Step #1 Don’t tell me what you are not – tell me what you are. Don’t tell me what you let go of – tell me what you embrace. Don’t tell me what you need to get over – tell me what you are expressing. Don’t tell me what you need to fix or change – tell me what you are creating. Don’t focus on what you are not – focus on what you are.

Step #2 Choose. Do not wait for God, universe, spirit, purpose, destiny, authorities or society to do it for you.

Step #3 Be present to what you are creating, right now. Before you learn how to create what you want, realize how you created what you have.

Step #4 Find out who you are. You are your body, you are your soul, you are your life. Include everything, and everything becomes an expression of you. Exclude it – and it becomes an expression of your trauma.

Step #5 Include death into your life. Death is wonderful, it is a graduation, a transition, as much as birth. What’s there to be sad about? What’s there to grieve about?

Step #6 Travel far. When your background changes you see what is only you, in sharp relief.

Step #7 Believe what you say you believe.

Step #8 Don’t lie. Not to yourself, not to others. Never.

Step #9 Go find out what you want, don’t wait until it finds you.

Step #10 Consider the possibility of your future being entirely different than your past.

“Contemporary spirituality” … what an interesting concept … what is it that we call “spirituality”, exactly? Is it subject to fashion? Or progress? Does God change with the times?

Spirituality, defined as being present as what we truly are, appears to me to be beyond times, societies, theories, schools, ideas and concepts. We are – and we make up stories. And sometimes making up stories about what we truly are, and then studying those stories, is called spirituality.

It always begins with an experience – let it end there.

I can not think of anything that would render humans unconscious of the reality around us more effectively than the concepts of right and wrong, good and bad, just and unjust. While we focus on determining what’s right, what’s wrong, what’s just, what’s unjust, we are missing what’s so.

To effect any change it is usefull to be present to the whole picture, to see the entire situation in all it’s implications. The ideas of rightness, justice, goodness, injustice, evil, limit the perspective drastically and make the change nearly impossible to occure.

How did I learn what I know? What teachers did I work with? What books have I read? What workshops have I attended?

I can tell you all this, I can tell you the stories of my life but they will give you nothing at all.

How did I learn what I know…

I learned by choosing to look, by choosing to question, by choosing to consider. I learned by listening to others and then looking within myself for my response to their words, for my opinion, for my way of seeing what they see.

I learned by looking inside to see my way of being me.

I learn from being in nature, with trees, with plants, with animals. I learn by feeling them, I learn  by moving how they move, by howling how they howl, by resting how they rest. I learn by being in my body the way they are in theirs, I learn from being present as they are.

I learn from being with people, from being with my husband and feeling him, feeling myself with him. I learn by considering my feelings, seeing where they come from, choosing to feel them or to let go of them. I learn from being present to what I feel, to what I think.

I learn by discovering myself.

The world around me, the universe around me, the nature, other humans, are a mirror. They do not teach me of who I am, they do not tell me what I am, they do not give me wisdom that I don’t have. They reflect me, and in their reflection, by choosing to look, to consider, I learn of what I am. And as I learn what I am, I learn what the reality is, what the universe is. My universe, my reality.

There is no teacher born in this world, nor has there ever been one, that can teach me about my reality – because not one of them is me.

I learn by being present as what I am, being present to what I am.

How did I learn to be present? I heard of tools, I practiced them. I sat in meditation and learned how to be still and look inside. I studied with Brooks and learned how to feel and be present beyond the restrictions of my mind. My Zen teacher, Brooks, they taught me methods, they gave me tools, but they did not teach me what I know. That I learned by using the tools they gave me.

Where the tools came from, what teacher taught them, what book were they described in – it doesn’t matter much. Knowing that will give you nothing at all.

The wisdom does not lie in tools, in other people’s heads, in other people’s words, in other people’s books. The wisdom lies in you. One tool is no different from another. If you look for wisdom any tool will help you find it.

If you choose to look for it.

It hit again this morning. I found a spot behind my ear, it wasn’t there before … or was it? Was it smaller? Did it grow? Have I seen it? Could I have forgotten?

The initial feeling of “this is okay, there is no need to worry about this” was swallowed by fear, quickly. Fear soon turned into terror and I froze. My insides froze, my head froze. A straight jacket of fear kept me stiff, rigid. I could not think, I could not speak, I could not live.

But this is not the first time, this has happened before. This fear has happened before. My mind knows that, while my body is torn to shreds, gutted, burned by fear. I can’t do anything, I am frozen, I can’t move.

But this has happened before.

Is this it? This time, is this it? Is it cancer? Will I die? Now?!

