I Met The Universe On A 4 A.M. Bus To Burma

I met the universe on a 4 a.m. bus to Burma the other night. It strolled up and my heart recognized it before I consciously did so.

“Hi” I said. He looked creeped out. Then sat next to me on the bus where I thought I’d sleep until the border, but me and the little light laughed all night, rambling on until the sun came up. And when it did, we continued scattering laughter around bouts of honesty, which is the best and only way to do it. We spent eight hours on a sweaty bus packed with strangers. We were not strangers.

Near the end we were talking about creativity (he was a genius film maker) and he was talking about how sometimes he feels too unorganized to have motivation.

“Maybe it’s not that you feel unorganized (messy room, papers scattered across the floor), but what really keeps us from clarity on our path is that our minds are unorganized.”

When we don’t have solid practices of connecting to ourselves and sorting through our thoughts, we feel disoriented and disconnected from our calling. We don’t have access to the stream of our subconscious, the river beneath the river. Stagnant. Standing in a cloud of fog throwing spaghetti at walls that we can’t even see.

We don’t live as if to be led, and that is a true tragedy. The universe is all the time, everyday screaming and flailing its arms trying to get our attention, to lead us where we are meant to be, and we do everything in our power to look away from the path ahead.

We squander our emotions and call it noble. We dilute our truth with tonics. We fear solitude like it might just eat us alive.

And that fuckin’ sucks, yo—to fear being called deep down because inaction is easier.

Feeling in alignment with my path is the best feeling I’ve ever known. Like the first few moments of falling in love, except there’s no filling up on ego or strings attached.

It’s pure. It’s flow.

It’s unconditional love.

That is how our lives were intended to unfold in every second of every day.

But to do that, we have to be better listeners.

And that takes time and practice and solitude and routine.

There are times when I feel like I’m writing poems and feeding them to a black hole. There are times when I wonder if the self-care work I am passionate about is denial of “real adult life” or I’m the only sensitive hussy who needs it out here.

But the more I acknowledge that fear, the more people reach out to me in need of guidance. I am not a guide. I only have a tool bag of tools that clean out people’s ears to hear to the guide within themselves.

The universe says to me everyday, Hold on, tootsie pop. We need people like you here doing this work.

In strangers on busses and friends feeling lost and people seeking connection.

DO YOUR INNER WORK! I want to shout from the mountain tops. But I can’t. It comes with the unfolding and everyone must learn the lessons themselves. Ahh, the mystery and the magic of metamorphosis.

I trust it. I trust that by helping myself, I help the world.

So friend, if you feel lost, if you feel stagnant and hurt, disorganized, and anxious, it is a blessing. It is your emotions guiding you into your inner world, where finally you can start creating the life you know in your heart of hearts belongs to you.

If we drop in daily to our hearts, we get to co-create our lives with universal grace. We are unshackled from this place of inaction. Fear releases its grip from around our necks. We drop in. And that dropping in is thrilling.

Find what works for you and do it. Your path will be lit up with frickin’ tiki torches and neon signs everywhere you look saying, YOU’RE DOING GREAT, SWEETIE!

And when the universe meets you on a 4 a.m. bus to Burma, you will recognize it deep in your bones and sing music into a dark and dirty kind of night.