A Word, or Two, Or Five on Intensity

Intensity as BEING Alive

This past weekend, I had many experiences of what it means to "BE" alive...not just living and in a body but truly ALIVE...

I used to consider "intensity" as a code word for "TOO MUCH" - I believed I couldn't handle what life brought to me and that intensity of experience was associated with pain, suffering, lack of joy and sometimes even betrayal.  These beliefs were a potent force which created a desire to be smaller, to fit into the box of other people's realities and not act too weird or powerful lest someone get offended.

What if being REAL was the change the world requires?  Could you handle being that intense with yourself, with others?

I attended a dance in a rather small venue over the weekend, with art on the walls and a kind of intimacy not normally associated with the typical bar or club.  What did the space create in its consciousness and what did we bring to the space?

The music pumped from the speakers, the light show danced above our heads and the smoke machine billowed clouds of atmosphere while amazing souls came in tune with their own life force.  There were no walls in that space - we occupied a new reality - one we created in love, joy, and trust.

Re-writing the Code - Intensity as the New Harmony

I haven't danced that hard in a long time.  That was an intense experience - physically and emotionally.  There were people I'd never met surrounding me - an experience that just a few short years ago, I might have considered, trying, too intense, tiring, emotional.

I might have thought I had no control over the the space and that by the end of it, I needed to solve all of the problems of the Universe that showed up there.  I could easily have felt lonely in a sea of people.  I may have controlled the intensity by shutting down, or screening people off or putting up walls.  Maybe I would get pissed off at something I didn't like about the space.  Have you ever done any of these things?

Instead, I found myself intentionally creating the space, the organism of the dance.  I set a clear intention for the type of experience I wanted before I even stepped foot in the gallery. I cleared from my energy-field anything that did not allow this and I set a boundary for the Truth that I wanted to experience during the course of the night.

And you know what?  I had just the experience I created.  I have learned to be that POWERFUL.  Being that POWER-FILLED is an intense experience.  I have re-written how I handle life and I find my experience is in HARMONY with that new code.

Does that mean that there weren't other people in the space with me, who had a completely different experience?  Maybe they went home disgusted by something or someone, maybe they went home feeling lonely...Absolutely.  We all have a choice, every moment of every day.  I just didn't "see" them.  They were in their own reality, not mine.

Music as a Metaphor for Creating

As I danced - until something like 2:30 in the morning, I allowed the music to flow through my energy field, my body, and fill me with ALIVENESS.  I couldn't stop smiling, really.  

It was fun to juggle my body with the body of others in the room.  To look up from a particularly intense meditative trance and see another awesome, unique face smiling back at me or moving their limbs, or trancing out to their own blissful universe of SOUND.

I met new people or re-met ones I'd known for years in that space too.  I allowed them to BE in their own You-niverse of dance and sound and experience.  I didn't need to control anyone or move them around or position them.  I didn't need to talk in words.  

A kind of telepathy ran through the space of pure consciousness and that was the BLISS of shared connection.  An energy that changes everything surrounding it and makes it whole -- in the way it needs to be, in the moment.  I understood something greater than myself was at work.

This music of awesome harmonic creation has the capacity to heal even the deepest wounds.  And I knew, intuitively that the room contained within it those who carried wounds, and pain and hurts and recent destruction of their reality - and yet, I hoped in my heart and soul, that the music would flow through them, and the love would lift them into the joy of who they truly BE.

When they chose it, they could see it too.  In their own space and time.  In a way that was meant for them to FEEL life again in a whole new way.

What Else?

At the end of the night (well some people kept dancing, but the end of MY night), I put on my coat and felt the pure intensity of the physical experience.  My feet hurt, my legs hurt, my muscles were like, "What the hell were you doing to us you crazy woman?"  And that was another coolness of being ALIVE in this BODY.

The intensity of the FEELING of the space was almost overwhelming by this time.  I could shrink into the couch and stay there forever, pulsing with the electricity of the base booming from the speakers.

I could ruminate on the lack of wordy communication (too loud!) or consider what I might write about after I slept for the next 24-hours.  Could I even sleep at this point?

Some BODIES might be shrinking at this stage into a dark corner to be ALONE in a sea of people.  That was OK too.  Sometimes you just need to check out of INTENSITY like that.  Nothing is wrong and nothing is judged.  You know you FELT something and need to process or sleep or just BE somewhere else for a little while until you can feel SAFE to venture out again.

Just know that life is INTENSE and while we may have been raised to shrink into obscurity or be afraid of FEELING or sometimes think back to a time when feeling this much was just TOO PAINFUL -- know you are so much more YOU and so much more ALIVE when you are ALL of You.

A Short Word on Fragments

I'm almost done with the intensity of this post. Understand that this was not any ORDINARY dance for me. I care too deeply to be anything other than OTHERWORLDLY.  Yippee!

When we are shrunk down into someone else's reality so that they feel comfortable, we pay a price.  The Earth pays a price and something breaks.

We exist then in a fragment.  Intensity has us jump into a black hole somewhere and hide and not experience the fullness of LIFE.

It may appear safe but in fact it is not.  It is a house of cards.  It is FAKE.

In the dance, we are a role, a persona, a container that's ready to burst at the seams.  We will go off like a bomb as soon as something startles us and we've seen it time and time again in the news.  We get surprised that anyone would do "something like that" and yet, if we faced it - we knew it was coming. 

No one can exist in a fragment and not, at some point, lose their ability to pretend that's all of them.

