Today is Day One

I’m sitting with a group of friends in one of my high school best friends house post a ceremony. They all have a look of wonder and the table is quiet. So, I start bouncing around in my chair making faces and being silly.

Zonia, you are our guru.
“Oh no! Don’t YOU guys say that ever again!” I say in my most dramatic way flipping backwards hanging like an Aztec sacrifice off my chair. “Ewwwww...”
But you are! You are our love guru.
Aghhh...
Well, what do you want us to call you?
Your friend! Just be my friends.
What’s the difference?
So huge! Friends only have to be themselves and I need people to just be myself with.

We all do. I think the worst thing teachers, healers or guides can do is pretend we have the answers to everyone’s problems; perhaps we have figured out how not to fall and stay down, but we are still human. I think the worst thing we can do to others, in our quest for certainty in an uncertain world, is expect them to be superhuman.

​What we can do is teach and hold true to our dedication to wellness and the belief that sustained practice, whatever the craft, is the key to mind-body-emotional health. But to teach that we are now impervious or have somehow transcended? (In relation to this, I have only to say the only transcendence to humanity is death.)

Until then, that is death, we are all flawed and this is our stop striving for perfection gift to the world. That happiness is not hinged on getting anything exactly right, it’s finding the quirky curve in the road informing, humorous, or educational. We are all learning.

Never outgrow your foundations, build upon them but return again and again to the beginning. This is beginners mind. It’s is the basis for growth and the beauty of life is there’s always more to learn.

For the last couple years, feeling sadness over various observations I had in community, I turned my eye inward and, of course, discovered all my unsaid truths, all the masks removed revealed an innumerable amount of regrets and “can not be changed” behaviors of past choices.

Memories imprinting a “would do differently” episodes from my life that are my next round of great teachers but were avoided by throwing myself into an inhuman amount of work that revealed my humanity surfaced through three physically painful collapses in one month.

The result was a recocooning, a going back to the beginning, a reawakening again to self in relation to self that has lead to the emergence of new voice authenticating itself and allowing itself to be heard—not for intelligence, but for its heart wisdom. Deep knowing.

Surely in looking back, compassion comes from knowing where I was coming from at the time, deep learning comes from stepping back and using observer perspective to look at the affect of my choices.

To speak truthfully, from a place of vulnerability is to weed out people seeking perfection and instead making way for true friendship. Authentic relationship is intimacy—connection on deepest level is soul to soul.

Recognition of humanity’s lessons learned, not only through strength, through fragility. It is not just the yogic Buddhist face but also the one hidden in darkness isolated coming to light—seen—ceremonial heart fire. Enlightened by sorrow, which is deep feeling.

“We are all human together” feeling, as connected as we are real. My closest relationships are the truest. We are true to who we really are with each other.

To smile this big is to feel so deeply. To know life without happiness is to seek it as a soul path barometer. Am I on track?

Soul work is human work.

Understanding our minds is listening to the voices that speak to us, the ones unheard, unvoiced, forgotten, held back now now lifting them up, expressing, listening, releasing, and hearing the wisdom of their experience.

Bleeding hearts are broken bodies, my own and many other leaders, healers, and teachers who come through my room under my hands. Safe to tell me the secret that they are human, I look at them with love and say, yes, me too. Then we laugh to be seen in our true light and relax. Natural disposition, nothing to be ashamed of, still strong and capable, just needing a little help.

Broken bodies are opportunities to face pain, slow down, give attention. Muscle is not the answer, faith, breath, and mindfulness are. To know this is to understand that going into that which is hardest to face, acknowledge, is to be able to later teach the healing process and aid others afraid to express that which ailes them too. You have permission to be real with me. I’ll hold you in the light, hold my center with deep compassion.

This is the differentiation between those who are teachers, healers, and guides and others feeling victimized by life, they show courage and walk in the way of fear to the very thing they are wishing to change, thereby, dissolving fear.

