There's a Fissure in the Universe: Part I

A true-ish story.

Dear Kula Diaries,

It was a sunny summer afternoon when I discovered I could fly. I was sitting on the ledge above my house, looking out at the view below and I decided to do a meditation. I do this a lot on the ledge… it’s my favorite place to mediate. I perch myself on a rocky knoll and close my eyes. Soon, the world starts to fade away and I’m sitting there with my thoughts… until, even those start to become wispy. It was during one of these meditations that I felt a sense of buoyancy… of lightness… and to my absolute shock and amazement I looked down and saw that I was hovering above the knoll. “WHAT IN THE ACTUAL F”, I shrieked out loud in an entirely unspiritual manner. With a thud… I plopped back down on the ground. In a daze, I looked around. Did I dream that? Had I been so deep in my meditation that I had imagined I was flying? I had to find out.

When I was a little girl, I distinctly remember flying around my bedroom. I don’t know how old I was, but I must have been younger than 10 years old, because this memory takes place in our house in North Carolina. I’m lying in bed, and then suddenly… I lift off and fly around my room. I dip and dive and swirl in the air… and then plop back onto my bed. Some time later, I open my eyes and quickly pat my arms and legs to make sure they are still there — everything appears to be intact. Was that real? Was it a dream? My brain tells me it wasn’t real, but as a little girl, there was a part of me that really believed it had happened.

This time, I wasn’t going to take any chances. I needed definitive proof. I stood up on the ledge, and closed my eyes again… searching for that sense of buoyancy. The ledge sits with about 50 feet of exposure down a rocky cliff to a tangled mess of forest below it. I’ve dropped my earbuds down there before, and climbing down to retrieve them was not fun. A fall? Well, that definitely wouldn’t feel very good. But I was pretty convinced that I knew how to fly. So, I thought, What’s could go wrong? As it turns out, that’s probably the worst thought that you could ever have if you are a human flight newbie… still not even sure if you can actually fly… and are currently about .0005 seconds from trying to test it out by stepping off a 50 foot ledge. But, that’s exactly what I was about to do.

The view from the ledge.

Ok, hold that thought. We’ll back to it in a bit.

Today, we are going to do some time travelling. We are going to travel back in time to about 3 weeks ago from today. I was sitting in my office that day… trying to write my weekly diary entry for The Kula Diaries… and nothing was coming to me. People have asked me where my ideas come from, and I wish that I had an answer to that. I don’t have a grand plan… I don’t have a content schedule… I just plan to sit down and write every week, and I trust in some way that the words will come to me. Well… three weeks ago, when I was trying to write my weekly post… the words did not come to me very naturally… but some words did come. This is what I wrote:

October 27, 2023

I’m sitting in my Kula Office, talking to one of my Kula employees, and I say to her… “What should I write about this week?” I feel scatterbrained and distracted. This is one of those weeks where being the owner of a business… being a human… has been tested in ways that I haven’t experienced before. -I told my husband, “There’s a fissure in the universe… I’m sure of it.” During the last few weeks, if you had told me that I was currently inhabiting the Twilight Zone, I would have believed you.

On Thursday, I wrote my founder’s message for the Kula newsletter… and I struggled to find the words to put down there too. As I was writing, the only thing that I could think about was the birthday card that my mom had made for me this year:

The Moby Dick themed card that my mom painted for my birthday.

On the inside of the card, she wrote the words of a prayer attributed to Shantideva:

May I become at all times, both now and forever A protector of those without protection A guide for those who have lost their way A ship for those with oceans to cross A bridge for those with rivers to cross A sanctuary for those in danger A lamp for those without light A place of refuge for those who lack shelter And a servant to all in need For as long as space endures, And for as long as living beings remain, Until then may I, too, abide To dispel the misery of the world.

What was really remarkable about this prayer… that my mom couldn’t have known… is that I had been listening to the last four lines of it almost every morning, in this beautiful recording from the Dalai Lama:

I try to include this into my morning walk… I find a place to sit, usually on the little ledge overlooking the area where I live. I put my ear buds in… press play… and close my eyes. There is a little piece of my heart that weeps when I listen to this prayer, because it’s simultaneously so hopeful… and yet also in acknowledgement of the most difficult parts of life. Darkness and light… co-existing.

When I was talking to my employee about writing this Substack, she told me that it seemed like I always had things to write about… but I was honest with her, and I have to be honest with all of you… this week, the words did not come easily. I was so ‘distracted’ by some of the complexities of life that I had a hard time finding the stillness that I so often mention. I’d do a meditation, and within the first few breaths, my mind would be elsewhere — in an imaginary world of what-ifs and worry. I made it through each day feeling like a little bit of a shell — detached from who I really was, and decidedly not residing in my body or my heart.

This was all I could muster for my weekly newsletter on October 27th.

And yet, there is a part of me that knows that even this is important. In our Kula Diaries Book Club this week, we talked about Chapter 9 in The Power of Now (which is my favorite chapter in the entire book). One of the first passages in Chapter 9 speaks to this very idea:

“Do you truly know what is positive and what is negative? Do you have the whole picture? There have been many people for whom limitation, failure, loss, illness or pain in whatever form turned out to be their greatest teacher. It taught them to let go of false self-images and superficial ego-dictated goals and desires. It gave them depth, humility, and compassion. It made them more real.”

I lived for a lot of my life trying to push away the things that I had labeled as bad, and it wasn’t until I started to practice acceptance and forgiveness, that I was able to begin to see the goodness that was often hidden in the chaos. It was never an easy path to discover it… but, when I was open to the idea that it was there, I was able to see the tiny flicker of light, that I wouldn’t have otherwise noticed.

When I first started writing The Kula Diaries, I had no idea what to expect… or if anybody would even want to read anything that I wrote. Many years ago, I wrote a blog about hiking… but, in true Anastasia fashion, I quit before I actually let it develop into anything that was sustainable or meaningful. I talked myself out of it, before it even had a chance to become anything. And now… for nearly 1/2 of a full year, I’ve managed to write 2x per week… to send these words out into the universe and hope that they find the people who might be interested in hearing them.

The past few weeks have been a little hectic - moving into a brand new office, adjusting from working at home to working away from home… supervising more employees… and dealing with some complex situations. There have been moments when I just want to lie down on the ground and scream into the void. There have been moments when I wonder if I am doing enough. There have been moments where I have second guessed myself… and second guessed my second guessing. There are

And that was it. That was all I wrote… and I saved it as a draft. I ended it two words into that sentence, and I don’t even really remember what I was going to write next. This week, I read it again, and I decided that I wanted to finish it. So, here goes…

There are … moments in life that sometimes make you question what you are doing and why you are doing it. And then there are moments where you raise the white flag and throw up your hands into the air … and decide that it isn’t even worth repeating the story anymore, because dwelling on things in the past is only holding you in resonance to the energy of the past. You remember that what you really care about isn’t where you’ve been… but where you want to go. Which is decidedly not where you just were… and you know that the more and more you focus on where you were, you’ll just continually hit the repeat button on that.

There are lots of moments like that in life. Sure. I could write about them all day. We all could. But there are also moments when you are sitting in your office on a normal work day and you suddenly remember that last summer on a brilliantly sunny day… you learned how to fly.

To be continued….

Love,

Anastasia

P.S. I’ve had a lot of fun writing this… it took on a life of its own… and can’t wait to share Part II next week. If you are traveling or celebrating a holiday this week, I wish you ease and peace and safe travels. If your plan is to enjoy quiet time at home or elsewhere, I also wish you ease and peace and a sense of belonging, exactly how you are. Thank you all so much for being here - you are loved.