Tuesday, June 27, 2017

Full Circle

Life always brings us exactly what we need even when it feels like it has abandoned us. I remember it being so gray that year, dreary, and cold. It was 2009 and I was living in Portland Oregon. I was struggling for the first time in every way imaginable. I was in the dark night of soul as I only realized many years later but at the time I was assured it must of been hell. In the midst of the darkness, sparkling like the oasis of life that it proved to be, I found a beautiful bookstore set in an old home. It became my sanctuary, my solace away from a life I didn't want to live. It held events and workshops with spiritual authors and presenters. I would browse the offerings and think it would be so lovely to one day to be able share something there. My full circle moment came this weekend when I presented Unleashing Her: Invoking Shakti, a workshop designed to support the Divine Feminine rising at this sweet sanctuary called  The New Renaissance Bookstore.

It is truly tremendous what can conspire in a mere eight years. My heroines journey has had more page turners than I would have preferred but it has led to beautiful moments of remembering the purpose of them. In full victim mode that year, feeling like life was against me, not understanding "what I had done wrong" or "why this was happening to me," it was impossible for me from that perspective to see the silver lining.

I had very limited resources for the first time and found that I could sit in the bookstore unbothered for hours and read any book on any spiritual subject matter that I wanted and I did. Then they began offering a free movie on every visit so I could begin borrowing their DVDs of my teachers talks and each time I took one back I could get another...for free! It was a game changer for me to have those resources available, to have that space to explore new truths, and inspire me to keep the faith. I was able to finally see that I was in the middle of a spiritual awakening and my whole world was crumbling with reason, that life was indeed for me, and working on my behalf to raise me up. It gave me hope, it held me up, and allowed me room to grow.

For days before in preparing for the workshop I was to facilitate there, my heart ran over with gratitude that brought me to tears a few times. The immense love I have for my life, the struggles and the joys. I could not have enjoyed the experience as I did if I had not once before sat in that same place, desperate, and hungry for more. I could not have experienced the satisfaction of knowing how far I have come had I stopped at any moment before. Full circle moments like this allow us to feel the aliveness of being human. The ups and downs of the human experience intended to distill the finest spirit. To get to the purity of life. The heart of the matter. To reveal the sweetest being that lies within. Full circle moments are cause for celebration of the growth and learning that has occurred in ones life. A returning home as a changed person. Back to the beginning to begin anew.

So in writing this, I celebrate myself and my full circle moment. The changes I have endured and integrated. I celebrate the rise of Goddess on the planet. The fierce love and compassion for life, the nurturing capacity to evolve a human species into their fullest potential. I celebrate my humanness, my ability to make mistakes, fall on my face and find it in me to rise again. I celebrate the joy of living my dharma. Sharing with others on the path home, the tools that supported me on my journey, is so deeply gratifying. Trust your journey and have faith, your full circle moment could be right around the corner!

Namaste!

Thursday, June 1, 2017

Integrating the Human Experience

As the money rained down over me, laser lights shooting through in multiple colors, with scantily dressed beautiful women all around me dancing, and a song playing that everyone knew, I leaned my head back and thought if this isn't Lakshmi energy, I don't know what is. I was in the middle of Drai's nightclub in Las Vegas at a table with more millionaires than not, the last place I think anyone would think of as being in alignment with Goddess, and yet there she was right there in sin city, with me, in a sexy nightclub, in the middle of the night, teaching me, about true abundant living.

I've spent most of my adult life separating the different parts of myself. I am a Gemini rising and so as I mature, I experience myself as almost two totally different people. I have long been dubbed the "Urban Hippie," as I easily move between hip hop nightclubs and kirtan festivals. I've always considered them separate, compartmentalized as in being in contrast or conflict with one another. Although I guess I can say that I always knew they weren't, I definitely did not saw them as the same movement as clearly as I do as I write this. 

It's fascinated me how I could dance between such seemingly different ways of living with such ease given the nature of my spiritual path. I remember when I began bartending in Las Vegas many years ago, it felt like I wasn't following the path that spirit had intended for me. I kept asking source to use me to make me thy vessel, to allow me be the mouthpiece for the divine and yet I kept ending up in another bartending job without understanding until after a few experiences with guests that began to see that I was being used and in a much more profound way than I had previously understood.

I was incognito. I caught people off guard. They didn't expect some bartender in Las Vegas to drop wisdom on them, they were open and then they would leave implanted with seeds of awakening and go back to where they lived in another city, in another country, and I realized I was indeed being used. In a big way, as a hub, to spread the message of love, to wake up people and to celebrate with them when they were finally activated. I was just busy being in judgement of the position that I was in that I almost missed the beauty of the work that I was actually doing there beyond shaking cocktails. 

I saw then that we don't always get to know the how we just need to know the what and then allow whatever comes come without judgement. So before arriving this time in Las Vegas to work and play I set some intentions to attract more abundance. Invoked Lakshmi, the Goddess of Abundance and Good fortune. I asked to experience abundance in a new form. To breakthrough old resistance to receiving money and allow myself to become a magnet for it

So when I laid my head back and watched the storm of money coming down upon me and saw the beauty that was all around me, I saw Her. I saw my intention be manifested before my eyes. I felt the raw power of Her rain upon and in and through me, so that I too began to overflow. And all of this was because of Her grace. I realized my own oneness with all of the energy. I fully became this energy, no longer in duality, experiencing myself totally in love with the moment. 

In a nightclub, in nature, while having sex, while mopping the floor, while drinking a cocktail, while taking your kids to school, there it is, life happening. The Goddess flowing. The infinite nature of evolution requesting a chance to experience it all. And so I will continue channeling Her divinity wherever I am and have as many experiences as She brings me, and I will love them all, as they are, for what they are because they simply are. To decide what is good or spiritual and what is not isn't necessary. It's all good and it's all spirit!