If you could take a selfie of your soul would you post it? #ProjectMe

Perspectives  

We all have a different perspective.  What is true for you and true for me can be very different and yet, still true.  This is one of the reasons I generally rebel against anyone attempting to pin their truth on me.  It’s important to me that I take complete responsibility for my truth and speak it authentically.  This is one of my core values and seeing as how no one of us is exactly the same, embracing a personal truth is (to me) an ultimate expression of self love.  Outrageous as it may sound .. loving myself is a major priority and, from my perspective, does not have as much to do with ego as one might imagine.

Here's why:  

I don’t feel any desire to change anyone’s beliefs or to convince others to see the world exactly my way.  Doing this would be disrespectful in my opinion.  I trust people with their own truths and enjoy learning from all the different ways people see their worlds.  If I wanted my truths to be your truths - that would be all about my ego, from my perspective.

My Truth: 

What lies in my heart is a constant pursuit of questions.  Honestly, any answer I land upon will change.  I don’t really know anything other than how I feel and what my gut tells me at any given point in time.  Even with data and analysis I still go with my heart.  

Everything I ever say should automatically come with a disclosure.  It would go something like this:

"The words I am about to say are based on my current truth and are subject to change as new questions arise and the pursuit of new questions ensues."  

For example; the world was once believed to be flat.  Science proved the world to be round and yet today, with our connected global economy it is perceived to yet again be - flat. This is all about perspective.  In fact, I connected to a number of people in multiple countries this week all while sitting in a bath tub.  So, in that moment and from my perspective the world was in my bathtub.

Not Being True to Me Makes Me Miserable:

I find that I am miserable when I think I know something to be an absolute truth for everyone!  And I am so happy when I just own my personal values and remain curious about everything else going on - or, going in (laughs for a moment)! 

As it turns out, this way of being started very very young.  Spending time with my family in Utah has surfaced a lot of old memories.  One that comes to mind, and one of my oldest, is relevant to my Mormon upbringing. 

I remember reciting the words “I believe this church is true” around the age of 5 or 6.  I also remember saying it to please and to belong and because everyone else was saying it.   But I have a distinct memory of being very young and questioning - how can I really “know”?  I see now that this memory holds the key to one my very first personal betrayals, a pattern I would later suppress and ultimately have to surface and integrate by doing a lot of shadow work.

Questions vs Knowing.  

For what ever reason - questions are the key to my heart and when I am being authentic and true to myself, I am chewing on a very very delicious question.  Despite being raised in a culture of “knowing” I did my damnedest to ask a lot of questions, test a lot of boundaries and disrupt quite a bit of the status quo growing up.  Sometimes this was enlightening to family and friends and other times it was very inconvenient.  Ask my parents to describe me as a child and they will tell you I had a way of seeing the world differently, constantly having to learn and explore and could speak in terms of concepts or paradigms early on.

I can distinctly remember the first time my Father introduced me to the concept of 'infinity'.  It tickled so wonderfully to try and imagine that concept.  I remember laughing, opening my mouth and letting out a noise as my little brain delighted over it. 

In Junior High and High School I refused to see “clicks” and befriended lots of different kinds of people.  With each person I met I let myself learn something and disrupted myself as I went along.  My hair, cloths, music, perspectives, adventures, etc..   At the time I remember feeling so comfortable doing this.  It was like I was seeking out my identity ... my purpose.  

Later in life when it came time for me to leave my family, I followed my heart and pursued a number of deeply personal questions.

It makes me very warm inside to realize that I’ve been following my heart all my life and might actually be at 10,000 hours of doing this.  Taking leaps and trusting my brain to figure things out as I go, trusting that something bigger will take care of me, trusting I will meet the right people and everything will work out ok in the end.  I have been self disrupting again and again and again for close to two decades.


And - I fail.  I fail a lot!  

When I fail I often battle shame and guilt and blame myself.  However, this is getting much easier.  

