Alisha Westerman

Be like Buddha. Or not.

In the spring of 2010, I started working with a life coach named Florence, a woman who proudly bears the nickname Overbearing Bitch.  It was so transformative and empowering that I decided to get trained as a life coach myself.  Against some odds, I took some financial and time-commitment risks and enrolled in a ten-month telecourse with the same organization where my coach trained years ago.  I love it so much that even if I never took on another client, I would still take this class for the enrichment and personal growth; after each bi-weekly 1.5 hour class via conference call, I want to hide away from the world and roll around in my notes.  Or I jump up full of energy and go for a walk in the valley where I live, breathing deeply while pondering my  expanding perception of what it is to be human, what we’re capable of, how we can progress and how we can experience more freedom.

So far it has made me a better, quieter listener, more compassionate and less judgmental of people and their behavior, more likely to ask empowering questions and trust in the resourcefulness of that person, rather than give them advice or even worry for them.  But it has also made me more sensitive to negative attitudes and given me an inclination to call it like I see it if I think something is unfair, inappropriate or just plain hurtful but might be otherwise excused as “tough shit” or “how things are”.

I have the added benefit of being in a class with 27 educated, caring and compassionate people stationed throughout the world, most of whom are big into the principles of Nonviolent Communication – a model inspired by the principles of Mahatma Gandhi.  I  joke to my classmates that I’m a life coach junkie, for all the benefits I’m enjoying by experiencing this type of conscious communication and having classmates practicing on me. This is because I’m an emotionally open person.  One of my favorite pastimes is exploring my emotions, writing about them, processing them, feeling them.  Or so I thought.

For all of my championing of feelings, it turns out I hate feeling angry. I end each class feeling really amazing and yet with all the joy and curiosity and appreciation and gratitude I’m experiencing, along with an abatement of anxiety in general, I’ve also been feeling much more anger (see: previous ranty post).  And I really. Don’t.  Like it.  It’s painful.  It’s draining.  It cripples my ability to trust, to give, to create, to love!  I become disappointed that I’m angry and try to talk myself out of it – try to convince myself to be magnanimous and focus on the positive.  This gets me feeling disconnected or overly attached to positive visions while suppressing negative emotions. But what I learned in one practice session with a deeply empathetic classmate is that my anger points to what’s most precious to me.

“What might your anger be trying to tell you?” she asked over the phone from a rustic cabin in Maine.

My anger telling me something?  I hadn’t thought of that.  “Hmm.  Well, that I have a deep desire to be seen and heard for who I am.  And we all deserve that.  I want to live in a world where that’s a given.”  I began to cry. Suddenly my anger didn’t seem like a glaring flaw or a shortcoming to be corrected, but something noble, reflective of my strongest values.  What else was I not seeing about anger?  How could I accept my anger, embrace it?  I could embrace sadness, even fear, but anger?  I literally flinched at the thought.

It’s no surprise that as we continued, I realized that my reluctance to accept and learn from my anger was likely linked to my most defining experiences with anger: twelve years of living with a step-father whose quiet, ever-present anger in the household meant threat, violence, abuse, cruelty and victimization and was often irrational and unpredictable.  How on earth could anger be a good thing?

I’ll never forget the first line of a poem recited by a young Korean poet named Grace who was visiting my university.  I had recently been betrayed by the first person I had seriously considered marrying, and while my anger was righteous, that didn’t make it feel any less poisonous.  She said, “If I let this anger go, where would it go?”  I thought of this line often, but don’t feel that I ever came up with a good answer.

Since I began immersion in this learning process of techniques for life coaching, I have been feeling anger on an almost daily basis, for various reasons, mostly based on the behavior of others, unfortunately, as it’s something I don’t have authority over.  Negativity, vulturous behavior, inauthenticity and downright meanness.  Also my own failures and shortcomings.  This is to say nothing of injustices going on the world, the pain of which I constantly internally negotiate in order to keep at bay.

Am I more sensitive because of this course I’m taking?  Am I to experience the anger of others in order to turn me inward to examine my own anger?  Is it personal, energetic and dimensional velcro, as I pull away from my environment and prepare for a big move?  (More on that some other time.)  Or what about that aggressive warrior planet of Mars, particularly active in the sky right now and ruler of my chart, since I’m an Aries rising?

As I contemplated this, my classmate wisely deferred to one of the program’s core principles – valuing diversity, described not as a colorful workforce or whatever, but as “Opening up the the full spectrum of experience creates new levels of awareness, self intimacy and alignment.”  …So, all of these things might be happening at once?  All of them could be true, and have something to offer me?  That is so characteristic of the universe to give me a well-rounded, comprehensive course in a given subject, ‘stead of focusing on one facet.

My realization in that moment was that I’m connected to it all.  My anger, your anger, his anger, their anger.  It hasn’t solved the problem of the energetic and physical discomfort I feel when I’m angry.  I still become disappointed about it.  I still have a habit of trying to push it away, talk myself out of it, and become overwhelmed wondering how I can address it when it involves others without seeming like a fragile, over-sensitive nut.  And wondering where is my dream world, made up of all the things I value, rather than the things I find hurtful?

