I Am A Love Warrior

I am a love warrior.

In older times this may have meant that I was someone who ran from conflict and instead used spiritual bypass to sprinkle flowers on even the most putrid of things, not wanting to look at what was beneath those blossoms, waiting to be seen, mourned, and cleaned up.

I am a love warrior.

In other places this may have meant that I actually went to war to destroy what others had loved in order to spread my own beliefs, cloaked in an illusion of wanting to protect me and my own while hurting "them," and their own, in order to do so.

I am a love warrior.

In THIS time and THIS space, being a love warrior means not being afraid to look anything in the eye - no tragedy, no illness, and no fearsome being in the darkness of her or his despair.
Even if that being is me.

Being a love warrior in this time and this space means bringing love to EVERY situation. Not judgment, not codependence, not envy, and not worship, but just LOVE. 

Pure, true, open, vulnerable love.

The love that makes us invincible because we know that any attempt to injure is just another person crying from her or his wounds, flailing to try to make the pain stop by discharging it on another.

Once you know how the trick works, the magic has no more effect on you.

One WE know that the answer to getting out of this old flawed system lies in unconditionally being present with the most beautiful and amazing pieces of our worlds as well as the opposite, seeing all of it as manifestations of the Divine force of the Universe that has come to us to be experienced and cataloged, then we become free.

With our love, we heal with glances.

With our love, we activate with laughter.

With our love, we breathe beauty.

With our love, we create harmony.

And with our love, we PARTY. We rock our hearts out in parties that EVERYONE is invited to, and that it is impossible to be turned away from because the only criteria to get in is that you have to want to  come in harmony and you have to be responsible for your own energetic contributions to the group. 

Those who can't do this just don't end up coming to the party. But they'll get here, sooner or later. They may just be taking the scenic route.

I am blessed (some, in other times, would perhaps, and have probably, said "cursed" as well) with a multidimensional archetypal vision of the world and those in it that exists for me in every moment of every day. I can see into places that even now some would call imaginary, and I can interact there as clearly (and sometimes more powerfully) than I can here, in this dimension.

And yes, of course, results very often pop through to this one as well, in ways that I never expect.

I have traveled through graveyards of wretched ghosts, tied to the land, chained through trauma and death to places that have changed around them. They have shown me what I looked like from afar - a star moving along the horizon, shining out a beacon saying "Come here - there is a door. You can get out. You can go up."

I have been educated by angels who have told me secrets of creation and shared with me the mysteries of why they have thrown in their lot with the humans as well (they want the energetic codes for integrated passion. They have honor, power, love, and steadfastness, but they do not have passion. They can only "get" passion when we integrate it ourselves, because we are creating a new brand that is available to everyone this time as we merge emotions and create new alchemical blends of energies.)

I have argued with the most stubborn, most powerful dark beings who saw ME as a dangerous thing, moving through their worlds as a Light Being - a race that they see as untrustworthy and dangerous.
I have been locked in will-to-will combat with creatures that some would see as monsters, but when you are actually there with one, you have no time to be afraid, and you have no judgment of fearsomeness if you are in love. The most dire circumstance becomes an arm wrestle (or even better, a dance-off) instead.

I have learned to meet both ends of the spectrum with non judgment and love, and have woven a new net of realities and timelines where we can all exist in harmony, using the same thoughts and feelings that you too reading this have had about how the old systems don't make sense and in order to truly create what we want, we have to make new stuff.

You know this because YOU are a Light Warrior too. You wouldn't be reading this if you weren't.

It is not a plush job. Wills battle on the daily. And more than that, wills inside of us writhe and shift as we adopt new paradigms that make us question that which we thought to be unshakeable truth yesterday, once we see the holes and who is left out of that equation.

None of it is easy.

But it is worth it.

And we are in this together.

Rocking the Twinkle Toes with Love and Travel

Several days ago, I read a blog post called "Don't Date a Girl Who Travels." Here's the link. It has been translated into several languages, and after I posted it to my Facebook page, I discovered that I wasn't the only woman who felt the same way that the author of the column did. Friends of mine, ranging from soul sisters to acquaintances, commented on the article link describing that same heart call that I felt when I read it - that bittersweet feeling of "Yes! This is me!" combined with, "well wait, does that mean that I'm unlovable? Do I care?..." with the thought trailing off into a silent, pensive moment of wordless wondering.