I remember struggling so much with guilt and shame growing up that I would try to mask and hide it.  I learned to bury feelings of shame and guilt below a layer of performed optimism and faking that nothing was wrong.  

Nothing in my life has sucked more than facing this and integrating it.  NOTHING!

I was exposed to a lot of different perspectives when it came to doing "shadow work".  Unfortunately, many of those perspectives were pushed towards me as "truths".  This meant I'd have to rebel and seek out my own way.  Discovering your own path towards shadow integration is very very hard!


What worked for me was to design a set of questions and to fall down each one like a rabbit hole.

Questions like - “Who would you be if you made shame your friend?”  “Who would you be if you integrated deeply personal failure as an advantage just like business failure?”  “Who would you be if you loved yourself no matter what, and I mean even if you act like a dick and piss people off?”  “What would you do with your life if you no longer had to put energy into hiding guilt and shame?”  "If you could make an art out of expressing guilt and shame - what would that look like?"  "Could you make money turning guilt and shame into art, thereby giving you an incentive to express it?"  

These questions were fun, but they forced me to look into the dark corners of my life and to really own what I found there.  With each thing that surfaced my life became more turbulent and I’d occasionally get a major sucker punch.  Some of these punches involved looking at people differently, recognizing why certain people were in my life to begin with and to let myself learn the tough lessons they had to teach me.  It also meant I had to face some of my oldest and most deeply rooted fears associated with not belonging, being unworthy, rejection and the big one - betrayal.

This work is not for the faint of heart.  It is tough.  It burns and tares and makes you feel like you might go crazy.  It takes faith.

One of my greatest accomplishments in this life has been to remain completely open hearted and empathetic towards people who have betrayed me, recognizing betrayal as a personal pattern that began very early in my life and that these individuals gave me the opportunity to spot and correct this pattern. To me, integrity is an internal thing.  It is about honoring personal truth in all situations, no matter who you are with!

So here is the super duper authentically positive bright side of all this!

Here I am in my mid-30's and my biggest fear is how fearless I am becoming.  Not the defiant "I am invincible" fearlessness of my youth.  I mean the realization that I can do anything I want and disrupt anything I want.  It's all fair game!

As it turns out, my purpose is to “disrupt” and to help others “disrupt”.

It's about being aligned with the way I see the world ... a playground of possibilities!   

This means, I change a lot!  It also means that people might not understand me or accept what I do and that if I take that on I am betraying myself by not honoring my truth.

To build resiliency for what will inevitably come I asked myself - "What if you just belonged to yourself and that was enough?”  “What if you simply belonged to the world and all of the people in it whether they reinforced this or not, is your choice?”  “What if you secretly just loved them all and by loving you just let them come and go as they please?”  "What if you loved yourself enough to also come and go as you please?"

Those questions have changed my life forever!

Right now I am chewing on the question “what from my Mormon upbringing do I value and want to hold close to my heart?”.  Im seeking to understand how much of my soul is actually Mormon and challenging myself to let those parts of myself shine wholeheartedly and without apology. 

This brings me to the title of my blog post, which is appropriately worded as a question.

If you could take a selfie of your soul, would you post it?

My answer to this is YES!  My soul is a gorgeous mess, in a constant state of disruption.  

Scroll back up and look at that selfie again.  That is my truth!  Anything else you see is probably your projection ... but even then, that's my perspective is likely to change again in the future.

Yes, that's it! Said the Hatter with a sigh, it's always tea time. #ProjectMe

To begin I must confess ... I am on my 8th cup of green tea, my 10th or 12th repeat of Imogen Heap's album Sparks (Deluxe Version) and have peppered close to 30 pages with words in my journal over the course of 8 hours or so. I am unshaven, barefoot and fed by mostly grazing. It has been a perfect Saturday!