At least now I know my anger has something to say – something worth listening to.  I can’t ignore that, despite my conditioning or discomfort surrounding it, anger can speak to some deep unconditional needs I have as a human being.  In the middle of a downward spiral, I can at least ask, “What do you need?” and bookmark it for later when I come out of my funk.  For the rest of this year, I have 27 classmates who are eager to practice coaching me through it.  And equally valuable is the compassion and understanding surrounding anger, which I can now offer to others.

Uggh.  Sounds like a painfully practical application of my commitment to clients, which I would do well to extend to myself:

I stand for discovery, awareness and authenticity.

I commit to acceptance, non-judgment, curiosity, and faith in you.

Your freedom is more important to me than either of us being comfortable.

Let the discomfort begin.

If you want to know more about the school in which I’m enrolled, my personal take on coaching or how to sign up for coaching with me, look here.

Are you blacker than me? How can you tell?

I have consciously chosen to keep my blog as rant-free as possible, but this one keeps coming up, so this one’s for you, white boy.  Ughhhh, what’s up with random white guys who like to tell me that they’re blacker than me?  “I’m blacker than you are,” they smugly say.  And it raises so many questions.  Why the smugness?  Why is it always a point of pride?  Why is it always white guys?  Why not white women?  Or black teenagers?  Why does it happen repeatedly? And what does it even mean?

That you think you’ve memorized more rap lyrics than I have?

That you imagine you fuck longer and harder than I do?

That you feel you have an impressive sense of rhythm?

That you have taken more opportune moments to spontaneously display more dancing ability than I have?

That you do a better impression of Eddie Murphy’s stand up?

That you’ve proudly perfected your African American Vernacular English in the privacy of your car?  (I’m Caribbean American, by the way.  Totally different dialect, and I wasn’t raised speaking it.)

That you have more black drinking buddies than I do?

And when exactly did I declare to you that I was black?

When exactly did I wear a t-shirt displaying my percentage of blackness?

When exactly did I ever declare that you were white, or that I gave a shit?

Why don’t you ever brag about being more white than I am?

Whence came your compulstion to measure up to me – and what you perceive to be my blackness, or lacktherof?

The only explanation I can think of is that you lack exposure, and thus lack a fundamental understanding of diversity.  You simply can’t know very many black people, because if you did I certainly wouldn’t stand out as un-black.  I’d just be another person that you know.  I wish that were the case.

My parents and I. First photograph together since 1981.

I’m one of many who knows that 2012 is a very special year.  It already has been, in my experience.  As far as family goes, my sister Ninah visited St. Croix for the first time.  We grew up together on the sidewalks of California, but St. Croix is where I’m from and also a part of her heritage.  So that was cool.  And my mother is here right now, for the first time in 25 years.  I got to be with both of my parents at the same time for the first time since I was seven years old.  I have no memories whatsoever of being with the both of them together on St. Croix.  It was always one or the other.  It’s not like fireworks lit up the sky when we were finally all in the same place, but I believe some sort of energetic grounding has happened for me, and is probably key to all that is happening next in my life.

I started a ten-month course to become a certified life coach.  You can find out more about it at www.alishawesterman.com/lifecoach.  As if I needed another url/, haha.  Three sessions in, already what I’m learning is invaluable.  The coursework and practical applications are expanding my understanding of what it means to listen.  I’m learning to listen on multiple levels at once, and to be more still, inside, as I do that.  To really receive what a person is offering me when they talk to me – whether it’s a casual comment or a conversation I’d rather not have or a welcome exchange with an old friend.  Usually with intuition, I tend to jump ahead of linear time to conclude something and try to pull someone along with me.  Now, I’m learning to go to where I don’t have answers.  I’m learning to become more interested in what is possible than what I know.  To step in time with the other person’s pace of learning and trust their process.  A huge part of life coaching is asking questions – something I’m wild about.  A huge no-no in life coaching is giving advice.  It’s just never going to work as well for someone, if at all, as it will for them to find their own solutions.

More fully grasping that has led me to make a New Year’s resolution: to give myself more credit.  I usually wait until February and make Birthday Resolutions, when I have recovered from holiday excess, broken in whatever pair of new shoes I’ve acquired and reestablished a routine. I like having the first month and a half of a year to reflect and see how things are shaking out and shaping up before I start making promises to myself.  However, this one came to me by way of a little voice that was still and quiet and kind enough to stand apart from all the other voices.

I immediately knew what it meant.  Giving myself more credit means setting aside self-doubt and assuming – or pretending, if necessary – that I am competent and knowledgeable in my current endeavors.  It means deciding for once that I, and not someone else, am the one for the job.  And it means being a grown-ass woman and buying myself some really nice bras.

Marriage does that to a lot of girls, grows them up.  They get nice lingerie at their bachelorette party, they get kitchen stuff as wedding gifts, they take an official vacation and stay in some sort of actual hotel.  They sign legal documents and often change their name and their bank accounts.  They do grown up stuff and it pushes them into a new realm of responsibility to themselves and others. Oh yeah and often times they have babies.

