The physical world we live in is thick, heavy and dense. We are weighed down by bodies that are weighed down by gravity, and surrounded by physical objects. The density and weight of the three dimensional world we live in is a blessing and a curse. A whole spectrum of experience exists that allows us to engage our senses and partake of sensations that range from great pleasure to severe pain. When the pain outweighs the pleasure, as it is does far more often than we’d like, the overwhelming urge is to escape. This leads us to take any measure we can to change the way we feel: drugs, alcohol, sex, gambling, television, spending money—ANYTHING that alters our mood, and allows us to transcend the moment or situation we’re in.

We all long for transcendence, though some of us more than others. We want a break from the density of this world. We want to feel light and free and at peace. In fact, many of us seek this out to the exclusion of all else, as if we’re looking for the exit out or the escape hatch, so convinced we are that we are trapped and there is someplace better.

The problem is that we are spinning our wheels. This plane of existence–the schoolhouse we call earth–doesn’t appear to be designed for extended vacations. If it were, then all those hardy attempts at long-term escape wouldn’t have such an exorbitant price tag and always end up backfiring. After three decades of studying this topic relentlessly, my best guess is that the whole point of being here at all is about learning and growth, with some of the best ingredients for human evolution being struggle and pain. If everything was easy and all the edges were smooth and soft and pain-free, we wouldn’t learn very much. Instead, we would atrophy into soft blobs of clay, malleable, but not much use for anything.

Still people want out or at least want relief from the struggle. They treat life like an evening at the movies. They invest the time to select a movie, get themselves to the theater, stand in line, pay for the tickets, buy their snacks, find their seats, watch the previews, and then after watching the movie for awhile, decide they don’t like the movie and get up and leave the theater.

Oh, were it only that easy. Life is designed with such a heavy coating of amnesia so that we don’t even remember agreeing to any of this in the first place. It is as if were born in the theater itself, and want to find out what lay outside its dim lighting and soundproof rooms. We’ve suspended our disbelief to such an extent, at times we are so immersed in the idea that life begins and ends inside that movie theater, that escape seems the only viable solution to what seems such a small and limited existence.

Perhaps though, none of this would even be possible unless we forgot most of what we know about life prior to and beyond this one. Perhaps that’s the whole point: forgetting so that we can engage fully in this mysterious mirage we call life. Regardless, the joke is on us if we spend the entire time we’re here trying to escape or transcend it. Again, using the movie theater metaphor, if we spend the entire time looking for the exit, we will miss the movie.

The desire to transcend is a paradox and it is also ironic. The paradox is that two things are true at the same time: we want to be here and we don’t. It is this tension that can make us nuts. The irony is that attempting to transcend the density of the 3-D may defeat the whole purpose of being here. This is especially true if we chose to be here in the first place, but somehow forgot about it. In that case, who could blame us for being curious or even furious that we don’t know what’s going on or what we’re doing here. Knock someone out and drop them off at a location where they’ve never been with no instructions or map, and chances are they’re going to be a little upset.

I have loads of compassion for those who want out of this place. I have often felt that way myself. But instead, I busy myself with my quest to figure things out. Like Truman in the Truman Show, I’m determined the find the truth, not by finding the door out, but by somehow penetrating through the lies deeply enough so that I stumble upon something that hints at some answers. The irony in that is that the layers of illusion probably never end, but only shift to accommodate the search.

In the meantime, little by little, I’m learning to enjoy the show, laughing at myself and my folly, and realizing that not knowing is what keeps things interesting.

That may be my favorite paradox of all.

How do you like to learn your life lessons? The easy way or the hard way? Didn’t know you had a choice? That’s the beauty of the gift of free will we’re given—we always have a choice.

Welcoming, inviting, allowing, and embracing life lessons is certainly the easier way to go. Running away, ignoring, resisting and fighting the lessons that occur are going to ensure that we’re in for a rough ride.

We hold most of the cards (more on that later) that determine whether our path is one of joy or suffering. Now I’m not knocking suffering. It’s an incredible teacher, but we don’t have to get a degree in it.

The key is to volunteer or sign up for the lessons, rather than make them pursue us. A life lesson that has been avoided is no fun. By the time it has become painful, quite a bit of time has passed, and the intensity of the lesson has built up way beyond our comfort level, such that in order to get our attention, its approach is rather more akin to a two by four or bulldozer rather than a nicely paced challenge.

