I wish I could say that I had fallen in love with some guy named Eddie.  The only Eddie I know is Eddie Haskell from Leave it to Beaver, and all I really remember about him is his annoying high pitched and grating voice.  A real whiner.  No, here I am referring to the eddy, those spots in a river that, on a long paddle, you look for to catch your breath. At least that is what I remember about canoeing.  My hope was for a calm eddy around the corner so I could get out of the current and take a breather.  Well, this memory of the benevolence of the eddy is being challenged and I am currently having quite a different experience.

For nearly 9 months I have dedicated my life to learning to live in the flow.  To live from a much more aware and intentional place in myself. To give my mind a vacation.  It has been both challenging and magical.  My most valuable compass has become practicing the art of navigating life from the heart, the intuition and that “gut feeling”.  Yet in this practice my heart is always accompanied by my mind trying to get control of the process and of the unknowing. My mind believes it can figure anything out and that it will make me feel better in the face of uncertainty.

So, the river of life I live in right now is moving at a speed that my little boat is having some difficulty navigating.  My mind just wanted to “eddie out” and consider my options.

My home base for the better part of a year has been a room in my daughters apartment in Asheville North Carolina, where a few of my things and my cats live when I am not here.  She and I have busted the illusion that mothers and daughters cannot co-habitate as adults and it has been a great time.  But, the lease is up here and Jessie is leaving for the Virgin Islands on her adventure and I am packing my few things, my cats and heading….hmmm….well that’s not clear.

I have many options but no one of them turns that inner light of knowing on or makes me feel inspired and certain.  Every choice that comes up on the radar sounds great:  More time with Film School in Seattle, going to the coastal town of Point Roberts and writing, Findhorn in Scotland, setting down some roots here in Asheville, creating community with new friends.  All these ideas of what is next for me seem great from my mind’s point of view, but my heart is quiet. I have lost my compass.

So, I did the most familiar thing I could do in the face of packing boxes and moving out in  five days from now.  Yep 5 days.  I decided to let my mind take over and make a solution.  Big mistake.  My lack of patience to wait for the answer kicked in my most primitive response.  Just figure it out.  You can do it Maya.  Just get that pad of paper and get those pro’s and con’s down and it will be clear what you should do next.  Big, very big mistake.  It was at this moment I began to eddy out of the river of my inspired life and discovered that an eddy if far more complicated than I had remembered.

An eddy is a place in a river where the water is “moving in a different direction or different speed” than the main current. Eddies are made by rocks in the river, outcroppings along the side, behind logs, bridge pilings, and also on the inside of bends or along the side of the river.  An “eddy line” is the part of the river that separates an eddy from the main current. Eddy lines can range from gentle changes of current, to violent, whirl-pool-causing obstacles. The speed, volume, and motion of the current will decide what type of eddy line is formed.

The eddy that was created, the moment my mind jumped into the front seat of my life was nothing short of a violent whirlpool of thinking.  I began to chew on every detail of why this and not that.  My pros and cons list graduated to a full sized dry erase board in my living room where I could move around all the factors in my life like on a chess board.  This process of “figuring it all out” became exhausting and took me just deeper down the rabbit hole of indecision.  All the while I am being churned around in the washing machine of my own thoughts, the river is just moving past me in it’s predictable and constant flow and always going somewhere.  In the end, I made myself sleepless, anxious and stuck.  I had forgotten my compass.

Right when I hit my breaking point I stumbled on a post on Facebook.  There was a black and white cartoon of a man in the darkness without a flashlight.  All you could see were his blinking eyes.  That was me!  The quote went something like this: “They say when one door closes, another door opens.  But these hallways are a bitch!”.  I was in the dark corridor between leaving something and beginning something and I did not like it.

So, with a week before I had to fill a car full of cats and belongings, find storage for my few other things and go to AAA to get a new set of maps and trip books, I came to a grinding halt in my process of efforting to discern the right thing to do.  I just stopped thinking. I gave up trying. What a relief.  My little boat broke loose of all the debris and obstacles that the mind had created and just silently drifted back into the rushing current of uncertainty.  I was allowing myself to simply not know.  Chop wood, carry water was for me “pack one box at a time” and not know where it was going.  Sleep returned and anxiety stopped. I allowed the vast knowing universe back into my process.

