Because my energy is climbing, I have discovered it is necessary to shed some of the behaviors that have been holding me back; as well, I will be gaining new behaviors that will propel me upwards.

Immediate intentions (between now and the end of July):

1. Ending my attachment to nicotine and cigarettes.
2. Choosing caffeine less often.
3. Running around the reservoir with my iPod.
4. Dancing whenever I can.
5. Being proactive while employed at the hospital.
6. Writing a minimum of two pages of the project every day.
7. Finishing up my bachelor’s degree.
8. Finding a nearby yoga home.
9. Discovering a nearby belly dancing class, for free.
10. Visiting the local library and borrowing audio books.
11. Figuring out the theme for the newest site.

Following the immediate:

1. Participate in the presentation of our home, inside and out.
2. Explore further educational options.
3. Replace Landon’s broken friendship bracelet with one that is shiny and new.
4. Make several trips to the thrift store… to drop stuff off.
5. Begin putting together a database with herbs and their uses and descriptions and… everything.
6. Drive traffic to the newest site.
7. Finish writing my first project.  Offer it on my new site.
8. Compile a list of other project ideas.
9. Create my BOS, and put together hand bound books.

I think I’ve found it.  Eureeka!

Some folks write autobiographies of their past.

I wonder what happens when you write one of your future?!!?

My own energy is continuing to raise.

It’s like watching myself laugh until tears stream from the corners of my eyes.

In a practice that resembles a spell, I surround myself with light.  Love.  Awe.

I’m a big fan.   It feels safe here.

I am surrounded with an impenetrable light that protects me from my neighbor’s energy.  I will not allow those vibrations which feel bad to touch my own energy.  I continue to raise my energy, focusing on my intuition and insight and capacity to really enjoy this experience.

Enjoyment.  Awe-filled experience.  Love; all encompassing love that surpasses any other emotion… it fills me.

I overflow with peace.

I have to tell you something.

You’re not going to necessarily like what I have to say, but I have to say it because if you do not hear it from me, you may never hear it.

You have got to stop having problems.  I know it sounds crazy, especially because you’ve never thought about things this way.  Yes, it IS within your control.  I’m not saying you “asked” for these troubles.  I’m not saying that you “deserve” all of them.  However, I do believe that life happens perfectly and that every problem you survive not only makes you tougher, it also makes you smarter.  If you allow yourself to learn from it.

If everything continues to hurt, and you are constantly putting out there that these things hurt, you will only attract your attention to experiencing more hurt.  The truth is that we all hurt sometimes.  It’s sucky at the time, especially if you’re entirely consumed by it.  It becomes less sucky as you move forward, though.  But you will never move forward until you stop holding onto what hurts.

What it comes down to is that every person feels pain sometimes.  Sometimes every person feels pain a lot.  The difference between someone who always talks about it, who is in utter misery, and someone who relishes life is that those who relish it do not allow themselves to spend more time focusing on it than those who do not.

Imagine you are a child, growing up with extraordinary talent, but never being given the opportunity to do normal child things.  You never have time to play in your imagination, never reach the normal milestones like discovering that you are a little boy, later going through the motions of learning what it’s like to have boy-girl interactions– or interactions with any other child your age, for that matter.  You never discover your role in the early or late adolescent pecking order, you never get to decide which clique you’ll hang out with– or that you don’t want to hang out in a clique at all.  You do not discover your sexuality nor your self image.  You are told who you are, and in what way you do it.  Imagine that you are pushed and prodded so completely that all of your time is spent honing in a musical talent that nothing– NOTHING in your life matters besides your ability to perform.

Sadly, I’m not talking about only MJ, here.  Every child celebrity goes through this same process, and I believe that it is not only incredibly damaging to a developing mind, but it’s a shame that we as a society endorse this sort of child exploitation.