I, on the other hand, have bargain shopped and bartered my way through a lifestyle of loopholes, scholarships, used cars, vintage treasures and auntihood.  Wouldn’t trade that for anything, but I’m now admitting to myself that I want some cliche grown-ass things.  I want an all-consuming career.  I want a job title that answers questions, rather than raising more questions like, ‘And what else do you do for income?’ and ‘People pay you for that?’ And I want lots of nice underclothes; I’m an enthusiastic new member of figleaves.com, through which I will be amassing an arsenal of well-fitted underclothes and swimwear.  (Ladies, are you sure you’re wearing the right bra size?  I wasn’t.  Go to their fitting room to make sure.)

Giving myself more credit also ties into my declaration some weeks back that I’m done working to fit into clothes – clothes now need to work to fit me.  This has everything to do with cut and fit and nothing to do with weight or size; I’m probably the thinnest I’ve ever been, and I still hate how I look and feel in flouncy, high-waisted dresses.  I have never found them comfortable, and I from now on I refuse to wear them, even though they look good from a distance and on others and are almost exclusively what I see on racks these days.  What works for me is drop waist dresses and one-pieces.  So I will hold out for those.  I also hate really flimsy things that require three layers just so your knickers don’t show.  To me, an ethereal, paper-thin skirt may qualify as texture, but that’s not clothing.  When I think of clothing, I think of something designed to put a buffer between you and the rest of the world.  I think of costume designer Janie Bryant of Mad Men.  (Sigh.  Can’t wait for next season.  My awesome celebrity sighting this Christmas in New York was Phil Abraham at Whole Foods.)

figleaves.com Where big boobs are no big deal!

Working with the premise that I’m fine just fine the way that I am, I’m now assuming that if something is uncomfortable or looks bad on me, it’s not my fault – it’s just not going to enter my closet. Of course, this applies to more than just clothes.  If something feels unright, I shall no longer assume I am what’s unright about it.  Therein lies the opportunity to expand awareness, examine an experience from new angles and grow wiser with fewer wrinkles. Here’s to that.

Janelle Monae - Divine Androgynous Siren

From ancient sculpture to neoclassical art to the runway, androgyny has always been a special kind of beautiful.   However, at this point in time, it and other challenges to the heterosexual sentiment are in the spotlight as human are healing from sexual repression,  integrating polarities of male/female, good/bad, black/white, right/wrong and embracing all parts of themselves.  It’s about discarding the myth of “otherness”,  outsiders and rejects.  Never has it been so cool to be a geek or competing with a disadvantage.  (But this sentiment is as old as storytelling.  From Jesus Christ to James Baldwin, Great Expectations to Glee, our favorite stories, myths and legends have always been about underdogs, Seabiscuits, orphan, paupers, Cinderellas, and anyone who was at a disadvantage and had to learn how to access their own inner power.)

Perfectly illustrating this polarity integration is the increased presence in mainstream popular culture of people who captivate us while defying our traditional, polarized views of sexuality and gender.  Mona Lisa, Grace Jones, Prince, Madonna, Antony Hegarty, Lady Gaga, Janelle Monae,  Manilla Luzon… And can you even be a cool, current male actor these days without doing a gay or drag role?  James Franco, Gael Garcia Bernal, Johnny Depp, Cillian Murphy and Harold Perrineau are some of my favorites.  Tranny celebrities and tv shows, girly boys, boyish girls, gay marriage being legalized.  When I see gay people kissing on tv it still shocks me and reminds me that, growing up, I was presented with a grossly lopsided picture of romantic love – that of only straight men and women.

Pansexuality is defined simply as: The potential for sexual attractions, sexual desire, romantic love, or emotional attraction, towards people of all gender identities and biological sexes.  Is that so farfetched? Found this excerpt on one of my favorite monthly cosmic updates that describes what I’ve often felt but haven’t put into words:

Androgyny and Indigo Children

As we progress in the Ascension cycle more of our Starseed and Indigo children are starting to emanate their core essence and evolutionary purpose for incarnating on the planet.  We have an array of biological ages where our Star children are starting to get to the age where they are clearer about their inner core self than the adults are. This is creating many conflicts with the current educational, religious and parenting styles in society. Over the last twelve years a new breed of consciousness has incarnated on the planet, and many accepted the clarion call to help ascend and heal the schism of polarity. Many Star kids hold a polarity integration template of Androgyny designed for the Unity of the polarities and now are revealing this outwardly as their core essence. As they biologically advance as young teenagers, many kids are bewildered at the hostile or enraged responses they receive from the old reptilian calcified regime. This negative response runs the gamut from their biological families, and inept and ill equipped educational and social systems.

