Okay, I don’t mean to start every blog with a music reference but it always seems to work for me. When I am uninspired, lost or blocked in some way I go through my faithful itunes library and choose a song…. its like searching for lost treasure.

“If you hear a voice call out your name… there is no need to be afraid, for its only freedom calling.”

Oh, dear, sweet Colin Hay. Now, this is a guy who really has it figured out. If you spend any money on music (or on anything at all, really) this year it should be for Colin Hay’s music. Buy all of his cds (especially Transcendental Highway)…. really, just do it… give them to everyone you know for Christmas or not Christmas or whatever you celebrate around this time. Your life will change, their lives will change. If you don’t believe me read these lyrics Freedom Calling — Colin Hay, I dare you to not be moved!! This song rises and rises and the bagpipes burst through and it is a truly angelic moment… Every single hair on my body stands on end and I shiver with the possibility… of… everything

Sometimes it feels like my body is too weak, too human, to contain the majestic dragon consciousness, as it wakes up and stands, striking and glorious inside me, on its hind legs, wings outstretched. But a really cool thing is happening to me right now; I am living my life again. I am opening up and letting the energy flow both ways through me. I am invigorated, motivated and still.

I am learning my formula for inspiration, solving my equation. I indulge in the “I don’t feel like its”. There are things that I know I love, that are good for me, that I will avoid because “I don’t feel like it” . Sometimes just challenging that is enough; saying “Really, Gina? Are you sure that makes sense, that’s what you don’t feel like doing? Isn’t this something you, in fact, do feel like doing?” Often that is enough to push me off the cliff, but sometimes I am a petulant billy goat refusing to budge, I dig my heels deep into the dirt and resist mightily. These are the days I just want to stay in my pjs, I look around at the dishes or the recycling on the back deck and I run back to bed like the groundhog who’s just been scared back into hibernation by his shadow.

There is a beautiful paradox of humanity here. The thing that makes me feel hopeless is the same awareness that allows me to feel glorious. “The deeper the sorrow that carves into your being, the more joy that you can contain” — Kahlil Gibran. Another thing that makes me grateful for my humanity is the impellent urge for growth, expansion, because… I AM learning. I am carefully examining myself, my strange repeating patterns, tracing my fingers over the lush veins of rose quartz and scraping away the dirt so my resplendence can be seen entirely.

This time what I’ve learned, uncovered, seen, is the need for an arsenal. I need to have a chest of weapons readied and easy to use in those moments when I want to turn and run. This reminds me of a comedian I saw when I was younger, Ron James. He is describing how he bought a shotgun to protect against intruders and how he stores it at the foot of his bed in a locked box. When someone sneaks into their bedroom and he “wakes up with a head full of sleep, he pokes his wife “honey, honey, what’s the combination? What’s the combination?! Hey! you better stay back, I’ve got a big gun in this box!” That’s why it needs to be near and easy, my cache of weaponry… if I am trying to remember a quote and I have to look it up in 3 different books, that just wont happen when I am in my shifty, uninspired state. My world has to be a display, an armoury of bows and arrows, and swords, brass knuckles, tear gas,and cannons and catapults, and I have to be ready and trained.

I am training. And I am collecting everything I can, everything that I know will pivot that instinct for retreat. I have songs, quotes, a long hot shower, a deep breath. I wonder, marvel, at the power of a breath that fills every crevice of my soul and my body. I take my stockpile with me now, everywhere I go, because one never knows where that goblin (and his writhing, drooling army) will be lurking. And I keep adding to my arsenal every time I can, every time I think of something, so it will be imposing in itself, so its mere existence will incite fear into those mucky little goblin hearts (Do goblin’s even have hearts? maybe they are sustained by some other slimy organ, that pumps sludgy brown goblin blood through crooked bodies, that we do not possess.), so there will come a day when those “hard times come again no more.”

Oh, yeah… I’m ready to take the recycling out now.

“They say we’re made of mostly water so how come we can’t find the sea?” Water Song — Colin Hay

Today I realized, remembered, reaffirmed that I want to live an EXTRAORDINARY life. I want to face the fear I have in my life, embrace it, and, holding hands, bring it boldly forth with me; tearing through the thick, stone walls like a finger through crumbling rice paper scrolls. Even as I write that I get goosebumps of fear all over my body. I gasp, and my stomach holds onto that gasp for dear life. To my mind, my ego, those words feel treacherous, that commitment is frightening and bare. I will have no excuse anymore if I call those words to live inside me. Right now, in this moment, still I have no excuse, but ego tells me all sorts of stories to support the opposite being true, to remind me that I cannot live any way but by his faithful, feardriven guidance. My goblin ego has created a foundation of lies that support the belief that the emperor is, in fact, clothed. The child; my deepest heart, is still gently calling me, trying to open my reluctant eyes to the naked emperor, but I am not having any of it.

