Hands down your pants…

Want some hands in your pants ladies and gents? Well it’s NYE, time to get naughty…

Seriously speaking it is time to get naughty – it’s time for new year’s resolutions – whether the ones you intend to keep, or break. Personally I aim for no fear. That means I will probably break my vow at least ten times a day when I chicken out on things, but it also means that I will watch my thoughts and see when something comes in to stop me from what I would love. Because it’s all about what we would love by the end of the day (I mean really – your resolutions are to do what you love, or create what you love, or be whom you love being) and if you aren’t doing it, chances are you have some fear around it. Fear you might not even realize you have – most of the stuff controlling our behavior isn’t conscious until you stop and really think about what you are thinking about…

I don’t think it’s about curing fear either, I think it’s about hanging with the tension and instead of avoiding something, or forcing yourself to do it pretending to be cool, being vulnerable to your own fear and doing it without forcing. Can’t really explain it, but if you force you usually put something on top. Ever tried “impressing” instead of just sharing of yourself, of your heart and what you are good at? Or even if it’s your first ever dance class and you aren’t good at, just relaxing and having fun? Living your heart in other words. I’m making a movie about this next year…a dance movie. Now that’s a dream come true.

So what would I love? I would love to live my dreams, that’s what I would love. And I would love to share those dreams with those I love. I don’t want to blog about all of them right now…I really just feel like sitting down and sharing them with those I love, but man, family, writing and making movies would probably sum them up. Oh and creating a life in Cape Town…I’m still new in town so it will take a while, but buying a car next week will make things a lot easier.

Feel free to share your resolutions with me…the world…your loved ones, or just your own heart! Happy New Year folks – may it bring you the life your heart truly dreams of and lots of love in every area of your life!!! Go create magic!!! Cheers!!!

If your thoughts wander and your hands don’t follow, are you living your dreams???

Would you like to get naked my dear???

Would you like to get naked? You see, I have developed this new concept of nakedness. All you have to do is strip your clothes off and your life is transformed. Forever. Just ask that guy who saw that girl naked and life was never the same again…suddenly he was having SEX all the time…

I don’t know how many times I’ve read The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho. Many times. There is this idea put forward if you so like, saying that we are scared of going after our dreams because we do not know if they will be all we’ve imagined. So sometimes our dream is right in front of us and we do not touch it. Because we want to keep the dream.

Other times I find the dream is all around us, but we still somehow manage to avoid it, because we do not give of ourselves to it. We don’t pour all our love and hard work into something, because we are scared we will fail. We leave a little bit of room for failure, a little room to say we didn’t do our best anyway, so if it fails, well it wasn’t because we were incapable it was because of time, or money, or whatever else.

There are yet other times when we are living the dream without really living it at all – we really fucking go for it, but our heart is closed, because we are afraid if we open it and we do not get the end result we dream of, then we will break our own heart. We don’t trust. It’s kind of like living in a glass cube where you do everything, but don’t truly feel it. It’s like banging someone without stopping to feel…it’s being aloof to our own senses, scared that if we invest them we may feel pain.

Another version of not trusting is “keeping our options open” – we invest some time and energy, we think we are truly exploring something, but we don’t surrender to the moment, we always keep a little bit of focus somewhere else. And when things don’t work out we think we were really clever for not surrendering… It’s like putting your toes in the water, thinking you swam and then wondering why you didn’t get anywhere, or felt the beauty of the ocean all around you. Yeah, I wonder why?

The ego is a tricky bitch. It will lure us away from what we love in so many different ways and we won’t even notice it unless we open our heart so that we can truly feel what resonates with us. I always compare it to having sex versus making love. How often do we slow down and feel, totally feel another person’s energy and truly explore their taste, smell and touch? I mean there are a great deal of sensations going on during sex, totally overwhelming, just like life unless you slow down and allow yourself to open your heart to it. Feel it. Explore it. Taste it. Lovingly play with it.

To fully explore you have to be fully open and surrender. To do so you have to fully trust. Trust yourself. Trust your own heart.

I find it a challenge to live my heart fully every day without hold backs. To give without analyzing. To surrender to every moment. To be fully present with those I love. To be fully present with strangers, whether I like them, or not. I have chased my dreams all over the world without ever surrendering and actually living the dream. I still have nightmares about trying to find my home in the Hollywood Hills. It’s the only place I have felt at home you see, but as I started having those dreams and wondering whether it is right to be here and blah, blah…I stopped living. Instead of focusing on my life I started thinking about what everyone else is doing and what the right choice is…my heart chose Cape Town. I want to surrender to the city to truly explore it. My heart sings for this place and my work here, yet it’s so easy to get sidetracked by obstacles…as soon as you have a fight with your boyfriend there’s an obstacle. Potential pain. And if you always run to a new guy…when will you ever discover love?

I’m scared. I’m scared of not meeting enough people and making enough friends. I’m scared of spending Christmas and New Year’s by myself. I’m scared of my economical situation, although that’s looking up. I’m scared of running into danger. I’m scared of failing with what I love most – the projects in Cape Town working in the townships and with film. I’m scared of never finding/recognizing/finding but not being loved by my soulmate (due to ego blockages). I’m fucking petrified already. But I like this town. I have a funny feeling I will come to love it.

I don’t have a return ticket. I think somewhere, that’s where my mind needs to be also. To relax into the city. To feel it. To explore it. To make love to it. To surrender and open my heart to it. That’s my dream. To live life like that. Naked. To live that presently with an open heart, receiving and giving love freely. And it would be nice to be with a man who did the same.

