YOUthevolution

It's beautiful...life. It really is. For now, I'm not afraid. For now, I'm in the flow. I can see the crazy beauty in me - in everyone. How can one being be so simple and so complex at the same time? So open and so closed? So complete and in such disarray? Only beauty can be the answer. Only this could bring me here...bring you here. Why else would one choose such blissful torment? How could there be a righter right than you? A wronger wrong than you? Who else could unnerve me one vertebra at a time, popping my emotions like buttons on a Thanksgiving Day sweater? Who else could bring me to the fullness of my being? To the brink of sanity? To the wholeness of love? I've never felt more repulsed, more intrigued - pulled even. And why? Grace, maybe? And the pictures in my mind mean nothing - the thoughts - even less. And who am I to belittle and degrade such a masterpiece? Such completeness? Such realness? As much as I want to say I will no longer be afraid - I will be; that I'll no longer be angered - I will be. Because what is the right without the left? Without sadness is there joy? Without me, who then, are you? Darkness and light are witnesses to eachother - the most passionate and gentle of lovers. The root of the stem that births both the thorn and the petal. I am not afraid of you, because there is only one of us. You and I are one.

Happy Growing!

Much Love,

Jess

So...this world can be pretty jacked....but have you ever left your smoothie out a little too long? Seen all the green fuzzies growing in the bottom..pretty nasty, eh? But that's life...that nasty pile of goop is the perfect environment for all those grubby microbes to grow up to be big and strong...somehow, the environment suits them. Well...it's kinda like earth. Look at it right and it's pretty much a giant ball of shit floating through space...one with a pretty bad virus...called humanity. But, somehow, this nasty, polluted world manages to be the most breathtakingly beautiful, magestic, inspiring ball of perfection ever fathomable under heaven. You know, I've grown more keen of the world's dirty little secrets (and not-so-secrets) over the last couple months and it strikes me as noteworthy that I have really grown a lot here....like that dirty, fuzzy little mold patch. That's beautiful. But, seriously...wash your cup...let's not be gross. .... this philosophical moment provided in part by Roxberry Juice.  Happy Growing!

Much Love,

Jess

I don't know what I want anymore...hell, I don't even know if I want anything. I do know that no material thing, be it a goal, an object, a person, or a place can make you happy...I know that for sure now. I think I've spent nearly all of my life thinking that if I "lived" right, or if I made the "right" decisions that God would smile upon my life. Now, I know that God smiles on my life, because life is good...life is good because it's only purpose is to wake you up to the fact that something greater exists and you are a divine expression of it. I feel sad because I know now that any dream that I can dream up will not fulfill me. I absolutely know, beyond a shadown of a doubt now that happiness does not depend upon external events...I know that the only way to experience true happiness is to go within. I think that should make me happy...to know that I don't need to be or do anything else to  be happy and whole but just respect, love, and nurture what I already am...but still I am sad...I feel there is so much that I have to give up now....maybe "have to give up" is the wrong way to put it, it's more like I lost something...I lost the dream of prince charming, of having the perfect job for me, the perfect house, the perfect experiences...none of those things exist...the happiness isn't in any of those things....it's in you. YOU are the key ingredient...the missing puzzle piece that will make all of your dreams come true. I'm sure that I "should" feel empowered by that...but as I good friend once told me, "Don't should on yourself!" I know that this pain that I'm feeling is good...and I feel as though I will be able to suffer consciously through this experience, because I know that this will set me free. I know, that continuing to put my hope and energy in external things is a waste of time. This is good. Happy Growing!

Much Love,

Jess

"Then he said to them all: "Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me." - Luke 9:23

"Suffering is part of the divine idea." -  Henry Ward Beecher

I am sad. I am afraid. I want to move forward, but I don't want to let go. My mind paints pictures of enemies and angels and my heart welds them together as one. I am exhausted from examining this journey I have been on, and the thought crosses my mind that it is not meant to be examined. As much as I want to make sense of what is happening and what has happened, maybe that is not the point...maybe the point is to embrace it. Embrace the heart ache, the love, the joy, the very feeling of being alive in this moment, whatever it is. Let life play you like a flute, the high notes and the low. Much easier said than done. Be the canvas, be the silence, be the stage, be the screen. Allow the fleeting scenes and strokes of life to be what they are. Many spiritual teachers talk of embracing the moment because it is, "what is." It is not "good" or "bad" ...that is irrelevant...it is happening. Good-bye Seattle, and thank you for all of your many lessons. Happy Growing!

