AMA with AMA: Answering YOUR questions!

Writing a collect... virtual friends... and aunthood.

Dear Kula Diaries,

It’s Wednesday, which means it’s time for another AMA: Ask Me Anything!

I look forward to answering your questions every single week, so thank you for submitting them. No question is too small… no prompt too weird… no random project you’d like me to undertake too daunting. If you have a suggestion, please share it with me!

This past weekend, Aaron and I had the chance to ride our motorcycles to Vashon Island to spend Kite Day with Captain Joe. Some of you read about our Lighthouse Quest last year… and Captain Joe was the reason for that quest. I’m sure I’ll write more about the experience soon — but I wanted to express my deepest gratitude to the universe itself for the gift of Lighthouses and Captain Joe. Aaron and I ‘discovered’ Captain Joe and the Lighthouse Quest last summer, during a particularly difficult time on my entrepreneurial journey — and it was, indeed, having something like a Lighthouse Quest that helped me remember the goodness that still existed in the universe — even when it was difficult for me to see or feel it.

I’m sharing this to say that it might be a literal light… or it might be a metaphorical one… but it is there… and it will guide you back home.

Ok… let’s answer some questions!

Dear AMA,

In his book, Being Here, Pádraig Ó Tuama discusses the poetic form of the collect:

“The idea is that you’re collecting your intentions and arranging them. In this form, you’re only allowed to ask one thing.”

Tuama says there is a basic five-fold structure to the collect:

Name the one you’re praying to (Address) Unfold the name of the one you’re praying to (Say more) Name one desire (Ask one thing) Unfold the desire you’ve named (Say more) Finish with a bird of praise (End)

Experiment with the form and write your own collect.

I have written many poems, but I had never written a collect before — and, honestly, I found it to be both beautiful and challenging.

You can find a beautiful discussion of the collect here:

In Eckhart Tolle’s The Power of Now, he mentions that the word God has been misunderstood and diluted over time — taking on the ‘persona’ of a judgmental ‘guy in the sky’. This was my understanding of God as a child: a divine Santa Claus who was ‘keeping tabs’ on me… and all of the things that I was doing wrong. God was something that I needed to force myself to believe in… like the tooth fairy or the Easter Bunny. I went through the motions at church (I was raised attending Catholic church), but I never really understood what I was doing. I’d sit… and stand… and kneel… and make the sign of the cross… without having any idea what it all meant. As a violinist, I also was often asked to play my violin at church — and I specifically remember saying, “I don’t really understand what goes on during the mass itself… but I do feel something when I play my violin.”

Over the decades, I’ve come to have a different understanding of the word God — as the source of all life, the universe, the intangible energy of love that permeates all things… but, I’ve also come to understand that the name doesn’t really matter, because a word can ultimately be a distraction to simply allowing yourself to feel and experience something in a natural way. Personally, I don’t go to church anymore — but I do feel more connected to life and the universe than I ever have. I can sense and feel the bigness of something — and without needing to waste time on the semantics of naming it — I can simply feel and appreciate the love that I know it is.

Ultimately, we cannot look outside of ourselves for the things that we are seeking — because, as Rumi writes, “You are not a drop in the ocean. You are the entire ocean, in a drop.” The love that exists out there … is also the love that exists within me, and within each of us. It is this connection that has given me the feeling of faith that I had previously often looked for… but never found.

Being present … finding a sense of peace in each moment… staying out of the stories in my mind is a daily practice for me. My mind sometimes feels like it wants to go there. And by ‘go there’ — I mean to a place that causes me great amounts of suffering… in worry, anxiety, or fear. Sometimes, I can catch myself as I begin to slip down that path, but other times, I don’t… and I descend into a world that feels very bleak. It is in those moments, sometimes, where I need a nudge… a reminder. And so, that is what I wrote my collect about — asking for help to remember who I am, when I’ve obscured the light.

This is what I wrote:

God or the universe
Whose name has often confused me and been misunderstood
But somehow, there is a part of me that understands that you are a part of everything
Today, bring me relief from the worlds
I create in my mind
A sweet honey drop 
Of ease and calm
And when I forget to see the sweetness
Of this moment 
Remind me that it's there and nudge me back
To try again
You, who accomplish the infinite without me needing to do anything at all. 

