If I should call this summer anything I'd be the summer of deep digging and random acts of sobbing. 

I've just completed the third draft my memoir, From Kailas to Kali. It's a story about my climbing inner and outer mountains, quite literally facing demons while searching for truth and personal power. It's the classic heroine's journey, of seeking it in all the wrong places and outside of self, but ultimately having to find it closer to home, through the body and wounds, and getting really intimate and honest with self in the underworld. There I happen to meet the great goddess Kali… and if you're familiar with her, you'll know that she cuts away any ego, attachment, fear and illusion that stands in the way of truth and freedom. My 'awakening' took a journey to the world's most sacred mountain in Tibet, a ruined marriage in San Francisco, and a rude awakening by the goddess who helped tear off my masks, drive me out of hiding and into true intimacy with my own sovereignty. Weeew!

Now I know that writing the book has been the REAL mountain to climb.

I've lived with this project for more than eight years. The first draft I wrote was a travelogue of the journey to the sacred Mount Kailas in Tibet. That book won an award, yet didn't sell, and it didn't actually feel like the book that lived in my belly. A couple of years later I was again working on the book, going deeper more complex into the story of what was going on at that mountain and why that story haunted me so, but I still couldn't finish it. I didn't have the courage to be honest enough with myself. And I wasn't ready to take full responsibility for my truth, because, if I did, it might have meant big changes -- such as leaving my marriage. Ironically, when I divorced a few years ago, I finally knew -- it was time to write the real story. 

As with personal, spiritual evolution, so with a book -- it has its own incubation time, and I've had to learn to trust the process and timing rather than push it. To write the book in my belly, I had to live more life to gain perspective enough on myself to tell the truth. Though, I had no idea that I was writing myself out of grief and into power. I imagine this is what often happens for artists regardless of what medium we work in: we create of the compost of our lived experiences and that which haunts us to the core of our beings. 

My compost was a bunch of failures and fear of facing reality. It hasn't been easy nor particularly pretty. Within minutes I would sob over the memory of signing divorce papers to being in awe of the words that come out of me just so. In the emotionality, grace did seep in -- when I finally committed to the process and dug through all of my compost this summer to finish the book, life took on a whole other dimension. Everything around me began to feed into the writing. There was no more separation between the story, the creative process, and what was going on in my life. I kept attracting just the right comment from someone or the right situation to catalyze a new layer of understanding...

Like how my former husband, who is integral to my story, showed up and after two years I saw that I was ready to tell him about my process of becoming honest and how his 'betrayal' was the prefect (though not preferred) catalyst for my stepping fully into my power as who I am. Or this beautiful lover I met who broke open my heart with his music and revealed to me how deep the Himalayas live in my blood and bones. Or how this friend kept making me feel obliged to save her and I finally stepped back and said, no thanks, not my job. Becoming honest on the page helped me be more honest in me in my daily life. And set boundaries. And ask for what I need. And complete things that I no longer wish to drag with me. 

Stepping into my truth

I've learned that when I fully immerse myself in the presence of my life, there truly is no separation between our inside and outside. If you really pay attention to the qualities of thoughts and feelings and what's happening around you -- synchronicities, coincidences, repetitions, lessons -- notice how everything feeds into each other in one beautiful co-creative mess. To be in this awareness does not require a creative project like a book, it can simply be the active creating of your life. Try it. It makes life rich and you feel lusciously alive. 

In writing a book about stepping into my truth and personal power, this is what I'm being asked, right? Better than therapy, one might say. Of course resistance keeps poking its ugly head out, teasing me to see if I'm willing to let go of more unhealthy patterns around truth and power. Tender, grateful, I keep asking to move through it and learn the lessons rapidly. Because, for the first time in my life, my desire to overcome these obstacles that hold me back has become stronger than my fear of it. It is no longer an option to hold back. 

To be truly yourself you have to be willing to risk being judged, disappoint, make a fool of yourself, put out a lousy book, stand up to people's projections, and more. Someone recently asked me, "Are you willing to do this?" YES. Full-hearted yes. 

Dear sisters (and brothers), now I ask you: Are you willing to risk being judged and disappoint others to be fully yourself? What compost might you rise from and become the beautiful flower you are?

Gosh. I could be a preacher, couldn't I? A sexy rebel priestess preacher, of course, with love and freedom at the heart of my words. I want this for me. I want this for you.

Willing,

Lone

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