It’s a pretty different day that the one last year. I feel grateful, hopeful, at ease.

I share the experience of my journey hoping that others might find something helpful for their own journeys.

I am struck by the way what I need keeps appearing to help me on to the next part of the process. The latest example is accidentally discovering Thomas Hubl after being invited by a friend to participate in a web training of his. The idea of listening to yet another spiritual teacher made me want to puke. Simultaneously, the group participation and collective trauma exploration aspects of it terrified me. Something in me continues to be able to sense when I should move toward or away, and a force other than logic drew me in.

What I’ve discovered is an adjunctive process/framework to support what I’ve already been working on. Plagued by energy management issues, I’ve found an explanation that makes sense and a way to work with it, in addition to what I’ve already been doing.

The so-called “problems” I’ve been struggling with turn out to be, surprisingly, the same work I’ve been doing all along. The simplicity of it is astounding. Feeling my feelings – all of them – helps build a stronger human container to hold the charge of life so it can move through and express.

I’ve noticed for a long time how I squander a good bit of my energy through lack of discipline in sleep routines and diet, and dumb down my energy with sugar or tv when it feels big. I’m starting to be able to stay, and let the energy fill my body, and let it enliven me and watch how it wants to move.

I get why group settings have been difficult now…more people = more energy, even harder to contain. It’s starting to be easier to talk in front of groups and stay connected to myself.

It’s been quite an amazing and unpredictable journey to find my body feeling a bit more open with each bit of work I do, and to notice the pattern that habitually braces my body against big feelings, good or bad, because of it having been too much for so long. Now I can notice and either choose to stay open and feel the flow from head to toe and back, or I can brace or resist feeling, and stay open to that feeling if that’s all I can do. Either way, it’s an amazing feeling to have experience come in and fill my body and be able to stay with the wave!

Here ‘s the thing: there’s no way my mind could have told me it would be like this. People who already have it, have no idea what it’s like to not have it. And those who don’t have it, can’t imagine it.

All I could do is keep going. No matter what, all I could do is keep being honest with myself about where I was, even when my mind was saying, what the heck is going on? What about all that enlightenment crap? Now it all makes sense. Waking up only takes you so far. Then you have to live. That’s the real work. Cleaning the gunk out of the pipes by going through it all consciously, bit by bit.

Then you start to feel the flow, the movement out, toward life. Off the cushion. Life flowing through you, wanting to express. The movement that cannot be faked or forced. Happy Birthday to me.