Does this link work or shall I delete it?
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“The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell, don’t go back to sleep.”
Rumi

Dawn and sunrise and daylight are among the finest teachers we may tap into.

They teach us trust, consistency and unconditional love. They show up - we never have to worry about whether or not they will happen because they always do.

They don’t moan and kvetch and say “But I am not inspired to go to that side of the planet. Those people over there aggravate my calm. I just can’t do it this time.”

Dawn and sunrise and daylight show up anyway.

They show up when people shake their fists at their presence, they don’t worry about letting down those who sit and wait with their journals and cameras waiting. They don’t feel badly about their ebb and flow because they have seasons of sorts too AND they always arrive.

Walt Whitman asked, “Does the daylight astonish?”

I turn to Walt in my heart and nod, laughing, “Yes, indeed!”

Dawn, sunrise and daylight are my role models of consistency and unconditional showing up. They might show up behind clouds or rain or turbulence because they can’t control those things. They return on time - give or take a few hours because the earth turns and tilts and they can’t control that. 

They do the very best they can and I am grateful for that, in fact I know where to look to find the time of their return and usually I can also figure out if they will be blocked by weather.

The thing is, we just get so used to their presence we stop thinking much about their incredible qualities. Some people take them for granted. Good old dependable dawn, sunrise and daylight.

Let’s remember just how remarkable they are.

When Walt and I ask you, “Does the daylight astonish?” what would your response be?

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The One Small Shift Course: a creative playground of consistency - will begin in Mid-January. Unlike anything you may have tried before, this program will supercharge your "get up and go" with passionate purpose. For complete details, visit here:

​I wrote two brain dumps. The second one I recorded and shared with the Word Love Writing Community, Click here to join us - for the inner sanctum of all things #5for5BrainDump related. The thing is, the text disappeared and I wanted to publish something so I was left with this, the even more vulnerable writing of the two.

So - dear ones. May this writing be of service. May I not be completely horrified to have shared it. And as I often say, "Perhaps no one will read it so what will it matter?" 

When I allow myself the space to be empty, when I leave room for silence, there is a process – sometimes shorter sometimes longer.

There is this ball of sludge. (Substance. I’m reminded of David’s ball of substance he referred to as love or source or whatever he called it specifically I don’t recall. He never actually said the word love in my presence not in the early days not in the end days, I heard him say “I love you,” on the phone to one of his eventual followers – tribe mates, whatever one calls the people he surrounded or surrounds himself with now but for me, then it was “Thank you for not making me say the things I can’t say.”

That ball of sludge I name “depression” Depression for me is sludgy.

It is the gumball stuck in my throat. My inability to breathe when it lodges itself there. When I have my stress cough fits, I’ve learned to relax, to pull over, turn off the car, exhile myself into the bathroom stall. “Don’t come in” as foreign other substance – not the gumball – pushes against all matter in its way from the inside out.

Not pleasant. Sometimes leaves my throat to ache for days and my muscles to contort, reminding me “don’t mess with the status quo unless you want more indescribable pain.” Who wants that?

Depression is something I wasn’t allowed to have.

Having a relationship with depression is shameful and ugly like a boil or a zit or a walk with an ungainly limp or bad breath or any number of things that repulse or repel others.

Alice is just happy to sit beside me and purr. (Poor cat, she doesn’t know I have this gumball still wreaking havoc and blocking everything and nothing. Tomorrow I was supposed to have been successful.

Magical realism come to life in my life.

I needed to empty that.

I needed these words.

​I needed the words to express this. The sludgy ball of substance, like an egg can crack over my head and slime out and over me, get lost on my skin.
 

Writing Prompt: I remember when I received the gift of..... 

​I remember exactly how it felt when I lifted it up from under the Christmas tree. A guitar. A guitar?

I was taking a guitar class but never expected, didn’t even ask, to receive such an extravagance. I was the one who thought of everyone else first. My flimsy, not-that-important desire to sing and play guitar and be the next generation Carly Simon had any real bearing to the rest of the world.

A guitar.

I don’t remember when I first played it – though I do remember the first song which then launched me into a daily guitar playing practice before I even knew there was such a thing as practice. Unlike the clarinet which was chore like to me, guitar was pure pleasure.

My brother, Jim gave me a follow up gift which was almost as exciting as the guitar itself.

I remember sitting in our big blue Dodge Van at the Willowbrook Mall. Jim handed me a package and inside was a book called “Carly Simon Complete” which was part biography, part sheet music collection.

The first song I played was “Anticipation” and much of my free time became practicing singing Carly Simon songs and then Carole King songs and then occasionally writing a song or two or seven or more of my own.

I haven’t written a song in years, but oh, it feels so great to remember those gifts.

Key threads?

I almost cried when I received both.

I didn’t give a thought to being bad at playing or singing because the desire was so much larger than the fear. When in doubt, stir up desire. It can rise up above that fear goblins any time.

Tell me about the gifts you have received.

In our live broadcast on Periscope today, I shared about my awkward first attempts at livestreaming.