Oak Creek Vortex, Sedona AZ

Let me begin this little rant by saying that I love love. I seriously do. There are not many energies more delicious and addictive than a yummy, activating, intriguing romantic connection that captivates the mind and tugs at the heart. And, in my defense, I can say as well that I know a LOT about love. I've been married and divorced. I've lived with several partners (um, not at the same time of course.) I've even parented the children of past lovers, whom I loved as well and miss on a regular basis (er, the children, of course.) I can say with full confidence that right now, at age 30, I have had 6-10 great loves so far. These are the kind of loves that books are written about and songs are woven around. I am tenderly aware that some people (some people who I know and am close to) have never felt this feeling, even at nearly double the number of years on this planet, this go-round, that I have had so far. I am also attracted to greatness, so I can say that I have been in love with many amazing men, who all had and have world-shifting potential, whether they will ever act on it, or even ever admit it to themselves.

But...

The other, darker truth is that we live in a time of shifting energies and overhauls of entire planetary paradigms. I have seen prophecies fulfilled in my time - yes prophecies. More than one. And we are, as a planetary race, trying to figure out what the heck we are doing as we emerge into a new age of consciousness, alignment, presence, and attention. Lots is changing. One paradigm that is shifting dramatically is romance. The other is travel.

Speaking of travel...

Weisbaden Hot Springs, Colorado

Much like love, I have traveled a lot. Some people may chuckle that off, saying that because my wanderings have not taken me abroad, my worldliness doesn't amount to much. But I have criss crossed this USA countless times, in small and large measure. If you were to take a US map and draw the routes I have taken on the map, you would have what resembled a preschooler's art project. Swirls, scribbles, spirals and grids have marked my passage. This land is huge. And it is varied. And it is beautiful. And if you were to put it next to many other countries on this planet, it is easy to see that what we call one nation is actually quite a collection of kingdoms, cultures, climates, ecosystems, and even languages. I've been around.

What does it mean to have gone so far? To have glimpsed mountain tops of love and earth, to have walked in caverns deep below the surface of our planet and of our own consciousness, where not only warm, cleansing waters run, but where the things we don't want to look at hide shivering in the darkness until we are brave enough (and triggered enough) to lead them back into the light?

It means good stories, for one. ;)

But aside from that, I have found that we are still figuring it out. I have never yet felt that feeling of "coming home" that looks so appealing when I see other people talk about the space on earth where their heart rests. In my 30 years I have never spent more than 2 in the same house - hardly ever even in the same town. I've also never had a place where my heart could rest in the keeping of another person for very long. That is the drawback of a life full of non stop expansion, growth, and epiphany. You can't get out of the fast lane, even if you want to (which I don't, I'll clarify...) 

It can be lonely, I'll admit.

It can also be glorious and blinding and invigorating and...interesting.

So where does that leave us?

We are figuring out new ways to interact with our planet. The most comfy house I've spent time in was a handmade off-grid place in the mountains outside of Santa Fe. With an outhouse. Yes, I said an outhouse. One that gave you views worthy of the highest caliber photography as you're ... doing your business. You know what I mean. Anyway.

The point is to say that what we think the best option is may not be what it actually is.

Levitation Practice, Santa Fe, NM

With this whole Divine Feminine vs Divine Masculine thing, I've found myself observing tribes of people who identify with one side or the other. Both call the other vampiric. Both blame the other for not showing up with all we've got to create epic partnerships. But in the interest of taking full responsibility for one's own creation, I have observed the duality of men not wanting to grow up emotionally into magnificent, king-like beings, and of women holding onto the trauma of many lifetimes where a relationship was tantamount to being given a prison sentence. And there we go, manifesting the same things over and over, knowing that something isn't just right, that we diminish in each others' presence, and that we both must eventually free ourselves in order to survive.

But is this always true? Will we traveling chicks and guys ever find places where our feet love to dwell? Will it be a space or just our delicious planet overall?

What about where our hearts yearn to dwell? Will it be a person or just a delicious energy that comes and goes behind different faces?

I think it's up to us to figure it out. There's no wrong answer here.

And I think we will figure it out. But I am positive that we haven't done it quite yet. It is time to look at what we are creating and not blame anyone else, but find where we are hurting, from this time or others, and really dig deep to get out the roots, the seeds, and the rest, and to heal it to be able to face our horizon with new eyes, fresh hearts, and dancing feet.

Grand Tetons, WY

www.charismelina.com

A Walk to the Park

On my second day in Redondo Beach, I decided to go for a walk to a nearby park and the botanical gardens therein.
I LOVE botanical gardens. They make me happy. And now that I'm in the city, I'm realizing how deeply I'd connected to the complex and very wild nature back in the Blue Ridge mountains. I kind of miss it - but I'm learning so much about how to be Awake in the city that I don't really mind. Besides, I have experiences like this one to keep me nice and grounded.

