THE CLIMB: THE GROUND BENEATH IT ALL

Not by me, through me.

That line arrived at the end of a morning I had spent building the case for everything I had constructed — the method, the proof, the system, the practice. I had laid it all out. I had named it. I had declared it. And then, at the very end, something else arrived. Something quieter. Something that did not belong to the same energy as everything before it.

Not by me, through me.

I did not fully understand it then. The week that followed was the answer.

To build, you must move; to move, you must be brave. Life will not give you anything before you are ready. To be ready, you must do the work: collect people, collect experiences, gain knowledge. It is no different than your spiritual practice; you must commit to it, you must take the steps. I did not know my spiritual path; I did not know what I needed to do. I simply began. I took the steps, I learned as I moved. I know I still have much to learn. Now I know I can, now I know I must practice in order to learn. If I commit to the journey of learning, then nothing I do is wrong, no matter the mistakes, no matter the stumbles. I keep moving, I keep learning.

I will continue to grow, and I have. My spiritual practice is not even two years old. My social media, podcast, and blogging is not even a year old. Look how much all of this has grown. If I look at my spiritual practice and where it began to now, I am greater than I could have imagined, with so much to continue and the courage to keep going. Then take the same look and timeline into the This Tree & Me work. I see the same pathway and trajectory. There is a pattern, there is a process, there is proof of it all. This is life.

I know as I work, as I continue moving, things will grow. My health and fitness is the same, so I know if I simply start moving, begin the journey, no matter what that is, it will grow. I first must listen to my heart. I must allow, through my spiritual practice, the messages to arrive, to listen and decipher ego or self. Then I must follow. This is my method, this is L.A.F. It is written in my Doctrine. If I do not practice the method daily, it all stops. I do not teach what I do not practice. I must not forget this was developed by me and for me before anything else will be. I must follow my own practice. I build from my method. I structure my life from this. Then I build my life, my work, my dreams. Then I teach, then I guide. I cannot help, guide, or teach others until I help, guide, and teach myself.

That is where grace and compassion come in: self-love, work the work. Understand that I am growing, that I am building and finding my way. It will come. I prepare. I construct. I do. It does not just happen. I have seen it work. I stay disciplined in that knowledge. I allow myself the space to learn, to listen, to grow. Not wait, not just dream and hope. Work the process, take the steps, follow the method. If I do this, my life will simply appear, it will flourish, it will arrive. I live it, and that is how I teach it —

Not by me, through me.

And then the path showed itself.

Living is about choices. Your path lives inside you; you have everything you need to follow your heart to create the life you want. There are paths to your right and your left. You have the choice to step into those at any time. They look beautiful. They seem to have no curves, no potholes, no barriers. They call you to turn off your path and drive down them. This is an illusion — a trap of the ego to seek protection, to be safe and free of pain.

It tells you to look straight ahead: the road is rough, it is unknown, it has many hills, it has many valleys. Why would you want to choose that path when you have these that appear so smooth, so known, so much easier to travel? One is your past. You know it. Keep living in that and you'll have no surprises. Or take the other. It is the future, your dreams. It is beautiful; it has all your dreams and wishes living in it, though you may never get there. The dreams of it are beautiful. Both are easier than following the path laid straight in front of you.

Your path has pain. It has suffering. It will knock you down and humble you. Why struggle to get up when you have those others that will keep you protected in the known, already traveled, or the dream of stories of a great and easy life? It is a choice, one you can and have turned into many times. Both, all three. The story is true, all three stories as told. What you aren't told is what comes from following the path of your heart, the living in that path: fulfillment, joy, pride, growth, accomplishment, experiencing the beauty of living.

Living is painful. It is hard. It will knock you down. It will humble you. It teaches you to earn what you want, that joy has a price, that love has a cost, that a true life of gratitude is expensive. Though if you choose that path, if you struggle, if you get back up, if you have faith in yourself to keep going, those dreams, that beauty of rewards, the healing from past, the pain in your rearview, are all actualized. They are real. They are gifts.

And you will have it all in life through living, through choosing to travel the path straight ahead as it is laid out — no on-ramp, no off-ramp — staying singularly focused to keep moving forward. Topping the hills, surviving the valleys, experiencing it all, having gratitude in the lessons, being humble in the existence, finding and appreciating the gift of a lived life, loving all the scars as much as the rewards. A full life, a full existence. Joy, love, fulfillment, pleasure, aim, suffering — all gifts.

Travel the path ahead with an open heart and eyes. Do not be blind to what is on either side. See them. Use them as fuel. Allow them to remind you of true pain and suffering, the life lived safe, and stories known. Choose your path. The choice is yours.

I chose. And then resistance arrived.

What does resistance teach you? Why does it appear when it does? Why is it heavier at times, even when there is no immediate and obvious reason? How do you identify this? Sometimes you need to put away everything and listen, allow the resistance to be all there is. If you fight or force your way through it, you'll get nothing from it, so you must stop. Quit doing whatever you are doing, change the focus, and allow that resistance to be present.