Far better to meet this thing halfway and invite it in for tea rather than wait until it breaks our door down. Whether we like it or not, these lessons are coming one way or another.

What the Soul needs, the Soul gets. Period. And if necessary, it will use the override button to circumvent whatever dalliance or detour or distraction that has led us astray from our path.

Typically, this avoidance occurs when we listen to the mind instead of to our intuition. The fact that the mind is often referred to affectionately as the drunk money is no accident—if left to its own devices, it behaves in a way that is clearly not sober or sane. In fact, following the path the mind takes is like following a raving lunatic without a map. After exhausting yourself going around in circles and endless dead ends, the only place you’ll end up is either back where you started or even worse, lost.

Better to stop moving and check in with a more reliable source: your intuition. We’ve all been given this incredible internal guidance system, but sadly, most of us don’t trust it enough to cultivate it or learn how to use it. This creates all kinds of problems because listening to our intuition is the only reliable way to hear what our Soul wants. It is an internal system of checks and balances that allows us to sort through the massive quantities of information presented to us at any given time and to discern what to put our attention on. Without that, we are walking around with no sense of direction or purpose, just wandering aimlessly in a state of constant reaction to what we encounter.

In order to significantly reduce suffering in our lives, we have to learn to establish clear boundaries around ourselves to eliminate lots of meaningless stimulation and distractions and then determine from that what our Soul needs for growth and expansion. This is a more proactive way of living, in which we move toward our lessons rather than away from them. It saves a lot of time and trouble and heartache.

I see the mind as a rebellious teenager that constantly tries to find clever ways to get into the driver’s seat of our lives. The only way to deal with it’s juvenile antics is to be firm, direct, and most importantly, consistent when you are reminding it that it’s place is in the backseat or even the passenger seat, but never in the driver’s seat. No, that seat is reserved for the Soul or as some people refer to it, the Higher Self, the part of us that has a map and can see the bigger picture and knows the best route to take us where we need to go.

So take a moment and scan your life right now. Do you have a vague awareness that there are some things that need your attention? Do yourself a favor and address them right now before what is a gentle easy lesson becomes a brutal difficult one.

If you’re in the middle of a painful lesson right now, don’t beat yourself up. We all have blind spots and issues we sweep under the rug. We all have lessons that have required varying degrees of pain before we were willing to learn them. Do what you can to finish the lesson, recover and restore balance into your life again, and then comfort yourself with the idea that this type of thing can be avoided in the future.

Because while life may very well be a game, one thing it’s not is a game of chance. As I said earlier, we hold most of the cards. The rest is influenced by other factors, including, but not limited to, other people’s free will, laws of physicality, past actions and intentions, subconscious scripts, not to mention the Almighty Dealer. However, with that said, we do have a say in how it goes. The first step is acknowledging that fact in the present moment, and then working from there to minimize future suffering and to evolve to a place where some of those other factors can be addressed, thereby increasing our odds not of winning, but rather enjoying the game.

I recently watched the first three seasons of Lost and realized that the entire show is a metaphor for life. To some degree, we’re all lost and we all behave as though we’ve survived a plane crash on a desert island. We walk around looking a bit shell-shocked and dazed most of the time, dwelling in the terrain of survival mode, but completely clueless about our ultimate fate or destiny.

We seek meaning in our micro-cosmic relationships and experiences, but don’t really know where we fit in the big picture. As with the stranded crash victims in Lost, some of us want to leave the island and some of us don’t. Some of us think there is something better somewhere else, and the rest of us would rather make the best of where we are.

There are the daily dramas and encounters in which we learn things about ourselves and what we’re capable of. The range of human experience presents us with challenges to flesh things out, such as are we more concerned for ourselves or for others, and is it better to tell the truth or to lie? We are given ample opportunities to see what we’re made of, and when we don’t like what we see at a given time, we can correct ourselves and our path, as long as we haven’t reaped any major, irreparable consequences.

But this is all food for thought. The real issue is what are we doing here in the first place? We didn’t crash here by accident. Is there really meaning and purpose to our existence or are we creating that? Is there such thing as fate and destiny? Do we each have an actual purpose?

