Have you ever had the laugh that begins with your toes and ends out of the top of your head? The laugh that hurts so hard that you cant breathe and you beg someone else to stop whatever it is so you can stop laughing and then when you think you’ve got it licked, you just look at or say something and it begins just as intensely as the first time. It is fun, and gleefully exhausting with resulting body aches.

Now take sobbing. Lying on the kitchen floor peering at cobwebs under the cabinets through tear blurred eyes. A sorrowful wail that will not stop until it has had its voice. The kind of sorrow that is not enjoyable or welcome. It depletes the body of all faculties and it feels like you’ve been wrung out like a dishtowel.

And finally, orgasms. Intense, heated, toe tingling, please don’t stop, orgasms. The kind of feeling that takes hold of you with shared heavy breathing, muscles contracting automatically in a rhythmic pulse that would make a percussion section put down their sticks. This is a most wonderful gift that renders the body useless afterward because there is nothing left to give.

I am not saying that they are good or bad but I do believe that there is a common thread. A full body release. It is a complete opening of all conduits; physical, emotional, energetic, ethereal, and spiritual. So the thing that I try to do at all times is to allow full expression. It is not easy to do and I have to do a lot of deep breathing when the sobbing hits but I do know that it is just as important to feel the bad as much as I know that the other feelings are needed as well.

Laughter is the best medicine. It is also best to practice it proactively. I do not know how I would have survived this transition if weren’t for levity and a curiosity for life. I connect with people through my heart and with humor. I always tell my prospective clients that if there is a heart connection and we have a laugh then we will likely work together.

I cannot tell you how often I laugh during the day but it is often. I make myself laugh all the time, laugh at situations, and laugh with my friends whenever I speak with them. No class clown here but a quick wit and humility can go a long way in any relationship. Well almost any. With this being said I find it curious that so many people find it amazing that I am able to be happy so soon after Jill’s physical departure. I also find it curious that one thing I often hear is that she would want you to be happy. Just following orders!

I know that I can choose to engage in and enjoy being here while I am or I can  choose to be broken hearted. It really isn’t a choice for me anymore. It seems as if a switch was flipped in my being that knows truth and love and will not allow anything but that. I do have an essence of sadness that still tints my spirit’s colors but it is not as intense as it was. I choose to completely allow the sadness whenever it arises and that helps release the trigger to the painful part of a memory or thought. Whenever I think about doing something that I don’t want to do and I know will make me feel the sadness and usually lead to sobbing, I do it. Listening to her seventeen voicemail messages I have saved through the years, looking at her photos and videos, or cooking foods that remind me of her. Each time I do this it hurts, but a little less, and I am able to rejoice in the pleasure of that experience for all the beautiful wonder that it is, I am, and life is. Sometimes it takes longer to come out of the sadness but I am able to let it have its voice and then it is done just as much as a good belly laugh doesn’t last forever.

When I speak with someone about my approach to being they are compassionate and amazed at how “strong” I am. I have always believed that if you don’t like something, do something about it and quit your bitchin.’ Life is a wave meant to be surfed; fall down, get up. I also know that having a human body is only necessary to be here and that our existence is way beyond this physical blip. So with this knowledge I can not feel as woe is me because she is okay, I am okay, and this is just another shift in my being as much as it is a shift in her being.

To be clear, it is not easy and it is worth the hurt. There’s a new slogan. “Worth the hurt.” Not masochistic hurt but a heart centered, mindful, acceptance of sadness as much as I accept all other feelings. Each time we come back into a new body it is to spiritually clean house. Karma is the script we create for ourselves before entering our physical life that will help us to become loving, compassionate, and accepting. The lessons we are presented are not always clear but I do know that we are given many subtle and not so subtle signs as to what our path is. When we take the time to stop, breathe, and process before acting or reacting, it becomes much clearer that we are being guided. How many times do you know something in your gut, don’t follow it, and afterward say “I knew I was right.”

That gut sense is a wonderful tool that is not used enough. It can be your most powerful ally, ardent protector, and lighthouse in the fog. Trust it more and it will strengthen; because we are all part of nature and this is your animal instinct that can be developed with practice. No one or thing is infallible and sharpening your instinct does not necessarily happen overnight and it isn’t always right or wrong but it is a gift that is not often fully appreciated. Let yourself off the hook and laugh at/with life for it can be very funny if you can just take a moment to consider the source, stop, breathe and process. Enjoy as much as you can of every moment of every day for it is all temporary and wondrous. Namaste

It’s interesting. That is the word I always seem to use that best describes my life now, my being. I do not know how many days it’s been since Jill left as I stopped counting many weeks ago. It didn’t really seem to matter any more, one day, thirty, two hundred… Every day is a new day and this is the blessing that I acknowledge. The new day brings more love to me as I am more able to tap into that source from which Jill and I share and also shared when we were both physically here. It is this love that gets me through the days, knowing full well that her physical departure was an agreement that Jill and I made before entering our bodies this time around. This pact is a weighty one because of the pain the had to occur for us both. It must be in some great part an agreement to awaken my full being and for her continued path of existing to which I am not privy the details. I believe that had she not left her body that I would still be on my life’s treadmill and might have physically died before her because of the intensity of it. This physicality we have is only a way point in our existing.

Some moments are better than others but no day is terrible anymore. I accept that she is gone from her body and I also know that I will have relationship and joy again to which I will be guided. With that acceptance I also fully engage the sorrow, and sadness, and loneliness that invade my being from time to time. I do have peace and laughter as well.

Being alone again, not in a relationship, is quite the extreme from what I have known for over 13 years. Our home included Jill, Bingo, and me. Notice that I put Bingo before me. He was our baby (a 110lbs. Great Dane/boxer mix) for the entire time Jill and I knew each other and he left his body four months before she did. It’s been one hell of a year. The house is the same, our bed, the décor… but the palpable shift in energy and lack of physicality is at times horrible but mostly different.

