Tag Archives: oneness

Rusted Root Redux: The Real Deal On Change, Compassion & Acceptance

Forgiveness, Life Coach, Owning Your Uncool: The Series, , , , , , , , , ,

A Story of Big Love & Uncool.

Recommended Listening Soundtrack:  Send Me On My Way, Rusted Root (Of Course!)

groundhog2Based on the title of this blog post, you might think you are in an episode of Ground Hog Day.  And much like Bill Murray reaches a point of ultimate frustration and desperation, driving off a cliff with the groundhog in his lap, I am about to metaphorically do the same thing here, with you!

Recently, when I learned that the band Rusted Root was coming to the “big” ABQ, New Mexico, I felt immediate excitement at the prospect of getting an interview with them for my “Owning Your Uncool” Series.  It was kismet, the universe aligning around passion, creativity and a common goal!

As I went through the process of putting the pieces together, I still felt myself mesmerized that “it was happening!” Just like that moment in Crowe’s Almost Famous when Kate Hudson’s character gives William Miller this simultaneous mischievous and magical look when they realize they’re going on tour with up and coming rock band Stillwater, I realized, “It was happening!”

It Really Happened, Alright.

When I went to publish my original post I found myself a little wary over the answers I’d received.  But an old voice came back to haunt me from the deep recesses of my grungy heart.  The answers weren’t matching exactly what I “thought” I had asked but the old voice knocking on my door was one of self doubt.  And self doubt is like a personally imposed curse that leads us down a road of pain, regret and even more self doubt- the irony!  It is with this post that I now have the opportunity to not only share with you Rusted Root’s amazing thoughts on life’s struggles and owning their uncool, I also have the lovely experience of owning my own uncool.

Yes, I mistakenly published incorrect answers to my interview with Rusted Root.  And yes, I feel totally uncool.  But what have I learned?  All I can do is forgive myself and my ignorance, and remember in the future to always follow my gut and to not fear the appearance of stupid showing up on my doorstep again.  Thank you, Rusted Root!

The Real Deal.

RR DEC 2014 BAND SHOT 2
Rusted Root sharing their “Movement” with the world uncensored!

Rusted Root is a band that embodies the spirit of Big Love, and with that said, I am honored to present to you the “Real” Rusted Root.  Here are some very personal and beautiful answers from band front man Michael Glabicki that come out of their “Movement,” a genuine conversation through their music about the devotion and intention of our actions as a collective community “to all that is love, healing and pragmatic.”

As musical artists working to express clear intentions around your “movement”, how have your struggles in life brought you to the place that you are now in your craft and in connecting with your community?

Struggles…..yes there have been many and rarely without. All you can say is thank you for the opportunity to grow and expand in  our individual and communal expression. Reality is good and exists to teach us what we need to actually live the dream. The dream of being a musician and creating a communal type of expression was mine from the start. If we could play meaningful music in every neighborhood and on every street the world would be a drastically different place. There would be more compassion and acceptance of one another. There are many forces against this idea. That is the main struggle. When starting out there was an opening on the planet for unique and deep music. Somehow we were able to slip in to the consciousness fairly easy. Soon after that  there was a closing of that doorway and a shutdown of expression. Things got a lot harder. Things continue to be a bit more superficial but I feel more excited and focused on what we can do to create a change. Those struggles have gotten me to a place where I can create a profound magic out of any situation now. So all I can say is thank you and let’s get going! There is now a fearless space easily achieved in the songwriting, arranging, and performance.  This allows us to be open in the moment to what is the most healing. It seems the most selfish surface music nowadays is the most planned out. They put upon the audience their mental idea of what  makes them look superior and it’s so lacking real magic. We open to the crowds energy and create with them in the moment bringing about a communal experience. I am constantly surprised on stage what comes out of us because of this- it is always different, alive, and connected.

If there was one big moment growing up that you could pinpoint as a major contributor to your life’s inner struggles and empowerment to continue doing what you love- what would that moment be?

I was 2&1/2 years old and I got ran over by a car. It was bad enough where I could have chosen to leave the world. I remember conversing with a spirit/ angel and afterwards deciding to come back. I remember understanding a lot more of my purpose after that and feeling love and support from spirit moving forward. It probably gave me my sense of humor and lightness about life. After that I would have dreams of fighting these evil human skull birds on the beach. They would surround me and the only way I could get out of it would be to get calm and find a humorous way to scare them off. Up to that point it was terrifying. It was very shamanistic. It really helped me define my role in a profound way. Actually I don’t feel that different now on stage.

