A Guide for Living in These Times

Monday, September 10 ~ Sedona, Arizona


Click on this audio link to hear the audio archive of my interview on Blog Talk Radio this evening, in an hour's conversation with host Phil Harris.

It's a free-ranging give-and-take about spirituality and metaphysics and a guide for living in these times.

Breaking In, Breaking Out

Albuquerque, New Mexico

Thursday, August 9 ~
An Omen?

This final morning in this Albuquerque hotel, I wake up to a dream about another Albuquerque hotel -- the one around the corner I'll be checking into later today.

In the dream, I'm standing in the parking lot of this second hotel. As I gaze up at the building, I remark with some surprise that this hotel is such a powerful vortex that I ought to create an energy drawing of it.

I think nothing of the dream until...


Friday, August 10 ~ Breaking In

It's my first morning in the new hotel. The telephone rings, jarring me out of a deep sleep and a dream about...about something.

It's the front desk.

"Your car," the concerned voice says. "It's been broken into."

I stumble out of bed, into some clothes and out to the parking lot. A police cruiser is parked next to my minivan, an officer jotting down notes from the sea of shattered glass at his feet.

As I peer anxiously through the now-missing driver's-side window, I try to determine what's been taken -- not an easy task given how jam-packed the car is from my 30 months (to the day) of full-time travel.

"Don't touch anything," the officer cautions, as I poke my head into the car, doing my best to avoid the stray shards of glass still clinging to the door frame. I can't open the door until it's been dusted for prints, he says. Just like on TV.

Unlike on TV, my car is parked at the security camera's only blind spot. The camera captured nothing usable.

Bad news for the thief: he captured little of significant monetary value.

Bad news for me: the cases he grabbed (thinking that they held computer equipment) contained identity-related documents, including bank and credit card statements.

I spend most of the day in shock, too busy on the phone with glass, insurance, bank and credit card companies to deal with the deeper meaning of the incident.

The only thing that keeps pounding through my head is the phrase "breaking patterns."



Tuesday, August 14 ~ Breaking Out I

It's funny. I've been on the road for nearly three years, everything I own stuffed into my van. Through that time, I've never felt at risk, nor have I spent any time worrying about the security of my belongings.

Yet here I am, noticing a new missing something every time I step into the car.

It's interesting to me that the break-in occurred during daylight hours and that no other car in the lot was stolen. It's also interesting what was taken. It's almost as though the perpetrator was directed to my car and was guided what to take.

Among other MIA (missing in action) items are
• the bulk of my art supplies
• the digital audio recorder I use to record my sessions, teleconferences and live events
• a variety of documents and other objects relating who I have been and how I have viewed the world

Unthreatened and untouched are my copies of The MoonQuest and anything and everything related to my writing.

Now I see one of the patterns that shattered along with my car window: My work with healing art and sound. Whatever my future vibrational offerings, I know now that they will look and sound different than they have in the past.

It's in this moment that I feel called to make way for the new by offering my complete inventory of sound initiation/activation CDs at clearance prices. [See my August 14 newsletter, The Sounds of Change.]

Throughout my adult life and regardless of whatever else I've been doing, my primary focus has always returned to writing and related activities. Today and as a result of the break-in, it appears to be doing so once again.


Wednesday, August 15 ~ Breaking Out II

Until this morning, my thought has been that I would stay in New Mexico through the fall, perhaps hitting the road again with The MoonQuest after the holidays. To that end, I've been searching out furnished rentals on Craig's List.

It's a pattern I've followed through my 30 months of full-time travel: periods of being on the road interspersed with stops of various length in furnished sublets and vacation rentals.

This morning that pattern, too, fractures and dissolves.

As I drive to the bank to deal with more identity-related fallout from the break-in, wondering en route why I'm not finding any suitable furnished rentals, my mind wanders back more than a dozen years -- to a meditative walk I took in Nova Scotia just after returning to work on The MoonQuest after a seven-month hiatus.

It was on that walk that I knew it was time to leave my furnished rental and find a new place that was unfurnished.