That’s my proposal for a naked lifestyle. I think I will need to sell the concept: better results in life than with Tony Robbins…quick, only $0.99 for one blog that will change your life! The bottom line? Get undressed!!!

Definitively time to get naked…whoop, whoop!

Strip off…a naked sense of play with the lions and lionesses…

I’m starting to feel quite naked these days…and I’m also starting to sense the lioness inside me roar. The eagle take flight. The owl of wisdom gently whispering advice. I’m starting to feel ready to play. Play fiercely and wisely, but most of all: play. A naked sense of freedom is coming over me.

I was looking at the photo from yesterday’s blog, the photo of the lion, and an array of thoughts entered my mind. You see, I get completely lost in that photo – it must be one of the most beautiful photos I’ve ever come across. I absolutely love it. I can literally just sit and stare at it. As I was looking at it, it occurred to me that maybe one of the things I am so drawn to is the almost human look on his face. As if I can see a person in there, or an animal with human characteristics. Other photos I looked at when searching for lions included the same and I thought that maybe what we look for in animals is proof that they too have emotions. That they too love. And when we see love, we love….and that’s the most magical state of being there is.

Secondly, and this thought really struck me, there are these majestic, magical animals and what do we do? We put them in cages and teach them tricks. In the wild they run like the wind, they perform incredible feats, they play, they display their majesty…and we put them in a cage and teach them 1+1=2 by pressing some buttons with their paws? God must be laughing.

Thirdly, I was thinking that what we do to lions is what we do to ourselves. We get a job in a cubicle somewhere, or we spend our lives coming up with “the next big thing” so we can get rich and successful and get a different cubicle – one made of glass and stainless steel. And maybe that’s life. Maybe if we couldn’t do that we would still be having to plough farmland in Siberia. I guess I just think one should be aware that we have made up society and where you want to keep your focus is up to you. You can devote your life to come up with the next great app, or you can raise your kids on a farm, picking strawberries and watching the stars at night…and maybe there you will be inspired to come up with an app for helping people find their heart’s desire, without you even having to try. Or maybe people already know. Naturally.

I love technology. I love that we hunger for knowledge and development and I am in awe of Apple and their apps. I love all that. I just think one should learn to question and think for oneself. Because I’m not really sure if guns, or bombs improved humanity, or if where people tell you to focus your energy is necessarily the best place to focus it.

I think if I can dance, make movies and theatre performances, work with people and live in a natural house say somewhere in the hills outside Cape Town, or LA, with my family…I think I would be happy. I don’t think a Mercedes, or a Hollywood contract would do that much for me. I’d love to spread my work if there’s an audience that would love to receive it…I’d love to have money so I can live without worries…but I get happy from staring at a black and white photo of a lion. I get happy typing my blogs. I don’t need to chase cubicles, I need to live my heart, but I used to feel really bad about it…because I used to think I was a failure because my heart rather go on an adventure, than stick with one job, follow the normal path and gain secure money and sure as hell that would have made me a lot more money…but I would never have seen the Hollywood Hills at sunset, whilst writing this blog. And words can’t describe how much I love that place and this blog. I thought chasing my dreams made me unhappy as it was so unsettling, but really what made me unhappy was thinking of what others thought of me for doing it. For being a gypsy, an artist, a hippie dreamer (who loves Louis Vuitton). And I was also very scared I’d never succeed and be forced to do work I hate for the rest of my life. But there are ways around everything if you just stop focusing on the traditional path and start making up your own.

I have a right. I am entitled to live as I choose. To explore what I love. Unlike those lions we have caged, I am free.

Who wants to play?

When the wind is blowing in the opposite direction…

Nothing’s ever perfect. I keep being reminded of the part in The Alchemist where the boy arrives in Africa and loses his money on the first night. He’s on a quest to get to Egypt and he has just lost all his savings, he can’t even return to Spain. He realizes he has a choice – he can either see it as a complete failure, or as the beginning of an even more daring adventure than he could ever have dreamed of. The boy chooses to see it as an adventure. He then proceeds to get a job polishing glass and he helps the shop owner by introducing serving tea to the customers. He spends years polishing glass. I’m sure it wasn’t easy, but we all have a choice: greet the sun with a smile in the morning, or proceed to look at the sun with envy as we ourselves hide in the shadows.

You can shift your mind about almost anything and you can choose to accept that your adventure is now. That doesn’t stop some things from being difficult to the point where you’re almost completely depleted. The point is, if you keep looking to the sun as part of you, sooner, rather than later, it will return.

Last fall was not a happy time for me. I had left what I felt were some of the most joyous, secure parts of my life – my two best friends, the city I loved and the first home I’d ever had that felt like a home – our gorgeous chalet in the Hollywood Hills. I no longer fell asleep watching the stars and the twinkling lights of Los Angeles. I no longer drove to Malibu in the weekends to jump through the waves. The sun that I so adored, seemed far, far away. There was one point when I was struggling at work (and given I work for my business partner, who is also the investor for my dream company, that was not easy), I had a rash from the cold and felt about as sexy as a burnt toast (I’m not made for winter, pointe blanc), I had found out some friends were potentially ill (and I don’t mean with the flu), I had absolutely no desire to date anyone, my social life was a mess as I was still new in town, my back was as my back is – aching and causing headaches, I felt drained, tired…I lost weight (not for lack of eating, but because my body was just drained), I looked like hell. I knew though, I knew that in LA I had been on top of my game, so there was a place inside where everything was well. It was just a matter of transforming that to the outside.

