A New Prayer

Sometimes the right words just come to you, like this prayer came to me.

Holy Father, Holy Mother, Holy Spirit, Holy Son. In perfect love and perfect trust, together we are one. (Insert a prayerful request and repeat).

Change the conversation…with yourself

If you stop to think about it, we talk to ourselves more than we talk to anyone else. We are our own angel or demon. Our own helper or hater. The way we talk to ourselves is an area of being human that is rarely brought up, even in counseling or mental health situations.

Is your self talk positive or negative? Do you encourage yourself to pull yourself up by your bootstraps as keep going? Or are you your own worst heckler?

I have been on a wild and traumatic personal ride for the past four years. At times I even considered talking myself out. Most of this time was hazy, in pain physically or emotionally, confused and anxious. In short, it’s been hell. Just this year, 2020, have I been able to pull myself up above water. I’ve had to change the way I talk to myself in order to make my situation better.

Like so many others, I was subjected to a series of unfortunate events that broke me. Many days, and weeks, and months I wanted to just give up and succumb to my awful fate of brain injury, cognitive disability and abandonment. Living in a loony bin started to sound nice.

But one fact kept me from giving up entirely: This is not the life that God wanted for me, and my life is not for me to forsake as it belongs to God.

So in my daily, or hourly, or minute by minute struggles I came up with a soothing phrase to encourage myself, “That’s okay, just keep going.”

“But I hate this and it hurts and I hate my existence and I don’t want to do this, I want to curl up and die.”

“That’s okay, just keep going.”

“But my life is in shambles and I started off so good and then things happened and now everything’s fucked, and I don’t know how I got here and I’m so lost and miserable.”

“That’s okay, just keep going.”

And after some months, maybe six or seven, I really have a very poor concept of time, I’ve been able to evolve my self talk as things have gotten better. Now what I say to myself is this:

“My brain is healed. My heart is filled with love and hope. My mind is clear and focussed. I’m happy to be alive.”

And I will continue to say this to myself as I’m waiting in line at the post office or trying to calm my brain down to go to sleep. And when the time is right I will naturally be inspired to make a new phrase.

I invite you with great compassion to play with some encouraging phrases for yourself. Or if it feels right simply use mine.

“It’s okay, just keep going.”

Möbious Escape Velocity

We go backwards, we go forwards. This has all happened before and will happen again. We exist in a Mobious loop of what is and what will never be. We run through halls of mirrors with our eyes closed, only to come out exactly where we started.

Have you ever been through some tough shit and when you get on the other side of you realize that you’re pretty much in the same boat you were X amount of years ago? That’s the Mobious Loop of your existence. When you see it with all eyes open it can be quite unnerving. How do we break this cycle learning the same lesson, in different ways, over and over again? We have to find an escape velocity. A force that overcomes the current amount of force. Think of a rocket slingshotting around the moon. And the rocket must approach the moon in a certain range of speed and angle. There are three subjects in this problem: You, your speed, the body of gravity (the moon).

The strangest part of this blog post is that I have never had this train of thought before. The philosophy is literally evolving as I type. What a trip. I would love so much to have coffee with Einstein and Fenyman.

Organic and instantaneous evolution.

Back to the problem of escape velocity. Let’s assume that the gravitational object is fixed and cannot change. What are the ways we can achieve escape velocity?

Brainstorm here… But really the only sensible thing to alter in this scenario is the speed and angle of the approach. Which, in the sphere of personal growth, may mean the amount of Motivation we have. It may also imply a change of angle, which we’ll think of as Perspective. You also call it your Beliefs. Ah, I see the formula starting to come together. Do you?

Now let’s assume that the angle and speed of the approach is fixed (hello super stubborn person). We now will consider the gravitational object. The moon. What could be your moon? Love? Religion? Family? Truth and Beauty? Your health? Whatever it is, it must be something that pulls you. That drives you. That makes your world worth living in.

Putting these two scenarios together we now have a formula.

X = (Your motivation + your Perspective) * your Moon. Where X is our escape velocity of our Mobious loop.

Whew. My noggin is about tapped out. I will leave it at that for now and leave you contemplate, heckle, or explore our new equation.

Stay wavy.

~ Star

I am enough.

I make metal jewelry. The picture above is an example. I have offered this ring on Etsy for four years. It gets ordered once in a while. But in the past three weeks I have seen a huge spike in my I am enough ring. And not just in the US. Today I am mailing one to Ireland.

Why has the phrase “I am enough” become so comforting and appealing in the last month?

I believe it has to do with being stuck with ourselves. With the continuing isolation and social distancing, the cancellation of every festival this summer and an overall decline in entertainment, we have to spend time with our Selfs more than ever.

You are enough.

You have the potential inside of you to attain every happiness. It’s a matter of playing musical chairs with your perspectives, values, the way you talk to yourself in your head, and how you internalize what others say and do.

Overall, we are far too sensitive. We take the whole world personally, and we shouldn’t. Someone who snaps at you or cuts you off in traffic giving you the finger is obviously having a bad day.

You have the power of free will and can choose to embody compassion instead of mirroring the negativity right back. And in that act you are typing the scales towards a better human experience for all of us.

Try it. And along the way I bet you’ll discover that you are enough.