What does it mean to outgrow the self? To follow a cycle to its delicious grief stricken threshold end while yet grateful for the self you’ve become?

Ready to let it go; excited for the next adventure.

What is that moment of overlay between what was the resistance to change the tension the inevitable heart opening surrender and the subsequent rebirth into love. From truth we melt and return to breath. Stillness in peace amidst chaos.

My friend Deb and I have visited the metropolis Sayulita international beach port town for the last decade.

Escaping from out sleepy fishing village empty beach starlit sky nights to the steroidal version of melding Mexico pot: Ex-pats from around the world, witness colorful flags and ojos de dios blowing in the sea breeze amidst the indigenous from Oaxaca to the Sierras.

Earth and sea unite as one until the
Tension of what was
Resistance
Modernity inserts or asserts upon the
Streets dark and hardened wins.

Retreat to return;
Nostalgia and wonder intermingled in
Where exactly are we?
And oh it’s this is amazing place again.

Pastel palette meet vivid electric ceremony
Meet oceanic sands and water color waves
Blend ancient power and thriving softened
Innocent spirit alongside the fierce
Births the water bird in and around me
World matches what I feel as
I, now rounded, head towards 50:
Psycological teacher

A-line
Presence transform barefoot shaman jungle healer…
Self meet self and become more of who you are
Quieter funnier deeply intimate storyteller meet
Observer mind dancing the streets
Spanish meet English,
Touch the bare ground earth mold
People who glow love you into peach and orange sky
Baby blue meet hot pink and raise the sun golden
Sands warm hearts in time so that
Hands touch and we remember
Future is past reformed from the ancient worlds
Stars are born soul recognition twinkle eyes and
Sing baby songs in lodge for next generations are
Coming of age and the edges have worn off
The warriors have
Fallen in love and
Poverty converts through constant creation
Artists re-envision

A new palette opens vibrational gateways to
traditional tweaks little by little what was
Morphs into another version entirely.

Take me with you and allow all my nos to soften to yes.

Nosotros together belonging and
Solitary growth deconstructs to
Me to us to we and I begin again to relearn
Me in the midst of chaos
Joy finds its rest in becoming life anew.

Then sleep dream and awaken.

Tomorrow is yet another day to
​Outgrow the self
Transcending heaven through our own body Earth.

I'll start from the beginning. From the first memories that formed me in my childhood, or at least from a different, happier, joy filled version of simultaneously existing memories that I now choose to have overlay the ones that explain my ability to hold space for womb trauma, issues of separation and depression, as well denial of the unknown. In this version, the unknown continuously dwells beside me, the joy of the earth and its inhabits walks with me, and I am at peace in my oneness, turning womb-an by 8.

I lived on the edge of a new housing development in Aurora, Colorado. It was a beautiful "I'd like to buy the world a coke" warm sunlit 70's clothes in meadows and on hills kind of time and place.

On the other side of our fences lived people we called neighbors whose houses had children with home we spent the day at school. Since we lived in the same neighborhood and went to the same school, there was no telling who you would bump into along the way, converge and remember, you come from the same place and you are headed to the same destination.

We'd enter through an opening in a silver open weave fence that bordered safe lands where we learned soccer and kick ball with the tire swinging always by friend or wind. The monkey bars we each took a turn falling off and knocking the breath out of us. Play stations with bars where the athletic learned how to circle endlessly and climb, while the strong pushed overloaded stinky dusty overly full tire swings.

Square dancing in the gym where we parachute played when we were younger, same place we climbed ropes to the ceiling and tried to touch our toes and hold ourselves up to pass governmental tests of health. In that same place, crushes and aversions were forged as we were forced to hold hands with the opposite sex and follow directions that made spiraling mandalas in motion, in cowboy boots of course and prairie dresses of course.

Then bells would ring and someone near would be walking somewhere close and we talked about the day, crushes, and wishes until we got home to whatever awaited us.

My 5'11'' smiling giggling mother was always there. In a 70's shag with sewing tools strewn all over the kitchen, she'd break to give us food and laugh us away to the outdoors where classrooms converged in races, bike and barefoot races we'd run down the street at full speed, or wander out into the endless field with prairie dogs, amethyst and petrified wood.

In the distance a conservatory with a plains Indian tipi. It was a beautiful 300 acres of land that preserved how life looked and therefore felt on the prairies before open flat land became anywhere USA strip malls and housing developments.. To me, it was pure heaven. Warm, safe, alive, friendly, and filled with images that I feel inside my brain. Myself resting in my awareness while still yet a kindergartener. Memory clear as summer sun filled days, and warm spring rain, playing in the gutters. I often wonder, with curiosity and not regret, what my life living in these fields, watching the developments grow, and staying friends with this set of people, would have become. We left when I was in 5th grade just as we were beginning to find our instrument in music class, I had not yet made it to all the stations.

I return to this neighbor 40 years later with ideal images of and how safe neighborhoods and schools can be. As I remember night under the stars singing concerts, jean, white shirts, red bandanas, and silver bleachers under the stairs facing hillsides where parents sat on blankets. Ideal I remember and as I drive into the grid it looks exactly as I remember and I am relieved and happy, calling my brother, mother, and father to share the exciting news. "Hey! You guys! It really was ideal! It's really as cute and sweet as I remember," I repeat this several times to my brother, mother, and father all of who are too busy in that moment, too distracted. So me, and myself, we remember together, giggle, and feel into happiness of memories.

I am flooded by memories of us, my neighborhood friends, rolling down hills at break times, fast. Limbs flying everywhere, laughter propelling us along with gravity to repeat the game over and over. Another memory floats through my mind and I laugh inside, maybe in that moment I am 7 or 8, now, I am 9 riding my bike to the duck pond, down the hill by my house, losing the chain, getting stuck in the bars, flipping, skidding15 feet coming to a stop, dusty, bloody and shirt belly missing and exposing where I had slid, now bare, on my belly marked red. Oh yes, that's where the scar on my knee came from and when I learned pebbles embedded in my knee, that my mother was not a natural born nurse, but the best creative, crafty, storyteller mom in the world. The dirtier we were, the more engaged in life we were, so certainly, bike chain broke and all, it was certainly a memorable day. I remember I had choices, closer to my destination than when I began I decide to sky gaze at the pond, yes, despite all our accidentally, life used to be safe and I, at 9, knew the way to peace after bloody messes and how to get home before the light of day had set.

Pops worked a lot, the first Hispanic in his company, Chevron Corporation, I now understand those long days without him and late night visits to top floors downtown darkened with people gone home, father at his desk dimly lit in the emptiness where my brother and I crawled under and through desks and pops worked harder. He was an accountant for a corporation before excel sheets existed. When my mom missed him, we'd drive downtown up to one of the upper floors and sitting under those desks playing my pop, with graph paper and a ruler, entered in mechanical pencil on graph paper large numbers to budget account changes.

That's my pop. Focused, determined, he changed all our lives and his in one generation. Moving from my grandmother's one room adobe house in my El Paso, Texas birth town to Aurora, Colorado after he graduated from University Texas El Paso, first but not last of my family to get a college education. This education he got with the GI Bill for his service in Vietnam and, he joked, his education only cost him a leg. In the 40 years he worked for Chevron, nobody knew he was an amputee, but they didn't have to. My dad ran, lifted weights, and played racquetball tournaments on off times, not to mention helping create one of my favorite very first memory while landscaping our yard.

​The Strawberry.

Well, it's not just a strawberry, it's my dads smiling gentle face behind the plant as the sunlight was shining on us. In this memory he was handing me the strawberry, telling me to put it in the hole he just dug and cover it over.

How, daddy?

Ask it, he says.

And it tells me.

​To be continued....
​

It's been two years since my last post.  The question to writing is always where to begin and where it will end.  I feel that way today in my soul, beginnings and endings have a now and the waiting for it to be the right time is killing us all.

The right time? For?

To start over.  To just give ourselves and everyone a new start.  To remember at night we enter the imaginal, dreams and visions filter to us new information in relation to our contemplations and experiences.  When we awaken, however, do we awaken?  Allow the new to arise in and through us.  Be renewed.

As of late, working with the potent human beings in contact with the imaginal, soul worlds and their ancestry, we hold the space for the generations to pass.   To let them move from seed human form into their true celestial origins, we must also free them of the nodal, knot, or trauma to which we are associated.  Let them fly free to the next realm, prepare a place for us when we go.  To a place where this world we shall understand in its complexities, turmoil, and beauty a mosaic of human destiny too grand for any human to hold.  To difficult for us to process that loss was a steep price for experiential evolution, experience that will remain the beacon of why we must do it differently.

As of late, I've been asking continuously, how can we do this better, this disagreement and learning?  How can we slow walk the older generations with peace, comfort and kindness through the threshold?  If they are able.  

As of late, I've come to accept this new world may be too foreign and they may not be able to let go of the worlds they have had a share in creating more wealth, abundance of chachqis and consumerism than they could have ever imagined.  At least this is true of most of my baby boomer relatives.  Comfort, convenience and so many addictions to plastic ready made items that freed the women from endless duties of cleaning and cooking so they could self-develop and still work, raise children.  Children who have the freedom through these very things to become, do, and, in my case, explore the world.

Our spoiled generation who knows nothing of walking great distances out of necessity, using our own strength to create in the void something we don't quite know how to do, in languages we didn't grow up learning, along pathways and structures to thoughts and new ideas.  Complexity.

My grandmother was raised in missions.  To her the Spaniards and settlers gave her a new life and faith to which she and many of my family clung.  A life line of prayer that connects them to my grandmother and to faith.  The rituals, the prayer, the power to raise seven children to grandchildren and great grandchildren until after her passing her daughters and sons are now the grandparents and great grandparents.

So many prayers.  The over structure and colony gave my family educations, jobs, cars, trucks, and more beauty than the previous generations could have conceived.  To this, my parental generation is proud and resting in their retirement.  To this I felt deep loss and separation through church from nature.  In my 20's I returned to it.  In my 30's I rebelled against it.  Not understanding by experience the poverty of language and money, I felt accutely the poverty of lost culture.  All my cultures.

And a.

My one-hundred percent Navajo-Dine friend calls us.  Those natives who are born from the earth who are Dine first people and a....little bit of spaniard, German, European, multiple tribes...so many that our native blood just says, yes, and thanks to the colony I know how to walk in multiple worlds.

Mulitplicity of existence.  Intersectionality.  In high school I was voted Most Versatile for my ability to weave and bob through social groups and say yes to the questions can you?  Journalism, Athleticism, Honor Role, Debate, Spirit Squad.  A Mex-I-Can from El Paso, Texas borderland to three regions and the entire east to west migration.

My people are all people.  My strands of thought complex and interdimensional.  From Colorado prairie field up brings to Hawaiian wanderings and Mau rock aunty Kelly Aloha breath stories, I have passed tumors from my nose in snake burials, worn 70's fur jackets, barefoot runnings, imitated fashion magazines, lived the swing salsa life of the San Francisco Bay Area, retreated to the jungle before cell phones and wifi could reach the spa, and looked at sketches of the Sistine Chapel in London.  I have run down the Alps and climbed Mount Shasta, explored my innermost regions and the places to which my feet have chosen to walk.  To the indigenous of the Southwest, to the Sierras of Mexico and back to the European roots we all come from this earth.

The only question is are we brave enough to find all the places we keep alive in and around us.  Able to let go not of the learnings and strength gathered, but of the stories that bind us to past.  To evolve we must look to future.  Who will I be tomorrow and in how many ways am I the same as every human I am blessed to meet, every breath I take, I am in unity with air. Every step I feel the earth, every tear laughter and joy I move waters of energy and feeling heart knowing through my being-ness and I wonder yet again:

How can we do this better?  This shifting phase of explosive wars within our own hearts the Ancient Mother and Father ask us to remember, once we all came from the same Source.  Once we were all Beloved Ones but where love was lacking there is now darkness.  Can we fill that darkness with compassion and again remember ourselves whole?  I am just delusional, hopeful, and full of faith enough to believe that it is possible.  

In my late 40's, 48, nearing 50.  I understand.  As we age, we get soul tired.  Catalysts for change we become containers of understanding.  Each generation will have its victory, make its mark, change the world.  In the places where our possibilities intersect, where we refrain from name calling and blanket social media terms we believe apply and size up the other instantly, where older generations come to understand plurality and singular can coexists in one person, can we, in the spaces between, pause step long enough for the seed of realization and new relationships to birth?  Can we step back into our empathic self to feel soul rise.  To look for what is right.  To be grateful for the changes despite the losses and trust future generation will give life to it again.  And this generation will pass.  That this change we wait for will also carry the price of our grandparents, aunts, uncles, mothers, fathers, passing until we are the grandparents of the future.