I believe in a world of possibility. I believe in love… as my facebook religion states: Love. Plain and simple. Love everything and everyone; unequivocally, unconditionally & gratefully. That pretty much says it all… and, as I mentioned in my last post, one of my favourite lyrics is from the song “Gamble Everything For Love.” This is truly one of the philosophies of my heart… and I have not been doing it justice. I have not been living that in the core of my being. I am afraid of love. I am afraid of not being loved, and I’m afraid of being loved.

I have let my goblin build a big fortress inside my chest, with high walls and brave longbowmen and infantrymen prepared to die in defense of the fair maiden; my heart, they’re charged to keep invulnerable, safe, protected. My sweet and loving heart has been forced to take refuge in this tower, asked to slink back, to avoid danger, fear, ridicule, rejection, loss; all those sadly conventional, “reasonable” states of being that only have meaning to my parasitic goblin. There are no bars, no locks, caging my heart in that damp, tall tower, and to expect a knight in shining armour to blaze in and kill the faithful guardian army would be a shameful waste of such loyal, honourable lives. My heart knows this and will not compromise such a futile and tragic loss of innocent life by contriving an escape or pleading for rescue. So, faithfully and confidently, it waits there, alone in the tower, weaving baskets and telling stories to itself; still and patient, longing for, and expecting, my reawakening, the slaying of my evil ego goblin.

The good news is I don’t need a legion of slaves to dismantle the tower… I only need to make a phone call. Just one… so instead of playing the “what if” game of worry, I am playing the “what if” game of power. Not what if I make the phone call… but, rather, what if I don’t? Am I prepared to live meekly in the moment, my heart locked away, praying to my goblin as he reminds of the emperors fine robes? or do I want the life that is not just less ordinary, but EXTRAORDINARY. There is a choice, a choice in every moment… I “choose life”, but not just that, I choose alive, fully alive.

“There are those that have the flame and those that just want to get close” — Ben Lee

Reading his bio on his website catches my breath in the middle of my chest, as it always does when I come across a kindred creative spirit. I live for that creative connection, that is why I love learning about new music, and how I know I love a song. Its as if that energy channels into the song. Ben Lee’s cd Awake Is The New Sleep is like that for me also. Try to be unhappy listening to that!! I dare you!!! One of my favourite lyrics of all time is from this album; “Make a list of things you need, leave it empty, except for number one; write: Love — gamble everything.” (finding the right punctuation for that sentence is challenging, if you have any better ideas let me know.) Yeah, do you feel it? There is so much charge and stillness in that when I read it, hear it, feel it, so much wisdom in that one tiny, simple line… I feel like I want to explain it somehow, break it down… but there is nothing more precise I could say, and words are, by their nature, just approximations anyway, exactitude and perfection are impossibilities.

I was just thinking about how growing up I always had “safe jobs” and “dream jobs”. I never let myself get too attached to the dream job idea, which is a bit funny because I have always been the first to encourage those around me to live big and follow their “bliss” (in the words of Joseph Conrad). For me, its always been a challenge to make that jump, to extricate myself from the sticky spiderweb obligations and restrictions I’ve imposed upon myself.

These last couple years have finally become about that extrication process of possibility, of discovery. Its remarkable, though, when permission to dream is finally granted, how difficult it really is to create images and dreams and wants that are definitive. Painting that clear picture, inclusive of all the details, is trickier than I thought it would be. It’s like my life is finally a blank canvas and I’m terrified of what to paint because I know I have the power to create it. (Okay folks, psychoanalyze that!!)

I have been increasingly disconnected from my source since moving to this fair city. I am proud of myself for some big accomplishments though. Its a strange balance… I haven’t felt as alive as I did when I was overwhelmed on Saltspring Island and wanting so much to leave; writing feverishly in the middle of the night, playing my guitar until dawn. I kept thinking “If only I had more time, more open space in my life then I’d really be able to explore, to live, to awaken…”, now, here I am with more open space than I ever could have dreamed of, or wished for, and I spend it on facebook. There is sad, sick irony in that.

