Dear beautiful you,

 
A few years ago, at a multi-day class/retreat, I woke up feeling…different. Light, free, expanded, grounded, open, potent, limitless, and pure me.

 
I got ready for the day with ease and flow.

 
I went for a walk in the fresh mountain air and marveled at all the life that surrounded me and felt part of my own heart.
I returned to my cabin still feeling…different. Crystal CLEAR.

 
I couldn’t really believe it. I kept looking around me like I had this big hilarious secret, but that it must be ephemeral, it couldn’t possibly be real or sustainable or me.

 
I danced around the cabin singing “Defying Gravity” (“Something has changed within me, something is not the same…”) from the musical Wicked (because that’s how dorks like me roll with spiritual epiphanies).

 
I shared privately what had happened with the teacher leading the class/retreat, feeling sheepish but also like I had to share it with someone who might just possibly know what the hell I was talking about. We both sat there with tears in our eyes watching the lifting morning fog. Whoa.

 
The years since then have not been spent 100% in that spacious, miraculous feeling.

 
But I had tasted it. And it never totally went away. It became this new foundation I could rely on, no matter what else swirled within or outside of me.

 
I returned to my “normal.” I kept practicing and setting lovely intentions and crafting my life, imperfectly perfectly.

 

Sometimes there would be just a hint of that feeling woven in with my regular life. And sometimes there would be way more than a hint. For a sustained time.

 
There has been an ebb and flow as that feeling (Dare I call it joy? Happiness? Those words make it seem small somehow) has subsided to the background then surged to the fore.

 

This experience of the tides within me surprisingly hasn’t been unpleasant. It is like a primal dance. All states are just fine, they are just me now. There is no rush. There isn’t really even an endgame I’m aiming for. There is just this fascinating dance.

 
When that feeling is at the forefront, especially when it is sustained for big chunks of time, I am just in awe. While getting on with my everyday, challenges and all.

 
None of this is a panacea for life. I still get sick sometimes, or moody, or hormonal, and I still have bills to pay and dinner to figure out and loved ones who are suffering, let alone the world we live in seemingly going to hell in a handbasket on a daily basis if I focus too much on the news.

 

But my relationship with all that is totally different.

 
Sometimes now I can deliberately summon that feeling. Or it’s really more like an invitation. I don’t do it directly, exactly. I don’t try to recreate something I have already experienced (that morning singing “Something has changed me” in the cabin).

 

I am actually inviting the Divine Wholeness forward, sometimes in words, sometimes by anchoring in my practices, and sometimes with my wordless heart as I do the laundry or run around getting groceries. And that is the feeling that comes with it. One of unity and clarity and pure love, of grace and gratitude.

 
How can I express to you how much I wish this for you? For everyone?

 

And it is within all of us already. I am nothing special. That this formerly suicidal fat, hairy, moody girl can have this exquisite experience of divine aliveness, let alone repeatedly so for sustained chunks of time, says it all. All I have done is asked and shown up as best I can, as best I know how, which honestly ain’t all that a lot of the time.

 

I simply have opened my eyes repeatedly, and now sometimes I get to SEE. To see the reality. The reality that has always been with me and in me, the reality that has been me all along. Amazing.

 
And it is you, too. It is all of creation.

 
This I wish for you. You have it. Please, step up and ask. Please step up and practice, whatever that means for you.

 
Be a musician in your life, doing the scales over and over so that finally, in what seems like a miraculous instant, divine music pours forth through you.

 
It will be easier for some and harder for others. Some musicians can pick up the violin and through pure gift, pure affinity and talent and grace, play it immediately, without a single lesson.

 
For most of us, inviting music from a violin would take a lot more guidance and practice and sour scales along with the sweet tones before the music flowed forth.

 
But you can. You can, if I can, for sure.

 
This I wish for you.

 
All my love,

Alice

 

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