How do we get some answers to those and other of life’s big questions?

Searching for the answers is part of what makes life interesting. However, so many “answers” in the end, become nothing more than stories we use to explain what we don’t understand. The real meat of life comes forth when you eliminate the stories and then see what’s left.

But do we ever really get to the bottom of what’s left or do we keep roaming around in the hall of mirrors substituting one set of illusions for another? Once we get unplugged from one matrix, how can we be sure we aren’t within another one?

Perhaps none of us will ever see the whole picture. Perhaps life is designed to be an infinite maze of mysteries, and therein lies the beauty of it. Perhaps the key is to simply surrender to it all, in all its enigmatic glory and just enjoy the ride.

I don’t think knowledge is what we’re ultimately after. Rather, I think it’s a feeling of place, of belonging and of being at home with ourselves and what is. This state of being is completely in our control and is a matter of our level of resistance and acceptance. It’s based on who we are, not where we are.

Life can be viewed as a movie. Each one of us is a kind of lens that sees and experiences life through our unique filter. We each have our own take on what life is about. Our stories make us who we are and add to the big picture of what is unfolding around and within us. Remembering this can help us to become less attached to wanting things to be a certain way and instead simply enjoy the show.

Being lost is nothing more than believing you are in the wrong place—the wrong relationship, the wrong job, the wrong location, the wrong body, etc. The operative word here being the word belief. Our beliefs are what nail us to the wall every time, along with our judgments, assumptions, expectations and agendas. Drop those and you won’t see something as either good or bad, right or wrong. Instead, it just is the way it is.

Certainly, if you’re feeing lost, do what you can to see if there’s a way to improve what’s happening. But if rearranging the externals in your life doesn’t give you a feeling of being more at home with yourself, then try working on your attitude. That may be the real source of your feelings of disconnection and dislocation.

And that’s a helluva lot easier than trying to get rescued from an island.

The final miles of my trip ended with a bang. Not to be outdone by Montana, Idaho had a little gift waiting for me in Coeur D’Alene. When I pulled off the exit, the memories of a trip taken over twenty five years ago came flooding back. It was cross-country trip taken with D–my boyfriend at the time and now my ex-husband–to celebrate my newfound freedom after a year devoted to settling my father’s estate.

The two of us had arrived in Coeur D’Alene after dark and pulled the Chevy Luv truck we were driving into the parking lot of a large hotel. Rather than checking in, we climbed into the back of the truck and slept in the makeshift bed we’d rigged back there. Roughing it came easily back then. We were in love and needed very little except each other to keep us comfortable. Finding places to park the truck were part of the adventure. There was barely enough room for the two of us in the small covered truck bed, but I didn’t mind; to me it felt romantic.

What I remember most about that long ago trip was the sight that greeted us the following morning when we emerged from inside the truck. As we rubbed the sleep from our eyes, we looked around us at one of the most beautiful places either of us had ever seen. We had no idea we were near water when we’d pulled up. Now in the light of day, the lake aglow with sunlight and surrounded by a bank of evergreens, we soaked it in without speaking. The surprise of it added to the magical quality of that morning. I remember feeling incredibly blessed with love and freedom and opportunity. Losing my father the year before had carved a hole in my heart, and now this place seemed to be offering me a healing balm.

Over two decades later, this is what I recalled when I drove down the main street to the water’s edge. My life, what it looked like then and how it looked now collided and ultimately completed a kind of circle. I came to this place both pre- and post marriage, each a time of new beginnings–bookends around that twenty-four year period defined (and confined) by vows and commitment.

Now alone, I let the tears come, in honor of who I was and who I was becoming. I let myself feel sadness for the lost innocence and love. My life had come full circle and here I was on a journey to the new and unknown.

Afterwards, I found an adorable little motel with a large cozy room decorated like a mountain cabin. On the main drag, I stopped in a wine bar and ordered some local wine and a cheese plate with three different cheeses, fresh bread, figs and dates, and a generous helping of hummus. It seemed a perfectly light and fitting meal for my last night on the road.

The next morning, I said goodbye and thank you to Idaho and before long, entered the state of Washington. As I drove, I was struck by the barren flatness of eastern Washington, the landscape, not at all what I expected, but as I soon discovered, set me up to be nicely awed by the last leg of my trip. Halfway across the state, the terrain shifted dramatically and the mountains simply appeared out of nowhere. One minute they weren’t there and the next, they were, popping out as I rounded a long curve in the road.