It took all my strength to turn things around, because let’s face it: when shit hits the fan it’s not like your energy levels are on top and you are ready to play the game of your life, but that’s exactly when you have to play the game of your life. That’s part of the adventure; the trials of the hero.

For me the most difficult part was probably worrying about a friend, but what completely drained me was work, because every day I’d make a new mistake, fret about my future and be completely exhausted by the end of it. It’s easy to say let go of your worries, but when nothing seems to be going your way and you feel like each day you get a new bucket of ice water thrown in your face and you’re not sure how to reach any of your goals, it doesn’t come across as all that easy. I was lucky. I had a fucking strong spiritual core that I kept returning to – a place of love – but whereas in LA that would take me five minutes to get to, here it could take me five hours and last for five seconds (great sex right there…).

Today when I look at my life I look at a smiling boss and business partner who has finally agreed the go-ahead of our company (I mean it was already incorporated, but that means very little without the dough) – once they find a replacement for me in his other company it’s go (well, part-time go…my salary from my company isn’t exactly erm, high). I look at my social life and I feel joy and peace. I look at working with a project that supports kids in London and South Africa and I feel like walking on clouds…a twelve year dream finally starting to materialize. I look at potential dates and I smile. I look at someone in the mirror who’s dancing and twirling forwards with dimples in her cheeks.

Today, you see at a woman who is living her dream, feeling sexier, sassier and happier than ever…but she was living her dream a couple of months ago too. It just wasn’t the pretty stuff…but it was the stuff that makes for a good story, a good adventure. And maybe it could have been different, maybe it could have been easier if I had been on a higher level of spirituality, or higher up the mountain, what have you, but we all start from somewhere and then we climb. I got furious at myself at times thinking I was making the same mistakes all over again, but clearly I hadn’t yet learnt how not to make them. You have to be nice to yourself.

What turns things around in life? In stories of great adventure it’s usually a dashing Prince, or Princess (or Jester, I stick by that one, LOL) isn’t it? Or it’s the ticket that flies in through the window and you realize that you are soon to be jetting off to Africa… Or it’s winning the lottery…or getting the dream job as if by magic.

In life I think the real turning point is love. It’s a place of love in your heart, where you allow for the magic to happen. It’s the desire to change things around, coming from that place and acting from that place. If you live in that space of free flow, of intuition and love…life does change bit, by bit, by bit. Sometimes over night, but often after many small steps of love. That doesn’t fool-proof you from storms, it just teaches you how to fly a bit better and a bit higher than before on a day-to-day basis.

So once again: love peeps. May it flow in abundance and may you have the strength to find it when life is rough and the dream of tomorrow seems far away. Even when you cry, may you love so that gates are opened for more love to enter, to heal you and move you to safe harbours.

You are always a heartbeat from anywhere: open your heart and be ready to fly when the right wind sweeps by…and it always will, you just have to have patience for it to come round and make the wind chimes chime…

A dragon, or a fierce lover??? You choose…

Today I’m going to talk about dragons and fairy tales, but bear (I always write bare…it’s the nature of the blog…baring ones soul, or else I just talk about sex too much, but I prefer the first explanation…) with me as there is a point and I haven’t just lost my head to a Prince Charming…

So about dragons: Sometimes I think the fairy tales about women in towers guarded by dragons are simply women guarded by their own dragon, trained to keep evil at bay, but by now mistaking everything for evil. Hence, only the man who silences the dragon wins the heart. Sadly if this is the case, anyone with force can enter. A real woman controls her own dragon – opening the gates to the man who will respect her heart and whose heart she respects. Of course any man wanting to enter will have to fight the dragon though, if so just for a while to prove himself worthy of the heart. Men sometimes get confused and start fighting for any heart they can’t have, so you have to make sure he’s really fighting for you. In other words: give him a run for his money.

We all have dragons in our heart in one way or another – they sit there moaning about the bad, fearing the good in case it isn’t good enough and generally trying to protect us from everything by warning us about one hundred and one different things at the same time. They are the what ifs and the watch outs and the buts (I could have that hot butt, but…). They distract us from everything and stop us from enjoying what could have been, had we allowed it.

It’s so easy to think what if? When you aren’t involved in something you think what if that would have been the solution? When you are involved in something you think what if things go wrong? And when things go wrong, because they always do to some extent, you have to know you really want to be there and happily work to sort it out. This is where many people get lost – they move from one thing to another, because as soon as they hit a wall, they leave. Or they simply never get involved enough in the first place to stay – they never allow themselves to love and let go, so they never feel a deep attachment and the glorious happiness that comes when you love like a fool. And “like a fool” simply because you have given up every reservation and completely dedicated your heart…only it feels more like you opened it and magic happened.

A healthy, happy person knows that if something crashes and burns, they will rise from the ashes. They are willing though, after looking at something with an open heart listening to the wisdom of the heart, to invest their all should the investment be wise. They know that they have the go ahead from their heart, not from an over excited state of mind, so they are at peace investing themselves.

When wise people immerse themselves in something, they do so without losing their head and their footing in the world. They are not a teenager in love, but they love as fiercely as a teenager would, with the heart and soul of an adult. They know things can go wrong and they will come out OK should that be the case, but their focus, once invested, is on the good and how to continuously build that.

To let go and fully enjoy something; to learn to build the positive aspects of whatever it is, is a true gift and it means that you fully embrace what you have. You start enjoying it. You start putting in a positive effort to make it even better. You get excited when there is a problem, because there will be a thrill solving it. Things may still go wrong to the point where you know it’s time to quit and hell, it’s 2012 – the whole world might go under, but to know if it could work, you have to give your all.

