Reach for the Stars...and Touch Them

With all there is
Why settle for just a piece of sky?
~ from the score of Yentl, Lyrics by Alan & Marilyn Bergman

Thursday, Sept. 25 ~ Albuquerque, New Mexico

I'm walking on a nature trail in Albuquerque's Sandia Mountain foothills, the late-day sun gilding the granite outcroppings and illuminating the sage, cactus and juniper.

This is one of my final farewell walks in a landscape that has so nurtured and inspired me.

You see, in five days I will be gone from here, launched yet again on an open-ended, Spirit-directed odyssey into the unknown and unimagined -- my third such journey of faith in the past 11 years.

My first, in 1997, opened me to marriage, parenthood and life in a new country. The second, which spanned 30 months and was sparked by the end of that marriage, led to my two books and CD and kindled for me a more empowered professionalism. Both journeys pushed and expanded me, challenging me to surrender more fully to the divine imperative that directs and prospers me -- when I let it.

In each case, I knew nothing of what lay head. I simply stepped off the cliff of my certainty and into the void from which all creation emerges.

Was I afraid? Sometimes.

Did I allow that fear to stand in my way? Rarely, and never for long.

As I think ahead to what's next, this lyric from Osibisa's song "Woyaya" plays in my head:

We are going
Heaven knows where we are going
We'll know we're there
We will get there
Heaven knows how we will get there
We know we will

I'm also reminded of the scene in The MoonQuest where Toshar and his three companions must step through an opening that will carry them "beyond the end of the known world."

Dense smoke chokes them where they stand as the jungle through which they have trekked burns up. There is no way back.

The only way is forward -- into the unknown, with its challenges and opportunities. With its secrets and mysteries. With gifts more wondrous and miracle-filled than any they could imagine.

When I left Toronto in 1997, the only direction I had from my GPS (God Positioning System) was to head west. Ultimately, it landed me in a new life in Sedona, Arizona.

When I left Sedona seven years and a Hawaii sojourn later, my GPS also sent me west -- at first. In the many months of cross-country travel that followed, I always managed to find my way back to the New Mexico that has been my full-time home for the past year.

Now, as I prepare to leave Albuquerque, my divine compass points eastward, directing me to the McDonald Observatory near Fort Davis, Texas.

I've felt pulled toward the home of National Public Radio's StarDate since August, when I knew I would be returning to the road.

It was a mystifying pull because, as stunning as is the observatory's setting and as fascinating as is its planetarium show, I've been there -- twice -- and never experienced any life-altering epiphanies.

At a conscious level, at least, it was a fun place to visit. Nothing more.

Yet if I've learned anything through my years of personal and spiritual growth, it's the importance of surrendering to the highest imperative I can access in any given moment. (There's a reason why the word "surrender" appears 67 times in The Voice of the Muse!) Like Toshar and his friends, I too must surrender to whatever lies beyond the end of my known world and be open to all the wonders that await me on the other side.

And so, if that highest imperative is sending me back to southwest Texas, I'll go -- whatever it means.

I've asked what it means countless times in recent weeks. Today, on my Sandia walk, I ask again.

For the first time, I hear an answer: "To remind you to reach for the stars."

Now, as I write these words, that same inner voice adds: "Reach for the stars...and touch them."

We all need reminders to reach for the stars, that potent metaphor for our highest, most divine potential. In these challenging, turbulent times, we also need to be reminded that those stars are not beyond our grasp. We can touch them. All it takes is a hand, outstretched to the infinite...the infinite we already are.


Photos by Mark David Gerson: #1 Sandia Foothills, Albuquerque, NM; #2 From the McDonald Observatory, near Fort Davis, TX

Vehicle of Faith

Saturday, August 30 ~ Albuquerque, New Mexico

I'm sitting in the showroom of a local car dealership. It's been a long day of car buying. Nearly eight hours long.

Although the quintessential auto-purchase experience in terms of time spent (why does it have to take so long!?), my day here belies all stereotypes about car salesmen. Brad and Kelly, my salesman and his sales-manager boss, have been warm, engaging and genuine.

Still, I'm exhausted and stressed.

After two failed attempts at car-buying in recent months, I was reluctant to give it a third try, even as I knew it was time for a new vehicle.

Then, seemingly from nowhere, I got an e-mail and follow-up call from this particular dealership. They claimed they were responding to an internet request for information -- a request I have no memory of having made.

I put them off for several weeks, somewhat gun-shy after my previous experiences. Finally, today, I relented, no longer able to ignore the many synchronicities of the situation (not to mention the end-of-season discounts).

Now, the test drives are done, the credit apps have been processed, we've negotiated back and forth on terms and down payments and I'm staring at final figures -- the figures I said I would need to see in order to make a decision today.

