The Best of...

Saturday, July 26 ~ Albuquerque, New Mexico

It’s hard to believe that these New Earth Chronicles have been around for 30 months and that this is the 148th post.

I was mighty resistant in January 2006 when I first felt the call to blog. At the time, I knew nothing about blogs. Didn’t much want to know, either.

But 14 months into a full-time road odyssey that had already twice carried me coast-to-coast, I felt as though a blog would be the perfect way to share my journeying -- using a medium that was more personal and immediate than the newsletter it would supplement.

My remaining doubts dissolved a few days later, when I learned that the next meeting of the Albuquerque-based Southwest Writers group would offer an introduction to blogging. Talk about perfect timing. I drove down from Santa Fe for the meeting and a few days later, this New Earth Chronicles blog was born.

Since then, this blog has followed me across the U.S. and into Canada as I've chronicled my experiences of this New Earth we're all birthing -- each in our own way, each in our own lives.

Although my chronicles of the road ended in August when I dropped anchor here in Albuquerque, my New Earth experiences have continued, as have these chronicles.

Here are a few highlights...

• February 2006 ~ Santa Fe, NM -- Love Beyond Love...from a Place Beyond all Understanding

• June 2006 ~ Palm Desert CA --What's It All About, Alfie?

• October 2006 ~ Hillside, VA -- D(r)ving into Different States

• November 2006 ~ Dalton, GA -- Family Lies, Family Ties

• December 2006 ~ Ojai, CA -- Aligned with the Flow That only Passion Can Activate

• January 2007 ~ Thousand Oaks, CA -- An Eye for the Right Life

• May 2007 ~ Santa Fe, NM -- A Horse (or Two) of a Different Color

• July 2007 ~ Sedona, AZ -- Use Me

• October 2007 ~ Santa Fe, NM -- Deeper Levels of Trust

• January 2008 ~ Albuquerque, NM -- Why Are Americans Afraid of Dragons?

• February 2008 ~ Albuquerque, NM -- The Alchemy of Creation

• March 2008 ~ Albuquerque, NM -- Don't Fence Me In

• May 2008 ~ Albuquerque, NM -- It Only Takes a Moment

I also now have a second blog, The Voice of Your Muse, a source of tools, tips and inspiration for writers. If you haven't already, please check it out.

Photos by Mark David Gerson: #1, from The Heart of Texas (August 2007); #2, from Desert Spring (June 2007)

Metamorphosis, or Cosmic Puberty Strikes Again

Monday, July 14 ~ Albuquerque, New Mexico

5 a.m. -- I wake up from a restless night's sleep with lower-back pain that shows up in my left buttock and upper leg. I try to find a pain-free position. No luck. I get up.

9 a.m. -- "I need a chiropractor," I say to myself. "No," an inner voice insists. "But I'm in pain!" I argue. I then flash on a memory from a few years ago when a series of chiropractic adjustments did little to ease a similar problem. A week after canceling my remaining appointments, the pain was gone. "Let it be," I hear. "You'll be fine."

10 a.m. -- I'm not fine. I take two Advil, do my best to buffer my stomach and spend the day moving between bathtub and soft-seated easy chair.


Wednesday, July 16

8 a.m. -- Another Advil/easy-chair/bath day. I grumble about my inner guidance but surrender to it. No chiropractor.


Thursday, July 17

9 a.m. -- With even the toilet seat barely manageable, I abandon inner guidance and scan the phone book for a holistic-sounding chiropractor. The first one can't see me until Monday. The second greets me with voice mail. I know I shouldn't make a third call, but I do. I get an 11:30 appointment.

11:30 a.m. -- The chiropractor's office is empty and dark. I wait a bit, then leave. "Hang in there," my inner voice says.

11:45 a.m. -- On the drive home, my July 7 blog post echoes in my head: "We are morphing into a new species," I wrote. "We are stepping into our Divine Selves, into the Gods we have always been." I also wrote about "strange physical symptoms" that "kick in for no conventionally explainable reason."

Noon -- Suddenly, this thought: What if my body is trying to adjust to that very morphing I wrote about? What if I don't need a chiropractor to adjust my spine back to its old alignment but need to give my body the time and space to adjust itself to a new alignment? This explanation feels right -- to part of me. To another part, it sounds crazy. I resolve the dilemma by taking a nap.


