March, 2008

I was recently in Sedona, Arizona for a workshop through my yoga studio. The weekend was called the YEHA Dahn Mudo Camp. YEHA stands for Young Earth Human Alliance...it's for people who have great vision and purpose in healing society and the Earth however they may...the weekend was a mixture of yoga, tai chi, martial arts, massage, energy work, meditation, etc.

I met some amazing, passionate people and experienced a lot of emotional release through physical and spiritual training. During one excersice we called upon the energy of heaven and earth and were listening to beautiful music accompanied by the sound of strong rains...it was a clear, bright, sunny day that morning, we had our eyes closed during this exercise, and when I opened my eyes I was so shocked and amazed to see that little trickles of snow had begun falling, it was snowing!! There was already snow on the ground...how long had we been meditating and calling upon the rain? It was so beautiful I began to cry. Then I watched as other people in the room began to notice the snow and be as surprised as I was. Apparently it is rare for Sedona to get snow so late in the year, I was told later. There are so many more indescribable parts of the trip...

As we were about to head home I explained to one of my new friends, Leslie, about drivenmessages and asked her to help me come up with a message. She said to find three words to describe the weekend. “Trust Your Soul” came to mind instantly...follow your heart and trust you soul...Truth.

Many hours later, at 2 am, we were almost home...Leslie was asleep and Kimberly my other new-found friend and passenger and I were still awake. We had gotten off the freeway and were on surface streets...aware that it was St. Patrick's Day, we started noticing the subtlely dangerous driving going on as the hours grew. While pulling up to a stop light two young men in a Mustang came screaching up along the left side of my car two lanes away, they were going into the left turn lane at our light. I could sense them coming long before I heard or saw them (especially after all the energy training), they were drunk and looking to vent. When they approached us they were screaming and flipping us off, the passenger man was leaning all the way out the window. Kimberly and I looked at each other with amazement. "Wow, they were really angry." Kimberly quickly realized that my statement "trust your soul" is in some ways, making me a target. I realized this when I began the drivenmessages journey and have been pursuing it anyway. (In fact, there have been times when I became lax about the messages.  I had written "Put a smile on someone's face today" on the window a while back and kept it there for 4-6 weeks and never changed it, never took a picture, or blogged about it. I hope that in some way it still made some kind of difference to people. ) Anyway...Kimberly and I talked for a while about how being positive and loving can also make you a target...that you are then vunerable. At one point I said to her facitiously, "well, imagine you've been drinking all night, have stayed 'till the bar closed, and here are these happy, peaceful little girls, flowers in their hair (figuratively) with "trust your soul" on their window. She looked at me and understood what I was saying. It is clear that if inner strength, vision, peace, and your commitment to it are your purpose...be it known that there will be many obstacles. I was a little hurt by the men at first, and when I dug a layer deeper I found the pain was really because I was sad for them. It's really unfortunate how unhappy and angry people are. I began thinking about Iraq, how those Mustang men weren't far from weilding an AK-47 out of the window and if they were passionate enough, they really could have guns and kill people...it's going on this very minute right now. As I sit in this coffee shop writing a blog, attempting to make a difference in the conciousness of humanity there are children dying of starvation, women being raped and sodomized...WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO?!!!!!!!!!!! I want to do my best to contribute to healing society and making a difference in the world. I can't help thinking, if those men were as passionate about screaming "f@*k you" to a couple of young women on the road at night as they were about helping people in their lives, building a home for someone in need or finding funds to give to cancer research, or by expressing something inside them waiting to explode, our world would be a better place.

It only takes so much of us, of our consciousness shift towards love, creativity, and abundance to affect the world...more and more children are being born with miraculous energetic capabilities and wisdom....have generations before us thought the same as I do? Will we always be striving for hope? When will our planet unite and take care of everyone in need? When will more of us do our best to maintain inner peace and actually take care of ourselves? Maybe some people are destined to be "bad seeds" but do you really believe that? Do you really believe that when an infant comes into the world with purity, innocence, and passion, that s/he strives to kill people someday? Everyone is someones child. When we love our children more than our belief systems the killing will stop. (Some may say that I'm young and have high ideals; will I feel the same 30 years from now when time may beat down my optimism, or will I stay strong and carry hope? For now, I'll take my idealism and run with it.) Killing in the name of God is one of the most poposterious notions I've ever known. People like Ghandi had the inner strength and fortitude to surrender to peace and love. Yes, people died in order to free India, yet each one of those individual people died with the conviction and hope that nonviolence was the answer, that eventually the perpetrators would see the senselessness of their actions. Ghandi didn't sacrifice lives for the greater good, each individual person made that choice to believe in his message, and gave their life for it. I'd rather give my life in the name of peace and love than in the name of anything else...this body will die, my soul will not.

I want to truly thank from the bottom of my heart whomever has really taken the time to read this whole blog... In gratitude to my family, friends, and all around me for being a part of my human experience.  

I believe that though there are wars and intolerance...in the spirit of true HOPE I choose to believe that this is all a reflection of the process of our souls...we are forever evolving, with darkness comes light and so forth. This is a delicate balance we live in. The Great Human Experiment. Maybe next time I'll be a tree or a bird, wouldn't that be nice? Or another human who knows to be the guardian of this place, animals, environment, each other...to stand up for what I believe in (even when I make mistakes and falter) and eventually through living this life, die for it.