Do You Have a Girlfriend?!

          It´s 5:30 AM.  The neighbor´s rooster has once again disturbed my slumber with its relentless cock-a-dooing.  My alarm is set to go off in 30 minutes, so I turn it off and decide to watch the sunrise instead.  The view from this house in the hills is breath-taking.  You can see all of Lake Atitlan and its three gorgeous volcanoes.  As the townspeople slowly make their way to open their shops, the birds sing their harmonious, morning melodies. 
     
The sun begins to crack its light just above the horizon, gently asking the darkness for its permission & blessings.  There´s something about the stillness & simplicity of this time of day that makes it so special and magical.  I thank my eyes for allowing me to witness this incredible beauty.

          My younger cat Shiva jumps on my lap and subtlety reminds me that its time to satisfy her hunger.  I don´t want to pull away from this moment just yet, so I pet her little head, hoping it may get her mind off of food for just a few more minutes.  As her tiny claws dig into my thighs, I accept that it´s time to move on.  I kiss her little head and make my way downstairs. 
          As I go to the shelf to get the cat food, I notice an all-too-familiar stench. Oh man, I forgot to let Shiva out last night before bed.  The thought of having to clean up whatever was creating that smell made me a bit nauseous and angry with myself.  But I reminded myself that there´s a reason for everything we experience throughout the day. "Try to see this differently;" I thought.  There´s beauty in everything.

          After cleaning up, I grab my towel and make my way outside, very much looking forward to a hot shower on this brisk morning.  Lying in front of the bathroom door is Brownie, one of the stray dogs that sleeps behind my house.  I named her Brownie because of the color of her fur, although I´m not quite sure if it´s her natural color or the fact that she probably hasn´t bathed in years.  She´s lost some of the fur on her back due to a skin condition.  Her kind, gentle eyes look up at me, reminding me to look beyond what my eyes are showing me and see instead with the eyes of my heart.  Her beauty is undeniable.  I pet the top of of her head and lay my other hand on her furless, bumpy skin.  I thank my heart for allowing me to ´see´and share this wonderful exchange of energy with her.  I make my way into the bathroom and turn on the shower.  No electricity.  A cold shower is better than no shower, right?
          The last three months have been a whirlwind of change for me.  I now practice full-time as a holistic healing practitioner/massage therapist, and I´m also teaching courses in these same practices that I just learned only a few months ago (or so I think).  This journey has put on an entirely different face from the journey I had planned.  And for the last two months I´ve felt guilty about this.  I was supposed to be at an orphanage right now teaching English to Guatemalan orphans and then making my way to Haiti to help with the rebuilding there.  But instead, I´m in still San Marcos helping people in a different way, while earning a pretty decent living.

          Had I stopped listening to my intuition?  Or had it led me astray?  "You´re a fraud!"  A little voice continuously yelled in my head.  And it honestly made me reluctant to blog for a while.  But fortunately I was eventually able to gain a different perspective and allow a more peaceful voice to guide me.  This voice provided three priceless pieces of wisdom: 1)  Always do what feels right   2)  See the beauty in the seeming chaos & ugliness  3) Plan only for this moment.
          I´m probably not going to make it to the orphanage or to Haiti.  My heart has asked me to stay here in San Marcos and help people through this new passion and gift I´ve rediscovered. And India seems like my next destination, but that´s not ´til June, and who knows, I may be asked to just pack it all up and go home tomorrow.  5 Year Plan?  Pfft!  I barely know what tomorrow brings.  