The sun's at about 3 o'clock - I'm out on the front porch swing feeling her heat through stripes of shade cast from the iron fencing. The sky is especially powder blue with a few clouds; bleached white perimeters, grayish purple centers -they've hardly moved in hours. We've hardly moved in hours.

Wrote a lot about a lot of things, felt good to write as long as I wanted & as much as I wanted.

Played the song Telemiscommunications on the piano by ear, not that it's the most complicated of chords, it's become my favorite song right now. Have played it 35 times today alone. I tend to do that when I find music I like. Here is the song:

Reminded me just how much of a Mad Tea Party the digital world can be and quite frankly, in the digital world - we're all a bit mad.

Telemiscommunications have been at the root of much of my suffering over the last few years. It's really unfortunate but has sparked a lot of learning.

Sun's at 4 o'clock now - and hidden behind a rather large cloud. The lighting has changed and off to my left I see a flurry of bugs flying about an open field that were not quite visible before. Were they even there? Hmm ... They're so, busy ... and clumsy. How do they not crash into one another?

This digital world has been a catalyst for love for me though. I am lucky. Have been in love 5 times in this life thus far. Strangely enough I met all 5 of these amazing men in person first, but 3 of them became relationships later and because of our digital connections.

This digital Tea Party took my small business international in the first 6 months, so I am quite grateful for it really.

Yet still, there is something so very special about time spent together and time reserved to spend together with people you care for. This idea of being around people I love all of the time was part of my decision to move to Utah.

Actually, it was after realizing that I was not going to be able to turn off or slow down the digital world, and still fulfill my purpose in life, that I sat down and re-evaluated my priorities.

But, that will have wait a moment. I must make another cup of tea ... there - that's better.

The sun is now at 6 o'clock - everything is a little more orange outside. The white of these little flowers in the field has become yellow and brighter and the busy bugs are gone.

About those priorities ... Ive boiled them down to 10 and in no particular order:
1. Be around people you love and who love you - all of the time and even if it means traveling or living different places.
2. Have an epic love affair with food & your body and all things that come in contact with it!
3. Have lots of safe sex - ideally with a special someone, but if there is no special someone have lots of sex with men whom you respect and who respect you.
4. Laugh from time to time and cry from time to time too.
5. Fulfill your purpose in your work. Follow the work where your strengths are played and continuously practiced and challenged. Seek out interesting projects and people to collaborate without limits. Never do it for the money.
6. Sleep, including lots of naps & be outside as much as possible. Even better, take naps outside below trees and in parks and by bodies of water.
7. Read and write every day - learn from everything & everyone - everywhere. Teach what you learn, share your adventures - but stay open. Never stop learning!
8. See all people as equal - no matter what. Really listen & help people feel heard.
9. Be visionary - be brave - be YOU! Don't let the word authentic become hijacked by a status quo.
10. Let decisions move from the gut to the heart to the head and be sure all three play their part - even if it takes a little time.

Bonus - 11.  Revisit and update these priorities often. 

There went the sun. Ahhh, here come's a cool breeze. These little moments. <3

There are plenty of opportunities for this Tea Party of ours to be connected to any number of my priorities but it's also worth acknowledging that each of them can be achieved devoid of a digital medium as well.

When people look back at this moment in history I think they will see us all struggling to balance hyper connectivity with meaningful living and hopefully we will find a way to have the first serve the latter in ways we could have never imagined prior to the digital age.

I mean rarely is the Tea Party generating the most meaningful moments in life. If that were to be the case, it would be simply mad.

So yes - there is always time for tea. Tea is part of life now. But ...

"Did I tell you I loved you today?"

And then ... I woke up in Utah. #ProjectMe

Finding myself in Utah is so unexpected. Had you asked me three months ago if I'd be here I would have said "anything's possible" but lightly chuckled inside at the notion. And yet I am here.

A series of possibilities formed a constellation in my sky, and when interpreted, they pointed to Utah. Well, they pointed well beyond Utah but Utah was the next step.