Commitment sounds boring. I think it sounds terribly boring in fact. To me it sounds much better to say: I have a dream. If you have a dream to set up a company, to have great loving passionate relationship, to build a house, to do whatever it is you want to do…then you have to give your all for it to work. You decide that’s what it is you are going to do, then you leave the reservations somewhere else and give your heart and soul to the project at hand. It will grow exponentially because all of you and all your love is invested in it. If you say you’re gonna give it a go and stir it with your pinkie whilst thinking about everything that could go wrong and all the other things you could be doing, all the other wo/men you could be shagging…it won’t have a chance. You will never feel the joy of it overtaking your heart. Of it building until it becomes the most fabulous thing. Of it making you extraordinarily happy.

It’s really quite weird, because to go for anything is a sacrifice, because you leave everything else, at the same time, without making that sacrifice you will never achieve the greatness of love.

For anything in your life to happen, unless it’s something you are forced into, you have to allow it. In fact, even if you are forced into something, it will never make you happy, unless your heart and soul accepts it. Sometimes, a bit of a force though, shocks the system and you open the gates involuntarily, but you can’t hope that someone will steal your heart, or force you to build your dream. If you want something, you tame your own dragon and get ready to fight all the other people’s dragons you will meet along the way. There’s a thrill in fighting for your dream, you just have to decide it’s worth the fight and be open enough to know when it’s time to quit, should it not be the right fight you’re fighting.

Go on gladiators….attack!!!!!

I think I choose the fierce lover over the dragon…don’t you?

I can do orgasms all by myself…

I think it’s supposed to be “I Can Do Bad All By Myself” but I’m not Tyler Perry and that’s not a suitable headline for this blog. I can do orgasms all by myself on the other hand is. The thing is though: shared pleasure is double (or triple) pleasure. That’s why this dizzy blonde is on a mission to open up, surrender and love freely and openly. To give of myself as much as I can, but also dare to trust that there are those that give to me and be OK with that. It’s hard to allow someone else to give you orgasms when you can do it all by yourself…it may be double pleasure, but you are then counting on someone else. And I guess I was never too good at that. Trusting. Believing others actually loved me enough to freely give of themselves to me. I am learning though. One baby step at a time.

More than anything I guess I was scared of others because I didn’t trust myself. I feared their opinion of me as it could bring me great joy, or great sorrow. I didn’t have self-love, so I was 100% relying on others love. If they told me I was great I felt great. If they told me I was bad, I felt bad.  Often, if I liked someone enough, I would just give and give and give, trying to please sooooo much, just to try to get them to tell me I was alright. It made me feel very, very vulnerable and I was often closed up like a clam.

Now, I have learnt to do orgasms all by myself. I don’t need to rely on my ability to give others orgasms, or their ability to give them to me for my own internal happiness. Even if others tell me I’m not enough, or I find that they aren’t pleasing me, things don’t have to go tits up because my bottom is still rock steady. I do believe though that being a rock, being an island, as the song goes, is only one part of happiness. The other comes from sharing that happiness with others.

The journey of being open and vulnerable on this blog has been fabulous – it was easy for me because I wasn’t sharing my feelings with this one person, who was in the room (desperately trying to please them at the same time), I wrote it for myself, it was about giving myself an orgasm, but the feedback in the last year and a half has been truly astounding – it seems I gave a few other people orgasms too (metaphorically speaking). To hear that my words in any way reach out to people and touch them makes me giddy with happiness every time. If I manage to make someone smile, laugh, see their own beauty, or find their own strength, that is simply beyond amazing. It’s totally worth having my heart and soul online for that purpose (and getting the odd punch for it) and it’s helping me because I’m learning to do the same in my own life: being open and loving, not to please but because that’s who I am.

Yet, blogging is also interesting because a lot of people know exactly what you are pondering and you have no clue of what they think of you. Everyone else can play hard to get, but my words are always there, accessible 24/7. “Hi Darling, I am very busy, I can’t take your call right now…but you won’t have a chance to miss me, because I’m all over my blog instead of all over you. You’re a mystery, I’m an open book. Literally.” Sometimes it feels very unfair indeed…maybe he will just have to give me his secret diaries?

And now I have a favor to ask…I would love your secret thoughts too… Basically, I’m submitting this blog to publishers and editors. I have gathered some of my favorite pieces that I am rewriting for that purpose. And to make it extra nice I thought it would be fabulous if you love this blog and you would be willing to write down why you love it…any random words from your heart about it…because then I can include those words in my proposal. Like my words in return for yours.

So yeah, I am asking for your orgasms peeps…well to describe them, if this blog ever gave you any…metaphorically speaking, as you know by now…please do not send me descriptions of actual orgasms. I know I talk sex a lot, but there are things even I can’t handle.

See I am doing it – I am asking for shared orgasms, even if I can do a book proposal all by myself…and a part of me is screaming it’s stupid because no one will write to me and it will prove…nothing. I am still getting an orgasm from my writing…and on that note peeps: enjoy your day – make it orgasmic!

Bottom down vs. tits up…

There are a few things in life that can go tits up if you don’t get to the bottom of them, so to speak. In fact for most things I believe you should put your bottom down firmly, but to do so you need a firm ass.

Essentially, to get a firm bottom, I believe there are three questions you need to ask yourself to work the right muscles:

Whom would I truly love to be?

