RESOURCES

Good morning dear Friends,

Oh, how you and Death Valley have been on my mind and in my heart. For days after returning home to Colorado, I would wake up in the night and look for the stars above my head and feel sad to find the blank stare of my ceiling or I would wake up and look to the mountain to see if it was daybreak only to see my wall. I still look at the moon and see the desert. I also have had many, many dreams of us, mostly simple dreams of conversations, sitting in circle or quiet hikes. I am holding us. I imagine we are holding us and I am glad for it.

My return home has been beautiful and clumsy. I have tried to describe my feeling but words fall short. I keep saying that I feel airy which I am sure has many different interpretations from flaky to checked out. What I mean by it though is almost literal – of the air. Not quite under the hold of gravity. Slightly above the ground and while wanting to get the traction of the earth, not minding, for now, floating just slightly above it, slower, off balance, lighter and playful.

[…] I did not dive back into the onslaught of emails and text messages because the moment I returned I became aware of how impervious it all really is – the constant banging on my door for attention without connection. That is my view of digital work communication upon my return. I don’t want to demonize because lord, knows, I have done it: sent the email with words that I would likely never speak in person; quickly detailed via email an expedited task list with an immediate deadline so that I wouldn’t get the push back of the conversation, or sent the note of gratitude late at night because that’s when I could make time for it. While these have sufficed in the past, now I really see their deeper message: my own trepidation of speaking my truth out loud for fear that it will be interrupted and imperfect; the tasks that get completed begrudgingly lacking a bought into sense of purpose; and the gratitude that, while happily received, isn’t high enough on the priority list to get delivered in person and in writing during appropriate hours.

I don’t want to communicate without connection or more intentionally, I want to connect when communicating. What that looks like right now is, I have been calling people; talking to them; collaborating on solutions and holding each of us accountable with compassion using our voices, feelings, thoughts and emotions.

[…] Another change upon my return has been the removal of the television, iPad and video/gaming services of my phone from my daughter’s and my daily lives. After all of our time without internet services, I have to say, I was very reluctant to bring it back at all. However, I was home for a couple of days without my daughter or our puppy and I turned on the TV to catch up on some shows. Again, floating and slower, I could suddenly see all of the very fast work our eyes/minds are being asked to do while watching these shows. Suddenly, I am seeing every cut/dissolve/interesting fade to a new scene and not only is it work on the eye/mind as just an optical feat but there is a general suspended belief system that we grow accustomed to – things that are impossible – movement from one location to another in nano-seconds – that we accept as part of the viewing experience. Shortcuts to reality. Yes, yes, I spent many years in television production, I know it’s all part of the game but I guess what I am getting at is – I don’t want to play that game anymore. I am no longer very interested in shortcuts to reality or in suspending my belief system so that I can be entertained. Well, certainly not on a daily basis. And so, Sophia and I are talking more, playing board and card games, collaborating on homework, painting, taking our pup on longer walks, living more and being passively entertained less.

[…] These are the surface matter. The deep matter is in some type of metamorphosis. It is the other side of the airy. There are times when I crave the earth in deep and pulling ways – pulling, maybe magnetic I am not sure, I just know it is a force. I crave it not like to walk on it but to be in it, deep underground. One day while I was in this mode, I could feel the pull and thought it was like I was a seed. I wanted to be planted in the ground for a while so that I could germinate, root, grow and bloom up at once away from it and part of it. Feel the magnificence of the sun on my face while my feet are in the deep cool, earth. That felt so right and so true I thought it was dead on and then I realized that also sounds a lot like dead. Buried, underground, dark, still and silent and then in the bright light. I pulled the car over and laughed and cried. The veil lifted, perhaps, it isn’t accepting our death but is that life and death are the same. They both exist mightily in our being calling, crying, craving the air and the soil; heaven and earth and we are the divining rod between them – living and dying; dying and living – why, how, what, where are we going – we know within.

I will sum the above up with this broad intention that began percolating with my quiet conversation with God under the blanket of the stars and in the center of my Purpose Circle when the words whispered: If you are going to trust yourself then you will need to trust the Universe more. At the time, I received these words powerfully and at face value. Since then, the words have unfolded deeper and neatly into a mantra that I’ve held close for nearly a decade: I am not in the Universe; the Universe is in me. Connected to this, I now interpret the whisper as: Trust the Universe is speaking through you and even to you. When my knowing doesn’t make sense based on what my senses are telling me, I will check in on my connection to the Universe (universal intent) and choose to trust myself. I can tell you a million stories of self-loathing where I didn’t do this – where I trusted what I was seeing/hearing/smelling instead of what I felt/knew and then later felt like I betrayed myself when my knowing held the answer. My big intention is to trust my knowing – trust my-self; my being and the Universe that is in me. I will do this knowing what I think I have known all along but previously feared, that it is a matter of life and death because I am the matter of life and death. We all are and I am living and dying for a higher connection, to you, to me, to it all and everything.

This sounds so big and unwieldy even to write and yet, I know, if I stand in this then the path to my doing will be lighted and clear. It may not always make sense. It may, in fact, fly in the face of common sense. And if it is what my deep knowing asks then, Heaven knows where I am going but I know I will.

Sending deep love,

Julia Sherman

If you are going to trust yourself then you will need to trust the Universe more. Trust the Universe is speaking through you and even to you. Trust your knowing – trust your-self; your being and the Universe that is in you. It may not always make sense. It may, in fact, fly in the face of common sense. And if it is what my deep knowing asks then, Heaven knows where I am going but I know I will.

Note:  The above are excerpts from an email to fellow fasters of the Ballcourt, written by Julia Sherman and shared with authors permission.