The way we go about it is the lesson for all. Injury, no matter how it happens, is collective. Sacrum, sciatica, hip, paoas. Over and over and over. Occipital ridge, neck traps, shoulder blade. Over and over until I must say the only thing keeping us alone is silence.

Who will break it? I will.

If we gather together to hear similar stories, then their powerful grip releases its hold. It is not the definition of us. It is the beginning.

Our perceived weaknesses, our inferiority, our inadequacies are giving us insight, opening our hearts and bodies. In turn, they become our strengths. In time we will be a superior version of self for having modified and put attention on a place of growth and that will be more than adequate. It will become a treasure.

What moves us forward? Movement.

Simplest statement I make to all healing: immobility leads to immobility.

Fear your own true nature—the injured, sad, angry parts and isolation is inevitable. Touch your pain. Befriend your fear. And you can touch others and be a friend who gives courage and hope. There is light in together.

In self-compassion is forgiveness of emotions we don’t want to admit to having, face to face, admittance is acceptance. Acceptance is drawing love into the bone. In the marrow is love healing.

I love you.
I accept you.
You are a part of me.
I believe in you.

Know you are loved. You are loving. You are beloved.

The story of unlovable is self-perpetuating injury and dependent on hiding. What amount of self is hidden from view will determine whether we feel truly loved or if we have become a caricature portrayal of who we think others would like us to be. A grand costume and de-masked revealing only to happen in private.

Perfectly happy all the time.
Ultimately confident, never in doubt.
Body fluidly moving, never sore or in pain.
Always creating, never destroying.
Always loving, never deceived.

The ones who truly have glimpses of this are the ones who know truth in their deepest hearts, blessed to know they are human to the core feeling everything, unsure, body pains from muscles used sore tired aching—to be in body is to use it, to use it is to feel it—must end to begin and giving everything leads to empty. In other words, joy that big is gratitude for rising up but also we all know our vulnerable moments will come, in those we know grace will too.

The difference in healed verses suffering is embodying truths. Forgiving mistakes, leaving off regrets in the past, stream forward in wisdom grow and be moved continuously towards the belief in a greater cause motivating and, despite everything that might hold you back down under behind, find the energy, the light, and break through.

Rise up inside your body. As in, breathe soul alive in you. Come to the surface and remove a lifetime of armor is a heavy load to bear your body finite to infinity.

Heart humbled but strong thank God—perfection is not possible, so let it go. There will be problems mistakes and misunderstandings.

Love life anyways. Focus on senses. Transcend them. Return again to rose, mint, lilac, cacao, Pablo santo, copal—life radiating energetic imprints of emotions —the best ones are felt sense. Happy for daily gifts given in small lady bugs and sun rays. Observe beauty, well, be beauty in observation.

Performers need audience, all elements seen and unseen watch the plight of humanity and applaud the soul who remembers. Embodiment is separation from source. Disembodiemnt is return to.

We come to know what holds us by how we hold ourselves.

This body of memories is a storehouse of love. Sometimes we learn love by what it is not and make the spiritual journey to what is. Be grateful for the stories that have made you—you. They are yours. You are sacred. Only our perception of self in regard to story can be changed and a new genre be written. Costume change. Character rewrite. The essence remains.

You are loved. You will be loved. Loving is he goal.

When it is hardest to believe is when it is most powerful. When the awesome power of love redeems us all, this we call grace.

True story. In the middle of doing my most potent healing work is when I question my life’s meaning the most. When people are changing at profound levels, I remember the hardest parts of my life the deepest.

Its then I pray grace to us both. It can’t be changed but also I believe in miracles and the force of creation to see me from a Higher vantage point, to know my deepest heart and grant me wisdom to take the opportunity to say, I’m sorry for everyone I ever hurt. Bless them. I’m sorry for everyone who has hurt me. Bless me. Make us all whole and well. Allow us to be happy anyways. Give us a fresh start.

From the beginning, as if you were just born. Day one: The best day ever.