It can be super funny and super annoying when people start to get all spiritual on you, spouting off this master and that teacher, going to this workshop and that retreat.

As if the more books you can read, and the more trainings you can attend, the more spiritual you’ll become. As if the more you can rub shoulders with the “big” teachers, the more their understanding rubs off on you.
It’s all ridiculous, isn’t it? It’s really giving away your power.

You, as a Divine Soul, are just as spiritual as any famous guru, teacher, priest, rabbi, master, and so forth.
A teacher may be a little further on that path than you. But you can’t move forward on your path, just by attaching to a teacher.

You have to do the work yourself.
You have to have the experiences.
You have to grow into your understanding.

This kind of awakening isn’t transferable (even if they tell you it is). You can’t be activated or realigned or awakened by anyone else.

It all comes from you as soul Self, deciding to be awake.

Be wary of teachers who tell you that if you hang around with them, do their program, etc., that you will become spiritually elevated.

You might.

But it might be, that in giving away your power, you put yourself in an even worse position. You become a spiritual sheep.

Instead, own your own power. Do your meditation. Do your practice. Get out and explore the world as your own spiritual sadhu, or stay at home and explore your spiritual Self that way.

Read books and take trainings and go to retreats… but understand that the power to transform comes from within you, it is something you already possess. Another cannot do this work for you.

​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.