As we acknowledge these beloveds for their role we can apply the compassionate witness to see them for who they really are. We may see a teenager and young adult movement into homosexuality, bi-sexuality and confusion or bewilderment about their gender roles and sexuality. We may see more young adults that we cannot traditionally label as a “male or female”. This is an aspect of gender reconciliation designed to integrate and unify male/female polarities that is transpiring within the Indigo communities. This is a part of their contribution to redefine male and female roles as exploring new and alternative ways of being.

The issue is that confusion about this behavior, misguided ego deceptions can be emotionally traumatizing for the youngster. There is an incredible astral delusion used through 2^nd chakra seduction to believe deviant and irresponsible sexuality is okay in the name of creative freedom. This ensnares the Indigo desperate to achieve freedom in this enslaved planet through misguided perceptions and internal angst. As we witness more and more Star kids declaring their homosexuality and bi-sexuality the social attitudes need to get a grip on this changing paradigm and clear negative ego judgment aimed at these youngsters. We will need to open dialogues to teach and support them to learn self love and self acceptance first in order to engender unconditional loving relationships based on integrity and energetic responsibility. This group has been highly confused and has a high suicide rate.  Adult Indigos that are same sex oriented may be called to support these young adults or children. The goal is the elevation of higher consciousness perception to support their core essence to express without the lower chakra pain and trauma distortion.

It is important to note that the social label of being “gay” has a spiritual purpose that has been hidden or bastardized. The distortion to disrupt that lifestyle has been enormous in the draconian mind control through organized religion. Many souls choose to be “gay” to learn to unify inner energetic polarities that were not completed in the previous life cycles. Some have come to reverse the frequency fence by holding the reverse polarity in their body as an override to the 555 grid. Some come to establish new neurological templating for the human mental body. Some Starseed souls are totally androgynous on their planet and have come to Earth to learn what gender is. Although there are organic principles of creation that have male and female energetic principles, those principles do not manifest neat and clean with a pretty bow on top. There is no easy and absolute answer to the myriad of purpose that this has manifested on the earth. However in learning to have loving compassion for all of life, this is certainly another area that humanity could learn a lot to learn empathy through.

May we take a moment while reading this to send loving compassion and prayers to all of our Indigo children and Human Family that were “born this way”. We honor and love you!

-from Lisa Rene’s October newsletter, posted at http://www.energeticsynthesis.com  © 2009-2011, Lisa Renee

There’s lots of vocabulary to sort through, and the vocab isn’t needed to just be who you are, but it can help clarify things.  Androgynous, androgyne, pangender, pansexual, polyamorous, gender outlaw, transgender, transexual, Jung’s anima and animus, bigender, two-spirit.  And there’s the awesome Bugis of Indonesia, who identify three sexes, four genders and a fifth group that translates roughly to transvestite priests, who are born as intersexual (hermaphrodites), have their own distinct wardrobe and are considered to embody all the other genders.  Can I get an amen?  Our self-expression is so much more fluid than check-box categories.  The notion that normal is 100% straight women in dresses and straight men in pants seems not only a thing of the past, but a thing of pure fiction.

Recently a friend asked me to list five things I can’t live without. They came to mind immediately. I was pleased to see that they all have the following in common:

o pure, simple products that prevent waste
o affordable and save money
o educative and empowering
o travel friendly and encourage mobility
o promote wellness and natural balance

They’re not the typical glamazine answer (mascara, book of austere poetry and designer flats/tote/notebook/lipgloss/scarf). They are survival oriented – like, if I was marooned on an island these are the five things I would choose. And while sure, I could live without them, I do believe that without them the quality of my life would plummet. I love that they’re all things I can fit into a tiny bag. I can leave on an all day excursion feeling ready for whatever. If I’m house sitting, the transition is hassle free. And when I get on a plane, it’s nice knowing my carry-on contains everything I use to feel balanced and grounded, no matter where I land.

One: Dr. Bronner’s Pure Castille Soap

Why: It’s the purest soap available. I use it on my skin and hair, but I can also use it to brush my teeth, wash my clothes, do the dishes and clean house. It’s not a newfangled antibacterial thing but a natural, organic antibacterial thing so it doesn’t promote mutation of bacteria into next year’s nightmare virus. It’s oil based so it can clean anything, and though it cleans deep, it doesn’t dry skin. It’s so concentrated that a tiny bottle lasts forever and travels well. It’s environmentally friendly so it’s good for camping, and where we live we dump our dishwater on the plants outside. One time up at a lake I used the peppermint scent to wash my hair. When I got in the water, I was swarmed by fish who just seemed to want to be in the water clouded by the soap. My favorites are almond, lavender, eucalyptus, peppermint and hemp. There’s a documentary on the eccentric Dr. Bronner, his family business and his legacy called Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soapbox.

Two: Young Living Essential Oils

Deep Relief, Valor and Di-Gize, at your service.

Why: They are my preventative health care. Plant oils are a miracle product that has been around for as long as people have been using plants as food and medicine. This particular brand is medical grade, making it ingestible, which is how I know it’s the purest product available. Essential oils are naturally antiseptic, anti-microbial, anti-inflammatory and highly oxygenated,making them essential to healing, purifying and regeneration. I use them for everything – skin and haircare, cleaning, deodorizing, relaxation, massage, reiki, increased energy, mood enhancer, cramps, beauty care, hand sanitizer, perfume, flavoring water, cooking, making chocolate, dietary supplementation, cleaning cuts and healing injuries, diffusing into the air and just about anything else you can think of.