Yes, I just went there.  Parents who allow their children… and especially those who push their children to become little child celebrities are exploiting their kids.  Children have an innate NEED to have alone time, to go through their awkward phases, to develop friendships naturally without the pressure of constantly identifying with a persona that the masses have created in their own minds about the themselves.   The key to self-esteem is a process of self-discovery, trial and error, and a desire to be comfortable with oneself, regardless of what other people think you ought to be.

I could give you ample examples of how we have wronged these children.  I can illustrate the patterns of exactly how growing up as a child star severely inhibits mental wellness in them as adults.  It leaves a bitter taste in my mouth, yet I realize that how we, the society, are socially may never be conducive for concern for future sacrificed children to grow up in a normal, wellness-inducing environment.  No, we are far too selfish to consider such things.  After all, if we had no child stars to worship, what on earth would we do with our extra time?

Back to MJ.  I believe that the whole child molesting accusation was a sham.  As far as I’m concerned, all that was was a ploy to get a wealthy, child-like man to part with his money.  Twenty million dollars worth of it, for that matter.  For several reasons, MJ was vulnerable.  Not only was he never allowed to develop, as he grew older, he found himself housed in a body that was afflicted with various illnesses that are difficult enough to deal with even if he had been given the opportunity to grow up in a healthy fashion.  He was one of our world’s first extremely famous black performers.  He grew up black before it was considered “acceptable” to be so.  In his early adulthood, even that was questionable, as his skin disease began to redefine his already undefined social understanding of self.  Who was he?  It’s quite certain that this question plagued him throughout his entire life.  He was an enigma, a rarity, a social outcast with popularity and fame surpassed by no one.  Even his family, filled with children who went through the same social training, were not like him.  As time continued, his self image continued to unravel, out of control.

It’s really no wonder the man was in a constant state of self crisis.  Surgery after surgery, treatment test studies that may or may not help him get a solid grasp on who he was to the world, and a constant push to maintain the image that the world held so dearly… it’s no wonder at all that the world had difficulty defining him without silently (or boisterously) declaring him a freak show.  How could he have any sense of self if nothing and no one could give him enough time to discover it for himself?

Early on in my education, I discovered the name of the illness that afflicts those of us who do not see ourselves in the mirror as we really are.  This disorder is called “Body Dismorphic Disorder.”  I don’t believe that anyone who has never experienced this illness first hand can truly begin to understand that when a person with this illness looks into the mirror, they do not see the same person YOU see.  In anorexics, a person can look in their mirror, and all they see is a fat person, even if what every one else sees is someone with skin and bones.  Similarly, I don’t believe that someone who has never been given the opportunity to discover themselves, who has been given the constant battle of identity crises, has any capacity to see themselves in the light that every other person may see them.  The distortion is inevitable, and while in the spasms of grasping for self definition, it becomes easy to see just how quickly a person’s body and mind can deteriorate.

Was he a freak show?  According to our standards, he was.  However, when you consider the extreme vulnerability he was robed with, and the extreme pressure that was forced upon him from early on in life, it’s not difficult to see that his life with us was a clear demonstration of what it looks like to crack within the public eye.  It’s no wonder that he behaved and appeared the way he did, especially in the last ten years.  This, my friends, is exactly what it looks like to deteriorate publicly, even if the last years of his life were spent in isolation.

Many of you may disagree.  If you will, that is fine.  However, I propose that he did not do this to himself.  I believe that WE did this to him.  Maybe not intentionally, maybe not maliciously, but it is the fault of all of us, of this society, for allowing it to happen.  He isn’t alone, either.  There are several other children who we are failing, and who will continue along this path, inevitably flailing to the point that they, too, will crack under the social pressures we’ve imposed upon them.  Our willingness to exploit them will only lead to their own future demise.

I’m beginning to realize that all of the “rules” I’ve learned up til now are becoming fuzzy.

The lives that those of us in this Western society lead have us thinking that we Must Work, and we Must Do What Everyone Else Does.  We’ve created this fancy concept of time, and because time is our greatest asset, we must trade it for money.  Because we Must Have Money in order to Have What We Want.

