Music has always been a messenger for me. It has been one of those mediums through which answers for particularly tough questions have come.
Case in point…
I had hit a tender spot in my life. They happen every now and then, these spots. I usually slam into the walls after skidding into this metaphorical space before I realize that I am actually in this space. But, once I am bruised and aching from the hard contact, I open my eyes and look around and realize the old, familiar questions are back.
Why am I on this planet?
What am I doing here?
What am I supposed to do?
Do I want to stay?
How can I make this life work?
When those general questions cycle through, my typical questions about business cycle in…
Do I even WANT to do the work I’m doing?
Why do I have such a difficult time doing the things “normal” humans do?
How can I create money when everyone tells me that what I do is priceless, but they’re not willing to pay for what I do?
How can I build a business when the feedback is “you are too expensive?”
After those questions echo through and become part of the white noise cacophony in the background, I begin to feel the emotions… frustration… fear… anger… sorrow… and then… e.x.h.a.u.s.t.i.o.n.
I have been EPIC – Empathic, Psychic, Intuitive, and Creative – my entire life, so I’ve known, all along, that I am “different.” And I’m not different in that cute, “You’re unique like everyone else is unique” sort of way. I am different. At times I think I’m less human than I am something else.
And when I hit that exhaustion point, the general sense of what I am experiencing is that this planet is really. fucking. difficult. and I am tired of trying to figure out something that is seemingly so inconsequential and… well… stupid.
Those are the thoughts of The Phoenix.
See. I tell you. I am not all that enlightened all the time.
But, I digress. Back to the music.
I had hit that tender spot in my life and I did it in front of people, on a high-end mastermind call I’m involved in on a weekly basis. The coach of the call asked me what question I wanted to mastermind with the group and I exploded in a fit of fiery frustration.
“All I hear is a flatline,” I said after spending several moments trying to hear my question amidst all the cacophony of the metaphorical space I had landed in with a painful thud earlier that morning.
“Oh!” He said, laughing from his mansion porch in Las Vegas. “You can hear the locusts above me, too?”
I know he knew what I meant, but he was trying to break up the sludge I was drowning myself in.
“No,” I said acerbically. “I am trying to find my question, but really all I have is a flatline of nothingness that is filled with frustration.”
He asked me to share what the frustration was and there, in front of my peers and colleagues, I unleashed a barrage of vehement frustration peppered with saucy swearwords until they were all laughing. Each could relate to the frustration I was in because they had all been there, one time or another or many; none had been willing to share that, though. Only I am willing to go to those depths publicly. And I do it. Willingly. So others can learn.
So there I was, crying without care, swearing with abandon, and ignoring the fact that my coach was beaming with pride and love as I got raw and ugly there for all to witness.
He walked me through a process and at the end, quietly asked, “What does Angie need so that this healing she has received can be embodied?”
The cacophony had quieted, so I could search the silence for what I needed. The answer showed up in the face of the man I love and I could see him putting his arms around me. When he holds me, I am Home. When he holds me, the world fades away and I am okay.
But, right now, that isn’t possible, so I would have to find a substitute.
I felt the anger and frustration surge.
I am tired of looking for substitutes that will do okay for the “time being” because the real thing I desire is not available to me. I’m tired of figuring out how to make do with what life throws at me. I’m tired of it.
But there I was, at the end of a beautiful breakthrough process, trying to find out how to be happy with what I got, rather than yearning for what I don’t.
The substitute was to go outside to the sunshine and soak it in. Smiling, my coach “commanded” me to leave the call right then and go outside, drink some water, and eat something that felt happy to me. He wanted me to pour love into Angie, to remind the human of me that I am valuable, important, needed on this planet.
Sitting on my back porch, I closed my eyes, everything seeming red behind my closed eyelids as the sunshine beat upon my face. I breathed deeply, singing a mantra of Ah-nay-oh-na… gratitude in the language of The Phoenix.
From that space, two questions arose… What would YOU have me do? What am I NEEDING to do next?
No answer came.
I ate my lunch. I got ready to go. I got in my car. I turned on my Pandora. It was on my “Chill” station and I rolled my eyes. Meditative music is probably not the best choice for driving.
What do I want to listen to?
No answer came.
What station would YOU have me listen to?
“Broadway Showtunes Radio,” They said.
Sighing, I turned it on, popped my car into reverse, backed down my driveway, closed my garage, and headed out of my neighborhood.
I had reached the top of the hill when the first song finally started playing: From Now On from the Greatest Showman on Earth soundtrack.
That was followed by How Far I’ll Go from Moana, Defying Gravity from Wicked, and Let it Go from Frozen.
Obviously, Disney had infiltrated my Broadway station, somehow, but at any rate, the message was a loud and clear answer to the questions from my time in the sun:
It’s important to know you’re own heart, be your own compass, and direct your own course. When you listen to others and do it their way, you can become consumed with the doing of it all, losing your way. When you return to your heart, you will know the way and you will get there.
Four times. In four different ways. From four different stories. Four times They told me that I actually do know what is best for me and how to find my way through this world.
It’s in ME. In my gifts, my abilities, my knowing. When I fear myself, I get muddled. When I listen too closely to the directives of others, I get muddled. When I focus too much on the earthbound things that I have to/must/should do, I get muddled.
So, from now on, how far I’ll go is that I will be defying gravity and letting go.
I’ve been here before, in this choice-space to defy gravity and I’ve said that I am and I have done it.
And then I fall to earth, again, to be reminded that I, as The Phoenix, help others to rise by rising myself FIRST. I rise and those with me rise, too. I am not designed to push others from the ground. I am designed to cause them to rise by creating my own updraft.
I forget about that.
But, it’s okay.
I remember now.