As I recall that long-ago walk, a 2007 version of my 1994 knowingness washes over me: It really is time to stop. To truly stop. To drop anchor. To land. To create not only a home base but a home.

My first thought, as it was 13 years ago, is that I have nothing with which to fill an unfurnished house. My second thought also parallels my Nova Scotia experience: Trust, and it will be fine.


Monday, August 20 ~ Breaking Out III

Hobby Lobby, a regional crafts chain, is running a mega sale on art supplies this week. Is that a sign, I wonder, to replace my stolen colored pencils?

Once in the store, I study my options and settle on a set of watercolor pencils.

Yet as I drive away with my new purchase, it feels all wrong. To my shock, I realize I don't miss my old colored pencils and don't want new ones.

My desire to draw hasn't vanished. But all I want now is a few plain sketch pencils to play with.

Another old pattern makes way for the new.

It's time, I realize, to add my inventory of healing art to my selloff of the past.



Friday, August 24 ~ Breaking Out IV

In my frequent moments of overwhelm this week, I ask for confirmation of my decision to drop anchor.

The signs and signals, while not abundant, are eloquent.

Perhaps the earliest, gone unnoted at the time, was the realization that my thick stack of membership cards in frequent-hotel-guest plans was taken -- probably because it looked like a collection of credit cards.

A more recent indicator (for the author of a book titled The MoonQuest) is that the house I'm most drawn to has the word moon as part of its street address.

A phone call today is the capper: Even though I have no house yet, I've been offered my first housewarming present.


Saturday, August 25 ~ The Eagle Has Landed

I have just signed a one-year lease on a house that is everything I asked for...and more. I'm excited and abundantly grateful, even as tremors of anxiety continue to ripple through me.

It's been 15 days since the break-in. Each of those days might as well have been a year for all the openings and transformations that have occurred since that morning.

There have also been many synchronicities and miracles through that time, and I know that at least as many will carry me forward into whatever's next.

Are my traveling days over? I wouldn't dare suggest that. Nor would I dare guess what lies ahead.

All I think I know is that writing will remain an integral part of it...whatever "it" is.

These New Earth Chronicles will likely continue in some form. After all, the New Earth we are co-creating won't disappear just because I'm experiencing it from a less mobile perspective. My newsletter, too, will live on in its own as-yet-to-be-determined way.

Meantime, I'll continue to promote and market The MoonQuest, work toward completion of its sequel and move forward with publication of my book on writing, The Voice of the Muse: Answering the Call to Write.

Through all that, I'll do my best to stay open to whatever gifts and growth await me on this next phase of my journey...wherever it carries me.

Thanks for being one of those gifts!


• Save up to 75% on healing art and CDs at my Web Store.

• Order your copy of The MoonQuest today -- through www.themoonquest.com or through Amazon.com using this direct link. Or click here for a list of retailers who carry the book.





Photos and Art by Mark David Gerson.
#1 Santa Fe sunflowers; #2 Albuquerque sunset; #3 Waxing moon over the Sandias; #4 Drawing #117 "Portal to Your Passion"

The Heart of Texas

Wednesday, August 1 ~ Junction, Texas

Images from a week in Texas....




#1 Stained Glass Image of St. Francis, Monastery of the Poor Clares, Brenham

#2 Monastery of the Poor Clares, Brenham

#3 Rt 965, near Enchanted Rock

#4 Rock Formation, Big Bend Nat'l Park








#5 Rio Grande River

#6 Chisos Mountains, Big Bend Nat'l Park

#7 San Padre Island Nat'l Seashore, Gulf of Mexico

Texas Photos by Mark David Gerson|

Giving Up the Need to Know

Sunday, July 22 ~ Albuquerque, New Mexico

More Texas license plates. Everywhere I look on the drive from Sedona to Albuquerque, I see Texas plates.

They're there, it seems, to tweak my dawning awareness that when I leave Albuquerque on Tuesday, it will be to head into Texas.

Not that I have any idea why I'm being drawn to Texas...again. Why should I, when I still don't know why I was pulled there earlier this year [see God's GPS].