Friday, July 18

6 a.m. -- I'm still in pain. "Damn!" I mutter. I can't get back to sleep, so I give myself a mini sound-healing session. This is my second early morning self-treatment this week and the second time a spine-shaped DNA strand appears in my mind's eye. I fall asleep.

8 a.m. -- I wake up. The pain is nearly gone.


Tuesday, July 22

The pain didn't stay gone. Instead, it ebbed and returned over the next days, each return less intense than the last. Today, I feel pretty good, if still just a little bit achey.

Why am I sharing this story? Not to prove what a wonderful self-healer I am, nor to show off my fearless, resistance-free existence. We all have the former capacity but, like most people, I don't always trust mine. As for the latter, it's not as constant as I would like it to be.

Rather, I share my story to remind you -- and me -- to listen to the voice of your deepest heart, to discern what is truth and trust it, to honor not only the demands of your body but also the call of your highest self. I share it, not for you to avoid necessary treatment, but to be open to the wisdom and healing power that is your birthright.

I share it, too, as a personal example of that Cosmic Puberty experience many of us are living. I share it because I know that many of you are experiencing your own strange symptoms -- either new ones or a recurrence of old ones.

For me, the past week involved more than back pain. I was lethargic, slept poorly and had little appetite. I also experienced a catalog of other physical and emotional oddities. Even my computer was affected: On Tuesday, my laptop's trackpad died. On Wednesday, its battery followed suit.

Today, after eight days of listless emptiness, I feel energized and transformed. It's as though I went through a physical and emotional retooling and now stand at the threshold of something new. Even my computing life has had an overhaul -- new keyboard, trackpad, battery and printer.

Perhaps I should have seen this metamorphosis coming. At the end of my talk at a local library a few weeks ago, the librarian gave me a gift: a thermal mug emblazoned with the theme of the summer's teen reading program -- Metamorphosis.

That mug has been sitting on my kitchen counter ever since, refusing to be hidden in a cupboard, its transformative message staring me down multiple times a day.

I can't tell you where this metamorphosis is taking me or what its next stage will look like. Nor can I tell you how it will manifest in my life.

The only certainty for me is that metamorphosis is an ongoing journey, one that continues to call on me to surrender to it. Unconditionally.

The only certainty for us all is that we are all evolving, that we're all engaged in the kind of r-evolution (radical evolution) I often write about. At least, we're engaged to the extent that we allow it to be so.

How engaged are you? Are you allowing metamorphosis or resisting it? How is it playing out in your life? Where is it uncomfortable? Painful? Where is it joyful? Transcendent? How can you surrender more fully to it and flow more easily along your journey to the Divine? How can you move through the human stress and confusion of these times while acknowledging the God you already are? How can you help others on that same journey?

I know you can do it. I know you can, because I believe in you.

Art: "Remembering the God That You Are" (#12) by Mark David Gerson. Graphic: Logo for the Rio Rancho Library's "Metamorphosis" summer teen program

25 Words of Living

Sunday, July 20 ~ Albuquerque, New Mexico

It wasn't until today that I got around to responding to the 25 Words of Work / Life Wisdom challenge put forward by fellow blogger Liz Strauss earlier this month -- only to discover that I'd missed the deadline!

Still, it's such a good exercise that I did it anyhow. Now, I want to share it and invite you to try it.

Here's Liz's idea (slightly modified):

1) Look for something you see too much or too little of, something you're feeling right now or someone/something you would like to describe.
2) Without thinking too much as you do it, write a sentence or two about it.
3) Count the words you have written.
4) Trim the sentence until you have 25 words -- no more, no less. Notice how your idea changes as you distill it and how your feelings change with each rewrite.
5) For a little extra fun, create a Wordle word cloud with your 25 words at www.wordle.net.

Because it's too late to be part of Liz's project, I invite you to post your sentence here -- or to post it on your own blog and include a link to your blog in the comments here. Include a link to your Wordle word cloud, too.

I'll be reposting this invitation on my blog about writing, The Voice of Your Muse in a couple of days.