Young Living does singles and some carefully combined blends. I usually have about twenty or so at a time, but unless I’m traveling, I only carry a few with me at a time. On almost a daily basis I offer some to someone who has a headache and it always seems to help.They come in tiny glass bottles and are so powerful that only a drop is necessary. I often add them to water or a carrier oil for application. Some of my favorites are peppermint, sandalwood, eucalyptus, juniper, lemon, lavender, copaiba, cinnamon, and the blends Valor (with tansy) Di-gize (with ginger), Purification (with lemon and spearmint), Stress Away (vanilla, cedarwood, lime peel) and Deep Relief (balsam fir, copal, wintergreen). They also have some unusual blends such as Inner Child (with Neroli), which I use on reiki clients to help with memory retrieval. And though they repel biting insects, whenever I apply them outside or near an open window or door, within a minute, bees come crawling on me looking for the flowers. Good stuff.

Three: Almond Oil

Almond oil. Simple.

Why: This is my moisturizer, hair conditioner, makeup remover, skin soother. If I could only choose one thing, this would be the one. I’ve also used coconut, olive and avocado – it depends on climate and weather. Almond is my favorite. Cocoa butter would be my next choice, but is more appropriate for colder, dryer weather. For the tropics, Almond oil is perfect; it’s light and smells nice on it’s own. Oil is the most effective way to clean your body. (Think of the Greek athletes, oiling and then scraping their bodies after a sparring.) It’s the best way to get the glow that so many synthetic and expensive products promise. It’s the best way to apply my favorite essential oils, turning a few drops into a lavish, 15-minute pampering session. By applying oil to the skin and stimulating with touch, you increase blood flow and oxygen and it shows up as a natural sheen on the skin. When I shot the music video for Bone with Paz Turner, I had no cosmetics on, other than some eyeliner and borrowed lipstick. I just don’t really own makeup and am not very good at applying it. But every time I see the video, I’m surprised at how good my skin looks. I’m sure they used some flattering filters, but I also know that before I headed out for that shoot, I had spent a good amount of time with a good amount of almond oil!

Four: The Keeper

A girl's best friend, for real

Why: Because who wants bleached cotton lodged in their vagina several days a month for years to come? Not me. Especially if what I’ve heard is true – that they contain fiberglass to cause more bleeding. The Keeper, also known as a Diva Cup or Moon Cup, is a reusable soft cup with a stem at the base that you basically insert like a tampon and can leave in up to nine hours, remove, empty, rinse, re-insert. It was invented by women, duh. It’s sanitary and safe. It leaks when it’s full, just like a tampon, but it’s zero impact. You can swim, sleep, or walk around naked wearing it. It’s perfect for camping or when you’re a guest at someone’s house and feeling bashful about what you leave in the trash. When it comes to periods, nothing is as ungross as a reusable cup made from the sap of a tree.

Five: Enema Bag

Good old fashioned enema bag.

Why: They say Mae West took an enema every day. I don’t know if that’s true and I know it’s not recommended, but this is the cheapest, quickest most magical fix for sluggish digestion, flat abs, increased energy and gentle cleansing. Not the squeeze bottle, the bag. It costs under ten bucks at a pharmacy and is reusable; the only part you have to clean is the attachment. It’s a great followup for before and after fasts and liver flushes. It helps clear up skin, brighten eyes, reduce bloating and gas and lower yeast count. It’s also more of my favorite kind of health care – preventative – functioning as the cheap, quick answer to colonics. Using a gravity-fed enema bag once a week will change the way you treat the insides of your body and change the way you feel. Improving digestion can eliminate countless health problems down the road – back pain, numbness, bad breath, low energy, skin problems and lines that seem to appear out of nowhere, toxic organs, disease due to toxic build up and lots more. Those who know about my work with colonic hydrotherapy know I could go on about it forever, but you wouldn’t understand unless you’ve done it or are feeling that it’s probably time for you to. If I travel anywhere for longer than a week, this always comes with me – I don’t care how crazy the contents of my carry-on looks. I care more about the contents of my insides!

Part of why I love all these things is that they’re easy to share with others. It’s funny how often I end up playing nurse to someone who needs a quick remedy or help for a chronic ailment that’s not chronic after all. Helping others heal, balance and educate themselves makes these five little things all the more powerful.

So there you have it. Five things I can’t live without. My aim isn’t to be environmentally friendly or stay thrifty or always be on the go or even to be as healthy as humanly possible. My aim is to keep it simple and feel good.

Below is a link to my favorite of three takes.  Recorded at the gallery.  It was late, I was tired but I had taken a drink with rum, lime and sugar.  My dad swears by that as a cold remedy.  It definitely does something for the throat.

