Summing up the Universe-guest post by Jack Kerouac

“It’s all like a dream. Everything is ecstasy, inside. We just don’t know it because of our thinking-minds. But in our true blissful essence of mind is known that everything is alright forever & forever & forever. Close your eyes, let your hands & nerve-ends drop, stop breathing for 3 seconds, listen to the silence inside the illusion of the world, & you will remember the lesson you forgot, which was taught in immense milky way soft cloud innumerable worlds long ago & not even at all. It is all one vast awakened thing. I call it the golden eternity. It is perfect.” — Jack Kerouac

Madeleine Peyroux strums my heart strings

I wonder at people

Poetry exists as a body attempting communication. — Sam Hamill

I wonder at people..
I stare at their faces, freckles, bangles, rings, and things.
I wonder at people…

Wondering where they just were, where they might go next.

I want to be inside their heads, daydreaming their life like a story book, unwritten.

-by me, a really long time ago. just found it in a Sticky Note in my computer.

I will teach you to be rich

No, not me. Ramit Sethi, silly.

author and Sacramento native

Sethi, 26, is clearly the “unique voice on money, one singularly attuned to..his generation [read: my generation]” (according to the San Francisco Chronicle). I should know, I have his book. And unlike most personal finance books, I’m really truly reading (and heeding) his advice.

Book cover

I know you may be thinking, “Natanya, a blog about personal finance? What gives?” Well, I am a glutton for anything synchronistic and this chain of events, made my heart pitter patter.

 

Here’s what went down:

• First. I’m puttering around on Gala Darling’s site (International playgirl and life lover extraordinaire) checking out her links to other fabulous people and come across 
• New York fashion designer, Peter Nguyen of LÉON. I read a post on his blogabout Money Management in which he says readers should go out and buy I Will Teach You To Be Rich immediately. 
• So, I do just that.
• A few days later its in my mailbox (thanks Amazon!) and despite the book’s highlighter colored cover and boastful title, I am pleasantly pleased with my purchase.
• Then. The next day I finally read through a package from my mother that includes a nice letter along with a handful of newspaper and magazine clippings that she thought I’d enjoy (thanks Mom!). (Earlier I had opened the envelope and scanned the articles but hadn’t actually read any of them.)
• There-at the top of my hometown paper’s front page was an article about Ramit and his book, because lo and behold, he is a Sacramento native, just like me!

Coincidence? I think not.

So, because he’s been blessed by the fashion gods, because his book title is so far past audacious that its “cool”, because he’s from Sacramento, and because I said so, do yourself a favor and check out his book or at least his blog and learn something dammit. Because it this economy, financial advice that you’ll actually want to listen to is worth as much as the next IT bag.

…but that’s just my 2 cents.
Hugs, Natanya

PS …2 cents that if invested in at 8% annual return for the next 10 years…would be worth…$465 billion…. or something like that, right Ramit?

More to Say About the Head Shave

Bold and Bald

“You really pull it off because you have such a beautiful face,” some say admiringly. “You just radiate!” say others. When I shaved my head over the weekend, I wasn’t expecting this kind of response though I admit I’ve enjoyed the stream of compliments that has continued to flow at a steady pace since shearing off my locks. I can’t say it hasn’t felt great. Of course it has. I love the adoration, their look of approval—I feel brazen and sexy like an Amazonian woman (a bald Amazonian woman).

Sitting with Coby, a resident Life Coach and Transformational Leadership expert, over lunch, she offered a reflection on my recent ‘do. “You are ready to be done with needing other’s approval,” she said, her eyes holding a piercing gaze as if God herself was hading down the 11th commandment. I had just shared with her (probably with too much pleasure) how comforted I was by the recent reaction to my haircut. “It’s not about that is it?” she inquired knowing how well I knew this to be true. “Just as when someone’s distaste for your can be about their own internal stuff, so can their adoration.” I nodded heavily as if it would help her comments sink in. “You don’t need to be bothered with any of it.” Of course, Coby was right. No matter how effusive my friends would be, I was intent to let it go. This was not about showing off my best features and collecting compliments. This was about self-efficacy where only my own opinion mattered.

Since When Are Monks Sexy?

