Author Archives: Maya Christobel

I posted today an update on my trek to get a driver’s license in this country.  Then a friend sent me what was a front page article in USA Today on not being able to get a drivers license and the new ID Act.  This article is not just about me, it is about all of us and our country and enlightens me to why I am up against a brick wall.  Please read and pass it on.  It affects all of us.  Maya

Real ID Act blocks some Americans from driver’s

licenses

By Oren Dorell, USA TODAY

Strict federal rules aimed at keeping terrorists off planes are blocking some Americans from renewing their driver’s licenses or getting other state-issued IDs.

  • Charles Lust, 46, of West Palm Beach, Fla., found out his name was changed without his knowledge when he tried to renew his driver's license in February 2010.By Eliot J. Schechter, for USA TODAYCharles Lust, 46, of West Palm Beach, Fla., found out his name was changed without his knowledge when he tried to renew his driver’s license in February 2010.

By Eliot J. Schechter, for USA TODAY

Charles Lust, 46, of West Palm Beach, Fla., found out his name was changed without his knowledge when he tried to renew his driver’s license in February 2010.

The consequences can be staggering. Without an ID, people cannot change jobs, drive legally, collect Social Security or Medicare, get through airport security or open a bank account.

It’s “a persistent problem across the country,” says Chris Calabrese, legislative counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union.

The problems stem from the Real ID Act, passed by Congress in 2006 in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, when terrorists used easily obtained driver’s licenses to carry out their plans.

The law says that by 2013, only IDs from states that require applicants to present proof of citizenship or legal residency will be accepted to board an airplane or enter a federal building. In most states that have begun to comply, that proof means a birth certificate or immigration papers.

The ACLU and others predicted that the law’s documentation requirements would be a burden to many Americans, and the issue becomes more pressing as the deadline nears.

Sometimes birth certificates are incomplete, inaccurate, missing or were never recorded.

When corrections officer Charles Lust, 46, of West Palm Beach, Fla., tried to renew his driver’s license in February 2010, he was shocked to discover his birth certificate said his name was Bell. A court, establishing paternity when he was 14, changed his name from Lust, his mother’s name, to Bell, his father’s name.

After his driver’s license expired, he couldn’t open a bank account, cash a check or change jobs. He had to make special arrangements to pick up his kids from school because the school requires ID.

“It kind of put my life on hold,” Lust says. He finally got his license in September after the Florida governor’s office granted an exception.

Bonnie Cohen, a paralegal at the Legal Aid Society of Palm Beach County who helped Lust, says her office has handled more than a dozen similar cases this year, most of them elderly minorities born in rural parts of Florida, Georgia and Alabama. Their records were lost or damaged in natural disasters, birth certificates were never issued or they were issued with errors, and some people were raised under a different name than what’s on the birth certificate.

Sixteen states have passed laws opposing compliance with Real ID, according to theNational Conference of State Legislatures. The Department of Homeland Security, acknowledging that the law’s documentation requirements are burdensome and cause privacy concerns, has several times delayed the deadline for states to comply.

The National Governors Association calls the Real ID Act “unworkable” in its current form. The National Conference of State Legislatures has lobbied for its repeal.

Repeal “is not going to happen,” says Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., who authored the law and chairs a Homeland Security subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee.

Proving a person’s identity without a valid birth certificate can mean digging up alternate documentation, such as school records, going to court for a name change and sometimes fingerprinting to avoid fraud, says Monica Vigues-Pitan, advocacy director at Legal Services of Greater Miami. She has had 15 cases this year.

Bonnie Sarkar of Colorado Legal Services has helped 20 clients obtain IDs this year and has 10 cases pending, most of them involving elderly and poor people. “Elderly people often have this weird sense of shame about it because they don’t want people to know,” she says.

