 A dear friend clued me into this phenomenon recently. How there seems to be a “Disparaging Spirit” that we all sorta have within us at varying levels. And is it a “spirit” or is it a subtle wave that moves through people and even more often through groups? I’m not sure. But for now I’ll categorize it as a “spirit” that can take hold of a person. The “Disparaging Spirit” desperately needs both a host and an audience to live and thrive. It needs people it can engage, enlist and enroll into its never ending quest to be right. It can be very soft and quiet in some folks and extremely loud and obnoxious in others. But make no mistake, we all have it within us. The "Disparaging Spirit" is universal in that way. Personally I suspect the "Disparaging Spirit's" roots lie in the shade of unworthiness but who knows the motivations various people have underneath it all.
The “Disparaging Spirit” takes hold in us when we share and state out loud our low opinion of others with others. It’s exactly like casting a spell of bad seeds. The "Disparaging Spirit" starts out as a series of thoughtforms that then become verbal. Or written. Or recorded in a video. It can take many forms and yield many rotten fruits for both the host, those listening to the host and of course whomever is being slandered. The “Disparaging Spirit” often just wants to hear itself talk as much as it demands attention from others. And sometimes the “Disparaging Spirit” is so frightened that it will be discovered by its host (and others) that it clings desperately to itself until the host is totally overtaken and blinded. Desperate to be Relevant. Powerful. Wise. Whatever. Splitting (and justifying the splitting over and over) until the spell is cast! The “Disparaging Spirit” is insidious when it takes hold. It grips for dear life even on the smallest things so much so that the smallest things become the biggest things. There’s no room for the messiness and realness of life with the “Disparaging Spirit” because messy is what life IS. The “Disparaging Spirit” only wants what it wants and blinds its host from seeing the 95% of things going well. Going really well, actually. It only allows the host to see the tiny fraction that went sideways, went messy, went awry. The (occasional) human messiness of others becomes WHO THEY ARE to the "Disparaging Spirit" and the host can no longer relate to others in the same way. Bonds are broken and trust is shattered because of the "Disparaging Spirit." The “Disparaging Spirit” doesn't care to see how it’s hurting others. How spewing the low opinion cast of others is *really* a reflection (or projection) of themself (onto others). And I say “them” here with clarity. The “Disparaging Spirit” often overtakes its host so the host can’t see him or her Self anymore. Can’t see the beauty of community. The beauty of friendships. The comfort of knowing that others have their back. The "Disparaging Spirit" only wants to be right. The “Disparaging Spirit” lurks at the edges wherever there are people because it’s a parasitic phenomenon that needs bodies to operate in and through. When the "Disparaging Spirit" has a strong hold of someone, the person is but a shell of themselves and can even hide the Heart-centered person other people thought they knew. The throat chakra of the host is blown open but disconnected from the Heart. The openness of the throat is connected to the fear and fluidity and power that reside below the Heart as well as the observations and insights from the upper chakras but somehow the Heart got skipped, so much so that the Humanity of others is completely dismissed. The Compassion that was once there becomes blank and cruel. The “Disparaging Spirit” cloaks (and chokes!) the Heart in the spirit of being right and being heard at all costs. Even if what's being said isn't even true or at the bare minimum is an exaggerated and wildly inaccurate distortion. All in the name of being right. And how does the “Disparaging Spirit” get activated? Well. The world is chock full of fodder! Turn on the nightly news. Look at a political campaign. Go for a scroll on your social media accounts. Stand in line at a big box retail store on Black Friday. And then there’s a goopy cruel way that it can activate. Sometimes a course of study can activate the “Disparaging Spirit” in a host. Let’s say you’re studying the criminal justice system and you’re in semester after semester of classes on serial killers and the best way to deal with them. Maybe you begin to look through this lens at others in your life. You begin to overlay what you’re learning onto people in your life until you (hopefully) wake up one day and realize that the people in your life aren’t in fact serial killers! OMG, you’ve just been saturated in material that had you looking at your life and through this lens of serial killers. As it turns out, you can finally fucking relax! Everyone in your life is not a serial killer! This is an extreme example