What would I truly love to do?

Whom do I truly love?

If you ask yourself these questions every morning you will spend the rest of the day shaking that ass of yours to your own rhythm, following your own heart. You gotta move baby, but you gotta move in harmony with that bottom of yours…because the true foundation is all in a firm ass…

Sad be the day when I am not thinking of those I love, sending them my prayers. Sad be the day when I do not dance in harmony with those I love. Sad be the day when I do not dance with those I love at all. Sad be the day when I do not move to the beat of my own drum, following my heart. Sad be the day when my steps disagree with my heart. Sad be the day when I do not create choreographies I love. Sad be the day when the dance is not one I love. Sad be the day when the steps I take are not those written in my heart. Joyous be the day when my heart is the leader and I the partner, swirling through life in a most beautiful dance. Joyous be the day when I love.

Maybe that night we make love till morning…

Sometimes we feel small and insignificant. Much like a tiny girl, walking up a massive mountain. We aren’t quite sure of where we are, or where we will end up. We have an idea of where we want to go – to the top – but the path is winding and we can’t always see the top – there is fog, trees and sometimes fires blocking the sight.

There are nights, when we are curled up by the fire watching a starry sky, and we feel calm and serene, and the path we are walking feels like the loveliest thing ever. Our muscles are tired after a day’s worth of climbing, in fact we are feeling tired through and through, but a good tired – we lived. We lived to the full and we are still buzzing, still filled with life and life force. We are almost giddy with excitement of all the wonders we have seen and are yet to see. Our eyes are still glazed with the beauty of butterflies catching the morning breeze underneath their wings, or the glorious sight of rainbows and waterfalls. Maybe a sudden thunderstorm filled us with power, with lust and then a gentle drizzle calmed our spirits shortly after, only to be followed by sunshine that made us laugh.

We may be sharing our camp fire with some exhilarating stranger we have met whose faces tell tales of faraway countries and adventures more fearful, more wild than we could ever imagine…or maybe adventures so sweet and lustful we can only dream of….and maybe, maybe one day achieve. Or maybe we are sharing the fire with gorgeous loved ones who are accompanying us on our journey and feel as familiar as our favorite spice.

Maybe the night is filled with laughter and excited whispers and tender words. Maybe children are playing and grown-ups smiling. And maybe, long after the kids have gone to bed, everyone is sharing tales that make our heart sing. Maybe we have found a boy whose eyes are sparkling in the moonlight and seemingly reflecting not just the moon, but our own soul, making us feel understood. Maybe for that moment it all makes sense – the search, the climb, the path that we are now on. Maybe that night we make love till  the morning.

At other times we are utterly lost – it’s raining, our knees are aching, we can’t see the top of the mountain – we are walking upwards, but we have no idea if we will ever reach the top, or at least find enough treasure to buy a fire that is always burning, a bottle that is always full, a bed that is always protected and love that is always tender. We are fearful, tired and soaked to our bones. We seek the light in our soul, the inner warmth, the love we know is hidden there, but the fear is overwhelming and the panic seemingly real as the night closes in on us and we shiver.

We  think about friends we have lost, lovers that crossed our path. We think about the chances we never took and those we should never have taken. We think about our own death and wonder where we will be then? Will we have reached the top? Or will we still be fearful and lonely?

We try to fight it, to be strong, but we only get angrier and angrier with ourselves when we do – because we are meant to be strong, right? We are meant to conquer the rain and walk with joy in our heart. We are meant to have learnt enough to find our way by the stars. We aren’t supposed to be lost, or lonely, or tired, or hungry. We are supposed to know better, be better.

Then, we give up. We remember what being truly tiny meant – what it was like being a child. When the world felt large and scary and we jumped up into our parents, or siblings laps and cried, or were just held tight. We were stil told that we were beautiful, that we were loved. No one gave up on us because we slipped and fell. They just hugged us better. We remember that it was OK then. OK to be lost and frightened and sooner, or later we found our way – whether by ourselves, or with the help of others. We felt tiny back then too. We felt scared back then too. But we weren’t angry with ourselves. We just were. We just allowed ourselves to be and somehow, somewhere, we always found the love we needed to find, the light to lit up the deepest night.

Then we take a moment to rest. We sink down, our back towards a cold fir-tree. The cold, suddenly intense against our back, awakens us. We look around. We see a tiny hare, followed by another tiny hare, looking out at us from underneath the bushes. We slowly reach out our hand. We are in desolate parts where man rarely walks and the hares have not yet learnt to fear us. We slowly look at them, as they are looking at us. In their eyes we see our own fear and trepidation reflected. We see curiosity and hope. We see warmth and love.

One of the hares slowly, slowly moves over, seeing whether to trust us. And then, with a final jump it is by our hand, sniffing it. Its nose feels warm against our cold skin. It keeps sniffing around, then suddenly jumps up, into our lap, and looks at us with big eyes. The other hare now follows, carefully, but bravely, seeing the success of its fellow friend. And then, you have them both in your lap, sharing their warmth, their lives with you.

Everywhere the rain is drizzling, turning the wood into a hazy, almost surreal place. The raindrops glisten in the final hour of dusk and the sun is making one last effort to shine through, turning everything golden. You feel a little warmth from it against your skin and the hares’ body heat radiating through your clothes, into your stiff, frozen bones. For a moment you are sharing your life with two other creatures, like yourself, trying to stay warm, find food, love and happiness. You are helping each other, understanding one another. Suddenly life has conquered and you once again feel calm – inside a new dawn has awoken.