And I now spend time every day reminding myself of the joy of the journey, even if I do not know the destination.  And that is the key.  Letting go of the destination.

When most of us take trips we have a map or a tour guide.  Without the map we do what?  We drive down the road and if we get lost we ask directions (or at least I do).  But like most I had become dependent on knowing where I am going and getting the map out when I felt lost.  The map shows you what is ahead, when to turn, the distance and the constructions zones to avoid, all in the service of me getting from point A to point B.  I have a point A but no point B.  I wanted a map and my mind was going to make one. But in reality that is delusional.  How can anyone get a map from point A to nowhere?  This process of needing to know and have a destination stripped me of the very things I have been learning:  That I do not always know what is next and if I allow that unknowing to just “be” then, without exception, something breaks into my life that is new and magical.  My heart and my intuition know that but my mind had forgotten.

I had forced myself out of the flow of my own knowing and put myself purposefully into a place that was “moving in a different direction or different speed” than the main current.  Why?  Because I was afraid to not know.  I was afraid to make the “wrong” decision.  I was simply uncomfortable in limbo and unwilling to live with the discomfort. Fears were my “eddie line” separated me from the main current of life.

So, you might be waiting to hear what I have finally discovered that I will do come May 29th.  Me too!  I still have no idea.  I rededicated myself to the path that this entire year is about for me and I am waiting for the direction to emerge.  I am waiting and floating on the river with my heart as the rudder.  And until that feeling of joy and inspiration floods my very being, I am packing one box at a time, I am getting my oil changed, I am putting out requests, I am meditating on the very vision of why I am on this road in the first place:  To discover what makes me happy.  So stay tuned for the next chapter.

We live in a world afraid of identity theft.  As if our identity is our social security number, our address, our Facebook page or our education.  But, we are lead to believe that all these things define us.  And for me, one woman deciding to travel for a year and having my driver’s license denied me based on our SS Administration not agreeing with my legal name change, I am acutely aware of the delicate concept of Identity.

But, underneath all of these metaphors for who we are, is an essence, an authentic expression of our Self that evolves over our lifetime.  An identity that has nothing to do with our job, our marital status or our bank account. For some of us, we conform early to what our family wants from us, we identify with work as who we are, our bank account to estimate our worth and whether we are loved and lovable is proven by who is out there loving us.

I am a person who has devoted my life to unearthing the real ME and helping countless others to remember themselves.  My authentic self, as opposed to my conditioned self, my persona that was constructed out of the expectations of others or societies norms, is not really me.  So, who would have thought that creating a website would be the perfect vehicle for greater self-awareness and self-expression.  But it has in so many ways.

I just got back from and adventure of swimming with wild dolphins who always know there true nature and I am sure never have one identity crisis in their life on Earth.  As for me, I left a psychotherapeutic practice after 30 years only to sell what I own, pack my car with my cats and the things I think are essential in my life and head for the highway.  I had hours driving to contemplate my next incarnation as I listened to self -help tapes from Wayne Dyer and cried my way through books on tape like The Daughter of Fortune.   And I figured that other than my passion for blogging it was time to get a Big Girl’s Website.  To define exactly who I am and what I want to offer the world in terms of my talents and gifts so that I might re-invent how I do work in the world, support myself and help others in the process.  I started this web design just before Thanksgiving of last year.

I just woke up one day and posted a Craigslist post asking for a web designer who could help me create a website.  After 46 left brain responses entered Mary and her daughter Iva from www.Ivaluva.com.  Mary is like a wood nymph looking 20 and being nearly 40.  She and I hit it off immediately and found ourselves holding hands in a territory I was least familiar with.  Her job was to hear me and interpret who I am by creating images and color and form that defines the spirit of what I am all about.  What a magical new relationship. Partnering with a person who wants to interpret the essence of who I am in form and design and then create a website that captures the uncaptureable.  Asking me all along, “Who is Maya Luna Christobel?”

When my therapist asks me what makes me happy, who I am in my life, what I am afraid of that stops me from being the biggest version of myself I can be… I answer easily and then rip off a check to her for a couple hundred bucks and come back for more.  But, when my web designer says to me, “Maya, who do you want the public to see about you, what work do you want them to know you do, or what do you want a person who comes to your bright and shiny new website to see first?  Do you want the world out there to really know who you are, what you offer them or just have a feel good kind of experience?  I choked.  I mean I literally choked!