to be sure but the same is true of ANY course of study. You can’t help but overlay what you’re studying onto others. Whether it's astrology, psychology or…. serial killers. As much as the “Disparaging Spirit” demands to be heard, it can’t stand being called out. It needs a host to stay alive. So: I see you “Disparaging Spirit.” I see you clearly and how you cloud people in this world. And I pray that your hosts awaken to what's happening here to both themselves and humanity. Awaken to how you make things difficult for both the host and the people in their orbit. And I want to point out here that what I’m speaking of isn’t related to traumatic and completely tragic events of this world - like poverty, slavery, addiction or war. Those things need our strong words sometimes to wake people up! What I’m talking about is the "stuff of life", like... what meal is served, for example. Sometimes we’re just humans trying to figure out how to relate to one another in community - juggling disparate personalities, food allergies or offering compromises in a spirit of radical hospitality. Trust that, in general, folks are doing the best they can. That they have your back. That you’re liked as a person for exactly who you are and what YOU bring to the party. There’s room for everyone to be Wise. For everyone to have a say. Someone else shining brightly doesn’t diminish YOUR shine, sis (or bro). Truly. Disparaging words about real people in your life are never going to be the answer. I’m reminded of an old Negro Spiritual hymn I grew up singing. I’m the daughter of a preacher and we were very often invited to the Black churches to worship. In fact, I will often work with hymns to dispel the “Disparaging Spirit” within myself when I see the disparaging thoughtforms start to come alive in me. Because hymns take real physical and mental energy to process, leaving little space for disparaging thoughts and words to manifest about people in my life. There’s the musicality of hymns, the words themselves and then the meanings of the hymns. Often the teachings there are just what I needed to hear. And for me, a desire to cast the spells of hymns will often fill that “spell casting” desire that I, as a human, innately have. That we all have. Casting spells gives us vitality and power and is often one of the things the “Disparaging Spirit” is itching for, I’ve noticed. It’s just that the “Disparaging Spirit” is so, so… well, disparaging! So in that spirit, this hymn was always a favorite of mine. Maybe you know it too. I’m gonna lay down my sword and shield, Down by the riverside, Down by the riverside, Down by the riverside; Gonna lay down my sword and shield, Down by the riverside, Going to study war no more. Chorus: I ain't goingt' study war no more, Ain't goingt' study war no more, Ain't goingt' study war no more. Ain't goingt' study war no more, Ain't goingt' study war no more, Ain't goingt' study war no more. Going to lay down my burden, Down by the riverside, Down by the riverside, Down by the riverside; Going to lay down my burden, Down by the riverside, Going to study war no more. [Chorus] Going to try on my starry crown, Down by the riverside, Down by the riverside, Down by the riverside; Going to try on my starry crown, Down by the riverside, Going to study war no more. [Chorus] Somehow this hymn feels relevant when dealing with someone seized with the "Disparaging Spirit." Best to not engage. Let it be. Pray. Send Metta. Especially to those who may disparage me and disparage those I love. May it be so.
2 Comments
 Tomorrow, yes tomorrow July 25, I'm launching a new Living Mandala Podcast series called "Chakras of the House." It's a 9-part conversation series with Religious Studies professor and scholar, Dr. G. William Barnard. There's no one better in North Texas to chat about this with, so thank you, Dr. Barnard for your time, your energy and your encouragement. We recorded the whole conversation this past weekend but I'm going to roll it out every two weeks in case you want to follow along with your own house. Meaning, you can go back to your home for a somewhat systematic assessment and golden opportunity to clean and clear various parts of the house, your body and even your filing cabinet! Hope it's helpful.
May it be so!  After musing and sound boarding with a trusted circle of friends, here goes: The Living Mandala Podcast! It’s just a tip-toe in. No splashy, professional launch. No 10-part series drop to whet everyone’s appetite. No “best practices” according to the websites and blogs I’ve read. And especially no comparison to podcasts I listen to. No, as I’ve considered the best way to navigate this new territory, I’ll just do what I do and see what happens. There is no pressure. I’m eternally grateful to new (old) friend and actual podcast expert Ana Xavier for encouraging to just jump in the pool and see what happens. No need to be perfect. Do it for the joy of it. Be low key and see what happens.
