The Art of Surrender

Surrender: Melting to the Highest

This week I'm confronted with a mountain to scale, the peak of letting go of everything that has brought me comfort and pleasure except for what I can carry on my back. I'm not leaving until June to embrace the traveling lifestyle of a wandering magi, helping others I encounter through the amazing gift of astrology, but my ex-wife is coming to Boulder on May 8th to pick up my Pathfinder so we can sell it to further move toward being debt free. I won't be needing a vehicle where I'm hoping to go.

"Surr" means the highest and "render" means to melt, so melting to the surf, aligning your will with the divine will. It's a strange place to be at between lives. I've always worked for myself as a professional astrologer, and I've even managed to make most of my money online through doing people's charts, selling visionary products, and traveling/lecturing. But now I've embraced a life of Location Independence. I will flow with the winds of change and move to wherever I'm inspired to go. Which means letting go of a 10 by 10 storage locker full of stuff. George Carland would be proud!

Realizing Minimalism

The idea of having all my stuff on my back is extremely appealing. When I was 12 I dreamed of traveling the world as a nomadic gypsy having adventures and amazing experiences. I even pretended to be a famous Portuguese explorer with a ship, and one day I set sail from Portugal to explore the world. I closed my eyes and spun the globe and put my finger down on a random location that I had to go to for my next adventure. Each week I would write in my journal about adventures I would have with my crew on the way to that location. When we reached the location, I would go to an encyclopedia and read all about the place's history and let my imagination percolate what I'd absorbed. Then I would write fantastic journal entries about interacting with the culture and the adventures had.

I realized today that this journey I'm about to set sail upon is the adult version of that childhood dream. And that this blog is my journal where not only will I be recording my adventures, but I'll get to share them with you! I'll get to interact with you through the miracle of the Internet too!

So yesterday I began redesigning my astrology website to streamline everything. I won't be sending people their charts anymore with printouts and a disc and symbolism sheets. I'm automating everything so I can send it all be email. You'll still get the most amazing, inspiring chart interpretation I can give, but now you'll receive it as an mp3 download which you can right click and save to your desktop and then send to your i=pod via itunes! How cool is that? I just downloaded an app on my Droid phone that allows me to record audio right from my phone and then upload it!

The World it's a Changin'

We always hear people talk about the world and how it's changing so fast. I think as this last pass of Uranus oppose Saturn comes into focus this month (APR 28th) and then a final pass in June, the new world is being born! It's not some distant future thing like the end of the Mayan Calendar or the Second Coming of Christ, it's happening right now all around us. It's about the blend between Aquarian Age freedom and technology with Piscean Age visionary imagination and spirituality. And it is so exciting!

Scaling that Mountain of Stuff

Meanwhile my bookshelves, and books, and boxes full of kitchen stuff, and software, and cds, and dvds, and x-box games, and all of it is driving me nuts. Part of me wants to just head down the road and refuse to pay my storage fee bill so they can just profit from selling it all so I don't have to deal with it. The ultimate escapist fantasy. But part of me knows my soul deserves to go through my old life and let go peacefully in a therapeutic way. I better get started fast because soon I won't even have a vehicle to make a trip down to the storage locker. I know I'd rather leave with no possessions left behind. But so much stuff to sell. I've made a few auctions on Ebay and they seem to be going well, selling my collection of Dungeons and Dragons miniature figures. Within the hobby we call it plastic crack.

I'm happy to let go of it all if it means I get to substitute imagining adventures on a game map with having adventures on a real world map. I imagine all the non-player characters in a fantasy world that make up all the tavern keepers, and servants, and craftsfolk, and farmers, etc and I have deep respect for them. Without the trappings of civilization travel would not be as fun! You go to India to meet Indian people and experience Indian culture. I guess I'm feeling different about this because my adventure will be highly inward. My adventure is not just an external quest of outer experiences. My adventure is an inner quest of consciousness.

While I'll have an exciting time meeting new people out here in the real world, my rich inner life of writing and interacting with people through the Internet will be just as exciting and full of wonder. I'm in the process of taking all of my inspiring designs, everything from game designs to astrology book ideas, and putting it all into digital format so I can access it on the journey. Thank eternal being for a flash drive!

In role-playing games, there is a magical item called a bag of holding, which is a small bag that has an extra-dimensional space in it for holding lots of adventure equipment and treasure. Encumbrance can be a bitch! I learned this first hand when I set off on my first traveling magi journey after dropping out of college when I realized they had nothing else to teach me. I had a 4.0 my last semester with a focus on Physics, Japanese, Philosophy, and Religious Studies. After two days on the Colorado Trail, my wife (Arian's mom Tracey) and I sent a whole box full of stuff back home to my parents for safe keeping. We wouldn't be needing that extra journal after all...

So this little Flash Drive is my modern realistic equivalent of a fantastical bag of holdings, as the i-pad will be my library of holdings, and my lap top will be my design studio of holdings, etc. This morning I took a deep breath an put my new travel backpack on my back just to feel the freedom of having just it's weight on my shoulders and envisioned the open road stretching out before me. Then I opened my eyes and saw all my bins full of stuff that I still need to sell, and before May 8th!

The stress of that is good because it creates a sense of urgency. Nothing like Parkinson's law to kick your behind into gear! "A project tends to expand with time allocated to it." Having lots to do in less time creates urgency so we get more done! That's the focus this next two weeks!

I've got an astrology book to write, a film to make, several websites to design, a ton of selling to do in order to be ready to embrace this journey of a lifetime!

Today I got my first donation from a new reader of this blog. Thank you sincerely Lane, the wise rock lord geologist of the Land of Enchantment. You don't know how much it means to me that someone supports this spiritual quest. It gives me the strength to break free of the materialistic shackles of the society we've created.

Thank you!