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The Grief Experience

September 5, 2020 By Must Love Crows Leave a Comment

You know when things start to feel heavy inside. When something needs to be excavated. You just convince yourself you don’t know.

You seek a physical reason for a physical symptom. After all, you were taught to devalue the messages of your avatar.

Your lungs become heavy just as your thoughts become the same. Maybe depression seeps into your pores – and your core. And you think, “This is wrong; this is bad. I must stop this.”

I call to you now to NOT try to stop it. To see the power in this slowing down, which may feel forceful and out of control, but serves as a way for grief to be transmuted.

I used to be so afraid of the messages my body sent me. And as the fear grew, so did the symptoms. To the point that I could not see the origins: grief that I did not understand the source of, but yet still had the right and need to exist within me.

I do not fight anymore. I do not try to change my experiences. I have learned to try to befriend what I have feared, what I was taught to fear: the messages my beloved body has been trying to tell me from the very first primal violation of my spirit.

Grief comes in waves. It does not always make sense. It’s timing is often absolute shit in the scope of our human desires. But on a soul level, it’s divinely orchestrated and is done an injustice when argued with.

Back into the gallows I go. Cause that’s what grief feels like. It’s not bad. It just IS.

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Embracing the Forced Pivot

August 21, 2020 By Must Love Crows Leave a Comment

In my earlier years, I was heavily committed to wanting things to go my way.

I lived guided by the illusion, that trying to control what I experienced was the way to go, in order to get things to be the way I wanted them to be.

It was a very mind-centric way of living. It was also really dumb. But it was what I learned and what I knew.

It created a lot of suffering because, obviously, things don’t always go your way. I felt like I was fighting with my reality a lot.

Err, OK – all the time. The more I tried to control, the more out of control things became. It created a very, “life sucks and then you die” kind of vibe. Which was, well, gruesome for my spirit.

Putting a lot on emphasis on the brain needing to be in a position of power goes along with a core, learned, and primal, yet irrational, belief. Which is this:

We believe our brains are so advanced, and that we as humans are somehow so advanced that we are in a position to be the almighty knowers of THE WAY things need to unfold for us.

Our own spiritual, mental and emotional demise is born of believe that THE WAY is the way we prefer.

Important to acknowledge how ludicrous this is. Also important to remember you can and will fall asleep to how insane it is, over and over.

Thankfully life delivers endless opportunities for us to wake up again.

Life experiences can teach you that the path leading you where you’re destined to go is often completely different than what you want to do or how you want to feel.

Just yesterday, as I thought to myself, “I’m going to put away the lights I use for auditioning because they’re in the way and I won’t need them for a long time,” I received an email from a casting agent:

“Please submit this monologue by Sunday.”

Some actors would freak with excitement over this. And I was excited to some degree but I was heavily focused on the plan I had crafted, and this wasn’t part of it.

My plan was to focus on readings and other healing work I was doing. In fact, I had recently stated to the hubby, “I’m going to wait until later fall or the new year to focus on acting since the industry isn’t really booming for actors with my experience level at the moment.”

Seemed logical; felt logical. But then came the email, and out the rainy window went my plans (west coast rain is here today). And after realizing my next 3 days were now going to entail doing the opposite of what I had planned to do, I laughed.

I laughed at the aspect of myself that thought my plans were the only way things could or should go. Like a slightly sedated hyena.

SO MUCH EGO. You have to laugh at these displays of shadow! Scratch that – you don’t have to laugh. But speaking from experience (IE, NOT laughing about it) your day to day life experience is infinitely more frustrating if you decide to let your ego consume you with thoughts like, “This isn’t what I wanted.”

The example du resistance:

Last spring as the pandemic began to rev up, my husband and I came to the conclusion that it was entirely unwise to take our vacation.

Even though there was a lot of gratitude (we were alive, we could reschedule, we weren’t stuck in an airport) there were rumblings of sadness about the cancellation.

We had planned it for a year. And it had been an intense period emotionally over the past 6 months, and the place we were hoping to go felt very healing to us.