It's a great writing exercise, but it's also a great experience in both distilling and discovering what you think and what you believe.

Here's mine: Today I remember that surrender is the key to writing and life: trusting that all is in divine order in every moment, in every breath.

You'll find more examples on Liz's site as well as at the Remarkable Parents blog.

Give it a try. It's both fun and enlightening!

Follow the Voice of Your Muse

Saturday, July 19 ~ Albuquerque, New Mexico

Just a quick note to remind you to visit The Voice of Your Muse, my blog of tools, tips and inspiration about writing.

Since I launched it this past spring, the blog has expanded to more than 50 posts on a wide range of practical and motivational topics -- many with relevance beyond the realm of creativity.

There are a couple of ways to make sure you keep up with the new posts:

• E-mail subscription -- Use this link and be sure to respond to the confirmation e-mail. (A Voice of the Muse subscription is separate from the one that brings New Earth Chronicles posts and my newsletters to some of you via e-mail.) You can use this same link to receive new posts via Twitter or IM.

• Use a blog reader like Bloglines or Google Reader.

Whether you subscribe or not, please visit the blog and add your comments and suggestions.

Cosmic Puberty, or Living Radical Evolution

Monday, July 7 ~ Albuquerque, New Mexico

A version of this article first appeared in the July 4, 2006 issue of my inspirational newsletter.

You're not going crazy.

I know it feels that way sometimes. It certainly does to me.

One moment you feel fine, on top of the world. The next, something pushes you into a depression or despair it's difficult to pull out of. Or you feel yourself sinking into a morass of apparent meaninglessness and purposelessness.

Old patterns -- addictions, even -- poke and prod at you, demanding to be satisfied.

Intense fatigue or other strange physical symptoms kick in, for no conventionally explainable reason.

You feel as though you're going crazy.

You're not.

Then what the @#$&%!?# is going on?

It's what I call R-evolution, short for Radical Evolution.

Our humanoid ancestors had the luxury of millennia to evolve from cave to condo, from simplicity to sophistication. Even for our grandparents, evolution was a subtle process, barely discernible within a generation, let alone a lifetime.

All that has changed.

We are experiencing, in this lifetime, a revolutionary overhaul that is unprecedented in human history.

We are morphing into a new species.

You could call it the New Human, although that's not truly accurate, because where we're going transcends much of we have come to know as human.

In effect, we are stepping into our Divine Selves, into the Gods we have always been, but only as a potential.

That potential is now being realized. Not for everyone, perhaps. But for those who have made that choice, however unconsciously, that's what's going on.

Exciting? Yes.

Miraculous? Absolutely.

Fear-provokingly uncomfortable? Without a doubt.

We stand in a place of transition.

Increasingly, our old ways of living, coping and feeling secure are not working. Even many of the New Age paradigms we have grown into in recent years seem out of place, dysfunctional, wrong-minded.

We are, as Gregg Braden put it a decade ago, walking between the worlds.

Who we were is outmoded. Yet who we are becoming is not yet ready.

Remember that awkward period in early adolescence? You were no longer a child, yet seemingly far from adulthood. On top of that, your physical and emotional bodies were doing all kinds of weird and wacky things.

Welcome back to puberty. Cosmic puberty.

You're experiencing peculiar symptoms and your emotions are volatile. You're beginning to think and act in ways that are foreign to you and others. Your likes and dislikes are shifting, as are your passions and priorities.

Even the face staring back at you from the mirror seems disconcertingly unfamiliar.

In this twilight zone we now occupy between our human and divine selves, cognitive disconnect is the norm.

Our human minds struggle to control our lives in ways that our divine intelligence considers unnecessary.

Our human mind has expectations. Our divine intelligence has none.

Our human mind tries to figure out and understand, functions our divine intelligence regards as irrelevant.

Radical Evolution, or "ascension" as some would term it, is not about moving into deeper understanding. It's about moving away from understanding. It's about abandoning any need to understand and moving into a place of permanent mystery...divine mystery.

Yet we're still wired to function in human ways. Or, rather, our divine electrician has begun the rewiring, but it's a massive job. And the transition is as weird and wacky as was puberty.

That's not reassuring to the human self, which feels as though everything familiar is breaking apart.

