A Tough Week

It’s been a tough week, huh? I mean….I know it sounds irrational to some, but us in North America and Central America had an eclipse this week, and it nearly took me and the other astro girlies OWT. This has been a tough week…for me, I’ve felt more self-doubt this week than I have in a long time (like 7 months? Pretty good run).

But I have recently found this book–or maybe it found me– called “A Course in Miracles.” I’ve been reading this book like it’s Harry Potter and I’m in 10th grade. (Whew, aged myself there.) But seriously, y’all ever loved a book so much that you’re happy it’s long as hell because it means you get to spend more time with it? When I say I love this book.

This book is why I’ve been studying my whole life on linguistics, mental health, self-healing, religions/spirituality, and metaphysics. It’s so I could comprehend this book and find a way to share it.

A Course in Miracles says that we are God’s creation. (Here, the term “God” represents the creator and source of eternity, wholeness, and love in whichever religion/spirituality/philosophy resonates with you.)

We are all God’s creation. God, in their perfection, cannot create imperfection. God created us, and God created everything around us, and they infused all of their creations with their perfection. (Note: To me it doesn’t make sense to assign God/the universe/the ultimate source of light and love and eternity, a biological sex, which is a trait of a physical body).

So if we’re so dang perfect, why all the imperfection?

Because peace does not attack.

See the thing is that, like, waaaaaaay back in the day, humankind got it in our own heads that we are separate from God. If you’re Abrahamic, then what Adam and Eve ate from the tree of knowledge, introduced the idea that we are separate from God and each other and everything and everyone. AKA the ego.

In reality, we are like fingers on the hand of God, or more like one cell on one finger on one hand of God. We’re there, we’re part of everything, and we all have a necessary and equally important role to play in the totality of All.

But we are God’s creations, and God’s creations can create, of course. We can create in perfection and love or we can “make” from the ego and fear, but we cannot do both.

The idea comes down to time versus eternity and the battle plays out in our brilliant, creative thoughts. See, here’s the most rational, non-metaphysical way I can explain it:

Your thoughts influence your emotions. Your emotions become your mood. Your mood influences your behavior and habits. Your habits and behavior have consequences. It’s not punishment. What goes up must come down. Or, say, if you spend all your money of travel and designer shit you don’t even wear while teaching English abroad then you might have to work a stressful ass job to make up for a decade of frivolity. (Super relatable I know lol) Consequences. Not punishment.

So we have God, who is love and the source and eternity. And we have the ego who is fear and finite and time-bound. So the ego fights for itself in our mind. It knows it’s finite. It knows that it is a fractured idea of separation and fear rather than of light and love.

The ego know’s it’s ultimately not necessary, and that is why it’s out here fighting for its life yall. Putting all these “what ifs” and “worst case scenarios” to block us from the wholeness and love and eternity that is who we as the creations of God are. Fundamentally. All of us. Every single one. Even you. Even your parents. Even my childhood bully who told everyone I was gay (not that there’s anything wrong with that!) in 5th grade who added me on facebook the other day. IDC that it’s been 27 years. <–But see there? See how quickly the ego gets in there? She’s another mitochondria in God’s perfect cell, same as I and all of God’s creations are.

The idea is that ideas spread, and when they spread far and wide enough they show up in the physical world. Hence money, the patriarchy, racism, houses, capitalism, clothing, all of it. All of the things we humans make to fill a gap that our egos created, not God.

Maybe this sounds a little absurd. How can everything be due to the spread of ideas? How can we be surrounded by eternity and perfection, especially when we account for the suffering of humans, animals, plants, bodies of water, etc.? How is that not real?

It’s real because we made it real. Us, in perceived abandonment, thinking we were created by noone and are entirely separate, have brought these shitty ideas into life.

The solution? The first step at least?

Dream a new dream. It’s a tough time right now on this earth, but there is peace and love and wholeness available to us all of the time. It’s a matter of unlearning the habit of fear, of letting the ego die, and of training the mind to think friendly, creative thoughts.

Because peace does not attack. The love and wholeness and perfection that surrounds us is incapable by nature of bonking us on the head or forcing us to see things its way. Peace does not attack. All these ego-based and fear-based guardrails that we used to build these enormous walls around ourselves have to be dismantled so that we can see what’s already there.

Life is hard at times. We’re in this together. Let’s just try to think nicer thoughts and to let the love in a bit more. And, most importantly, let’s dream a new dream.

