Experiment. Experience. Expand

It is amazing what is happening to me here.

I am learning to trust people, in fact to love them, even when they hurt me, or worse, when they annoy me :P

I am learning to take my weak immune system, the fact that I sleep on average 3 hours per night, and my constant back problems, but I still get up in the morning and I still do service for this place.

I am learning to see that I am not as beautiful as I want to be, or as talented as I want to be, but I still have pieces of beauty in me, and I still can work on what I love.

I am learning how not to stress, worry, and pressure myself to BE someone. To be rich or important or any of that.

I am learning to trust my choice or the ones I have not made, because I am young and life should only be about experimenting.

I am learning that hugs always should be given, and to never be too shy to ask for one. The friends here are always ready to dole them out, which to me is the real kind of friend.

I am learning to use my will, or ask for the divine will when I am weak, when I don't feel like I can go on, and then somehow some way, I always have just enough strength to go on.

I am learning to be thankful for the gifts in my life no matter how small or simple. Vitamins, gluten free cookies, my instruments, my computer, my clothes on my back, my friends here, my family back home, and for all the people who are gone from my life but are in still in my heart.

I am learning to feel like there are signs, or that you have to keep demanding from the Divine for answers. She takes her sweet ass time sometimes, but eventually she gives you a nudge and you have to still be open by then to notice it.

I am learning to listen, rather than blab.

I am learning how to feel important enough that I have something worth saying, that I am worth listening to, which for me is HUGE.

I am learning to feel happy for other even in my jealously or sadness that they have something good.

I am learning to feel okay. Which is better than okay if you know what I mean

Life from now is will only be this. Experiment. Experience. Expand

Director of the Universe

"The Director of the Universe knows what to do with you, so why worry."

"Let go, because whatever plans you have for yourself, they will change. Divine Mother has a plan for you so might as well go with it."

I'm am learning, maybe not so much learning but dipping myself in surrender. Learning to trust in God, leave my anxiety, worries, expectations, and plans up into the hands of the universe. It's so simple. There is no purpose. There is no expectation except the expectations you put on yourself. The only thing you can do, the only thing to live for is this precise moment. Are you even there? Are you aware? Are you even just allowing yourself to be yourself? Are you taking time to laugh? To read? To play some music? Talk, and I mean really talk with someone? Are you okay with who you are? Are you okay in your situation, no matter how fucked up or confusing or unsure it is? If not, then that is all you need to work on. All you need to do. So simple. And yet so complicated.

I am no where near the answers to the endless fears and questions and choices I must make. But I am dipping my feet into the unknown and that is enough for me

That should be enough for anyone.

Pockets of Peace

I never understood what artists meant when they said that they are not the creators of their work, that some energy or God works through them and they are just the instrument. But a couple nights ago I was having this static energy in my hands before I was getting ready for bed. My mind was sagging and tired but I felt like I had to write, like I had this pent up poem in my hands that had to come out otherwise it would keep me awake. So I wrote. And usually I detest poetry, or at least my own. I am no poet. But after I came up with this one, I feel like maybe I could start.

I think I'll call it Staying up with God.

                 

I don't have much to say,

other than I talk too much. 

I skip sounds in my feet

add lyrics to a beat

but I don't know how to be quiet.

Thoughts push like a crowd

and each one is loud

but I don't want to buy it.

Because when I become still

each feeling in me is filled

with  consistent one.

I don't have to be pretty or impressive 

or act tough or aggressive 

as a spirit I am done. 

But these pockets of peace 

are hard to keep 

and in that way (or in of it itself) become vital

In this world that can so easily crash

we drink booze and smoke hash 

to keep away the darkness which comes like a tidal.

That's why you have to grow your glow

reap what you sow 

and know that everyone is here for a reason

Go confidently into life

bring joy into strife

and love yourself, because God never plans for treason.

Repeat, "I am me, I am me

I am strong I am free

and if not then I'm getting there."

I'm no saint or sage 

but I got a pen and this page 

and this is what i've come to share.

They will tell in life: be that or do this 

But to know self,  to know God

my advice,

follow your bliss. 

Then the World Should end more often

Today is 12.21.12 the ominous day where it was proposed to be our last day. Yet this morning with all my fellow worker yogi buddies we played games. We played animal charades and pictionary with horrible drawings and ever more horrible guesses. We laughed and cat called and generally acted silly. A bunch of adults acting like children. It was fantastic.