I mean I can look these questions in the eye when I am submerged in the bubbles in my bath and there is not one soul around, but going public?  Please!

Well, let me confess here that I was a blubbering idiot tripping all over myself trying to answer my 20 something web designers questions.  I got a headache, not because I did not know a Widget from Link, but because becoming public, going online and projecting myself out into cyberspace felt a little like unprotected sex!  OMG! Once you have completed the act there is no turning back.

Therapy never felt this exposing and challenging.  I wake up in the middle of the night asking questions like: What truly makes you happy Maya? What would inspire you if you were to redefine your work in the world?  Does money really follow when you do what you love?  Wow!  Time to put my money where my Identity is or is it the other way around.

This has been a rich and rewarding few months with my web designer, my techy named Kuba, these young minds poking at my 60 year old understanding of the computer and my ever changing concept of self.  It has been a daunting, lovely and terribly frustrating experience that I would not have done without. My computer is now no longer this specter in my life, but like a long lost lover.

My Facebook page no longer some trendy thing everyone does to gossip about others, but a wonderful window into the world around me.  I tweet, I post, I blog, I just love it all.  I spill the love I have for the world into every post, I sing out loud with every music video I post, I rejoice with every spectacular photo of Elephants kissing Chimpanzees and I thank the gods of cyberspace for such a long reach around the world of countless souls.  What an amazing time we live in.

If any one of us thinks that there is just one version of who we are or one destination in the discovery of our true self, then I am here to say that you might want to rethink that idea.  In my experience I have found the making of a website a perfect platform for redefinition, honesty, courage and personal expression.

So, many of you have seen the beginning of this unfolding when I launched my site in February of this year and it has morphed into a truer expression of ME.  It will continue to.  Who would have thought that web design was therapy?  So, please visit me now at the newer improved site and give me your feedback.  I am a work in progress.  www.mayalunachristobel.com.  And by the way, I am still not driving!

Blessings, Maya

We live in a world afraid of identity theft.  As if our identity is our social security number, our address, our Facebook page or our education.  But, we are lead to believe that all these things define us.  And for me, one woman deciding to travel for a year and having my driver’s license denied me based on our SS Administration not agreeing with my legal name change, I am acutely aware of the delicate concept of Identity.

But, underneath all of these metaphors for who we are, is an essence, an authentic expression of our Self that evolves over our lifetime.  An identity that has nothing to do with our job, our marital status or our bank account. For some of us, we conform early to what our family wants from us, we identify with work as who we are, our bank account to estimate our worth and whether we are loved and lovable is proven by who is out there loving us.

I am a person who has devoted my life to unearthing the real ME and helping countless others to remember themselves.  My authentic self, as opposed to my conditioned self, my persona that was constructed out of the expectations of others or societies norms, is not really me.  So, who would have thought that creating a website would be the perfect vehicle for greater self-awareness and self-expression.  But it has in so many ways.

I left a psychotherapeutic practice after 30 years only to sell what I own, pack my car with my cats and the things I think are essential in my life and head for the highway.  I had hours driving to contemplate my next incarnation as I listened to self -help tapes from Wayne Dyer and cried my way through books on tape like The Daughter of Fortune.   And I figured that other than my passion for blogging it was time to get a Big Girl’s Website.  To define exactly who I am and what I want to offer the world in terms of my talents and gifts so that I might re-invent how I do work in the world, support myself and help others in the process.  I started this web design just before Thanksgiving of last year.

I just woke up one day and posted a Craigslist post asking for a web designer who could help me create a website.  After 46 left brain responses enter Mary and her daughter Iva from Ivaluva.com.  Mary is like a wood nymph looking 20 and being nearly 40.  She and I hit it off immediately and found ourselves holding hands in a territory I was least familiar with.  Her job was to hear me and interpret who I am by creating images and color and form that defines the spirit of what I am all about.  What a magical new relationship. Partnering with a person who wants to interpret the essence of who I am in form and design and then create a website that captures the uncaptureable.  Asking me all along, “Who is Maya Luna Christobel?”

