So I’m back onto Facebook after a little over a 6-week deactivation.  I thought it would last longer—three months, six, a year, forever—but then the fires broke out in Los Angeles and we had these “wind events” here in Ojai and, well... Facebook is truly the best information resource out there for this.  
 
Like, the Ojai Community pages and the fire pages and the communications from our town government and our Police Department and our Fire Department and each other…. If I want to know something, it’s here.  And if it’s not and I post a question, it’s answered. In a nano second.
 
So I signed back in. For the two days we had no electricity last week and while we moved our very small generator from place to place around our home.  The kitchen to make coffee and to cool down our fridge to the bedroom to plug in our internet to Garth’s office for a meeting and back again to our fridge.
 
When it ran out of juice we went to our daughter’s house to recharge (not all of Ojai was electrically down) and then back again to do it all again.  Till the lights went back on, on Thursday late morning.
 
And then I deactivated again.
 
Until another wind event and what did I need to know that I might not get anywhere else and back on it again I went.
 
I changed my background pic. To my dancing fifth position feet for a week until this writing right now. 
 
As now I’m on it. And in it. But just a bit. I hope.
 
Right now I sign in, I hope, once a day. To see if there is something I need to know about the fires and the wind and our safety in this Valley.  I sign back in, my thinking is, just until this fire season is over (is California fire season ever over anymore?).
 
And I don’t scroll. 
 
And I’ve gotta tell you, this is really hard. I want to go hunting. I am an investigator with my legal mind and busy thoughts and wondering. And this place, it makes me want to spend time here. As the creators of this intended. To waste time here.
 
So far I don’t. Waste time. I sign in to see if there is something I need to know for our safety in this Valley and then I sign back out again.
 
Except once. Once I signed in and looked around a bit.  Once. Well Twice.  Twice.
 
So far.

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So last week I wrote about this instantaneous Aha moment that comes when the shift is fast and, whoa, ok, here I am now in this new thing.  
 
And today I want to talk about the opposite of this.  Because this, this happens too.  
 
The thought came to me while I was in my ballet class this last weekend. I was watching myself dance at the bar and was friggin’ blown away, because really, look at my body’s ability to retain the structure and movements, the grace and intention, the totality of this dance modality without my brain even having to think about it.
 
The essence of ballet and the structural manifestation that goes along with this is so deeply ingrained in my body that it is my nature.
 
I can go for years without taking a class, and when I step back into this studio space, everything drops in and shows up in alignment and in a beautiful, beautiful way. 
 
My heart truly sings along with the music and movement of this class.  Not just because of my body’s ability to remember so deeply, though this certainly is just a wondrous and fulfilling piece of this dance puzzle— 
 
But the joy that I feel to be able to take these movements, and to be able to fulfill this desire to dance in this beautiful and profound way… My eyes fill with tears as my arms move in unison with the combination of my feet.
 
And so I’m in this ballet class and moving in this way and feeling my heart soar along with my Grand Jeté across the floor, and this thought drops in about these deeply ingrained patterns we have that maybe don’t serve ourselves in this beautiful way. 
 
These deeply ingrained patterns we have that have layered into our muscle memory nervous system activation, as this dance practice is for me, and yet they no longer are supportive, but rather are constricting and limiting and perpetuating of a story that is old. And then what do we do?
 
I have this. 
 
Layers and layers that smell of old sweaters and feel so comfortable and so familiar on my body, even though they are now too worn to keep me nurtured and cocooned the way they used to.
 
These layers are hard to peel away. They are sticky. They are facia-like in their ability to hold tight to the bones that are my true being. And they are confusing.  Because some of these sweaters, oh god, I love them. 
 
How do I give them up?
 
I am in the practice these days of rewriting my stories. These narratives in my mind that play in the background and come front in a moment they think I need them.  
 
“Thank you,” I say, when they drop in. “Thank you for showing up and let me take a look at you.  Can I try you on for a sec before I let you dress me in this moment? Can I make sure that you still fit just right.”
 
And I ask, “Who is wearing you?” “Am I five, or eight. Ten, fifteen, twenty-eight, or forty-five?”
 
And then I wait for the answers to drop in.  
 

I love when the sun comes into our home. When the light move and the shadows and textures, the line and space, change. One moment the couch is really blue and you can see the tweed fabric from afar, and the next, the yellow sculpture on the coffee table turns to this off shade of green, a color that I am sure does not have a name.  There is movement in a moment. In an instant.
 
And I love this photo for this writing because I’ve been thinking about these moments that happen when this movement moves fast within us. 
 
When all of a sudden something that you once thought was one way, it shifts—and everything that you believed was true about it all, all of a sudden you see completely differently. And that this is a really weird moment because in an instant, “poof” and you are in a completely new paradigm. (I love this word)
 
And I am reminded of that beautiful moment in the play, The Miracle Worker, when Helen Keller is with Anne Sullivan and water is running over Helen Keller’s hand while Ann Sullivan is writing on her hand in sign the word for water and all of a sudden Helen Keller has this moment, this epiphany, this “wow, this is enormous. This is huge. Things have names. Things have meanings.”  And boom, everything became clear in like a nano second.  And boom, an immediate shift from darkness into light. Into understanding. Into connection with the world. 
 
Our spiritual growth is often like this. 
 
With Helen (can I call her by her first name?) there was no question that this was so. That what she was experiencing was in actuality happening.  It was tangible and solid and landing right there in her hand along with the cool flow of water running through her fingers. Boom. Words. Boom. Meaning. Connection.
 
But in this spiritual realm…
 
It’s a weird thing for me sometimes. Because I have this amazing ability to create meaning sometimes because it softens the reality of things. To create meaning that makes things more tolerable. Because, well, we all kinda want that, right?  Get me out of the discomfort in that spiritually bypassing kind of way.
 
I’ve written about spiritual by passing before. I wrote about it in that speaking to God and the Universe and sitting in my higher self and oh my goodness the veil is thin and the portal is so easily accessible. And it is nice here, being the being in human being. And dropping back down into being the human can often be pretty fucking painful but you know we gotta do it because we’re here living this human experience on this Planet Earth School of Survival… So while you can step through to the other side of the veil, you can’t just live there. Just not part of the deal. And…
 
I am aware of this. The habit sometimes. Of creating meaning.  And then having to differentiate my story with the Universe’s wisdom. And so when, boom, there really is this moment of whoa this means this now, not that anymore, I often have to sit in this and make sure it’s the Universe and not me.
 
Does this make sense?
 
So I’m thinking about this, these days.  And really making sure I am truly stepping into the paradigm shift, and not bypassing my experience of something by creating my story of the moment that keeps me away from the truth of the moment.
 
Most of the time.