I wrote this song when I was 23.  I was visiting St. Croix for the summer.  My summers on the island were always filled with days of shimmering heat and lonely, starry nights, and I spent many hours out on the patio with my guitar. The summer I wrote this was a particularly intense one; for me, the song managed to capture that and also a culmination of the years.

It’s one of the few old ones I haven’t gotten tired of, and as I sang, it still felt emotionally relevant.

The Yellow Rose

In his most recent post on Letterly, Blogstar/lifestyle icon Everett Bogue said this about writing:

“I have to constantly ask myself if I’m maintaining or doing the work.

If I’m maintaining the question becomes: what? The more I maintain,
the less work I can do.”

I have this same thought about the human body. Am I just maintaining my body, or doing the work I want to do? Is this yoga position extending my spine and better preparing me to channel creative energy, or is it just reversing the compression I imposed on it this past week by sitting incorrectly and not stretching? Is this chakra meditation helping me further expand my energy field and be a better reiki practitioner, or just undoing the constriction that began when I got upset this morning? Is this intensely relaxing reiki session upgrading my hardware (body) and energetically cleansing my tissues, or just debugging it?

Sometimes my friends say I’m so healthy or have great willpower when it comes to eating well or not drinking much alcohol. My habits have never been a matter of willpower, but of sensitivity. If I ate and drank what lots of my friends have for as long as they have, I know I’d be in the hospital by now, or in the hut of some Brazilian Shamaan, trying to recuperate. And I’d be ugly as sin. Curse of the sensitive Pisces, or maybe I know too much, but creases caused by stressed organs, puffiness from inflammatory foods, too much salt and not enough water just shows up so damn well on my face.

That’s how can I resist pizza, pasta, mac and cheese, pastries, ice cream, soda, coffee, etc? Plus, there’s tolerable and sometimes delicious substitutes. That being said, I love me the occasional french fries or potato chips. But overall, it’s a simple equation: I’m more interested in doing the work than maintaining.

Sometimes I have my doubts. Like when an older person who’s doing great for their age says to me, “You’ll see, when you get older, you’ll start getting aches and pains and falling apart.” And then I watch them bite into a piece of deep fried meat or shovel some cheese cubes in their mouth and sip daintily on their sugar free iced tee and I realize they’re just saying that to make themselves feel better, because, though they’re “doing great for their age”, they never thought they’d downgrade.

I would never tell somebody that aging is inevitable, because I don’t believe its true. I always encourage people that they can heal from anything. We are designed to regenerate. These days, it’s just a matter of sidestepping the diversions of regeneration, which we mistake for normal, ubiquitous, delicious, and recreation.

I would rather have the energy to do something I want to do than eat something that smells good and tastes good for as long as I chew it (and sometimes not even that long). I would rather not spend countless short-lived moments of gnoshing pleasure in exchange for years down the road trying to lose weight, or gain back the use of overloaded digestive organs, or money on doctor’s fees and medicine – holistic or not.

And forget all this grow old gracefully crap. Even the term anti-aging doesn’t cut it. My cells are multiplying and flushing out as we speak. So are yours! I’m not interested in downgrading by feeding those cells bad fuel and depriving them of oxygen and rest. I’m not growing old. I’m renewing, all for the purpose of doing the work. Regenerating and accomplishing and producing. As I get up there in years I may regenerate slower, but I also have better, more deeply ingrained habits. I may even learn new and more powerful ways to regenerate. The older I get, the better I’ll be at renewing.

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Regenerating the mind is much easier than regenerating the body. Regenerating the
body, unless we develop a good habit of fasting and withdrawing from stress and stimulation, requires some resources. Access to fresh water and healthy food instead of cheap junk food, clean air, time for exercise and self care and at least a few decent self care products, such as almond oil, Bronner’s soap, and a comfortable place to sleep.

Regenerating the mind is always free and you can do it as often as you decide to. You can be working a job you hate that hunches your back and gnarls your fingers, while programming your mind to exist in a state of bliss. And if you have even slightly agreeable circumstances in your life, you can use these as a springboard to land in a place of your dreams. As thoughts create things, you’ll find yourself beginning to live your dreams.

I worked a job in classified data entry. It was 10-hour swing shifts, four days a week. Ten hours!!! I became addicted to audio books. It got to the point where I would look forward to going to work. I read so many amazing books and learned so much in that year and a half, and reading is one of the greatest joys of my life. I don’t know what else could have forced me to grant myself that many hours of uninterrupted reading time.

Another way I like to help my mind regenerate is to practice forgetting. I do this by eliminating triggers, such as smell, sight and sound. Purging my music collection and closet. Ditching my favorite Aveda perfumes and shampoos. Chopping my hair off. Moving out of a place. Giving away favorite books. Having new experiences! New experiences are a great way to break free of undesirable patterns created from old experiences.

Regenerating the mind is probably easiest for people who have a high capacity for focus (not me), severe self-discipline (not me), or a wild imagination (me, me, me!)

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Timeless is probably the best praise one can give a work of art.

Ev Bogue asked the following about this most desirable quality:

What are the qualities inherent to timelessness?