Tom Theisen of the Legal Aid Society of San Diego has a homeless client in poor health who has a Texas birth certificate and school records from the 1940s, but he cannot remember his Social Security number. He’s stuck in a Catch-22: California law requires a Social Security number to issue an ID, and the Social Security Administration requires a state-issued picture ID before disclosing the number. That means the man cannot claim Medicare, cannot get health care and is unable to collect $845 a month due him from Social Security.

“I understand the concern about undocumented people in this country,” Theisen says. “I think there’s been an overreaction.”

As most of you know I have been dancing with our governing body and our legal system for sometime now.   All in an effort to renew my driver’s license.   Can I say that I had no true idea of how crippled those systems are and how most of the true power for decision-making lies in the hands of people who personally feel quite powerless and who hate their jobs and are ruthlessly underpaid.   So, they tend to be ruthless with me.

These clerks in life stand between a person needing to do some legal transaction that could change their life forever and getting a result.  This clerk can make or break whether you achieve your goal with one swift glance at your pile of paperwork, raising their thin eyebrows at you in disapproval or can brandish one signature on a paper that you hold in your hand like a sacrificial offering, only to be put in a pile to be never seen again, like a cast away orphan that no one will adopt.

So, now four months into my surreal process of getting my driver’s license renewed, I have not only been told I am a “one of a kind case” but my fabulous and accomplished lawyer Martha from Denver has this week been branded a full- blown “troublemaker”.  You must understand that neither Martha nor I look like street people, x-hippies, drug addicts or criminals.  We look well put together and between us have umpteen years of higher education, I am a Harvard Grad, Martha 22 years as a lawyer and we are kind and considerate.   In the end none of it matters. I might as well be Charles Mansen.

Since last writing I have flown to Denver, taken FBI fingerprints, supplied a second set of finger prints for the Colorado Bureau of Investigation and been told that due to the use of curling irons as a teen they did not think my fingerprints would pass the scrutiny of either Bureau.  Hmmm….what was it about those little swirls at the tip of my finger that was so unacceptable that I might just not be fingerprint “worthy”?  And if I am not fingerprint worthy then what does that mean?  It means I don’t get to drive.

I then, off the record, drove like a little old lady in the slow lane and back roads to get to Court on the day before Thanksgiving.  I waited for my knight in shining armor, Martha.  I sat inside this beautiful guilded domed building called Jefferson County Court House tucked up against the foothills of the Rocky Mountains.  The building was affectionately referred to by the locals as the “R2D2” building.  You get the idea.

As I waited, I saw a marble bench with a life size bronze statue of Thomas Jefferson, the father of our country and our legal system, sitting on the bench with quill in hand.  I thought, “I will sit next to him and meditate on the outcome of my day, can’t hurt since maybe his energy would rub off on me”.  So Thomas and I sat there like an old familiar couple as every passerby from nose ringed and tattooed young people, to a group of Mafia looking guys that might have just been lawyers, passed me all saying, “Well he sure doesn’t talk allot does he?” The metaphor very apropos.

So, I sat in court with my lawyer who on that day had lost her voice too.  Now, I find that simply perfect since I had “No Voice” with anyone in the system up to this point and called her hoping her voice carried more weight than mine.  When the day we were hoping to plead our case in court arrived, she was not talking very much and in the end we were told we needed to file more and more papers and get fingerprints and generally jump totally new unnecessary hoops to satisfy someone down the chain of command that no one really knew the name of.

Then last week I hit the end of the line of options.  The last straw, the last attempt, was to file an appeal and go to District Court….now let me remind you that this was not to prove I was not the Uni-Bomber, not to win or lose some battle for my child, or right to put a fence up and keep my pack rat neighbors at bay.  It is not an appeal for the kind of justice we need and is only fair in our country to protect someone, to award a parent custody or to make sure child support is in fact paid.  It is an appeal to get the simple act of spelling a name correctly accomplished, so that the Social Security Administration can breathe a sigh of relief that in fact I am who I say I am.