It was soon clear that I’d managed to save the best part of the trip for last. Nothing so far compared with the beauty of the Cascades. A bit of ironic perfection, I thought, to realize after traveling almost 3,000 miles, that my destination was in fact the only place I wanted to be.

This took some time to sink in.

As I counted down the last miles, the gorgeous scenery, my constant companion now, I thought about what it took to get here — the love of my friends, my courage and my unwavering trust in the universe to take care of me.

Finally my time on I-90 ended and I came face to face with the Seattle skyline. There it was at last…my new home, beaming and proud in the sunlight. I’d made it….me and my stuff and my car…all in one piece.

This journey had ended, and the real one would be begin, but this time, I had no idea what the destination would ultimately be.

I turned north onto I-5, in no hurry to find out.

Montana was a purging experience for me. The complacency of the first two-thirds of the trip ended abruptly as I approached Billings and was broadsided by a sudden wave of intense grief. I had held myself together for almost four days, but almost running out of gas must have popped the cork on my feelings. They came on like a flash flood, quick and fast and deep; I surrendered and finally let myself feel the loss, the vast, open, empty space surrounding me, a metaphor. My soul emptied out so that I could feel the pain, the loss, and the separation.

It lasted close to an hour, hitting me in waves as I drove. I questioned the wisdom of continuing to drive, thinking perhaps I should pull over. But being behind the wheel was grounding for me. I think I was actually afraid that if I stopped, I might not be willing or able to get back in the car again (that’s the hard part about this kind of grief–it feels as though you’ve sunk into an endless deep pit of quick-sand never again to emerge).

So I plodded on, letting the waterworks flow unhindered, tissues wadded up in my right hand, dabbing my eyes so I could see and blowing my nose so I could breath. Finally, the shuddering and heaving slowed, and bit by bit, my breathing returned to normal.

It was getting late, I was exhausted and ready to find a place to stay. Life had other ideas. After stopping at a half dozen acceptable-looking places with no vacancy, I got back on the road, my stomach growling (it had been hours since I had last eaten) as the sky darkened.

Before I started on this trip, I had imagined the issue of not being able to find a place to stay might come up. Up until now, I’d always had plenty of choices. Not in Montana, I heard myself say out loud. I could almost hear Montana answer me back, “Sorry, honey, it’s not time to rest just yet. “

I wanted to shout back, “Wasn’t almost running out of gas and sobbing my guts out enough? Don’t I deserve a rest?”

No reply. Just silence. I could feel the fear rising up again as I continued driving with no clue what my options might be on the road ahead. Perhaps I’d have to drive all night, something I’d done before in my life, but not alone.

Images of what could happen began to play across my mind’s eye. I could break down. I could run out of gas. I could be ambushed by a psychopath. I pushed them away, started some deep breathing and turned on the radio. I found an oldies station; songs of infidelity and heartbreak and some rockabilly accompanied my late night drive through the Rockies.

Out my right window, I noticed some strange lights in the sky. Inside of a large bank of billowy clouds there was a violent lightening storm happening. The clouds looked almost black against the brilliant bolts of white and orange fireworks exploding within them. It was quite stunning to behold. I felt a kindred spirit with those clouds as they mirrored my own internal storms.

At around 11:30 pm., I saw a sign for a town called Big Timber. There was a sign that said lodging. I was hopeful as I pulled into the Super 8 parking lot, and relieved when the woman behind the desk smiled and said she had a room. I told her of my difficulty finding a room, and she said that it had been like that for weeks. Some work on an oil refinery nearby or something like that.

I slept like a baby and the next morning, once I got a look at Big Timber in the daylight I decided to take my time and wander around. I ordered my first real latte in days and browsed for a couple of gifts in some shops. Then spying a real mechanic at the end of the block, brought my car in to have them go over it to make sure it was road worthy. A couple of sweet guys gave me a quart of oil, checked the air in my tires, and refilled my windshield washer fluid. I handed them a nice tip, which they gratefully accepted.