And what will this podcast discuss? Well, stuff that I find interesting and that’s adjacent to my consulting practice, Living Mandala Consulting. That said, I could easily veer off course if a super interesting person comes my way. I’m going to be open minded like that. The name says is all - Living Mandala, based philosophically on the Hermetic quote: “As above, so below, as within, so without, as the universe, so the soul…” ― Hermes Trismegistus Please know that eventually I’ll get this right but for this nanosecond this podcast will be clunky as hell because I’ve still got to navigate the RSS business with Apple and other platforms that seem like I should be on. I did figure out how to sync up with YouTube automatically, so that’s nice. You can certainly subscribe there for now if that’s easiest. Thanks for your attention, your time and I hope only to reciprocate with all kinds of good stuff in the near (and far) future. The vision is to drop these on Tuesdays at Dawn. That’s when I was born and it seems like that’s a good time to replicate in a weekly fashion as I rebirth myself over and over through the medium of my Voice. After my ego has been annihilated of course. Anyway, with zero fanfare, enjoy the first episode! Can’t wait to see what happens. I’d love to know what YOU would want to hear about from me. Especially if you know me and know something of my eclectic background. May it be so. 
Here's a short video wherein I wax about what I'm up to these days. And what's going on in my world. It's a wide open and vulnerable share. But here we are.
Hari Om Tat Sat.
 What a year! A full year of Full Moon Salons. A strangely cool "moon"thly commitment P and I made well over a year ago. An inspired idea to "get us through" what we knew would be an interesting year. And yes, 2022 has been a VERY interesting year. Holy shit. But here we are. Complete with all 13 moons in the experiment. 13 gatherings to explore a higher order. What does it look like and feel like and sound like to invite people over to our humble little home to talk, to dream, to learn, to ruminate, to germinate, and to connect on the night of the full moon, full illumination? Well, it looked like this when the weather was nice and we could meet in our giant backyard:  And it looked like this when we met in the living room because it was raining, too hot, too cold, whatever:  Each Salon was interesting and cool in its own right. Each Salon had it's own mixture of faces, with someone new coming each and every month. And of course there were committed ones, the ones who also attended each and every moon, just like P and me. The steady presence of dear friends and the wonderful conversations we had have totally have gotten us through a challenging year. A long written narrative of the whole series is basically written and it's been a joy to capture. Maybe I'll share it someday, maybe not. Shrug. Moving on, one of the new courses of study I've picked up in 2022 has been examining Runes. I received a set of them this past summer and have been working steadily with them since. You don't really "ask" the Runes a question, specifically a yes/no question. No, instead you bring a conundrum, an idea, a situation and then cast the stones. You determine your own course of action (or inaction) based on the interpretation of these oracle stones and the order in which they're cast. (Also, I'm not an authority on Runes but over time I am totally seeing how precise and amazing they are. I have deep respect for the Runes, y'all.) So, after the final Full Moon Salon was over and we'd picked up the house, I sat down at my altar and went over the day in my head. A few really positive things happened, one kinda disappointing thing happened and then of course the cherry on top was the final Full Moon Salon in this series. Bittersweet is the word that comes to mind. And this is what I drew:  Without even getting into the interpretations of the stones themselves, I first noticed how oddly geometrically connected they are. How the one in the middle (bow)ties the two on either side somehow. I read each interpretation from my main source book. Okay. Sure. Meanings absorbed. Fine.
And then I went to my secondary interpretation material. Material I have personally aggregated from a wide variety of sources and put into my own reference document for a more faceted approach to their interpretation. The first thing I noticed from this secondary source is that the Rune on the far right is associated with Jupiter. A planet we had spoken about just that evening at the Salon. How Jupiter rules Thursday (the day of the final Salon) and how the day itself is imbued with the qualities of Jupiter: expansive, social, convivial and so on. The Rune in the middle is associated with the Full Moon. Which, obviously got a chuckle out of me because well, it's a full moon. And the final Rune on the left? It's associated with the sign of Gemini. Really? On the night of the full moon in Gemini?! Because there I was: asking the Runes for insight on my (very full and rich) day. And they told me it was Thursday, Full Moon in Gemini. And the message of the Rune casting (to me) was to get present, be still, go within. Which, is exactly what I did. I set my meditation timer and did my evening sit. Mega-cool, present-tense meta, meta, meta! Anyway, the universe has a sense of humor and I feel complete (for now) with the Salon. Yes, something else is sorta brewing for a 2023 Salon series but it won't be every month. P and I hibernate now. More soon. May it be so.  photo by Cole Suttle on the Full Sturgeon Moon Each Salon has been more fulfilling than the next, seriously. The series only has four more Salons so if you'd like to experience this "moon"thly gathering, please know all are welcome with a proper RSVP. Peruse the website to see who we've had at past Salons and check the dates for the remaining four. Who knows what we'll talk about next! Next up - all things Living Mandala Consulting.  I get asked a lot about this in person. (My aren't we curious?) But yeah, projects are happening! And each one is confidential in nature so I can't really dish much, now can I? Will this be my forever gig? I mean, maybe. I certainly do enjoy the project-based nature of the work. Let's just say I have a few more months left in my official self-imposed sanity sabbatical and time will tell. I'm open to the right invitations for something completely different. But in the meantime, I LOVE working with each and every client who trusts me enough to bring me into their most intimate spaces (and auric fields) and help them make changes for the better. And then the home front. The improvements continue with our 100+ year old home. (Paul's in there fixing a spot on the kitchen wall right now.) And Lemon the tiny kitty is officially a big boy.  The biggest life shift (by far) has been my mother and her husband moving in. I'll just leave that sentence there where it is.