The papers were filled out while my lawyer Martha drank hot tea for her throat and gargled and took aspirin, so she could meet Thanksgiving head on the next day.  She took time to run the gauntlet of absurdity while blowing her nose and feeling generally miserable and  get down to the court to file a motion to appeal.  She was told in no uncertain terms “that no one had ever attempted to appeal a name change document before!”  Am I surprised?

So, my gypsy saga continues.  I have no license, I cannot drive to the corners of the earth and in fact may truly need to buy a Gypsy wagon and a good mule.  Anyone know where I can buy one?  Or maybe a nice looking Chauffeur.

Death and Life

It is said that the vibrational frequency of the state of feeling appreciation can change your life, your health and instill instant feelings of happiness. And in setting aside one day a year to remind us to be Thankful is a start.  And what if every morning as the sun rose and every night as the sun set we consciously created a spirit of appreciation that would change our very cells and send them humming and spinning their way toward great joy?

 

Everyone has something to be happy about. To say wholeheartedly that they truly appreciate.  Good health, a dog that is loyal and accepting of you, a tree in bloom outside in the park, a hand to hold, the man who makes your your coffee at the corner coffee shop.  In the book “365 Thank Yous”  one man changes his life entirely by focusing on his own brand of gratitude and appreciation every single day.

 

But today, for me, I find myself feeling deeply into a state of full appreciation for life.  As many of you know I am very moved by the teaching of Abraham.  This wisdom is channeled by Esther Hicks who is assisted by her husband Jerry Hicks and has been for nearly 25 years.  Jerry just died last Friday unexpectedly.  It has rocked the lives of countless people and in many was opened my heart even more to how precious life is and how very much each and every person I have close to me needs to be seen, loved and appreciated daily.  His passing gives me the pause I need to focus on what is really important in my life.  Today Thanksgiving has more meaning because of it.

 

His wife Esther sent a letter that reveals a depth of love about her companion of 30 years that is so profoundly inspiring that I am including it here.  May her gracious writing be an illustration of the depth of love we can attain in all our relationships.

 

Happy Thanksgiving, Maya

 

Dear, dear Friends,

 

Our sweet Jerry made his transition into Nonphysical last Friday. How sweet the Vortex is feeling to him today!

 

Jerry said to me when we came together over 30 years ago that given the difference in our ages that it was likely “that I will cut out on you early,” to which I replied, “I don’t mind.” His joy of life and continual new discovery of purpose kept his life feeling fresh and we shared such joyous eagerness for life.

 

Over the years, Abraham has consistently insisted that there is no death. Again and again they have reminded us that there is only life and more life and more life. It has taken me some time to understand this, and I honestly must say I have not yet fully come to terms with it, but I do believe that in what we are calling Jerry’s death he is discovering the next logical step of life that Abraham has always been talking about. And at times I am catching a glimpse of the bigness of what Jerry is feeling and while I am still pretty mad at him for not sticking around longer to surprise and delight me in all the ways he has been doing throughout our 30 years together I accept fully that the next logical step of joyous life for Jerry was to be found in his re-emergence into Nonphysical.

 

Since 1985 it has been Jerry and Esther and Abraham and I believe with everything that I am that that has not changed. I know that Jerry will continue to be the third powerful point of the triad of Energy that makes up the Abraham experience and I am certain that his new vantage point will be, as it has always been, of advantage to us all.

 

I know for sure that Jerry will help me, in time, release my own personal resistance to physical death, because I will not be able to maintain that resistance and also play easily with him. And my desire to continue not only my Abraham experience but also my Jerry experience I am certain he will be the catalyst to help me do what Abraham has been trying to help us all do all along.

 

Once again, Jerry is out there leading the way for me. But the difference this time is that I must find the way. I am not there yet, but it is my absolute promise to myself that I will find the way, because it is the most natural thing in the world to do and because Jerry has provided for me the reason to do it.

 

I am eager about what is ahead and while I cannot begin to explain or even imagine the details of how it is all going to play out, I am certain that it will be fun.