But we dug into the positives and decided to use the 2 weeks off at home to get stuff done. I had my plans: obsess over astrology. And he had his: to focus on making music.

My husband has been studying electronic music production and engineering for the past 8 years. It’s something he’s incredibly passionate about, and his dream is to do it for a living. So into his cave he happily went, creating for a couple of glorious, sweat pant wearing weeks.

Somewhere along the 2 week period in which we had originally planned to spend on the beach, he got signed to a record label.

Synchronistic events unfolded that never would have happened if our plans hadn’t been thwarted.

Instead of SPF, he applied for a joint bank account with his production partner; Instead of chatting with tourists on the beach he had conference calls with record label managers.

Let us get back to the fact that we were bummed about not being able to go on our vacation. Having to cancel our plans was not part of our plan.

This is important to take note of because humans don’t like their carefully laid out plans being messed with. We take that shit personally.

We put a lot of energy into our anger over something messing with our efforts to get life to go the way we think it needs to go.

We can be ungrateful and irrational and because of our negativity bias, bypass the positives that can come of our forced pivot.

The hubby and I could have spent a lot of time arguing with the reality of our experience – of things not going our way. And we did spend some time doing that because we’re human and that’s what we do.

We felt a bit sad, frustrated and annoyed. And also a little freaked out because the pandemic was a wild unscheduled-to-us ride through the fear zone.

But when we gave up and submitted to the reality of what we could not control, things rolled in a direction we could never have perceived them rolling.

When we said, “OK, I succumb to my current experience,” a hard and fast and amazing pivot occurred in the form of something my husband had wished for his entire adult life, coming true.

All that said, today is the day his first song is released on Itunes and Spotify.

It’s also our 10 year anniversary. I’m happy to share the date with his milestone, and I trust there is some deeper meaning to it all because I choose to believe in the synchronicities 🌀

Click here to check out my hubby’s first release on YouTube.

Love to all and thanks for reading, listening and supporting. And a reminder:

Celebrate the pivots – You never know where they will take you!

xoxo

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Showing The World The Real You

August 3, 2020 By Must Love Crows 2 Comments

To know who we truly are takes a lot of work. To show who that person is, once we begin to do the work of understanding who that is, is another feat in and of itself.

Who am I? The question haunts us in whispered echoes throughout our life experience. As we bounce and bump into others, we are given opportunities to understand the answer. And we change it a lot. As we feel the comfort of belonging within the context of a group setting, we may lose sight of the answer entirely. In fact, the answer may at some points in life, if left unchecked or unquestioned, be entirely dependent upon what the group asserts itself, and us, to be.

Fear of rejection, of not belonging anywhere can take us down paths that lead us astray from answering the question, Who am I? It feeds desires that don’t belong within us, that serve as bandaids for the cracks in our foundation formed by choosing the comfort of belonging over the transformative discomfort of understanding who we are in the absence of all the noise of the collective.

Yet, we ARE the collective. We are part of it all and everyone. We are, for lack of a better phrase, cut from the same cloth.

And we are all here for different reasons.

We aren’t here to adhere to group-think about “makes sense” or how we “should” feel, think or act.

We are here to question the beliefs of the very thing within which we undeniably belong.

It is through that questioning that we uncover fragmented insights into who we are and what we are meant to do.

The work of human life is to put the fragments of intel we receive from our experiences into a story – the story – we are playing out in this incarnation.

Some of these insights come from really difficult experiences. Some come from joyous ones.

The universe doesn’t discriminate with good or bad in this area. They are ALL guiding us towards something, or, repelling us from something.

Every experience we have is a road map – every event we experience is a potential pivot point. The intensity matters to our human minds, but to the universe, they are all simply gifts of varying intensity, guiding us in the direction we are meant to go.

When we come closer to knowing the truth of who we are, our foundational awareness is solidified through the act of giving the world a glimpse of who that is.