When my therapist asks me what makes me happy, who I am in my life, what I am afraid of that stops me from being the biggest version of myself I can be… I answer easily and then rip off a check to her for a couple hundred bucks and come back for more.  But, when my web designer says to me, “Maya, who do you want the public to see about you, what work do you want them to know you do, or what do you want a person who comes to your bright and shiny new website to see first?  Do you want the world out there to really know who you are, what you offer them or just have a feel good kind of experience?  I choked.  I mean I literally choked!

I mean I can look these questions in the eye when I am submerged in the bubbles in my bath and there is not one soul around, but going public?  Please!

Well, let me confess here that I was a blubbering idiot tripping all over myself trying to answer my 20 something web designers questions.  I got a headache, not because I did not know a Widget from Link, but because becoming public, going online and projecting myself out into cyberspace felt a little like unprotected sex!  OMG! Once you have completed the act there is no turning back.

Therapy never felt this exposing and challenging.  I wake up in the middle of the night asking questions like: What truly makes you happy Maya? What would inspire you if you were to redefine your work in the world?  Does money really follow when you do what you love?  Wow!  Time to put my money where my Identity is or is it the other way around.

This has been a rich and rewarding few months with my web designer, my techy named Kuba, these young minds poking at my 60 year old understanding of the computer and my ever changing concept of self.  It has been a daunting, lovely and terribly frustrating experience that I would not have done without. My computer is now no longer this specter in my life, but like a long lost lover.

My Facebook page no longer some trendy thing everyone does to gossip about others, but a wonderful window into the world around me.  I tweet, I post, I blog, I just love it all.  I spill the love I have for the world into every post, I sing out loud with every music video I post, I rejoice with every spectacular photo of Elephants kissing Chimpanzees and I thank the gods of cyberspace for such a long reach around the world of countless souls.  What an amazing time we live in.

If any one of us thinks that there is just one version of who we are or one destination in the discovery of our true self, then I am here to say that you might want to rethink that idea.  In my experience I have found the making of a website a perfect platform for redefinition, honesty, courage and personal expression.

So, many of you have seen the beginning of this unfolding when I launched my site in February of this year and it has morphed into a truer expression of ME.  It will continue to.  Who would have thought that web design was therapy?  So, please visit me now at the newer improved site and give me your feedback.  I am a work in progress.  www.mayalunachristobel.com.  And by the way, I am still not driving!

Blessings, Maya

“Complete possession is proved only by giving.  All you are unable to give away, possesses you.” –Andre Gide

My last Post was about Mother’s day.  I appreciate all the responses I have received about your own experiences and your requests for some of the other writing I have done.  I was asked to be in a book called This I Believe: On Motherhood which you can find on Amazon.com and I included a chapter called Visitor at the Table.  This is a great group of writers that speak as daughters, mothers, grandmothers on every issue relating to mothers.  A great gift for Mother’s Day.

As I looked through the hundred or more writings I did while living with my mother, another theme rose up:  Stuff.  Not the inner stuff of families but the outer stuff.  The selling of houses and the dividing and selling of things.  What to do with a lifetime of accumulating when a parent dies?  What to do with Grandmothers clock, the tea sets, the clothes never thrown away since the 1960′s, balls of rubber bands, Tupperware for every occasion and even ones I could not think about.  The attic.  The basement filled with stuff.

I am sure one of two things motivate most of us when it comes to what we choose to accumulate.  First we think, ( the operative word is THINK) we need it.  Or we FEEL we need it.  Thinking we need something is our practical self telling us that we should have it because it will make life better, and we believe what the infomercial is telling us.  QVC is great at getting us to buy something that only minutes before we did not really want or know exists, and too many people at 3am will forego paying their phone bill that month to get a knock-off handbag.   But the most powerful reason we buy is how we feel about something.  It will make us look younger, feel better, get approval or give us status.  We all do it.

And then there is the  throw away - hoarding - attachment problems.  ”We will need it someday or it was owned by someone we love”, drives us to be pack rats.  And sentimentality does have it’s place but most of us keep things and never use them, see them or even remember we have them, simply because we cannot give it away.  And that being said I am not a proponent for throwing anything away.  The conversation of Giving Things To People Who Need Them is one for another writing.  As is Recycling and our responsibility to do that.