"Not going to work this time," I insist to whoever's in charge. "If you really want me to go to Texas, you'll have to do better than license plates."

It's now my second night in Albuquerque, and I'm chatting with the hotel owner about The MoonQuest, which she's just begun reading. My post-Albuquerque plans never come up. Yet, somehow, it emerges that her husband has family in -- you guessed it -- Texas.

I don't make the connection until an hour later, when I'm talking to Josh, the new guy on the front desk.

"Are you a native New Mexican?" I ask.

"No," he replies. "I'm from Dallas. Texas."

I almost surrender in that moment.

But not quite.

Unconditional surrender comes 24 hours later.

I'm parked outside Office Max. Across from me is a small black car with Texas plates.

"Not going to work," I say, shaking my head at the Universe. "Show me people, not plates."

I come out of the store a few minutes later, following the man who was ahead of me in line. He heads straight for the Texas-mobile and takes off. For Texas, no doubt.

As I walk across his now-vacant spot, something flashes up at me from the pavement. A penny.

I stoop to pick it up and know where I'm going.

I still don't know why, but in that moment I remember my own words from a week ago as I spoke as part of a Sunday Service talk at Santa Fe's The Celebration. The topic? "Too Much Knowledge Is a Dangerous Thing: Giving Up the Need to Know."

I give up.

You Want Me To Do What?!?

Tuesday, July 10 ~ US-93, north of Kingman, Arizona

I'm in Sedona a few days ago when, for the first time since turning it into an eBook five years ago, I begin rereading my book of writing practice and inspiration, The Voice of the Muse: Answering the Call to Write.

The idea is to update and repackage the eBook to restore some of my focus on teaching writing.

The more I read, the more excited I get. Not only is it good -- better than I remembered -- it ties in perfectly with The MoonQuest.

If among its other themes, The MoonQuest is a call to live more authentic lives by telling our stories, The Voice of the Muse is the primer that shows how to do it.

I continue my reading with that thought in mind until, somewhere on the highway out of Kingman, I hear the voice of my muse (ie, Evan Almighty's boss -- see Use Me).

"Forget the eBook," the voice says. "Publish it as a book. Not in a year. Not in six months. Now. Start the process now."

"You want me to do what?!?" I shout. "But The MoonQuest-- It's just barely out. This is insane!!"

"No more insane than building an ark," it replies.



Thursday, July 12 ~ Mono Lake, California

I wake up this morning in Hawthorne, NV in fear. It seems to be one of those unfocused, nonspecific fears, but it's likely related to the whole Voice of the Muse thing.

I struggle out of the womb-like safety of my hotel bed, into my clothes and into the car.

As I climb the Wassuk Range that separates Nevada from California, I open the car window. It's the first time in weeks that morning temperatures anywhere have been cooler than the low-90s, the first time opening car windows has been a comfortable option.

It rained last night in Hawthorne, a brief but pounding thunderstorm that soaked the streets and flashed electric bolts of white up in these mountains.

As soon as I lower the windows, the umistakable scent of sage -- heightened by the moisture -- blows into the car. I breathe in the cleansing, purifying smell and let it wash away my anxiety.

Now, ten minutes later, I'm parked on the side of SR-167 across from Mono Lake. Like some latter-day Avalon, Paoha and Negit islands rise up out of the lake's morning mist.

The stillness is complete.


I don't know what's ahead -- with my books or in my life. But in this moment, embraced by the mountains, enchanted by the lake's Camelot-like formations, and having written these words, I am at peace.


Thursday, July 12 ~ Oakhurst, California

I spend most of my day at elevations exceeding 9,000 feet -- in the skyscraping heights of Yosemite National Park. Now, most of the way down the mountain, I sit at an outdoor cafe as dusk drains the last color from the sky. With the final glimmerings of light go the final shreds of my resistance.

I feel both the insanity and the perfection of this divine directive to publish The Voice of the Muse.

I don't know how I will produce and pay for a second book while still paying for and promoting a first.