When we begin to offer ourselves to the world as we inherently are, even when afraid of how that version of us will be perceived, we say to the universe, “I am beginning to know who I am: please send me experiences that solidify my burgeoning understanding of my purpose and align me with experiencing my desires.”

To do this, we must stop offering versions of ourselves that other people are comfortable with.

We must abandon the group and not just risk being rejected for being ourselves, but fully accept the experience.

We must willingly move into experiencing how it feels to not be accepted for who we are, in order to envelop the full energetic expression of WHO we are.

Even though this courageous act may be something we choose to do, it still triggers feelings of abandonment. This great severing of our roots, this powerful choice to choose the road untraveled, to live within the unknown and the discomfort of others not understanding or accepting that you are uncovering your path, feels like a loss. Like being left out for being YOU.

But the universe rewards leaps of faith. No act of courage goes unrewarded through its eyes. And the power that resonates from your choice to act beyond the scope of all that you know – all that was once comfortable yet feels less and less so as you begin to know yourself inherently – leaves an energetic imprint that motivates and empowers others to walk the same courageous path.

xo

A

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Intuition vs Instinct – What’s the difference?

July 24, 2020 By Must Love Crows Leave a Comment

The concept of intuition and instinct can cause confusion. We don’t know the difference and we use the terms interchangeably.

No one explains it well, including me. They just say, “Follow your instincts; follow your gut.”

That’s hard to do. I mean, we are all so jacked up nervous system-wise from social media and the intensity of living life in a pandemic-laden world, it’s hard to know what we feel.

We are triggered – a lot. Control – of others and our experiences – is becoming a serious issue. And being with ourselves without some sort of noise distracting us from how we feel is difficult. It feels a lot easier to avoid knowing how we feel. We just log on to Netflix and binge away whatever feelings are trigged within.

It makes it harder for instinct to do its job when we’re consumed with the intensity of energies lambasting us on social media, on TV or on the internet. But it still manages to show up.

Instinct comes from a very specific place in your body – the 3rd chakra area.

This is the energy centre responsible for primal instinct. The feelings that tell you to change lanes, lock your doors. I refer to it as the hair on the back of the neck notification. “Hmm…something isn’t right, or safe, here. Better <enter activity> to protect myself.”

While instinct and intuition are most definitely linked, in that they come from a place beyond the finger pointable, this-is-what-this-means, human-demanding realm of needing to have proof of their legitimacy, instinct is easier to accept than intuition.

We get stronger hits with instinct.

We can feel it more clearly and there is less of an inner debate about its legitimacy. Mostly because it comes in hot, ie with intensity (funny enough, instinctual hits often give you a cold feeling in the body.)

Very hard to deny the goosebumps that occur at the same time your “gut” tells you something is up and you need to be wary.

Sure, you can try to deny it. But think back on all the times you thought, “Damn! I should have followed my instincts. That experience sucked!” Yeah. We learn the hard way that instinct is here to serve us.

Intuition is not so welcomed or easily discernible in the 3D world. It’s quieter. It’s less abrasive in its delivery.

And – big surprise – we don’t value it as much because we try to compare it to the hits we get in our 3rd chakra with instinct, which are, and no disrespect to instinct, more obnoxious.

We are trained to think that if intuitive insights don’t come hard and fast and large, they aren’t worthy of our attention.

But that’s the thing that trips us up.

Intuition isn’t obvious. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t a legitimate form of guidance and insight.

The little bits of insight it offers lead to BIG THINGS.

Intuition is all for aligning you with where you need to be. And it wants you to respect its power, ie it doesn’t want you to investigate its legitimacy.

Intuition does not want you to compare it to its cousin, instinct.

It wants to be taken just as seriously as instinctual, loudly-felt responses are. It wants the subtle feeling it sends to be respected as much as the slap in the face ones.

It wants you to jump when it says how high, for the elusive pay off of, “You’ll know why at a later date.”

Seem risky? Maybe. But more like it feels risky. ‘Cause we humans have been trained since we were in diapers to not trust what we can’t see.