When I drove in this morning, I asked Spirit for a sense of what a new monthly car payment would look like. Not surprisingly, the resulting figure pushed my financial comfort-zone buttons...just as a comparable figure had three years ago under similar circumstances. Yet I knew that if I acted today from a place of trust, centeredness and integrity I would be taken care of, as I always have been.

The "final figure" now before me is uncomfortably higher than the one I sensed this morning. Yet despite my fears, I know I must say yes. Not because I've been worn down after eight hours in this shabby showroom. But because all my higher senses tell me to.

I say yes.

When I get home, I’m so fearful and frazzled I can't get out of the garage and away from the new car quickly enough.

I spend a restless evening and sleepless night mired in doubt and distress and wake up exhausted and barely functional. Fortunately, pep talks from a couple of friends give me the courage to begin to take ownership of the vehicle. I browse through the manual, marveling at all the gadgetry, and call my insurance company to switch my coverage.

And then the phone rings. It's Dana, the dealership's finance manager. My heart sinks.

Eight years ago in Hawaii, I drove a new car home from the lot only to get a call the next day from the dealership, sorrowfully advising me that I would need to kick in more money or the deal was dead.

I had warned the Albuquerque dealership that if that were to happen here, I would return the car.

"Yes?" I answer tentatively.

"Could you come down to the dealership this afternoon?"

Oh, God, I gasp silently. "Why?" ask hesitantly.

"We'd like to lower your monthly payment."

"What?"

"We’d like to lower your monthly payment."

A few hours later, I’m back at the dealership, signing a new set papers. My interest rate has dropped by a third, my payment has dropped 14 percent, and my new monthly payment is within the range I had (erroneously, I thought) predicted.

As I drive home, considerably lighter-feeling than during the same drive yesterday, I think of the journey of trust the biblical Abraham went through when God asked him to sacrifice his son, Isaac.

A man of infinite faith, Abraham began to prepare for the unthinkable and unconscionable. Only when his knife was a whisper away from Isaac’s throat did an angel appear, praising Abraham for his faith and releasing him from his vow.

I feel like Abraham right now.

During the past 24 hours, my faith has also been stretched beyond all reasonable limits. Like Abraham, the only thing I have been asked to give up is my fear.

Now, having let it go, I have been rewarded for my trust and am free to move forward on the next leg of my journey -- in my vehicle of faith.

Art by Marc Chagall: "Sacrifice of Isaac," Musée Marc Chagall, Nice, France

Stepping into the Void...Again

Friday, August 22 ~ Albuquerque, New Mexico

O'ric raised his hands over my head in benediction. "Ride north one league at a time. Aris will guide you at night. A path between the suns will guide you in the day. Your heart will guide you always."
~ The MoonQuest: A True Fantasy

I knew it could happen any time. I knew my days in this house were numbered. But when I listen to the woman who owns the house I’m renting, I'm numb with shock.

"This isn't working," she says of her attempts to sell the house with a tenant (me) in it. "I'm afraid I'm going to have to give you notice."

This isn't how it was supposed to be. I expected to stay in the house until it sold, which in this market could have taken months. Meantime, I've been scouring Craig's List for suitable alternatives.

Now...what?

It takes me a few hours to settle into an emotional state conducive to meditative activity. Once there, I feel out the energy of my known options:

1) Find another Albuquerque rental
2) Find a rental somewhere else, in or out of state
3) Hit the road for some indefinite, transitional period

If you've followed these Chronicles for any length of time, you know that the last time I did #3, I ended up on the road for 30 months!

Although I'm not keen to embark on another open-ended odyssey, the romance of the road still carries a certain appeal. Still, my first choice is #1...though it’s proving hard to find anything that measures up to where I now live. As for #2, I'm open, but nothing solid has presented itself.

Frankly, I'm open to all options, despite my conscious preference. I’m particularly open to the options I can’t yet see or imagine.

That's just as well because whatever inner/higher/heart intelligence is guiding this human journey, it keeps urging me to "expect the unexpected" and to pack in a way that offers me the most flexibility (#3).

Like Toshar, the questing protagonist of my novel The MoonQuest, all I can do is follow the path that presents itself in each moment -- wherever it carries me, whatever the consequences.

If there's one thing I've learned through my years of personal and spiritual growth (and writing The MoonQuest was a potent teacher in that regard), it's that the unimagined and unimaginable is nearly always far more wondrous than the known and predictable.

Travel beyond the end of the known world, Toshar and his companions are told. A similar voice constantly offers me the same counsel.

Not for the first time in my life (and, undoubtedly, not for the last), what's ahead is beyond my ability to predict or project. Not only is there a catalog of options betyond nos. 1, 2 and 3, there are variations -- 1a, 2c, 3f -- that my mind can't yet figure out because it can't yet see them as possibilities. They lie beyond the end of my known world.