 

I am such a fortunate girl, to have been able to play with Jerry and Abraham and all of you for so many wonderful years and I am so eager to continue doing more of the same for many more years to come. I feel certain right now that not only has nothing gone wrong, but things are going especially right. It will be different, for sure, but it will also be very, very good.

 

I’m feeling such love for you all, and for Abraham and most of all for Jerry. And as I have said to him a thousand or more times through the years, “Well isn’t life just a kick in the pants?”

 

Love,

Esther

A New Worldview

 

THRIVE is an unconventional documentary premiering online on 11.11.11 at http://thrivemovement.com/.    The THRIVE Theme Song is now available to purchase on Amazon and iTunes.

 

The antedote to it all:  Joy

 

Dis-Illusion

I was asked this morning, “Maya, what did you take away and learn about yourself when you went to the Louise Hay Birthday Party?”  Although I wrote a piece about the self help movement needing a little self help, I have been cooking on that question ever since, so I thought it would be a good question to look at. Let me start here.

Gypsy “travel” for me is not completely literal.  A gypsy moves when work is needed, when the clan requires better grazing land or when the spirit moves or the authorities require it.  And for me the Gypsy encompasses a life that is set up to offer maximum freedom, space and creative opportunity.  That can be accomplished on the physical level but can also be accomplished on the inner planes.

What I am learning from being “grounded” and not driving at this time, is about the latter:  The space I need to make inside of myself in order to discover what freedom is for me and to allow for the universe to provide ample creative opportunities.  My experience with the party of authors in San Diego has everything to do with making that space.

I had squeezed myself into a belief system before I went to the west coast, as well as into a pair of high heels and a black dress that screamed success…so I thought.  That belief system was based on my preconceived thoughts about self help authors, the self help publishing world and about what it might mean for me to be an author in and amongst these folks.  I felt privileged to be there and feel that the experience was totally invaluable.  But, my preconceived notions went something like this:  A self help author is fully healed, functional, whole, evolved, ego-less, does not play the games, does not care about fame or fortune.  I was wrong. On all counts.

My experience was similar to when I pitched a screenplay in Hollywood a number of years ago called The Necessary Betrayal and found myself swimming with sharks who really did not care about the “heart” of my screenplay only about the distribution rights and the residuals.  Back then, I came to a stark understanding that I was simply…naive.

And I was naive once again with the impressions I had created out of my own mind about the self-help movement.  And my qualifier here is just this:  There are many exceptions to my experience and many authors and self help advocates who are very much my picture of what I want to believe about the self help world.  But they are rare. And for the purpose of sharing what I learned, I want to strip away my own naivete and take a look at what might be true for me …after the fall from my illusion.

What I walked away with, once I had had five hours with my guru’s, was that maybe in fact this is not the tribe I will choose to be part of.  In fact I had to bump up against my own beliefs about fame, money, success and drop back to remembering what I am writing in my book Roadmap to Success:  That success is not the set of strategies, the five year plan, the bank account or the notoriety, but that success is an outcome or result of my life being truly aligned with the essence of my own spirit and who I am.  Then it just might be that the money, the fame and the rest of the bag get’s delivered to my front door.

I have realized that I am not terribly interested in who’s who and if I know them, or whether my book shatters the charts, even though I was so tickled when I figured out how to get Freeing Godiva up on Amazon.  And I am not centrally interested in fame that leads to money, even though I would love to have allot of money.  The essence of who I am is in love with serving the world and helping anyone love more fully, more honestly and more powerfully.  If I can do that then I know the rest will follow in whatever way is congruent with the truth of who I am.

So, I flew home knowing myself better, knowing that this might not be the path I “seek”, or the people I compete with or the folks that become my tribe.  I flew home knowing that I need to be true to what I believe about myself and write about that, talk about that, go where I am called to go and not necessarily know the outcome.  I think that is the essence of the Gypsy.

