Imperfect ritual
The other day I sat at the top of a bank, overlooking the ocean.
I had thought as I left the house that I would walk to the ocean and I would bring it something.
I like to bring the ocean other pieces of nature – usually flowers. But the closest thing I had was a basil plant, so I picked a piece of basil as I left and put it in my pocket.
And then I didn’t make it to the ocean.
I felt too tired to walk that far.
So I sat on the side of the hill, overlooking the ocean, holding the piece of basil in my pocket.
And then I tossed it down the bank toward the ocean, where it landed. Amongst the roots and dead leaves.
Something that doesn’t belong, in a random place.
Not placed beautifully or carefully
Not in a mandala or the correct spot
And I thought about how when I was leaving LA I held a funeral for myself.
I printed out a hundred photos and was going to burn them all. But it was too much burning to do inside, so I went outside, and there was nowhere to sit except next to the dumpster.
And then the photos did not burn. They just kind of melted with this horrid smell.
So then I cut them up instead, and the next day I took the ashes and the cut up pieces and other pieces of my life – crystals and my pendulum and other things – and went to bury them in nature.
But nature was hard to find in LA. So I drove trying all the green places on Google maps.
And then I drove to a river that ended up being totally fenced off.
And that was how I ended up in a ditch on the side of the road, near a fenced off river looking up at the California mountains, and I thought, I’ll just have to do it here.
Amongst toilet paper and cigarette butts, down through the bushes on the side of the road.
This is where I will leave the pieces of my past self.
There is some part of me that always wants to do it perfectly.
That imagines that if I were X type of person, or a “real” X, I would do it correctly.
I would follow some method.
I would not end up in a ditch dumping out pieces of photos and flower petals and haphazardly covering them up with branches.
But this is how it seems to go for me.
There has not ever been any sort of ritual I have done in the “correct” way.
I used to make beautiful offerings to Venus and then forget about them and they would rot and grow mold.
Not what you would imagine would bring you your future husband.
But that was when I met Jordan.
And so I end up doing things like this, where I realize I will not be going down to the ocean so I will gently float my piece of basil down the side of the mountain where it lands far away, all by itself.
Here is a piece of nature I put somewhere else.
This is also how I lead most of my calls.
Sessions, embodiment rituals, medicine.
As I have embodied my own medicine I have completely stopped preparing for things.
Because the more I learn from the feminine the more I realize there is nothing I have to do.
I just have to show up and let the energy come through that is there in the moment.
And I can.
Some of the deepest most transformative sessions I have held come after I get home ten minutes before a call, rush to feed myself, and drop in in the seconds before I get on.
I was talking to my teacher about this the other day wondering if that was really ok – if I should be making space to meditate or drop in beforehand – and she said I literally never do that. I don’t need to.
I don’t need to either.
I used to have a teacher who made offerings every day. Who created these beautiful pieces out of nature, chanted. Had all these daily practices.
I used to try to conform myself to it, being like, if I were doing this right I would do these things.
I think there is such beauty in that. And sometimes I still create beautiful offerings when it is true.
But most of the time it is just not me.
What is me is ending up on the side of the mountain saying here is a piece of basil, ocean.
What is me is leaving pieces of my life in a ditch in LA.
What is me is leading calls where I end up just as amazed by what happened as everybody else did.
Trusting so much that I don’t have to do all the extra.
And sometimes when I ask myself if this is ok, wouldn’t I get even better results if I could just manage to do something in the proper way I imagine it is done, I just look at what is around me.
I have created a life that is exactly me.
A business that creates transformation and experiences unlike anything I could have imagined.
When I look at our house here on this island I am like of course we have this house. It is the same thing.
It is not the glamorous house where everything works correctly and is luxurious and high end whatever.
It actually could have seemed like a terrible logical decision to buy this home. Most people would not have.
But it is the most beautiful thing to me.
And this is DIRT, really. My journey into your deepest truest self.
When the conditioning and the performance and the image comes off.
When the fake pieces of your life fall off.
And often we don’t even know what these things are until they do.
The real you – who is she? How does she act, what does she want?
You can’t know until what is not you is gone.
If you liked this piece, you might also enjoy:
– Sad celebration of the life of my past self