Yet, as God did with Evan and his ark, the God within me and the sentient spirit of both books will provide all the resources, inner and outer, that I need.

As long as I say Yes.

As long as I surrender.

And I do.

Photos by Mark David Gerson: #1 Yosemite Nat'l Park; #2 The road to Tonopah & Hawthorne, NV; #3 Mono Lake, CA

Use Me

Sunday, July 8 ~ Sedona, Arizona

As I watch the new movie, Evan Almighty, with my daughter this afternoon, tears mingle with laughter at the story of the ambitious newscaster-turned-Congressman whose life is turned upside-down when God tells him to prepare for an impending flood by building an ark.

My tears come in Evan's surrender to the higher power that always knows best, the higher power that I, like Evan, have been known to resist, curse and fight.

I have never been asked to build an ark, but I have been guided along roads that seem equally bizarre and incomprehensible, in directions that others have judged or mocked.

Ultimately, though, as with Evan and his flood, the higher guidance has always proven itself wiser and more knowing than a limited human mind that is always trying to figure things out and cling to control.

As the film credits roll, I'm reminded of the song Use Me, Rickie Byars Beckwith's ardent anthem to ultimate surrender:

Use me
Oh, God
I stand for you
And here I'll abide
As you show me
All that I must do

I'm reminded too of author Madeleine L'Engle's description of the Old Testament as filled with bearded prophets shouting up to the heavens, "You want me to do what!?"

Evan is just such a prophet, as am I and each of you. For in every moment, the God Power we carry within is calling on us to do and be the impossible, to build our own version of Evan's ark, even though it makes no conventional sense, even though we don't know where to begin or who we'll be when we're done.

I wrote about the song Use Me in a November newsletter (The Choice for God), after having cried while singing it during a Sunday service at L.A.'s Agape International Spiritual Center.

Ironically, I had just recommitted to my then-unpublished novel, The MoonQuest, not realizing that this act of recommitment would result in its speedy publication -- by me! (You want me to do what!?)

My tears then as now are the tears of truth. I know that whether I stand in the vibration of that powerful lyric, in the resonance of today's movie or at one of life's many crossroads, my only choice is the highest choice, the choice that prophets through the ages -- all the way up to Evan -- have made: the choice for God.

My God is neither actor Morgan Freeman nor some force outside myself. My God is the divine within me, the highest imperative, infinite wisdom and creative intelligence that asks of me only that I surrender and allow it to use me -- to be me -- as it guides me forward.


As I prepare to leave Sedona tomorrow for parts (yet again) unknown, I recommit to that path of surrender and know that, in so doing, I walk in the path of God. And I am never alone.

Manifest Destiny

Tuesday, June 12 ~ I-25 between Albuquerque & Santa Fe, New Mexico

I'm on my way to Santa Fe because Federal Express has delivered two advance copies of The MoonQuest to my mailbox there. (The bulk of the shipment arrives in Albuquerque on June 18.)

As with every aspect of this journey, I'm equal parts excited and scared. And when I get to the UPS Store, I leave the FedEx package until last, opening every other letter and parcel before I rip apart the white padded envelope with its distinctive orange and purple lettering.

Seeing the book in published form takes my breath away. I don't breathe again until, shakily, I leaf all the way through it to be sure that its pages are not only fully present but right-way-up.

When my breath finally returns, it's quavery and teary.

Before I left Flagstaff, Arizona in March for Albuquerque, knowing that I was about to launch the publishing process, I stopped for lunch at a Chinese restaurant. The fortune, which I still carry in my wallet, read, Look for the dream that keeps coming back. It is your destiny.

This dream snuck up on me 13 years ago, when The MoonQuest's first words made their own way onto my blank page (see A Horse or Two of a Different Color). Since then, however long it absented itself from my life, The MoonQuest has always come back. This last time, it insisted that I bring it to completion.

I don't believe in the disempowered choicelessness of most definitions of destiny. As Toshar (The MoonQuest's main character) is constantly reminded on his MoonQuest, there is always a choice. At the same time, a commitment to living the highest possible choice strips us of many other choices and, ultimately, connects us with our heart's desire and soul's passion, which, in the end, is an aspect of destiny.