Reborn. The Cosmological Grandmother and the Star seed are one being.  All tribes are needed.  Among those thriving in the over structure are also those devoted to spirit and the holy evolution of all beings.  Thank them.  For those who have been waiting and caretaking these precious things because it wasn't safe, because it wasn't time, because we didn't know how to stand in the places prepared for us, the time is here.  But not for you to step back, for us all to step forward into soul beings, together

Tell the story.
Which one?

The one about the world as we know it ending and everything coming to still point deep listening, waiting, praying. The story of our hearts, loss and grief, and the grace that comes in simple things.

Home with our hearts, fears, worries, anxiety we lose everything. Learn to hold ourselves, learn boundaries, learn nothingness. Completely empty now, begin the refill. Blank canvas, pick your colors. Begin with one breath-heartbeat at a time.

Tell the story.….of the essential. As in The Little Prince saying, “What is essential is invisible to the eye.” Its it what we think, it’s what we feel. In this story, it’s microscopic.

Tell the story about the invisible, the field of consciousness working through tragedy and uncertainty, invading us with watchful intent: every movement of hand, placement of self in space, and who do we put beside us no matter the danger or fear? As in, cannot be separated.

Smaller than the eye can see, made for chaos it recreates existence. For at its center it holds truth, everything in the Universe is made of God even man-made begins with what is natural.

Naturally
soul to soul
we touch.

Tell about the dark night of collective uncertain soul. The journey back to each other—the questioning of the divine, our purpose, realizations, and the understanding that connected is truly alive.

In connection we transcend, more than our part and particle, we are soul of world. She reaches for us now, reach back and in. Nourished by us, she too awakens to her lovers. One eye open from sleep we return, resurrected to the surface from spine we have held it all together.

Now fall apart, it coalesces and reorganizes, animating soul of flesh return to color and radiantly shine towards the sun surface beam hope, love, celebrate for we are alive together now in presence we sing gratitude with laughter and cry tears for those who have passed but exist ever in the unity field, sparkling rain down from celestial spheres in the ocean of unconditional love. Job’s tears comfort us as we are blessed double.

Faith.

When we die we return to what we love the most, that love is God. Fill the room with your love story, let it all in—love story memory.

Cut and splice. Two years ago an eternity of cleansing, loss and isolation begins and leads to rebirth. Now snip. From there to here in an instant we return. Pick up the thread and then just hold it. Go nowhere. Just there and feel your connection to the web of life. Cherish it.

Always here—breathe yourself home to this place of spiral rocks, ocean tides, crickets and music dancing us to sleep, rocking peace back into bones, touch palms. Feel safety.

Fall back in love with the joy of life, but do it all differently. Savor the moment foot touches ground and passion flower hits tongue. Melt. Drift. Hammock swing back to happy child and then hold yourself close as Mother.

For she knows her lovers and knows how to bring them back to life in all the best ways choose yourself, your destiny and know:

​“ The miracle that was created special for you, is already here.” (Vinitia)

It is early morning on the Nayarit coast. The night crickets are giving way to morning bird calls and I am smiling remembering the evening of several tables of expats together on the beach with several hundered strangers watching the sunset.

Since I’ve just arrived people who haven’t seen me a while are grabbing on and squeezing tight. One woman I haven’t seen in five years, we embrace and laugh almost crying with the joy of direct contact. Another man looks at me, half decides to abstain from all touching, gets a big smile and announces, you are worth it!

I am at ease and calm after travels through airports mostly empty. The hysterical have stayed home leaving the fellow travelers with whom I sit turned from tvs, deep in meditation, breathing and assured looks go out from one person to another. The general consensus in San Diego during this lay over is, “I’m ok, you’re ok, we are all ok.”

I’m relaying this to a colleague who is asking how travel day went. “Amazing ,“ I say. “No lines!” As is my nature, I’m generally laugy and jokey (Especially at inappropriate times, a trait I share with my mom, who when anxious makes even more jokes.) and am in the midst of describing the San Diego airport when a guest deep in panic over returning home decides to lend an ear. I am unaware of this and continue by saying the only three people who didn’t seem ok were the only three people in masks.

While the rest of us were being comforted by the “we are in this together” feeling of community, the mask wearers appeared furtive, fear seemingly spiking off their every standing hair, high alert, separate, fast paced, eyes wide. I am finishing my observation with “to the rest of us, they appeared strange,” when suddenly angry and obviously a bit quivery with her own fear the guest jumps in.

Though she’s been in Mexico for a week and this is not her observation, she decides it is her duty to reinform me via her internet scrambles.

With respect and calmness both my colleague and I get quiet and nod. We turn into “oh yesers” and “ok there are demographic more at risk” and, this is the point...the guest has a history of lung issues and a compromised immune system. Empathetic ally I tell her, “yes, my father is in protective mode with my mother who is a cancer survivor and has a history of bronchitis.” We all nod. Now that she has set us straight she is calmish and returns to her table.

My friend and I take a big sigh. We don’t need to say anything. It isn’t the first time Americans arrive and leave the ocean side amidst information they’ve received from Facebook sharings and relations pinned to hours of news with PTSD symptoms. Fear and mass hysteria make Americans the most furtive group I work with, one of the many reasons I haven’t owned a tv since college and I quit social media for years at a time.

Uninformed might be one way of seeing me or, from my point of view, highly attuned to my surroundings as things are unfolding in the moment. Present with what actually is not what is feared will be coming. Willing to hold conversation with people who have varying viewpoints and when confronted by important information I go look it up, not on social media but from varying sources of information. Somewhere in between us usually the truth.

As a high school teacher, I taught units on mass hysteria and the methodology over which government gains control over the psyche and collective consent of its people for its “protection.” Supposedly we study history to not repeat it. I see us fall into so many patterns it’s mind blowing. Deconstruction of the populace especially through dehumanizing methods, highly emotional speeches with small snippets of facts, and a populace who shares information without checking sources and who forget not all sources are benign.

The remedy to mass hysteria is higher order thinking skills, use of observation and connection to your own state of being.

Hysteria is characterized by fast breath, wide eyes, fast heartbeat, the typical fight or flight responses of body and racing mind. The danger of hysteria is exactly in those two responses. Like the woman ready to fight me for having my own experience and observation not based on media and fear, the every man for himself survival mentality clear out the paper products at every store stock pile close your doors board the windows is the most dangerous of human animal behavior there is.

At this time I would caution people against being angry at people for not being afraid because it seems to me informed people are actually hysterical with their information and seem to have a feeling that if you are calm it’s because you don’t understand.

What if I do understand? What if I’ve already made choices and am willing to remain human under all sets and conditions?

About a week ago, I was sick for 8 days. I slept. I hadn’t been sick in five years. I have an incredible immune system. I nettied 6 times a day with gse, cedar and tea tree salts. Saunaed for an hour twice a day. Drank whiskey hot totties to break congestion in my chest , drank gse along with on gaurd DoTerra and laid down. Radical self-care. I can honestly say it was the stillest I have been in years. Deep sleep. One day I woke up and it had all cleared.

I don’t watch news and only rejoined social
media that week out of boredom. What was it? I don’t know. Just a regular episode not like the one threatening.

​I haven’t been to a doctor in 20 years ever since I got tired of being run around with symptoms no one could explain until an MRI revealed a brain tumor which I self cured through a year long walk about, restarting my endocrine system with stem cells and renewed faith in our bodies incredible healing mechanisms.

Alan Watts described these processes of immunology as the chaos of our cells warring at a higher level of order to put things back into balance and make us stronger. He says at some level human beings are like this on our planet and that at a higher level order we are balancing the Universe. Is it true? At least it’s another way of looking at things.

As for people who are angry at the simple suggestion of hand washing, the World Health Organization has a myth busting section available for people who want to douse their bodies with alchohol, raise their body temperatures by sitting in hot baths and flee to warmer climates, no it calmly reiterates...wash your hands. Wash your hands. Wash your hands.

Other health professionals suggest sweating to keep fresh blood and oxygen flowing, fresh nature air (In other words, don’t lock yourself in your house and curl into a ball.)

For those people who are sharing info like Facebook is their second job, remember you will always find proof of whatever it is you believe to be true and, as an ex-teacher who failed at trying to explain this to students (maybe adults will understand it better) checking sources is the most important thing you can do for yourself, let alone others. Try generating information (Like walk outside. Look around and say here is what life is like around me.) rather than blindly sharing everything that sparks your little heart. Finally ask questions, lots of them.

And, for your own wellbeing, fill that little heart with courage and swell it through memories of loved ones. Don’t forget together is the most powerful state of human beings and, while being cautious, remember we are in the process of evolution and adaptation which involves change. Change is uncomfortable, sometimes we feel like primordial goo.

I can’t help but remember when my friends sons were around 7, now about 10-11 years ago. A pandemonium broke out at school because there was an outbreak. The school called and my friend was, as any good mother can be when the safety of child is at stake, in a state of panic. She was racing back and forth, couldn’t remember what she was doing, couldn’t find her keys and I was standing calmly in the center of the room. “Hey,” I kept saying. “What’s the matter?” Between short sentences I was gathering what the call was and, finally, I grabbed hold of her by the arms and got her eyes to stop wobbling so that her pupils went back to normal and her breath steadied. “Friend, what outbreak?” She took a deep breath, “chicken pox.” I smiled at her and pointed to the couple of scars on my face. “Friend, we all had them when we were young. Remember?” Her eyes blinked several times. She took a deep breath. “Oh yeah.”

Yeah. Steady eyes. Yeah.

The great large majority will be ok even if exposed. I just wonder if maybe in our state of informing and “lovingly” trying to protect each other, if we can also remember to hold each other close and quell the panic. Aware, conscientious, and lovingly supportively calm.
This shall pass. Decide who you will be on the other side of fear. And ask how we will return to normal from pandemonium?

What will be my work this season I ask myself?

It is my job to touch people. Perhaps people will cancel flights, avoid others or maybe something amazing will happen and we will come together, closer because the ones we love are worth holding near and continue to appreciate the beauty of the world unfolding around us day by day because we understand they are gifts and nothing is guaranteed.

"Write me," I say pen to paper as I reflect on who I am not but once thought myself to be.  As in, life cycles, experience and new patterns change us all.

I was found by an Apache teacher who told me she had been dreaming about me since a child. She took me to the grandfathers in Hopi land who made me believe I had a special purpose.

Raised a Christian minister from 11-20, working as a youth advocate and teacher from 20-30, ceremonialist from 30-40, for the last four I’ve grown quiet and, in my silence, have wondered if I forgot to stand in or up for something that passed me by when the masses joined the elements to create a prayerful movement to all directions.

I ask Creator, who am I?  I did not grow up on reservation or with picture language to describe what I feel in my left hand are my grandmothers, my unborn daughter.  I have only my life and the many stories of family heart that have shaped me.

Tribal brothers and sisters come to me and I remember my sister Magnolia telling me, “Zonia, what do you fear? That you aren’t nativey enough to do the work that has chosen you? You are more nativey than my friends who grew up on the reservation.”

Not true anymore as the nations unite stand on their feet and recite meanings and words in fields of earth's rhythm to explain what people feel in their hearts but can’t say.

Quietly I realized I did fear that but even more so, I began to feel that if I wasn’t asked I didn’t need to remember. True for me in all spiritual groups, even yoga. So many memory keepers and scholars are there and me?   I fall silent into the private recesses of my painting, journaling world and ask again,  "Creator who am I?"  

Show me.  I will listen and learn from the beginning as one who knows nothing. Watch and perhaps remember the part of me that went away when I cut my hair and did my last ceremony.

"Zonia? Don’t you care?"

I used to care...so much about everything. Every wing, every feather, every tree and water drop used to call me to them to witness them drop.  Root down into the earth that holds all the memories my family told me in my heart I cried and amber spilled from my eyes over injustices I felt in my modern body who knew only the quiet personal retreat of a grandmother hiding from her heritage in bathrooms she prayed to the mother for the life of her family and the power of her hands she layed on bodies like my great grandmother did before her and and her great grandmother before that. For her, it was in the name of Catholicism calling upon Jesus and spirit to heal what we could no longer name in native tongue.  I stumble to find words to describe what I am told, feel and know.

Irrelevant. Redundant. Faded into shadow. Returning to light.

I have said so much and now have little to say because I shrank love when I should have increased.  Watched the courageous speak, sing, write and dance while I held quiet heart close and stayed little nestled with the seed. Appreciation for brothers and sisters. Sacred heart burst.

Facing my own imperfect inclination to the end of nothing left to lose. No one but also some one in a million life path towards origen of species evolution built in thorough learning mistakes are gifts worth holding onto each other no matter what else is lost can be found again. Redemption is grace is reborn in the present facing future development of story lines unknown.

Pray to the stars in me and the waves lapping shoreline for words that aren’t already speeches rerunning ideas we all know the mantras what is beyond words is knowing and beyond knowing is forgetting remembering forgetting again and turning to the quietest ceremony of all.

