that?  We can’t even be nice to one another because we can’t be honest with ourselves!  That’s horrible.  The bar for kindness and honesty is pretty low these days.  We must change it first with ourselves.

STABILITY SHOULD BE HARD.  Otherwise, no one is going to want to do it.  People are wanting to do all kinds of hard things these days.  P90X looks hard.  Crossfit looks pretty hard.  Running marathons is hard.  Well this is the hardest thing you will ever do, so “just do it,” to quote Nike.  And because it’s so hard, it leaves you with the best high you’ve ever had.  It’s the best because there is no come down.  Once you are in this realm, nothing can harm you, and nothing can stop you.  You will know when harm is coming and you will use your STABILITY to help yourself and help others.  It becomes that permanent, consistent vibe you are looking for, and the best part is, you don’t even have to spend a single cent to try the first day of STABILITY training.  You just wake up and make the choice to start right now.

SO IN LOVE – Brock Berrigan

There are two ways to go through life.  You can aim to be at peace or always arguing with life.  If you are aiming for peace, then your accomplishments have fuel behind the energy.  Fuel that internally knows the ultimate outcome is for your benefit.  Always arguing is more like beating your head against the wall – always “trying”, but not knowing why you’re trying.

I prefer to envision myself completely at peace before I die.  And if I die tomorrow, then I shall be at peace today.  With how I treat people, with how I receive people.  With how I look into a person’s eyes, to how I give myself the opportunity to create and soak in all that is around me.

I will do anything and everything I want in this life.  But, how do we guide the want?  It is a question discerned throughout every decade.  And in the end, we are kinder than we think.  The word “want” insinuates that we have the free will to literally be horrific people or good natured people.  So then, define good natured.  The fact that we spend this much time pondering how to “guide the want”, I’d say we’re headed in the direction of good natured, but not fully on board with it.

Many of us plateau once we reach success and begin to give to ourselves more so than to others.  Define “giving to ourselves.”  For this you must fast forward that conversation with yourself and we meet up at the end with the same question, even though we are different people.  The question we arrive at is:  How much giving TO ourselves makes us truly happy?

From my own life experiences and reflections, I can correct that happiness actually has nothing to do with giving of any kind.  It actually stems from a deeper part of our being.  It stems from being grateful – the exact opposite of giving.

We hear stories of children who came from nothing, and still found success.  We resurrect leaders who came from poverty and wonder how or why they fought for what they believed in without a doubt.  We read about those who forgave and forgot, and are now so happy because they do not let their past hold them back one ounce.

It all stems from gratitude.

Why is gratitude important?  How did it get overlooked?  Why don’t more people talk about it?  Because it takes conscious thought, reflection, and decisions.

Gratitude is utterly being grateful for everything and everyone.  There is a trigger in everyone’s life where they become grateful.  Whether, something happened (one, large difficult life experience), and they are now grateful or they grow old (reflecting on multiple life experiences) and are now grateful.

For me, divorce taught me gratitude.  Ending a relationship with someone I grew up with allowed me to cling to everything I already had in my life.  I became grateful.  I began to see purpose in every action, word, moment, person, wave, and prayer.

My Aunt lost her husband, father, and son in the span of 2 years.  She became grateful for her brother, sister-in-law, cousins in other states, grandsons, niece, and all who had ever gone before her.

And for some of us, gratitude doesn’t kick in until we are old and wise – until we have had the time to look back and appreciate all the ups and downs.  But, gratitude can come quicker than you think.  And it can be forced upon you or you can choose to learn it.  It CAN BE taught.  And when it is, it is like an unveiling of a simple word that if you think about it hard enough, you either understand the simple word or you do not.

To appreciate someone, you must see yourself as admiring them and learning from them.  To appreciate a person, you in a sense, love them.  You love every moment under their wing.  You love that you can improve as a person from just observing, listening, and allowing them to be your teacher.

To appreciate nature, you must see the world as something greater than you.  The birds chirping become magical in a sense.  The ocean waves become a mystical being providing you with peace and calmness.  The wind sends a current of wisdom nearly flooding you with endless flutters of hope, possibility, and protection.  From nature, you then are soaking up a form of love as well – love sent from all that just comes from this earth.  It will transform you and heal you, if you see it through the eyes of gratefulness.

Gratitude requires humility, and gratitude generates love.