Honestly, channeling Sinead O’Connor is the last look I imaged would make me feel sexy. Not when the shaved head is also the standard issue monk classic. Since when are monks sexy? The funny thing is I have never felt more beautiful. With or without the compliments I see an inner glow seeping through my skin and scalp. It seems almost too easy as for years I dried, flattened, ironed, twisted, curled and pinned my hair in an effort to look hot and fit in; teenage code for wanting approval. Unfortunately, the trends kept changing and I was forever scrambling to look “cool” without looking like I was trying at all. With all the hair products I was buying and trying (along with all the make-up merchandise) it became mentally exhausting. Hours were spent in front of the mirror creating looks that more likely horrified my parents than impressed potential suitors. So what is my secret to the glow now?

My daily routine now resembles my ex-boyfriend’s more than my best friend’s. I’m already walking out the bathroom door white she’s still waiting for the flat iron to heat up. It doesn’t take good cover-up to get a glow like this. Believe me, Cover Girl has no powder formula that can cover insecurity. They may try to sell you confidence in a bottle, but you can’t buy it online, or find it in stores, you can’t borrow it from a friend or use your sister’s extra. The only way to get it is to discover your own divinity. I know, easy right?

The Great Need

Some might point to my clipped cut and think of the punk rockers of an earlier generation—the tattoos, the piercings, the neon dye jobs and assume that I’m in some kind of rebellious phase. Perhaps I’m angry, they assume, four years of that unmentionable presidential administration would do that to any idealist. I don’t listen to the Sex Pistols and I’m not angry. Perhaps I am rebelling, but its certainly not against The Man or Authority in general. Rather, the rebellion is against the Great Need. The Great Need is all the voices I’ve internalized that are excellent at imposing limiting beliefs: “I’m not good enough” chief among them. The Great Need has arisen after years of looking at models in magazines and assuming that true beauty only looks like them, and after years of self-ridicule when the mirror didn’t match those pictures. The Great Need is relying on the opinions of others to build my inner foundation.

Guided by an Internal Compass

In an act of ultimate defiance I reject the Great Need now by not needing at all. I refuse to be limited my own small thinking, by the fear that I won’t be liked without the right look. I dismiss the notion that fitting in is the equivalent of being loved. I shaved my head because I’ve shed the neediness, the fear, and the self-denial. Though magazines may show flowing silken strands, I defy their standards and set my own. The shaved head stands for self-acceptance; it releases me from the longing to be someone I’m not. “Perhaps, this is what your life is about,” Coby says confidently, “You know, finding out that the only approval that matters is your own.”

I know she is right. So as others applaud my bravery at shunning conventional standards, I will acknowledge their compliment, but I will refuse to own it. I will choose instead to believe each of us is born with an internal compass, helping guide us to our fullest expression, our highest potential. When another projects their impressions upon me, whether their feelings are loving or hateful, I will treat them the same. I will bend to no one else’s standards but my own. How anyone else sees me is superfluous. There’s no denying that such a stance can be a hard pill to take. But it leaves me with the most power and control over my sense of self-worth. I am not at the mercy of another, whether it is a friend or a trend and nothing as fleeting as a haircut can shake a foundation so strong.

-Natanya

Poems galore…

Its not about you
I don’t want to argue about truths
I don’t want to dream of my fantasies fulfilled
I don’t care to comfort you unconditionally
I will write out my conditions for you to sign

I am not evil to leave you out
You didn’t make yourself welcome.

Hidden
I want confusion,
I enjoy being lost,
I delight in nervous tics,
I dream of being scared,
I desire false hopes,
I demand disrespect,
I take care to beg,
I dabble in honesty,
I lust for unrequited love,
I never know what I want,
I will not explain myself.

What Time Is It?
What time is IT. It is.
Are spaces tinged with time like color in a flower?
Is it definable?
Spaces and time. Time then time now.
Rushing river of time, thundering past and through…
Spaces and times.
The times you seek are not the times you know.
Answers to questions are seeds fully grown.
Needing time, needing space.
Needing now needing. The seeding takes up nature’s gifts and in an alchemical mix the space is made for creation to blossom a divine glow.
Flow, again and again to grow. Go through the space pick up some time put it in your pocket and saving it for another day, keep it in your heart’s locket so it cannot, will not, fade away.

The battle lost tonight
My writing hand- tired, limply falls across the page in a dramatic dance-ink and blood, dying slowly from the paper’s edge…to a stillness…sighs…nothing left to show.

Drastic Step? Or Minor Tip-toe?