The ceremony of heart and radical forgiveness of self for the insanity of isolation and perception of fault imperfect human denying self and others backslide to modern world from grounds upon which I slept and feet that walked visions for days until I reached the end of roads taken towards now uninvited guest.

A guest in my own home where I used to pray upon soils and sing the opening in my heart.

Closed.

Out the front door step into the larger reality of beyond the structures even the domes save one overhead the sky no teachers but the rising sun and stars.  No elders or officers of church just wind blowing breath on skin that touches skin of all colors.  Beliefs divine communion soul to soul. Natural medicine.

Morningstar when sun rises life eternally walk the path of faith in future. Let past fall away from mind into heart follow golden cords of ancestry to the unborns living in and around us is the human entity forever beyond time we are all here togethe, God intelligence in cells like star canvas nations constellations spirithorse caught in the bear hibernation slow way down to stop.

Be prayer. Infinite unknown one step at a time in the dark god invited to light the way to witness together the truth of love in every living thing pulsing spirals of light imprinted by stars mapping the universal plan is unfolding and destiny leads the way rivers and swimmers make their way to eggs that create the next generation living testaments to miracles transformation through lineage of human to human child to child born from mother father unending genetic chain Earth sky water beings being.

"Zonia, what do you care about?"

Life. I care about life thriving and people learning.

Learning what?

The mysterious ways of creation calling to our hearts mind falling out of head to the ground we fall humble beginnings no matter the role, knowledge or path we return to dust remembered in talk story names of grandmothers and grandfather little ones young elders side by side the last generation takes the remaining experience of living with and not against or in spite of all the forces seeking domination even within circle a cylinder rises like a pyramid of pharaoh and rulers take charge of medicines that heal everyone if and when everything but truth drops away we are healed. Open dialogue.

Cancer is lie. Radiance is innocence.

Like child I sit. Wipe me clean. No more stories to tell. Not my story or my grandmothers but I hold her hand close to my heart when I I hold my heart with my hand. Like Russian dolls we nestle together. Hold close.

The only thing that matters to me?

Dropping roles and chests until love drips over my head like flower petals from the rainbow sky and all I can remember is thank you that somehow we are all still here rotating planets and watching moon cycle to the songs sung long before words could ever explain a spring opens bubbling love to the surface like lava from my blood and all the nations past and present silently become one again.  Womban.

Nothing left to share but this:

God exists in the spaces between thought speech and feeling, presence is wholeness undefined by dogma language or birth. Singular cell source intelligence created you I and time space continuum all things on into eternity.

I am well aware that I have been blessed many times over by those who are blessed and that spirit moves in every direction towards the center of human beings.

Some, born into wealth, will never know the journey of survival but move towards their spirits and these have always had the leisure to create the beauty that is their hearts. Whatever they can conceive, they can do it with no blocks save what their minds can conjure. This I pray for all beings.

Some, born into love but poor, will forever seek and passionately drive towards their freedom and these know the courage and discipline that comes from working hard to create space to breathe, to eat good food, fresh water, and live in alignment with a higher nature than the one struggling to survive. This strength of spirit can only be created not bought. This I pray for all beings.

Each have their own journeys, all are programmed at the center to forever seek that which is life. For some this life is all there is, self-made and driven they seek meaning and have the freedom to find it under in through around any possibility in the world, possibilities are endless. For others, there is a greater sense of Creator and, in that their life is the result of prayerful dependency, love is the only thing that truly matters and it is unconditional, to be found in the smallest molecule, even a teeny atom is of exceeding value .

Meaning and freedom. Strength, determination, and the gifts of previous generations. It’s spirits way of both descending the ladder and climbing it. In the middle is where we meet. In the middle is where our love is manifested and seen. How we spend time, where we place attention, how resources are allocated, all these are the test of humanity whether born blessed or striving to remove all barriers and feel the blessings of life.

It is easy to get distracted. When do we take the time to enjoy what we have been given/have and when do we seek opportunity to lift others up?

This is, of course the plight of our collective conundrum. How to weave these golden threads together? How to take the magic of all people and combine them to make a harmonious life together.

Become a creator, advertise it, attempt to draw without manipulation the masses seeking to fill the spaces with beauty. How to gain a following without creating followers? How to live a dream without becoming a slave to more? How to be content and still beautify? When to push? When to receive? When to be full? And when to be empty?

The in breath. The out breath.

The oldest ancient pattern of living there is in the Universe. Contraction. Expansion.

The real issues: Ownership. Freedom.

Since the money system in any form was created, the scales of have and have nots has teeter tottered back and forth, and if it isn’t owned but valuable, how can it be copyrighted?

Own what is needed. Water. Earth. Air. These are gifts we all deserve to enjoy.

And fire? I have a clear memory of a time I was asked to attend a tipi and travelled a long distance at my own expense to arrive, sit up all night praying for the life of another and in the morning came the first time I saw a money cup. We ate the corn for our energy body, the berries for our blood, the meat for our flesh and then, the money cup.

My ancestral brain sat on knee blinking. Blink. Blink. I looked at the fire. I looked at the cup. I looked at the fire. I looked at the cup. I whispered to it, “Psst. What are doing between me and the fire? Why are you in the middle of my prayer? Why are you between me and God?”
It said, “I don’t know. They put me here.”
”Oh,” I said, “I need to right my relationship to you. What would that be?” I continued to pray about the other bowls that passed, “The soul animates me, my ancestors got me here, and my body moves me around. What do you do?
”What ever people want.”
”Zonia!”
I looked up. “Yes?!”
”Pass the cup”
”I didn’t bring my wallet in here. I came to pray.”
”Pass the cup.”
Ok, I thought, this time, I pass the cup. It wasn’t to be the last time I saw the cup. Every time, I felt the same way: Blink. Blink. “Why are you here?” I’d whisper. Eveytime it would tell me, “Somebody put me here.” And I’d hear my inner spirit say, “Oh.” And sometimes I’d get very quiet and pray. “Heal my relationship with you.”

I tell this story to my thriving Mexican brother with whom I have co-sat sweatlodge. He is a peyote chief.

“What do you think it means?” he asks, “because when I put the cup outside the tipi I get less money and running tipi is expensive.”
I smile, “The more affluent the chief, the bigger the tribe. What did you think being chief meant? It’s expensive to take care of a big family.”
We both laugh and we know money collected isn’t just for feeding the people. It’s his job, but the chiefs used to have normal jobs and then run tipi. He used to give to the people, not take.

I think, I tell him, “It’s ok to charge, but don’t confuse love. If you make someone your family, it’s your responsibility to lift them up because you feel them inside your heart. If they are your brother, you want him to have a good life, to be able to have a wife and care for her needs, and feed children if they wish to have them. They are your family. It’s just what you want for them. These are old ways though, old male female dynamics. Everything is changing. I suppose if it is your job, then charge, but if it is your calling the door is open for all to know their intrinsic worth to Creator existed long before money and their relationship to that Creator is free. There should still be some meetings done just for love, it’s always the sessions I do that way that are the most powerful. Meetings are the same.”
“Is that why you got upset with me after lodge for telling people to support your work?”
”It was not my motivation for praying with the people and I didn’t want to detract from those gifts of songs by making people think I did it hoping to get money from them.”
”I saw you pull back when I did it.”
”I know but then I looked at the love on your face, felt your hearts support, and listened to your kind words. I asked myself, why should I pull away from blessings? I knew then, I am still healing my relationship between spiritual practice and money.”
”That’s funny,” he says, “you made me want to love more openly and freely like you.”
We hug and both say laughing, “Perhaps between you and me is the truth.”
I say, “It’s always between you and me that truth exists.”

A truth between two people is a witness and a participant. The experience of one balances the other and so we can shine light on those thoughts trapped inside corners of our silent minds. When I write, I like to believe that I allow my own thoughts to be seen in order to grow. Some thoughts I see and immediately can think of a million refutations to learn them into submission. In other words, change them immediately. Other times, I believe when my words are read the truth of another sends me illumination, as in, I see sister you are needing enlightenment, as in play with this truth a bit, make it more fun, and allow yourself to prosper.

These thoughts I have vascillated between within my own mind. Moving from the extremes of very little belongings but rich in spirit to thriving financially and investing in future. Knowing the riches of starlight descending upon hot springs and the gas it took to drive there. Doing healing work for others, using my body in health operating on food money has bought and being blessed to travel with partners around the world teaching, running down the alps, and meeting villagers in India. Giving and receiving. Rejoicing at others good fortune. Content with my little home and lots of time.

As a child, I never lacked for anything. As an adult I only lacked what I did not allow myself to receive, and this usually because I gave freely. Entering into a crystalline state with the light essence of a piece of paper, I heal my relationship to money. A blank trade system. Money is whatever we make it. It makes many things possible. It can itself be a practice. Learning how to master it with your gifts, is a blessing.

Yet, I can’t help but think of the many ways it can be a deception. The ways in which people hide their true source of affluence. Claiming to have prayed so much, or be so much more devoted, or such positive thinkers that wealth just happened.

Hiding that it is a gift from wealthy parents or intelligent investments, even hard work, is a falsity and I think if we are all to truly be healed in relation to money, deception and the impression that others can become what you have been gifted if they are only willing to invest in you, is the distraction that I resist.

I resist that fancy pants, better yoga mats and super foods make us better yogis, or that designer drugs and expensive ceremonies make us medicine people. False. Modern day “keeping up with the Jones” can bankrupt you but it can be fun.

I acknowledge that I came from a upper middle class family and am college educated. I did not realize our standard of living because my dad was modest enough with his money to retire at 50 and still help our whole family make fiscal jumps. I've thanked him for allowing my brother and I freedom to devote ourselves to what we love and forgive us that it doesn’t translate to wealth. We are simple people. My brother plays drums, thinks drums, hears drums. I love people and pray in nature. We live on what we make, sometimes it’s little, sometimes we have been shown how valuable what we love can be.

When younger, I get a disappointment to my pop, “Sorry, dad, you worked so hard to lift us up. I feel like we went back.”
He says to me, “Other people can look around them at what they have amassed, your wealth is hidden in your body, it resides in your heart and your share it with everyone.”
”Thanks pops.” I feel blessed and know in my heart, whatever your life, self-development is the key.

I was not raised to be an entrepreneur, my dad made money working his way up despite humble beginnings and brown skin. He teaches us to work, I tell my nephews and students to become the best at whatever you choose to do. Grace yourself with plenty. My mother loves shopping sprees and vacations were once a year. It took bankruptcy, many give aways, generosity, a brain tumor, and year long vision quest to create me. I believe in favorites I wear so often they can no longer be mended. I believe in nice things that last.

I retired from being a teacher with a small salary I used to travel for a year and tried editing, ghost writing, teen centers, private schools, being a barista, sandwich maker, new age store lady doing crystal readings, yoga teacher, massage therapist, ceremonialist, retreat leader, and healer. I was willing to live on whatever my devotions made me.

I knew little to nothing about alternative lifestyles as an artist, musician, festy, plant farmer worker, rainbow gatherings, or work trade, but I learned that within that system there was still hierarchy and at the top were high powered executive business people making lots of money paying workers very little. I saw workers playing but many investing little for the future. Smart ones educated themselves, courageous one took big chances, and creative ones became famous. In this journey I learned the answer to the question I had while still teaching.

In a class of 42 kids, 38 had individual educational plans because of their unique learning styles and differing intelligences. I remember knowing for certain, most would not follow the college bound course. I asked myself, “What will they do? How will they live?” Soon after, I had given away everything, put on a backpack and begun my own deconstruction reconstruction to be completed two decades later journey.

What would they do? Play. Dance. Travel. Experience. Live. Love. The lucky ones would.

The rest would struggle at minimum wage jobs trapped in pizza shops seeing no way out, knowing no differently, seeking mind numbing anything and still seeking love in all the little places until a spirithorse gave them small little boosts.

My father and I invested in the future. We gave my nephews boosts to find what they loved. Sometimes this meant I gave money and travelled no home or to other countries to work so I could help. Choices. Exchanges of one life for another. Oldest one gave his girlfriend a spirithorse jump and the youngest one joined forces with his lovely “wife” to make family. My brother devoted his whole life to drums and somehow the generations move forward and now I funnel it back to me.

What is my relationship to money? Ever melding, shifting, contorting, always grateful.

What are my feelings about thriving? We should all be so lucky. Some people can live their entire lives for the amount people pay for shoes. This seems crazy and yet it is reality.

What I seek is not answers, it’s peace. What I seek is my own value and to thrive within my own gifts putting what I believe to be of primary importance first. I believe in a creator. I believe what we do, what we stand for, how we spend our time and money matters. I believe in joy and bliss. I believe in loving others and giving them a chance. I believe in fairness m, as in we get what we work for and sometimes we get lucky and receive gifts. I believe in the best in people. I believe we all want similar things.