Plan Only For This Moment

          I still have a hard time really living into this idea, because I grew up believing that planning our lives in advance saves us a lot of hardship & anxiety and provides us with a destination/goal to keep our sights on.  Many people here have asked me what I plan to do when I get back to the States.  "Are you going to open your own clinic/practice?  Are you going back to acting?  Are you still going to live in LA?"  And I stayed up very late many nights trying to find answers to these questions and figure it all out.  And it brought me much more anxiety than it did clarity.  My worrying got so chronic that I stopped enjoying what I was doing in the very present.  I stopped enjoying life.
          And one morning I woke up at 3am and had so much anxiety about where my life was headed that I laid in my bed, wide-awake, until my alarm went off at 6am.  All the possible scenarios anxiously swam through my mind during these three wasted hours of my life, and when my alarm went off I was so upset that I yelled aloud, "I don´t fucking know!  Just leave me alone."  And just like that, I got my answer.  And I´ve slept wonderfully ever since.
          Now, when people ask me about my plans for the future, I simply and honestly tell them, "I don´t know."  Usually that satisfies most people, but for the rare unsatisfied, I write down God´s number on a piece of paper and tell them to give Him a call- he will have the answer for them.   

Always Do What Feels Right
          I´ve grown accustomed to the face of this little voice- my intuition.  It continues to lead me moment to moment and is the only reason I find myself where I am today.  I used to constantly question its guidance, especially these last few months.  Although I kept listening to my inner voice and making decision based on what felt right, it kept delaying my previous plans and taking me away from what I thought this journey was all about - 'stepping outside myself and being of service to others.'  And this made me feel very guilty.  But what I didn´t realize was that I was attaching specific limitations to 'being of service.'  I had the idea that unless I was working at an orphanage or helping people in a country like Haiti, I wasn't truly living up to the promise I made at the beginning of this trip.
          Most of us see service as a voluntary act for those much less fortunate than us.  Service has to be a big commitment to an important project that is drastically changing the lives of people.  You have to dedicate all of your time & energy to it and don´t even think about earning money while doing it.  True service is priceless and requires great sacrifices.  As I began to see the foolishness and limitations in these beliefs, I started to realize why most of us are so afraid or unwilling to help each other.  We think it has to be this great sacrifice that depletes our own abundance ('this abundance that we´ve worked so hard to obtain').
          But service is much simpler than that and often requires very little from us.  It´s taking the time to greet those you meet everyday with a genuine smile.  It´s remembering someone´s name.  It´s feeding a hungry dog or helping an old woman with her groceries.  It´s teaching a native Spanish-speaker English for an hour or showing compassion and love to a homeless person when you don´t feel at peace about giving them money that day.  It´s giving appreciation to the food we eat or showing gratitude to the flowers that grow in our gardens.  Service is simply sharing your love.  Your love can be the salvation for the rest of the world.  We don´t have to travel the world to be of service to others if that doesn't feel right.  We can be of service right where we are, during each moment of our day.  Service is not sacrifice; it is sharing our abundance in a manner that also brings us peace.
          I've had the pleasure of really making a difference in many people´s lives these last 2 months at the Holistic Centre.  Yes, I´m also earning some money in the process, which is simply icing on the cake.  Abundance comes to us in many different forms and money is just one of them.  I accept it as a wonderful gift for sharing my love & compassion with others.  But I've also treated many people, especially local Guatemalans, for free.  If it brings me joy & peace, the money is irrelevant.  By allowing abundance & love to flow freely into my life, I´m able to peacefully share it with others.  To me, this is what service is all about.

Seeing the Beauty in the Seeming Chaos & Ugliness       

          This has been by far my biggest lesson and has completely changed how I see myself and the world around me.  It all starts with faith/trust; trusting that every experience we have, every person we meet has a purpose.  And most of the time, our most challenging experiences hold the greatest gifts for improving our lives.  Have you ever noticed that when we continue to ignore our intuitions, the universe acts in a drastic manner to really force us to listen?  My friend Robin told me it took a horrible car accident to give her the strength to leave a relationship that was bringing her a lot of pain & unhappiness.  The accident was a great blessing in her life, but we don´t see the beauty in these difficult experiences until after the fact.  We usually see ourselves as the victim of a terrible accident and wonder why such bad things happen to good people.  Let us question coincidence for once!  Could it be that our lives always unfold in a way that is in our best interest?   And perhaps accepting our experiences as they are happening is the key to really reaping  the fruits of challenging experiences and unlocking the treasures that they are so willing to share with us.
            Let me give you a simple example.  There's only one internet cafe in town, which has about 5 computers and the slowest connection known to man.  One day I really needed to print something, but every time I went there all the computers were taken.  I kept coming back all day and being faced with the same challenge.  When I arrived 30 minutes before closing later that night, once again all the computers were taken.  But instead of getting angry and frustrated about it, I knew that there was a reason for this.  
          So I sat down and patiently waited.  It just so happened that this guy, who a few weeks I had told I liked him without knowing his sexual preference, was sitting at one of the computers.  We hadn't really talked since then, and it had been awkward between us every since I had been honest with him.  So he randomly turned to me and asked me if I thought my teacher Nadia would sell him this stuff called MMS this late at night.  It just so happened that I was also taking MMS.  I told him that I´d walk him to her house and see if she was up for it.  But by doing this I´d be giving up my place in line and would probably not make it back before closing.  Regardless, I went with my gut feeling and took him to Nadia's.

