Some Effort Required

No mud, no lotus

So they say, as we all struggle through the “mud” of life to reach our full potential of blossoming beauty and enlightenment as the lotus is a metaphor for this process.  I feel like life could come with
a disclaimer, “some effort required. Actually a lot, or more than you could have ever realized.” And then there’s grace. It is the counterbalance to the effort, the wind beneath your wings, lifting and helping you soar, just when you thought you were too tired to keep beating your wings. Life has immeasurable moments of grace as well as effort in my opinion. I love both.

The last 9 years I have lived on the Big Island, secluded in the jungle, on farms and ranches, finding ways to grapple with my psychological, physical, emotional and spiritual health and fulfill my dreams.  It has been an amazing journey, renewal and affirmation of the love within me and surrounding me at all times, despite what challenges come my way.  I started this blog in 2011 with the intent to share some of the insights I was having along the way, and of course life got busy and I didn’t keep up with it. Sound familiar? This year, I am all about utilizing and completing the projects, resources and passions I have come in contact with, that I may make room for something even bigger to gestate and birth through this process. So here I am, writing my first entry in a while, hoping it will take root, be the continuance of a seed I planted 8 years ago.  I am commited to nurturing this through weekly if not daily writing.

In our deepest longing for love to desire us, we find our very longing is all consuming in it’s fulfillment of the very desire it seeks.  Everyone deserves love. Everyone. This is the foundation of Peace. How we get there is confusing at times, yet simple if we just breathe, trust and surrender.  I find myself tired and not sleeping, wishing for the life I am building, believing it is in me, just as these stories were in me all along too.

Many of the themes of my life have been about struggle and empowerment. I am proud of the person I have become through what has subjectively felt like an arduous path of emotional and spiritual tumultuousness.  I recently read a book my mother gave me called Finding our way through the dark by Demitri George. It is about the moon cycle we are born under and how it affects our psyche, our sense of emotional growth and patterns in a subtle yet powerful way. I realize now that being born under a crescent waxing moon explains so much more than I could have imagined. It has clarified for me a confusion around why I put in so much effort and struggle so hard at times.  If you want to come back to the lotus metaphor, think of a new moon like the seed being planted, the crescent is the enormous force it takes the seed to break through the shell and take hold into the earth.  From there, the following cycles of establishment/uprising, fulfillment/flowering, ripening/seeding, receding/composting, and reseeding/full circle come into play.  We each go through these 30 year cycles, generally unaware of their influence & impact.  In doing the finding our way through the dark workbook, I started to look back at the themes of my own life, and how they perfectly aligned with these natural cycles.  This gave me the idea to start writing again, to reflect upon these themes in my life and explore the stories, beliefs and worlds I’ve dreamed in these 35 years; to step back and see the tapestry I’ve woven and been woven into, surveying before the next major cycle shifts.

I have started writing a book about my life, the one subject I feel I know best.  It is fun and tough at times, revealing and embarrasing at others. It shows so much of my humaness, my fragility, faults and failings. It also shows triumphs, adventures, miracles, and synchronicities which to me make it a super juicy tale worth telling.  I invite you to read it as I post some of the excerpts here, in hopes it inspires you to examine your own life, see yourself as the director, star, or maybe someone just going along for the ride.  Have fun, don’t take anything too seriously, and remember to laugh at yourself, I most certainly need to do so more often, it’s good medicine!