I have enough examples of people who use their wealth to enjoy life and educate others to have skills to have a better life. I see this all the time at the retreat center where I work. They inspire many people, they inspire me.

Mostly I believe we could all want less from stores and preserve more what comes naturally. I believe we all have choices and each of us has a golden thread that connects us to source. That Creator see us as having intrinsic value and that creatures would like to see what we will make of this life we are living.

I would like to braid a golden thread, going in all directions, Universal filaments connecting the seen and unseen, utilizing whatever bridges I am given to bring more of the love I feel in my heart into the open while thriving and feeling what it is to have.

​From one golden heart to another, big love, big kisses❤️🥰

I am sitting in the sun allowing the light and breeze to penetrate my thoughts as I pray to know them as friends.

I hear the words of a co-worker echo a Hawaiian sentiment about the alive responsiveness of all living things. She says her feelings in her own words and sparks renewed appreciation in me for the interconnectedness of all things, "Everything in nature desires to be friends with us."

She lights my heart up. I smile.

"What?" She asks laughing.

I realize I've paused mid-action in goofy smile, "Words like that are medicine to my soul." This medicine in words has be arising in me since January. New concepts. New ideas. New phrasing. New cycles.

Old ancient feeling.

I've been reading many books, but am stuck on two pages in The Education of Little Tree. I've put it to the side many times, reading other books, returned to this simple talk story and the profound element of family, love, understanding contained in those two pages puts me in a clutch the book gently to my heart, consider the many lessons two pages can contain trance.

On this day, one concept strikes me differently. Usually affected most by the grandfather and grandmothers use of "I kin ye," instead of "I love you," is my favorite passage. Today it is the expounded idea of what it is to accept others as family and to kin them by understanding what it is they are feeling in any circumstance that arises. In this passage one of the men in the congregation has stood up to berate everyone and another man has stood up to tell him that if any misunderstanding has occurred he wants this one to know how loved he is and that everyone would like to right the misconception. In the telling of the story the grandson asks why no one gets defensive, grandfather says it is because he is kin and everyone understands that he comes from a time of fighting and that what they really want is for him to feel safe again.

The idea arises and connects to a statement I made while assisting a friend with chores.

Zonia?
Yes?
Why don't you go out anymore?
I don't know. I've gotten into a state of resisting everything lately.
Why?
I'm not sure.

And as I do, ponder this idea, let it stir around amid a million differing concepts until it blob tags with a clarifying sentiment, differing situation and words that heal my view--today the ideas that connect are
1. New Generation of Healthy Medicine People connects to 2. "kin," understanding, fighting, resisting, 3. this moment on the bench looking skyward at leaves dancing sunlight, 4. A week of feeling myself pass through and 5. a bath wherein I contemplate images from childhood, not just paradise, but also Armageddon. (What used to be taught as an actual occurrence makes its way into my spirulina sea salt crystal bath as spiritual metaphor for hearts devotion) and 6. a line from the Upanishads.

"You are what your deep, driving desire is.
As your desire is, so is your will.
As your will is, so is your deed.
As your deed is, so is your destiny."

This has led me to ask the question of each line:
What is my deep driving desire?
What is my will?
What are my actions?
What is my destiny?

As I review, an observer of my life interactions, I watch God's answer in the form of book readings, a visitation from young friend I have known a decade and moments like these on the bench.

My own end of 17 year travel cycle including re-gifting everything I've owned many times over, the epic adventures, the prayerful meetings, the miraculous money-less journeys wherein just enough is actually enough I am so happy to be free so not impoverished, uncontrolled, at peace with manifestations of walk abouts and the wondrous simple pleasure of sunrise to sunset the counter experience of modern day belief infiltrating all sectors of life, "Money is God."

That I do know I can not pay celestial bodies to rotate and shine in such glorious perfection. The--no one but my soul and its Source energy own me. The--I have no reason to go this way but for the ancestral angelic guidance and the facing of ridicule about ending my professional teaching career almost two decades ago. The--lone path that has just settled into home and this rocking bench in the sun.

I reflect.
Always in motion, it is difficult to truly know the lives and communities I've touched or affected but perhaps the greatest effect is, as I tell my friend's 3 year old little grandmother who pretends to know everything:

The greatest process of learning is knowing what you do not know and looking to those who do.

What I do know is how to resist the established thought for me own--to be told over and over I'm crazy for living differently until it is the norm, and how to say unfavorable truths to medicine kids in the throws of addiction who have only stories of use and addiction to share, disembodied, who are bored of esoteric wisdom, whose elders are quietly either in addiction themselves or manipulating them and encouraging it for money, I have shared my wisdom.

This exploration I have resisted since I broke down the willow of a lodge threatening to charge and threw it in the fire. A bit thunderbird of me, but "I kin me." This trend I silently observed in my heart welcomed and watched as the wealthy and humble sat circle together, then some took over every indigenous circle and spiritual realm shifting it into yet another rat race for financial flow.

​Grateful for financial flow, wealth was not my objection, the shift in dominant focus was.

I retreated further from technology, my generation, and spirit family into jungles to quietly do the work of touching one body at a time. I flourished in someways and in others felt two things 1. like a ghost and 2. like a caricature phantom of my previous self.

Resisting only to resist. In a cyclic thought about how to protect the spirit of teachings that taught me freedom in my spirit, the power of connecting to Source, in health and vitality and mostly in relationships.

I have, and we all know the danger of judgement, but also I questioned the difference between discernment and judging behaviors and actions. Why? Because of my own time as teenager crying for visions, needing rite of passage overdosing seeking God in acid, cocaine, and alcohol and leaving body to find death ancestors and pain pulling me back into body so that spirit compelled me to serve young, old, sick, my own family and adopted. For protection. Looking into my own heart, " I kin ye."

I was always two people, both too old wearing my grandmother's shawl and wise enough to know what habits age, that there are grey spirits that feed through us their own addictions, and a teacher who acted surrogate mother to many teens needing adults who refused to parent or guide, too busy caught up in the age of youth beauty and riches. Forgive my fighting, some experiences have taught me patterns and cycles I do not wish to replicate. Discernment. I could not unknow what I knew.

I look up from my heart. Resistance and judgement, to protect myself from my former selves. A third woman arises. She sees youth and fun are still here glowing and glimmering. She observes the power of medicine, time, the changing of generation as new generation elder teachers guide soften and learn to parent, to sober, to think, to consider future, pay attention. Next generation. My spirit family tribe. Where is the door back in?

Acceptance.

I began to again focus on beauty, joy and devotion.

From the outside of tribe, I gather those in outer circle to enclose, embrace and pull in towards the safety of inner circle. Bring back together strays. Rejoice. Open. Learn again.

Clear the black web of separation, change my words, address my own human heart pains, make contact. Calls to people I let go too long, travelling no longer valid excuses. Well springs burst again and what seemed lost is found. That for the youth I touched in my idealistic phase--a circle is now drawn around me--spiraling back loved, awakened to higher-mind meditations of devotion, elements, song, dance and the simple things that give community meaning.

The ceremony of life.

I see them, this young generation of medicine people will be both an evolved version of the best minus the fight for the way has now been paved. They are safe to commune with the invisible realms and supported in vision. These ones hold the sacred, like Paradise, in their hears. It can't be taken. These are the ones honoring their bodies, taking care of the Earth, trusting the power of prayer, and holding a higher form of love creed that transcends all dogma.

These ones bring me back to life. Their words and actions are medicine and, though they work with plants, WHO they are is the salve not what they use, and not in excess.

The second group of young ones become grotesque caricatures of charlatan teachers (in the old days tribal elders in tipi were drug and alcohol counselors) lacking ethics and foundation to hold them steady. They imitate behaviors and language but mock God and Spirit, engage in consumption to extremes that will deplete dopamine stores and create physical/ mental disease. They are not medicine for the people, but have only words to downplay the Armageddon of soul.

Pictures, not only of garden, adorned my spiritual upbringing but the ways people would choose darkness in empty choices, false pursuits, and addictive behaviors also were present.

When I began to see the trend of addiction and tainted places of worship in which I used to seek sanctuary, I left.

More concerned with free mind and healthy body, I focused on what saved me from the path of nowhere, empty. I took firm stances and cut off relations. I now know this was itself a blind eye, fixated on shadow, and I was momentarily building a firewall. Looking inward at my own ego, my own addiction to cyclic stories, my transient nature, and the quest for the infinite became finitely fixed on human pursuits, my own failures that led to dust.

As I stopped travelling, the wall fell and the karmic train dustily piled up now cleared and quiet. Tangled heart are free. Relationships re-established. And, though I love that I've gotten younger than I was when young, the expression kiddo being used by several elder women in my life have awakened my wizened heart. I am not a child, although relationships have always been my little girl cry.

To heal, the story must circle.

Zonia?
Yes?
How long does it take to heal?
As long as it takes to spiral back to the point of confusion, to tell the story until you are either bored, have better experiences that define you anew, or collect more data until you refute that idea which is making you sick.
What if I get so far into it I forget where I am trying to go?
Other people are more likely to forget you than you are, hold close to your heart, trust, you will come out the other side.

I remember during my morning oceanic embryonic brew that one of my favorite pictures of this spiritual warfare was a ring of self-induced chaos and confusion, fire wherein in the middle is paradise and the humans highly tuned to nature, surrounded by the love of people from all of Earth, devoted in their heart to spirit, are protected, peaceful, kind, happy, and truly free.

This is my tribe. My spirit family. So in love. So in their hearts.

Independent of others for extreme riches or expenses, their simplicity leaves little barriers between a real life with a fit body and a shimmering heart.

This to me is the true meaning of THRIVE.

Protecting these things that are of value is the next generation's mission. At one with the elements they wish to safeguard our waters flowing from Mother's breast, the Earth from which all beings grow be it food, animal, plant, human, the air we breathe, to live in tune with the metal of their hearts vibrating towards all life and ever in harmony with human destiny to love--to hold--to connect--to heal that which has been structured to separate us from the power to choose light.

Money is not god, but it can be used by godlike people in order to create new systems. It can be a great ally. Welcome it and fixate our hearts on opportunity, stewardship, education, connection, health, joyful celebration, and lasting experiences.

For the Indigos who fought to clear the path and karmic relationships for this new generation, may there be understanding for this our kin. Current world consciousness arising was not won easily and though it proliferates in words and beauty, there is still much to do, but may we birth into the circles of safety and joy. May love draw us into the light. May we be taught again the idealistic beauty of faith and love's devoted contemplation.

I accept the new generation of true medicine people as my teachers and return again to basic lessons with a beginner's mind.

To know what it is I do not know and allow the love flowing to enter me dissolving all barriers between me and its people. Young, old, mid-life--let us hold hands and be family. Sing praises. Recall our medicine hearts to our friends, elevate desires for life to continue and also have the strength to face still resisting corruption with a shining spirit. True inspiration breathes life and creates unity.

Let us breathe together, then, and remember desires of the heart drive all action and determine not only our own destiny but of the entire human race.

Sitting swaying bench, I look into my prayerful hands and see the light of gratitude I felt myself reaching for, it is here with me and I hold it close. Nothing to resist, calling safety into my field. Heart to heart with all living beings, pulling me forward, connected, friendly, hopeful, healed, and a I feel a golden shower of happy rain down upon me in sunlight through the leaves like medicine to my soul.

Years ago now, when loved ones of mine experienced wildfires, I sent a message that to them, even me, seemed ridiculous, but in the time that has passed since, I have come to appreciate the metaphoric language of surveying the wreckage of life.

Make piles of screws and nails.

Of course I knew then, as we all do, there will be heavy machinery that will plow through the aftermath but the eye trained on the small treasures will turn towards the ashes, get low to the ground look for screws and nails, as in

"Focus on the little things that will help you rebuild."

Find the surviving garden gnome and, in the silence that follows mourning wildlife and places of long held memory, put these little things as a symbol that which endures, for the wild flowers that will bloom, for the now germinated seeds of forest that, laying in wait for the heat, sprouts life.

And yourself, stooped and surveying years of work ahead, will also become a symbol of community, humanity, that continues to love, grow, give, sing, and celebrate. In the years that follow, you will watch life return, not only to your own heart, but to those around you.

In the end the surrender of old memories, will birth and everything will be made new again.

Since I've stopped traveling and come to a stop, with the dust settling behind me, I have surveyed what is left of the life I had before I began. I think about the nearly two decades of backpacking I spent walking 12-14 hours a day. In what direction?

"I always knew my heart would guide my feet in the direction where my vibration would be needed even if I didn't understand why I was there," one of my best friend Mags says about the journey.

This she says in response to my questioning my lone path, the many people, places and things I have lost along the way, some in give away more than I have generosity, some in "three moves is a fire," and some lost in true Thunderbird will not put up with that kind of behavior style.