 

Bald Beauty

Somehow it’s not enough just to shave my head and be done with it. People are curious to know why and aren’t mollified until they find a satisfying answer. For what good reason would I choose to rid my head of enviable luminous locks?! In all honesty, I don’t think I have a reason good enough for those that need one. In fact, as I progress on my spiritual journey I realize that the best decisions I’ve made (and by ‘best’ I mean the ones that have lead to the greatest happiness) are those that took less of my thinking mind and more of an intuitive spark to make happen. That leaves me without the profound words that my thinking mind is so good at conjuring up for important moments. Instead I’m left with a feeling tone, a texture of sorts, a soul’s melody to a tune only I can channel. How do I explain that?

“It was time,” I say when pressed for an answer. Time because the idea has been sitting with me since I was a freshman in high school and came to school one crisp fall day to see Nicole, a beautiful senior, strutting through the quad, head freshly sheared. I was impressed. “You have some big cajones,” Elsa, another Kripalu volunteer told me the morning after I shaved my head. A spritely Spanish 60-something, Elsa ends our conversation with, “I wish I had the cajones like you.” This is a theme I can clearly remember from watching Nicole, seemingly immune to the harsh judgement of high school, and wishing I was brave enough to do something so radical. Over and over as my friends marvel at my now bald head, they murmur  as if speaking from a deep longing, “I’ve always wanted to do that. But I never had the guts.” It amazes me now to think back to freshman year and remember that I too had once wished for the brazen audacity to say the hell with it. It amazes me because actually doing it feels nothing like the drastic step I had made it seem.

In fact,  I find myself now almost surprised in the moments when those comments arise. The choice was not a major deliberation, nor about an angry rebellion; it was just time. The right time. And I believe the the inner calm that preceded the choice, the current sense of peace about my new identity, this is the texture that accompanies a choice made not by following external pressure but one that comes from a deeper intuitive knowing. As I spend more time with this texture, becoming more sensitive to where it’s rough and where it becomes smooth, to where it curves and where it lies flat, I believe I will become more effective at making decisions that are not about following the latest trends but about allowing what stirs within me to find its physical expression.

Saying the Unsayable-My Semester Intensive Experience

Things aren’t all so tangible and sayable as people would usually have us believe; most experiences are unsayable, they happen in a space that no word has ever entered, and more unsayable than all other things are… those mysterious existences, whose life endures beside our own small, transitory life. – Rainer Maria Rilke

In a confluence of forces too precise to be known, I found myself in the midst of an experience so unsayable no words now seem capable of carrying its magnitude. The Semester Intensive was one “mysterious existence” as Rilke describes above—hardly tangible in essence and nearly impossible to explain. This acute inability to describe my experience is certainly a self-imposed limitation, an excuse to avoid undertaking the risk of trying to describe a transformative and ultimately sacred time in my life. Those four months changed my life forever—how could I possibly do it justice?

The driver behind this thinking is that by not trying, I can’t fail – the logical fallacy being that not trying is its own kind of failure. To be able to see behind my own façade and to bravely reveal one of my innermost critics, is jut one result of the four months spent at the Semester Intensive, an experiential learning laboratory based out of the Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. In the fall of 2008, I joined a community of 31 like-minded young adults following an impulse to leave behind the linear- thinking of most college classrooms and enter instead into a holistic, community based approach to learning.

My mother told me she thought I took the semester off as an escape from my reality – Why wasn’t I forging ahead in college as I had in the past and making my name known?

Growing up, I was a productive, healthy, lively child. I was curious about the world and wanted to know it intimately, so I didn’t think twice about dabbling in swimming lessons, soccer teams, gymnastics, horseback riding, baseball, basketball, tap and ballet, swing dancing, piano, violin, and guitar lessons, student council, and youth group leadership. I was voted homecoming queen, MVP, rookie of the year, and best eyes. I was an A student, accomplished, healthy, popular and well traveled. On the outside all was well, but when the noise around me subsided and I was still, the harsh inner dialogue plagued me. I didn’t know enough, I didn’t write well enough, I wasn’t pretty enough, I wasn’t cool enough, I wasn’t fast enough, I wasn’t strong enough. Always, I wasn’t enough.