And as I am now packing once again to leave Asheville to wander my way across the United States (with a chauffeur), I am faced with one more clearing of my life.  Although I sold most of what I owned last year to become the Gypsy writing this blog, I can still ask the same questions of what I have left, and in doing so there is still more to give away, sell and leave behind.  I want my load in life to be light.

 So, here is a little on how to start thinking differently about our attachment to things.  Very creative, practical and innovative.  These groups pose some wonderful questions that all of us should ask ourselves. The most important question being “Why am I not doing this and when will I start?”.  If you hem and haw ask yourself what you are afraid of, why you drag your feet or what causes you to move away from the idea?  And then once you have read the ideas go get a pencil and paper and write down the “10 Things I cannot live without“…everything else can be given away.  That’s my motto.

And I am asking those of you who would like to have your list of 10 things published, with or without your name, to send it to me with a sentence on each item as to why you chose that thing as essential to your life.  Send it to mayachristobel@gmail.com, please.

Blessings, Maya

7 Ways to Have More by Owning Less

–by Maria Popova,  Aug 11, 2011

Ah, once again it is Mother’s day.  A day that we do one of a few things.  We love our mother down to our toes and thank her for life!  Or, we reluctantly send a card or flowers out of obligation or guilt  because we are still hurt that she has disappointed us as our mother.

But for many we don’t do anything.  An action sometimes born out of the wounds of childhood and an act of resentment.  But, none the less, this time every year we make a choice on how we approach Mother’s day. Each year we have one Hallmark moment to do it differently.  To change course and create what it is we truly want.

I am approaching the year anniversary of my Mother dying.  The anniversary of my leaving Oklahoma after years of being a caretaker for my mother.  Those years changed me.  Changed my resentment to joy  and in the end was a singular time of coming to terms with who my mother really is , which has everything to do with who I am today.  My mother  is me.  I am my mother and in loving her I love myself.  Not an easy task for many of us. Certainly not for me.

And I found a piece of writing I want to share with you about my struggle toward forgiving her and allowing myself to be human in the process of my life with her and in the time of her dying. I look back on those days before she died and am grateful for the painful, agonizing, heart wrenching, lovely, sweet time I had with her.  I hope you find this writing a catalyst to seeing your own mother more clearly and embracing a path of forgiveness and love. But most of all that you will do something different this Mother’s Day…something truer to your own nature of love, more giving, more spacious, and more of exactly what you have always wanted from your mother.

Starhawk has been teaching all of us about the nature of Spirituality for years.  She has a new book entitled, The Empowerment Manual.  Here are six ways to empower others.  In understanding about being a true leader or teacher and empowering those around you, you empower yourself.

An empowering leader holds and serves a vision broad and deep enough to inspire others and allow them to take parts of it and make it their own. When Rob Hopkins founded the Transition Town movement, his vision was to take the insights of permaculture and ecological design and apply them on a local community level. That was a big vision, far too big for any one person to realize alone. Within it, there was room for many people to step up and realize their own creative ideas and pursue their interests—how to transform a vacant lot into a community garden, how to plant forest gardens in city parks, how to influence policy around water resources or investment in renewable energy. Rob’s original vision called many people into their own power and leadership.

An empowering leader helps the group develop a strategy—a plan for getting from here to there, with milestones and goals along the way.

An empowering leader rarely uses Command mode. Most of the time, she leads by example and persuasion. But when command is called for, an empowering leader will step forward and then step back into a more democratic mode once the need has passed.

An empowering leader also steps back. He doesn’t hog the center or the spotlight, but is always looking for ways to share.

An empowering leader puts the needs of the group first. He thinks about how each of his actions will affect the group.

All of this is, of course, the ideal. We can strive for it, but most of us will fall short in one way or another. An empowering leader makes mistakes. If she doesn’t, she’s probably not experimenting enough. An empowering leader is also a good learner, an experienced and willing apologizer, someone who can make amends and move on.

Keep Power Circulating

Power tends to concentrate, and even the most benevolent and empowering leader may unconsciously begin to hoard power over time. When power becomes permanent and static, the group often stagnates.

Collaborative groups need strategies for sharing power and developing leadership in all group members. To keep power circulating and flowing freely in the group, we can adopt a few key elements in our structure.