Now that everything is going so great, now that Chris creates amazing business deals, now that we are moving to Europe, now that the world lies at our feet, now?! Now will my life be reduced to running from doctor to doctor? From surgery to surgery? From one cure to another? Now?!

Now would be the perfect time – my mind informs me. Now you have to grow, now you have to graduate. The world might be at your feet, but you have to grow big enough to carry it on your shoulders. Now is the perfect time for you to collapse. Chris might be creating an amazing opportunities, but now you have to support it, now you have to be present here. What better way to bring him down, what better way to bring you both down, back to where it’s safe, back to what you know. What better way than to fall apart, now?

But what if this is real? What if this is not just my fear? Not just my hypochondria? What if? What if? What if!

Thoughts are flying in frantic patterns, terrible thoughts, scary thoughts, doubts, stories, nightmares. I follow them and stop – I can’t do that, I can’t think this, I can’t think right now. Stop.

I don’t think. I feel instead.

The feelings are deep, grounded. The fear, the terror, now without the scattered thoughts, is settled and calm.

I can feel this. I am feeling it. I am here.

I can be here, I realize. I can be here and I can feel this. All of it. It doesn’t hurt to feel, without thoughts the fear doesn’t scare me. Without thoughts the pain doesn’t hurt.

I am here.

This is what will happen when I die, I realize. I will be here and the thoughts will be gone. I will be present, like this. I can do this now, I don’t need to wait. I can be here, present here, now.

The feelings change, shift, open. Trauma moves. Anger, fear, hate, pain, moves slowly, majestically. I feel it, I am with it. The feelings don’t feel good, but I do. Safe, calm, grounded, present. Because I am here.

The feelings are not what I am, though my thoughts would have me believe otherwise. The feelings are. I am. they move and change. I am.

I can graduate here, I realize. I can not only be here, present, but I can grow here, I can open. I can move on.

This is wonderful, I realize. This is wonderful.

Stories, series of stories told by people who know how to live, who know the rules, who follow the rules.

I read about the rules as I stretch my arm …

“No, this is not how you stretch your arm!”, says the rule “this is wrong, you have to do it like that!”…

I move, flex my fingers … “No, not like this! This is the rule for how you flex your fingers, like this…”

I turn … “No, this is wrong, this is the wrong way to turn, the sinful way, it will have you damned, it is how you fall! Here, this is how you turn, this is how you stretch, this is how you roll, this is how you move, this is how you live, this is how you think!”

I move and stop … arrested, corrected, fixed, righted.

My body grows tense, rigid … I move just a little … “wrong!” … I freeze …. I try again, slowly, maybe this way … “no! wrong!” snaps the rule.

I stop. Shocked, terrified, blank.

My body is frozen, rigid, tight. I can’t move anymore, I wouldn’t dare to move for the fear of rolling my hip the wrong way, the shameful way, the damnable way. I can’t think, the risk of thinking an improper thought is too great. Inside of the blank, tight, constrictive box I can not move, breath, feel. I am frozen, and it is just as well.

I do not need to move, breath, feel. The rules do it for me.

The regulations, the rights and the wrongs, the meanings, the ways – they are all here, pulling on strings they’ve attached to my arms, folding my legs into proper configurations, setting my feet just so, rotating my head into the proper position, at the proper angle.

I watch the rules as they move me, twist me, rotate me. I watch the rules, trapped inside of the tight, small box of my frozen body, immobile, blank, shocked. Shocked into being a puppet. But a proper puppet, a right, good, moral, upstanding puppet. A well adjusted puppet.

The rules pat me on the head, they are pleased with me. “Good girl!”, they say.

“But there is space here, within those rules” I allow myself to recognize, “in every rule that pulls on my hands there is a space, there is an experience. If I can be there, feel there …”.

I feel the space, the space within the rule. I flex my muscles tentatively … there is no protest. I move a bit more … and a bit more … nothing! “I can move here!” I realize with elation. Here, within the very heart of the rule, the very meaning of the rule, I can move and nothing stops me! I can move how I want to move, I can move my way!.

I wave my hands, they are my own again! There are no strings here, inside. Here I am myself again, within the rule, within the experience of the rule. I roll and twist and bend in a way that is mine, that feels good, that feels open, spacious, and I can feel the rule, I can feel it’s experience in my body and I move with it, twist with it this way and that, my way.

“This is how I dance with this rule … I choose … this is the right rhythm for me, the right form for me, the right relationship for me!”

Here, it is all me now – how I dance, how I move, how I relate. With the rules, within the rules.

There is only space to be what I am, when I choose to experience this space.