Advocate vs. Accuser

We need advocates not accusers.  People who believe in us instead of believing we should be something, or someone, else.

The voice of the Accuser reminds us of all of our inadequacies; all of the ways we will never be a “fit” for the Remarkable Life.  The voice of the the Accuser sets us on a path of lonely self-loathing.

In stark contrast…

The voice of the Advocate reminds us that the Remarkable Life is already with us.  Walking, journeying with us towards the Greater, we are ever reminded that the only person we need to be is the one we see in the mirror.

Claiming the Unfinished

To claim your life as unfinished is not a sign of imperfection.  The powerful will say otherwise.  With their own blind-spot clouding their vision, the powerful will project perfection and voice their arrival.

Don’t believe them.  The Perfect are lying through their teeth, and deep in their bones, they know it.

Don’t think for a minute that the “unfinished life” is less-than.

To claim a life unfinished means we have acknowledged our life is still in process; still growing, moving, learning, discovering.  Accepting our life as unfinished opens us up to the Creative Source that is always eager to dance with the undone.

The powerful can have their “perfection”… you have a life to live.

Roadblocks & Barricades

What gets in your way?  What is standing between you and your Art?

“I don’t have time.”

“No one will like it.”

“I’m too old.”

“I’m too young.”

“It didn’t work last time.”

“What if I can’t do it?”
“I don’t have anything to say.”

These are powerful words.

Words that block and suppress the True Artist within.  These words gain their strength as they feast on our fear, and we offer them plenty to chew on.

But the truth?

These words are a phantom.  A smoke screen, trying to divert our attention from contributing to this life, only what we have been designed to contribute.  These words are hell-bent on sidelining us and keeping us busy with all of the self-made drama this life has to offer.  So, the best way to silence these detractors?

Keep going.

Wake up.

Participate each day.

When the blockade pops up and the barriers close in don’t slow down.  You’re going somewhere no one has ever been.  Pay no attention to their “Road Closed” signs because, you’ve got work to do.

Hit the gas.

A Death Not Meant For Us To Know

There is a pain in this life we were not meant to know.  A death that we were not designed for.  Our process unable to compute the loss and our container unable to hold the brokenness.  It may be our own, the shrapnel from another, or what we observe “safely” from afar.  But the effect is the same:

“How could this be?”

“Is this really happening?”

“Please make it stop.”

“I want to go back to the beginning.”

A pain too deep for words.  A location far below the depths any of us were meant to travel.  So we keep descending.  Like a diver that has traveled far below the threshold, we begin to suffocate.  Our world: disorienting, dark, dizzying and cold.  For many, this is the location where what has become of our life is now lived.

But there is news.

The Finite Place is not the end.

There is more.

While dark, these depths are the dirt, soil, and earth from which new life will find a way.  And Life always finds away. 

In your unexpected turn, in your pain, in the losing of your life, you are being re-worked and re-invented, and re-made.  A shedding of the Old Self, so your True Nature might come alive.

The Beauty Purchase

The Shadow tries to convince that beauty can be marketed for consumption.  We believe this for a while and we make its purchase.  Our insecurity is hungry and cannot seem to be quenched, so we guzzle down empty promises and inhale each offering.  We latch on to something that can redeem, fulfill, and make sense of our longing.  We sell ourselves to the “Latest and Greatest”.

Yet the magic pill doesn’t work.  Positive thinking, workout routines, and the religion of our youth is not enough.  Still hungry.  Still yearning.

What will this cost?

“I will gladly spend it all for a taste of what will truly satisfy.”

“Just show me ‘Where’ and ‘How’ and I’ll buy it!”

But this is the first lie we must see through if we are to move forward.

Beauty cannot be contained or manufactured.  It has always been here, waiting and moving… hovering.  Bursting all around us, Beauty is not asking or requiring anything of you, for it operates via a generous grace that the Market does not know.  Beauty will not be sold to the highest bidder or sold cheaply as the next fad. 

Instead, it is an odd thing.

When we begin to let go of our addiction to solve, cure, fix, engineer and save…it happens.

Beauty arrives. 

This Day

There is too much beauty in this life to rush so quickly.

Too much pain to pretend all is “fine”.

To stay awake to the moment, in all of its incarnations, is the Real Life.

No more hiding, no more pretending…

A New Day is here.

Be of Good Heart

“Is this all there is?”

This is the question when life feels stuck and unmoving.  Its search must surely be rhetorical because we already know the answer and it aches our cracking bones.

“Yes”

It feels so true, yet do not be fooled.  This is the myth perpetuated by the Resistance.  No creative imagination to envision beyond the “life” set before us, and no container to hold something greater than what is predicted.  Inescapable and Unavoidable serve as our companions in our dutifully-obliging-life.

Monotony transfixes us in a hypnotic state and overruns our unique identity with a colonized and civilized auto-pilot.  The work is never ending, the days never changing.  Rocks from this pile to the next and back again.  “Keep up the good work”, “Don’t let anyone down”, “You can try something new tomorrow” are just a few of the thin sentiments we try and feast on.

Yet we are starving.  A thin shadow of who we are to be.

Our identity molded and formed not by Free Spirit, but by this sly never-ending-production-to-please.  We are a stranger to ourselves.  What began in us in our youth has been weathered, eroded, and tamed.  Waking up is difficult when you’ve been lulled to sleep.

“Flavor” is a word exiled from our vocabulary and upon its reflection our forgetful-self strains to come up with even a few morsels of something palatable.  Pointless, meaningless, and apathy become the only colors in our existence.  Each one of them of the same shadow-like hue.

Until…

Something breaks in.

A Voice, a Word, a Breath.

Too much for even the Magnificent’s lungs to hold, this Wind penetrates an air-tight existence and unlocks its breathless captives from the inside.

Our flat world suddenly takes shape.

No longer must we waste our breath trying to convince the self-made-king of the truth welling up within us.  There is more.  There has always been more.  Today is a fresh existence that has not and will never be copied, cloned, or industrialized.

This is the day.

And the rulers of this dying age?  The Light has removed their shadow, revealed their nakedness, and left them blind to what is real.  Yet they keep on going, jawing about this and that (the way they always do) as they try to mend their delusion.  Fear and visions of impending enemies, all meant to solidify our tribalism, will not work us up in a frenzy any longer.  The spell they once held has been broken.

Broken by the sound of trumpets.  Shattered by the height of cheer.  Overturned by the tide of mercy.

Be of good heart; Love has found us.