Dear AMA:

Picture this scenario: You’re at home, feeling lonely and sorry for yourself, when the phone rings out of the blue. It’s an old friend, checking in on you. For an hour, you have one of those rare, wonderful, uplifting conversations; by the time you hang up, you’re glowing inside. Ten minutes later, checking your email, you find a note from Meta revealing that it wasn’t your friend at all, but a brilliant voice-cloned simulation, automatically generated from videos your friend had uploaded to Facebook. A question: does this change anything?

First off, what a fun question to contemplate!

For me personally, I genuinely don’t think it would change anything — other than perhaps experiencing a moment of confusion and/or surprise, I think that I’d be more inclined to trust that the experience had happened because I needed it… and I’d be grateful that, in some strange way, I had allowed this virtual-friendship into my life.

Ultimately, the feelings that we want… are self-generated, even if we believe that they are coming from somebody else. For instance, if I’m having a blast hanging out with a friend — the feeling of fun is coming from me, and I’m enjoying the entire experience even more because I have somebody to share it with. The feeling is not coming from my friend. How do I know? Well, because I’ve been in situations before where I had every opportunity to have an amazing time with my friends… and, instead, I was so distracted by suffering that I had created in my own mind, that I was simply not able to find the feeling of enjoyment or fun. There was nothing that they could have done to make me feel better — it had to come from within me.

I spent a lot of time, unfortunately, chasing the feeling of something from another person — and, realistically, you could get the dopamine hit that you are looking for from a computer, if it knows exactly what to say. I still remember the days when AOL Chat Rooms waltzed into the internet scene — I think that I ‘fell in love’ with about 10 different people online… that is, until I met them in person. In my mind, I was able to create this ‘perfect version’ of who they were — and I attributed my own feelings of happiness and love to them. And yet, when they failed to meet my expectations… that feeling of love was instantly gone, and I was left trying to fill the gaping void that I thought they had created.

This is what AI came up with when I asked it to make an image of, ‘Anastasia Allison’ and her virtual friend - HA!

Once you know that you are the source of your own love and kindness and gratitude — you can experience it freely with others, without feeling that anything can be taken away from who you are. So, in this particular case — having a conversation with an old friend that isn’t real could feel really amazing — but in the recognition that the amazing feeling was generated by me, I don’t think I’d have to let that feeling go just because the person on the other end of the conversation wasn’t ‘real’. In fact, hopefully the energetic buzz would serve its purpose… and inspire me to do something that I had otherwise not considered: maybe I’d reach out to that old friend to tell them a story about this ‘funny thing that happened’. Love, generated from within, creates more love — and it is the one thing that, once you understand its true nature, can never be lost.

Dear AMA,

Are you an aunt?

I am an aunt! My sister Mare, who helps me run Kula Cloth has two kids — they are now in their teens, and they live in North Carolina, so I don’t get to see them very often. For most of their early childhood, they lived in either WA or Oregon, so I had the opportunity to spend a lot more time with them.

A photo from many years ago… Aaron drawing in the sand with our nephew.

I love my niblings very much, but I think that the best part of being an aunt has been the opportunity to watch my sister Mare raise her kids with a lot of love and compassion. Her children are loving, sensitive and kind — they are inclusive and open-minded… they are honest with her about things that I never would have dreamed about telling my parents. It’s really special to be able to see them grow up into wonderful compassionate individuals.

The last time that I saw my niblings, it was 2020 — in the midst of COVID. My husband and I flew to Maryland, which is where my parents live — and my sister met us there. During the week, we spent time hiking and taking photographs of Kulas and exploring rivers and waterfalls. It was a really wonderful experience to be able to spend time with them — and I hope that they will have the opportunity to visit me in Washington someday soon.

My mom’s sister — my aunt — is a cardiologist who has never had kids… and when I was a kid, I really looked up to her. I loved how independent she was and she was always the ‘wild aunt’ who gave us ridiculous gifts at Christmas — like the fluorescent green jeans jacket that I never wore, but now severely regret not wearing. She inspired me as a young kid that I could do anything that I wanted to do — and I hope that I can be an example to my niece and nephew in that way. I guess I’ve morphed into the wild aunt that I always envisioned myself to be — the trash-bag wearing, creepy cat loving, motorcycle riding, pee cloth slinging aunt who, despite any amount of distance, is always thinking about and loving her nephew and niece very much.

Hahah!

Friends — thank you all, as always for being here — it’s such a joy to write these words and share them each with all of you. I hope that this week brings you joy and peace — I’m sending you all so much love!