Posts in Present
How Do You Surf the Vicissitudes of Life?

I was only an ocean surfer for about 5 years of my life in my early 20s. I thought that because I had been raised on a snowboard there would be a natural translation of my ability from snow to waves. I was wrong. I didn’t realize how accustomed I had become to being strapped onto my board and knowing that Earth would catch me regardless of where I was jumping from. Surfing waves was a completely new frontier, one of fluidity and unknown…

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How Can I Help?

As someone who is oriented toward service as a life path, I am often reflecting on to what extent I can actually help people and what kind of circumstance is required for that to be a reality. Over the years I have learned 4 big lessons on this topic 1. I cannot actually help anyone unless I help myself first and 2. I can only help people who are also willing to help themselves because 3. You can’t help anyone if you are sacrificing yourself in order to help them and 4. If they don’t want to help themselves, nobody can help them at all…

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Are You Free?

Life is beautiful. It is such a gift, perhaps it’s the biggest gift of all…to be alive. And yes, it comes with a full spectrum of human experience that is both shattering and exhilarating, expansive and terrifying, possible and trying - all at the same time. How is it that I get to wake up every morning to this glorious mystery and experience something completely new and different if I so choose (to become aware of the new and different)? Am I in fact free to change my mind and life at any moment? Am I not free if I forget this?..

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What Do You Remember?

Memory is such a deep well of exploration. Each of us carries it very near within, not to mention throughout the fabric of our psyche in every ravine, crevasse, and mountain pass that we may stumble upon while traveling through the inner landscape of our beingness. Astrologically our memory is associated with the 4th house and where Cancer represents in your personal chart. And let’s be clear, memory isn’t just about recalling where you put your car keys or only used for ‘memorizing’ words for a middle school play. Memory is an ancient doorway to the past which is where most of you lives…

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What Ends Here?

Writing this by the crackling fire before the sunrise is such a luxury and I’m soaking up every moment. This week I’ve been fortunate to recharge in my homeland of Jackson, Wyoming, gain altitude by hiking in the glorious crystalized Tetons, inhale fir sap essence into my lungs from the trees, and weave along with the Snake River walking at her edge for hours…

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What Is Sacred?

Have you ever heard the definition of Shamanism as that of making the everyday sacred? Having explored rituals, ceremonies, underworlds, inner worlds, and outer worlds for at minimum the last 25 years I am yearning to pull this definition apart. I don’t actually believe that anything becomes sacred just because I believe it to be, that simply does not feel like my seat to sit in. I truly feel that every day is sacred regardless of me and it is my job, and my privilege to remember this…

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What Is the Source of Your Inspiration?

I love this question. It makes me want to get really close to the inner layers of this beautiful diamond of inquiry and burrow myself deeply into the answer. And ultimately there is only one true response for me. As soon as this question is posed, I begin to feel sensations ignite throughout my body, my hair stands on end and then radiates with latent energy that is awakened as if suddenly called to attention. I feel warmth, I feel excitement, and almost a touch of shyness at the same time as if spirit is flirting with me. I feel as if I am on the cusp between life and death and that truth is just about to pour out across my tongue and into the world…

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Balance Means...?

I love a great living metaphor. The kind that ripples out from the micro to the macro and vice versa. For example, in my daily life, I am a literal balancing act between chapters or seasons of life, not quite where I’ve been and not quite where I am going. There is such a clear and visceral truth that I no longer belong in my past and yet the future is so exquisitely unknown, only to be revealed with each step. Welcome to Libra Season, the Autumnal Equinox that gifts us a momentary taste of true balance as the daylight equals the night, and in perfect form we cross a threshold from summer into fall…

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Is Your Reality a Dream?

Today is a new moon and tomorrow Mercury goes direct. However, at the moment this new moon is exact, there will be 6 planets plus Chiron retrograde which will set the tone for the month ahead (even though there will be an uptick of forward motion once Mercury shifts gears). Pluto, Saturn, Neptune, Chiron, Jupiter, Uranus, and Mercury are all holding a very particular court at this time. It is tentative, speculative, contemplative, and reflective through the Virgoan lens of harvesting the fruits of your efforts with a penetrating analysis of your progress along the way…

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How's the Weather?