That's quite enough for now. Oh and I'm writing like mad. I do have that going for me. Onwards! May it be so.  Six years as Aurah. Six years since I took her hand and walked out of a fairy tale and into the Default World working with that name. While it was “just a school project” the premise was more than I could resist. To construct a ritual experience to birth myself (and two willing friends) as an Adept at Magic into this material plane? Vowing to do her best to make the world a better place. Vowing to make a difference. Vowing to choose love, choose kindness, choose to learn and practice virtuous magic. That’s the baseline orientation of “Aurah” and calling myself by this name has been and continues to be a powerful and simple verbal queue that helps me remember these vows over and over again. It’s been an extra-ordinary journey and one I reflect upon with sincere gratitude. Especially to my beloved teacher who authorized and encouraged such an audacious experience. Go big or go home, as I like to say!   Our annual dinner on the equinox was an exquisite delight. The meal the mister and I prepared was a hearty winter stew coupled with a vivid green salad to celebrate the balance between the seasons. I also made a couple of loaves of homemade bread to round out the meal. After dinner we read our birth story from Unified Field Theory of Oz and I passed out gifts as thanks, once again, for their willingness to do something magical. I’m eternally grateful to this crew for their intrepid spirits and open minds to come with me on a totally hairbrained journey. Happy New Year, Adepts!  May it be so!
 I quit my job last month so that I could just be "me" for a while. In that spirit I am sharing that I'm officially available for consultation and project work. For a list of the business-ey things I offer, please visit me here. For a list of the more esoteric (and yet freakishly grounding) things I offer, please visit me here. Let's see if we're a good fit for your project or endeavor.
It's the full moon in Leo. Seems obvious to "put all this out there" today. Oh and if you haven't RSVP'd for the Full Moon Salon, get on it. I'm sending the email out to all those who RSVP this afternoon!  And so, what about the last five years? I’m not quite sure what I’m going to say about it but here goes….
After I left the science museum in 2016, I took some time off. Seriously, like a couple of months. I read a lot. I started that Salon. I went out to West Texas for a while. I took walks every morning with the dog, that type thing. At some point, a friend mentioned that she had a friend that was “looking for someone like me” and did I want to meet with her? I don’t want to say too much about the next four months of the adventure. I may have even signed an NDA (I can’t remember) but either way, the experience doesn’t get much airtime with me. In the end it was a frustrating and dare I say “spoiled” situation riddled with paradox and contradictions. At some point I realized it was not going to work out and went ahead and applied for a cool job as Executive Director of a sweet little nonprofit. I met with the board of directors and had a contract in front of me with a decent benefits package. I asked a former coworker at the music station where I used to work for a recommendation and he literally stopped me mid-sentence and was like “Wait, you’re on the market? I need you to apply for this job we are about to post…” And that’s how I ended up back at the public media station in a totally different job in January of 2017. And I’m not kidding when I say the job was huge. Enormous. But it paid really well and I took the gig knowing I would only last 4-7 years. I even told my boss and my staff this fact the moment I was hired. The truth is I already knew this job burned people out. Just in the time I’d been around the first time at the music station I’d seen numerous folks in this position go through a revolving door. Again, the work is enormous. In essence, it’s raising millions of dollars and managing a decent sized team. There’s the mail program, there’s the vehicle donations, there’s the matching gifts, there’s the monthly contributors to care and feed for, there’s the digital fundraising and then there’s the on air fundraising. On three channels: the music station, the news station and the TV station which translated to ten on air fundraising campaigns a year! Not to mention the thousands of coffee mugs, tote bags and assorted thank you gifts plus the hundreds (and hundreds) of member comments and complaints. I’m not complaining though. I had my eyes open when I took the gig. And for the first few years I thrived. I fixed things that were broken, I mapped all our processes and optimized practices that were cumbersome. I got all the trains on the track and running on time. I was an enormous breath of fresh air and energy that helped everyone thrive. Then we upgraded our database, something that almost killed me at the museum. But I worked on the team that executed that process. And then I re-mapped all the new processes because as we liked to say at the time “every keystroke is now different” when it comes to processing money and data. I got all the trains back on track and running on time again and even with all that, my department raised more money year over year while I was there. And then the pandemic struck. I was already feeling the itch to move on after I’d “fixed” everything but when March 2020 rolled around, I knew I needed to stay. I was being asked by the universe to stay. But damn working nonstop from my dining room table was hard. Looking at little faces on screens was the new normal. I was only allowed to go to the station to be on air, whether it was radio or TV. And again, with ten on air campaigns per year across all three properties, I suppose I was actually up there a good deal. As hard as it was, I'm so grateful for all the