It will even fight you then. It will try to get you back on track, tell you to fight through it, keep going. It is creating resistance against itself, fooling you that you are defeating it. If you listen and recognize this, you will see you are in the same situation and place you began. You are in a loop of the ego playing the hero and the villain. If you were a dog, this is the equivalent of chasing your own tail. You will never catch it, and that is the point; that is exactly what the ego wants.

So release. Let go of whatever you were doing. Take away the want or need to perform and move forward. Stall, if you will. Sit idle in this. Allow it to win and have your entire focus — not to follow, to listen, be curious about what it is avoiding, why it is so loud, what it is keeping you from. It sees where you are going and what you are trying to achieve. You may not even know, though your ego does. It sees what you were doing is going to level you up. It is scared of you getting hurt, feeling pain, failing. It is afraid of not being needed to protect you, so it stops you. It does what it needs to keep you from moving, so you stop.

You give it what it wants, though now it is on your terms — not to trick it, to learn, to listen, to understand. Allow it all the space it needs. It will reveal itself. Then you heal. Then you lead. Then you grow. Now your self will once again guide you. Now you can follow. Win the war. Not every battle is yours to win. Choose wisely.

I won that battle by not fighting it. And then something older than the battle arrived.

When your calling penetrates your heart, it is undeniable. The feeling is both unrecognizable and the most familiar. You may not fully understand how this is your calling or how it arrived in you; you simply know this is who and what you are. Again, I have seen my calling — not as it is today, the wind, and how it began when it was put into me, where this was installed into my spirit. I was atop an elephant riding to lead my people. I had a jaguar on each side, leading to keep the path safe, clearing any resistance that may appear. It was ceremonial, feeling as if that version of me was blessing or baptizing me into this role, now showing me this is not new. This is who you are and has been in your existence since your energy was created.

The path between then and now is unknown; it may not be entirely important. Arriving back to that state is what I have been given. Just like this life, I have traveled from birth and my true self through many phases and paths, from love to complete suffering and all in between. Where I began to where I am now is similar to my eternal existence. The journey is not the identity or the purpose. It is what was needed to arrive back to my truest form — like the vision where it began, to where it has been brought back to me, is what I need to see. The journey has simply given me the lessons needed to travel full circle.

It is almost unbelievable that I am this being that I am now, and I was in my spirit's origin. It is scary a bit to see how I walked this earth before as this leader and to arrive again. What is not scary is the depth of belief within me, that this is who I am and always have been. The thought of it is scary in human thinking. In the spirit, it is known — no ego, no judgment, simply fact. It is just what and who I am. Now one step: continue to seek the what, find the next step, keep moving, and let curiosity lead from the spirit, not the mind. Lead as the vessel, not the image. I am this spirit. It is the only way I know to breathe.

And then the vessel found its source.

Where does existence live? Where is the soul? Where does your truest form exist? Where does all of your energy reside? Is it your heart? Does everything that you are exist and begin in your heart? That is the message I receive today. I seen my heart. I felt my heart. I held it in my hands. I became my heart. I visualized me as my heart. The vision was as clear as open eyes to the sun. I lived as my heart. There was nothing in my mind. I was the vessel. I was the heart.

It started calling me. I heard it clearly, so I followed its beat. My entire focus was living in that beat. The ego tried to resist it. It tried to make me disbelieve what I was feeling and hearing. I continued to focus on the beat. That is when I seen it beating in my chest. I witnessed it and felt as if I was in it like a house. Then I seen it as its own entity. It was beating, though, as its own outside of me. I held it. I felt it as it beat in my hands. Then I became the heart. I was it, and it was me. I was not observing this; I was this.

Even as I opened my eyes, I seen the room as still, as if I was watching it and not in it. I could see myself in my chair, though I had no form — simply seen the world around me. This has no words. It is hard to explain. Then I felt a deep breath within. I was released back into my body. My eyes closed. My breath became still. I was so calm, so at peace. I was present in me.

There is no epiphany, no grand lesson. I just was. I just am. I rose from spirit to being. I then wrote, and this is the writing. I know this has meaning. I know there is something to this. I don't need to know what; I just know that it is within me. I awoke early this morning, and I believe this is why. The Divine had a message for me to give to my soul, my beat, my essence. God spoke into me, not to me, into me. It is not directional. It is in me.

And then morning came. Quiet. Still. With nothing to prove and nothing to become.

Existing is enough. Not everything is meant to have great meaning. Sometimes, the greatest gift you can receive is space — a place to be, to be with yourself and nothing but breath and heartbeat. Allowing nothing, understanding that stillness is not failure; it is not a lacking of anything. Being present with yourself is enough.

Self-love, self-care, self-worth — it doesn't have to look grand: visions, movement, accomplishment. It can give you as much as these things. It is needed to slow everything down, to have zero expectations and wants, to be with yourself, sit in silence and peace. Allow nothing, accept everything. Enjoy breathing, enjoy your mind, enjoy feeling where you are, feeling the aches of your body. Moving from nothing, no goals, no place to be, no tasks to achieve. Breathe and feel.

These are base functions: your breath, your heartbeat, your body. If you are alive, they don't need anything from you; they will just be. As you must learn to just be, they are the teachers of this. Let them show you the way of existence.

Not by me, through me.