You feel fresh. Every part of you has been shaken – you have been lost and you are still lost, but inside you have found the light. You know that as night comes rolling in you will eat some food that strengthen your body and find peace in your dreams. You will then awaken with the sun and move towards new horizons. Maybe with some furry friends by your side.

It is impossible to know if we will ever reach the top of any mountain. Life is an adventure and as such, we know that there will be struggle, there will be loss, but what will always save us is our own life force, our own love of that which surrounds us, that which we do and those whom we love, including ourselves.

We will continue to get lost and we will continue to get found. Storms will shake us and events move us. We will lose what we have found and move on to find love in unexpected places.

The best we can do is find our own heart, our own peace. We can never know what storm is coming next, or how far we will get the next day. We can only continue to move with a purpose in our heart, which gives meaning to our journey. We can continue to build love in our heart, which will strengthen us and keep us calm in the eye of the storm. We can surround ourselves by love, by doing what we love and taking time to build friendships with those we love, or those we think we will come to love. We can give of what we have, as well as our gifts, our talents, and share our lives with others.

We can love and with love always comes a treasure.

The A-student sex fantasy…

Did you ever have that fantasy? Did you wanna shag a school girl, or a teacher? Well, you are in luck if you like the school girl type because I am your ultimate, too-nice-for-her-own-good, A-student, truly dirty underneath the niceness (and way too shy to show it to the average person) type of woman.

My whole life I’ve been getting A:s when I’ve felt like it. I have been given quite a few D:s too when I have had turbulent times, or simply been tired sick of school, but my end results were always good, even if they weren’t as good as they could have been, because I screwed up along the way. And potentially because I often studied ten minutes before smaller tests (literally – we had a ten minute break before each class when I usually learnt the material off-hand), wrote an A and then didn’t start study for the bigger ones until it was too late…but of course – for some things, you did have to spend time and effort.

Even though I had some turbulent years in school, I almost got kicked out of high school at one point, I always won in the end. Not until lately have I realized what it must be like for people who can’t write A:s whenever they feel like it. I mean I know my abilities in maths are awful, but because that was one subject, I never much cared about it. I just learnt to live with the fact that somewhere along the line I usually twisted some number around and ended up with the wrong sum total.

I was also good at art, I was good at dancing, I produced my own thing at age 18, I travelled by myself from age 14 so I was super independent…in some ways I had a really easy ride. From I was 18 I have heard people say they wanted to be like me – I was their role model.

Now, my interiors were never sorted, so I had a hard ride in other ways and that’s what some people don’t get, but that’s what taught me to fight – because the intellectual challenges…well they’re fun, it’s when it gets real tough inside that it’s a true fight. And I don’t mean fight as in hold onto, but fight as in get over the obstacles. We can all choose to walk a different way when we hit a stone in the road, but then we will never reach our destination. You have to get past the stone.

I always thought life was about having fun, about doing what you love. And I never minded working hard. This blog for example, it doesn’t write itself. I write it. My plays haven’t produced and directed themselves. I was at college till 12am most nights and I was back at 8:30 the next morning and I was there most weekends too. I am a workaholic by nature. I am not a party girl – I get bored. I love meeting people and talking to them, but when the topic is anything less than really getting to know someone, or having a real laugh, or getting creative ideas going, I don’t really care. I prefer to be on a dance floor, painting, writing, doing a play, traveling, being out in nature, spending time with loved ones, or working on a business. And I think drink and drugs…what for? To make others think you are cool? To lose yourself from life? I have my art for that.

When I graduated from college I thought I’d walk into a job I loved and that was that. I never considered doing anything but a good job, for a good company. In my first year out I had something like ten jobs at the same time, all of which I pretty much hated. And I never thought you could feel that way. I always loved work. I loved learning, so long as the topic was interesting, I loved a good challenge, and I loved to be creative. I was used to working my ass off and I became someone who feared waking up the next morning and going to work. And when I wasn’t working, I was working on my own things desperately, trying to succeed somehow, of course having no clue of how to do it and my social life was a mess as I had just graduated and all my friends were still in 24/7 drama school, so I had no respite – my life was about work and feeling lonely when I wasn’t working. In the end I spent three months in LA on a couch depressed as hell. The A student seemed like a joke, only of course, at uni in LA, depressed as hell, she was getting A:s too, but she somehow learnt that you can love yourself even if you have nothing. And potentially three months on a couch was worth it.

I’m not the most systematic person on the planet – my brain is a mess of ideas and thoughts. Being a dizzy blonde is sometimes funny when I’m about to fall into a pool because I spotted a six-pack, but sometimes not so much so. I screw up. I make mistakes I think no normal person would make. I miss things. It’s like the maths thing – I will turn 13+12 into 30 because 2+3 = 5 and 12+13 = 25 and all in all it ends up as 30…and have no clue why things went wrong (but of course I added the 3+2 twice). It’s simple things like that where I go wrong. My relatives used to call us and tell me five times to tell my dad to call them as soon as he got back – by the time he got back I had forgotten all about it and would only remember five hours later. I often think about five things and do another and end up having to redo things five times. Even when I think I fully concentrate, I do these things. But I can memorize a whole script by heart, no problem.