opportunities this job afforded me. In December of my first year back at the station (2017) I fell into a fire and burned both of my hands to a crisp. I couldn’t do anything for weeks with all the bandages, not even pee or eat without someone helping me. I was able to take all the time I needed to heal. During my tenure there it was my son’s turn to take a “coming of age trip” and he chose Myanmar. And so he and I backpacked Burma for a few weeks, all paid for no problem. I got to meet so many interesting people too. Musicians, guests on the big talk show on one of our stations, city leaders and personalities… Truly a cool place to work when we could be in the building, pre-pandemic. But the pandemic really rustled up something about the industry that was already there. And that is the truly “ungrounded” nature of the work. Everything is “on the air” or “over the air” and when we had a building that ungrounded nature was stabilized because we had physical access to one another. We could read body language. We could have lunch. And when we all moved to work remotely, the ungroundedness was exacerbated. Now we had reduced each other to little boxes on screens. No more popping by someone’s office for a quick answer for a quick question. We lost ourselves somehow…. Not the station’s fault. Not anyone’s fault. But it highlighted (for me anyway) the ungrounded nature of the industry. I realized it’s one of the reasons why donors want the tote bags and coffee mugs. It makes the work we did real to them. And for the record, I LOVED the work we did. To provide the highest quality (music, educational, news) content available for free regardless of willingness or ability to pay for it? All the yes! Public media is a public service and I truly believe that. It’s what made me such an excellent fundraiser for the mission. (And it’s why I’ll continue to be a donor.) But the job itself had waned. No longer was I “fixing” anything, making a difference in terms of streamlining and making things flow. No, now it was a whole new world of maintaining something that I didn’t want to maintain anymore. Other people are “maintainers” and do that quite well. I like to fix things. I like project work. I like things to have beginning, middle and end. I like creating order out of chaos. And then when it’s all “ordered” I like to pass the baton. Let someone else come in and “take it to the next level” or whatever. (Which I can do too by the way, if that’s the project in front of me.) Anyway, the realization I had in the end, after months of soul searching, is that I need more creative work. I crave creative projects. I also need ample time to myself between projects to restore my energy to do more projects that serve. I also need to get my Voice back. When you accept a gig like this with public media, you are also accepting that they have bought your Voice. I couldn’t go anywhere without someone saying something about how they saw me on TV or heard me on the radio. It feels a bit off to be a very well known “public figure” with one message and one message only: to support public media. The fact is, it got old and I felt like my hands and creativity were tied. I didn’t really get to have an opinion about anything because I was the Voice and Face of the fundraising. That’s tricky as fuck when you feel like you might want to have an opinion about something. I abandoned all my social media accounts with hundreds of followers (thousands on one of the platforms) in 2017 and never looked back. I started new ones sharing personal content only using my pen name (Aurah) and have allowed myself this little corner of the internet, using my creative-muse name, to express myself. Sigh. And so do I miss the gig? Eh, not really. I miss some of my friends there for sure. I miss talking on the radio and TV to some extent. But the work itself? No, not one bit. I knew when I took this job that it would eat me up and spit me out like it had all the others who came before me. And it did. And I’m at peace with that. I learned a ton. I am an excellent and more refined communicator because of this job. I have no stage fright or issues with public speaking. Like, none at all. “Put a microphone in front of me and I’ll talk” I used to say. I can manage millions of dollars in terms of both revenue and expenses. I have so many positive things to say about what I learned. But when I say that job almost cost me my sanity, I mean it. That said, I left on extremely good terms and have no regrets. And so here I am. It’s a new year (Water Tiger, baby!) and I’m ready to reinvent myself by doing something else. I have a few ideas of what that could be but we’ll see. I’ve done this many times over the years and reminding myself of my own resilience has been the exercise of this writing assignment. During the pandemic I became a Certified Organizational Specialist and so basically I’m now trained formally in something I’m already really good at: getting shit tidy, cleaned up and stable. I might try to do something along those lines. I might even just “put myself out there” with all my skill sets and see what happens. I’m good at lots of things but I work best when I’m executing someone else’s dream. I remember having that realization a long time ago: I don’t really have dreams of what I want to do. I want to serve others with their great ideas. Anyway, it’s been fun. Thanks for reading. Who knows what’s next but I’m sure I'll be listening! May it be so.  Graduation day with a school mate My Masters degree school years, all six of them, are a bit blurry. I was done with all the arting, officially, especially after I’d applied for that City art job that I didn’t get. I spread my degree out over six years because the classes are much more difficult and the expectations higher. Oh, and also the price. I paid cash for this degree and the only way I could afford it was to take one class at a time.
