Burn

The other night I dreamt my childhood home burned to the ground. I stood on top of the rubble, with other members of my family. I looked to each of them for a place to live, to be taken in. There was no one for me to stay with. Although in reality this home was sold shortly after I'd moved to New York, in my dream all of my belongings had still been in the house, and now they were gone. Everything I'd owned had burned, but I wasn't phased. In fact, I felt a relief. I could start fresh. I needed, and was attached to, nothing. Yet there was a realization of how special the walls of that home had been. What they had held was scared, and now it was gone...as if it had never stood there in the first place.

I've often documented my dreams, and the visions that have come to me in the in-between here. Some I understand the meaning of right away, and seem almost more real than reality.

This one makes sense. I've been in a state of emotional purging recently. A lot of gunk has built up inside me over the last few years. Trapped in me, I've been living with the sickness of it. PTSD, and anxiety. Physical manifestations that breathe down my neck daily, and dull my sparkle. Only recently has it started to pour out, mostly in the form of tears. This is unusual for me, to have bouts of crying. Sometimes full-on sobs. I have been in fight-or-flight for so long. I've had to hold off on letting it out due to the battles I've had to fight, raising my son, and simply not having the time. But lately it's leaking out, ready or not.

This isn't a bad thing. The webs are untangling inside from around my brain, and heart. The water from my tears is cleansing. "Make space. Clear the way." It whispers..

I have had a sense that a new page is just about to turn. The next chapter is so close. New players will enter, a new stage is set, and life begins, anew. I see white light where I once saw no color at all. I feel warmth right around the corner, coming to me from the opposite direction.

I have only felt on the verge like this one other time. I searched through my old posts until I found it, and wouldn't you know it, the date was February 2013 (here). Exactly one month before absolutely everything about my life changed in a million ways I never could have seen coming.

Is there a shedding of the skin every six or so years? I laugh to myself, remembering that every seven or so we literally become new people, as every cell in our body replaces itself with a new one.

Of course. 

I hope I'm right about this precipice. I have no reason to doubt. Everything I once had burned to the ground. I need nothing other than walls to house a sacred space, where that ends up is TBD.

But I stand calmly on the rubble.
A clean slate.
I don't feel loss.
I am not empty.
There is a hint of spring in the breeze.

I wait...

.
.
.
.

Fragility.

I've sat down to write a blog here several times over the last few weeks.  I start, I stop.  I hit save instead of publish.  I think I'll come back to it.  I don't.  Snippets come and go through the day and when I think I've got one to expand on, it fizzles.  I can't quite get it together.   Maybe I'm trying a little to hard to make something out of nothing.  Or perhaps if I gather the bits of the nothings and just come here now, they'll form their own something.  Let's try.

I just realized that everything floating around in me lately has to do with opposition.  So many themes, perspectives, observations coming at me from opposing angles.

I have been thinking about judgement.  How unfair it is to judge another.  How deeply hurt I've been from others who I had once considered friends to have judged me.  Then I wonder why it hurts so deeply.  What am I missing from them no longer being in my life? How crucial were they to my life in the first place? Why do I think about it frequently? What do I so desperately want them to understand about me? And why would I feel like I ever needed to explain?

I think about how consciously I work to never judge another.  But I realize I still do it.  Not in big ways.  And that's what's so tricky.  Thoughts can be so sneaky! But I've started to tune in to that barely audible voice that quickly says, "I wouldn't have done that." Or "Why did / didn't he / she do that?"

Wait.  Maybe that's it.  That's the key.  Is this how life works? To dig deeper, spin it back to me, and question what I'm believing in that moment? To take a minute to become a little more aware, and think about what kind of reality I'm creating? What I must believe or not believe to feel this way or that about this person in that moment?

Well damn.

Okay.  I'll take it.  I'll keep learning.  Please, let me keep learning.  I'll keep questioning.  For the love of god, let me keep questioning.

Thoughts.  Thoughts truly are things.  And what fragile things they are.

I'm in love.  I'm in love like never before.  I love you.  What's the opposite of those words? I hate you.  Words must be so carefully chosen.  In any kind of relationship you're just a slip away from words that could damage, alter, or end it all.

Words are things.  And what fragile things they are.

I think about death a lot.  I have since May 27, 2012 and will for the rest of my life.  This is not to say I walk around in doom and gloom.  Quite the opposite.  It made me chose life, and chose to fill my life in a brand new way.  It showed me what matters.  It gave me awareness.  I'm aware I don't get to keep this life.  I'm aware I'm on a set amount of time in this body on this earth.  Let me say it again, I don't get to keep this life.  I don't get to keep my people, either.  I've watched two go, now.  The impact of their deaths rearranged everything inside my head and heart.  