A: It is 7:30 a.m. and 79 degrees outside. The AC is on and blowing lucid visions of life yet to be integrated into my conscious mind from the depths. There is a correlation between the movement of cool air and the rustling up of sedimentary processes lying inside the dark lake of my inner stillness. I hear the internal call to review how I got here, what is happening now, and what comes next once the past and present are clarified.  The astrology of the moment is also a great indicator of how cosmic weather provokes similar invitations if I am paying attention…

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Where Are We Going?

 As promised, this is Part 3 of the previous series Which Way Will They Blow? To begin, let’s discuss the we and the where. A friend once shared his perspective that when using the word “we” when writing, it automatically assumes everyone is in the same boat. And when it comes to the cosmic language of astrology and speaking to the collective (we) about the astrological weather of our near future (where), there is no other boat to be found, at least while we are destined to remain on this planet together…

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What Is Beauty?

I find myself in utter astonishment. Not because of the complete 180 that has introduced itself into my life this week but because of the most exquisitely beautiful dream I just woke up from. Have you ever been surfing the tidal waves of change, basking in the glory of the unknown, and asked for a sign? Me too. Just yesterday actually. It isn’t that I am new to these death and rebirth cycles of life, yet, somehow they keep feeling more intense, more palpable, with more at risk. I imagine this crescendo of undeniability and immensity is a true blessing. The more life I live, the deeper into the layers of my psyche I go, and what I find there needs work - rugged, genuine, courageous inner work…

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If You Could Have More of Anything, What Would It Be?

God. What does this word mean to you? Every letter is a symbol that coalesces into form when put together to create a particular wor(l)d. There is a resonance, a vibration, and a powerful resounding tone that emanates from this word. Some may throw their life before it, surrendering to the intoxicating gaze of destiny and dance with wild abandon into the eternity that is God. Others may run, as far as they can from it, barely uttering these letters upon their tongue. While others may dissect it through time and space, tracing history with their intellect, “proving” the absence of such a thing as if a construct of the human mind itself…

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Where Am I Going?

What a great question. Have you asked yourself this lately? What comes up for you? For me, many different layers to the answer are resounding in thought waves with every realization and aha. From “I don’t know” to “home” to “communion” to “do the laundry” to “the direction of my discernment” to “get some food” to “into the future” to “self-realization” to “somewhere new” to…and the story goes... 

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Which Way Will They Blow?

The winds of change are here. Deep in your bones, a new reality is fertilizing your inner soil yet discovered. One that is unrecognizable to the current collective mind. Can you feel these winds that are calling us into a new future? I can feel them, I can hear their howl too. Two years ago I was invited to explore astrology from 2020 - 2030 on a podcast and what I saw was both chilling and inspiring. The cosmos seems to be blasting transformation from an exalted karmic combination of profound medicinal astrology to cure the weakness of our societal blues from every angle. How about that?

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How Was Your Day?

Sometimes it feels as if there are a thousand days from when I wake up until I get to crawl back into bed, that luxurious place for hard-won rest. Plus, I haven’t actually been sleeping as much as I would like for the past 6 months as I continue to wrestle with my destiny which can stretch the capacity of experience in a day. Still, those moments of being deeply present to how my body practically merges with my soft sheets and the gravitational pull from my mattress are (insert Italian kiss to the tips of the fingers all brought together mudra) benissimo

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Be Still and Know?

How often do you find yourself simply being still? I’m reflecting on the stillness that is calling me from what feels like a faraway land, beyond the bustle of New York City, beyond the constant flow of thoughts that rush as a river through my unconscious, beyond the momentum of life that persists even if my body is not moving at all. Psalm 46:10 reads, Be still and know that I am God. What does this mean to you, if anything?

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