The same year I started my program, Eva decided she wanted to go to public middle school. We heard her reasoning, let her make the case and then agreed to let her try it out. Turns out she loved it and wanted to continue attending the neighborhood school. Jiri would follow her lead a year or so later in a Montessori school and with that, both our kids were in school! First up during those years, I worked for a nonprofit that enlisted wealthy donors to donate money but also business expertise to small nonprofits that needed to scale in order to serve more people. I was hired to strategize and execute a conference that wealthy philanthropists and people who staffed foundations would attend to explore ways their money can make an even more powerful difference. And wow, this gig was fun. I worked my own hours from home but with meetings all over the city with various people involved in the conference’s planning. I fundraised alongside very high profile people. I worked with a local college that had turned its football field into a garden to custom grow the food for our conference. In fact, I picked out seeds with the chef who planned the menu five months in advance! I worked with various presenters on how they would “pitch” their nonprofit business or social enterprise to a “room full of money” (like Shark Tank). I helped the presenters with their one page business plans. I managed a million moving parts and we culminated with a feast for the senses in terms of great ideas, amazing food and the profound satisfaction that the work I was doing was truly making a difference through this conference. During the second year of the conference, I even had to move our event by one day because of a parade. What happens when an actual parade rains on your parade? After two years of producing this amazing event, it was time for me to move on. I’d only been contracted for 30 hours a week and was eager to do something full time. A friend had told me about a very cool job at the nonprofit rock music station in town. It was strictly marketing and fundraising. I had zero radio experience and thought for sure that I wouldn’t get the gig. There had to be a million people applying for this job - seriously, it was a cool posting for a cool job that doesn’t come around often. Soon enough I had my first interview, which went really well. And then while I was off-grid at my very first Burning Man, the station was contacting me for second and third interviews. When I got back “on-grid” I realized this. Whoops! I quickly called back and soon enough was ushered into the station to meet more people and by mid-September I had started the job! And when I say that that was the coolest job I’ll ever have, I mean it. I even knew it at the time. It didn’t pay that well, but the other perks were totally worth it to me. I met allllll the famous touring musicians. I’m so serious. I still have tons of their cell numbers in my phone because I was their station contact in many cases. I attended all the live shows I possibly could and was notorious for giving away free tickets to cool concerts. I learned so many valuable things with that job: how to speak well over the radio, how to address a large crowd at a concert, how to fundraise in mail, social media and through various other digital means. And probably most important, how to be normal with super famous people. Essentially it was two of us running the station - my friend, coworker and “work husband” Mark who was the program director and me. I did everything but pick music and DJ in terms of fundraising, marketing, social media, blog entries, contests, e-newsletter, concert series and so much more. The two of us were on a very long leash and with very little oversight we did amazing things. We launched a massive annual summer concert (now defunct) that attracted 10,000 people. We did wacky contests. We made music so much fun for our listeners and donors. At a certain point, I realized I’d grown the donor base and had actually grown my job into many jobs. There were no plans to flesh out the team and so I knew that in order to take care of myself, I needed to move on. They would figure out soon enough that I was doing the work of three people. Maybe then they would staff up. (Spoiler alert: they did.) A girlfriend knew I was restless and she told me about a brand new job at the big, brand new science museum: Membership Director. Hm. Could I even do that? I applied and I swear within a month I had landed the job and started it. It was insanely bittersweet to leave my music industry friends but to move into the field of science? Ok by me! I had a science degree after all. I love that kind of stuff. With the science museum I had a few new moving parts: actual staff to manage (this is very different from managing volunteers), millions more dollars to raise and infinitely more moving parts in terms of the database and mailing lists. But I’m a quick learner and soon enough was meeting and exceeding all my fundraising goals. During my time there we upgraded the