The only problem I see here, aside from the circular thinking, is that if we spend all of our time working, we don’t really have time to enjoy those things that we really want.

My life changed about six weeks ago.  Maybe more, maybe less… I’ve always told you that time is difficult for me to grasp.  Along with the formal academic education, I have been taught by nearly everyone around me that THIS is what it looks like to be successful.  Sadly, many of the folks who told me these stories are ones who also do not have time to enjoy the things that they desire, as well.  I’m betting it wasn’t even a malicious, intentional lie they told me.  I’m betting it was passed on to me with good intentions simply because they believed it, too.

I can hear my grandparents gasp out with trepidation.  Dear Jesus, is Ash going to quit her job and travel the world like a vagabond?  Not likely.  I like money.  Don’t get me wrong.  I just don’t see the purpose in spending so much time working towards it when there are many other folks who are able to Do What They Love and simultaneously be millionaires.  I don’t know that I want to be a millionaire, honestly.  I mean, it would be nice to not have to ever consider money… but I think what’s really important here is my desire to have time to do what I want.

This shift in perspective knocked me right out of my chair.  Suddenly everything I hoped for became worthless.  I was going to have to put in grueling hours for something I might not even like in the end.  Western medicine is sterile and empirically proven.  The things *I* believe in are spiritual.  Pseudoscience.  Fake.  That sort of internal paradigm sounds intriguing at first, but after much thought, I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s a little too paradoxical for me to not want to simultaneously push myself or someone else off of a cliff.  And that’s no way to lead this life.   Life is very short, indeed.

What if someone told you that, once and for all, the purpose of life had been solved?  Aside from the fanatics who would desperately grasp at whatever tool they could use to defend themselves, most people would be skeptical.   Most people would want proof.  I’m not going to tell you I’ve found proof in God or any other deity.  But I am going to tell you what the scientific “facts” tell us:

We are a tiny speck in the scheme of things.  We believe that there are billions of stars out there, hundreds of thousands of galaxies.   The universe appears to be expanding.  The constellations are changing.  Eventually our galaxy will either move farther out, or it will stop and begin to contract back to where it came from.  Either way, the daily dramas that go on in our little heads are useless drivel.

What if I take this amazing opportunity for life, grasping it by the horns, riding it out like a cowgirl on a wild horse?  For all I know, this opportunity, this very day–today–may NEVER happen again.  And here I am wasting it punching hours on a clock.  Here we ALL are wasting it.  Wasting.  Gone.

Some people sort of grasp the magnitude of life.  I’d put down bets with high dollar stakes to guess that most people can’t bother to consider it.  Hence the unending battles we fight against each other… Hence the hatred that is brewed up, the violence, the terrorism, the drama of it all.  If you were thinking about things on a Universal level, though, none of this would be worth it.  There would be no crime because we’d all acknowledge that none of this matters anyway. There’d be no wars because we’d all acknowledge that every single one of us, in our own ways, are praying to the same God, caught on our hands and knees for the same sorts of desires and wishes… we’d all acknowledge that no one can “own” part of an Earth that’s not interested in selling her parts… We could be harmonious.

I know, I know, that’s awfully idealistic of me.

I can’t necessarily change the world like that.  I can’t necessarily convince you that the way we’ve been taught is a smoke screen for something– anything… but I can change how and what I do with these precious moments that are flying past me before my eyes.  I can envision hundreds of people dancing in circles around a massive fire.  I can imagine the spark of life within me growing so massive that nothing can stop me from doing what I will.  I can imagine becoming one with the things that increase my energy.  None of that is far fetched, especially since the things I do have control over fall within my own experience.  Do what you will, but I am moving onto something new and different from the rat race that I’ve been so obsessed with all these years.  I’m ready to find gratification in every single movement.  Every moment.