I'm different now.  I saw the switch go off.  We're just a slip away.  From breathing, or not breathing.

Lives are things.  What fragile things they are. 


That's it for now….

Follow the omens

Do you believe in omens? Signs from the universe?

Every few years I read "The Alchemist" by Paulo Coelho.  I remember my first time through, years ago.  I wondered what all the talk of omens meant.  I sure wanted to believe that I could somehow follow a trail of omens to my destiny.  But how would I do it? Would these omens be something I would need to learn to conjure up?  Attract like "The Secret"? Whatever that means.  Why wasn't I lucky enough to have signs popping up around me, to show me I was on the right path? Or...could it be I wasn't quite understanding the concept?

Years later (and a whole bunch of books, life experience and new knowledge later) I got it.  It's not as literal as I originally thought.  You have to tune in.  You have to become aware.  You have to notice.  You can't brush them off.  They are there.  They are every bit as magical.

Deepak Chopra talks a lot about something similar, called syncrodestiny.  The coincidences of the universe.

"When a coincidence arises, don’t ignore it. Ask yourself, What is the message here? What is the significance of this? You don’t need to go digging for the answers. Ask the question, and the answers will emerge. They may arrive as a sudden insight, a spontaneous creative experience, or they may be something very different. Perhaps you will meet a person who is somehow related to the coincidence that occurred. An encounter, a relationship, a chance meeting, a situation, a circumstance will immediately give you a clue to its meaning. “Oh, so that’s what it was all about!”

The key is to pay attention and inquire.

I wanted neon signs with my name and and arrow signs, but if we're searching for something of that magnitude we don't see the our real guideposts.  

I have tuned in.  I have opened up.  I am listening.  I am slowing down and noticing.  In doing so over many months, I can tell you that we've got a great relationship, the universe and I.  She leaves me love notes to both teach and confirm what I know.  And she reminds me when I forget.  If we let the universe show us the way every day, we can't possibly go wrong.  

It is true that the greatest things we'll ever learn are love, self respect, that we are exactly enough just as we are, and that the greatest pilgrimage we'll ever make is within our own body.

Last year (my dark and dismal year) I started to take notice of peacocks.  Peacocks everywhere I looked.  On tv, online, on merchandise, painted on walls, in real life.  It got strange.  Really strange.  Okay, I thought.  I'm listening.  I wonder what they're trying to tell me? I looked up the symbolism of a peacock, and wouldn't you know it.  Renewal.  Resurrection.  A phoenix.  Spirituality.  AWAKENING.  And if you know me or follow me here then you'd know just how much that pertained to what I went through and how I'd describe the most trying and life changing year I'd ever had.  

One day last summer I was outside on a run, and out of nowhere on the sidewalk was this (just when I needed it more than you could know):

Something else happened that was so obvious.  So blatant.  I couldn't not see it as a sign.  It has to do with a name, but I'm keeping this one to myself.  

The one that really makes our jaws drop, happened right after my Grandpa died.  I was leaving Southern Utah a day after the funeral and on the way out my Grandma asked me if I wanted to take a box of candles.  My sweetheart loves candles so I said okay.  I took the big brown box and we put it in the car.  It smelled of my childhood home.  I brought it inside and it sat on the kitchen counter for a few days.  We all discussed my grandma.  At their age and after being partners for so long it can by typical for the other to pass shortly after losing their spouse.  We all wondered, would this happen with my Grandma? 

I had given them new nicknames and for the last few months I would refer to them as Tiny Brown or Little Brown and Mr. Shuffles when I would talk about them with my sweetheart or parents. One day, my sweetheart and I are sitting at the kitchen table and we can't believe we haven't noticed what the candle box says:

If you ask me, it doesn't get any more personal than that.  Her nickname.  And a message that her life is far from over.  

Two weeks ago I found this on the ground:

And today on a wall that was blank yesterday was:

For awhile I've been entertaining some thought about what I've jokingly called to my close friends and family, "quitting the biz".  Am I serious? Do I really want to give up acting? Kind of.  Hang on, let me explain.  I will never quit, but I do want more in my life.  I have too many other parts left waiting to be fueled.  And boy, they are hungry.  I'm suddenly craving adding more in and being okay with taking time away from.  But I also know how important it is to go with the flow.  To be open.  To have a plan but to be adaptable.  To follow the omens.  

The omens have shown me in huge and surprising ways that it's not meant for me to be announcing my "quitting" anytime soon.  From three theatres contacting me for various things at once, to my dream project that had only been a fantasy all but two weeks ago, to being recognized (as an actress) when I was in a place trying to get the ball rolling for the next new adventure in my life.  