For the latter, I find myself standing up out of the ashes of my life and the many choices I have made to follow the way for me. Close to the ground and the little things, I catch myself searching for nails and screws.

What are the little things that remain to put myself and my life, pre-27 year old Saturn return travel cycle Apache vision quest initiation back together?

One peace.

The life of living in a 7 mile radius and never leaving for years. The life of a teacher who touches the lives of at-risk teens who have no adults guiding them into the lives they are seeking. The life of a woman innocent and still believing in forever love, faith in an active force moving through me and guiding me to lakes, forests and tress.

This me, even those who knew me then, have to really focus to remember.

I am focusing to remember. Recovering from the quest for infinite potentiality. Infinite me's. Infinite loves. Infinite fantastical dreams. Infinite crafts and talents. Infinity, as in, never ending rabbit holes.

True power lies in one love.

One you. The complete version, as opposed to the characature in the jungle. One place, as in funnel your energy into home community.

Visit potentiality, but safeguard what is true.

This I realize after trying to move to Maui to be with my much younger boyfriend. My youngest nephew calls, he is seeking adult influence during a transition and almost jumps on a plane. For him, I leave. for myself, knowing that I will never find true peace if it doesn't exist in my family.

I keep this and my deep felt responsibility for family in my heart and make a new life closer to him and his now thriving family. I cut off social media when a group of women laugh at my not being able to make Maui life last.

"We all talked about it and knew you wouldn't last."

I hear this, and my private life becomes profound. As in Huna style keep secret like a seed under ground, show people only the flower. I realize not everyone is praying for my success. I realize that putting my whole life for all to see elicits all responses. How affected are each of us by the thoughts people have when looking at our pictures, discussing our lives? I believe more than we realize, after all people charge money for distance reiki, that is someone to conjure a picture of us in the mind and send thoughts which are energy our way.

So much of my life is still private. Glimpses, yes. All the details, all the precious finds from the ashes of my life, those are for me and my closest loved ones. The ones who call and talk voices to voices. The ones who visit, sit face to face.

Connection is not an idea. It takes time, shared memories, something I didn't always have to settle grievances in a timely manner. Small things become big. Biggest lesson of the cedar bag. Heal relations. Say what is true in your heart. Allow misperceptions and injury to be cleared. Allow love to enter into all your spaces.

I finally have my own space. It's not temporary. It's my home.

I pass through anxiety about losing it. I pass through anxiety of people trying to take it. I pass through the anxiety that there will be those who don't believe I deserve it. I pass through the sitting in it alone after years of seeking home with partners.

I tell my friend who’s house I rent. She wells with tears as she expresses how happy she is I am home, how much she appreciates the work I’ve done, and how the work I’m doing on the house is a blessing. I feel loved, safe, welcomed, wanted. I pray to be surrounded by more friends like her.

I fall asleep. Deeply asleep for a month after assisting my nephew with his new baby. I'm a great aunt. Somehow the first generation under me made it to adulthood and generations move forward. I find peace, like paradise after Armageddon. Everything gets quiet.

I start social media up again after finding it difficult to navigate community events. I realize that technology is so prolific that I am in social isolation. I hear a song by Steve Gold, "Isolation wears an ugly face." I realize that I used to think of Facebook as a form of isolating ourselves from direct personal contact, but I am out of a loop, or should I say newsfeed, and many people have broken dependency to tool status. Still 500 likes is not equal to one phone call or cup of tea.

These I offer to friends.

Can I protect myself this round from self-consciousness, anxiety and fear over my truths and writings, from those who compare and seek not the best but the holes, the fragility, the vulnerability, the humanity. It is there to be sure. I can assure myself and others of that. I never have proclaimed to have the answers. Just a mind full of never stop asking questions, an educators view of the world, produce your own content. As in higher order thinking skill, aka think for yourself.

My gratitude smiles fills my heart with laughter, a thing I do even when I'm nervous and always at what would be considered "inappropriate" times. Buddha, you right, we funny.

​ People who come to me will find that I give less advice, sometimes a channelled word, but mostly a yep been there done that life goes on sometimes we get it right listening ear and lots of love flowing from my hands.

Focus on the life I have now.

Reactivated. So many friends and acquaintances. Life has moved along. Children aren't babies, they are in college. I find myself on there. I visit my albums. Some pictures are missing. First round breakups, I never could delete them all because I know I wasn't in those moments alone. To erase them is to have giant holes and forgotten memories keepers burned in the fire. Forgotten forever. Perhaps this would be best, but for the lovers I no longer stay in contact with, I cherish the energy they have birthed inside of me, the memories that make up the tapestry of the story of my life, the keys to love I have learned. One of which is, STAY.

I remember talking to two lovers at the resort where I lived after another relationship burned to the ground, not out of flakiness but out of a calling to serve 300-500 people a season in the jungle, to financially rebuild my life and the younger generations, and be allowed (by the loving family I have in Mexico) to become my whole self. They tell me, the next time you are really in love, don't leave, no matter what.

Really in love with a place, with your life, a full realization that you could never trade in for anything better. This isn’t infinite potential, it’s real. This is it. It’s not perfect, just yours. You are in love and your brains, the thinking that spirals you out, have fallen out of your head like the double rainbow on mushrooms day in kalalau Kenny’s 32 birthday.

Love is staying. Staying in love is practice. Practice is cherishing. Cherishing is holding close. I remember reading a quote, "I knew that if anyone was going to take me seriously, I had to slow down."

Slow. The speed of searching through the rubble for the little nails and screws that you can easily rebuy, but these ones, they actually held your house together. They are special. Everything isn't gone, you are still there to discover them. Will you find them all? Will you really do this for the whole property? No, if by chance you even started, you will give up. Maybe you will pick up one or two and, then, see that cleanup is bigger than this, and let go. You'll never be able to save what little things are left.

Surrender the past and everything associated with it.

Start over. Let ash piles burn to fine dust. Unpack the ancestral momentos you saved from the flames, they are the most important part of your story.

Rebuild with new love, no memories from past holding back your future forward growth. Find more strength than you knew and burst your heart open wide to tears to laughter, to feeling and let life overtake you with her magical ability to go on, to thrive, to refill your life with everything you lost, in a new form.

This we call resurrection.

We call it Olive Magic. As in all in love with Olive. To channel the best of our lives for the future generation and balance our rebellion with good people values and change with preservation in mind. So grateful for new beginnings.  This we call grace.

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.

People ask me often how I keep the dreaming alive inside me. To be honest, there are periods of time when it dims and I can’t see very clearly, but I was lucky enough to be raised by a seeet Mexican woman who’s smile lights up the room and who’s warm hands send love through your entire being.

Though the rest of the family is not, in her private heart and spiritual practice she is a paradaisical Jehovah’s Witness (the opposite of what I call armageddonites focused on destruction and judgement.) So from birth my mother raised me looking at happy pictures of paradise with people of all tribes races living in harmony with the earth and animals. She taught me to develop a deeply personal relationship with god and to pray from my heart, then trust what that god directed me to do. She taught me to believe in angels and that those angels would direct us to people who needed hope, comfort, and love.

I did pray deeply with this being who’s name my own studies taught me was a verb, an active force creating me and everything for a purpose. In my own ponderings on creator force I saw it powerful enough to create the sun and wise enough to put things in motion with mathematical precision. I studied life on this earth and the forces that have to exist in perfection for there to be human beings and this gave me profound appreciation for life.

In my state of wonder I met and mentored with a yogic chiropractor acupuncturists ak Bach flower remedy using energy and emotion in spine in accordance with diet and spiritual awareness married with real truth seeking questions and the ability to laugh at nonsensical teachings teacher. He was my best friends dad. Through that teacher I came to the power of body and it’s intrinsic complex beauty.

There came a time in my life when I realized I didn’t want to wait for some future time when god would make paradise happen, I wanted to go back to nature and it was at that time my first Native American teacher came to me.

She twined me spiritually to my vision and taught me to trust what I saw. We did month long fasts and meditations. And soon that force, guiding me since birth, directed me to give away all my belongings and put on a backpack.

There were of course many factors in my physical, spiritual, emotional healing that gave me the courage to do so, but also there was a fearlessness and trust that surely something beautiful would be waiting for me.

I would say that 15 years of traveling has given me the greatest gift of all. The pleasure of meeting infinite amounts of people who share the childhood dream I was raised to cherish. I encounter them all the time and usually when my traveling is tiring me, I feel depleted or miss my home community in the Sierra Nevadas.

In the moments that I am feeling deluded by myself thinking I’ve been doing something, I will meet the next generation or a thriving community of people with like minds all desiring some sort of utopian answer to our disconnected technological driven consumeristic world. Then I feel, hey we have done something! I believe the next generation will revitalize and reinvigorate the older generation and continue to awaken, reawaken and energize us. What a victory! To our quest they will add varying beliefs and strengths beyond new age towards embodiment of the material.

There is a generation, like myself, who have been devoted to health of body mind and spirit and who, in the beginning, had to push so hard against firewalls designed to keep us in containers.

Defy containers.

Especially your own. Push boundaries. Grow. Learn. Discover. Be undefined by dogmasbut forever inspired by ideals of the best kind.

Freedom. Joy. Creativity. Integrity. Love. Forgiveness.

In the past year, having given so much time to the life of others, I had a physical collapse that lead to injury. At the same time major beloveds who had travelled with me through lifes uncertain journeys repartnered. During this deep period, which came just as I was coming out of communal isolation and disassociation from group think and social media, caused me to recocoon.

It has been a genuine gift to me. As I steadily go inward, dreams arise out of my subconscious. As I awake there is a sun in my heart, awareness and awakening in places that, for whatever reason, I’d closed and fallen into slumber. As this she awakens, she feels welcomed and loved by current self.

I can only think to accredit this to my recent reignited love of Jungian philosophy and Marion Woodman who is not of a new age era.
In the midst of a desire to grow I began to meditate upon those unexplored parts of self and remembered every part of life is a passing phase. Some are more fun than others. Some are so meaningful and, for my part defining.

I will call the years to come the Olive years. Life after all the love my brother, ex-sister-in-law, many grandparents and I invested into children now grown. The next generation confidently have arrived at a place in their life when they have family, love, home and the first new baby in 20 years.

That the time from ending my teaching careeer to following spirit journeys yogic twists and bends along the past and basic confrontation of everything I question about my mothers religion has birthed another generation.

Who will each of us be to her after so many reevaluations experiments mistakes excursions adventures brave choices changes and going back to the beginning? She will meet an amalgam of all ourselves combined and influenced by each other reflections and, of course, family jokes.

When I struck out on my own, I devoted myself to world religions, certain there was a common desire from all these cultures that would bring them together, and in them I found a humble desire for love and communion, a healthy desire to thrive and for families to be safe and protected, with a spiritual belief that they are loved by the force that put everything in motion.

I also went headlong into shamanism and relationship with unseen spirits. For me I had allowed angelic direction to guide me and why would t that happen worldwide to many people for the best of reasons, relief, confirmation in spirits presence and action in our life.

Then there was relationship with the seen world the elements the plants the animals people. That together we comprise life on earth and a harmonious relationship with these things is a harmonious planet in complement to one another, supporting future and wellbeing for all. It is a knowing that those who walked before us and ensured our existence have a perspective to share and wisdom to guide. That together old and new, seen and unseen, the future can be pabed ahead of us based on current today decisions.

Finally, I questioned sexuality and repression of natural urges. Eventually having passed through desire and lust to passion friendship personal boundaries understanding freedom of sexual expression is exactly what feels good in your heart body mind and can not exist separately because of the psychic schism that occurs when heart mind and body are not in agreement. As in encounters void of love, out of mind but body used, and anything attempting to please someone else or fill an emotional gap that only spirit and self creation can bring you to higher elevations of love consciousness.

It is all a journey to knowing beyond family, culture and religion has implanted but in the end, most guidelines are supplied with the understanding that there are predators there are those who would manipulate us into servitude, there are selfish beings who would attempt to twist love and we must get stronger in our hearts to remember not what provided temporary pleasure but lasting gems that we can treasure for life.

For everything in our life there is a time to know for yourself what is true. Do it from a place of self love and there will be less regrets and in the end when one phase blends into the other and you have grown, even those will dissipate.

The great teachers of your life to whom you are no victim but wild choosing and eventually making the round back to what is love, the dream world, the happy world where nightmare choices and dramas fade into old systems of thought and shedded costumes for lighter days of celebration and true you.

No barriers, no fear, no judgement.

Acceptance. This is true forgiveness. Live what made you. Love it. Believe in a higher power. Trust yourself to be loving. Trust others to love you.Know there are no accidents. Put your mind on your life. Lose your mind. Open your heart. Rebirth.