I knew then, at the start of my fifth day, that I had passed the test of driving through Montana; the rest of my trip through the state passed uneventfully. All that was left was a tiny part of northern Idaho and crossing the state of Washington. Then I’d be home free…

To be continued…

When I left Wyoming, my gas tank was half full (or should I say half empty?). Having been a city dweller for the past five years, the foolishness of this decision didn’t occur to me. I naively assumed based on my experience so far, that there would be plenty of places to get gas. But that was before I had driven in Montana. They don’t call it Big Sky Country for nothing; the operative word here being “big”.

Everything about Montana is big: big sky, big mountains, big ranches and BIG spaces between exits. In the very eastern part of the state along I-90, the exits all seem to say the same thing: “No Services”. Wow, I thought as my gas tank quickly drained due to the winding hilly roads and the heavy load, this is not good, not good at all.

My heart started to pound as I imagined myself stranded in the middle of nowhere relying on the kindness of strangers (hopefully they’d be kind) to drive however far it was to get me five gallons of gas and even then would it be enough? Would I have to call AAA? Would they even come out here? What if I didn’t have cell phone service?

For the first time since I started my trip, I started to panic and realized that it would be my own stupidity that brought on this crisis. I felt as though I’d landed in a David Lynch film and that any minute my trip was going to take a bizarre, unexpected turn.

I gripped the steering wheel, my mind racing. Around the next bend I saw an exit, and along with it was a sign for gas. Thank God, I thought, it’s going to be okay. By this point my low fuel light was on. I had very little time before I’d run out of gas. As I pulled off the exit, I had to drive under the highway and down a rough road for while before I came to a small, run-down service station on my right. It looked completely deserted except for a couple sitting in front of a trailer advertising fireworks for sale. As I pulled up in front of the pump, I saw a closed sign, and next to it another hand written sign that said they closed at 5 pm on Sundays. Well, it happened to be Sunday and it was quite a bit later than 5 o’clock.

I got out of my car and walked over to the couple selling fireworks. In spite of the lateness of the day, the sun was blazing.

“I’m kind of in trouble. Just about to run out of gas. Do you know where I can get some?”

“Yeah,” answered the woman, pointing to a road that ran next to the station. “Just head up that road about 16 miles. There’s a gas station that’s open there.”

The guy chimed in, “If you drive that way instead of the highway, it’s all flat and straight and that’ll save you gas.”

“Thanks,” I said, getting back in my car thinking again about David Lynch (who happened to be born in Montana). Sixteen miles? I wasn’t even sure I’d make it that far. But what choice did I have, except to spend the night in my car and wait for this gas station to open. So I took my chances and headed down that long flat road.

I never felt so alone and afraid and foolish. I started yanking every spiritual tool I had out of my toolbox. I used affirmations, prayers, visualizations, etc., all the while sweating like mad, because I turned my air conditioner off to save gas. Every time I passed a ranch I imagined putting myself at the mercy of the rancher to give me gas. I assumed that with all the tractors and trucks and machinery, these big sky ranchers had plenty of gas lying around or perhaps even their own pumps.

Well, whatever ego/pride shit I had dragged across the country with me got squashed and then reamed out of me in Montana. The humility and gratitude I felt when I finally pulled into that far away gas station was akin to mystical rapture. I was in such an altered state, I almost kissed the ground. Everything suddenly seemed incredibly beautiful and I felt ecstatically happy. It was the relief that comes from getting another chance, a reprieve after a major screw-up. It was as though I’d been hit really hard in my heart chakra and my third eye at the same time. Just plain jolted out of my complacency. Colors got brighter. Sounds got louder. I was awake at a new level. Sharp and real and fully present.

Later on I thanked Montana for being my Zen master, my guru, my shaman. But not until after I’d gotten a few hundred more miles under my belt. Montana is a big state and she had a few other lessons up her sleeve before she was done with me.

To be continued….

Definition of transition from dictionary.com:

movement, passage, or change from one position, state, stage, subject, concept, etc., to another; change

Major life transitions include birth, death, moving, marriage, divorce, kids leaving home, illness, accident, etc. I’ve just experienced two of them…divorce and moving across the country…and if you want to enter into the fire of transformation, not through accident or illness or near death experience, but a more voluntary process, trying letting go of almost everything familiar to you in a matter of weeks. This is where the 30 years of studying and practicing spiritual principles really comes into play…this is where you truly discover what you’re made of…this is where you come face to face with the level of inner strength you are working with…all at once.  It’s walking the talk, putting the pedal to the medal, and leaving the realm of spectator sports and jumping right into the game.