Living in this place of unlimited openness isn't without its stresses. Not knowing whether I'm moving or roving, not knowing which contingency to pack and prepare for -- these information voids catapult me well beyond what's left of my comfort zone.

Yet through it all, I have an abiding knowingness that when I trust and surrender, when I let go and leap, I end up somewhere magnificent, somewhere I could never have imagined, predicted or chosen.

For today, all I can do is to start packing and let tomorrow take care of itself...and me. It always has.

Art by Mark David Gerson: "Surrendering to the Mystery, Surrendering to the Void (#34)"

Trust. Now.

Friday, August 8 ~ Albuquerque, New Mexico

Mistrust has deformed this land,
twisting it until lies are truth and truth is a lie,
embedding it with layers of fear so thick
even the brightest light can't pierce through. ...
It has spread so subtly we don’t even see it.
Yet it's there. And it must be stopped.
We must stop it and begin again.
~ The MoonQuest

How do we begin again? By trusting ourselves.

From there, we regain trust in our highest God selves. Then we regain trust in each other.

We trust what we know. We trust what we see. We trust in the possibility of the impossible. We trust in love.


"You either trust or you do not," M’nor stated. "There is no halfway in between."
~ The MoonQuest


Where do you still not trust yourself? Where do you still not trust others? Where do you doubt that you're capable of miracles?

How can you more fully surrender to your highest God self and trust your alchemical power to bring Heaven on Earth into your life? Beginning today.

The MoonQuest is available at selected retailers across the U.S. and through various online sites, including Amazon.com and LightLines Media.

It Only Takes a Moment

Tuesday, May 20 ~ Albuquerque, New Mexico

As I drive home from a lunch date with someone I haven't seen in a decade, a song from the musical Hello, Dolly! insinuates itself into my mind. The song, "It Only Takes a Moment," is a paean to love at first sight, but it reminds me how a single instant can precipitate an earth-quaking, life-shaking change in direction.

One of the most profound examples of that in my life occurred ten years ago, just before my last encounter with today's lunch partner. It was May 1, at a Beltane bonfire in Sedona, Arizona.

It was at that bonfire that I met my former wife, a meet-up whose sparks rivaled those that leapt up from the fire pit that night. A week later, we moved in together; six weeks after that we were married. The six-plus years that followed were filled with love, joy and a cornucopia of unexpected miracles, not the least of which was my daughter, who made her own spark-filled appearance at 9:11 a.m. on 9/11/99.

It only takes a moment...

The song and the accompanying memory take on particular significance for me today, during a period in my life filled with uncertainty and flux, a time when doubts about my path creep into any opening they can find, a period of fear, anger and confusion, a time when inner guidance is unclear and seems to shift from moment to moment.

There are energetic reasons for these experiences, experiences that I know are not unique to me at this time. But, for me, the reasons are less important than how I choose to respond to all that they have set in motion in my life in recent weeks.

When I woke up on that life-changing May morning ten years ago, I was angry and frustrated. Little that I had felt guided to expect had come to pass. Here I was in a new country, uncertain why I was here, unclear about how to proceed, unnerved by the seeming disconnect between inner knowingness and outer manifestation.

In a single instant 12 hours later, my life was thrust into a new direction and nothing was ever the same again. It was as though I had been reborn into a new world that bore only a passing resemblance to my old one.

It only takes a moment...

Today, I remember that instant and others like it and I know that one moment -- one breath -- is all it takes for the miracle that changes everything to appear unannounced.

I remember, too, that the key to receiving that miracle is to stay present in each moment, moment-by-moment. For unless I'm present in the moment, I may not notice the miracle that is its fruit. If I'm locked in worry and anxiety about the future -- and even the moment after this one is part of that future -- I may not be available to the angel who delivers the miracle.

Not every life-changing moment is a happy one. The human journey is filled with miracle-filled moments masquerading as bad news. The instant when my marriage ended was one of those, as was the moment I learned that my mother had cancer.

Yet even those moments brought with them wondrous gifts that I could never have predicted, like flowers blooming among the desert cactus.

And so as I move through the challenges of these times, I try to stay present in each moment, remembering that a moment is all it takes -- for worlds to topple, new life to birth and miracles to bloom.

It only takes a moment.

Photos by Mark David Gerson: Sandia cactus flower, Albuquerque, New Mexico

Deeper Levels of Trust

Saturday, October 6 ~ Santa Fe, New Mexico


I'm at The Ark bookstore reading from my novel The MoonQuest as part of the Santa Fe Short Story Festival.

"When's the sequel coming out?" someone asks.