Stand in the sun. Feel natural water on your face. Breathe deep. Hold hands. Walk under the stars. Sit around the fire. Laugh at your own foibles and observe your own cuckoo. It’s ok, we can all relate. Love each other through imperfection, know it’s what makes life so valuable. That our one life is hard enough to power organize, contemplate who is the a awesome force that put it all in motion. Who blesses us with sunrise, sunset?

Look your dad in his deep peering Native American Vietnam landmine surviving amputee seeing right into your soul eye.

Know he raised you to be virginal. Tell him youre wild. Explain what men want and how a woman frees herself from caring. Show him your heart. Embrace your mother and the innocence of her spirit. Put it back in your own heart, retain freedom.

​Remember you love puppies and babies. Remember your romantic heart monotony and commitment make you blossom. Stand for family and healing. Give to people when you have nothing to show for it but the wealth god allows to flow through you to them. Realize you have everything.

Zonia?
Si poppy?
Your calling is expensive.
Breathe a heavy sigh for success that doesn’t necessarily bred wealth. It’s nice to be understood.

Its bigger than you what calls you to travel to help strangers.

Assure him you are in your heart and not to fear for you. You are as strong as he wanted you be, but maybe more than he ever knew possible. Have him reaffirm that he knows who you are and what you have done. Good bad and ugly. Love unconditionally. See his aging heart feel deep peace.

Be in your body. Love your body. It’s yours. It’s the vehicle for all your experience. Painful and all the running trails climbing mountains rehabilitating joints and spine one tear at a time, repair. Do it again. One day at a time climb yourself and those you love out of holes and then watch their little seed sprout and know it’s all been worth it. All the tires gave you all the amazing. All the hard made your teong. All the weak gave you god.

So live a little. Live a lot.

Know there are healthy vibrant choices filled with laughter and self development. Use your mental capabilities to imagine this you happier than you ever have been. Then follow the path to that you calling you to flamenco dancing red lipstick full moon ocean dancing with your best friends and then do it alone when no one is watching. Do it for the elements. Do it for your heart. For your family. Do it as if what happens in private for one person affects the whole world. Give it your light willingly give it your life and trust in the end all the things people places you let go of will all be loved held celebrated including you.

Know you will disappoint others and yourself. Dust yourself off. Say sorry. Mean it. Think about what to do differently. Then get on with it. Do it better every time.

Spiral in. Spiral back out. Inhale open. Exhale, no really exhale, stop bracing against the spaciousness of empty. Leave room to move. Your things will never fulfill the spirits longing to outgrow your body until one day you fly free...like the eagles, the hawks, the winged Pegasus.

Dream in magical terms. Believe in everything good coming. Tread carefully around cautionary tales because life is fragile but trust your allies and guides. You got this. Make a come back from injury of all sorts.

There is is no alternative. Add hoops fire and lots of dancing to paradise and find others creating the same reality. Join forces. We have done something. The dream is alive and moving everywhere we are alive.

Real life is better than dreams.

There is no substitute for personal practice, also known as you experiencing what you feel like in your body, what you think and taking time in a private space to put your attention on it.

​Where you quiver is where you need to get stronger. Move with fixed attention.

Practice. Get stronger.

Come to the boundary. Don’t pass it, just hold. A working posture. Joint stability. Don’t move.

Contract. Use your muscles, not to pull but to stay, keep loose with breath. Relax into it.

Expand. Open where you are tight, slowly, and strengthen where you are weak, mindfully, deliberately. Breathe.

Contact, engage bhandas.

Expand. Do your favorite postures, but devote yourself to the ones you hate and are hard. You need those the most.

If you keep going you will adjust, patterns will shift in your psyche.

Apply what you learn. Change habits.

Do different postures.

Shift.
Focus.

”Imitation is suicide.” Read Emerson’s Self-Reluance Essay.

​Become your own guiding star.

Educate yourself. Apply information, study, memorize...you know, all the things teacher made you do in school. You’re the teacher now.

Train your mind, follow with body observation. Listen. Adjust.

Learn from different schools and teachers. Especially conflicting ideas.

Be open to understanding. Let go of dogma. Do everything they say not to. Keep what proves true. Do everything they say to, let go of false beliefs, fears taught like truth, remember real yoga (mind working with body) is healing. Always, but you must understand how to apply information. This is wisdom.

Devote yourself to your favorites. Integrate.
Create a truth representing your journey. There’s no conflict. All of it is you. You made it that way. 🙌

Go back to the beginning.
Wheres the beginning?
Where you began.
Began what?
Before the circle stories and the glitches. Let go to a time before they were.
Observe wide eyed.
Then say nothing.
Go to lodge. Say nothing.
Go to yoga. Say nothing.
Sit in circle. Share nothing.
Cut your hair. Take your jewelry off. Wear plain clothes.
Zonia, why did you cut your hair? The deep answer to a deep question, I thought native people only cut their hair when someone dies.
I did.
The Mexico answer.
Zonia! We love your new look.
Shake my head laugh smile. Start over again.
Prefer the Mexico answer.
Go to lodge.
Zonia, sing and speak my friend says, if you keep your wisdom inside it will rot.
Go to lodge.
Sing. Be led. Celebrate but say little. Watch. The young who once sat are teaching now. In the years of my traveling they are now family with farm and new baby.
A new baby in the family is coming. My brother does the grandpa dance.
Start over with her.
Everything is new.
Graduate phases in life.
Move on.
Real friends grow with you and no matter your costume, occupation or calling you will always be the same.
Sit Shabot. Love family. Put them first.
Was I very serious when I met you?
Yes, but you were always you.
Go to Esalen.
Say everything.
Make peace have self-compassion.
Go to lodge, say nothing except to ask for silence to hear the steam, the ocean, the river flowing where thermal waters meet.
Dance. Paint. Run in the rain.Feel happy inside.
The real lodge is earth. The elements are with us no matter the practice. They live inside our bodies and next to us.
Outgrow the container.
Go to El Paso. Dance. Sing. Embrace. Laugh.
Go to Mexico. Dance. Sing. Laugh. Work much less. Love the community. Spend time with friends. Change season.
​In between imagine the next yes moment that will define a thriving beginning filled with love and happiness.
​Wear costumes for fun.
Dance at midnight alone in the dark of the temple hall.
Teach yoga.
​Heal my spine.
Remember home, before traveling in the years of teaching. Remember community.
Go back to the beginning.
Wherever that is.
​Birth it inside silently but live fully.

Sharing a podcast done in El Paso with my good friend Robert Acosta of Float Spa. We will be having an event together in El Paso March 9 and 10 @ Casa de Yoga, El Paso (East Side, $30)

I am adding a story addendum because the opening sequence seems contrived. I asked myself if the details were clear and here is their full true rendering.

While in Mexico I had a series of dreams about a female child about to be born, who I now know to be my great niece. I shared these with my friend in Thailand, Jason, and told him I felt a child was about to be born.

Then I went my way to Texas, where my mother had painted this same female vision.

I did not know if the child was mine and went onto my next journey in Colorado. Around that time, my friend told me he had a new teaching partner who would be taking him to California. He didn’t know any details and on I went from Colorado to Utah.

I was about to fulfill a life dream of going to the Arches National Park. I was at the stop sign about to turn left, 15 miles from my destination, when spirit said a resounding,
”No.”
”What do you mean, no? It’s right there.”
”No.”
”What? Why? I’m here.”
”No.”
”Arg,” I said as I made the right turn towards a friend’s house in Salt Lake City.

The questioning did not stop, however. Why was I being redirected with urgency like an appointment had to be made. Where was I being directed?

My friend, Ken, called and said he and his partner were going to a blues fusion two day festival. “Oh,” I thought that sounds fun, maybe I’m supposed to be there.

"Everyone is going” he said reiterating all our friend's names.
“Ok, I’ll go.”

So I bought the ticket and headed towards Grass Valley where the festival would begin. I found out none of the people who were going are actually going to be there. I try to sell the ticket and even give it away because I’m exhausted.

Suddenly, I get a call. The day I arrived in Grass Valley is the same day my friend from Thailand arrives and (oh...yeah). They are going to the two day festival.

So, the opening story: My friend and I end up at Convergence without knowing the other will be there. I’m definitely being guided and synchronicity happens from Thailand to Mexico, but the 6 sentence version left a lot out and I think that's what I hear in my voice.

Anyways! Since the first podcast went so well, here’s the second podcast link! Love you😘❤️❣️

​https://www.podbean.com/media/share/pb-wj5c5-a241f1

Iriginally this was an article on entrepreneurship with guest writer Elena Madrid.

I had to interview someone because I am learning to ask experts their opinions about things. Elena came to my mind because she is a beautiful strong grandma my age who went to high school at my same school and graduated somewhere else.

She is not afraid to take the lead, create systems and fill in gaps where help is needed. She works for the college of education in Austin, Texas.

Her information is so good that I gave her name to my friend Robert who owns Float in El Paso, Texas and he is helping change consciousness for the next generation living in a thriving healthy environment birthing itself in the desert.

I met him because I went to Float to soak in a giant tub of epsom salt called a float tank. It was just what I needed.

His enthusiasm and drive to share information about medicine ways and help a lineage of people free themselves from fear of using plants as medicine sparked a great conversation. It was the perfect idea for a show and he asked if I would sit and talk to him for a while.

I do a guest show on his Podbean, The Higher Frequency Podcast. Here’s the link to my first podcast:
(https://www.podbean.com/media/share/pb-id8vg-9a560f)

He’s amazing and extremely intelligent. We could have talked for hours and did!

I do have a reward for the first person who blog comments the word for the show. We say it hundereds if times. It’s hilarious.

He recently happened to ask when I was returning to El Paso and it turned out he was doing a show on entrepreneurship. So, synchronized because Elena happened to be in El Paso and it’s her area of expertise. So grand Elena did a show...

Long story, I have no guest writer for this blog, just a good story about El Paso connections.

I love where I was born. It’s amazing knowing people since my birth. I even know where my great grandmothers were born, died and are buried. Also, everyone moves very slowly, so everyone always has time.

Desert very hot...move slow.

Ok. In between sessions right now, just reflecting and remembering I have blogs to write, journals, yoga and life ahead of me so I’m getting off the phone now.

​Love you❣️
Big kisses.
Big hugs.

I want to share the most amazing important information life experience has taught me.

The key to love is using it.

Especially among relations. Right relationships are the ones lived in public eye with a community of people who love and face each other everyday.

Can you look each other in the eye? How will you ever know, if you do not share?

Ideas.
Time.
Place.

Backstory and what you now understand about yourself and why you made the decisions you did then. Actually doesn’t matter why anymore. End justification and victim mentality.

Make yourself right with it because nothing will change how you responded in that moment you only can affect how you respond to current ones.

What idea are you at this time, for this place?

Wisdom is knowing your eye is trained to see what you believe. Believe in someone good loving you. Love someone good in return.

What is a right relation?

It is a healthy relationship with ourselves in relation to others. As in, not overinflated or unnecessarily humble. It’s harmonious. Honest. Unhurried. Able to listen.

Harmonizing intellects. Gathering information. Multiple perspectives and genres.

The full story. Share what life has taught you based on the lives you have lived.

The key to relationship is sharing the information stored inside you. Unlock the doors in perception, tell your love story, be balanced with truths.

Undo the lies silence and misperceptions have created inside you. Share what you feel. Socially awkward. Listen. Unknow. Relearn. Repressed now expressed is free from illusion. Release anxieties. Communicate.

Free to relate is relationship.

Friendly disagreements. Still functioning relationships. Healthy living together. Completely different but understood. Completely wrong but also so right.

In right relation. Me to you and everything in between.

Believe in me loving you.
Believe in the power of loving me.

Opposites. Attract. Male female. Young old. Right wing left wing. Not opposed. Meeting in the middle where we connect and then being friendly.

Leave it. You’re not the teacher. Neither am I. But both are students. Learn more. We will never know it all. Stop trying. Confusion is unnecessary. No need to put it all together.

Just share.

Justification and defense leaves holes in the whole. Stop knit picking, instead weave the thread.

All of us.
Together.
Are relations.
One Source.
​One brillant solution oriented mind.
Putting our world back together again one memory at a time. The best ones.

Tell your best stories, let go of the ones you no longer relate to. You are no longer in relation to each other. It’s neutral. That is healthy.

To live lives separately but forever together in our hearts. Choosing happy...softer actually...content...at peace.

Then... silence.

Let the circle go. Let go. In between thoughts is the life you are really living. It’s right here in front of you, the place where memory and current experiences overlay.

In Native ways, talking story is the most powerful form of healing, especially when spoken by a channel or medium in a group setting.

The collective is joined by life experiences and the healing is told by the one who has come to accept, understand, realize, and honor the same but different occurrence.

In the telling of story is the presentation of spiritual concepts at work, much like Jesus on the Mount of Olives when he spoke in simple parable, it is the human way to understand the esoteric.

