​If you are a person over a certain age, you have probably been taught that sugar is a treat.

It’s something that tastes good, and it’s something that we have when we’re celebrating. It’s something that we have when we want to feel good and have fun.

Yet we’ve known for a long time that sugar is a drug; that it’s as addictive and mood altering as anything out there on the streets.

When we have some sugar, our mood spirals up, we feel great, powerful, giddy, charged up; and then the sugar runs out, and we retreat into a slump of depression, lassitude, and anger.

Up, down, up, down. All in the name of “fun” or “treat.”

And even if you try to avoid blatant sugar, like candy or soft drinks, you will find it in most processed foods.

One day,  not too far in the future, sugar is going to be disdained as we once shunned fat, gluten, chemically processed foods, alcohol, drugs.

Until then, pay attention to your own relationship with sugar. It’s not a sweet, harmless thing. It’s a mood altering drug, disguised as a cupcake. It’s a mood destabilizer, disguised as soda.

If you want to be steady, balanced, calm, peaceful, sugar may not be a fit for your life.

​There’s a lot of talk about minimalism these days: about the idea of seeing how few possessions you can have, how little you can live with.

The idea of course is that we don’t really need a lot, and sometimes having a closet filled with clothing, or a house or apartment filled with stuff is much more energetically confusing, than having just a few well-loved things.

The trick is to curate your collection.

And it’s not just about minimalism: having less because that’s a path that’s popular right now. Instead, it’s about not allowing anything that you wear, or use, or own, to be something that doesn’t reflect who you are.

It’s easy to hold on to a jacket that you had a few years ago, because it’s still “good” or because you paid a lot for it. But when you look at this jacket as a curated piece of a very small collection of clothes that you wear; clothing that is a statement and an expression of who you are right now… you can see easily, if this jacket reflects your Now self, or not.

Curating your collection is also a way of showing the Universe who you are now, and who you are becoming; who you desire to become.

When you let go of clothing, décor, items that no longer reflect who you are, the Universe has a much easier time bringing your new reality to you.

​We hold the high watch whenever we are holding vibration at a high level for others.

You might experience this at an event, where you suddenly go into a trance state or experience yourself a bit outside of your body, and you become the observer and the witness to all that is going on.

If the occasion already contains a lot of positive energy, you will probably be able to see this energy as a golden kind of light, and you will attach to that energy and hold it; you will continue to create it for the group.

If the occasion holds a lot of negative energy, you will be able to see this, and by the power of your intention, you will be able to shift that negative energy to positive, or mostly positive, and you will hold that energy for the group.

You will be holding the high watch.

The thing is: nobody can hold this for a long time, by his or her self. This is why we call in the guides to assist us.

And more importantly, this is why we rely on each other, as kindred souls, to help us hold the high watch. Thus, when we falter, we know someone else is praying or meditating or witnessing with love.

All of us, together, create this earth reality. We must hold the high watch together, if we want to rise together.

Frank Baum’s Wizard of Oz might well be a manifesto for living a spiritual life.

You’ve got the girl with the ruby slippers, who leaves home to find it’s always with her.

You’ve got important archetypes: Good (Glinda), Evil (Witch), Reason (Scarecrow), Heart (Tinman), Courage (Lion).

And those amazing flying monkeys and talking trees and munchkins and the Emerald City, which stay with you always.

But what interests me most is how Baum (and later Elton John) wrote about the Yellow Brick Road. It’s really a path of Flow, isn’t it? It’s a path of pure synchronicity, drawn by the Universe.

So much so, that if you just stay on the Yellow Brick Road, never veering off to where your ego or your fear or your hesitation wants to go…. well, then you’re in pure Flow, all the time.

And when you are in Flow, it is incredibly easy for the Universe to take you to your Highest Possibility.

Today, think about what the Yellow Brick Road is in your life. What’s the easy path? The path that’s so simple, so inviting, that you can just skip down it?  That’s the path to walk on.

Life isn’t meant to be hard.

Flow always shows up as the easiest, most effortless, most delightful way, beckoning to us with a smile on its face.

​A few days ago I was working on a pretty big (for me) project, and I started to freak out in a way that I haven’t freaked out for many years.

In fact, I’ve been so calm and serene and detached from outcome lately, I had started to think my freaking out days were over.

Hah!

The Universe keeps pushing us to be bigger versions of ourselves: to expand more, to grow more, to try new things, and to have that completely humbling feeling of beginner’s mind, over and over.

When you’re in beginner’s mind, everything is new, difficult, confusion, chaos. You don’t have a way to orient yourself, because it’s all new. You don’t have those landmarks of having done something before. Or maybe you do have landmarks: of where you tried to do something before, and failed.

But you know, failing is just a marker. It shows you where you are on your task of growing yourself up.

Freaking out: when you come to that trigger of possible failing, or having failed in the past, is always an option.

Or you can also skip the drama, and trust that all is well. Either way, tantrum or no tantrum, you’re going to be fine.

It might be interesting to see what facing the big, the new, the seemingly impossible feels like, without the Great Big Freakout.

There’s an interesting phenomena where we spend a lot of time dealing with our memories and what we did in the past; not necessarily ruminating over our “glory days” if we had those, or past wounds, if we had those.
 
We ruminate over the past, in our minds and memory.

But we often forget to ruminate, (which means ponder, think over, chew on, cogitate,) on our future self. As if we only have the ability to know our past reality, instead of our future.
 
The truth is, we can hitch a ride to our future self, and when we do this: lasso our awareness to the self that we are becoming, instead of the self who we were… that this aspect of intentional energy creates this reality for us.
 
Who in your wildest dreams, is the future self that you would like to become? Hitch a ride to that Self; the self you long to be more than anything.
 
As you attach your energy to that new reality, the Universe creates it for you.