From Up Here....

The human ability to remember and then live in a moment that has already past is sensational. So too is the ability to travel into a potential future which may or may not be made manifest. But to be there, to stay there, to feel it, hear it, see it, taste it, touch it. We can do this and many of us do do this. It can be a source of great calming or great anxiety based on what we decide to remember or create inside ourselves.  

I'm on a plane, sitting on the runway, getting ready to elevate thousands of miles above the ground, above the clouds, above life on earth. But I'm also in bed, with a man, a man I have deeply loving feelings for but for many reasons don't get to see that often. We lay, naked, body to body after communing in the most sacred of ways. I can hear his heartbeat, I can feel my smile grow. Remember this, I think, mark this moment. I feel his body relax and his head filled with sleep falls heavy onto mine flooding me with warmth. Remember this.

And I do. I remember it vividly. As I sit here fully dressed on a deep blue leather chair in row 10C on this tiny air bus headed due east, I feel him. And my heart squeezes in my chest. And I think of all that I haven't told him and all that we can not be to each other. I feel the warmth dissipate into something else and wish my brain would stop hijacking my memory. then the plane begins to move and my iPhone All Times List on shuffle picks the perfect tune and we shoot straight up through the clouds up over anything I could possibly think.

Because up here anything is possible. Because I am flying. And I can't help but think about how many different people there are on this planet. About how at one point we thought the earth was literally flat and being able to fly was as ridiculous a thought as extra-terrestrial life. Video phones as ridiculous as time travel. And now we know the earth is very round, we can walk on the moon, there is water on Mars and FaceTime will be as common to our children as radio and tv was to us. It's only a matter of time and space until ET and doc browns delorian are here and touchable, usable, part of our reality.  

Things change so fast and all the time. And there are 7 billion people with infinite brain space to think and dream and create and remember and break down boundaries we only thought were real. There are 7 billion ways to live a life. 7 billion childhoods to work through, if we make it that far. 7 billion mouths that have 7 billion different tongues that taste 7 billion different ways. 7 billion bodies that all work, generally speaking, the same way but have vastly different experiences.

And yet, we all breathe, we all bleed, we all feel pain and we are all capable of joy. We are all capable of blindness and we are all capable of kindness. Is some psychological arenas it is said that anything we can see, anything we can conceive even, is something we are, on some level, capable of. Which means in a very real way we are capable of anything and everything and nothing is off the table. Even eternal life, eternal love.

My aunt died when I was 6. That's almost 34 years ago. She visits me almost every single day. Last night my teacher Gene Bua sang to me. He's been gone for 5 years but as sure as day, there he was. Ok it might have come through Mark Ballas' body but there was his sweet soul, immediately touching mine the second the notes of "IN MY MOTHER’S EYES" landed in my ears. And yes I was seated in my felt chair at the ahmanson, but I was also in my car. In my 2007 Volkswagen Eos sitting next to this legend of a man, laughing, crying, singing. Maybe not how I want it but it's there, available, always.

Eternal life. Eternal love.

 And just as often there are 7 billion ways to panic and freak out and create horror and terror and fear. And we see it out pictured. Every day and frankly lately more often than I'm comfortable with. And we're all connected and we are all responsible. The chaos and mayhem we see comes directly from the chaos and mayhem we feel inside ourselves. And listen, I'm no saint, and neither are you. And I am not saying let's all think positive thoughts all the time and save the world.

But what if we could? What if instead of being afraid to lose someone, we knew we couldn't? What if we knew that whoever and whatever we love, lived in us and could not ever disappear? Even when we do, even when they do? What if we became as brilliant at creating joy and harmony as we are at creating fear and separation? Something tells me we already are, we just forgot.

Because anything negative we feel or think stems from a variation of very human, very understandable, very untrue belief: I am unworthy, I am unloved.

People will lash out, be hoarders, degrade others, become addicted, withhold talent, withhold love, withhold joy all because we feel these things or because we are scared that these things are true or because we're scared they're not. People will hurt each other and themselves over and over and over trying to prove that they are better than each other only because they are so fundamentally convinced that they are worse. It's almost unbearable how simple the solution is and yet how unbelievable.

For 7 billion different brain cells to all of a sudden wake up to their inherent worth and loveliness. How very unbelievable.

and yet right now I believe this because up here, anything is possible. Up here, over the clouds I believe this in every cell of my being. I believe this is where we are heading. I want to believe that we will as a people can just wake up to it but until that happens I will just keep work on waking up to it myself. Over and over as many times as I have to. And I will do whatever it takes too.

Maybe it's closing my eyes and remembering my bed in my room that I lived in when I was 12. Remembering the outdoor bunk bed I slept in at camp just two years later. Remembering all those people I loved and how they made me feel. I’ll remember climbing up to that loft bed I built in college, peering out into Eagle Rock through that tiny sliver of window. Creating that sense of home wherever I am. Somehow feeling the warmth of every bed I have ever slept in makes me know I am always home. 

Maybe it's remembering the man I thought I would marry. And finding forgiveness and finding compassion and finding as much gratitude for him as for his departure. Remembering every person I have ever loved and letting the gratitude and compassion grow. Somehow realizing I can still feel them all with me makes me know those feelings are mine. And I can visit the amazing moments of my life at any time. Maybe it's realizing how much fun I have wherever I go and acknowledging that that is who I am. Maybe it's setting the intention to know myself as that wholly and completely.

Maybe it's all of these things and so much more. And maybe it's none of them. I do know though that resting my head against this plane window and feeling the seat underneath me sturdy as we fly through the air, whilst thinking about all of these things simultaneously, I am calmed remembering the weight of that man’s head as it rested on mine. And so, I will think of it. And I will think of him. And I will revisit that moment and let it calm me. And I will see what I can create moving forward. And I will be with the warmth I feel from all of that right now. And right now I will allow all of this to expand in my body and make me feel good. Make me feel love.  

I will allow all of this to help me to remember who I really am: love.

The human ability to do this life thing, in this space, at this time, for the centuries it has is sensational, truly sensational. to feel it, hear it, see it, taste it, touch it..... it's miraculous, when we let it be. Marvelous, when we let it be. Magnificent, when we let ourselves see it and us as such. So why don't we? Why don't we let ourselves see how amazing of a place this earth school can be? I want to. Are you with me???