museum’s database from an old, rusty one that’s no longer supported to a new, shiny, fancy system that would meet all our needs. I continued to take classes for my Masters program all the while but I’ll tell ya, that database upgrade almost killed me. I got a wicked case of face shingles and was sick for a month during that software implementation. I’m grateful for that illness though, it totally transformed my relationship with pain, my own mortality and vanity associated with the facial disfiguration I experienced. I was finally working a job that paid fairly well and as such, I could follow through on a promise I’d made to my children years earlier: to take them anywhere in the world they desired for their “coming of age” trip but with one catch: it had to be a developing country. Eva, my eldest, chose India and we traveled for about a month together all over the northern states - from Jailsamer to Varanasi. We both fell in love with India and I knew it was important that my daughter was seeing and experiencing something different than her upbringing. India can be a challenging place! I continued to attend Burning Man during these years, being extremely vague about it saying that I was “camping in the desert with a few friends.” The culture at the science museum was startlingly conservative and I didn’t think my staff or coworkers needed to have a mental image of me at Burning Man. I was open about all my Masters degree classes though, and plowed through my degree program during my time at the museum. The culmination of my degree was an enormous project that would count as my final graduation requirement. I would read all fourteen Oz books, in order from beginning to end to untangle and explore all the esoteric and mystical themes within the books. This project was in total alignment with my degree plan - I’d taken classes that explored plant medicine, magic, shamanism, yoga philosophy, mysticism, meditation, silk road trading routes and so much more. I’m eternally grateful for this degree program because I could study exactly what I wanted to! I just let my own intuition and interests guide my class choices. My final project also involved going back to India, this time to Sikkim and Bengal. I wrote a massive paper about it called Unified Field Theory of Oz. I even audaciously rebirthed myself as "Aurah" during this experience. After I got back from India this second time, I graduated (with honors!) and it was super freaking clear I didn’t want to continue to work at the museum. I’d done what they hired me to do: establish a membership program (there wasn’t a membership department prior to me), upgrade the database and generally ensure that we could raise at least $3 million per year with the plans and strategies I put into place. I began to mentally crumble in what I fondly call my “first mid-life crisis”. To deal with how uncomfortable the whole thing was, I started a Full Moon Salon with a group of fabulous women in my living room and then finally gathered the nerve to put in my resignation. I quit that job with no safety net and no plan except to at some point perhaps go bartend. I just knew I couldn’t do the stuffy museum job anymore. I felt complete and it was time for someone else to pick up where I’d left off. The year was 2016. There’s one area that I haven’t gotten into much because this serial writing project is mostly about jobs and the ways I’ve made money. It's worth noting that the whole time that I’m moving through all these work experiences, I’m also making radical and profound spiritual shifts within myself. Paul and I both have “done the work” in terms of self development, self inquiry and spiritual exploration. It gets a bit into so-called “spiritual materialism” to list all the things but these things are important as they relate to how I’ve made money in the world. In essence, I’ve gotten fussy and only want to make a difference with my work. Period. I don’t do things that aren’t actually helpful to the world or the people I’m with or “just for the money.” I’m super clear that I’m not motivated by money and am truly guided by service, a real karma yogi, it turns out. From Landmark Programs in the early 2000’s to Vipassana Meditation Retreats (several!) to Burning Man (six in total) to the Hoffman Process (which saved my life) to our own involvement with a local church during all our years together, we have made our spiritual development one of the most important priorities of our lives. In fact, it’s the key to staying married, I’ve found. To this day we meditate morning and night in our house. We both do yoga fairly religiously (I’ve been seriously studying since 2001, Paul since 2007). When I stumble onto a spiritual technology that works, I stick with it. Spiritual growth has been profoundly important in tandem with how I make a living. Anyway, one more entry in this series left and then I'll blather on about something else, promise. |
DescriptionPeriodic updates and observations from Aurah in the Field. Archives
November 2023
|
RSS Feed