The Amazing Nadia

          She ended up being busy but relayed the message to me about a dinner that night, which I wouldn't have attended had I not made this trip to see her.  My good friend Motoi was leaving the next morning & would be at this dinner, so it gave me a chance to say goodbye to her.  So I told my friend that he could just have some of my MMS and that I´d bring it with me into town tomorrow.  He was very appreciative.
           He called me the next day, we made the exchange, and he asked me if I wanted to hang out with him!  Although I didn't make any assumptions or have expectations, none of it would have been possible if I hadn't trusted the 'flow of the universe' and reminded myself that every seemingly frustrating experience is just masking the incredible possibilities that exist below its rough surface.  And by the way, I went back to the cafe that night, two minutes before closing, and the cafe owner decided to stay open for another half hour, as a way of showing his appreciation for my patience.  Unbelievable, right?  Coincidence?  Yeah, right. 
          Now, besides seeing the beauty in everything around me and in all my experiences (good or bad), I began to also see my own beauty & perfection (I use the word perfection in a very non-arrogant, yet empowering way).  Although I´m at a place in my life where I've accepted all my different colors and unique qualities, I began to be aware of situations where I didn't always feel comfortable about sharing specific things about myself.  (oh yes... here comes another story my dear friends...)
          I was sitting down having dinner with two male friends of mine a couple nights ago, and the conversation shifted to relationships (doesn't it always?).  Now,  I hardly knew these two guys and as they went on and on about this girl and that girl, I became more & more uncomfortable.  You see, I was happy to talk about my 'boy issues', as well, but had made it a point long ago not to talk about my sexuality with near strangers, unless they specifically asked me about it.  So I waited for the "Do you have a girlfriend?" question... but it never came!  I just sat there, uncomfortable.  I felt like I was forced to hide something about myself in order to allow them to feel comfortable.  Why shouldn't it be okay for me to chime in about my boyfriends without it getting weird?!   Why do I need to be prompted first or to sit there uncomfortably?  And then it hit me...
           I had created my own prison.  All of this was the clever work of my own mind.  None of it was real.  And the only way to leave my self-made prison was to be completely and utterly transparent.  But this doesn't just apply to sexuality.  We often don´t share our age, weight, job status, political views, artistic preferences, etc, etc, etc, because we are either insecure about it and don´t want to be judged by others, or because we don´t want to make them feel uncomfortable with our unique views or preferences.
          But the key to leaving our own prisons and getting past our self-inflicted limitations is to embrace the elephant in the room and set it free--- to be transparent and talk freely about it with others!  Instead of seeing our uniqueness as a blemish, let us see it as a gift.  Embrace the fact that you just turned 40 and still don't have any clue where life is leading you.  Embrace that you may be out of a job, so that you can enjoy and be open to what life has in store for you instead.  Let us embrace our sexualities, our height, our weight, our likes & dislikes, and everything else that makes us who we are.  By seeing the beauty in all of our perfect, puzzle pieces, we can help remind others of their own beauty and help them look beyond the seeming chaos & ugliness in their own lives.
           I believe we all have the same purpose on this Earth- to experience the love of the world and to share that love with everyone and everything that happens to cross our path.  The chose is ours.  We can see the world only through our physical eyes, or we can experience its beauty & love by seeing it through the eyes of our hearts.