This week #5for5BrainDump will be live on Periscope at 630 am PDT and at 4 pm PDT on Facebook Live at JJSWritingCamp.

Hope to see you there!

Today we are claiming our freedom to begin, again. Tomorrow we will begin moving our pencils and pens across the page and our fingers will move freely across the keyboard for five minutes a day for five consecutive days. Join us for the live community experience on August 27, 2018 at 6:30 am PDT on Periscope, at 4 PM PDT on FacebookLive with a YouTube video available with the prompt a bit after midnight.

There is a positive energy field when we choose to begin again. It might feel slightly scary to you - it actually feels a little bit scary to me. I have written once today and I am going to write again, as a warm up for the week. Are you ready to write a bit?

Prompt: Today, I am listening to.......

The past me wrote a poem to the present me and today, I listened.

I created.

I took a backdrop which appeared to be written in anger and I’m cradling it. So here we go, beginning now.

I’m listening to opposites today. Beauty and Not beautiful.

The stench of sweetness. The pleasantly bitter. The pleasingly painful.

Where does that land for you, right now, in your body?

Even that question may sound foreign to you and yet, I invite you in to explore. I invite you in to at least open the door slightly and look around.

This morning I looked out my window, an every improving sight of the tree in my neighbor’s yard. It is a flowering crape myrtle with lavender blossoms, one of my favorite colors and although my sometimes cranky neighbors don’t know, one of my favorites.

I watch as a man ambles past my window's view, one of the many drug addicts who frequently called on my neighbor on the other side who has moved away, rather force-ably sort of. I said aloud, though he couldn’t hear it, “He’s gone! Didn’t you hear? He isn’t here anymore.”

The man kept ambling and I kept typing, worlds though not very far apart.

“It’s a take no prisoners sort of day for me over here,” I texted a friend.

All of it, real.
Everything. All of it. Sacred.

The ambling drug addict.

Once neighbors and all their collective travails.

Blessings and gifts others don’t even know they are giving which we receive with quietly upturned lips in gratitude.

Listen closely to what is whispering. Not all shouting is angry. Not all seemingly angry is what it seems.

On August 19 our next generation of #5for5BrainDump, the transformative journaling program where a 5 minute writing prompt offered daily brings renewed insights, energy and an action plan to those who join us, in community, to share the best of the rest of our lives.

This is a modified #5for5 for me. It is more guidance than true free flow. Please take it a such and as I've been doing this week, I will write to the prompt later. Today's livestream is beneath the second prompt image. 

Today’s prompt: When I stand up for my wholeness:

(This has been an ongoing challenge for me – in relationship to standing up for myself for ANYTHING) and yes, so connected with our ongoing growth and integration).

I haven’t talked “integration” for a long time, I think because I received a critique that came at me unexpectedly – and then I turned the critique and the unexpected nature of it and turned it into a nugget of fear which morphed into a knot in my throat which stopped my fingers from moving and from there it moved outside of me and surrounded me and then it filled with water and pressed toward me until it was just me, treading water, no longer to even think about that word, integration, that experience of integration which works… ideally… like this.

In Julie World, Integration is knowing something on the soul level and slowly (or instantly) being able to communicate it to others in a way that isn’t foreign at all. It is coming into your wholeness, without separation of this from that and the other, over there in the corner and oh way on the other side is your inner…. (artist, scientist, anything other-than-acceptable-to-those-who-love-you) self.

Your body knows it – your knees and elbows and armpits and spleen and lungs know it (whatever “it” is) because you’ve been becoming more and more in harmony – in alignment – in deepening understanding so let’s think of an example.
I use integration with grief.

People (in my eyes inaccurately) talk about “closure” and “getting over” grief. In my experience, I don’t “get over” grief, I integrate the loss into my every day life.

My daughter Marlena died.

I will never forget her. She will always be my daughter. I can’t remember, though, when it stopped being important to say I had four children. I don’t know when I became comfortable with saying “I have three children.”

I still tell people I have four brothers, when asked. “I have four brothers, one has died.”

Marlena’s death has been integrated more deeply than John’s.

I think it was Wednesday when I said to Christine, out of the blue, “You know what? I can really write.”

She said something like, “You didn’t know this?”

To which I responded something like, “Well, I knew it on some level but I had forgotten and then I read something I wrote and I thought, ‘damn, I can really write. Really, I can!”

Integration involved conscious choice (choosing stress and/or peace). It includes a solid foundation of comfort and intimacy. Integration is quicker if we have a support system. If we have a map and several possibly paths to take… we have support. We know where to find answers if we don’t know already. We are confidence we will find or create or learn the way.

Integration invokes the deep dive. It calls upon us to be purposeful in a different way – an effortless blend of being and doing. I am reminded of walking, slightly stylistically, intentional. Feeling each step rise up from your core and slink from your hip to your thigh to your knee, calve and toes. Sole to soul to yes yes yes!

Writing Prompt: When I stand up for my wholeness:
 
And for further integration into wholeness, try this prompt:
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Today, I recognize it is time to say yes to _____ because____ so I will….