And last but not least, a friend who had no idea I felt this way wrote me a message telling me he'd had a dream I wanted to quit and he was sent from the future telling me I wasn't supposed to.  

And then there is the number.  After my grandpa died I slipped back into a bad way...for a few days.  That's all I allowed myself.  I decided I needed to live.  I needed to go forward.  I needed to go on.  If I didn't, my sadness would eat me alive.  I would be gone.  So suddenly I did.  

And I have been okay.  I have been better than okay.  

As the year ended and the new one began, everything finally feels aligned! Things are right.  Things are in place.  Things are clear.  And during this time I started seeing a number.  The same number, everywhere.  Even more than the peacock.  It was starting to drive me crazy because I couldn't figure out what it meant.  Long story short this number is associated with a God of Healing.  My healing has been happening as I've been seeing this number everywhere.  

I've seen it less the more progress I made.

Now, I do find that a scientific truth about the world we live in is more magical to me than any religious story.  The amazements we can prove in discovering our own universe is far bigger and exciting to me than an organized religion with a god.  However, I believe that all religion is true.  What is your truth, is your truth.  What is my truth is my truth.  What his or hers is his or hers, etc.  We have no idea what each others journeys are about.  Who is anyone to tell another their truth is right or wrong? 

"If there's only one nation in the sky, shouldn't all passports be valid for it? - Yann Martel 

One thing I like about getting older is the need to explain yourself to others goes away.  You can finally just put it all out there and know that it is what you offer, and that it is enough. 

But despite anything that may be proven (as of right now), there are still things that can't be explained.  The omens being one.  

Could I have read too much into these? Could coincidence be just that and nothing more? Maybe.  Sure.  But I am going to choose to believe in taking notice.  In following my omens.  If it helps me to get to my final destination with a little more comfort, so be it.  

I'll see you at the end and I'll be able to tell you I have indeed enjoyed the journey.  

"We are all just walking each other home" - Ram Dass

This is the one of several joint blog / shared topics with JayC Stoddard.  It's amazing how our blogs on the same subject are so different, so similar, and so complimentary to the other persons.  Every time.  Coincidence? You be the judge: JAYC STODDARD his blog is brilliant, you should follow it :) 

* * * * *

My life in pictures 

* * * * *

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Welcome to a new year, a fresh start, a clean slate.
I feel like I've just hatched from an egg!
Things feel better already, don't they?

"Begin today. Declare out loud to the universe that you are willing to let go of struggle and eager to learn through joy." 

I'm finally using the Instagram I started (one year ago today) regularly.
I've posted several pics from last nights New Years Eve celebration.  That was the first NYE in years I've spent with my family rather than friends.  Tradition is important, but so is NEW.  So we combined the two.  We made reservations at our favorite New Years restaurant, the same one we've been to for years, only this time with the family.  Then came back to our house.  It was perfect.

The state I was in coming out of / entering a new year last year was toxic.  This year is completely opposite.  I've realized now that if your rebirth is in chaos and negativity you set yourself right up for a downward spiral.

Today I was born in lightness.  In air.  In happiness.


I wrote one last blurb of the year on my facebook yesterday:

An ending & a beginning: If you know me or follow my blog, then you know that 2012 was the worst year of my life. I am so glad that in a matter of hours 2012 will no longer exist, and that I made it through! There really is no way out, but through. I came out transformed. It was my 365 day crash course in life's hardest lessons. It was the year of loss and impossible goodbyes, but also the year of the soul. I found lessons in everything and grew more in a short time than I would have thought possible. It was the start of a major transformation and rebirth. I leap into the new year a new person. Nice to meet you, universe. 2013 is my time to dig deeper into the unexplored parts of myself that I've left waiting. It's time to fuel my spiritual scientist. It's the year to create, in all ways. To express in new mediums. To share my words further, and to learn all I can. To follow the lead each time my heart pulls me toward something. To remember I am responsible for my own happiness and happiness is something I can chose each new day. I am so grateful to embark with my family connected to each other. 

Goodbye. Hello. Forward...forward now. ♥

Speak a new language

Speak a new language 
so that the world 
will be 
a new world 

-Rumi 

April, June, December
Metamorphosis, Shed a skin

Just a little over six months in between
Grow, Rebirth

...2012 fades away, the evolution of a contained 365 days complete,
and a new year is being born...

Join me: Instagram 

Deena Marie 


★ 

Shed a skin. Reconnect. Grow.

Time.  Life.  Evolve.  Live.  Transform.  Shed a skin.  Transition.  Rebirth.  Reconnect.  Reflect.  Find yourself in every moment.  Embrace change.  Each stage.  Life keeps marching on.  Forward is the only choice.  No fear.  Free.  Grow.  One year.

Tweet: @DeenaMarie 

FB: TheDeenaShow