Does looking back stretch work into the future?

The first thing that comes to mind when I consider these questions is classic children’s literature. Beatrix Potter, Lewis Carrol, Mark Twain, C. S. Lewis. What is it that makes Peter Rabbit, Alice in Wonderland, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and the Chronicles of Narnia so timeless?

They’re written in a simple, spare, linear style.
They are free of too many devices.
They deal with matters of the heart.

It’s no surprise that a lot of great writers also wrote children’s books. Nor is it a surprise that, possessing the above qualities, these stories are also beloved by adults, who I think fall back in love with the books for different reasons. I was surprised when I reread Narnia – a book that caused my imagination to grow like a wild, blooming vine – at how simple and short the stories were.

Looking back is worth our while. It’s how we identify the classic. The lasting quality. That which feels current, thought it was written/painted/recorded/drawn/sewn decades ago. It’s funny when a company puts out a new product and calls it “Classic”. It’s like putting out a new album and calling it Greatest Hits.

I don’t know if looking back stretches work into the future. Maybe the best approach is to look at everything as NOW. The past is now. The future is now. The work is nothing if not an exercise in Nowness. Maybe that’s what makes work timeless.

Recently I was asked to choose a last meal, which would run as a dinner special on In-Case-The-Mayans-Are-Right Mondays at Salud Bistro.  In truth, if I knew a meal was going to be my last, I wouldn’t eat it. Unless it was my last meal but I was planning to be  alive many days after that, hiding out in a cave or afloat at sea or stuck up in a tree somewhere.

The Mayans totally knew what was up.  Chocolate.  Gold bling.  A round calendar.  End of the world prophesies.  I think about the end of the world as often as anyone who grew up studying the book of Revelations at Wednesday night bible study.  Freaky stuff.  The best thriller sci-fi movies don’t come close.  Or the best thriller sci-fi movies lift directly from Revelations.

As my perspectives on religion and faith shifted, I never discarded the idea that I’d be witness to disaster and destruction, fire and brimstone, or split-second abduction/annihilation, or even some kind of judgment or test.  But I began to explore a new possibility, that the end of the world as we know it (key addition to the phrase, there) is less a bang and more a rematerializing, which I wrote about in my post The Shift.

There are three writers I read to connect with what might be happening to our bodies and the earth on a cosmic level: David Icke, Angela Peregoff and Lisa Renee.  Overall, they all emphasize the importance of love, intuition and taking care of ourselves.

David Icke is what many call a conspiracy theorist.  I think he’s much more than that and, while his lecturing style can be irreverent and his inflammatory illustrations downright unhelpful to the points he’s making, his presentation of research is coherent and resonates powerfully for me.  Overall, his message is we are powerful, and love is the ultimate power.  Sort of hard to argue with that.

Peregoff did some work on St. Croix years ago about this location being some sort of vortex.  I’ve written to her asking about it, but haven’t heard back.  I enjoy her weekly updates on energetic shifts we may be experiencing.

While Lisa Renee’s technical explanations and elaborate, inventive vocabulary lose me easily, I still make it a point to read (and re-read) her monthly newsletter on the various stages in which we find ourselves in the ascension process.  Ascension being the thing that we need to do in order to make it through this ending of the world as we know it flourish in the new dimensional reality that’s materializing.  It’s about a love paradigm.  It’s about busting off mental chains and untethering from everything we assume to be true in order to embrace truth.  It’s Lisa Renee who says “The ascension process is a 99% emotional and fear program clearing.”

On a personal, physical level, this process has gone something like this: fatigue, exhilaration, flashbacks and flash forwards, feeling very connected to people all over the world, and getting flashes of very specific geographic locations – places I have and haven’t been, intense rushes of qi in my hands, feet and solar plexus, and feeling a strong tether between my feet and the earth.  I respond to all this by jotting down notes or writing, lots of rest, yoga, stretching, exercise, eating, meditations, naps, writing, and group Reiki.  As I said at our last reiki meeting, (which sometimes feels like psychic surgery to remove blockages but this time felt like a deluxe energetic spa), we are downloading upgrades in software (mental shifts, changes in attitude, less expecation, more gratitude and compassion and understanding, forgiveness) and our energy healing work is currently geared toward upgrading our hardware (our bodies!)

As always, biology follows biography.  We’re experiencing physical manifestations of huge energetic and spiritual shifts.  What cancer is doing to people’s bodies these days – and at what rate – is indicative of what we are doing to the earth, to animals and to each other.  On a global level, I do believe the typhoons, monsoons, earthquakes, hurricanes, oil spills, tornadoes, war and rumors of war are also signs of the times.

I’ve spent most of my life in California, living up an down the San Andreas faultline.  I know what it feels like to feel the earth move under my feet and see the cars outside bouncing on their tires and see the walls of my home shiver as if I’m looking through a lense that has been rapped upon.  I’ve also lived in New York, where one of my childhood phobias came true and planes crashed into buildings and killed people (though I was in CA at the time, living across the street from a naval weapons station.  Oh, soothing comfort that was.)