There's a better way.  A fullness, a harmony, a bigger game.  I am asking you to allow INTENSITY to be a part of LIFE as you know it it...to see it as the sign of huge change and awesome opportunity, rather than shrink from it or try to apply a rule book.  

What would happen if instead of trying to find a reason why you can't feel the way you do, or it's not possible, that you allow it to be POSSIBLE and see where it takes you?

Be INTENSE.  Be all of you.  Just BE.

Love.....Love....Love

What's the Story You are Living?

An Interesting Dream

I had a dream the other night in which I was showing a "reporter" a few of the jobs I had growing up.  We visited the theme park I worked two summers at the end of high school/beginning of college.  Looking back the job really was one of my most favorite employment opportunities. 

I showed the reporter the rides that I used to operate in my "County Fair" uniform, which consisted of green culottes, rainbow suspenders and a cap.  The work was back-breaking some days - standing for hours in the hot sun, in polyester and dealing with crabby or drunk customers.  Nevertheless, I was seventeen, enjoying the moment and working for a fun, magical, exciting place to be each day in which we created a fantasy moment for those coming to ride roller coasters, take in shows or eat fair food.

The dream wasn't about nostalgia, though, it was about the choices I had made - unconsciously, to live someone else's dream.  In looking back, many if not most of the jobs I took, or thought about taking, related to wanting to please my parents.  

My First Real Job

I woke up one morning and my parents had a stranger at the dining room table.  They called me over to have me sign pre-employment papers for a paper route they wanted me to do.  We had not discussed the paper route nor had I made any attempt to ask for a job.  I was 12 years old.  I was embarrassed because I'd just gotten up and was being basically forced to take a job I wasn't sure I even wanted.

This part of the story is not about blaming anyone or discussing parenting skills. It's a moment in time, when I unconsciously gave up my own power related to my "BEING"-ness....and I was not a victim.  I chose this, along with my parents.

When my father was a young boy, he remembers fondly his paper route, customers and his need to work to make a living or help out with expenses.  In a sense, he believed he was setting me up to understand the nature of money, the working world and the discipline it takes to 'make it.'

The Rest of the Jobs

Other than that brief couple of summers at the theme park, I ended up on a track of under-employment and working very very hard for everything - temping as a receptionist during summers, delivering food, acting as camp counselor, cleaning stairs at the condo complex to name a few.

I was the renaissance woman of jobs and attempts at jobs and usually made very little money at any of them.  

Every so often in this journey, there would be glimmers of me coming out of hiding and being my true self.  I had a pretty good entrepreneurial run babysitting in high school in which I was booked up and turned down clients! 

The thing was, with this cloak I had taken on - this meta-STORY - if you will, I was attempting to live my Dad's life over for HIM while simultaneously limping along as not quite a full version of myself.

Take it from me - it simply DOES NOT WORK - to live someone's life for them...

What Happens When you Take on a Story that is NOT YOUR OWN?

• You don't have the full energy of your BEING-ness to facilitate creating your reality.
• You don't have enough information to create the other person's story.  Um, newsflash, I didn't have ALL my Dad's experiences/personality traits so how was I going to do it over, better??
• Some or ALL of you gets lost in there and in hiding, without your true light shining, you simply aren't effective at life in general.
• You aren't in the full creative, generative energies and you see the results of that in your pocketbook, your relationships, your jobs, your friends...I could go on, but I think you get the idea.

What we try to do to FIX it

Once you have committed (unconsciously) to live someone else's story, over, to FIX it...several things begin to happen.  First off, you forget that you are doing this for someone else and think YOU are doing it for yourself.  In time, you are so lost in this process, you actually think you are broken and need to be fixed or you are just so lost you go about things as an unconscious robot.  I see it everywhere, sadly.

Your soul is crying out for you to SEE it and BE it and you just simply try harder at being the other person.

At one point, after my first major healing breakdown in which my body literally made me STOP -- I was on the mend, became a massage therapist and healer and started telling my story.  But was I done?  No...not me...

I decided to go back to school and take out school loans to learn how to be a police officer.  I justified this process by saying that volunteering for a police department was about "taking my power back and learning to be powerful."  In a way, I guess I was right.  I followed this path - which was something my Dad had wanted me to do - police, military - for almost two years before realizing I couldn't pass background checks.

Um....because at the BEING level - I was not a black and white thinker, or a military personality.  Nothing against military folks but it just wasn't ME.

BEING in Your OWN Story

I'm short circuiting what it took to BE in my OWN story but by the time I had gotten so far along, and didn't know any better - the road back out was quite a journey.  I even moved to another state so I could clear myself of all the energy that I'd taken on that wasn't mine and feel who and what I was all about.

Needless to say, there are many (much faster) paths to clearing yourself and aligning with who you really are.  These paths are available and ready for you to use and when you are ready to live in your own You-Universe...you'll find the right practitioner and coach to help facilitate.

The thing is, the TRUTH here is...and what took me so long to figure out - is....WE ARE NOT BROKEN and there is NOTHING to FIX.

If you are fixing stuff, over and over and over again - you are living in someone else's story - I almost guarantee this.

Is anything in your life hard?  Like - you find yourself going in circles, not quite making it work - relationships, the people you surround yourself with, the jobs you pick?  And you suffer and go to healers and wonder how it will EVER change?

If you said, 'yes' to any of that - again, you are almost ALWAYS living someone else's story to FIX it.

And like I said at the beginning - you simply can't succeed doing this.

If you'd like a consultation with me to move out of the CYCLE of FIXING and into your own unique, awesome BEING story...please...don't hesitate to reach out.  I'll be happy to help you write your own True STORY for once...OK?

Love Love Love