When I have to do tasks, I work well if I have one task, then another and I have constant deadlines (note to self: Maria is creating constant deadlines). If there are too many tasks (and they aren’t my own, so that I know them inside out), they swirl around my head like a crazy circus and I don’t know up from down, I just feel like throwing up. Literally. I love if the tasks are physical, or extremely intellectually demanding, or creative. When they are none of those, after a few hours, my mind is a complete blur I can’t tell one thing from another and I seriously consider signing up as having ADD. I also get stressed thinking I’m constantly judged if I’m working for someone else. But I have no fucking ADD when it comes to directing a play. It’s when I get bored I get it, or terrified of being judged (and well, sometimes when I’m lost in thought). So slight overwhelm, being my own boss or looking after others (as soon as I am in charge of others I feel responsible and have to act accordingly) is my perfect state….but that’s not life. Life is everything. I can work towards being in that state, but I have to get there.

With the years I get more and more structured. If I don’t it all ends up in a mess. One big blob. When I start something new though and have no structure, it’s like hell. I get nothing done. Not for lack of trying, but I can’t make one end out from another. Not until my brain kicks into gear can I tell up from down.

In the past I couldn’t handle when this happened – when the boredom set in, when I couldn’t concentrate, when everything was a mess…I couldn’t take it. First of all I was furious with myself, secondly I left, hoping that somehow I would get my own projects sorted so I could feel functional again, like an A student again…and have a PA to do all the bills that were one big mess, unopened, somewhere in the house… Whenever things got too messy, I left. Today I’ve had enough of traveling. Yes, I want my castle in France and my house in Africa, but I ain’t flying nowhere. I am sorting out the mess at hand. I want to have a life where I’m not fleeing my own shadow. We all have shadows, in one way or another. Some people constantly end relationships, or start new ones to make the old ones end. Some people change jobs. Some people change cities. Some people do drugs. And some people think that’s who they are and that’s who they will be. They never decide to take the bull by the horns, they keep living in their own shadow.

Maybe sometimes I take the bull by the horns a little too hard – I get furious with myself and literally kick myself into fixing things. I basically beat myself into doing it. And in the past when someone told me I was bad, I believed them and always started a remaking of myself process. Today I know a bit more about my own worth and I don’t get stuck in the pain as much. My ex once said I should have been an athlete because I would have loved the challenge and the pain. He had a point. I get a kick out of breaking my own limits and that’s usually painful, and I guess I revel in the punishment I think I deserve (see S&M right there baby – nice school girls are the worst – they are hell-bent on making it, because they are bad, so they have to become good…or something like that).

A few years ago I couldn’t have written about this, because I would still have been in mental self-punishment hell and felt embarrassed about it (I mean it’s not like I have problems climbing the Mount Everest – but that’s just the thing: I’d probably get a kick out of climbing Mount Everest, but I can’t fill out a fucking excel sheet properly…and there are kids starving in Africa and what rights do I have to have silly problems like that?). Today I can step away from my own thoughts and be like: “Alright Maria, time to share some love with yourself and overcome your own difficulties. Some were born dyslexic, you were born dizzy and having problems when you get bored….and maybe just always screwing things up before you screw them right, because you love a challenge, or want to feel judged and get punished, or whatever. It’s alright. You’re OK.” And I still find it corny saying that, because it sounds better to me saying I’m kicking my own ass into shape…but that doesn’t get you places in the end. You may become an athlete, but what about your heart? What about feeling good? What about love? I don’t just wanna conquer: I wanna be happy. I wanna be able to set my heart free.

Whatever you fight, you strengthen, and what you resist, persists. ~ Eckhart Tolle Whatever you do, do it with love, or the pain will become too much for you to handle the task at hand, or the self-hatred will make you screw up more, so you can prove yourself right about being in the wrong.

I’m not saying you should keep doing things you dislike, but you have to overcome the fear of doing them, you have to learn. I didn’t leave LA for example because I had to, I left because I wanted to. I didn’t leave in a mess. And that’s how I want to move forward – when I screw up I sort it out. I don’t go into hiding, I don’t flee, I don’t lose myself in art, I don’t fight it/deny it, I don’t go into punishing myself mentally, I accept it, I lovingly fix it, and I move on with the new-found knowledge, skill, or whatever it is. You don’t wanna move parallel, you wanna move upwards.

So yeah, think twice before shagging A:students, or wanting to be someone you are not – we may be good at certain things, but we aren’t that good at everything…but we are cool in some ways right? Even with our glasses on…

And from one control freak to another: Relax; nothing is under control. – Mr Booja-Booja

Why I love sinners…

Behind each negative pattern, is a frightened child...

I don’t know about you, but it was a while since I lost my virginity….and then there were a few other things… Have you ever sinned? Have you ever cheated on anyone? Stolen something? Beaten someone? Wanted to commit suicide? Let someone down? Been a drug addict? Had abusive relationships? Been a tad anorexic? Had sex with half the world, by accident rather than by design? Then, you’ve probably seen some darkness.

Most people fear the dark, because it’s not pleasant not knowing what’s going on around you. When you “sin” you are in the dark, because you have no fucking clue of why you can’t stop yourself from doing what you are doing. You don’t want to do it, yet your desire to do it is stronger than your want not to.

Why we do “bad” things is individual. Some people were molested as children, have a guilt complex around sex and end up having “guilty” sex. They dislike themselves for it and to prove their own dislike, their own self-hatred true, they keep repeating it. They buy into the idea that that’s who they are, whereas really, that’s a learned behavior, a learned pattern – a set of emotions that get triggered and then acted out. Nothing to do with their heart, if in their heart they disagree.

