A gift from the universe
Seriously, don't throw it away just yet.
Dearest Kula Diaries Readers:
Today, I am going to paint a wilderness scene for you - and I hope that you will be able to see this clearly your mind:
It’s August of 2016 just before sunset and I’m high on the Continental Divide in Wyoming. I’m on day 7 of a 9 day traverse of the Wind River High Route… and I’m tired. I’m really tired. But I’m also exhilarated, because I had been planning this trip for months and now I’m actually doing it. My husband Aaron and I are only 2 days away from making it back to my tiny Honda Fit, which is waiting for us at a trailhead in Dubois, WY. We’ve crossed treacherous glacial moraines, more boulders than I could possibly fathom, we’ve navigated in a white-out, climbed razor-edged peaks, and descended precariously steep snowfields to arrive at our second to last campsite. The campsite is nestled in a hostile-looking rocky expanse in the shadow of Bastion Peak, in between the Gannett Glacier and the Grasshopper Glacier. It’s one of the most barren, lunar landscapes that you’ll ever see - but also one of the most beautiful - punctuated by an occasional toothpaste-blue tarn.
After setting up our tent in the only flat spot we could find, I quickly find a scenic spot to stick my trekking pole into the dirt… and I delicately unclip my teal square of micro-fiber fabric that I had been using as a pee cloth… I hang it on my trekking pole… and I start taking photos.
Now, let’s zoom out a little bit from that scene and take a tiny pause so that I can tell you that about a decade prior to this moment, I had started teaching a ‘Backpacking Basics’ course for Washington Outdoor Women, a nonprofit organization. On one of my personal trips into the backcountry, I had been disgusted by the amount of toilet paper I saw in the backcountry… so I came home and did a quick Google search for, ‘Leave No Trace Toilet Paper Options’. I discovered an article that suggested using a bandana as a ‘pee rag’. A pee rag?! “NO THANKS!”, was my very first reaction. But… since I was a backpacking instructor, I decided to give the ‘pee rag’ a try, just in case.
As it turns out, I loved it and started recommending using a pee cloth to all of my backpacking students. I was fanatical about encouraging people to carry around random scraps of fabric to ‘pat dry’ after peeing in the backcountry - much to their squeamishness, for the most part.
OK… now let’s zoom back to moment where I’m taking the photo…
I had decided to take these photos because I wanted to make a set of ‘Pee Cloth Greeting Cards’ to give to a friend for a gift. I’m not sure what that says about me as a friend, but I thought it was a pretty hilarious idea. I’ve got the shot lined up and as I’m taking the photo… a thought arrives… and it’s not a normal thought. It’s the type of thought almost exactly like the one I had about playing my violin in the mountains (except that this was a year prior). It’s the type of thought that feels like it’s coming from ‘nowhere and somewhere’- and the thought simply asked, “Why isn’t that a real piece of gear?”
That was it. A tiny gift from the universe had been gently placed into my hand. I had goosebumps when it arrived… and I have goosebumps now when I think about receiving it - because I know and feel so so clearly that that thought was given to me as a gift during a moment in time when I was so unbelievably present in the now that I was open to receiving it. It arrived, because I was ready to hear it.
Until I wasn’t.
Because I got really excited about the idea… and talked about how cool of an idea it was… and the second that I got back into cell service and started doing research on fabric and how much it would cost to start a company and how other people were probably doing it and how I’d probably fail and how it’s probably a dumb idea anyway and how I don’t know how to sew and how I don’t know how to start a business and how this is stupid and reckless and how all businesses always fail… needless to say. I dropped the idea.
"This is dumb,” I said, as I deleted all the research I had done, “Nobody would have bought it anyways.”
I walked away. I left the idea and forgot about it.
Let’s take a break and visit the space between for a moment.