So, let me close on a humorous note that is in the end…Oh so true!  And I will let the king of self help, Bob Newhart, tell you.

Blessings from the road,  Maya

 

“Thrive”: The Movie       11-11-11

PS: Please visit my other pages for new thoughts, inspiration and fun.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Winged Justice

How many Lawyers does it take to change a lightbulb?  Well, I can’t remember the punch line to that, but is all but flattering to the law profession.  And I have to also admit that I have never retained a lawyer before. But I have one now.  And this good lawyer is clearly a tool in my toolbox for living life I should have had years ago.

My continued saga with not having a driver’s license and having my wings clipped as a Gypsy had become more and more like a bad sitcom on ABC.   The saga has continued down a road of both the inexplicable and the absurd and ended up with a drove of desk bound clerks scratching their  heads and implying that I just many never drive again and certainly won’t have a social security card anytime soon.  Ugh.

It became apparent that the core problem to solve in the debacle did not originate with some understandable mistake I had made, and I made a few mistakes that is for sure, but originated with a filing glitch that was the responsibility of the court in 2003.  No one seemed to know how to say to me that the legal system dropped the ball, so they just kept dropping me. Enter my angelic lawyer.

All roads lead to the following advice.  “Get yourself a damn lawyer Maya!”.  Three of them in North Carolina said they would not touch the case with a ten foot pole….now I know what a ten foot pole signifies. Then after going through the same process in Colorado, where the problem originated, I gave up.  I just surrendered and acknowledge that I just could not solve this one and went to the computer and looked for a face among a sea of faces called ‘Civil Litigators’ until I found a face that made me happy.  Her name was Martha, I called and left a message and did not hear back.  I was at another dead-end.

Days later, with head in hand and while searching Craigslist for a horse to buy that was fit for long distances, the phone rang and it was my knight-ess in shining armor, Martha, from Denver.  Her first sentence stood out in neon: “You poor dear, you have been caught in the bureaucratic ‘shit’ with the little people who have no power to help you haven’t you?” ” YES!”, I yelled in triumph.  And then she proceeded to say what every woman wants to hear from anyone when she is in an all too tight space;

“I will take care this, you just relax, I know how to fix this!”  I nearly dropped dead with relief.

What is my lesson at this point you might be asking?  Easy answer.  Sometimes I just cannot do it alone.  That is a big realization for a single mother, for a self-employed professional of 30 years, for someone like me who is way too accustomed to doing it alone.  And the other lesson is learning that, for me, it takes way too long to ask for help. I suffer far too many ways that are unnecessary because I believe in “pulling yourself up by your bootstraps and just getting the job done come hell or high water”.  Thank you Dad, I will take it from here.

And, I also think there is a big something about being weak or not smart enough to figure it out on my own.  Something about perfectionism really that is in the groundwater of our culture.  I have worked on this lesson for a long time.  And I get more aware all the time how perfectionism is a crippling issue for men and for women.  It diminishes our worthiness and perfectionism keeps us out of the rich communal life of working with others, being accompanied and partnered by friends and helpers.

And the other lesson?  Surrender.  Letting go of the need to create an outcome when the outcome eludes you. When you simply do not know what to do.  I have learned to sit still and allow myself to simply not know.  Then to act on the only intuition I had, look at the face of this lawyer, feel something good and make a call and wait.  And then the angel flew in my window.

Since that phone call, Martha and I have become good friends, shared books to read and she has initiated some changes that I would have never known to do, that cleans up the edges of my life in a wonderful way and will help my life hum along, eventually putting me back on the open road.  I still think a horse might be nice though..

So, “How many lawyers does it take to change a light bulb?”  Simple.  One good one.