It is. One glance at the headlines is all it take to see that. Plummeting real estate prices. Soaring gas prices. Crises in the credit world. Floods, fires and financial failure.

Our minds and bodies are doing their own version of that same dance. Sometimes, the dance isn't graceful or pretty. Sometimes, it looks more like struggle.

Think of the biblical Jacob wrestling with the angel.

That's the essence of what's going on for us: our human wrestling with our divine. The human seeks to hold onto the perceived control of knowingness. The angel, on the other hand, represents all that is free, and therefore free of control.

All that is free is the mystery. For, along with its other implications, freedom frees us from having to know, to understand, to place in context.

As we move to this next level -- a step that is gargantuan in its steepness and implications -- we are leaving behind more than we can begin to imagine. Not in the physical sense. Not even in the emotional sense. In the human sense.

Much that has defined you as human is being squeezed out of you -- in that spin cycle I wrote about some time back or, perhaps better put, in an old-fashioned wringer-washer. And as each new space is freed up, more of the divine that you already are is entering in to fill that newly created emptiness.

Put another way, it's like the child (Peter Pan) who resists growing up, leaving childish (but not childlike) things behind to make way for the adult. In this case, it's not the human adult but the divine adult that is coming through...sometimes, or so it feels, like a steamroller.

No wonder you're in emotional crisis at times. No wonder you feel as though you are dying. No wonder signs and apparent synchronicities refuse to be interpreted.

Nothing is the way it was or ever will be again. Nothing can be understood in the old ways. Nothing can be fixed in the old ways. Nothing can be controlled. Period.

There is only one magic pill, and it can be a tough one to swallow.

It's called surrender.

Yet it's the only way.

All we can do is move through our cosmic puberty with as much grace as we can muster.

All we can do is surrender...to the mystery, to the freedom, to the divine that is taking over our lives, our will and our beingness and launching us into an era we cannot predict, anticipate or understand.

See yourself as a baby bird pushing through its shell. The shell is your human construct. You are breaking through that now. It is breaking down now. The bird is emerging, regardless. And it will fly. You will fly. And life on the other side of that shell is nothing you have ever known before.

You are stressed by all this. This is natural. Your human self is in panic. This is natural.

Know that you are neither dying nor going crazy, though that is what it feels like. Rather, you are experiencing radical evolution. You are becoming the divine.

Stop wrestling the angel and, instead, step into the angel. Become the angel. Become the god, your god, the god that you are.

~ For tips on how to use writing to help you move through these r-evolutionary times, visit my other blog, The Voice of Your Muse or check out The Voice of the Muse: Answering the Call to Write and/or The Voice of the Muse Companion: Guided Meditations for Writers.

Image: "Wrestling the Light" by Ivan Chan

Don't Worry, Be Happy

Sunday, July 6 ~ Albuquerque, New Mexico

What would happen if one million people experienced and expressed happiness on the same day? You'll have a really good chance of finding out on July 10, which has been designated International Happiness Day.

Initiated by Barcelona's Liberto Pereda Romera, International Happiness Day is a day in which people from all over the world are asked to intentionally choose to be happy while inspiring the happiness of others through simple acts of kindness, expressions of joy, gratitude, optimism, and forgiveness.

"We know that intention creates outcome," says Eva Gregory, who is one of the two US Ambassadors for International Happiness Day, with Jeanna Gabellini. So, if a million people from all over the planet celebrated happiness on the same day, we’re convinced that it would have a powerful, positive impact on the world."

To participate July 10 in International Happiness Day, says Gregory, all you need to do is set the intention to choose happiness on that day.

For more information, visit the International Happiness Day web site, watch the International Happiness Day video or join the International Happiness Day Group on Facebook.

On the Air with Mark David

Thursday, July 3 ~ Albuquerque, New Mexico

"I passionately believe that we are called to love, honor and respect all aspects of our beingness, not just the ones that behave in right/light ways."
~ Mark David Gerson

Tune into the audio archive of "Loving Your Ego While Surrendering to Your Highest Self," an engaging conversation on a wide range of spiritual/personal growth topics, including how to love your ego and my 10 Rules for Living, with Powerfull Living Radio host Lorraine Cohen.