Trying to fit in was making me breathless – so much of my energy was spent trying to be well liked by everyone. I just wouldn’t accept that I couldn’t be perfect. Perceiving that I might fail at a task, I wouldn’t even try. Fear determined my life and it was draining me dry. What had happened to the little girl, who drew rainbows, danced and sang her own songs under the limbs of her favorite trees, wrote stories then published them herself? I was determined to finally break free from my addiction to basing self-worth on the judgments of others and find freedom from fear.

With humble gratitude, I can declare that I tasted that freedom last fall. I cannot boast that I am free from those inner voices that tell me I’m not enough. I doubt they shall ever completely recede. However, daily yoga, meditation, community support, and engaged learning at SI brought me home to myself.

Listening models that taught me to validate and empathize with my peers created intimacy between strangers I have never before felt even with my closest friends. In a class on Healthy Living I began appreciating the small miracles of my body and its functions—today I bow to the inner urges that know how to achieve inner harmony and balance with my environment allowing me to thrive. Through music and nature and storytelling, our community of students and staff bonded like an intricate spider’s web. Each of us a node connected by the invisible silver thread of our experience.

Four months have passed since the end of the semester and I find myself still unpacking the lessons learned last fall. What makes my experience so sacred is the same reason this kind of education is so vital. Above all, I walked away reassured that I am my best teacher, counselor and sage. When I quiet my mind chatter, ignoring the voices of ego, and allow the still small voice to be heard, I witness my inner compass. With a sense of humor, I realize, the compass always points home—back to me.

In the years ahead, just like at every other pivotal point in history, innovators, connectors, dreamers, and great thinkers will be needed to help us find the path towards a brighter and more sustainable future. When children are pressed and stamped and funneled into a schooling system that leaves them little choice and no reflection on the direction of their life, it will be long before we see the kind of innovation that can lead to profound paradigm shifts in science, technology, and the arts.

Students who are instead offered a chance to integrate the whole of their life experience and encouraged to be independent in their thinking become imaginative and collaborative leaders. The kind of leaders who will graciously challenge the outdated, who will appreciate the work of their peers, and above all who will honor the divine spark within themselves and therefore within each living thing. These passionate and compassionate individuals will be the Galileos, Gandhis and Gates’ of the future. And they will be more than enough.

 

To find more information about the Semester Intensive and/or to donate to this worthy cause follow this link: www.kripalu.org/semesterintensive

Four Poems For April

It’s when…
when the grass feels like the hairs on the warm arm of Earth
when I stay up until late night is also called early morning and the sky is still dark
when concentrate on stretching my toes
when I laugh while driving because I decided to
when I feel your lips and forget that we’re separate people
when I feel like I could climb into a song
when I watch you breathe and realize we shared that last breath
…that’s when I feel most alive.

I do
I count my freckles
I spin in circles
I connect the stars
I lick my lips
I bite my nails
I paint my toes
I hum that old song
I chew real slow
I sew my skirt hem
I try to juggle fruit
I listen to you tell stories
And I dream myself far away.

Who are you?
Why
do I love you
when you weren’t
meant for me?
What
did you teach me
between the words
you spoke?
Where
would I be
if you didn’t
keep me late?
When
will I figure out you’re just my moving shadow?

 

Please go and be yourself gone.

Wait.
Please.
Because I’ve gotten used to dreaming you believing you wanted me.
And thats the way it wasn’t. Thank god. Right? Thank god.
Its my chance to love me more.
More than It was worth it before.
So, thanks.
Farewell,
You, who I used to be.

More new poems

I Want to Write Stories
I want to write stories
of adventure so real
you happily sink
your feet into
the mud
and
squish
the earth
between your toes.

I am Home
I sailed around the world
to search for my true Self.
I laughed and screamed and cried
when She didn’t answer me.
I though I’d give up.

It was then in my silence…
I heard Her whisper on the wind
that brought me home.

We Went for a Walk in the Woods
I asked if you saw the way
the snow glittered under foot.
You said you forgot
your sunglasses
and it was too bright to see.

I asked if you noticed
the way the slush
looked like snow cones
from the fair.
You said you were
busy being careful
not to trip.

I asked if you noticed
the tall trees like guards
at their posts of the forest palace.
You said the trees were
only pretty at Spring time.

I asked if you heard
the Silence of winter
as we walked.
You said you could
only hear your footsteps
crushing snow.

We walked together
on the trail but
I must admit friend
I think we took
a different journey.

-Natanya Green