There’s a world behind the world we see that is the same world
but more open, more transparent, without blocks.
Like inside a big mind, the animals and humans all can talk,
and those who pass through here get power to heal and help.

– Gary Snyder

___________________

Last week I returned home from two weeks in California… which is also a home to me. It’s where I was born and where I lived for half my life. As a native Californian who now resides in northern New Mexico, I still feel a very strong affinity for the Golden State and the ocean that embraces it.

My journey had multiple purposes…

Meetings with clients as well as a weekend retreat with a “wisdom circle” of amazing women entrepreneurs I’ve been part of for the past year…

Time with friends, including a house concert in Santa Cruz by Jami Sieber (who is the source of that powerful quote by Gary Snyder at the top of this page)…

An overnight at San Francisco Zen Center to ground myself in meditation practice…

And a visit with my parents in Southern California…

All connected by a train ride on the Coast Starlight.

 

During the trip, I held the first-ever “Liberation Lounge” – an in-person gathering of LLP readers – though it wasn’t where I expected it to be. Originally I planned to hold this event in the Bay Area but it fell through for various reasons. However, something else happened. More on that in a moment.

Magic was the operative word for those two weeks.

I’ve used that word magic a lot this year. What’s that all about? What does “magic” really mean?

Here’s what I think: Magic is what is always just below the surface of our lives at any given moment but usually we are too entrained into conventional ways of seeing and knowing to feel its existence.

Like a dowsing stick, we have to learn to trust something deeper and to be guided to that underground stream of magic that is constantly flowing, even when we’re not aware of it.

In the classic book  A Return to Love, Marianne Williamson writes that the true nature of reality is always the opposite of what we are conditioned to believe, that our spiritual truth is exactly upside down from the ‘truth’ of the material world. I believe that magic is what helps us to uncover what was there all along at that deeper level of reality.

Just like a dowsing stick has two prongs, there are two elements that make magic possible:

• Presence – paying attention to what’s inside ourselves and around us
• Our willingness to let go of what we think we know, to loosen up on the beliefs we hang onto with such tenacity

Magic does not mean that the hard things of our life will disappear. It does mean that we can swim under the surface of reality as we know it and find an entirely different way to relate to our hard thing, whatever it might be.

Given that definition, a lot of magic showed up throughout my trip but especially the last few days when I was in Pasadena, visiting my aging parents. I always feel challenged on those trips. The best part of this particular visit was that I realized I don’t need to live in an old story around them anymore. This is the mantra I started living into on that visit:

Everything happens for us, not to us.

That became my dowsing stick. Keeping those words in my heart and mind, I felt much more spaciousness around everything. Sure, my mom and dad still had all their dysfunctional patterns, individually and in relationship to each other. But I didn’t feel compelled to spin a miserable story out of all that.

Sure, I was concerned as I watched them growing older, wondering how they would take care of themselves and how this will play out in the future. Everything seemed very precarious, and as an only child I felt the burden of figuring this all out as they are not at all proactive about their lives.

So there is all that.

But then there is this. Every time I go there to visit, I connect with more and more people to support me, in all kinds of ways. Last year when I was in Pasadena, I got in touch with Karen Maezen Miller, a fantastic writer as well as a Zen priest and simply a good human being. Maezen lives in Sierra Madre, the town next to Pasadena. What a gift to get to know her and know that when I have to spend more time in this area in the future, I have a meditation buddy who will support my practice.

And then there was this bit of magic that happened on this most recent visit. While checking my email one afternoon, I got a Facebook friend request from a woman named Laura who also happened to live in Sierra Madre. She included a note with her request and told me that she has been following the Liberated Life Project for the past two years and loves it.

When Laura found out that I was going to be in Pasadena and that I had this idea for a “Liberation Lounge,” she graciously offered her home to host one. Even though we only had two days to put this all together, I said “yes”! — trusting the beauty of the synchronicity.

But there was still more magic afoot.

As I looked at Laura’s Facebook bio, I noticed she went to Alverno High School, a Catholic high school in the area which I was very familiar with since my high school (St Andrews) would often play Alverno in sports events. Way back in the olden days.

So I shared that with Laura, having no idea if we were anywhere near the same age bracket. It turned out that we graduated in exactly the same year (1979) and we were on our schools’ respective softball teams. I am certain we were on the same field together at some point!

But there was more.

On the last afternoon of my trip, we had the first-ever “Liberation Lounge” at Laura’s home. It was a sweet event with four of us — Laura, Maezen came, myself, and Tim who lives in Pasadena and is enrolled in Upaya’s Chaplaincy Program. We started with meditation for about 10 minutes, then had a lovely conversation and tea in Laura’s garden, underneath an abundant orange tree.

That’s where I found out that Laura has been working in elder care and loves being a companion to older people. She does this for an agency but doesn’t receive much money for it, and is going through a pretty stressful financial situation. As we all sat in her backyard, I realized that I was seeing the answer to a prayer: someone who I could trust and who loves to help older folks…. someone who could potentially be a resource for me as I deal with my parents and their aging process, and who could really benefit from this connection herself.

We all had an amazing talk during the Liberation Lounge, and it was clear to me that all of this came together for a reason. And not only my reason–there were many more beautiful synchronicities and connections for Maezen, Tim, and Laura.

As I finished up my last night in Pasadena, I felt deeply at peace and trusting in the benevolence of the universe, even when things seem hard and confusing. It’s all there, just beneath the surface — and everything depends on what we are looking for.

A dear friend once said to me:

Allow the world to surprise you.

 Yes. That’s magic.

 

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—Maia