My last weekly post left you suspended in the ‘space between’ - with a simple task:
Find some time to sit and listen. Look through the list of 6 tiny habits that I shared above and see if you can pick one thing per day - one unexpectedly fun thing per day - to do. Shift your energy a little bit and see what happens. Don’t look for anything new or expect anything to arrive… just be open. Listen to the space between notes, the silence between words, the vastness between breaths. See if you can notice when your mind starts to wander and then come back to your breathing… and if any ideas arrive (particularly those that might seem a little bit inspired or fun) … don’t talk yourself out of them. They don’t need to be ‘realistic’ or ‘make sense’ - if they feel good, trust it. Be open and see what happens and be OK with simply being, and allowing that to be enough.
Whether you’ve managed to fit in one of the 6 tiny things or not… Let’s try it together. Close your eyes and take four intentional breaths right now and then open your eyes again.
Did you feel anything? Notice anything? Did thoughts or judgments enter your mind? Did you believe them? For even a split second… did you happen to notice that you are the noticer of your thoughts? That’s right - you aren’t your thoughts. It’s in the gap between the thoughts where you exist. The stillness between the noise and the chaos - the generous present moment.
This, friends, is the magical place where creation is possible. It isn’t in a space ruminating about the past or replaying things that have happened… and it isn’t in worrying about the future and what ‘could’ happen - it’s simply right here, right now.
It was in this space between that I started to allow life to create through me. That’s an important concept to understand. When you begin the process of creating the things that you want to create - it’s not about ‘doing things’ (although you will indeed take action)… it’s about being open to having life work with you in order to bring more good into the world. It’s about being open to the infinite possibilities, with no proof at all. It’s about saying YES to yourself and YES to the entire cosmos… and about saying YES, I AM READY to life itself.
Sticky Notes
You might remember that I shared a story about how I had hired a coach shortly before I left my job. I did this entirely on an impulse. My dear friend Diana had randomly mentioned to me that her friend had opened a coaching practice, and I had a sudden and overwhelmingly strong impulse that simply said, “You need to hire her.” This was 100% out of my comfort zone. I came from a relatively traditional upbringing, and hiring a Life Coach was something that my dad (bless his heart) would have rolled his eyes at. I can almost hear him saying, “Nobody needs a coach for life!”. Ha! Nevertheless, I was in the flow and worrying about what others thought about my decisions had become secondary to following my path - and so I called this coach and booked a package with her.
On the first day of my first appointment, I showed up at her office and had absolutely no idea what to expect. I went inside and she asked if I would be comfortable starting out with a meditation and a visualization - and I said yes. I sat comfortably on an old-fashioned looking chair and gently closed my eyes as she started guiding me with soothing prompts:
You’re waking up in the morning and it’s an ideal day in your life.
What do you see?
Where are you?
What do you look like?
What’s the expression on your face?
How do you feel?
Interestingly enough, I saw myself at some sort of a resort or a retreat in a tropical location, but I was leading or hosting a class of some kind. The location didn’t seem particularly relevant to me - but what I did notice was how I felt: relaxed, excited, inspired, at ease, creative, peaceful and loved. Tears streamed down my face during the visualization as I began to see and witness a version of myself that I hadn’t seen in a long time - a happy, playful and carefree version of myself that had been hidden away and replaced by a cynical, sad version. As I looked at the happy version of myself in my mind’s eye… and simultaneously felt the sad version of myself… I wondered, “How did I let this happen? How did I ‘lose’ this part of who I was?”
As we moved through the meditation, she guided me to follow my breathing - noticing my inhales and my exhales, and then she asked me to imagine that I was holding a pad of sticky notes. If I noticed a thought come into my mind, she asked me to place one of two sticky notes on the thought. One sticky note said ‘imaginary’ … and one sticky note said ‘memory’. ‘Imaginary’ sticky notes were for thoughts that included: future planning, worrying, predicting events that hadn’t happened, what-if scenarios, and playing out conversations that hadn’t happened yet. ‘Memory’ sticky notes were for thoughts that included: ruminating over things that had happened in the past, specific memories of things I had done or said, images or ideas about places I’ve visited in the past.