Can you tell my readers about a time in your life, where you felt that same “uncool” and isolation inside as the teenage character in the film Almost Famous, and how you used that moment to propel yourself forward in your life?

I have always felt outside the norm. Literally as long as I can remember. My memories in the womb were probably plagued with feeling like an outsider.

I remember my parents thinking that there may be some mental issues with me. I think I was so in tune with energy and spirit that I wasn’t always seemingly here. They got some tests done in me. That made me feel inadequate. I think later in life playing music validated and communicated that spiritual world and made me feel that I had a purpose in this world.

How did you view yourself then, and how do you view yourself now?

Back then I was a bit more depressed and felt very hopeless. I felt like a freak. I felt afraid that everyone knew what I was feeling and was thinking the same thing. Honestly now I still have those feelings every once in a while. I don’t view myself in that way though. Now I feel different but extremely connected to everyone. I feel I have a very important role in the world. I feel that my differences are my power. I feel able to verbalize my experience. I feel that I have grown into an expert of my own experience and no one is more important. The best part is I feel I can really help others.

How do you view others and the world now, as a result of that moment in your life?

I view us all as children here to learn. Some people embrace this and some fight it. I think most people feel isolated so it’s all about creating oneness and respecting everyone’s individuality.

True Authenticity, a Band Called Rusted Root.

With all my heart, I honestly could not have asked for more authentic and inspiring answers for this piece.  I do these posts in an effort to remind not only myself, but all of you out there reading this, that we all have struggles.  There is not one person on this planet that does not feel insecure at times and lost within themselves.

But if we can just remember as Glabicki shared, “some people embrace thi and some fight it.”  With this post, I could not fight my own feelings about my mistake.  But I had to just own them and share them with you because if I can’t be real with myself and you, then all of this has no meaning.  I am grateful for this opportunity to share with you Rusted Root, and I hope you will share this with the world just the same.

If you’re in ABQ tonight, don’t miss the Heights Summerfest, Rusted Root will be playing their hearts out, as they always do.

Let’s Rock Big Love!

 

Visualize This- Turning Yourself Inside Out

Awareness, Compassion, Mind, Perception, Self Perception, , , , , , , , , , , ,

Each person we meet contains a part of our wholeness.  If you look at a picture of the earth from space- how do you perceive it?  It is luminescent, blue, white, brown- a glowing ball in the middle of space.  From afar you can’t tell that it literally contains everything we experience in our physical world every day- streets, cars, mountains, people, houses, trees, oceans, rivers, little flowers.  Yet every one of these things is a part of the earth’s wholeness.

In thinking about this picture of the earth from the viewpoint of outer space- look at others around you.  Think about your own existence.

How is each person in your life like the earth in this picture?

How much is contained and experienced in their life, that makes them who they are, that you simply can’t see with your naked eye?

Now look within.  Look at your own life and how much you have going on in it.  Everything you see and feel, they experience in their own heart and mind.  We are all a microcosm of the macrocosm.  Our perceptions are fragile, they are not who we are nor are they who the other person is…they serve as tools to navigate and learn.  The foundation of your being exists in what you can’t see from the outside, it is what you see from the inside- always affecting the whole.

“LET’S ROCK BIG LOVE!”™ Jessica
A celebration of our desire to love ourselves Big!

 

That’s All Happiness Is…

Attachment, Awareness, Buddhism, Carl Jung, Ego, heart, Joy, Life, Love, Mind, Perception, Poetry, Reflection, Self Perception, self-help, transformation, , , , , , , , , , , ,

It’s just the heart being free.

About 4 years ago I saw the above music video made for Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche, also a spoken word artist, poet and marathon runner.  The video and poem blew me away and I knew I would never be able to get it out of my head.  Which is funny, because it is all about being in your head.  I love this video because it incorporates something very relatable to me.  Some of my attachment in this life has to do with electronic music, and combining music with imagery and profound words really gets my heart going.  I feel joy, joy, joy!  What can I say?

I love this poem by Rinpoche because it expresses the passion I have in my heart to explore perception also in a relatable way.  In the end of the video he says:

When you’re happy, I’m happy.
That’s the formula.
First you, then me.
That’s all happiness is…
It’s just the heart being free.

The ignorant mind’s primary sense of being comes from the idea that it’s just “me”.  It strives to prove every day that we are separate from one another through habitual thinking.  But when you decide to train your mind to think outside of itself, and see that everyone’s experience around us is our experience then happiness becomes abundant.  When we see happiness in others, it grows within us.  Envision a garden that thrives in the joy of others- that is our heart.