Much Love,

Jess

I think whatever happened today would be called a break through...or a break in...whatever it was, something definately broke. I don't know if it was my spirit, or my delusion, but something snapped. It wasn't loud or extremely painful...it was soft and powerful. The thing is, I don't know. That's been the point of Seattle, I think. Or maybe, "I think" has been the point of Seattle...or maybe, "I think, therefore, I don't know." I've always been an analyst, a seeker...for as long as I can remember I was going to put this puzzle together...the puzzle of me, the puzzle of life. You see...I think today, for the first time, I saw life and this world for exactly what it was...flawed. Since being on the "spiritual path" I have chased and strived for qualities like innocence, trust, openness, love...regardless of the situation...regardless if it is earned or not. Today I realized that just because you behave that way, doesn't mean that the rose no longer has thorns. I balled for a good twenty minutes today in complete and utter self pity...I felt exposed, unsheltered...like nothing I could DO would save me from fate or spare me from the insanity of this world...and it doesn't. No matter how many little old ladies I help across the street, or cats I save from trees, or friendly smiles I share...none of it matters, if I'm attatched to the notion that doing good deeds will elevate me from life's little perils. Only union with God can do that, and to be unified with God is to know life beyond its surface nuisances and delights. It's been said that on the spiritual path, right before enlightenment you see the world as it is...and only then can you go beyond it. A Course in Miracles describes it as looking over the wall. But how can you look over the Wall of Delusion when you cannot even accept yourself fully? When you cannot fully look at and accept your own suffering? When you "put on your game face," or when you say you're "fine?" Seattle for me has been an introduction to my suffering, to my grief...to parts of myself I have never fully looked at...and it has been a grand introduction indeed...confetti tears, banners of discomfort, finished with a parade of emotions. I never expected courage to be so drastically needed on this journey...I guess I expected it to be peaceful, serene...like a quiet monk meditating in a forest somewhere...maybe it gets to that point...but to get there you must leave the comforts of home...of your safe, but empty beliefs about the world and your place in it...you must be brave enough to really look within yourself and be your own light. Happy Growing!

Much Love,

Jess

"What we are is God's gift to us. What we become is our gift to God." ~Eleanor Powell

"Life is God's novel. Let him write it." ~Isaac Bashevis Singer

"Peace on the outside comes from knowing God on the inside." ~Author Unknown

SEATTLE.... I can't see "myself" in anything here. I've just started to understand the relationship between desire and suffering. When you desire things, you are at their mercy, because you suffer when your standard isn't met...so you strive and struggle to maintain a certain level of comfort or ease or luxury for "yourself." You give away your power, by reaching outside of yourself, and all of your energy goes toward "getting more," "upgrading," or some other goal. For example, if I want to live in a place that is all my own, have a pillow top matress, and heat...I'm gonna work for that...double over time if I have to, so that I can have cable, new clothes, a gym membership, that extra 800 square feet, quiet, a yard, a boat, and the list goes on and on. You don't NEED any of it, sure it's nice, but at what cost? What if we put all that energy into union with the Divine, to transcend desire all together? To return to Eden, where even the lack of clothing wasn't worth getting upset over? It might sound like a long shot, but as Lao Tzu says, "The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step." How can you be reborn if you do not die first? What did I think that would look like? Sunshine and roses? No...it looks like discomfort, it happens when you cannot reconcile what is happening to you with your old way of thinking, therefore, you must detatch. This is the fire that will refine my soul, there is no point in fighting it. This is what salvation looks like. So, it's never about "I don't get to talk to my boyfriend," or "Stop talking about circus," it's about remembering that it's all not important...it's just God talking to you...reminding you of what you are not. Happy Growing!