If this is the case, then you can reach a level of falling in love with life.  This Life of Gratitude consists of maintaining family, healthy relationships, genuine friendships, honest interactions, present moments, and giving into your surroundings (nature, where you live, everything you come into contact with.)

For myself, it seems I have been naturally grateful for a lot of things.  But just being grateful is not enough to change my mindset.  Sometimes, I have to say it, admit it, affirm it with writing and prayer.  Sometimes I must specifically acknowledge which area in my life I am currently grateful for and which people I know have come into my life to help transform me into what/who I crave to be.  This helps highlight which areas in my life may be holding me back from internally being at peace with myself and ultimately at peace with life.

Once in this place of gratitude, you truly feel “in love” with it all.  It’s when the stars align constantly.  When the universe sends you everything you need.  Those moments where you feel like something is watching out for you or is purposely at work in your life.  It is the beginning of the rest of your life, where you can finally just trust what the world is handing you and trust what God is telling you to do.

Gratitude is that powerful.  And since love is a direct byproduct of it, you are able to give so much love to yourself and then to others in the end.  It’s as if you come full circle.  You are finally able to be completely happy with all you have, that you no longer worry about the future, or question the motives.  You just DO.  You just ACT.  You just BE.  You just MOVE.

It is a powerful state of living to be in.  It might be what living really is.  All I know is that this state of living in gratitude becomes permanent.  Once you are there, it cannot be stopped.  Since you are not bothered with the “what if” and “why” anymore, you are just working on your passions, fulfilling desires, and feeling settled in to your own shoes.  You just begin to live it all out without thinking, and the rest is history.  The rest just plays out as it should, because you trust that your wills and wants are guided by having already done the work to find peace in this life.

Just for Now by IMOGEN HEAP

Times of suffering are not what they seem. We call it suffering because, for a moment, we are forced to experience the essence of life. We are forced to be real and raw to the bone – for the first time immune to the BS of this world and not wanting any part of it.

Life has nothing to do with the daily activities and festivities, as much as we would like it to. And when we dig even further, it goes beyond our passions – beyond even our families and closest friends.

From my own story of finally being able to touch what’s really at the core of all this craziness, I embraced very concrete memories of peace and serenity.  I return to these moments mentally and visually as much as possible. I keep these memories of sitting on the sand at the forefront of my mind to keep me grounded and to ultimately help others.  It is a form of rejuvenation whenever I need it.

Remembering the peace of just being allowed to heal, being left alone to reflect and just exist, sometimes makes me crave to go back to that chapter in my life.  In that particular moment of wanting to go back in time, I bring the memories back to life and recall vividly what it was like to look out at the ocean and know that I am just a tiny part of it all.

Knowing you are tiny, makes it all that much easier.

And when it comes down to it, being tiny, helps us to completely just BE in the moment, with everything we do and say.

Most of the lessons I learned, while sitting on the sand and talking to the ocean in my mind and heart, revolve around the concept of how it is all just for now. And the more I saw this concept alive in all the surrounding religions, in my own Catholic faith, in my family, in the happiest of people and in the most successful of leaders past and present, I began to truly believe in it – live it – share it – and now, teach it.

There is nothing more important sometimes, than the waves coming in from out back. There is nothing more important sometimes, than the conversation at hand. There is nothing more important sometimes, than putting your feet up to rest or pouring one cup of delicious coffee, for someone else.

In these moments, we see glimpses of what it’s all about. We try so hard to hold on to it – to dig deeper, when we get a chance to dig in the first place. I’ve studied long and hard how to hold on to moments like this, while living a life dedicated to my passions, family, and friends. What I’ve come up with is that once you’ve found and experienced this slowed down version of living life in its simplest form, without anxiety and without fear – fully connected and fully at peace – you now have the control to completely let go, until you finally don’t have to tell yourself to let go.

We go back and forth with being a prisoner to our own crafted lives, whether we are too busy with everyday occurrences or worried about bills, work, and schedules. Then, we get that day off or take that much needed vacation, and it all makes sense again.

But what makes sense again? Can you pinpoint the wisdom you keep circling around? Days off and vacations are like tiny doses of quotable moments throughout life, and when you piece them all together, they bring meaning to Socrates’ philosophic method or to Lincoln’s powerful words that seem to live through you. It’s like they’ve done this before! We did not invent the wheel but it sure feels good to see their words making sense in our time.

