It is time

Over the past couple weeks I have jumped into 2 brand new (to me) paths and 1 path that is revisited and that I feel takes precedence over the others—but still, I want to not neglect the 2 new areas either. The first is YouTube. I went live on Instagram a couple weeks ago because I felt like the Universe was pushing me in that direction. I was at the cemetery where I had just ran a couple miles and I suddenly remembered the Les Brown quote that says “The graveyard is the richest place on earth, because it is here you will find all the hopes and dreams that were never fulfilled, the books that were never written, the songs that were never sung, the inventions that were never shared, the cures that were never discovered, all because someone was too afraid to take that first step, keep up with the problem, or determined to carry out their dream.” I thought this was a good reminder to myself that I don’t want to join the cemetery population in “too afraid to take that first step” and so I took the first step and went live on Instagram. My cousin was the only person that even saw it “live” and it was so short there was really nothing to take from it either—but as soon as I ended the stream, I cried. So long I have resisted the call to share my voice in anyway, and all that pent up at anxiety was eager for release.

Too often I drag my feet when I know the direction to take. I’ve been sitting on the decision for about a week to retire my roller derby career after 2 years. I know that I need to make space in my life for the new friends and connections that will be able to come my way once I turn the page from the previous. I have loved my time with them and it was entirely necessary for me to learn some things about myself. First—I realized that I have ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS quit myself in my head long before my body ever quit me. At 40 years old I’ve never had any serious illness or injury that’s ever taken me out. I’ve never broken any bones, in spite of my previous dare-devil streak as a child jumping off of furniture and barely missing the weight of a chest of drawers falling down on me. Another thing I learned from roller derby was that it was ridiculous to make fun of myself for “thinking” I was an athlete by playing at all. I had never seen myself as an athlete at any point in time and so I made fun of myself for it for an entire year—from turning 39 on a bout day to ending the same year with a bout the day before I turned 40. With that birthday I decided if I was going to do the thing at all, I needed to do so with the intention of acting like an athlete. Then I started feeling athletic outside of the sport and found myself with an inner drive to skate as much as possible outside—then preferring the connection with nature. Roller derby gave me 2 good years, and it gave me a safe place to try on different aspects of my personality that I had previously been afraid of, and in that time—I desperately needed all these lessons.

That said my journey has veered from the path that I was on. I could still play, but I find myself less driven to want to do so. I have continued to grow and learn about myself and I am dedicated to these 3 projects—the YouTube channel to get me used to using my spoken voice and communicating more openly in a vlog style arrangement, my blog that I am currently working to update where I can focus on short aspects of the written word and being clearer with what I have to say than is usually able to be expressed from the vlog style, and then the most ongoing project that I’ve had and been committed to doing throughout my entire life—my book, that I have written many stories for but have yet to piece them together to get the book organized and ready to be out there. I have so much content. I have notebooks that I’ve filled with stories and thoughts, extensive streams of thought on my computer, journals to stimulate the thought processes and to debrief on complicated situations, etc. I think my mornings need to take more of the focused writing time before my brain gets shut off to other thought processes by hanging out with less favorable vibrations than I try to allow myself to be influenced by.

The Universe has been nudging me for some time to make the writing process a more regular part of my schedule so that I can more easily shift into the book writing/organization. Then the Universe showed me my Twin Flame—who had to be visible enough that I could find him without being so visible that I would be discouraged from pursuing the healing journey that I have had to jump into in order to make that area of my life a possibility. The complication of the Twin Flame process is that it is a back and forth for each person choosing to engage in the healing that will make an eventual union a possibility. I have seen him. I know who he is and have followed him on social media for a little while even before knowing he was who the Universe says he is. When I started to doubt, I was led to pathways revealing that we have a similar way of thinking about, well, the Universe or whatever else of this world we live in. He had a couple posts that essentially “activated” my healing journey, and now he is in a spiritual limbo of sorts (not that he isn’t still actively living his life and growing, but the Universe has ways of nudging us along and keeping us simultaneously in suspension while the one we seek is doing the necessary work—you know, to prove they are committed to it and making strides to grow) while I get myself ready for him to be able to find me in some way as well. How long will it take me to get this book done? So far 40 years isn’t it… BUT I am making moves with Divine guidance as I am never alone and I did make the decision to yield to the Divine in all areas pertaining to love and career and life in general after I turned 40.