We’ve also been trained to demand the answers now, like entitled twats.

Ok, ok. That was harsh. But I needed to lighten things up here. lol!

So we’ve been taught to question what isn’t clear. And sure, it works with some things, like contracts and people who leave out pertinent details.

But we can’t work with our intuition that way and expect it to work in our favour. In fact, we minimize its power and effect when we do.

Or else – and this is super fun (jk) – if we don’t listen to the subtle hits our intuition offers, it forces our hand.

Big tower moments show up, where things fall apart in an intense way, so we’ll have no other choice but to pivot in life.

Intuition doesn’t care that you want proof that it knows what’s up.

It doesn’t understand why some humans will sign a contract filled with technical jargon that screams of desperation to convince you it’s not a shitty deal, instead of following a whisper of a hunch that something’s up that comes from a place you can trust WAY more than a lawyer: your higher self.

Intuition is like, why don’t you at least wait and think about it a bit, and I’ll send you some more signs telling you that this direction ain’t the one for you? mmm kayyyy?

We wonder why the hits are so subtle. Why don’t they yell in our faces the way primal urges to react in order to protect ourselves do?

Why should they?

They need to be different. They aren’t providing the same service.

When our safety is at risk, the universe forces itself through our cluttered up human minds and speaks to us through the 3rd chakra. It’s a primal message, delivered to keep us alive and safe.

Intuitive insights have a harder time poking through the density of the human experience because they aren’t associated with immediate life or death stuff.

They aren’t given such intense energy to be delivered through, we just think they should.

What’s more, intuition has a hell of a time coming in hot and how you’d like it because of the density of the 3D energy that we live in.

It’s dense AF here – Believe it. It’s hard for guidance to come through.

Our energy is weighed down and clogged up with thoughts that are extremely dense energetically: money, groceries, rent, jobs (the way you make money) career (the thing you dream of doing), that thing Trisha did to you in high school, that abuse you experienced in your childhood, the fact that your parents sucked at their job, and still do.

Try to get through the obsessiveness of your thinking about all of these things long enough to focus on making dinner, let alone allow your intuition to get through it. Nothing easy about it.

Intuition is competing with some seriously dense information. It wants to be heard, but we have our energetic walls up – to our detriment.

The mind runs our show, and it has no idea how to run it properly. It’s like the shittiest showrunner – ever.

No one knows when to come to set. It’s just a big old mess. That’s what’s helping to clog up your energy with the nonsense that blocks the inflow of solid intel from your intuition.

The mind also keeps us from experiencing what we want.

I enjoy the analogy of making room in my life, mostly because it’s played out so flawlessly over the years. If I really want to experience something I need to make the space in my life for it to come in. An example:

If I want to make more money, I can’t clog up my thoughts with worry over not having enough or focusing on not knowing how to make more money.

I need to remain energetically open to the in flow, so the idea about the how and the money can actually come in.

My personal favourite technique that I use in every area of life:

I need to set the intention and then be ambivalent AF about the outcome.

If I’m being real, it makes me feel like a badass when I do this. Just letting it go with some swagger – I mean, it feels cool.

So If I want a new relationship, I know I can’t use up all the energy within me thinking about how I’ll never find someone who relates to me. My energy needs to be free and open to receiving this new experience.

Your energy needs to be free to receive what you want to experience.

So then, the question must be: where is your energy going every day?

An example I have relied on many times from my life: I had a friend I’d known for much of my life. We cared for each other very much. But as the years passed it became clear that we were on very different paths. It just wasn’t a good fit anymore. If we kept it up, we’d be enabling and keeping each other from required growth.

So after much soul searching, I cut ties. It was very painful. The night it happened I cried – a lot. I slept fitfully, thinking about our last exchange (yeah…it wasn’t great). Yet I woke up the next day feeling freer than I’d felt in months. Less exhausted energetically. And when I checked my email later in the morning, I notice a new client had purchased a $2000 dollar consulting package overnight.