When, indeed?

I've been so focused on getting The MoonQuest out into the world and completing The Voice of the Muse: Answering the Call to Write that I haven't given a lot of thought to The StarQuest.

It's not that I haven't begun writing The StarQuest. I've begun it twice.

Unlike The MoonQuest, though, whose first two drafts each took me less than a year to write, The StarQuest, which has no completed drafts, has been in my life for more than nine years.

When, indeed?

That the question was asked by someone named Ben is significant. There's a Ben in The StarQuest. He's the main character's son. And he's the main character in The SunQuest, the final book of this projected trilogy.

It's almost as though the character himself leapt off the page to find out when I plan to complete his story.

When, indeed?

With The MoonQuest, I rarely knew from one day to the next — some days, from one word to the next — where the story was taking me. It was frustrating, stressful and scary to be forced to live moment-to-moment, word-by-word, in trust that the story would ultimately reveal itself.

It did, of course. In its time, not mine.

As I ponder Ben's question, I realize that what has held me back from completing The StarQuest is a deeper level of the same trust The MoonQuest demanded of me. By this point in The MoonQuest, in terms of page count, I had a sense of what the story was about. Not a complete sense, but enough to keep me going.

The StarQuest has yet to similarly reveal itself, and I realize now that I have not trusted it enough to continue.

I was ready to trust The StarQuest only to the extent that I had trusted The MoonQuest. Where's the growth in that?

In writing as in life, we're constantly being pushed to have more faith, to trust more fully, to surrender more completely. It's true for Toshar, The MoonQuest's protagonist. It's true for Q'nta, The StarQuest's protagonist. No doubt, it will be true for Ben as well, when I get to The SunQuest.

Meantime, it's certainly true for me -- in my writing as in my life.

I still can't answer Ben's question, but I can commit to whatever level of trust my stories (and his) are asking of me. And I do.

While you're waiting for me to finish The StarQuest, check out The MoonQuest.

It's a five-star selection on Amazon.com and a story the Midwest Book Review calls "an evocative and emotionally moving tale of adventure." The Mindquest Review of Books calls it "an exceptional, timeless novel."

The MoonQuest makes a great gift for the holidays! (Find out where to buy it and read/hear excerpts at TheMoonQuest.com.)

Body Talk I

Thursday, March 15 ~ US-64, near Farmington, New Mexico


The local NPR station broadcasts a promo for a program segment about spring allergies. They're gonna be bad, the announcer says.

Oh, I say. That's why I've been experiencing such extreme allergic symptoms recently. Sneezing. Sniffles. Scratchy throat. Itchy eyes. Off and on for several weeks. It's been beyond uncomfortable.

And then I remember.

I'm in my hotel room in San Diego last week. I've just come from Sedona, where my allergy symptoms were intense.

Juniper? Well, yes, it is the season.

But it's more complicated than that.

Actually, it's simpler.

You see, as I'm sitting in my hotel room, I remember that my symptoms act up and are at their worst either when I'm in Sedona or when I've been talking to my former wife, who lives in Sedona.

Am I allergic to her?

No, of course not.

But allergies are a function of the immune system, which is designed to kick in when it senses a threat.

Recently, as issues around my ex-wife and our separation have come up for deeper healing (see Heart Open Wide), parts of me are feeling profoundly threatened.

Although from a higher perspective, betrayal does not exist, my human-child self knows only that he has been betrayed and must not trust.

It's not safe!!! he shouts. And feeling endangered, he calls in the troops. Shields up! he cries. Defenses up!

My immune system responds, with sneezes, sniffles, itches and scratches, trying to fight off the danger, as it has done throughout my life.

As a child, my immune system was very active. I had many allergies. I had many fears. The world didn't feel safe, wasn't safe.

Today, that child is once again frightened, once again reluctant to trust.

Today, though, a new strategy is called for. A new defense.

That defense can only come from a place of love, of trust, of forgiveness...all the emotions it feels too dangerous to embrace.

It feels too dangerous. Yet that danger is an illusion. I cannot fear an illusion. I dare not.


Sitting in my San Diego hotel room, the Pacific waves thundering on the beach beyond my window, I offer a new strategy, a new defense.

I open my heart in love, I say.

I open my heart in trust.

I open my heart in forgiveness.

And, finally: It's safe to open my heart...to trust...to forgive.

The symptoms don't dissipate immediately. Many years -- lifetimes, perhaps -- of patterning must dissolve. But as my words remind me of the truth, that truth gains power in my body and in my life.

It is safe. I am safe.

I continue my drive -- deeper into New Mexico, deeper into spring, deeper into allergy season. Deeper into my heart.

Photo by Mark David Gerson: Pacific Beach, San Diego, California