Gratitude or Grumpiness

Last week I wrote about my unexpected challenge of trying to iron out a glitch between the Social Security System and the DMV resulting in my not having a driver’s license.  The glitch seems to elude both departments, the court system and two lawyers who have no idea how to solve the problem.  The process of dancing with the bureaucratic systems that surround me at every turn is time-consuming.  The process of conforming to the requests of civil officials is filled with lines and numbers, as well as the growing possibility for my blood pressure to climb, my stomach to growl, my head to ache and my day to devolve into sea of impatience and aggravation.  The questions are repetitive, tedious and usually down right absurd.

The amount of times I repeat myself when asked, “Have you every driven before?”, or, “Where are you living at this time?”, makes me question my own sanity.  Yet, I get up each morning and realize that today I have a chance to do it differently.  Today I have the chance to breath deeply and possibly learn something from the 24-year-old woman in a cubicle.  It is not an easy task for me.  Especially when I have “more important things to do!”, or so I tell myself.  Who am I to know if what I have to do is more important than this?

So, last week I decided to make this journey of solving the question, “What does a Gypsy do without a car?”. First I entertained a suggestion that I become an Outlaw.  I nixed that option and  I began a meditation, a yoga posture that I would truly be thankful for something, every time I pulled a number and sat in a chair with a sea of people who were in fact, pretty pissed off looking.

I started by seeing me in the huge room, waiting for my number to be called and imagining that it was a room filled with children.  I looked in each face and saw what each of us might have looked like as kids, feet dangling from the black plastic and chrome chairs, little boys in baseball caps chewing gum, little girls twirling their hair.  All of a sudden the pock-marked noses, balding heads, cranky faces and bleached hair dissolved into an ocean of cuteness.  I would smile, even laugh to myself and before I knew it my number would be up, usually in more ways than one.

And my journey has taken new roads, hit dead ends and there was a lawyer confessing in a hushed tones on the phone that sometimes there are oddities and mistakes in the law that don’t get solved and the person gets stranded and unable to do anything.  That was not only NOT comforting and  once again, made me question the purpose of the law all together.

Yet, every day one person would step up to the window or answer the phone and be real, and kind, and truly interested in my one plight in their world of complaint.  That one person would lead me to another person that might be just like her (I say her since to date I have never, ever, not once, talked to a man).  And that kindness has given me a little hope and I keep going down this windy road.

To date:  I do not have a driver’s license and there is not one in sight.

So, yesterday, as I was being chauffeured home by my daughter, we stopped at  Barnes and Noble.  I had a dim recollection of a book that I had intended to read that I felt just might boost my new meditation on patience and humor into a new realm.  The book was “365 Thank Yous”.  I found it in the inspirational literature section.  I recommend it to anyone who feels their lives have become tedious, derailed, uninspiring or filled with inexplicable losses. The journey this one man-made will inspire all of us to put our lives and our inconveniences into perspective and even be able to cherish them in new ways.

So, onward and upward to my next stop:  The Civil Court Supervisor!

About the Book - 365 Thank Yous imageErik Kolbell quote
About the Book page title image365 Thank Yous is a book that tells the story of an inspiration, the writing of 365 Thank You Notes, and how my life was changed by the people who received them.In December 2007, I had reached what I viewed as a nadir in my life. While my life seemed full of debts and disasters, I ached for the things and the security I felt I deserved. On January 1, 2008, as this dissatisfaction pervaded my thoughts, I took a walk in the mountains above Pasadena, where I was inspired to write one thank you note a day for the next year.Although it took more than a year to complete the writing of 365 Thank-you notes, I continued writing them until 365 were completed. And then kept on. I learned to be grateful for the life I had, recognizing that the love I had for my children made my life already richer than the many people I envied. I learned to be grateful for my law firm, my practice, and for the love of friends and family that surrounded me. I became thankful for the many people around me who dealt with challenges far greater than the ones facing me, with courage and style. I learned to recognize the many people in my life who had protected and cared for me.365 Thank Yous tells the story of how all these things happened, and could be traced to the willingness to be grateful, in fact to the grace I received from writing 365 Thank You notes.