Peeling Onions and Cracking Shells

I have been in New Mexico for 5 weeks now. I am preparing for winter in my little camper. I hope that it will be OK, but I feel more assured now since my Dad came out to help winterize it. We created a skirt around the bottom to keep out the wind, and we cut insulation for the outside of the windows. I cleaned up the outhouse, we shored up some boards, and I gave it some nice touches, but it is still a cold outhouse in the end. It will probably not be easy, especially as the days get shorter and colder. There are absolutely no lights out this direction, so you can imagine how dark it is at night in the middle of the mountains. When a friend comes to visit, however, the favorite thing to do after dinner is look at the stars. I can literally see millions of them. The skies never cease to amaze me, whether it is the gorgeous blue on a clear day, dramatic clouds on a stormy day, or layer upon layer of galaxies on a black night. I lived in Santa Fe for about fifteen years of my life, and some of my fondest memories are staring out at the incredible sunsets. Some things will never change about New Mexico.

Shortly after I arrived here (three days to be exact), I drove 13 hours to play a gig in Escalante, Utah. It was exactly what I needed to do. I had been around people so much while in Bali, Philadelphia, McKinney, and on my drive back East, that solitude in nature was creating bubbles of fear. My initial feelings of  living as primitively as I am was, “What the hell have I done?!” However, the quiet, long, and beautiful drive through New Mexico and up along the western side of Utah border was a sight for sore eyes and medicine for my soul. I found myself amazed and spiritually moved during the drive there and back. While in Escalante, I, yet again, found myself camping in freezing temperatures in my little tent for three nights, hiking “my rim” and remembering some of my favorite moments while there in May, and meeting up with some of my favorite people I met on my travels. I came back to New Mexico with a clearer idea of what I am doing. I am healing, I am growing, and I am connecting with parts of myself that I had long ago forgotten or just flat out ignored.

If you really want to get in touch with yourself and start cracking that ego shell around your soul, spend time alone. You don't have to live in the middle of the mountains to do this. Just turn off your phone (did I mention that I have no cell phone coverage or wi-fi?) and spend time sitting, reading, playing music (not practicing it), painting a picture, praying, meditating, and talking to nature around you. That pause is like magic that can slowly penetrate that shell. I am not alone all the time, though. I go to town everyday to check and send messages, occasionally check my P.O. Box, pick up a few food or hardware items, and see my friends. I also am back to making hiking something I do several times a week. I am trying to reduce my spending, so I am hoping to stretch my finances out a bit so that I can do more service work at this point and see where it leads as opposed to finding a job immediately.

Already, I have made several connections in terms of volunteer opportunities that really speak to me.

Let's go back to that magic, though. Stopping just for a moment and listening to your inner voice is when it happens. It happens when you feel a connection or an alignment with things going on around you, or when you simply stop in mid walk or pull over in the car to be amazed and truly grateful for what you are seeing. I feel the magic when I remember things that I yearned to do as a child or young adult that I did not think was possible, and now, I think anything is possible. In fact, I am doing some of those things now! Magic happens when you feel a connection or love for someone that you have never met before and may never see again, but you feel the energy pass between you. Magic is realizing that we are all part of nature, and we really don't own anything nor are we more powerful than any other creature...true equanimity. Magic is feeling incredible pain in your heart but you are not sure why until suddenly, you feel a layer of the proverbial onion skin peel off and something more real inside of you surfaces. It hurts, physically and emotionally, to realize that we live so much of our lives in the egoic mind, and we make so many decisions from that place. It is terribly difficult to crack it open, but now that I am feeling more and more cracks, I just want to peel it all off.

I recently heard someone say, “If you want to be impactful in the world today, you must be willing to be impacted.” She then went on to say that being impacted is not easy, but it is necessary if we are to make a difference. That rang so true to me, and we need to be more impactful than we ever have been before. I don't know what I, personally, can really do for the larger world, but I do know that as I keep peeling the layers of onion skin away , things are becoming clearer. Whatever my next steps are going to be, I know that loving kindness has got to be the center of it. Connectivity with those around us, with the wild animals and our beautiful planet, and the universe at large, has got to be done with the magic of allignment through our spirit, not our ego. So, until I have a clearer plan, I will keep cracking away.