By the time we die, we’ll have practically written our own book, or at least one really, solid chapter of which no one else will probably care to read, haha! And everyone will have to figure it out for themselves, all over again. The meaning of life – the purpose of life – the stairway to heaven – the road to success and happiness; whatever you want to call it. The title is different for us all, but the journey is much the same.  We’re all pretty clueless.  Which is why it’s amazing, when someone finally gets it – even if she feels and understands the tiniest part of it.

And still! That’s NOT what it’s all about, at least just for now. All these minuscule pieces of wisdom don’t even add up to the amount of wisdom up for the taking. So, what is extremely beneficial about these slates of wisdom, for the time being? Or to speak in our generation’s language, what is the most efficient way to use these moments of enlightenment? Beyond the fact that we were already built with this inner wisdom and it is only that we slowly start to believe fragments of it at a time …

… these bits of revelations simply give us total peace – if even for just a moment.

Just for now, we feel wise! Just for now, we get it! Just for now, when I wake up – am in the shower – am driving from A to B – am meditating – am praying – am lining up for my shot in the corner pocket – just for now, it all makes sense. A glimpse of peace. A glimpse of what it would be like to actually know ALL that we already know.

Being a writer, I always want to jot down these revelations. I want to keep them and hold on to them for fear that if I let it all slip into my subconscious, I’ll never be able to retrieve it or teach it to someone else when the moment presents itself. But, I am wrong each time. The wisdom is always there when I need to tap into it. So then, if it can’t be lost and is almost pointless to write down, then what’s the purpose of a revelation?

Peace.

Peace is the purpose.

And this kind of peace goes a long way – for you … for me … and then, for others, as a byproduct.

You must harness this peace from a revelation, when it comes to you. For me, this type of peace feels like the tide washing over my body, as I lay on the sand, fearless, and not knowing when the water will cover me completely. Harnessing the peace means I can make myself feel like the tide is washing over me every, single day – amidst the busy schedule, amidst the passion, amidst the projects and deadlines and family festivities.

Any time I become out of touch with this feeling of the ocean waters cleansing my soul, I go back to the revelation room. For much a time, my bedroom was the revelation room. There I was, listening to my favorite songs over and over, lighting incense and journaling until I was back to the Diane self. But as I grew, this revelation room became the ocean, the sand, the porch, the studio, the roastery and so forth. Many places, mostly of nature and creativity, bring me back to this self fairly quickly. And yet, it must be done, as many times as it takes, to make sure the peace has been harnessed amidst it all, as permanently as possible – completely internalized. We must be reminded every, single day of this peace or at least catalyze it ourselves, until it simply becomes a natural way of being.

What if we can’t get back to this safe place – this peace? What if the song, the ocean, the mountain can’t fix it? Then something is gravely wrong in life, and changes need to be made. But trust, that making the changes will not hurt as bad as you think and the pain will not last as long as you fear. It will hurt worse if no change is made, and you will lose touch with yourself in a much deeper way. Life is beautiful when everyday you’re living in your own heaven on earth, this foundation of peace that YOU created, that YOU let in – a world that teaches you wisdom, brings you goodness, and radiates with creative, loving energy as if everyone can see it and feel it coming from you.

I may be a person of inherent positivity, joy, and love – but it’s only because the opposite of the three is simply a waste of time: for you, and for me.

To bloom: a selfish decision in the end. But a selfish one that ironically helps everyone else.

Like my favorite analogy of the oxygen mask on an airplane: an adult is told to put on the oxygen mask first, because you will be of no use saving anyone else or a small child next to you, if you don’t get the oxygen first. So the same is, with life. The more I get it, the more you get it. The more I improve, the more you improve. The happier I am, the happier you are. Like something contagious, so is the idea of believing in resilience, believing in yourself, believing in something greater – for all our sake.

Wishing and picturing everyone else blooming is a whole different post, but I will just say it is a lot like meditating and prayer. Believing in others is the best thing we can do for one another – and in turn, it is one of the best things you can do for yourself. It all comes back to you in the end.

So, just for now, allow yourself to go back to the days of suffering and slow it all down frame-by-frame. Highlight the lessons learned and remember what’s important at the core of life. Recreate those strong messages from a time when you were at your lowest and incorporate them in and throughout the practical parts of life. The stress will begin to diminish. The small things that annoy you will all of a sudden disappear from the foreground. In a sense, you will be numb to the most superficial parts of life and connect with only the fruits of life – which ironically, is exactly what it feels like when life falls apart. Use these fruits to fuel your own journey; thus, comforting those around you and inspiring everyone else to do the same.