Much Love,

Jess

"I keep doing this because I don't think people thoroughly grok the fact that HERE is where it all is. After you finish the whole thing and you've emrated your spine for years and done your pranayam and meditated for years and years and sat in a cave and ants have eaten your arms and legs HERE you are. You're right HERE again.........and what blows your mind is you were HERE all the time and it's such a cosmic joke, it's so funny...you're struggling so to get HERE." -  Ram Dass "Remember Be Here Now"

I am sick of trying. I am sick of putting forth effort for things to come to fruition. I am sick of changing. Why can't the world change this time? Why can't I just hit the lottery? Why can't I just be on Ellen or Oprah? I really just want a free ride at this point. I am sick of caring so much about what I do and being the best. What does that even mean, the best? So what if I am here, or if I'm there? Successful or unsuccessful? Thin or Fat? A go-getter, or not a go-getter? Why does it stinkin matter? Why should I care about anything? I just want to be myself and I want that to be ok. I want to wake up every morning and do whatever it is that I feel like doing. I don't want to have to go to work. I don't want to have to "strive" to be something I am not, or don't feel like being. I am tired. At twenty-three I am sick of the game. I am sick of saying I am "fine" when I am not fine, I am sick of prettending to be happy when I'm sad. What's wrong with not being "fine," what's wrong with being sad? What's wrong with not wanting to socialize at the moment or for this whole day, or for this whole month? Why does that mean that something is wrong? I tell you...I think it means something is right. Especially in America, we've lost touch with ourselves, with our own humanity. We've lost touch with our emotions and we given up the right to be ourselves completely in any moment. You're crazy if you start crying in public, or screaming..you're a bum if you don't work, or even rebel against working at all, you're lazy. Maybe you just don't feel like wasting the one life you have as part of a machine. Maybe you would reserve your time and energy for things that you like and believe in. But you have to eat, you have to have a roof over your head...but what constitutes a roof? How much do you actually need to eat to survive? So, we are working for luxury. We stay in the rat race for the ability to pick and choose what we want and when we want it, instead of learning to accept or love what life brings to us. Seems a little wrong, doesn't it? A little bit like fear and distrust in God. But, look, I don't want to be eating out of dumpsters my whole life...I like sleeping in a warm bed at night unafraid of the bumps in the night. But is that the point? Is safety the entire point of existence? Is comfort? Is freedom? Is choice? Or is it Peace? Love? Balance? Maybe there is no point, or maybe the point is up to each and every one of us to decide individually. Eh, food for thought. Happy Growing!

Much Love,

Jess

"Don't ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive." - Howard Thurman

"Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinion, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation." - Oscar Wilde

"I would much rather have regrets about not doing what people said, than regretting not doing what my heart led me to and wondering what life had been like if I had just been myself." - Brittany Renee

So I did the trapeze for the first time today!!!!! What a rush! I am so proud! Ya know, it's funny how this one activity seems to sum life and its little challenges up perfectly. You watch the pros doing it and you see how easy they make it look, and you think to yourself, "That could never be me...they're so high..they must have years of dance or gymnastics experience to do that...I don't have any of that." But another voice in your head says, "Yes you can...just let go and trust." And that is exactly what you have to do, when you are getting ready to leap off the platform...trust. So, you climb the ladder, one step at a time...one breath at a time...and you keep telling yourself you can do it, even if you don't completely believe it. Then you get up there...then it's a completely different ball game! You look down, and you want to vomit..it's high, it's hot, and the belt around your waist begins to constrict like a snake determined to claim you. You chalk up your hands..breathe in, breathe out. You hang your toes off the platform while the instructor holds your belt. You must shift all of your wait forward to grasp the heavy, steal bar...trusting the instructor to hold you up. The bar, like a rock in the ocean, plunges downward...you put your other hand on the bar, completely vulnerable now. Something inside you says you can do it...all that is required is a little trust, a little faith. The instructor calls ready...adrenaline bubbles in your throat...humph! You jumped! You don't know why you jumped! But you jumped. Voices are shouting, telling you what to do next, how to move...you don't listen...you're just trying not to die. Finally, you let go of the bar and flop into the safety of the net like your warm and comfy bed after a long day. You're alive...at least you think. The instructor tells you it gets better if you go again...each time, a little better. Hesitating, you climb back up the ladder. This time it's different...still a little shaky, but you nail it! You hook your feet, you arch your back...you're flying! You go back up a third, a fourth time...each time doing better than before..until finally you're ready to be caught and finish the trick. You nail it! That's the thing about life...maybe, you're a little shaky at first...you want to cry, kick, scream, or even puke! But the ones who really live...the one's who really do this life thing...they climb up the ladder...and not only that...but they keep climbing the ladder. Because, we all start off as infants...we all start off as beginners. We crawl, then we walk, then we run, and then maybe we join a track team, if we're so inclined...but none of it ever happens, if you never climb up the ladder. Happy Growing!