Thinking about dream jobs and safe jobs, it occurs to me, that no matter what career you go for there is always competition. I have tried to steer clear of paths that will put me in direct competition with others because I have questionable self esteem in those circumstances. But these last few weeks, trying to find a serving job, have proved to me that it doesn’t matter what vocation you are striving for there will always be a long line of folks right there with you vying for that same position.

A lot of changes are happening right now, but that isn’t news. As a friend reminded me, “the only constant is change”. Its step by step, motion. Living is a verb (I need to remember that), its the action of “living” that we are engaged in, not the noun “life” that we are passively observing as it hangs on the wall like a snapshot of the possibilities we are not brave enough to leap for. Its like trying to jump into the sidewalk chalk drawings from Mary Poppins without believing. You just end up looking silly, standing there in the street, jumping up and down.

I am reminded of how I felt at my amazing sister, Gemma’s graduation. How it was clear to me, after hearing all the speeches, that nobody finds University easy. We believe that those who succeed at things found the road an easy one, but the more steps I take, the more I realize that is not the case. It is just a matter of who keeps going, who persists, after others give up, who takes failure as a growing experience and uses it, like fertilizer, for success.

Yes.. there again “is the rub”.

“If you want to be more successful, double your failure rate.” — Bill Gates (and he should know)

I spent the afternoon wandering along Jericho beach in the glowing overcast monochrome that, despite its greyness, makes everything enlivened, including me. I am so enlivened by my afternoon I have decided its time to start a blog of my own… a place where I can think my thoughts out loud and hopefully make connections and share a little inspiration along the way.

I was walking the beach with a lovely guy I’d never met before. I came across his profile on Plenty Of Fish (as if I needed another internet site to suck away more of my time, but there it is all the same), we sent a few messages back and forth and decided to meet. I always wonder and marvel at the very human ability of finding common ground. I am usually pretty good at finding a topic to connect on but this was different and exciting because we talked about joy and spirituality and allowing. Even more energizing was that his thoughts, perspectives, and ideas were ordered, complete, articulated, usually I am writing my thoughts or shaking them up in my head, so my own thoughts were a little hazier, a little less congruent. Its been a long time since I’d talked about my own position with a real live person, so this was a very wonderful, albeit challenging, encounter.

I feel like I know so many things about how I want to live, about how to get the most out of a life (my life) but there is always a gap, a grey area, that makes it a challenge to reconcile the thoughts and dreams of this inspired life with the expectations, pressures and feelings of daily life.

“Ay, there’s the rub”

But, something was clear to me today, standing on a wooden, arcing bridge over a clear pond with maple, alder and other leaves hanging on just below the surface. Out there, with the flocks of mallard ducks sailing toward us, their v-shaped wakes stretching out behind each one like rippling arms, something was made clear, rather, clarity was encouraged and facilitated by my new friend, about control. We human beings seem to be tangled in the most absurd of paradoxes. We fight so hard to be in control of the events in our lives. I would venture to say all our fear stems from some lack, discrepancy or expectation for/of control. We try to control the things that happen to us, the people around us, so many things that are beyond our power. We put all our energy into controlling the events and outcomes in our lives that are impossible to control and all that energy rallies a battle we know, in our heart’s center, is futile.

The paradox is we fight so hard to control what we cannot and completely ignore, shun, disregard, downplay the one power that we can control. The ultimate power that could open every door and awaken every sleeping atom within us… Why is it such a human tendency to look outward for fulfillment, when all we need to do is turn inward and allow the power to expand, the dragon to wake stretch giant wings and rise. In this act of internal opening we become centered, we can live serenely in the eye of the storm.

Inside, our hearts call to us all; politely, lovingly. They are fearful of pushing us farther away so they never call too loudly, they never risk offense. Hearing that voice, that gentle calling, and living our lives directed by it completely, is the purpose of life, the ultimate, harmonied success. It means allowing energy and emotions to flow freely through us, and it means detaching from the meanings we create about our realities, to our experiences as human beings. It means facing our emotions without drawing back and without qualifying them. It means having faith that everything is happening for a reason. The energy of the Universe is greater than anything the mind can conceive, so any attempts the mind makes to control or order circumstances are going to fall short. Its the difference between a paint by number canvas and a van gogh masterpiece.

I came away from my afternoon in cloaked in, no, permeated with, stillness. It is not often a blind encounter yields such a calm, cool, sighing sense of certain peace.

“Be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.” ~ Max Ehrmann