I remember coming home one night from a dinner stopping at an intersection with a homeless man holding a sign in need of assistance.  It was probably 30 degrees outside and 8:30 pm. I had nothing but a $20 bill, so I decided to just give it to him.  All I could do was cry with joy on my way home because he felt so happy.  Doing things for others changes our self-perception from being all about me, to being all about us.  This is the development of purposeful perception, and another opportunity to love from the heart.

Please share this video with others if you feel inspired by it too.

“Let’s Rock Big Love!”  Jessica

WHERE’S YOUR HEAD AT?

Acceptance, Boundaries, Ego, Forgiveness, Heal, lessons, Life, Life Coach, oneness, Power, Self Perception, self-help, transformation, Uncategorized, , , , , , , , , , , ,
Does your mind ever feel like this? Picture by Katie Lee found on VisualizeUS at http://vi.sualize.us/by_katie_lee_photography_balloons_inspiration_beautiful_picture_5zqt.html
Does your mind ever feel like this? Picture by Katie Lee found on VisualizeUS

A long time ago during my partying days, a group of my friends and I loved to rock out to the electronica song “Where’s you’re head at?” by Basement Jaxx.  I remember dancing on the rooftop of my friends’ enormous shared house on California Street in Washington DC during the summer when the low air quality fog hung over the city as the sun would try to peak through making it more amplified-  and soon, you could always count on that song.  Why am I rambling about this song?  Because I realize how this song has revisited me in a new era of my life, where I am always reflecting on just that- where is my head at?

It is a perfect question at a perfect time where half of what I am reflecting on is perception and mind.  In breaking down perception, the basis for my upcoming book, reflecting on your state of mind and how you are about to react to something is a valuable tool for living a life that is authentic and uncompromising.  What I do realize is that most of the time we are completely unaware of where our head is at- tethered like a balloon full of helium just bobbing along and carried off by any slight wind.

Just recently I orchestrated a large event and made a mistake that really upset someone.  When the victim of my own confused and overwhelmed mind confronted me about it, she expressed with great emotion her unhappiness.  I felt terrible and could not get the moment out of my mind.  I had a running tape of it secured tightly, rolling over and over again.  I relived my own feelings of shame and guilt without end.

When I went to bed that night, I had to acknowledge a few things in order to let it go.

1- Forgiveness of Self- I made a mistake, but running a tape of the incident over and over again in my head was completely unproductive and would give me nothing but more negative “feelings.”

2- Acceptance & Boundaries- I said I was sorry, over and over again, but she chose to still be extremely upset.  It is her choice alone.  There is nothing I could do to change how she felt.  This is a good boundary- that everyone is responsible for their own choices, and that includes in how they react.  My only role would be acceptance, and staying in my integrity.

3- Release & Heal- In accepting and creating a good boundary, the one thing I did have the power to do was envision this other person engaged in feelings of love and happiness.  I bathed the situation in love, and let it go.  Even in our boundary setting, which is primarily a function of the ego-driven mind, I can also recognize that we are inherently connected in spirit, and sending love and envisioning the situation transformed, it will help heal no matter what my mind tells me.

I acknowledge I still feel a little shame.  And I shall need to work on that, continuing with the above process.  But most importantly, I also have the opportunity to practice the new perception in my life that is at the core of my past experiences with situations like this one-

I AM LOVABLE.

Even though I made a mistake as we all do, or else what is the purpose of this life, I am not unlovable, as I might have acted out in the past.  But due to awareness, and processing my old perception of self, I can now come out of situations like that empowered with the knowledge of exactly where my head is at.  Time to groove on!

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Daily Prompt: Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes > Life Without Change? A Life Unlived.

Change, Daily Prompt, Death, Ego, Karma, Life Coach, Nature, Perception, Psychology, Reflection, Self Perception, transformation, Uncategorized, , , , , , , ,

There is nothing permanent except change. Herodotus

Change. A scary, dramatic word for many. For nature, change is constant. For human beings, change is also constant. But for the mind- the experience of change is much like death, at least in the beginning. For the mind, a thought or a belief system generally emulates concrete. But then again, even concrete changes! It is the nature of the mind to hold onto belief systems like they are living, breathing beings that determine who we are and how the world “should” be

Change- It Never Ends.
Change- It Never Ends.

When I was in college studying historic preservation, I had to focus a lot of my time on the conservation of old structures. And to conserve, you had to know a building’s past, present and future. We actually had to create architecturally accurate drawings- only through a reverse process of intricately measuring every aspect of a building in its current state of life. One of the things I distinctly remember is the debate of glass being a solid or a slowly moving liquid. When you look at a glass window from the 1800s, it looks like old glass- wavy, hard to see through clearly- but still. It almost looked like it was not consistent in thickness from the top to the bottom. Apparently that has to do with the way the glass was actually made, and not necessarily with its molecular structure- but nonetheless, even though some say it is a myth, there are still scientists out there doing studies to prove if glass is a slow moving liquid or a solid.