The days here are warm and in the evening I sleep with the windows open below just a sheet. I like that part - it reminds me of San Diego. The elevation is higher and this makes the clouds bigger, fuller and closer. The surrounding mountains remind me of Palm Springs the way they stand so boldly in my peripheral - always there, ready to surprise me with a little majestic awe. They are like characters, like Gods, like the Great Pyramids of Egypt I remember slowly approaching with complete wonder.

But there is one mountain in particular that I find to be very special.

Outside my bathroom window I can see Antelope Island in the middle of the Great Salt Lake. The image looks like the cover of the album 'In Reverence' by David Tolk; displayed as the backdrop to the song in this YouTube video:

I remember playing this song and staring out into the open cobalt blue waters of the Mediterranean Sea and having this very strange feeling like that moment was significant. Now, that same strange feeling comes with every morning shower as I look at the mountain a top Antelope Island.

I want to go there & climb it and I'm told the shorelines are covered with spiders feeding on brine shrimp and spinning their webs amongst the rocks. What a curious image I can't wait to see. And to float on the waters of the Great Salt Lake just like the Dead Sea.

This place, is magic.

Tonight, a show of lightning strikes touched the ground and scratched the sky in rapid secession. The sounds of thunder vibrated through my chest and into my heart. The feeling was identical to a 4th of July when I rode my bicycle through downtown San Diego, letting the sound waves from the fireworks move through my chest from multiple angles as they echoed and ricocheted off of buildings. To me, there is nothing like being in motion between tall buildings during a firework show. The reflections off the windows, subtle changes in lighting, streets empty of drivers, and again that popping sound multiplied by the many surfaces. It is a feeling that resonates through every cell in my body, makes me feel like a kid, simultaneously excites & calms me. Tonight's thunder storm felt exactly like that!

Oh & the rain here!

The smell of rain is often and when it comes it comes with sudden winds and large drops. I stand outside in tank tops and shorts and just let the whole event swallow me completely. The skies, the rain, the way I feel connected and yet so different here reminds me of the movie Powder.

Where I am living there are back yard vegetable gardens and an open field along one side of the house. There are chickens, a bee hive and a stream. Have already signed up for the local CSA box of food & am enjoying kitchen alchemy.

I feel like my heart is re-growing right now, feeling out it's roots and opening a few clogged arteries.

Not at all surprised to be finding comfort through change. It's our most natural state. Relieved to sense a steady drifting current at the moment.

Since being here I have slept and slept and slept heavy sleeps with vibrant and provocative dreams. My intent is to be here a year while I pursue various avenues of possibility & yes I am being intentionally cryptic.

From the top of a mountain that I hiked over the weekend, I looked down on the valley and towards the area where I was born. It was surreal. So much has happened since that little version of me came into the world down there in that valley, surrounded by these mountains, 35 years ago.

My journal pages fill with words of meaning as I stitch together emerging, forgotten, memories ... amending my story with vibrant ribbons of color, ribbons that were already there and begging for discovery. Many say not to look back at the past. I, however, love the archeological excavation and re-excavation of the past and with each dig I come with new understanding and new tools. Each time I take new artifacts & knit them into a quilt. This process is so - flow like - and meditative. What I eventually see are loose threads hanging from a blanket that covers what will be, just begging to be pulled, and at that point it becomes about choice.

I am here to make decisions and to love myself enough to allow those decisions to cultivate, to grow and to become what they are meant to be - so gently, so delightfully savored with each brewing day.

I visit and embrace my metaphors and sink my teeth into the disciplines that have served me well. This is the journey of a seeker and one who transforms & reinvents, again and again.

The many friends Ive had to leave over the years through ripples of bold change and growth constantly leaves me torn. For as hearty I can be at change, I know the agony of holding on and not wanting to let go. With every letting go I feel it's practice for the big one in the end. So practice well :)

Soon I will let go of Utah ... but even in saying those words I know better than to become to attached.