I am infinite. You are infinite.  There is no relationship.  You are the air I breathe.  Symbiosis. There is no word I can say to describe how beautiful you are.  All language and languaging is a lie.  A metaphor.  An apple is not simply a group of sounds.  "AAhhhpple."  It is more than that.  A crisp, juicy snap of fruit and nourishment dropping from a tree top.  And so, we can use words to point at the ineffable, the incomprehensible, we can taste the flavor of being, the fragrance of freedom, but nothing I can say can pinpoint it: who I truly am.

There is no one to awaken and nowhere to awaken into.  Self-realization does not come from a practice.  It can happen or not happen.  It is a loss, only.  A loss of the appearance of a separate individual.  A loss of something that was never there.  Just like walking out of a prison made of light.  An appearance.  There is no process. We can meditate.  We can sit with a teacher.  We can sit in stillness, We can sit in nature. We can sit with each other.  We can hold each other's hand.  Awakening can happen.  The dropping away of an illusory self.  A separate individual which cannot dissolve, cannot die, and cannot be destroyed.  The suggestion is that the faculty of agency had never existed.  But the illusion, the illusion can disappear. 
 

There have been three awakening stories in "my" life.  Three flashes which were so deep that nothing was the same afterwards.  These are just stories.  One was when I was six years old.  I saw a spirit for the first time.  The event frightened me, and so "I" left my body and flew around.  The spirit.  The energetic form.  From that moment on, there was no sense of the Earth as more than a physical place.  That is to say, whilst there is a physical body sensed at this moment, it is not perceived as real.  The spirit, also is a form.  A form made out of energy.  I am real, you are real.  We are not going anywhere.  Form, however, can come and go.  

The second was a car accident where my car flipped over as a young adult four times.  I was unharmed.  The feeling of flying created a subconscious link to who I truly was.  To the indescribable.

I then spent many years exploring spirituality, I worked as a Yoga Instructor, then a Shiatzu practitioner sensing energy in people's bodies, then I worked for a publishing company creating music for guided meditations.  During that time I lived in the woods, recorded bird sounds, went on many walks in the forest, and deepened my relationship with animals and plants.  That deep connection with the natural world has been a driving force for creativity and activism and has become a deep source of peace in the body.  At that time I also studied Shamanism.  I then started working as a medium.  Mediumship in essence is hearing and seeing and relaying information.  It felt healing to the body to talk about experiences that had happened.  To feel held by my ancestors, and learn to receive information in my dreams.  But more and more focus naturally fell toward who I truly am.

The third awakening story was in my adult life.  I fell into a twelve-day fever during adult chicken-pox.  I began channeling.  Healing energy came into the body.  Not in a way where I talked in a different voice.  There had been suffering.  The form of suffering for this body was mostly physical suffering.  Muscles in pain.  Nerves sending pain signals which created difficulty with even basic tasks.  There was also an experience of deep fear in the body, and a compulsion to act to control that fear.  There was also suffering in the seeking. 

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The channeling came in and showed the body what was possible.  And that nothing was lost.  And writing flowed.  Art happened. The illusion of separateness vanished.  Non-doership - the body as nature - effortless, thoughtless, spontaneous, action effulged and enlivened the body. 

And so, the wonder, the inquiry into the infinite absence of who I am, (the empty-fullness, the pristine natural awareness of the ever-present "I") continues. 

 

Who am I? Who am I? Who am I...

         My Teachers
 

• Bachelor of Fine Art from Lewis and Clark College.                                                 

• Associate degree from the Swedish Institute of Health and Sciences in Chinese Medicine & massage.                

• Became a Structural Iyengar Yoga Teacher

• Became a licensed Massage Therapist & Shiatsu practitioner.                                                       

• Studied Internal Family Systems Therapy with my parents, Internal Family Systems therapists, Bonnie Weiss & Dr. Jay Earley. 

   

• Studied color, auras, and mediumship with psychic-medium Jamie Butler.

• Studied Shamanism with Daniel Foor & Autumn Edwards.

• Currently studying Nonduality with Ramaji, Fred Davis, & Suzanne Chang  

• Learned music from my dad, who is a professional jazz and bebop musician.

• You are all my teachers: every animal in the forest, every blade of grass, every flower bursting with color, every flash of light, every smile on a loved one, every hand held, learning, growing, here now, here now, here now...