Learning through pain, learning through love

Well,

Unfortunately I believe that when you mess up in public you have to apologize in public. The last thing I wrote on this blog was driven by hurt and anger and, like, a desire to make someone feel as bad as I did.

It did not help me heal, it certainly didn’t help her heal, and I’m pretty sure I caused a lot of hurt to someone who is doing the best they can with the tools and experiences and resources they possess–like everyone else in the world, including me. And including my parents.

I’m sorry, mom. Please forgive me. I love you. Thank you for staying.

I’ve been cocooning lately because the last couple years have been a time of tremendous growth for me. In that time, I lost a parent, which fundamentally altered me and forced me to grow up immediately.

And I changed.

And I know to some, that sudden and complete change was bewildering because on October 9, 2022, I went to bed with a childish mind and heart. But on October 10, 2022, when I got the news that my dad had passed,

I put childish things behind me.

There is a level of seriousness that can’t be undone when you feel and know in your heart and soul and gut that the people who made you will leave eventually–if you’re lucky. If you’re unlucky, or they’re unlucky, you’ll leave them.

As a part of my cocooning, I’ve been deep diving into Dolores Cannon. She’s something of a metaphysical researcher, if your world paradigm allows for that concept. Mine does.

Tonight,

The chapter talked about pain, the purpose of pain as a teaching tool, and jumping from a space of “learning through pain” versus “learning through love.”

I mean, think about it. No pain, no gain. Ours is a time where the vibe of learning and growing yourself is very much shaped around pain. We do some things to avoid pain, and we do others to create pain because we believe that we have to have that pain to drive us toward the outcome we think we want.

I always, always felt like I felt things too deeply. I always felt like I was in so much pain. I felt mental anguish from a highly active but undisciplined mind. I felt emotional pain from allll of my internal experiences being so different from the external expectations. I felt physical pain, because something about my body just be hurting man, ever since I was a little kid. When I was 10, it was daily stomach aches–real sharp pains. When I was a teenager, it was daily headaches. As a younger woman, it was pain in my throat, my back, my abdomen, my feet, plus the fatigue. And so on and so forth.

I felt spiritual pain because who doesn’t here, separated from each other, cut off from our true nature, unaware of our history or capabilities? Trapped in these paradigms that we made up? It hurts.

I’ve also had some key moments in my life where people would approach me, out of the blue, and just tell me things like I have a calling on my life, and that I have a tremendous amount of strength available to me–so much more than I could even begin to conceive.

When I lived in Qatar and went through my terrible breakup where I lost like 30 pounds and nearly left my body and this earthly plane for real, my yoga teacher started to (gently) tease me and call me the Queen of Pain, lmao.

I wanted to quit and leave this lonely, slow, painful human experience so badly that I never, ever, not in my wildest dreams, ever saw any version of the “future” where I was in it.

But when your heart is broken, it’s open by the nature of it being broken, and during that time I completed my yoga teacher training course, where I learned that if you tap out of life before you finish your mission you have to come back and start allllllllll over again as a baby, with all of the lessons you learned in this life hidden from your conscious mind.

I said oh hell nah, only thing that sounds worse to me than sticking things out here is coming back and starting over, so if I gotta grow I gotta grow.

Tonight, the book I was listening to–yes, I love audiobooks, I get to both learn and rest my eyes–explained the purpose of that pain.

I was given this pain so I could learn how to transmute it and arrive at a higher truth, which is that I can live the rest of my life, make my mistakes, and learn my lessons from a space of love. To show it could be done.

And now I get to put that pain behind me and live the rest of my life standing on the business of love, because I earned it. Because as badly as it hurt, not only did I stick it out, but I freaking expanded. And now I know that there is no limit to my expansion–my ability to love, to grow, to develop, to know, is only limited by the limits I impose on myself.

Yours, too.

See the thing is: We are all the same. We’re made of the same stuff, we contain the same divine spark. We’re at different parts of our journey, but we’re all on the same journey, which is to gather experiences and information and then ride the divine spiral up to the light and oneness and reemerge with that from whence we came.

You can do that from a place of pain, or you can do it from a place of love. I did it from a place of pain, and I earned my reward. Now I’m doing it from a place of knowing. Of love.

ATypical Day

Astrologically speaking, January was a month of miscommunication because something something capricorn I think.

Did any of you notice?