Nonetheless- the fact that the argument is out there at all is just symptomatic of subtle change that exists on a molecular level every second around us. Change is constant, even though we can’t see it with our naked eye. The same goes for relationships, and our own mental perception of the world. In my world, our outer reality is reflective of our inner reality. How we perceive ourselves is projected around us like a film in each person we interact with in a multitude of ways.

Change never stops, one minute we are born and with every day thereafter, our body is different. The thing is, change naturally flows in a step by step process. A butterfly does not become a butterfly in one leap. It starts with the laying of an egg, then the birth of the caterpillar, then the pupa or chrysalis, and finally- the beautiful butterfly, which may life only 1-2 weeks. If we are going to make a major change in our life, and we have the opportunity to take it in steps, I feel that the mind generally copes better with change in a step by step process.

But let’s be real! Some change simply does not unfold like a gracious symphony. The death of a loved one, the loss of a job- that is the change we cannot control. But if we are choosing a major life change- choose the healthiest options for yourself and remember your motivation with each step. This will create an outcome that will always serve your highest good- trust in this outcome is integral or else, you may just lose your mind. But then again- would that be a bad thing?

I would love to know- how have you coped with a much needed, major life change- and was it easier to do it in one swoop, or vice versa?

DAILY PROMPT: Confessions of a Co-dependent: Me, Myself & My Helplessness

Awareness, Buddhism, Co-dependent, Ego, Forgiveness, Karma, Life, Life Coach, Love, Perception, Psychology, Reflection, Self Perception, self-help, , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

loveyourselfchallenge_tumblrLooking back, living life as a co-dependent was like a personal hell that I would re-create through relationships for myself over and over again.  I started to feel like Bill Murray in the film Groundhog Day only I didn’t feel like an omnipotent “God” with the advantage of no-calorie pastries, I felt helpless and cursed.  I lived my life like an addict, only I was addicted to being needed by others and when I was rejected I didn’t know where to turn.  Usually I would turn, but I would just turn in circles like an out of control top who could not tolerate the pain any longer.

Many addicts talk about when they “hit bottom” and my hitting bottom was definitely not something to write home about.  As for many, it was one of those experiences that has come back to haunt me in my own “hall of shame” many a time.  Understanding co-dependency is very difficult and frustrating for outsiders.  We can see certain patterns in people, but it can be trying and difficult to understand why they keep going back to that place of helplessness and loneliness whenever a relationship ends.  And why they choose partners that may seem dysfunctional or simply “wrong” for them.

For me, I had deeply ingrained worthiness issues, and I chose people that would prove to me my own personal belief system- that I did not deserve a healthy, thriving relationship that fed my soul on all levels, and that had good boundaries.  My lack of boundaries always set me up to fail because I compromised what felt right for me all the time due to my fear of conflict.  It would build up until I myself could not handle the situation any longer.  But if a breakup came out of left field, it felt like deep abandonment and I had no healthy coping mechanisms to help me get out of my personally fated riptide.

My rock bottom was not the end of my conflict, but it brought a turning point for me in my psyche that I had to take notice of.  I was young and already felt tired of having to go through the motions of life.  I was confronted with a break up that to me came out of left field.  I was a year out of college, and still very co-dependent.  When the break-up happened, I felt amazed at how people can make decisions for you and there was nothing you could do about it.  But mostly, I felt downtrodden and so helpless that life simply didn’t matter anymore.  There was a crack of light from my soul trying to expand itself into my ego-centered vision, but I was refusing to see it.

One night after going out with some friends and drinking I walked into my dark bedroom as if I was walking into a prison cell.   I looked out my window and saw the street lamp’s light, and the beautiful leaves from the trees rustling so peacefully.  In my heart, I wanted to be those leaves and not myself.  I was truly sick of my ego’s helplessness.  I then swallowed a bottle of pills.  Before going to the hospital, I simply remember this one thought- “why doesn’t anyone love me.”  What I had to learn is that my own personal love for myself and the divinity that coursed through my veins was undeveloped, and it was time to move forward.  And you know what? I am grateful every day for the grace and karma that I had to take life back by the reins from that experience and remember my truth rather than reject it so I could hold onto a belief system about myself that my ego used every day to create more separation.  The great divide within myself had to heal, as it does within all of us.  And I look forward to doing this with others for the rest of my life.