As I was packing, and selling or giving away the possessions accumulated from a 24-year marriage and two children, I was also grieving. Rather than packing up a moving truck all in one day, my decision not to bring many possessions on my move from NJ to Seattle, required a slower, more painful ending. My sister compared it to striking a set in a movie. Day by day, piece-by-piece, items that were once a necessary and integral part of an active family’s life, were disappearing, leaving behind an empty space, their meaning and usefulness expired. For weeks, the house had a melancholy lonely feeling…a temporary, transient, abandoned aura, as if the directors, actors and crew had suddenly up and left…moving onto another more exciting project. The party had ended and I was left sweeping up the after party mess.

I kept moving things around and arranging them, hoping to make it seem less empty. But every morning as I woke up, the heavy feeling and the long day of packing and getting rid of things awaited me. There was no running from it. It had to be done and I was the only one to do it. Yes, on the other side of it was a new life, filled with possibilities, but the ticket to get there was tearing down the life I’d known…completely.

I told a friend that I was having the hangover before the high. He agreed. The decision to move so far away came with a hefty price tag, compounded even further by my decision not to fly to Seattle, but to pack my mini-van and drive there…by myself.

In the midst of this grieving, the unraveling also brought with it tremendous feelings of self-doubt. I was reminded of the period of labor when a women enters what is called transition, when the contractions intensify because the time to push is fast approaching. Often during this stage, a woman feels as though she’s been through enough and can’t go on. Many women at this stage even verbalize this. This was me…in transition…almost ready to fully enter into the birth canal and be pushed out into my new home. Before I was fully packed and on my journey across the country, I wanted to quit…to give into the fear that threatened to bring me to my knees…but I didn’t. No…somehow I made it.

When is an ending a beginning? Where does one thing end and another thing begin? Depends upon your perspective.

Today marks the ending of my twenty-four year marriage and the beginning of my life as a single woman. In my case, the ending of a union marks the beginning of a separation, a diverging of paths into new directions.

As with many of life’s mysteries, there is a bittersweet paradox here. Change means both loss and gain. Letting go of what was for what is and what will be. Sometimes that can be a shock. Sometimes it is a welcome relief. Sometimes a little of both.

Change brings with it the rush of the new, the different, the unknown, but it also brings the fear of those things. What was comfortable and familiar is gone.

A friend once said to me, “One party has to end, in order for another party to begin.”

The problem for me is the time between parties can seem long and lonely.

Through the process of separating from my husband, there has been a pretty equal mix of loss and gain. You would think that after a couple of years of living separate lives, it would get easier and be less about loss and mostly about gain. But in my case, it hasn’t unfolded in quite that way. Sure I’ve had days of enjoying my freedom and solitude and space. But the lonely, sad times still crouch in the corner and pounce unexpectedly, catching me off guard and leaving me in a puddle of tears.

I no longer fight or resist the feelings. Nor do I hold onto them. I surrender and let them move through the way a summer thunderstorm moves through, dramatic, intense at times, but thankfully, quick. On the other side, the calm returns and I’m okay.

I’m okay.

So while a very long chapter of my life has ended, a new one has begun. In preparation for this change, I’ve discovered a well of strength and courage that I’d forgotten I had. Deep inside all of us is this incredible resource that allows us to tap into something greater, and right when we think we can’t go on, some invisible energy kicks in and gets us to the next moment and the next, so that before long we realize that in spite of our fears and pain, we’re still moving forward.

In this movement, we can choose to hide out and protect ourselves, licking our wounds, or we can use our vulnerability as a way of connecting with others. Stepping out of the comfort zone of a long-term relationship can open us up and make us available to others in unexpected ways. There is a deep recognition when we meet another soul who has experienced a journey similar to ours….a sharing and understanding that is not possible otherwise.

There are gifts that come from endings and loss, and those gifts shape the very course we take when starting anew. For every cost, there is a benefit…sometimes hidden from view for a very long time, but eventually, it shows up, and we can then appreciate what it took to get here. And if we’re lucky, even appreciate it.

So here’s to new beginnings.