Someone Who Can by YUNA

YUNA – like the switch of a season, she brings cherry blossoms to her oceanic vibe, birds chirping to her repetition, snow falling to her comforting voice.  I discovered her at a Pier Concert in Santa Monica right before I moved to the East Coast and whether I am writing for myself or for others, she gets it all out of me.

Being that I write alongside music, I have discovered this safe place, much like the running zone of a long distance runner.  Since I happen to do both, running marathons and writing, I have been able to compare these zones of consciousness I tap into, as I constantly drift off to never-never land when writing, when thinking, when running, when teaching, when drinking coffee.

Moving to the East Coast has triggered a permanent running zone now.  It was cultivated in California and the life I lived there gave me all the tools I needed to get the most out of this life.  Here, on the opposite side of the country, I get to use the tools, manipulate them, and analyze them – like being in a constant running zone with no interruptions.

And now, as I prepare to head home to visit the people who lovingly gave me each tool or instilled in me the faith to use them, I find that the running zone is continuing in a deeper way – taking me to a deeper part of the heart, where I can contemplate on another level, listening to every part of myself simultaneously, like a song on repeat.  Now, I am able to go back to all of these people and places mentally, while in the zone of my present life.

St. Teresa de Avila compares the soul to the many rooms of a mansion, which she refers to as the Interior Castle.  She shares,

“These people are sometimes in the castle before they have begun to think about God at all.  I cannot say where they entered it or how they heard their Shepherd’s call: it was certainly not with their ears, for outwardly such a call is not audible.”

Not only does St. Teresa define all the rooms of the mansion, but she shares her insight taken from prayer about the many versions of ourselves and where we are in relation to the rooms of the mansion, or if we are even aware of it at all.

Like anything else, any book or concept, her analogy of this interior castle to the soul adheres to you in a particular way.  It struck me hard, as I am a person who clings to my interior with all my might and have relied on it greatly throughout life without even noticing.  I can’t help but feel that my mansion is finally visible to me and now to others as well.  I can see all the rooms available.  I can see which ones I’ve entered, which ones I am avoiding, and which ones I crave to be in.

Looking at life on the West Coast to the present on the East Coast, I have that aerial view of my soul and of life through the mansion and its many rooms.  Although, it feels more like God showing me my life from the sky above, like a movie trailer premiering different previews of the past.  I am a fly on the wall to my own life.  And because of this, I get to soak it all up in a deeper way – like the most beautiful gift you could ever receive.  I get to laugh at the funniest and best moments all over again, from the inside.  I get to cry and feel the pain that I was once numb to and then embrace the beauty of healing and crossing a Finish Line, all over again.  I get to let all the past feelings pour in and out of me in the most beautifully healing, rhythmic way – like waves constantly forming, crashing, receding, and calming down, only to repeat the cycle.  I get to rake in the applause and receive those flowers of recognition one more time, but this time, I am aware of the acknowledgements and of the genuine praise I could not see behind it all.

And finally, there is an endless amount of love that I cannot keep all to myself.

Though, I have always been that way, I now feel the overwhelming power of this love I have and receive.  I can see how it is literally always at the max and that I crave to share it with the world.  This love is more radiant than ever.  Not for just a person one day, but in my heart: for everything and everyone.

There is no turning back from this heavenly place.  Once entered into such a part of life, your soul and your heart are sold.  It shows you that even the darkest parts of this world, cannot touch you.  They cannot taint you permanently.  Fear, denial, selfishness, and vanity – all the horrible things of this world don’t compare to the strings that tug at your heart and soul from the goodness of this world.  The pull of the GOODNESS is so much stronger than the bad.

Once your heart tastes where it is supposed to be, it stays there and there is no stopping it.

And that is the most comforting piece of advice I’ve concluded, from my own experiences and reflections.

Humbling yourself to the people around you, to the books in the window, to the songs on the radio, to the palm trees standing so tall and still, is a good start.  It is simply all there for you.  More helpful and comforting than any therapist you could ever pay for.  Truer than any advice anyone can give you.  And you will feel this certainty, this utter wisdom that comes from the goodness of the world, immediately.  Tapping into this interior world will implode all the bad lurking within, and like a magnet, your heart will attract only the goodness, from this moment on.

The toolbox is all around and ready to be accessed.  Your heart is already there at the Finish Line, waiting for you to get on board.  Just allow your mind to see it, use it, listen to it, and believe in it.