I need to complete my annual evaluation for work, and it involves writing. Normally writing is my jam, man. I can sit down and bust out 3000-5000 words if I have a burst of inspiration. If it’s an article, I can write the article. The words come out.

But lately, I have been struggling with writing. I feel swallowed up in a massive hole of voices and I keep thinking why would I add mine to the fray?

Sometimes I try to catch myself doing something that’s never been done. I’ll be sitting in my apartment, thinking “OK. I’m sure no Black woman from the USA who has locs and a biracial mother has ever sat in Qatar watching K-Drama on her MacBook Air.” Surely that can’t have been done, right?

And I guess I could do what everyone does and “share the process of how I made it” (to where? Things are not finished yet). Or write some kind of book about some kind of grand conclusion I’ve made throughout my years of travel and introspection…..like how to find love, or find yourself, or find your ideal career. Or what all the signs mean, you know?

But I don’t know. I feel like every day I find out there is more to life than I thought there was yesterday. And less. I feel so different than everyone….but we’re all one…but how can I be everyone when I’m sitting at my coffee table at 11:30p.m. and I haven’t gone anywhere for days?

How do I express what’s “right” and “true” according to what I know? How can I assess what I know, when we as a group (homo sapiens) know nothing. Every time I see some kind of historical piece of information that says “for the first time in history,” I think “for the first time in white, male, European history–maybe. But the first time ever? Ever ever?”

Did yall know that the idea of aliens building the Pyramids and the Sphinx in Egypt could have possibly developed or been influenced by racism….that colonizers saw those wonders of the world and figured that if they couldn’t figure it out, then it must not have been done by a human, because they after all are the superior humans.

The ego of people astounds me y’all. Who thinks like that, really? Can you imagine going to someone’s backyard, liking their gazebo/fire pit/deck (yes this is my dream backyard), and being like “well since I can’t build this and I know I’m better than you and everyone you ever met in every way, it must have been done by aliens.”

Kind of a wild conclusion to make, right?

Maybe I should write about spiritual stuff, right? I personally love to read about a good miracle….one that really turns a person’s life in an extremely positive way and has a lasting effect….like how old people were wild until they “got saved,” and then they just stopped drinking and smoking and fighting and gambling and fucking on the spot.

But I don’t have that…..I am absolutely blessed beyond measure. I try not to wonder too much about how I possibly won the birth lottery and then all the circumstances in my life go in a cooperative way so that I could continue to defy the odds until this very moment, where I am healthy, safe, employed, educated, loved, helpful, well-traveled, etc.

I have moments in my life where I felt guided….on the plane in 2013 when I first left the States for South Korea, my heart was pounding and I was terrified and praying. And I remember hearing a voice tell me don’t worry, that God is with me, that we will do it.

But like then is my spiritual advice to folks to leave everything you’ve ever known and see what’s left? What follows you? What you create?

I mean, I guess yeah.

But if anyone were to follow that advice, I’d have to give them a word of caution: everything takes so much fucking longer than I thought it would. Every scrap of wisdom I’ve gained, every trauma or wound I’ve healed…and re-inflicted…and healed again…that shit did not get better overnight. It took years of work, of being way more fucking honest than I wanted to be, of sitting with demons and karma and angels and energy and prayer and memories and sorting through all of it.

Shit sucks and is never ending and excruciating and glorious.

My mom and my psychologist both told me that I’m the type of person who takes things in…who internalize things from other people.

My psychologist says this is to transform whatever negativity I encounter…kind of like to help people out by energetically taking on some of their burdens for them because not everyone can carry everything that we must in order to continue living.

She says this is my work in this life: to clean the world a bit, at least my corner of it. To remove a bit of darkness from it and give a bit of light everywhere I go.

I think that if, sometime before I came to Earth in this human form, my soul was up in heaven like “sweet! free trip to Earth and I get to help people? Sign me up!”……..I think that if that is what happened up there…then I did some typical Bryoney shit and jumped in feet first with no research, not realizing how difficult the work itself would actually be.

And even if I did know….would I have let that stop me?

I don’t think so….I’ve never let anything stop me from working my ass off for something I really wanted. I guess I really wanted to be here, on Earth. I’m really grateful for the blessings I know about and the ones I don’t, and I do hope that in my niche way, I’m a very pretty cog in this machine of life.

Well there. I guess all I needed to do to write is get started. But does any of this even make sense? I feel like I’m rambling.