A journey of 3,000 miles begins with the first mile. I recently completed such a journey, arriving in Seattle six days after departing from my starting point in Hoboken, New Jersey. I had planned this trip for weeks and on the day of my departure, my Mazda MPV loaded to the max with personal belongings, I wondered if perhaps I was crazy to do this trip. Why? Because I had decided to do it alone.

Alone? Really? Wow! People’s reactions were pretty consistent. Many were in shock; others were in awe of my willingness to undertake such a thing. A couple of people even called me their hero — something that I didn’t fully understand then, but certainly do now.

What started as the least expensive way to get my car to Seattle, where I planned to relocate, ended up becoming something of a spiritual pilgrimage. A journey in which I’d leave behind the familiarity of the past, enter the unknown, and draw upon some of the strongest spiritual resources I had.

There were a litany of what ifs running through my mind and the minds of everyone who knew about my trip. Some were kind enough to keep their fears to themselves. Others felt the need to voice them. They asked me where I planned to stay so that I would be sure to be safe. They questioned the visibility of the items I was bringing, fearing that surely my car would be broken into. They mentioned the remoteness of the area I’d be driving through. They warned me about large animals appearing in the road in the middle of the night. I was even given a tool to break open the car windows in the event I ended up submerged under water and couldn’t get out (I didn’t bring it).

Once my van was packed, there was a new fear piled onto of all the other fears: would it make it? The weight of my belongings was so heavy that my back end looked like it was sinking onto the back wheels. At one point, I actually panicked and was convinced that it would be un-drivable. I stood by helplessly as that fear wrapped itself neatly around visions of my tires blowing out and not being able to get to the jack without removing the bicycle rack on the back and emptying out all of my stuff (yes, I had bicycles on the back), which I was sure would happen on an isolated stretch of highway, late into the night.

So shortly after I set out, surrounded by the backdrop of endless farms and billboards and accompanied by the hum of tires on hot asphalt, these fears would randomly float into my consciousness threatening to paralyze me with thoughts of how alone and vulnerable I was, how foolish I had been to make the trip alone and how I wished I’d at least had the sense to have more of my belongings shipped.

Along with many insights and blessings, I learned a hell of a lot about fear on this trip: how it operates to sabotage our movement forward, how it is derived entirely from the fright or flight place of the mind and is not at all based in reality, and most importantly, what to do with it when it does rear it’s ugly head on a dark, lonely stretch of road.

Looking back over the past few years, I realize that so many of the experiences I had and lessons learned were precisely what I needed to prepare me for a trip of this kind. This heavy investment in my spiritual bank account prior to my departure was absolutely essential, because the need to make withdrawals came up again and again. The growth and stretching that occurred internally, is why this trip ended up being far more than just an ordinary road trip.

To be continued…

One of the ultimate paradoxes of life, is the more attached you are to the outcome of a situation…the more you want things to unfold the way YOU want them to…the more it appears to move away from you, elusively drifting just out of your grasp. I was so close, you think. I almost had it. It was almost mine. But like a butterfly that flies away or grains of sand that fall through your fingertips, it disappears.

By the same token, many things I’ve wanted in the past, and I mean REALLY wanted, have come to me as if drawn by a magnet, when I ceased caring whether or not I would get it, when I wasn’t at all attached to the outcome.

This phenomenon never ceases to amaze me. In fact, lately, I’ve begun to test this out, first through plain observation and then, through actually using it as a formula. Bizarre as it sounds it actually works.

I’ve used it lately in connection with finding a place to live, in my relationships, and in my work.

Caring too much actually interferes with getting the results you want.

Not caring, on the other hand, allows you to take more risks, to be bolder in your decisions and your actions.

Clinging to another person drives them away because they feel suffocated and restricted by your needs. Clinging to a situation energetically does the same thing. It restricts it and blocks the flow. However, if you put space around a person or a situation, it allows for all kinds of possibilities to emerge.

If you want to catch a fish, throw more than one line in the water. Be okay with not catching any fish. Be open to not catching the exact fish that you want. Be ready to appreciate whatever fish you do catch. You might even end up surprised that you catch a better fish or even more fish than you ever imagined possible. This is what keeps life interesting.

As my son once said to me, “Have no expectations and you will always exceed them.”