1. Limit the Accumulation of Power

We can make agreements that limit how much responsibility any one person can take on, how many committees they can join, for example, or how many aspects of a project they can coordinate. We can break big tasks into smaller roles and share them.

2. Share Roles and Responsibilities
Meetings typically are co-facilitated, so that a powerful role is shared. When roles can be shared, we can also reinforce one another’s strengths and compensate for our weaknesses. A born Grace whose strengths are affiliative might look for a partner who is more of a boundary-setting Dragon.

3. Rotate Roles and Responsibilities
Many roles benefit by being rotated—for example, meeting facilitation. Some roles put people in center stage—media spokes, for example, or convener of a gathering. People who take on those roles get more attention—both positive and negative. Rotating them can spread both the praise and the blame around more fairly.

Other roles are more in the nature of chores that must be done—taking notes at meetings and distributing them, turning the compost, doing the dishes after the potluck. When they are shared, no one person is stuck with an unpopular task.

4. Train and Apprentice
Some roles require training and preparation: facilitating big meetings, keeping accurate books, propagating cuttings in the greenhouse. For the long-term growth of the group, we can create ways that people can learn, apprentice, and be mentored in those skills. And when skills are needed by the group as a whole—for example, communication skills, consensus process skills—the group should devote resources to provide overall training for all its members. It will be well repaid over the long term by improvements in function and by hours and hours of fruitless arguments avoided!

5. Pass Power On
Because roles of power are fluid in collaborative groups, part of a leader’s job is to sense when and how to pass the power on. Power circulates, and we can trust that, when we let go, others will take on the tasks and responsibilities, freeing us up to find new areas of interest and new challenges.

6. Let Go Gracefully
In a ritual, we often drum up a cone of power, bringing the group to a peak of excitement. Drummers, of course, love to speed up and go into a dramatic drum roll—but we discourage them from doing so because then they control the pacing and the buildup of energy (and often get it wrong). Instead, we teach them to hold a steady pace, listen to the group and follow the energy instead of driving it. As the cone rises, the drummers fade back until only voices are left. The voices raise the cone, because everyone has a voice, though not everyone has a drum.

Starhawk is the author or coauthor of twelve books, including The Empowerment Manual: A Guide for Collaborative Groups, from which this article was excerpted. An influential voice for global justice and the environment, she is deeply committed to bringing the creative power of spirituality to political activism.

Interested?

• Colin Beavan: Advice From an Accidental Activist
  How a regular guy found some super power.
• This Changes Everything: How the 99% Woke Up
  Introducing the movement that’s shifting our vision of what kind of world is possible—from the new book, “This Changes Everything: Occupy Wall Street and the 99% Movement.”
• Meet 15 Extraordinary People Transforming the Way We Live
  The YES! Breakthrough 15: The justice warriors, eco-innovators, happiness architects, and change artists who are shattering our sense of powerlessness.

Related articles

• Starhawk at Occupy this Week in NYC (ecofeminism-mothering.blogspot.com)

A change of heart changes everything

If you have not heard me say that the Music of AO has changed my life I want to say it now.  I have never encountered a medium that is both heart opening and changing the lives of children in need at the same time.  I am from the 60′s.  The Vietnam war was my backdrop for life.  The Beatles came and changed all us and the way we saw the world.  U2  opened our eyes to injustice and issues of freedom, Madonna bust the sexual revolution wide open.  Music changes people.  Music can also save lives and create hope and love where there has been none.  I want to do that any chance I get!

 

While in Film School I learned a lot about the power of the documentary and the short film.  That feature films are simply one powerful way to communicate.  And then I stumbled on this little 10 min. film about a man named Johnny Barnes, Mr. Happy.  He lives in Bermuda and every day at 2 am he gets up and prepares for his day, packs a rolling cooler with food and water, grabs clothes for bad weather, dons a hat and walks out the door to stand at a busy intersection of traffic for most of the day.  His reason for being there?  To throw a smile, a kiss to every passerby and tell every person on foot and in a car…. that he loves them.  He is in his 80′s.

I want to share this video with you not only so that you can experience the infectious quality of his smile and his loving heart but to pose the question:  What simple act of love and kindness can we EACH do, simply for the joy of doing it?  How can each of us make love and happiness the reason for getting up in the morning and going to bed at night?