If you aren’t paying attention, it will seem talking story is talking circles, or somehow off topic, but I like to think it’s a moment to spiral out in words all the thoughts we hear but don’t organize.

It is the hearing of memory, the validity of or questions in life now witnessed. Once the story is witnessed, it changes all stories and loses its power. Both teller and listener are transformed, releases from the isolation of overly charged “special” circumstances because truth is, all are in this living together.

We cocreate a truth. Rewrite mythology. Share perspectives.

Real taking story is uncensored, more like stream of consciousness, sometimes you even lose your place.

I remember meeting my elder brother Navaho. First things first, “I’m fat and I’m trying to lose weight.” Just so you know where he is coming from, what he is praying for himself tonight in tipi, and just so you know, he’s not a perfect man.

My brother does this without wanting to, and in anxiety he will ask me, “Zonia? Why do I meet someone and immediately start telling them a personal story about my grandma?”

It's the healing way we live with our hearts open and ready to connect at a deeper level, these are the topics that mean something to us.

What was I taking about?

Rehear yourself think. Yes, this point I am wanting to remember, and it will spiral until it is spoken and words take flight.

I remember stories. Keeper of memory. Knower of experiences. The, well, in relation to that story, I once heard the story about, which is different from my story, and similar to yours, but not the same. The, yes, things happen. They really do.

What you are feeling or seeing is normal. Not at all absurd. Valid.

Want some tea?

I have some photos I want to share.

Yes, please. Tell me the story behind the image. Why do you store it here? Who does it say you have been and will be into the future more?

It is taking me years back to access that experience perhaps it’s time for now my experiences are.

Who we were, is not who we are. It’s what we do today as a result of yesteryears. But it’s a start.

We look at photo albums, a son has died but this is us before when his mother and I began. The father shows me pictures of himself with a big giant fro and beard grown in Amsterdam.

I have to laugh and say, "Hey! You realize I now can't concentrate on anything you are saying. I can only picture you with a big giant beard and fro!"
​
We show pictures to show people where we are coming from in the sands of time, we step forward through ages and deaths and beginnings anew out of the silence.

Hey, tell me a story. A good one. Make it a love story. Tell the truth. Laugh and cry. Be human to human, you and me. We have this life we are living. What is behind it, revealed in snipets.

I’m sitting in my car. A squirrel runs towards me across the road. Aspen leaves quiver in the winds changing season, towards fall I’ll be 43.

Tell a story. Which one? Where shall we begin? And how do I feel about it now?

​Well, give me a second. I remember, this one time, let me use words and see if I can paint the story.

​Heart, you’re the leading character. Don’t be shy.

Listening is the first step.

Confusion is the result of our limited perspective attempting to process unlimited variables and unknowns through the computer of our brains.

For me, confusion is, not enough information, as in, not yet time, as in, wait and see, as in, do not yet proceed. Get quiet, very quiet. Ask a Higher Source from a greater vantage point, one that knows the heart and situations of the many on whom, from time to time, my next decision is dependent.

Not knowing is not the problem. Patience is.

Slow down. No, really, go the speed of the sun.

I remember years ago meeting a Tahoe local who slept on the beach. It was fall, he didn’t have much to do or own anything but he was happy.

”Zonia?”
”Yes?”
”Have you ever watched the leaves change colors?”

I looked at him, “Of course!” My mind twirled around images of all the seasons and remembered many a red and gold tree.

He smiled wide taking in a fellow nature lover. He pointed at a tree next to us, “I watched that one change yesterday.”

I paused, looked and laughed in appreciation. No, I thought then (but have since, yes) I have never watched a tree change color. I told him this with a new understanding of his question.

He smiled with a twinkly in his eye, “It was green in the morning but I noticed the edges turning yellow, so I stopped and watched it.”

That day that aspen was red and yellow.

”Really?! In one day?”

”In one day.”

Didn't seem true but since then, yes, in one day.

What do we give attention to in one day? One question? One situation?

The asking comes first. The listening takes time. The answer comes when we realize in our swirling minds, we are confused because we don’t have the answer.

What is the answer? Depends on the question.

How will you know when it comes? In the quiet a knowing will arise that you didn’t have before and it wasn’t in google which is driven by our minds, created by a mind. Databases only contain what is known and a mind can only seek what it can conceive.

It will come. The answer. But you have to listen and wait for it. How will you know? It will arise out of the quiet, the thing you didn’t think of before and it will feel like dawn’s first light, peace will descend in contented smiles and if it didn’t, at least the nonanswers will fall away into the quietude of observation.

Zen simplicity. Appreciation for what is. A knowing that everything has its seasons and cycles and the spaces between points us to where all the beauty is.

My Dad has just had knee surgery. His endorphins are wearing off and the pain killer prescription has expired.

I have plant medicines. I offer them after first saying, “Dad, I swear it’s not mine.” A reference to my brother getting busted in high school for experimentation and a porn magazine.

We both laugh. Really, it isn’t. I’m not sick at this moment, feeling healthy, happy, and fit. Medicine unnecessary. I forgot to give it to give to a client who deals with anxiety.

“Dad, seriously, do you want it?” His teeth are chattering and he has a fever. He says, yes, but only in food form.

”Ok. It’ll take a while.”

As the concoction brews and synthesizes, my dad looks at me and says, “I give you permission to practice medicine on me.”

I look at him and consider the long road from when I was choosing natural alternative therapies to heal my endocrine system after it shut down from a brain tumor and our many disagreements about that choice.

”Dad, I give You permission to practice medicine on yourSelf.”

My Dad and I have never feared disagreeing amicably about many topics. This isn’t one, especially now that this path has laid out in front of me from age 17, “It’s how I have become who I am,” I continue.

We take a moment to discuss pharmaceuticals and their scientific synthezation for the purpose of billion dollar profits taking plants and turning them into pills.

Aspirin and willow is one, but the list is extensive from anti-tumor agents and artichoke derived liver medications.

The insanity of it hits me in this particular moment, wherein, I tell my dad, reclaiming our relationships to seeds, plants and food is the first step to medical reformation.

When we realize knowledge, diet and natural medicine are free to every human being then perhaps we will begin, not to look outward at corporations as the problem, but rather our own separation from the Earth and a failure to take control of our own health.

This is not to discount medical doctors or emergency facilities with state of the art technology, rather this is to say that if we don’t start looking to the plants, not just for recreation or psychotropic effects, we will fail to liberate ourselves into health and a better relationship with our living planet.

Also, if we don’t realize the very separation of our plant from our consciousness and the creation of dependency on high priced synthesized versions is a form of addiction to unhealthy that keeps a billion dollar industry thriving so that it has the monetary power over politics, government and health care.

It begins with us. Every day. Every choice.

If we as a species are increasingly diseased, it is a product of our inability to doctor our own minds in conjunction with necessary behavior modifications, ending unhealthy patterns of addiction and also seeing the correlation between our choices in making our world a peaceful healthy place.

In making physical health a priority, we can begin to feed and water our bodies with the highest quality ingredients beginning with food sources, high plant based diets, especially greens.

As we become more in tune with the plants, we will understand water and sunlight as basic needs, realizing indoor lighting and computer screens are no substitute for active life styles and exposure to the outdoors. Being outside will increase our affection for living beings of all sorts, ourselves and our dependency on other life forms being one.

Perhaps our greatest source of disease is our disconnection.

When I say to my dad, practice medicine on yourself, I mean self heal. I mean know how to take care of your body. Do it daily. Stop lying about the things you know are breaking down your cellular structure. Stop contributing to the unhealth of society and reconnect to sources of healing.

One of the ways to do this is to recognize there are those who abuse plants with less side effects than prescription drugs. The idea that plant based medicines are the drugs of low economics and of the same vibration as alcoholism, needs to be healed. For many, the stigma is worse than the truth.

What is the truth? Somewhere between here and there. Always somewhere between here and there. Both sides see a truth that neither side will accept, this is blindness akin to the other side of the moon rejecting the existence of the sun because it is in the shadows.

Physical health is obtainable to all people, especially in our country. To be true, in our country there’s no excuse for claiming ignorance. Since I was a child and Arnold Schwarzenegger addressed childhood obesity and made us start doing chin ups by presidential decree, health and what constitutes it has been a conversation and a concern, and that was at the beginning of Lucky Charms sugar cereals and Burger King playgrounds.

The conversations and concerns: Soda and its effects on internal organs. Meat in high quantities, especially from discompassionate sources. Poisons on monocrops to cover over diseased farming practices. Corn syrups. Margarines. Any kind of science food not derived from a natural source. Did you know jaw breakers are actually sugar coated plastic? Yes, plastic. Here, son, because I love you.

The knowledge is there and rather than putting it to use people point fingers to Washington DC.

Highly radical first step to physical health, imagine someone who wanted you to be healthy rode with you in the car and steered you towards health alternatives in food. Imagine someone who desired vitality for you because they had nothing to gain monetarily, was with you in your home and deciding how you spent your time and money.

Imagine that person turned off the tv and went for a walk. Imagine that person making your meals. Imagine that person loving your children and interacting with them face to face. Imagine that person is you.

The real medicine I speak of practicing is wisdom, self-care, radical honesty and I not only give you permission to practice it on yourself, I say beginning with you can lead to a whole reform not only inside your bodies, families, communities, and country but would change the way we interact with the world and care for our life giving planet.

Discard the shell, Rumi says,
Keep the pearl of connectivity
Bright light’s angelic seed
At the center of heart beating
A rainbow bridge through uncertainty
Overwrite old stories, patterns that
No longer exist
Shimering gates
Crystalline overlays
Heart cords to highest selves in future
Pull you forward through passageways
In your mind
Focus
Dreams lay in dreams
Leave behind the self that fears freedom
Desires what is known to rise and repeat itself
Today births from what is not seen
An image surpassing your own understanding
Limited viewpoint
Stop controlling outcomes
Sink into the infinite plan
Heart seeking heart
Assurance
Listen
You are held
Love is guiding the way home
Follow the unpaved pathway
Synapsis
Faith healing in progress
Feeling the way not known for you
Returning to innocence in sandcastles
Wash away
Come back again
To the pearl in your heart
Believe in the best for you
The wind will carry you
You know where to fly
It’s a feeling, a knowing
Your child heart remembers
Unicorns and fairy princesses are the
Magical Kingdom
There is enough for all of us
If we remember how to share
Pearls of wisdom in
Our hearts
Find silence and
Follow the bridge spirit has laid called
Prayer
Connecting wisdom of experience
With blessings
Silence birthed reality
Destiny
Gratitude
Thank you for loving me
I am here, in your heart.
Put your mind on this
It is the pulse of eternity
The universe inside you
Awaken to your freedom
Will what is best for your
Intention
Live blessed, Beloved one,
The stars are shining for us
Become certain that the way unknown for you
Is lit with lanterns and
Hands outstretched to guide you
Though the way is not consciously known
You’ve been here before
Feeling
Listening
Knowing
You are not alone in the world
You never have been.
We are all here together on
The blue pearl so beautiful and
Beloved
In space
In time
The shell will fall away
The luminous sphere of souls freedom
Love’s will
Be revealed.

Who put the left brainers in charge of education? No, really, when did wholistic (holy whole) become categoric and compartmentalized become one box?

Little computers inputting information to catalogue inventory, take stock, human beings are best in full expression of life quests not waiting to live.

It seems to me, we could all stand to revisit psychologist Howard Gardner’s developmental intelligences.

In 1983, he proposed a multiple intelligence theory that broke down natural inclinations and knowings valuable to healthy society, in that, each one was an important part of society.

Some, like my brother who would hear music in everything, clicks and all tv conversation, would invisibly be drumming internally at all times a beat unheard by me. I always wondered what he was hearing.

When we we got older I remember watching him laying on the bed listening to music and I wanted to know what he heard. He would mouth the instrument line sounds so I could hear the independent sounds made by separate musicians. Soon I could hear the layers of music. I understood the staff dimensionally.

Others have a deep knowing of musicality and it’s connection to spirit. My friend Dolli feels music around her body and when she throws her operatic voice, she says it exists through her but outside her too, in the cathedral around her head.

Same brother, what a gifted nerd, was also given body smarts. He calls it independent limb function which is all limbs moving independent of the other’s direction at its own rhythm and beat. But, you know, musically and sounding right while doing it. That’s called multiple intelligences. Some people are good at more than one thing to an equal extent and those two things combine usually to determine what they do for a living.

In a perfect world, we watch the young living and see natural inclinations and give them skills to love the life they naturally lead.

This is of course the birth place for learning according to Kahuna master teacher modalities. It is the mainstay of indigenous culture and how kids ended up learning from auntie Mahi healing work or uncle Lloyd fire tending. It is how Waldorf Montessori got its roots, it’s called mastery and village training.