For many people the idea that you can’t stop yourself from having sex with someone is absurd, yet they can’t stop themselves from something as simple as eating a chocolate bar. Of course, the chocolate bar appears more normal than having sex with people you don’t want to have sex with, unless your weight skyrockets to the point where it isn’t healthy at all. Yet, the person who frowns upon the yes sayers to sex may take into account that the reason they are eating a chocolate bar came from some mild habit, whereas the person that can’t say no to sex may have been under much greater formative influences, such as rape.

Whatever made you end up in a negative circle of “sins” was probably not your choice. I doubt you chose to be molested, have an abusive parent or a parent who wasn’t a good role model, making you think you were doomed to one day become like them, told you were worthless, get bullied, or beaten. I doubt you made a conscious decision to become a wife beater, or a drug addict, but you bought into the ideas the “mirror” (people and events) in your past showed you. And once it happens, once you take too many drugs, hit your girlfriend, obsessively steal other people’s belongings, eat till you are about to burst, or allow yourself to have sex with people you don’t like, you think that’s you, even if you don’t really feel comfortable about it. Well, good news is – if you feel uncomfortable about it, it isn’t you. You are just under a spell where you can’t say no to doing whatever it is you are doing. You do have a choice though – it just takes practice, determination and potentially help to hold you accountable. Listen to your heart – what is it telling you? Follow that voice. And if you can’t make yourself follow it – find someone who can help you do that.

Habits can be hard to detect at times. Sometimes there’s just some discomfort at the back of our mind, or a feeling in our gut, but we don’t stop to listen as life is happening and what we see in front of us gets our attention. Besides, we get used to ourselves – if you are used to feeling fearful before a date, you probably don’t even notice it anymore because it’s circumstance. It’s normal to you, so you don’t question it. Still, there’s nothing normal about being fearful for a date. A bit nervous, yes, but fearful – no. Why would you be fearful? Probably because you fear other’s opinions of you, not trusting that your own opinion should out rule theirs and that your opinion should be that you are nice. You love yourself. If that’s your opinion, you will act from that place, so you will be nice and loving. The thing is – if you are scared of people, your perceived idea about them is negative and that’s the place you are acting from, even if your heart disagrees.

I’ve had negative patterns with people, with food, with men, with health, with depression, with hurt, with love…I mean we all do – we all have patterns, whether good or bad. To me some of my negative patterns were so pronounced that I had to stop, I had to do something about it. I was messed up from my childhood. Yet, as I always say – thanks to the immense pain I went through, I woke up. Some people never do, because the pain never reaches that level, but I decided to change. I didn’t feel like I was a gray mouse in the corner who hated myself and wanted to destroy myself. I felt like I was a playful, naughty little thing with a sense of humor and a huge love of life and love. So I decided to become that woman. I had to set myself free. One thinking pattern at a time. And doing so I discovered thinking patterns I didn’t even know I had – I acted them out all the time, but I wasn’t thinking about what I was thinking about to make me behave like I did. Only when I stopped to listen did I realize what thoughts caused my behavior, where they came from and that they weren’t real. There was a me before that behavior ever started. A me that never agreed with those thoughts, those behaviors. A me that hadn’t yet interpreted events to color my view of myself.

If we love ourselves it will become impossible to hurt ourselves and therefore others. I have never met a person who hurt others unless because they were hurting. Ever. When you love yourself, even if people provoke you, you won’t get mad. You won’t resort to anger, to hurting others. You know they are deluded. You don’t have to suffer because of it.

People are quick to judge others on their patterns, after all, it takes time to get someone to open up and share their heart. And even if they do, they may not be ready to give up their learned behaviors. Their self love may not have reached those levels.

People have sometimes pointed out to me that someone has issues and usually they are right – most people have issues. Some more visible than others. Some more harmful to other people than others. You can still love those people though, of course you can. If you have seen more than their issues, if you have glimpsed their soul, you probably do love them. And if they love you, they won’t want to hurt you, but they may still do. For example, I believe, unlike some women, a man can love one woman and have sex with the entire world, still loving just one woman, but as he doesn’t love himself enough to respect himself, as he thinks he is bad, he acts badly towards her, he fulfills his prophecy, she is hurt, gets angry, kicks him out and all is the same as it always was – he thinks he’s bad, she thinks men can’t be trusted. (Then there is the idea that love is for all and we should all have open relationships allowing ourselves to love whomever we want. That’s another scenario.)

I don’t recommend you get involved with a cheater unless you are OK with open relationships, until the cheater has become a non-cheater. Nor do I recommend you withdraw your love from them just because they are a cheater. Love them. Just don’t put yourself in a position where you will feel abused. And the same goes for everyone who is involved in any way with someone who is, as yet, helpless to their negative behavior patterns.

The good thing about sinners is that they have seen the darkness and therefore, hopefully, have an extreme wish to see the light. They will see it more clearly and with more appreciation than those that have never seen the dark. And those that live in the gray zones may never question them, because it never gets to the point of do or die. Those that hit the darkness know. They know it’s do or die, because the pain, the guilt, the sadness, or whatever it is, becomes unbearable. They have to do something about it. Some sadly don’t have the tools, the support, or the love to do so though. They fail.

I hope in this life that I will never again abuse myself so much that I allow myself to put myself in a situation where I abuse others, or feel abused by others. I hope I will be strong. When my own “self-hatred” slips in, I hope that I remember love and rather than feeding my self-hatred by self-sabotage, or hurting others/putting myself in a situation where I allow others to hurt me, I will choose the love and act from that place.

What’s more, I hope that in this life I will never give up on loving sinners. I believe that somewhere in there is a heart. A heart that may even love you.