And I now live on St. Croix, my original home, which is nestled among some dazzlingly deep water:  the  Mid Atlantic Ridge, the Romanche Trench and Puerto Rico Trench

Fun facts from Wikipedia:

• The Mid-Atlantic Ridge includes a deep rift valley which runs along the axis of the ridge along nearly its entire length. This rift marks the actual boundary between adjacent tectonic plates, where magma from the mantle reaches the seafloor, erupting as lava and producing new crustal material for the plates.
• Near the equator, the Mid-Atlantic Ridge is divided into the North Atlantic Ridge and the South Atlantic Ridge by the Romanche Trench, a narrow submarine trench with a maximum depth of 7,758 m (25,453 ft), one of the deepest locations of the Atlantic Ocean.
• The Puerto Rico Trench is an oceanic trench located on the boundary between the Caribbean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean. The trench is associated with a complex transition between the subduction zone to the south along the Lesser Antilles island arc and the major transform fault zone or plate boundary that extends west between Cuba and Hispaniola through the Cayman Trench to the coast of Central America. Scientific studies have concluded that an earthquake occurring along this fault zone could generate a significant tsunami.
• The island of Puerto Rico lies immediately to the south of the fault zone and the trench. The trench is 800 kilometres (500 mi) long and has a maximum depth of 8,800 metres (28,232 ft) at Milwaukee Deep, which is the deepest point in the Atlantic Ocean and the deepest point not in the Pacific Ocean.
• Knowledge of the earthquake and tsunami risks has not been widespread among the general public of the islands located near the trench.
• Since 1988, the Puerto Rican Seismic Society has been trying to use the Puerto Rican media to inform people about a future earthquake that could result in a catastrophic tragedy.

Puerto Rico Trench. Go big or go home!

I’m just sayin.  Peep how close St. Croix is – or rather, how deep in the crack we are – of the Puerto Rico Trench.  Deepest water in the world.  Hot magma.  The plates are spreading at practically a visually noticeable rate.  The water gets as deep as 25,453 feet deep. To put it into perspective, St. Croix’s highest point is is a whopping 1,165.  FEET.   And I, dear readers, am 5’7”.  I am a tiny dot.  Living on a slightly less tiny dot.  I have always felt that I could be swallowed up or washed away at any moment. I wouldn’t say that I’m afraid.  I try not to envision it.  But I think that the US Virgin Islands, given it’s weak infrastructure, compromised sewer systems, sluggish public works and corrupt government and elderly population, could easily become the next New Orleans scenario, or worse.

So.  My last meal of choice?

Mushroom polenta with truffle oil and cheese, braised vegetables.

I didn’t realize it would be pegged as healthy or vegetarian.  It struck me as comfort food.  If I’m about to be a piece of dead flesh, do I want to be chewing on flesh?  Nah.

So. Vegetables to keep it tasty yet light (in case I have to run for my life.)

Cheese because it tastes good and I won’t anticipate the digestive repercussion.

Corn to honor the Mayans, who knew what was up.

I was 10 when my sister Nikki was born, so I have clear memories of her.  The sweet tone of her two-year-old voice, the funny way she pronounced washcloth as “washcloff” or potatoes as “bitatoes.”  My niece Makeda resembles her mother in many ways.  I look forward to when she starts to talk and walk and does even more to bring up good memories has Nikki as a baby.

It has been my duty and pleasure to teach Nikki many things in life (too much makeup is ugly, don’t wear shoes you can’t walk in, sometimes you are right and they are wrong), but I feel like the lesson I’m always learning from her remains the same. I came upon the following letter when I was going through some things.  I’m not sure when it was written.  I don’t know if she wrote it to me back when my sister and I were in California, or if it was when we were both in NY. It’s at least three years old and it’s still telling me something I need to get through my head.  How often do we need to be reminded to follow our hearts, love ourselves and do what feels right?  Why, oh why, do we so often forget?

We need love.  That never changes about humans, and it’s written all over our faces in so many ways.  Age lines. Sadness.  Bitterness.  Exhilarating romance.  Sensuality.  And the fresh candor of baby faces.  I look at Makeda and her face seems to say, “Your job is to love me.  That’s what I need most.”

“Dear Alisha – I love you so much!  If you left this world for another, it would take your energy and concentration to exist just like in this world.  But we exist without even trying.  Our hearts beat, our blood flows, we wake up from sleeping.  You are enough by yourself.  You are the key to everything.  Listen to  yourself – take orders from the real Alisha, and there will be no doubts.  The only time we suffer is when we are in slavery.  Be kind to yourself.  Love yourself – not for any reason besides the duty to love yourself and respect yourself.  Not based on your job, (if you have one), not based on anything material.  When you listen to yourself, its quiet at first – it takes a minute to get used to how quiet that voice has become.  You have to let your heart take over your mind.  Don’t be scared.  What you really feel and think is good and needs to be free.  I am doing the same thing.  We are the only ones to free ourselves.

Love, NIK”