Early in the morning, after my workout and before my smoothie, I was meditating. My meditation starts with a balancing of all my chakras, followed by a clearing and smoothing of my energy field and a few moments dedicated to whatever I'm trying to bring forth in my life. After that, I talk to all my buddies in the different realms. To be specific, first I go check in with a large overarching group where lots of my guides come to speak to me at once - that said, they're mostly ETs at that point. Then I chat with my main ET guide (who I call my Rhythm Teacher - it's a long story,) and then with the Angelic realm representatives who hang out with me. After that I talk to some devic spirits (a.k.a. fairies) and finally, with Gaia overall - lately, by the way, she's been saying that she's nearly all good - that we just have to come where she is in our resonant state to see it.

But anyway, the devas had been large and in charge in the mountains, which was what made me aware of them in the first place. I hadn't believed in fairies since I was a little girl, and even then I didn't claim to consciously believe in them (rather choosing to draw pictures of them all the time and even build little things for them outdoors, thinking I was "just playing"...) but when something is floating in front of your face, literally and figuratively, it's really hard to not believe it. That, in fact, is insanity. I'm not typing on a computer right now. No way. Imaginary.

See?

Moving on.

So on that morning, the fairies told me that they'd be with me as I went out and about that day. Then they told me to "look for the flowers."

Ok, that seemed like an easy task.

I left my sister's apartment and began to walk up a nearby street. Driving down it many times, I'd never noticed how many flowers there were! Every other tiny yard was beautifully manicured, with flowers spilling over fences and peeking up from tiny, intricate, lacy layers of ground cover.

Before I was a block in, I noticed some beautiful blue flowers hanging over the sidewalk. One bunch of them had been somehow severed from its partners and was there delicately sitting on the sidewalk.

Yes!
One of the main (and very random) things that I couldn't help from doing this past year was wearing fresh foliage in my hair. Since much of my time spent back East was during the cold season, I pretty much constantly wore dark green Juniper leaves either braided into my hair or tucked into a ponytail. Somehow this grounded me and made me feel more connected. I think adding that harmonic life force to the part of us most often disconnected - our heads - does more than just add cosmetic value.  And wearing artificial stuff obviously just isn't the same...

I'd thought about doing the same out here, but I don't like cutting flowers. It's not like there's a tree with a zillion leaves who drops fresh ones every morning and I can go outside when the grass is still wet with dew and gather a handful to choose from, or like my nonexistent yard is filled with wild flowers, some of which volunteer to be picked and worn as I bend over each bunch, asking with my Heart who wants to come and hang out with me.

In the city, it's different.

Except when a beautiful cut flower (that matches your outfit, no less) just shows up where you're walking.

So I did what anyone would do, I put a sprig in my hair and carried the rest of the bunch until I found a pretty place to leave it, coating the flowery branch with my intentions that it brighten someone else's day the way it had brightened mine.

The walk continued, and about a block later, there was an empty and clean plastic grocery bag on the sidewalk in front of me.

Whew, that was close...

I've often read advice by other interdimensional ambassador types that say to always bring a plastic bag with you when you take a walk in order to gather litter as you go. It always sounds like a good idea, and I always forget. So this day, I was gifted with one. With only a moment's hesitation due to my self consciousness about how odd I must look bending down to pick up trash off the sidewalk, I gathered up that bag and went on.

Of course there were lots of little things to pick up along the way. Because I was still in morning traffic hours, there were a good amount of cars cruising by and every time I bent to pick up a wrapper or random piece of something man made and trashy, I felt a little weird. It's funny how social norms often curb us from doing what is right. And the likelihood is that no one would have even noticed me at all, much less looked at me askance for collecting litter.

The main part of this walk, however, was the beautiful city. I was in the suburbs, and there's lots of really adorable and creative architecture around here. More than anything though, I noticed how many plants and trees and flowers there are. I was as guilty of the next of thinking of suburbia, and especially SoCal suburbia, of being a concrete and asphalt wasteland where nothing grew and certainly where no fairies could survive.
Not so, as it turns out!

Fabulous.

And besides, I got to pass some really interesting things, like a couple of Dr. Seussy trees. Here's the first one which reminds me of the Lorax...

And a beautiful magnolia pruned to where it's not the normal thick, green, glossy magnolia of the South that I'm used to, but beautiful all the same.

A palm tree against the sky just clearing itself of the June gloom marine layer for the first time that day...

Eventually, I made it over to the park (taking a massive detour and getting a bit lost, but not minding a bit) and hung out with the trees.

A beautiful pine,

And then I meditated under this second Dr. Seussy tree.

There were some very zenned out (and slightly overweight) seagulls hanging out on the shores of the park's man made lake. I snapped a pic of this one. He wasn't sure whether or not he would fly off, so I crooned to him as I took shot after shot, finally ending up with this one of him looking at my camera. Seagulls are so unique and funny among birds - they have an interesting type of intelligence that we normally miss because we don't hang out with them much, I think.

All in all, it was a fabulous day. And now I have some lovely blue flowers to press in my journal to prove it.

Have a beautiful weekend!