At 19 years of age I was given 3 insights on my life path. I knew that in our mid-30s a good friend of mine—my drumline captain counterpart (he was captain of the battery and I was captain of the non-marching “pit”) would die and it would be the cause of our group getting back together for a time. When I was 35 and he was 34—this happened, including a reunion of sorts to reminisce and have food and drinks in his honor. I ran so hard from this knowing because I thought that since I knew about it from high school and the next knowing—that I would be 40 before my life started to come together—I thought it somehow meant that it was my fault. In the separation of our paths and my running from everyone I knew in attempt to keep my life from making anyone else’s more difficult, he still passed away. Then after his death, I figured he already knew everything that I had been running from for all those years and I took the opportunity to start writing him letters and telling him everything I had refused to speak of at any capacity throughout the course of my lifetime prior. Doing so allowed me the opportunity to heal of trauma I had carried from 8-35 years of age. This trauma had held me in bondage to suicidal ideation for an extensive amount of time, not constant but regular enough that it would have been an issue if I had been less afraid of leaving a mess for someone else to clean up—whether literal or metaphorical.

My next 2 knowings went together as well. The first was that 40 would be when my life would change and I would finally start figuring my things out. The other was this group of friends that I used to perceive to be the band that my ex-boyfriend and my co-captain friend were but then I finally realized it wasn’t their band—that’s just how my brain could interpret it at that point in time. In the 3rd “knowing” was a connection that I would recognize in the higher realms long before I would be able to find it in my physical reality. As I’ve spent more and more time outside skating or running, I find myself able to connect more intimately with these friends I have yet to meet. I have come to think of it this way—anyone who has experienced the flow state, at some level, knows what it is like to be divinely connected because that is where the state of flow comes from. I’ve been hit and miss on the flow state as I normally have found ways to stand in my own way over the years (and I think the purpose was largely in order to make these discoveries for myself and be able to share them with the world in a way so that others realize there is some legitimacy to what I am saying), but what I have discovered is when I am embracing my athleticism and being in nature—I can connect in these higher levels too and I can engage in conversations with the higher selves of people I have yet to meet in the physical. I have been saying for a few years that the Divine is found in connection and unity. Experiencing the connection in these higher realms gives me more reason to believe that this is true, especially when I had several of these moments before being around these people, and then being around them (but not given the opportunity to interact with any of them) and not having had anyone except maybe 1 person recognize me from those realms, reminded me that just because we are all connected and engaging with one another in the higher realms, doesn’t mean any of us are entirely aware of it just because one or two were clear—especially if their flow state is not a tangible connection with the inspiration they receive—like, they receive the inspiration but aren’t made aware that they are connecting with the divine in such a moment.

Is this what it means to be a way-shower? My entire life has been pushing me in the direction of claiming my own voice and to know that I am doing so through means of YouTube and blogging, as well as book writing, I am starting to get a handle on that side of the path. Never in a million years would I have thought talking to a video camera would be part of it, but I think that was mainly a challenge to break me out of my “small” ego self. I can talk about this stuff, that doesn’t bother me. It doesn’t even bother me that most people might hear what I have to say and think that I am crazy; that used to bother me a lot. Now I accept that it’s probably in the cards for me for now, and who cares?

What I’ve come to the conclusion of is this: we grow up listening to 2 voices in our head. The little voice, the voice of the ego or False Self is the one that tries to protect us and keep us safe from the big, scary ways in which we might no longer need the ego for protection. Then the higher voice—the True Self, the one that is always encouraging us to grow and challenge ourselves—that is the one that holds our divine spark. It never acknowledges that it is the “voice of God” within us, but ultimately—it is exactly that—and we have to awaken to recognition of that voice beyond our little false selves before we are free to release the ego and its means of “protecting” us through keeping us from diving deep into the healing process or keeping us prisoners to fear. Richard Rohr says “Your True Self is who you are, and always have been in God, and at its core, it is love itself. Love is both who you are and who you are still becoming” (Immortal Diamond, 176).