Modern day education seeks to mold the children into a need based society and, while some are born logical mathematical with a natural affinity for numbers and reasoning, most are not.

In fact, during the last years of my life as an educator, I was given the kids “at risk” of not fitting this mold. I became grateful for their spiritual rebellion, for my class was filled with spiritually artistically interpersonal socialites who danced their bodies, rapped in spoken words naturally loved the earth and seemed to know themselves.

All of which used to be fostered by elders as valuable skills needed to base society upon. In old law making, it would be unheard of to leave the heart, body and spirit out and put all decisions on mind. In fact, more import was given to the other three to inform mind about right choices and circles contained people representing various aspects of humanity.

As recent as this year, reflecting my own psychology and Jungian philosophy has me looking back on old information, gathering it for my own growth out of newly dogmatized new age practices originally meant to free people but now used to harness money for the list makers and how to livers.

As in, follow my amazing registered trade mark list for life and how to be spiritual, free, and healthy, only $19.95 and your eternal allegiance to something not generated by your independent thinking skills. This approach, pretty much the same as standardized testing which shows absolutely nothing about actual thinking processes just makes some test maker millions.

So, having realized I had mind fucked my own self with the fine fine fine attitude of “time to make the donuts” doldrums and same same conversations and boring nongrowth mentality of only talking to people just like me, I began to examine what aspects of self were undeveloped I.e sitting in the shadows, pissed (pain body) for not having its perspective tapped, and started reflecting on Jung’s psychology of archetypes.

If school isn’t educating whole peeps any more and I’m an educator, then I need to start with my own psychology and teach out of field, party, and social circle to grow.

Grow out of martyr, hero mentalities into thrive mentalities knowing we are always supported to grow. Remember sainthood and perfection needs the joker and sensualist to grow and splatter some paint, dig the earth and rotate like the sun.

Existential into space and play the Universal currents of musical intelligence through kinetic touch to stars and count mathematical precision drum beats spiral dance and turn the wheel of psychological genius access full person intelligence is in the bones and learning is soul in contact with world and the people in it are multiple faces eyes on different aspects of life living in the now running down the road, afiguring it all out one probability at a time, as in probably we know ourselves today but tomorrow is another day. Today the innocent tomorrow the outlaw, today the magician tomorrow the Everyman, today the sage taking it all so seriously tomorrow the jester Buddha laughing enlightened and released from the tension of disharmonic duality into one you, perfectly expressing all aspects, in harmony.

Smarty. Keep growing. Keep learning.

​The human race can not be unevolved. We can not unknow, what we now know.

We are all connected to the sacred elements of the Universe. We contain in our cells all the stardust, light, water, earth, metabolic fire that imbues us with infinite powers of manifestation and potentiality. It is built into our genetic code with perfect adaptation to the Earth cycles, human tendency, and outward manifestation of heart conditions.

Over passing years, the gap between peoples has widened into two very distinct groups, those who are here for themselves and those who understand our mere existence on the planet is evidence that we belong to a creative force.

For this later group, the perfection of our involuntary body systems, Universal mathematical precision and spiritual capabilities is a humbling fact that leads us down many roads in an effort to become more of what this force "wills" us to become.

The endless spiritual paths and belief systems can lead ones to confusion, especially when many of the beliefs tend to contradict each other. What is at the core of beliefs and their dogmas, however, is one outstanding fact.

We are all human beings living on a planet that was brought into existence long before any holy creeds or books were ever written or channelled.

Indigos are the generation of old souls who bridge the future with the past. They came to witness the effects of choices from previous generations and, over corrected in order to show the subsequent generation the middle path.

The next generation will witness both adult and elder wisdom and see the effects of both to balance. That is the purpose of the grandchildren, children generation.

The bridge leads to future, as in future generations, the unborns, the millenialists are a product of old and new harmonizing sleeping awakening in ways we don’t yet understand.
​
What defines a generation is the zeitgeist or shared belief systems in place at our birth.

My nephews
the avengers
​saving the universe
Strengths
Mr. Rogers.
Child Psychology
Consumerism
Spiritual Resistance.
Dharma. Calling. Destiny.
Human overcorrection of previous generations era. Extremism.
​Middle path.

My forever will be my step-daughter is telling me about the path she has taken to arrive at psychology as a major.

One of her classes is in social media and the masks people wear. She tells a specific story of a woman in circle who admitted to severe depression. The professor pulls up her Facebook page and they analyzes her content. She’s a yoga teacher and everything she posts is only positive, pictures are only smiling, and nothing would indicate she was sad in anyway.

This peeks my interest. What did the professor tell her was the answer?

Kenna tells me the answer is coming back to real feelings. The answer is telling the truth. The answer is admitting to her emotional state so that it doesn’t have power over her anymore and being open to others so they have the opportunity to be supportive.

”You know,” Kenna says, “Take the mask off.”

I stop painting and look at her. A memory of her at nine flashes through my mind, she’s walking with Ken ahead of me in Tahoma. They are holding hands. I smile big. “Nineteen, huh? How’d you get so wise?”

She laughs, “A lot of practice in crazy.”

We both laugh and begin to discuss effects of Facebook and self-creation. We talk about my recently reactivated page after a three year hiatus.

People told me when I left, I’d fail and my careeer would nose dive. Instead, I listened and found my way back to my heart with no thoughts about the approval or permission of others and found my way through the jungle to the sea where WiFi didn’t reach.

I found peace, surrender, trust, devotion and observed as people increasingly experienced separation though “connected” to hundereds. I watched as more people opened their life the more anxious they were about whether people liked them and wondered increasingly if people really knew them and if they did, would they love them?

And then I turned my page back on and all those feelings rose for me. Given my absence I thought I would share what it’s like to plug back in.

As I plug back in I see people I love. They are married now, some have kids.

Hey! How come we don’t talk? I write them, no way,! look at how life has changed! Text me pictures, I send my phone number. I wanna be close to you again but I don’t think I’m keeping this page😂

We laugh. Zonia just stay on it.

I don’t know it’s weird😂

Whats weird?

It’s an actual place! I feel like I’m literally going there. I leave here and enter there. I see gatherings and so many people together. I see friends, lots of friends in person. They look really happy.

I see videos of people that I know talking on screens about the things they believe in. I see video sharing is common. I see my students now teachers doing yoga videos and I wonder why I didn’t want to do that. It’s fun to see Deanna’s body fly.

I think about being the teacher and having her extend the last few seconds of breath before knowing the next pose pause. And then she moves and I see the beautiful angles of her leg I see an engaged Uddoyana twist, balanced sacrum. It’s beautiful.

I don’t say anything but I miss teaching in my community. I travel, I start yoga foundational breath awareness movement, and then I wait to see if when I return change has happened.

I watch a long time. People move houses, they get married, kids graduate high school. Moments pass in more radical clips. Change.

As I reactivate I gaze through pictures I have no where else. I remember all the ones I never posted because I didn’t have a page. They existed only on my phone and those washed away in the toilet the day I dropped my phone in. In the moment it was liberation. Nothing to refer to.

Only memories. They are fleeting.

Now on my page, I open memories. I wonder what happened to Karen. I see ex partners. I see albums that are shortened after the first round of deleting pictures post breakup. I see ones that are part of continuations. I don’t delete them, life has changed.

I wonder about people I’ve met over the years if they find me on here, what story will my pictures tell that my voice did not.

I think of these blogs. I write just to write, without social media, writing is for me. I think maybe I’ll share. I do. Then I have several days of wondering what I wrote. How it will be received? Oh no?! What did I say, then I remember everything I write is for me. To witness. To understand where I’m comfortable by from. To give rise to feeling and heal.

I remember all my feelings of isolation, decide my words have been true to me, and decide to allow myself to be seen.

Not just in pictures pages or words but in life.

I think of all the things I never say. All the smiles. I ask if they are real. They are. I ask if I’ve been wearing a mask of self imposed seclusion. I wonder if I have mourned choices and decisions. I wonder if I’ve let go of too many things. I wonder about the people whose lives mine touchs for just seconds. I ask what I’m traveling for. I ask where is my home.

I look at pictures of families. They are mine, but also no longer, just forever loved. I see my own story unfold in pictures, in words, in reels my own mind sees and I wonder if I know my own heart enough to trust what I’ve seen, chosen and done.

I think of choices.

I see my story unfolding.

I see two friends of 20 years who love yoga and have lived together for short periods of time but who only time to time get to sit side by side from across the globe.

I see two travelers partners children. I see ceremony, prayer and family.

I see when I choose my brothers family as my own. I see my parents aging. I see my grandparents gone.

I see me in yoga poses. I laugh, I remember why I quit social media.

We were trying to start a school to teach spirituality, connection, and practice. All anyone wants are photographs.
​
They don’t match what I believe to be true of me.

Meaning?

What does the photo tell?

Insecurity. Clothes ok? Posture good? My belly shows. Am I getting old. Do I practice what I teach? Am I delusional? Do the things I do make a difference. I think I’m doing “something”, what was it? Am I self-creating or self pretending? It seems that I’m alone a lot but also always with people. In love but gone. Loved but gone. Loving but extended over a large space for periods of time in and out of different lives all of them real and true for me and to me.

Next thing I know, I’m totally self-absorbed. Like in this moment, when I am remembering photographs all through the stories and insecurity that accompanies online presence I am absorbed in image and perception.

I turn off off the phone and stare at the ceiling. “Zonia,” I tell me, “you are self absorbed right now. It’s ok put the phone down. Everything is ok.”

Alone in this room. Ceiling breath thoughts go crickets come night falls. Thinking, sighing, breathing. All these pictures from the past, all these feelings are coming up. How good is this for me?

Loss, stories, and choices.

A little roadmap to where you are now.

Reflection. Asking myself:

If you had understood in those moments what life you were living, what would you have held onto?

Does it matter? They are all gone and I’m starting again.

Its almost the season I go back to Mexico and I don’t remember ever getting back. Not sure I did. One minute I was in Mexico staring at the ocean waves, then running through petroglyphs and climbing to hot springs, the next laughing in my Coloradoan friends backyard, then Venetia is putting blue mascara on me and my best friend from seven years old is walking me around the highly muraled downtown district.

Then, I’m in Utah and I’m blazing back to convergence where I literally collide into my yoga friend of 20 years and two and a half months go by side by side. We are. We are in Maui when I finally look over and say this makes sense to me next to Paula with Lou Gerriggs in Kula and then stuffing his dad in the back seat in Makawao. Ken and Georgia are getting married, he’s with me.

We are teaching yoga in San Diego. Then we aren’t.

Suddenly, I’m in Tahoe and back naked at the river. Everything has changed.

I can see love stories folding and unfolding. Friendships beginning and ending.

And time it’s going by. I want to gather together with people. I want to be all in one place, all these people I know. I want us all to talk story. I want to heal disconnection by being the photos into moving screens with laughter and to touch foreheads, say hello.

I want to cry and laugh with friends. Have a fire, sip cocoa, drink some wine. Suddenly they are filing through the house for a month. Theres so much back story, you can only start from here with what you know.

That life is fleeting. That people age time moves on and love is eternal. Not because it’s on the screen but because the stories of how it got that way are so deep and meaningful to your existence. That pictures dont capture everything. No details. No voices. None of the fears or insecurities blocking you from living in the life you were in without trading it in for other ones that didn’t last. That even those ones are a part of your memories and the many lives you’ve lived. That you are grateful. That overall you like you and damn you know what’s gone and won’t come back but let’s hold hands. Be friends. Have sleep overs. Look each other in the eye. Toss the phones for a sec. Come back to really in each other’s physical presence.

Like Kenna and I on the porch. She’s reading a book. I’m painting.

I think about closing again. Delete, deactivate. Then I see my nephew in namaste. It makes you happy. Ok. They are right there. It’s not far away as Oregon or quiet as spaces between visits seem.

When you can’t look anymore put that phone down.

Picking up from today. Write a poem. Call a friend. Make some tea. Paint a painting I may cover over tomorrow. Give them as gifts. Invite people into my home. Trade sessions. Sit together. Remember we are going to be ok. Take one day as it comes. Fall in love one memory at a time.

Dont rush it. There’s only today. We can’t record everything. Some moments are better than others. Some you’ll never see again but they are part of your memories. A ghost whisper from the past of farms cedar cabins and goat milk cheese. Others hillside gardens and yoga decks at sunset. Some hiking in the Himalayas living in surf vans teaching yoga. And some praying directions, sewing gifts and building fires.

All of them are me, but more so the many things I haven’t recorded or written. The posts I’ll never make. The feelings I can’t convey in any way other than embrace. And the moments alone quiet contemplation writing just for me because I must...those pass too into trail runs on meadows in Tahoe sun and paddle boards no phone no witness except for the one living inside me.

What will we we think about today? Do to fill the time? Who will we meet? Only one way to figure it out, gotta live it, putting the phone down.