Sea bass or a sea puppy?

The main fish in this photo isn’t fleeing the scene the way most do when humans plunge into their world. There it is, getting a chin nuzzle just like my pup used to whenever I’d find him sunbathing. It’s a fish in water but also a fish in companionship. The “off switch” got hit on its fear instincts.

And the woman? She’s both a grown adult and a newborn all at once, her expression not unlike the kind you might find on a baby reaching toward a light bulb for the first time.

“It’s all new to them,” my Dad always says.
“It’s all new to them,” I heard when I landed on this page.  

On the roadmap that’s spread across the table of life, this woman has landed herself squarely in that liminal landmark that might actually be better categorized as a portal. It’s called:

. . . the very thing that makes this black and white photo burst with color.

Wonder is a state of hyper-present openness that immerses its subject in possibility.

There are requirements for entry. To access the dazzle and rarified numinosity of what wonder wants to offer you — renewal, expansion, a connection to your power — you have to be holding a key with “Awareness” chiseled into it. You can’t step into wonder without being connected to your five senses.

“You have to be right here in the now with me,” Wonder says.

In wonder all of the things you thought you knew about a thing, a place, a person get tucked into a drawer. Hard lines and boundaries dissolve. Things are neither bad or good, good or bad, loaded with backstories or prescribed meaning. A fish is a fish but not a fish at all. Contradictions coexist in a state of harmony. Things become new again.

There are different strains of it, of course. The poet William Blake tapped into wonder when he wrote about seeing the entire world in a grain of sand. Buddhists will sometimes surf a similar thread in daily practice. But the wonder we’re circling around this week is the kind that comes more suddenly and with more of a rush.

It’s the wonder that happens when you jump off the dock, when you plunge in.

So why is it that “the plunge” can feel like such a challenge sometimes?

Look at a child under the age of seven and they’ve basically got “wonder” on speed dial. It’s a vending machine with no coins required, right there on tap—a diving board to jump off of, no questions asked. But us adults? We glimpse the dock, or maybe walk to the edge of it, or maybe even lift a foot to take the leap only to realize there are phantom sandbags tethered to our ankles that we never even knew were there. I couldn’t, I can’t, this doesn’t fit with who I know myself to be. U-turn.

What are the voices, the fears, the doubts, the programs that prevent us from jumping in to potential pools of wonder?

The question I’ve been asking myself a lot lately is:

Six months ago, I got the intuitive hit that I needed to start a new passion hobby.

What’s a “passion hobby”?

It’s something you pour yourself into that has nothing to do with your career or making money¹. It’s an outlet where you can build a new skillset over time and tap into the energy of inspiration. A passion hobby that is highly aligned to your soul will actually fuel all the other areas of your life. The mistakes, the missteps—they’re inevitable in your career and sometimes they can feel defeating. But a mistake in a passion hobby? The stakes are low. It’s not going to cost you your reputation, your cash flow. Part of the genius of a passion hobby is that when the other stuff in your life feels stunted, a passion hobby will always keep you connected to a sense of growth.

Passion hobbies will also change over time.

As a kid, I was obsessed with tap dancing. It felt like pattern recognition and a memory game to me. A few years ago, I started watercoloring every spare chance I had. It met me at a time when I was wanting to understand energy (water is energy²) and starting to dabble with energy work. I became fascinated by how the water and pigment moved with different brush strokes. If the paper was wet or the paper was dry, how did the water and color react? How was the pigment going to erupt on wet surfaces when I didn’t try to control it? As a passion hobby it was mesmeric and deeply spiritual for me.

What wasn’t spiritual was the intuitive hit about my new passion hobby.

Six months ago, my Higher Self (a.k.a the soul piloting my human self) gave me a nudge and said: “Marksmanship lessons are going to be great for you. Go get yourself to a gun range.”

For maybe two seconds I was intrigued. But that brief intrigue was very quickly clobbered by a big loud: “NO WAY, nope.” And that big loud nope was very quickly topped-off with paper mache layers of: “Guns are ‘the problem.’ That’s not who I am. That’s not what I want to invest in. That’s not where ‘my people’ are. What will people think? I’ll find something else.”

There was a new room my Higher Self was wanting me to step into, but the decor didn’t match the rest of the house. So what did I do?

I shut it down. I sent it away. I judged it.

Then I bought a compost bin and decided that using my intuition to scientifically render the most vibrant and alive soil would be more valuable.

I have trained my intuition down to a science³, and even with the information that I pulled with my intuition—marksmanship lessons landing at a level of being 97% soul aligned for me, composting landing at 68%—I did not budge. For two full months, I avoided the range. I didn’t even try to decode the judgment.

. . . and then eventually, I gave in.

In the four months since I started taking lessons, marksmanship has met me with so much of what I’ve been wanting to master in my own life.

There is a science to pulling the trigger on something, an art to hitting a target you’ve set for yourself. One of my instructors can look at the target I’ve fired at, and tell me exactly what’s going on with me. “You’re missing the mark because you’re having an anticipation issue,” he might say.

Three sessions ago, I was having a recoil⁴ issue that echoed a recoil issue that was happening in another area of my life. The solution on the range was the same solution I needed off of the range. I needed to firm up my stance. I needed to follow-through on the hold . . . on backing myself.

Maybe the most surprising thing is how meditative it is for me. I go to the range, put my ear protection muffs on, and I drop into myself. I have to be aware of my breathing, of every in and out breath. At the base of the exhale is when the shot will be steadiest. I have to be aware of my posture, how I’m carrying myself, the exact positioning of my hands. Every facet of the experience brings me into a heightened state of awareness. And awareness?

That’s my access key to wonder.

The world is your oyster. It is your taste-touch-scent-sight-sound playground — brined in sweetness, slippery unexpectedness, and there to be shucked open.

It’s also your oyster as a place to take the things that feel threatening, irritating, or at odds with who you know yourself to be — and then question how they might be there to help you create something completely surprising.

The pearls we find inside of oysters begin as irritations. There’s something that doesn’t jive with the oyster, oftentimes an outside parasite that has made its way inside. But the oyster doesn’t let the parasite become the end of it.

Over time the oyster will slowly secrete layers of aragonite and conchiolin—the mother of pearl materials that actually comprise its outer shell—and encase the irritant, thereby transforming it into a pearl. The parasite cannot harm the oyster anymore and somehow, it has actually become a beautiful part of it. There’s enormous value in the irritant and also enormous value in the outcome.

Which brings me to some questions for the week . . .

Have a great rest of the week and weekend <3

Love,

Brooke