I used to want to have it all lined up, no doubts, no curves, just straight and definite. I wanted to take risks, but only if they were guaranteed to work out in my favor. I wanted adventure, but I didn’t want to walk out my front door to have to find it.
The unknown, the “what if” game, the questioning of how it will work out, of not knowing exactly what would happen if I put one foot out there, all of that kept me frozen.
I needed the net before I lept. So I set myself up for the impossible. Because nobody can guarantee you a net, the only factor in your control is your willingness to leap.
The truth of it is, nothing is certain. You may not want to hear that, but it’s empowering to know and implement what that means. You and I don’t know any of it really, the future of how our plans will shake out, but we go for it anyway. Because we want more than safety. We weren’t born to play small in this big world of serendipity and music. In my case, I just felt cramped in the corner I put myself in, the one which I promised would keep me steady, wealthy, healthy, and wise. But I was none of those wildly positive attributes. I actually felt broken, spiritually poor, and weak as I stood at the edge of my life and watched the adventure happen around me but not to me and inside of me.
Nothing is certain, but we go for it anyway. I just began doing it, everything that I never thought I could, all that my heart was telling me I loved even when I didn’t know love was available to me all the time, anytime. I constantly remind myself that the path ahead is ambiguous for everyone, that I can make promises and do my best to keep them, but nobody can know what tomorrow will look like. So now I write every single day, and I do it because I can, because that is how I can express the lives we are living and the ways in which we relate to one another. The world is full of stories: mine, yours, ours. I’m communicating our co-uncertainty one smile at a time.
Nothing is certain, but we go for it anyway. I’m re-authoring my story. It’s about a woman who didn’t know what came next, but she kept dancing towards forever and discovered herself in the process. I already know there is a happy ending, and it’s good both coming and going.
The book A Course In Miracles states: “Teach only love, for that is what you are.” God willing, we all come to a point in our lives where we are just plain DONE with the ways of the world. We are ready to welcome in joy and miracles. We refuse to believe in misery and hardship any longer. In that shift we silently declare that we know there is a better way and that it is the truth.
This is the miracle. In this declaration we sign ourselves up. We become teachers of Love.
And from this point on we get hungry. Suddenly there is something to move towards! Desires appear where there was once only apathy or empty ambition. Now there is something pulling us in directions we never thought we’d go…saying things we never thought we’d say…meeting people we didn’t even know existed. And it’s no accident.
“Remember this: Desire in the heart for anything is God’s sure promise sent beforehand to indicate that it is yours already in the limitless realm of supply, and whatever you want you can have for the taking.” ~H. Emilie Cady
I love this quote. It helps me remember that I don’t just want something for the sake of it. When I have a burning desire for something, it was lovingly placed there. It is there because I am being guided to help teach only love. I am not speaking of magical manifestation. It’s true that we can have anything we wish. I refer to a higher level of service…a sweet surrender. When we agree to give our lives to serve at our highest, we are shown a way. Our hearts overflow.
This does not mean perfection. The road will still be bumpy. There will be lots of lessons to learn and plenty of forgiveness to offer. It’s an evolution. And as we heal along this way, we teach. We teach love. A fire has been lit in the belly that can never be snuffed out. Once you recognize how the world truly works, you do all you can to affirm the truth…to live it, to be enlightened by it.
This means a deeper, thoughtful, love-filled way of living. You need not endeavor to change the world. To change how you look at the world is all that is required. Your shift in perception is inevitably felt by all whether they know it or not. You make waves. And in this you are helped. And in this you make miracles.
hernise shares how using the LOA to manifest joy towards gym visits and other “routine” events of your day can be more life-altering than manifesting a Ferarri.
“I am not alone in this.” And now you know why I write. Now you know why I am unafraid to be honest. Ok, that’s not entirely true! I have fear, but I move past it…I type through it. I am not alone in this.
Food is my drug of choice. I use it, abuse it and make it something it’s not. In longing for love and wholeness, I eat in excess. In lieu of feeling the pain, I reach for something sweet. Instead of speaking my mind, I search for a salty treat. I hide beneath a binge. I drown in extra weight.
I am not alone in this. The addiction is there and it can be healed. I am willing to walk through the fog of fear to reveal the light within. I am willing to lighten up. I am willing to smile when it hurts, breathe deeply and look at my pain. I know I can do this, but I know I cannot do it alone. Help.
Help for me, has come in the form of a 12-Step Program. All these years of trying to control the chaos within and without have led to this. I have been led to a program requiring complete and utter surrender. How humbling. As if my life up until this point was not proof enough that I cannot fix this by myself, the first step was there to smack me over the head with the loving truth. I am powerless over food. My life has become unmanageable. I need help. I am not alone in this.