Why am I crying as I hold the book, my book, this being with its own imperative that birthed through me?

Release and relief, of course. But more than that, I'm crying because I have touched my destiny, a destiny I freed to manifest through me.

They are tears of joy. They are tears of birthing. They are tears of new life -- The MoonQuest's and mine.

• Order your copy of The MoonQuest today -- through www.themoonquest.com or through Amazon.com using this direct link.

Desert Spring

Friday, June 8 ~ Albuquerque, New Mexico

As I amble along a nature path in the foothills of Albuquerque's Sandia Mountains, I feel the stress and high anxiety of the day begin to dissolve.

It began this morning. In fact, I woke with it, with the unsettledness that comes of leaving two and a half months of what passes in my life for domesticity.

Today is the day the (relative) rootedness of a Santa Fe sublet makes way for a return to the mutability of a life in motion.

Today is the day that completes the printing and binding of The MoonQuest.

Today is the day one journey ends and another begins.

It's exciting, of course, but discomfitting too.


And so as my feet touch the feldspar, mica and quartz that comprise Sandia's granite, I'm grateful for the emotional grounding I always feel here. I'm grateful too for the explosions of brilliant color scattered through these desert highlands.

If you've never visited or lived in the desert, you probably think of it as not only dry but barren and colorless. Yet spring here in the high desert -- particularly after a wet winter -- brings with it not only infinite shades of green but the polychromatic splendor of desert flowers in bloom, their intensity heightened by the limited palette New Mexico normally offers.

The new growth and the vividness of the cactus flowers remind me that the same energy of renewal unfolding around me on my Sandia walk is also coming alive within me. Spring is here.

Sandia Photos by Mark David Gerson

Holy Faith I

Tuesday, May 15 ~ Santa Fe, New Mexico

It's Sunday morning. I'm sitting in Santa Fe's Church of Religious Science listening to the service and an image forms in my mind's eye...a series of angles, lines and contours that expresses the energy of Santa Fe and the notion of "holy faith," which is the English translation of the city's name.

I reach for a piece of paper and sketch what I see.

A few hours later, I'm at the dining room table with my colored pencils arrayed before a blank page. Propped up to the side is my rough sketch.

As what takes shape on the page begins to bear less and less resemblance to the sketch, I grow edgy.

Not because of the differences. Many finished drawings veer away from my initial concept.

No, my edginess relates to how much I don't like what is forming on the page. To be blunt, I hate it.

The emergent image, I say to myself, is just not very good. For a few minutes, I consider scrapping the drawing. After all, my judgmental self points out to my creator self, all artists have pieces they abandon. And for good reason.

Then I remember another drawing. Number 15. Titled Stepping into Your Power and Empowerment, I so disliked it that I almost removed it from my catalogue. It was hard to do, though, because people kept buying it. In the end, I didn't delete it.

In that memory, I realize what's going on within me today. My reactions to #15 and what is slated to become #116 (Holy Faith) have nothing to do with esthetics and everything to do with the theme/title of the piece.

In December 2004 I was resisting the next level of my empowerment. Today, as my pencil hesitates over the paper, I am resisting the next level of a faith that Santa Fe always demands.

The first demand on my faith is the drawing itself: Do I have the faith to trust the divine imperative that always guides my hand? Or will I let my judgment (read: fear) overtake my faith?

Faith wins out, as it always does in the end, and I complete the drawing (Holy Faith, pictured above).

Later, a client describes the image as "faith in the midst of chaos," which is perfect. For it's in the midst of (apparent) chaos that we most need our faith.

Demands on my faith in subsequent days, like all such demands, are similar to those I experience with the drawing and ask similar questions: Do I have the faith to trust the divine imperative that always guides my life and choices? Or will I let my fear take precedence?

So many demands on my faith in this city of Holy Faith: they revolve around finances (always a stand-in for deeper fears), around this publishing enterprise I have launched, around The MoonQuest itself, around where I will go when my current sublet runs out in a few weeks, around every aspect of my life that is steeped in transformation and uncertainty. And what aspect isn't, these days?