Usually our meetings in the morning are for reading out our duties and planning for the day ahead. But today we played games. And then to top it off we were told to sit down as our leader brought in ice cream and cookies for breakfast. There we were. The 12, yes 12 current apostles sitting around the yellow round table, having The Last Breakfast. Cameras came out and laughs spilled out. So I say if this is what happens at the end of the world, then the world should end more often.

Tell me it gets better

Bad day today. Feeling like I will always be on the bottom. That I'll always be the grunt, the nobody, the body of the chain. I'm tired of being powerless. It's hard for me to feel like I have any energy to climb the long ladder up.

Please tell me it gets better.

Never Left me at All

These are the things I've heard, things I'm affirming, and things that I don't know where they come from

"Once you become aware, you can't go back. Conciousness is both a gift and a curse."-

"It's okay, each day I'm becoming alittle more positive."-

"Thank you ma, thank you for the warmth of you in the sun"-

"You should do it, why not?"-

"I am calm, I am safe, I am happy"-
"By the grace of God I will sleep soundly"-

"No cellphones, no buildings, no internet. You totally disconnect. You sleep under the stars and catch your own fish, and bathe in the ocean. That is what real life is."-

"Knowledge comes from the mind, but wisdom speaks from the heart."-

God is transient and fluid. I feel like he looks out for me and other times I feel as lonely and deserted as rock in the desert. I am trying so hard to match my heart to my head, to believe in these affirmations and positive outlooks on life. But my heart hurts so much because I feel unhappy so often. I do not know if God is trying to tell me I won't live long or that the world will be over soon. Maybe that is why I've always felt so stressed and so afraid of this life. All I know is that I hope at the end he will be there for me, and hug me, and tell me he never left me at all.

 

Locked in a Glass Room

Spirituality. Fuck. It's tough. More laborious than shoveling concrete and more mentally exhausting than try to understand biophysics.

I am 20 years old, a time when I should be out partying, getting wasted, or getting a boyfriend. Yet here I am in the mountain in an ashram taking out trash and washing toilet seats. To say I feel a little odd being here would be an understatement. I don't feel like I should be here and at the same time I feel like I need to be here.

To say my time here is all smiley and divine would be a lie. I cry a lot. Sometime just during yoga, or eating. It's quite pathetic really. I'm battling my ego, my doubts about being in this hippy dippy place, and my aversions to God, all to see if maybe I have some kind of kind of hope or soul in me.

I can't really describe my constant need to be better, or at least to be different. I am never happy with the way I am or my bad habits, I am always looking for that next new diet plan or that new type of exercise or new talent to make me feel like I'm proud of myself or that I've achieved becoming a more whole person.

The people at this place seem joyous and are always focused. It's enviable and its hard to not compare yourself.

My experience with spirituality is akin to being locked in a glass room with nothing to break out the walls with but my fists. I see the smiling people outside, all laughing and talking with one another and I go through the stages. Jealousy. I want to be out there with them. I see the sun and how happy they seem and I want to get where they are. So I start pounding on the windows. But then I realize the glass is double paned. So I get angry. Why the hell put me in a room with a view if I can't even experience it? I start blaming whoever put me here and fume that I have to struggle so hard while everyone else is outside playing in the sun. Then I start pounding some more. My fists begin to bleed. They're sore and hurting but I am so close to desperation now because I feel the big doubt coming on. The one that says "You've worked so hard with no pay off and you still think you're going to make it out?"

That doubt comes like a smoke fire that starts in the room, and the heavy smoke is filling the small space for air, for faith. So I pound with what little strength I have left. Still nothing. And so I don't lose my dignity I start even telling myself that the smoke is just incense. That I'm really at the better place and those damn hippies can have their fields. I cry because even when I tell myself that, I still know I don't believe it.

I am in a hugely different place than what I usually go for. Me, Christina West, analytical thinker, master doubter, in a spiritual commune trying to learn how to meditate. I am still in that glass room and I don't even see the cracks yet. So why do I still try? Why do I still refuse to give up?

One line. "To even want to know God, takes extremely good karma"
I do not want to struggle anymore. I want some sunlight. I want some guidance. I just want to feel like I believe in something, even if it's just believing in myself again.