With all this new experience my being is easier to be. The rules have changed. There are no more rules. No obligation, no guilt, no regrets, no fears, no worries, no expectations, and no judgment. A change from the previous Ian that once inhabited this body. I am not saying that I was all of the aforementioned but I certainly did entertain a tighter tone sometimes even whilst living with Jill; the essence of love and compassion. What’s interesting about this new being is that I can not undo it, I like it, and I am free. My spirit has been unchained from its karmic shackles and has taken flight again, remembering what it’s like to see my way vividly through the dark and completely engage in everything “good” and “bad”.

It’s all interesting and when I am able to question I know that I am on my path. Am I really doing this? How am I able to be so peaceful? Is this walking the walk or just talking it? My friend Charlie laughs every time I pose this query because he says that it is genuine and rife with love and grace and that only a crazy person doesn’t question if he/she is crazy. I welcome all the experiences that come with this new being and indulge in awareness that radiates love like the brilliant gem that warms my body when I am in a cloudless day.

Okay, so it has been an interesting Thanksgiving week and I have had my share of waves to surf. Some were enjoyable like beautiful blue waters in Bali and then there were the crashing breakers of the North Sea.

I was missing Jill as I pulled in front of our cabin today. I slowed as I always did to see her in the window at the kitchen sink beaming an effervescent white smile with blue pools of love streaming from her eyes towards me. Yet again I could not see this and my heart twitched for a moment in recollection of the love and the loss I was simultaneously feeling at that moment. I turned the key and quieted the engine and also with some deep breaths the mind noise that had just taken up primary position in my thoughts. Groceries in, fire built, vanilla candle wafting from its flame. We I don’t keep the house as neat as it was before. It could use some detailing. It hasn’t seemed as important as it did before. Tomorrow it gets a good once over. We I like things to present well, not perfectly, just well.

Rambling I know but this is what’s coming out so I just go with it. So when I got home I was sad for a bit and that’s okay for me just as much as being happy is okay for me. It’s just another feeling and there is wonder in all of it. Sometimes the sadness is terrible and then it shifts and I am okay again. I don’t like the sadness, it sucks, but I don’t necessarily fear it. I also don’t hold onto it when it is done. It continues on its journey as a tide crashing the shore and then flowing out again. Holding on to sadness is like using it as an excuse for being a certain way and it usually isn’t a good, joyful, or nice way of being. I’m not judging, just aware. So anyway I was sad, was walking into the bathroom to shower and was compelled, and I do mean compelled, to find the theme song to The Greatest American Hero right now, listen to it and hear the words. This is not a song, let alone TV show, that I have thought about in ages.

Look at what’s happened to me-,

I can’t believe it myself.

Suddenly I’m up on top of the world,

It should’ve been somebody else.

Believe it or not,

I’m walking on air.

I never thought I could feel so free-.

Flying away on a wing and a prayer.

Who could it be?

Believe it or not it’s just me.

Just like the light of a new day-,

It hit me from out of the blue.

Breaking me out of the spell I was in,

Making all of my wishes come true.

Believe it or not,

I’m walking on air.

I never thought I could feel so free-.

Flying away on a wing and a prayer.

Who could it be?

Believe it or not it’s just me.

This is too good to be true.

Okay I get it, thanks for the reminder and support Jill. The music and words roused a smile in me and shifted my mood. I know that Jill is totally okay, better than okay, and existing as always. It’s not that she died as much as she shifted being and left her body behind. It’s part the cycle of life and nature and we are all one in that cycle. What I know is that I am experiencing the dying of a way of being as I too shift. This is not to say that I do not mourn the loss of the human Jill and our coexistence corpus to corpus. What I am saying is that I strongly feel our love which is really a universal feeling that we tapped into together rather than something that we created between us. I am grateful that I was able to share in it with her and also grateful that I will share in it again. As much as I know that she is okay I also know that I am okay and this is yet another chapter of my journey as being a human being for however long it lasts.

As my loving friend Charlie Morris said to me when I told them to stop trying to revive her body “Jill is now in a place of love and joy and peace. Why don’t you try to match her at that frequency while you still have a body?” Thank you Charlie for those words, they resonated. I will engage in all of it with eager eyes as a child explorer does and venture forward with the knowledge (not belief or faith) that all is as it is. Namaste

PS: Too funny, I was going online to facebook to post this and hit a link to Buddhist quotes and found this.

“I do not perceive even one thing, O monks, that when undeveloped and uncultivated entails such great suffering as the mind. The mind, when undeveloped and uncultivated, entails great suffering.” ~The Buddha (from “In the Buddha’s Words” translated by Bhikkhu Bodhi)

PPS: Charlie’s blog is www.MeetingWithCharlie.com

“Ego is the problem. Sometimes ego is very spoiled, like a child who is constantly throwing tantrums. Sometimes ego doesn’t accept where we are. Sometimes ego doesn’t accept who we are. Sometimes ego doesn’t accept things the way they are without any real complaint. So what do we do? There is nothing that we can do. Sometimes ego doesn’t accept the fact that the sky is blue, but there is nothing we can do, you see. Sometimes ego doesn’t accept that we are living on a planet which is permeated with natural disasters, earthquakes, floods, and other catastrophes. All we can do is accept that, and learn how to surrender to the flow of all events.” ~Anam Thubten (from “No Self, No Problem)

So powerfully true. Our ego (mind) doesn’t accept things as they are but wants them they way it should be. Awareness of our mind and breathing into our hearts is a way to take the sting out of life. namaste