Much Love,

Jess

"Advice from a verteran trapeze performer. Throw your heart over the bars and your body will follow." -  unknown

"Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed no hope at all." - Dale Carnegie

What a confusing last couple days I've had! My horoscope yesterday said that the thoughts that zip through my head in one day would dizzy anyone else! Soooo true!!!! Truth be told...I actually thought I was opening up to Seattle...and not just to Seattle...but my relationship also. I was afraid...afraid of change. You see, everything in the universe expands and contracts...your heart, your lungs, the seasons, the moon...you name it, somehow it does it...because that is the nature of Consciousness, or God, or Ultimate Reality. So there is a saying that real and meaningful change always happens on the cusp of wanting to expand and wanting to contract. Well, I think that change is trying to emerge in my life but I have been blocking it. Not purposefully, of course! My mind was so stirred up that I didn't know up from down! And that's OK!!! That's part of the process! Eckart Tolle says that "I don't know" is just a natural state of life...it's part of the journey, but, when we decide that we should know and we don't know, that causes panic and chaos! So, I guess, my ability to notice it is progress! This reminds me of the other day when I was telling someone that I have this weird fear of being trapped in an avalanche or swept deep under a tidal wave, because how would you know if you are digging or swimming toward the surface or deeper into the abyss!!!! Same concept...fear of the unknown, fear of unknowingly making things worse....funny, isn't it, how the things in our inner worlds manifest in the outer?? Kinda cool! It's almost as if this whole system was just a gigantic three way mirror! I am in love with it! I think it is magnificent...and each day I can see another hideous outfit for what it is! Happy Growing!

Much Love,

Jess

"As above, so below. As within, so without."

"I hope it will not be irreverent of me to say, that if it be probable that God would reveal his will to others, on a point so connected with my duty, it might be supposed he would reveal it directly to me." - Abe Lincoln

Verse 71 in the Tao Te Ching...

"Knowing what cannot be known--

     what a lofty aim!

Not knowing what needs to be known--

     what a terrible result!

Only when your sickness becomes sick

     will your sickness disappear

The Sage's illness has become ill

     his renunciation has been renounced

Now he is free

And every place in the world

     is the perfect place to be"

Is desire wrong? Is it wrong to want things for yourself? To have an opinion? This is something I've really been struggling with the last couple days. It seems to me, that if you were truley living in conjunction with Life, nothing on the surface would matter. For instance, I could be here in Seattle, and it would be the same as being back home...I would have no desire to leave, I would just be responding to each moment with loving, open arms. Maybe I am? On the one hand I feel as though my "sickness has become sick," this thought of needing to travel to grow spiritually has taught me that where you are doesn't matter. So shouldn't that mean that I could stay in Seattle and I could be just as happy as if I left for home? Ah-Ha! I think I've got it...responding to the needs of each moment and going with the flow of life doesn't necessarily mean you don't change course for different reasons. Life is Alive...it's a living and breathing organism. The water flowing down the stream doesn't stay in one constant line flowing down the river...it does not pass right through the rocks and debris it comes across...it bends to them, it positions itself around them and keeps on flowing, never glancing back up stream. Hmmm.... another thought is coming on....water. Yes, water. To me, water has always been holy. Water covers this planet...You are mostly water...Literally everything needs water to live...sound a little like God? Even further...Father, Son, Holy Ghost...Solid, Liquid, Gas....three entities in one. Everything in life is a messanger from another Realm and perhaps Water is the most obvious! When in doubt look to water. So water as ice is it's densest form...it doens't bend, it's rigid, solid, and heavy (and it is quite delicious to chomp on! especially Sonic Ice...ok, ok, back on track!); Water as a liquid, flows with life, it purifies, it takes life as it comes and adjusts itself accordingly, not afraid to flow to the lowest, dirtiest places, and when it is stagnant it starts to spoil...Water as a gas is it's most atherial form (or the Sage), there is no place it cannot go or pass through, it is light...it floats above life. However, none of these forms desires to be another form...when it is time, it simple transitions. Maybe right now I am water the liquid. I was once a solid and I have made the transition to liquid, this is where I am right now. When the time is right and the necessary molecular changes have been made, I will transition to a gas. But right now, I will bend to life! Happy Growing!

Much Love,

Jess

"Don't you realize that the sea is the home of water? All water is off on a journey unless it's in the sea, and it's homesick, and bound to make its way home someday." - Zora Neale Hurston