My day is rather simple.  I wake up around six.  I get up, make breakfast for the kids, eat with them, and then shower.  I have plenty of time to tend to their needs… helping them learn how to present themselves beautifully and prepare for their own days.  I take them to school, and come home, helping myself to a cup of dark, thick DazBog coffee and organic cream.  After my cuppa coffee, Landon and I go for a long walk around the reservoir and surrounding neighborhood.  We return, have an hour or so of “us” time.  Then it’s time to meditate.  We may also spend time in a yoga studio near by.  Once we have taken care of our bodies, it will be time to sit down and work.  I will work on my books, my sites, and will silently say prayers of gratitude for how easily it is that we are able to support ourselves and still have all of the time we desire to do the things we love.  A few hours of this, and it’s high time to make something creative for lunch and then tend to the yard and garden and house.  By this time, we will be ready to pick the kids up from school.  Once we get home, it will be time for the kids to do homework, and if they don’t need our help, the adults will spend at least an hour reading.  Soon after, we will start preparing dinner.  We’ll eat and then go across the street to the park to play.

Some days, we will skip school and/or day care so that we can all go to the art museum.  Or the history and science museum.  Or to the library.  On the weekends, we will do camping trips.  We will visit as many beautiful places in Colorado that we can find.  It would take years to see everything, but we will do it!

I see this happening within the next year.

The first steps are to start building up my income from home.  I think I will look into affiliate marketing for things I love.  I’d bet Wayne Dyer and Deepak Chopra have such things.  I’m sure I can find organic products that I can sell.  And most rewardingly, I am beginning to think of what it is that I will write.  I’m so much closer now than I was, even last month.

Life is good.  We have the freedom to do this.  And for that, I’m incredibly thankful.

Feeling awesome. Pieces are falling into place. Beautifully. Just keeping on keeping on!!

It has become apparent that I am going through a major transition.  I am beginning to question everything I have known to be true.  Writing these words does not scare me like it might’ve many years ago.  In fact, isn’t that what this blog has been about all along?  Getting to know myself better… learning to understand me, learning to follow my heart towards the things that make me truly happy?

I believe I’ve moved beyond my initial state of shock from realizing that everything I was working towards was actually not what I desired any longer.  Since then, I have experienced an enormous amount of growth and learning.  Which is good, because had I stopped learning altogether, it likely would’ve been a flag waving furiously at me, “You’re not headed in the right direction!!!”

Quite the opposite, really.  I’ve given myself permission to delve into the spirituality and philosophy of life. I have been delving into the realm of spiritual healing, learning about esoteric arts and crafts, and poring over study guides that have taught me various pieces of the entire universal puzzle I’m currently putting together.  I’ve been listening to audio books by Wayne Dyer and Deepak Chopra.  I’ve been thinking about Traditional Chinese Medicine and massage, even.  I’m considering everything with an open mind.  If something doesn’t draw me closer, I consider it and move beyond it.

I believe that now my new goal is to be able to work from home.  Support myself from home.  The first thing that comes to mind is my ability to write.  Of course it sounds risky.  At the same time, it sounds blissful.  I’m coming across new opportunities, and new ideas– stuff that I never previously even thought about putting my time into.  With the assistance of my lovely man, I have a few new sites up… though none of them are even close to having actual content.  I will share them with you as soon as I can.

In one of those sites, I’m think of putting up an advice column.  Something to the likes of “Dear Abby” or something of that nature.  Along with that, I have a few ideas of books brewing in my head.  Just need to get all the details knocked out, and let it simmer for a while.

There really is no reason why I can’t sell books.  I mean, I’m guessing that those of you who read my blog regularly would certainly encourage such a thing?  I can’t even tell you how many times I’ve had a comment that says, “So, when are you going to write a book?”

To answer that question: soon.  Very soon.  Hopefully sooner than later.  I’m quite certain it’ll happen in a blink of an eye.  However, the priorities, until I am ready, are still: work, school, family.  I realize that these are backwards.  I see the error, and I’m positioning myself so that I can change them.  It’s not going to happen over night, but I can assure you it’ll happen soon.  Maybe I’m just assuring myself.

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