With my eyes closed, I waited quietly until thoughts started arriving - which, of course, they did. As each one surfaced - instead of jumping down the ‘rabbit hole’ of that thought and getting lost, I simply labeled them with the appropriate sticky note and sent them on their way.
At the end of the meditation, she asked me to do one last thing… she asked me to smile. I smiled, and with tears streaming down my face, I said, “I wish I could feel like this forever!” She looked at me and asked, “Why can’t you?”. I knew in that moment that the only reason that I couldn’t feel like that - is because I told myself over and over that I couldn’t.
After performing the sticky note exercise numerous times (and still doing it to this day!), I suddenly started having an awareness of my thoughts. They still surfaced, of course, but I didn’t immediately believe all of them. As Tara Brach says, a thought can be, ‘real, but not true.’ Namely, the thought itself is a real thing, i.e. it is an energetic entity that exists within your mind. However, the content of that thought is most likely manufactured based on your own personal history, brain patterning and conditioning. Which means - it can be changed. This means that you can go from ‘This isn’t possible’, to, ‘I don’t know how this is possible, but I’m open to receiving the answers.’
And, friends, it is that tiny tiny flip of a switch that allows goodness to flow into your life. Unbeknownst to you - and through absolutely no fault of your own - you may have been unintentionally focused on the ‘lack of the thing’ or on what you didn’t want. And flipping that switch is what opens the infinite faucet of all things wanted into your beautiful sphere of existence.
The happiness of allowing
As I began the process of spending more time in the ‘space between’ - I noticed that I felt different. I noticed that as thoughts began to surface in my mind… I didn’t always believe them. As I shared in the ‘pee-cloth-wilderness-photo scene’ at the beginning of this post… thoughts like these would have stopped me in my tracks almost immediately:
But suddenly… I started to see and watch these thoughts arrive… and instead of believing them, I’d think to myself, “Oh! Imaginary!” And I’d come back to my breathing in the present moment and realize that right now, I was just fine. I didn’t need to know all the answers or worry about all of the ‘what ifs’ - I needed to trust myself that I would be able to handle those things in the moment, if I needed to do so.
I dedicated myself to my ‘6 tiny things’ - and as I continued to focus my efforts on my internal energy, everything around me continued to change. After I left my job at the railroad… I jumped with both feet into teaching my online hiking and backpacking group. I was sharing videos, teaching small online seminars and I even had two paid backpacking workshop weekends planned.
And do you know what happened then? An old friend came back. A gift of an idea that I had been given once upon a time during a silly photo shoot on a backpacking trip. The pee cloth idea knocked on my door and said, “Hey! Remember me? Remember when you were super excited about this idea that you had, but then you tossed it out? Well, guess what - I never gave up on you - and I’m still waiting. There isn’t an expiration date on me - I’m here to help you, if you’re ready.”
I was ready. After literally seeing my life pass before my eyes… what did I have to fear anymore? My pee cloth company failing? The illusory nature of all of my fears started to reveal itself and their power over me began to crumble. Suddenly, I didn’t see limits - I saw possibilities. I realized that I didn’t need to know everything… because somebody out there did know how to do it. All I needed to do was get good at using Google and asking questions.
I drew a basic prototype of my pee cloth idea and I had a friend who was a tailor, so I called her and told her what I wanted to do. “You need a serger”, she said. “What’s a serger?”, I asked back.
And so, I drove two hours to her house to pick up a serger (it’s a fancy sewing machine, I later learned). She showed me how to sew a straight line, and I took the serger home, where I promptly attempted to sew two pieces of fabric together and broke the thread. I tried to figure out how to re-thread the serger by watching YouTube videos, but I eventually resorted to asking my husband (who is much more patient with instructions) to try and figure it out. After 20 minutes, the machine was re-threaded and I set out to sew my very first pee-cloth.
In my mind, I was about to embark upon an earth-shattering moment – I was about to make the world’s first intentionally designed antimicrobial pee cloth. I knew that it was going to be the most incredible, astounding piece of gear that any adventurous person had ever seen. And so, I started sewing my first square.
