You’ve been waiting for this one for a while now. I know. I kept hinting….

Three weeks? Maybe more. It happened longer ago than that.

It is always challenging to sit down and write again – to get back on the horse. I don’t know why. It might be this particular subject. Perhaps we are preparing to go on a particular journey over the next several weeks and I am not sure I am equal to the task.

I don’t know.

But here goes. I’m just going to tell this one. We will just have to see where we end up.

There is absolutely no doubt in my mind as to this fact: the night the wifi went out the Universe conspired to provide me with a guide to move forward on my search for self.

Up to this point, I have been regularly visiting The Enchanted Land of the Intuitive but the Donald Trump of my mind keeps sending me back across the border.

My search for self thus far has been fitful, like I am not quite drowning. I am flailing just at the edge of the deep end of the pool, just as it slopes. Not quite tall enough to stand, I keep bobbing on the tippy tip of my tippy toes, but my head still goes under. Gulping water, unable to cry for help, I momentarily glimpse the safe poolside, only to plunge again beneath the chlorine-infested waters.

A memory of certain texts in my possession that might provide life preserver to my thrashing soul. Perhaps I could study my way out of this.

The Artist’s Way, by Julia Cameron

The Psychic Pathway, by Sonia Choquette

On Death and Dying, by Elisabeth Kubler–Ross (the ‘u’ is supposed to have those two dots over it)

Yes, I know, the latter might seem a touch morbid. NEWS FLASH: the search for self is no cakewalk.

I had this idea ‘to study my way out’ for weeks. Yet I hadn’t put one foot in front of the other, to walk to my shelves and pull these books out and begin.

Everyone together now – “She has a problem with beginnings!”

Why engage in actively solving a problem when it is so much more fun to become mesmerized by the problem itself?

Imagine a car spinning in the mud until it’s sunk up to the door handles.

Everyone together now, “The grind!”

My grind certainly consists of procrastination, but it manifests most insidiously in the wee hours of the morning. I cannot sleep, therefore I grind.

The best and brightest solution to my grinding is to read. Ah, the solace of the written word, the intricate story! A well-threaded plot, a detailed character will  smoothly, effortlessly, disengage my crazy from whatever bone it has decided to chew.

The mud begins to recede just a touch.

I read everything.

I read hard bound, paperback, newspapers, manuscripts, pdf,, .docx, .Pages, iBooks, Kindle, Public Library, Amazon, independent bookstore, giant chain, tablets, iPads, billboards, subtitles, lips.

My husband provided me a strange little music light with which to read in the night. It looks like bug antennae and flops forward blinding me at regular intervals. My reading source of choice for the middle of the night (don’t tell my husband) is my iPad, a small glowing candle in the windy winter storm of self-doubt.

This is a ritual, a nightly occurrence. The sky is black, I read. A bird calls, I read. The trains start to roll, I read. The sky lightens, I read. The schoolteacher next door goes for his morning paper, I feed the dogs. The siege of my brain held off once more.

However, on this particular night, my mind grinding like the brakes on a ’57 Chevy, the wifi won’t work. It won’t connect. The little wheel spins to no conclusion. ‘Browser cannot connect to internet.’ Nothing. Nada. Caput.

Imagine my shock, my abject terror, when I cannot get off my hamster wheel.

Gear change: We just changed internet providers. Which in this case also meant we changed our cable TV provider. (Which actually was satellite TV, complete with the ugly hood ornament attached to our house (god, I hated that thing). We changed to cable or maybe coaxial… I don’t know. Suffice to say, the phone people are now also providing the TV connection. And we don’t even have a phone.

But hey – 5G, Baby! Dig that! 100Mbps download speed – twice as fast as the other guy, for half as much.

We rule.

(At least I learned something on that soulless job I did for 9 months when I was never home and felt like I was MIA.) (See Blog Post #7.)

And yet, this very night, “Hello, 5G/100Mbps? I have no bars!”

WTF

I frantically think through every jumpstart. Every gesticulation, thump, start, restart, hard reset, shut down. Can you ‘kick’ an iPad? Even a threat to return to rabbit ears as soon as the first light of day breaks the east. I lie in the black, black night, exhausted and numb.

And then a voice says to me, “Go get The Psychic Pathway.”

The voice is not loud. It is not soft. It is not god-like. It is not frightening.

It is clear. It is simple. I know it is right. And I just know it has only my best interests at heart.

There is something about getting up in the middle of the night. It is velvet. It is so silent. Sound is so very far. The depth of the night is quite… intimidating, alluring…final. It seems to go on forever.

To leave my snuffling husband, my snuffling dog. My safe bed. My slings and arrows.

But this night, a voice says ‘Go.’

It seems like the most natural thing in the world.

 

I have gotten to know this voice well in these weeks that I have been NOT telling you this story about the night the wifi went out.

This voice sits on my right shoulder – not my left, my right – and tells me things. Whispers in my ear. The night the wifi went out it said, “Isn’t this the perfect time to start? Isn’t this the perfect opportunity?”

So I got out of bed and I slipped on my slippers. And even though I have not laid eyes on this book except to purchase it  in 1998 on a friend’s recommendation, and then to put it in a box in 2002 when we moved from Chicago to Los Angeles, and then to put it on a particular shelf in 2016 when we remodeled our kitchen, I walked straight to The Psychic Pathway and I took it back to my side of my not-so-tiny bed with the aforementioned cozy snufflers.

And I began.

I read the introduction and then I knew there had been a cosmic intervention.

The word ‘psychic’ comes from ‘psyche’ which is Greek for ‘soul’. ‘Soul’ is another word for intuition. Psychic pathway – intuitive pathway. That part of self that is not brain and is not body. Not the intellectual self, not the physical self. The spiritual self. Some might call it the heart, some the soul, some the intuition – but whatever the name its existence cannot be denied. We have all felt something, had feelings, had a feeling.

The Psychic Pathway is a guide, “a workbook for reawakening the voice of your soul” – your intuition. It says that right on the cover.

The Psychic Pathway is a map to The Enchanted Land of the Intuitive.

There are only two tools needed on the path to your inner voice – a journal and meditation.

“Shut up!” (See Blog Post #2)

Right?

And there are really only 4 concepts with which you need to be familiar –

• Be open – “I am open to my intuition.”
• Expect guidance – “I expect my intuition to give me guidance.”
• Trust it – “I trust my intuition.
• Act on it – “I will act on what my intuition tells me.”

In other words, “I will trust myself.”

“I will go get the book.”

I think now I know the reason it has taken me a while to write this story.

It is because I have come so far since that night.

The night the wifi went out occurred shortly after Day For Night. (See Blog Post #8)

“It’s always darkest just before…”, right?

It’s been about eight weeks. Eight chapters.

I don’t grind any more.

I journal everyday.

I can meditate anywhere. With or without Holosync.

I haven’t had a drink in 9 days. And that is with a successful 2 days of having a drink and then deciding not to have a drink anymore.(I figured out I can’t hear my intuition if I’m constantly recovering from drinking.)

I’m remembering what hope feels like.

I’m remembering what purpose feels like.

I’m remembering who I am.

But I’ve also met AssHat Man.

You know him? I bet you do. The guy in the black top hat that sits there on the other shoulder – actually he’s behind me – and judges. He has no face, no features. He speaks all the doubts. All the reasons the miraculous accomplishments are just accidents. AssHat Man. He tells you how mundane it is. He’s so bored.

AssHat Man can suck my dick.

Yeah, but I can still hear him.

I think it was hard to sit down and write this story because I like walking forward. I don’t want to turn around and walk back the other way.

But I can tell it’s still tenuous.

         I’ve been here before.

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