This morning, a new demand: Even as The MoonQuest has yet to leave its Michigan printing plant, a sensing emerges that its long-stalled sequel, The StarQuest, is calling to me.

If, as I realized in A Stunning One-Liner During Dinner at the Diner, publishing The MoonQuest frees me to move forward and stop wandering, that forward motion now appears to be an acceleration toward The StarQuest. In other words, my wandering will come to an end when it's necessary to complete the next book.

That completion will require all the holy faith that Santa Fe can send my way. Or maybe not. Perhaps all that's required to write the second book is to come to completion on the first, "to fix The MoonQuest on parchment," as the story itself demands.

For now, all I can do is remain grounded in this moment as I anchor all aspects of my beingness in faith -- Holy Faith -- and in that divine imperative that always guides me foward in love.

~ View a larger a copy of Holy Faith (#116) or order your own

~ Listen to a free audio excerpt of The MoonQuest

~ Read about The MoonQuest as a journey of trust

All copies of The MoonQuest ordered before June 11 will be autographed to you (or to whomever you're gifting it) and will get free U.S. shipping. (Normal shipping charges apply as of June 11.)

A Stunning One-Liner During Dinner at the Diner

Tuesday, May 8 ~ Santa Fe, New Mexico

I'm having dinner at Zia Diner here in Santa Fe, telling a new friend about The MoonQuest and about how it has been part of my life through all but the earliest months of my conscious spiritual journey.

"Maybe," he says, "once the book is out you'll be able to stop wandering."

A shiver of such intensity passes through me, I think at first it's the air conditioning.

Then I inventory the past 13 years of my life...

I began writing The MoonQuest within weeks of a move that launched more than a decade of wandering. Within six months of setting my first words to the page, I had sold everything I owned and moved to Nova Scotia. During my 14 months there, I lived in three different places (each hosting a different aspect of my MoonQuest literary journey).

My life has been largely unsettled ever since. Even the seven moves in my six and a half years of marriage could hardly be described as settled.

Then I think of the opening lines of The MoonQuest, which have survived virtually unchanged since the second draft:

Na'an came to me in a dream this night. It was early. I had not been in bed long and the night was newly dark.

"It is time," she said, "time to fix The MoonQuest on parchment."

Toshar, the main character, is then told that until he tells this, his story, he will not be free.

"It is your story to tell. It is for you to fix it in ink, to set the truth down for all to read."

My friend's one-line insight (his name is also Mark, which adds a certain twist: as though the revelation comes from within me!) reverberates through me long past dinner at the diner.

What if I, like Toshar, cannot be free to truly end my MoonQuest until I have shared it with the world? What if my life path will not be fixed until this aspect of its story is fixed in print?

It's a humbling and explosive concept. But it makes sense.

Whether we're writers or not, we're all called to share our stories. We're all called to break through the silence of fear that has stilled our voices.

In the film Catch and Release one character asks the other, "Who do you tell your stories to?"

"I keep them inside," he replies.

By keeping them inside, he keeps everything inside and that's what holds him back.

In Q'ntana, the fear-strangled mythical land in which The MoonQuest is set -- a land where storytelling is banned and storytellers are put to death -- it is said that "all people were bards once upon a time."

One of the purposes of Toshar's quest is to restore that once-upon-a-time to Q'ntana.

Clearly, I carry a similar purpose in a similar time. All the work I've done over the past 13 years -- be it through my words, sounds, art and teaching (writing and otherwise) -- has been about empowering people to experience their highest potential and to share that passion out in the world.

It doesn't have to be through writing, of course. Yet I continue to be amazed by the number of clients, friends and acquaintances who tell me they're feeling called to write a book.

For some, the creative act itself is the release into the new. For me, apparently, the release comes in empowering myself to take the next step by publishing it myself...by doing all that's necessary "to set the truth down for all to read."

Until I do that, I can't move on. Until I do that, I can't take the next step in my writing, teaching and inspiring. Until I do that, I won't be free.