Please simply click on the Karma Tube link below to watch.

This is a tribute to our humanity.  Enjoy!  Maya

Video from KarmaTube

I have been on the road for six months now.  And most of those Road Trips taken were without being able to drive my car.  My legal rights to a driver’s license buried in some endless bureaucracy.  At first, I felt like the inability to legally drive would become a boulder sitting right in the middle of my life and block my deep intentions to follow the flow of where the river would take me.  For a month or more I reacted and resisted this interruption in my perceived plan.  Once the likelihood of driving wherever my heart led, was challenged, I relaxed into the “interruption” and began to relate to it as a gift.  “What might this unwanted experience provide for me that I could not have known or perceived without it?”  And the answer was: “Surprise?”  The answer was,”The unexpected”.

What I am coming to understand is that MY “plans” are only one possible future.  And my attachment to the outcome of those plans can limit my life.  If I could have driven, my two week stay with my daughter with an intention to drive North to Maine would have me leaving Asheville.  But, because I had to pause for a moment, breath, let go of my attachment to any outcome, I stumbled into my own desire to create a website while waiting for what I thought would be a few weeks before the debacle of my driver’s license was behind me.

I interviewed two people for the job and hired one.   Mary Long brought love, joy and creativity to my creating a clearer identity and I hired her.  Richard Gannaway was equally as gifted, but somehow in our interview we never truly discussed my budding website, but fell into a mutual love for music, for his work as a composer, singer and musician with AO Music.  Richard sent me home that day with his newest album and my life changed forever.

The music did what music only can.  It opened a part of me long-buried and reminded me of a part of myself that had forgotten a core inspiration in my life which lead me to aligning my self with AO Music and it’s care for changing hearts and helping children.  My life ignited. If I had driven away as planned I would have missed Joy breaking into my life.

 “The Law of Attraction is responding to your thought, not to your current reality. When you change the thought, your reality must follow suit. If things are going well for you, then focusing upon what is happening now will cause the well-being to continue, but if there are things happening now that are not pleasing, you must find a way of taking your attention away from those unwanted things. You have the ability to quickly change your patterns of thought, and eventually… your life experience.”  Abraham

I stayed much longer in Asheville than had been planned.  I had time to sit inside of my own dreaming, my own inspiration and my deepest wants and desires and could not “drive away from them”.  The minute I claimed these hopes and dreams my energy changed, my happiness increased and as the law of attraction is trying to teach us, suddenly and immediately people, ideas, opportunities and gifts that MATCHED those dreams and inspirations began to flood into my life. I was offered the chance to write a screenplay and then to attend The Film School in Seattle.

Tom Skerritt, The Film School

I did not chase my dreams in my car. I couldn’t.  I did not make a ten point list of goals for the year to tick off one by one. I waited, I practiced deep self inquiry and I listened to promptings that had been drowned out by my assumptions about my life and what I should be doing.  And in return, the Universe was given room and space to spill into my life with opportunity that I could not have seen.

Since “having my wings clipped”, so to speak by unforeseen circumstances, I have found that in fact, I do not need a car.  That I do not need to spend all that money and gas for something that I have done just fine without.  I can stop polluting the planet.  I can create a slower pace instead of knowing that my car is right outside my front door so I can dash anywhere.  That has been another surprise.  The cost of a periodic taxi, taking the bus when I am in an urban area, being a passenger with a friend who I get a chance to chat with, and generally limiting how many places I need to be in a day has slowed me down to a rhythm that I am liking. That is healthier and more centering.

I have spent time on the ocean in Washington with Icelandic Ponies, I have lived in a hotel for a month while going to The Film School here is Seattle, I have aligned my life and heart with a cause to open the heart through music. I am nearly done with the first draft of the screenplay I have been asked to write.  And my website reflects the constant unfolding of me as I move toward being the most authentic expression of myself.  And come the end of May, one year after the death of my mother, my daughter, who I have been staying with in Asheville will be moving.  The lease is up.  And the question that comes back round is:  What’s next.  Where will my next stop be?  I cannot wait to be surprised!

I was directed in a scene by Tom Skerritt as the infamous “Mrs. Robinson” from the movie The Graduate.  Acting is NOT my forte so I will stick to being a writer!