😉🗝🤯🤗

To add some icing to my story: the same friend reach out a while later, hoping to salvage our relationship. When I again cut ties again (some more ouch) I received another new client.

I use this analogy because it’s a motivating one for us humans, as it relates to something we all want: the great money hack and the potential for financial freedom.

We are all very driven to create a foundation of money for ourselves and our families. To be released from money fears is a very powerful thing. That freedom is hella enticing.

And so I will reiterate that to receive what you wish in life, you have to free up energetic space within you, so it has room to show up.

To summarize…

Energy needs to be free in order to manifest.

The work required to make that happen = taking stock of what your energy is being put into, and questioning if it could be blocking what you want to come through.

Intuition is not loud. To hear it, you need to quiet the mind.

The mind runs your show, but it doesn’t have the credentials to do the job, ie it sucks at it.

Instinct lives in the 3rd chakra. It’s not the same as intuition: It yells at you.

Intuition subtly pokes you with thoughts when your mind gets put in its place.

Love, love, love,

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Fuel for The Work We Are Here To Do – Collective Reading

July 9, 2020 By Must Love Crows Leave a Comment

The entrance to forgotten inner realms of knowing become uncovered when we allow ourselves to discover the pathway to our own pain.

When we don’t cover it up by busying ourselves with attempting to controlling others; Rather, we choose to witness all the ways in which fear of our current experience goads us into behaving in the absence of awareness of our true motivations.

More – the way in which we fight with all that we cannot know goads us into trying to control others.

We attempt to control in funny human ways: in a grocery store line up; power-tripping on the highway; seeking issues where none exist in the comments section – our desperation to declare our belief in true fiction to the world – “I have some power in this; this too shall be conquered, by me, through ways that have never worked before in history, but still, I will try.”

It drains our life force. It uses up the fuel reserved for the work we are here to do, in this skin.

Ludicrously, our experience repeats itself. We don’t look beneath the inches we take backwards when busying ourselves with believing energy-draining control mongering will create an ability to tell of a future in which we are comfortable – that a fictitious affirmation will arrive from the skies, telling us what we want to hear: That we are safe from all that terrifies us; that we will experience what we want, rather than what we need in this life, to grow.

Dangerous times exist within our capacity to ignore all the steps backward we are taking when we refuse to take a step inward, and witness our true motives when we attempt to control everyone and everything around us, instead of seeking to understand our fear and discover why it exists: to teach us about ourselves and what we are here to learn.

We are all trying to run from the human experience of learning how to keep our hearts open within the unknowing. Within the fear.

Doctors can’t save you from this lesson. Neither can masks or gloves. Setting the intention to understand what drives your unrelenting desire for control: That’s the way home. That’s the work. I dare you to do it with me.

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Collective Reading – June 19 2020

June 19, 2020 By Must Love Crows 2 Comments

There is a process to this that many people don’t like. It’s the breaking of a thing, so it can be rebuilt.

Most people reject this process. They don’t see the value in it, they only see the fear – that which they don’t know.

The breaking can be violent and awful to witness and feel. And it often is. It feels unsafe. People feel vulnerable.

But the true vulnerability lies in the human that refuses to budge – who doesn’t allow space within them to see that there is a spark being created by every act of destruction.

The energy within the calling out, the naming of that which needs to be changed is incredibly powerful. It can carry us through the times when we don’t know the answer; when we don’t know what will happen. And all the fear that comes along with that experience.

Within the scope of the unknown is the fear of abandonment. If we don’t know, how can we create a sense of home – of safety – within the context of all that remains unclear to us? How can we live there?

The answer: create a sense of home within ourselves.

It’s within the remembering of the spark that exists and is created through the violent assertion of all that can no longer live in the way it’s always lived, that we garner our fuel and support. It is the source upon which all of our strength can be accessed.

We needn’t run away in fear or lash out in response to the unknown. We must only remember the spark that ignites and lights up all that is required, to do what it is we need to do, to evolve.