About a month ago, I stumbled upon a feeling that told me I had to let it all go to let it all flow. I shared the thought with friends and they all had the same reaction…”yes!” That is how it happens, we all agreed and I made the intention to let go of everything that I had planned for myself. 

Two weeks later I found myself at Weston Jolly’s Retreat in Sedona. How cool does that sound? And it was. Cooler than cool. Wow-er than wow. No words can describe what occurred that weekend. Weston is one amazing man, who was once an advertising guy. I imagine him as being very creative and also very particular. Apparently, he was writing on a beach in Hawaii when his hand became a vehicle for spirit to speak through him.

Can you imagine? What must that have been like? Maybe something like cracking open an egg. Once it’s open, there is no way to put it back together again. And you don’t want to, because what you find inside is so amazing, so magic. To live without it is no longer possible. To have knowledge that comes from a deep, most of my life unacknowledged place is to define the word “know”. There is a knowing. A simple but deeply penetrating word.

I know now that God exists. I don’t know who or what God is, unless you accept that “God is Love” is enough to describe God. When love appears in front of your eyes and finds its way into the hollows of your heart, wow. It is happening in so many of those hollows that I feel my heart is filling up with amazing love and the connection between God and me becomes more and more pure. The picture in my head is the groovy turtle guy scene in Finding Nemo, riding the Current. The Current is the flow of love, the flow of God.

God is like a river flowing through the wilds of the universe. But the universe is made up of God. Right? It’s gets too much for me to define. I prefer to let it remain a mystery and live this life soaking it up. There’s plenty of time later for figuring out the mysteries of the universe. Which brings me to the question, what is the universe? Where does it begin and end?

I’ve heard since I was little that the universe is infinite, that it has no beginning and no end. When I was a teenager, I would lie awake at night and wonder about that. The feeling that would come over me frightened me and I would go into my mom’s bedroom in the middle of the night, hoping to crawl into bed with her. She would tell me to go back to bed. She didn’t understand the fright in me and was plain tired, not wanting to come out of her own safe sleep.

Last night I listened to stories of such severe abuse to innocent children. The women who told their stories are forging ahead with such courageous faith, determined to clear the pain of their beginnings into this world. All of us have experienced some sort of disappointment as a child. I would love to think that most of it had to do with not getting a particular toy we had our heart set on. But I think that is naïve.

We grow children through pain in this country as well as many other parts of the world. We make demands on them they are not prepared to take on. And we wonder why there are so many of them who are lost, unsure of where to turn for help. Most are probably sure there is no help.

Recently, I moved to Phoenix, AZ from Asheville, NC. Before I moved here, or even knew that I was going to move here, I painted a beautiful picture of what was to become my reality. Like in When Dreams May Come, my painting has become who I am.

The bottom of the painting is the furling Arizona flag. Out of it comes a balanced heart. Behind the balanced heart is the image of the blending of the male and female aspects. They are joined in their touch and their essence reaches through and beyond. One has a foot in the town and the other the desert.

The painting is titled “Phoenix Rising”. It is how I feel. Whole, standing tall, reaching out to the world through my love. My love is to go deep into color, whether it be through paint or a person. I love to draw and I love to write and I love to paint and I love to love. Loving comes in so many forms, but the base purity of it is a connection of oneness. Seeing ourself in others is key to loving.

We are the same. Maybe not in all or obvious ways, but in one way or another, we are the same. It may not look like I have much in common with the crack addict pregnant woman, but there is something there that links us together. Something that, when I let myself see it, my heart melts with hers and that of her baby. I pray for them to be safe and feel loved.

Letting go of my sadness has been the toughest part of this journey. My sadness had become the safe place to go when things got rocky in some way. I learned to sink deep into a hole within myself. There nobody could reach me to hurt me or tell me I am unloved in some way. All the while I was hiding, I was wishing someone would find me. I finally decided to find myself. I picked myself up, dusted myself off, and started in all over again…like the song says. In Dare to Dream, I referred to the sound of sucking mud as I pick one foot up after the other. That image still makes me laugh in the midst of mierde.

The trouble with letting go of something is what to do with yourself when it is gone. The transition space of going from being sad to being at peace and in love sometimes feels like it is never going to be over. I kept reading that as long as I felt something as real, it would be my reality. The way to leave a thought behind, for me, is to get involved with something else. That something else has to be something that is related to my passion. I pour my love into some other place and another source pops over in the far corner. Pretty soon my room is filled with the flow of love. There is no separation.

My present passion is the animation of Lorelie and her Verbal Remedies. It is a dream I have had for a few years at least. I have just now begun to believe this will actually happen, that it is already happening because I am making it happen. I know, I know. The philosophy of “making” something happen verses allowing something to happen seems to contradict the other. There is a process of letting go and then paying attention to the next steps that show up…which also seems to contradict the other because you don’t want to be paying so close attention that you are obsessed with looking for signs which means you haven’t let go.

How to let go…ask for help. State out loud:

All kinds of help is now available and at your service. I can’t prove that because that is putting logic into a place no logic can put a lid on. All I know is that since making that statement or something like it, I feel lifted, different, relaxed, at peace. And signs are everywhere. Love is everywhere I look.