To say that this first attempt resembled a square would be a slight exaggeration. The best description that I can articulate for this, ‘shape’ (if you could call it that) – would be a three-dimensional blobular amoeba.
And that, my friends, is how the very first Kula Cloth came into existence. It was a single moment in time that was the culmination of so many micro-moments of impossibility that even attempting to fathom the existence of this perfectly imperfect amoeba of fabric makes my heart ache with the beauty of its creation. It is one of the most beautiful gifts I’ve ever received in my life - not the piece of gear itself per se, but rather that connection and friends and joy and unexpected dancing and love and kindness and goodness that it has shown me.
As I look back on my unlikely trajectory now, I am sure of one thing. I am sure that from the place of complaining about my life, I could not have seen this - and would never have seen it. Kula Cloth did not live in that world, and so if I hadn’t changed my energy from within, I am positive that it would have stayed hidden - likely never to reveal itself through me. While my moments of despair and frustration were not wrong, they were simply not on the same ‘channel’ as the things that I wanted to create. It was only through the gentle process of moving myself in that direction that I was able to allow them to come into existence.
Embracing the woo
Now, maybe this sounds a bit woo-woo … or like science fiction… and it felt a bit like that to me too. Keep in mind that only a few years prior to this moment, I would have probably been the one mocking anybody who told me that I could ‘create’ anything in my life. But sadly, my uninformed mockery would have been coming from a place of purely stereotypical judgement based on zero life experience whatsoever. The only thing that I can recommend to anybody who approaches anything new with a healthy dose of skepticism is this: keep an open mind, and try it… and see what happens. Don’t go into something thinking, ‘this won’t work’ - because then… spoiler alert … it won’t work. Go into these concepts as a blank slate, try it out, and then make a determination for yourself.
The ‘ask’ here is simple: practice small habits like gratitude, appreciation, giving, meditation and kindness … and see what happens. As you generate the strong emotions of love that these small habits create - and you couple those emotions with a vision for what you want to create in the world without simultaneously ‘needing’ anything in order to feel those feelings - your ‘signal’ becomes very strong… and things will begin to shift for you. As you hold a vision in your heart, without needing to know all the answers of how it might be possible, you open yourself up to receiving the answers.
Keep in mind that where you are right now is perfect. It might not be where you want to be, but it is where you are. Again, I want to make it very clear that you have never done anything ‘wrong’. Life can sometimes seem like a challenging, chaotic mess - and it is ripe with a seemingly never ending assortment of emotions and experiences. Each one of these experiences is an important piece of who we are - and ultimately, the ‘reveal’ of life itself is that we are all connected by a deep truth - a loving fabric that is intertwined throughout all beings. As we each begin the path of uncovering the truth about who we are - the goodness that we sense within ourselves is shared with each life we encounter - and beyond.
It is my greatest hope that my words can serve as a tiny trail blaze on your own trail of reconnection and that you will begin to see glimmers of the radiant light that shines brightly from within your own heart.
As always - thank you so much for being here - I am so appreciative that you take the time out of your day to read or listen to The Kula Diaries. If you haven’t figured it out already … creating this pee cloth is not really about the pee cloth for me. What started as a journey to create a piece of gear has ultimately transformed into a much deeper experience of remembering a truth that I had long forgotten … a truth that we all forget … but come back to eventually. A truth that goes far beyond creating ‘stuff’ - and ultimately back to discovering a sense of wholeness and peace that exists beyond anything in the physical world. This is the wholeness and peace that I wish for each and every being on this planet.
I am sending you all so much love today, wherever and however you are. Please never hesitate to reach out to me with any questions at all… and if you want to submit a question for AMA with AMA, you can e-mail me at anastasia@kulacloth.com or submit it anonymously with this form.
Love,
Anastasia
P.S. This post is my 4th weekly post and will celebrate the 1 month anniversary of the Kula Diaries. Thanks so much for your support!!
Beautifully written 🌻