With my habits and my heart laid bare, I admit to all who read this that I am addicted to food and I, when triggered, compulsively overeat. With faith and a willingness to heal I move forward. I am allowing Love to work through me. May I have the courage to keep going and to keep asking for assistance. May I love myself enough to nourish myself. May my words help others find what will help them to heal. And knowing I am never alone, may I break free of my compulsions and live in love forever.
aking lasting change in one’s life is like the changing of the seasons.
When it’s the dead of winter, you can’t imagine wearing shorts or flip flops, and there are days when you’re freezing your tush off while running from the subway to a safe spot indoors. The heat feels like a lifetime away, out of reach and beyond possibility.
In the summer it’s so beastly warm at times, and the mere mention of a down jacket baffles me. “Wool” becomes a dirty word.
Sometimes when we’re thinking about change it seems like it’s not within our grasp, potentially good on paper but nowhere near possible in reality. If I’m bundled up from head to toe with a hat, scarf, and heavy duty boots, how will I ever arrive at a point when a tank top and skirt are appropriate and comfortable?
That’s where spring and autumn come in. It’s all about the baby steps, the one-day-at-a-time reminders.
You don’t go from ski suit to water skis in the snap of a fingers. We start removing the layers week by week from April through June, peeling off the winter months and learning how to live and breathe again in a wardrobe meant for steamier days. The same can be applied to the reverse seasonal shift as autumn is a time for coming back into flannel shirts and light jackets, relearning and learning for the first time how to bundle up for the chill.
Piece by piece, we dress and undress the selves of our becoming, and it’s gradual, lasting change usually is. January and July aren’t next to each other on the calendar for a reason. We ease into the seasons like we ease into ourselves. Everyone loves spring and autumn, they allow us space for our evolution.
Imagining how soft that seems, how we are effortlessly but graciously out of control of the seasons changing in a way which ultimately benefits our growth, it feels like we never weren’t meant to be right where we are now.
hen I was 15 all I wanted was to be in love. I wanted to be defined by a love story so moving that everyone would see my worth. I wanted to be swept up by feelings bigger than anything else I had ever felt before. I longed to leave the ordinary behind and be lived by something that answers to nothing and to no one. I wished for something beyond the beyond and I searched for it with all my might. I searched for it in my high school…
My world was my high school! I was an inside looking out. I looked outside of myself to fill what felt like a huge, gaping hole. And what completes an incomplete girl better than falling in love? Who better to show me my wonders than a 15-year-old boy? Someone who spoke my language…someone who would take me as I was…that is what I needed. This is how I would feel better.
And we do this over and over. We recycle this need for completion and we look for its fulfillment in love, work, food, drugs… We think that these things are all separate and that they are serving different aspects of ourselves, but they are not. It’s all one void we’re trying to fill and it doesn’t even exist. Love is all there is.
I have looked for love and acceptance everywhere except where it lives. Hidden it may seem, but it lives in me. It is something I choose. It is something I let wash over me until every last trace of fear is gone. It is not elusive. It’s not hidden in a bank account, or a party, not even in a group meditation. Love is who I am. Love is who I am when I choose to let go of all that makes me cringe or binge or want to run and hide.
It takes courage my friends. It takes guts to wade through the distractions and leave behind that which we’re told will make us happy. It requires a soft and open heart to feel the hurts and let them go. Nothing less than full surrender will be needed, but the start of it is so simple. Say out loud today: “I choose love.” Let this echo of the still, small voice take you over cell by cell. This is how we do it. This is how we come face to face with the love within and recognize it as ourselves.
On day 17 of my Joy Cleanse and I decided to go 100% raw food for much of this cleanse. I am half Italian, so it is no surprise that my favorite food in the world is pasta. I can’t imagine any of the raw food-ers have much Italian blood in them, because most of them extoll the virtues of raw zucchini as a great pasta replacement in the raw food diet.
Well, I tried it the other day and it literally made me sick. Not only did it not taste like pasta, I don’t think raw zucchini agrees with me.
So I went on a mission. A mission to find a healthy, raw, delicious way to feel like I was eating pasta again.
As they say, seek and you will find.
And, boy, did I find.
Bear with me, because it sounds way less appetizing than it is.
I went to Whole Foods and bought these yummy scrummy kelp noodles from a company called Sea Tangle.
The wonderful thing about Kelp Noodles is that they really do mimic the taste of real noodles, albeit those glassy noodles you get at an Asian restaurant. But they also work with an Italian blend of tomatoes, garlic, oil cured olives, and fresh basil, with olive oil, too. In fact, that has been my go to dinner for the last two nights. You can eat them with anything you like with pasta, from Asian stir fries to comforting soups, and delicious primaveras.
The great thing about these kelp noodles is that for those of you who eat cooked food but are trying to watch your waist, they have 18 calories a package and almost no carbs. So knock yourself out. You could binge on three packages of noodles(which is a ton) for the whopping calorie count of less than 60 calories! I have also tried them cooked and they taste even more like regular noodles.
So, raw zuchinni be damned (sorry raw zuchinni). Kelp Noodles are the way to go.
