by Astara
I stumbled across a writing today by an old friend from California; Maura’s words struck a sweet harmonic across my heart strings:
“I think these times we are living through are really calling each of us to consider are we living from fear or operating as an agent of life and creation? These times call for all of us to take big risks. The world is no longer a comfortable place. It is (and always has been) a wild, dynamic, changing interconnected system. And YOUR PART, your decisions, your choices, your dreams matter to the future. What are you willing to dream today? What would you risk to try to make that dream a reality? We need the dreamers now more than ever. It is time.” – Maura Fallon-McKnight
I chuckled in recognition when I read, “What would you risk to try and make that dream a reality?” For I have already risked everything.
Once known as a sustainable leader and change agent of environmental design within architecture and engineering, I have emerged like a phoenix from the ashes of my past. I am now three years into my own rebirth. After leaping out of the culturally accepted corporate world in summer 2016, I slowly became aware that the leap was not a choice, it was mandatory for my soul. If it was mandatory, was it really a risk? Yes and no. Yes, because I could have said no to such audacious change to stay surface comfortable. No, because my body told me I was not going to do well if I stayed.
Was I ready? Not really. But I was aware that the pull was much stronger than my fear. So I took one step forward, which was off a steep cliff into the vast unknown.
When I was 23 and still in architecture school, I was living in Alexandria, Virginia, and attending the upper division studies of an urban design consortium at Washington-Alexandria Architecture Center. During a typical long stretch of all-nighters working on a design project, I kept strange hours which encouraged daytime naps. During one of those fateful naps, I had a dream that would stick with me for decades.
In my dream I was at the edge of the Grand Canyon and I saw a shiny beautiful air stream perched at the edge of the canyon a distance in front of me. The door faced the cliff’s edge. If anyone were to open that door and step out, they would fall into air. Suddenly the door opened, and Stevie Wonder stepped out. He stood at the top of the metal stairs perched over nothing. He turned his head toward the sky, smiling into the sun. I was dumbstruck, for I knew that Stevie Wonder couldn’t see that he was about to step off into the abyss. I screamed out “Stevie, no! Don’t move! Don’t do it!”
It was then that Stevie turned towards me. He smiled and said, “Girl, are you blind?” He stepped forward and as his foot fell off the last step, it hit solid ground. Where I thought there was a canyon, there was earth to meet him. I closed my eyes, rubbed them and looked back up. Was the canyon never there? Was I the blind one? I was.
Over the years, I have told that dream over and over to friends and family, as well as clients and colleagues. It has become an anthem in my life about the illusions of fear that we carry to protect (limit) ourselves. And how, when we are willing to move forward into the fear, and past it, we find solid ground. Every part of a dream is an aspect of ourselves. And so Stevie was that wise part of me that wanted me to see where I was blind and therefore limiting myself.
I dove off many risky cliffs in my life since that insightful dream in my twenties, and I have always landed on both feet. One would think that the risk in 2013 to move away from all my friends, family, and geographical roots to Omaha, Nebraska would have been the steepest cliff dive of all. And in some ways it was.
As it turns out though, the craziest—yet sanest—cliff jump, was the one that presented itself after I arrived to the heartland, where I—hand in hand with my husband Orion—stepped out of the seeming safety of corporate income and into my vulnerable authentic truth and deeper superpowers. I loved my sustainability career. It had meaning and purpose. Yet I was not using all of my gifts. The work that I do now as a soul coach, intuitive, sound healer, songstress, and mystic is more aligned, deeply fulfilling, and truer to me. Have I risked everything? Yes, I thought. I used my inheritance, then my 401k to invest in myself, our company, and my dreams. I set down my day job; I was in a new land with no familiar anchors. Truly risky business.
The truth is, risk is an illusion. It is a choice aligned in trust. To believe in yourself and know the universe has your back because what you are choosing is so aligned, so true, so you. Such radical trust may seem foolish to others, yet it is actually your intuition operating at its peak. It means that enough coherence generated inside you in order to listen to the intelligence of your heart and make choices from there. It is about setting down the past and stepping into the present. It is ultimate freedom.
The research of Heartmath Institute has uncovered that the heart knows first, the mind knows last. The mind is based on partialness. When we are identified in the mind, something is always missing, and choosing the unknown of our dreams is a risk. When we are identified in the heart, we are identified with our wholeness. And a choice from there, a choice on behalf of our passion project, is the best next step no matter appearances. Fear arises. That is natural. And still, listen to your heart.
I was in a new land with no anchors, but I was not alone. The universe within and around me delicately arranged for my move and all that followed. Within a year of moving, my beloved Orion stepped into my path, as well as new allies (angels) and new tools. And my relationship with Orion has become the crucial laboratory for risk: where evolution, growth, creativity, and living in harmony hold more value than the cultural virus of consumerism, fear, avoidance, and addiction that would tell us otherwise. A laboratory filled with raw, gritty, and messy experiments. Because of the mirror of my best friend and partner, I am looking at my shadows and learning to integrate (love) all of me, the dark and the light all along the way to deeper integrity. And Orion is doing the same. The result? Illuminating Hearts.
Years before I would leave the safety net of California and my career and meet Orion, I wrote a poem in 2010 called Risking Everything. Little did I know I was writing the poem about what was coming: my epic move, my beloved, my authentic life. Just as I was calling him to me, he was tugging at me across time, and had been for a while. He would offer me the invitation of the ultimate risk of showing up fully. A risk as alluring as a shiny Air Stream beckoning me to step into the mirage of a canyon. What risks are you willing to take to dream your authentic future into existence? If I can offer you any wisdom from my path, risk everything for your heart. It is time. Because in the end you will find it was no risk at all.
Risking Everything
by Astara
I shed lifetimes.
Walls, foundations, structures tumble effortlessly.
My own ripeness tosses me from the tree
that held me so long
long enough to blossom and bear fruit.
I am shaken free.
You grabbed the trunk and a hundred smiles leapt to your face
as your big hands shook me down.
Gravity pulls me into a universe free of illusion.
The worn rug of old stories
pulled out from underneath me
replaced by a magic carpet called earth
flying 67,062 miles per hour
through a dark dust-and-gas landscape
filled with light
and the sound of my heart
isn’t this the ultimate risk, the willingness
and the capacity to carry it out
that galaxy, this universe, that star,
this love.
