HOW TO BEGIN AGAIN ...spring 2025

A surreal strange cloud lingered over my typically energetic enthusiastic Boogie Woogie Being. Why does this vaguely hazy barometric pressure persist ?

I officially began a mission and course of action to seek out answers to this question. Overtime I discovered some surprising conclusions which both

connected and disconnected some dots.

Heavy. Dreary. Weary. Weighted down.

The feeling over time morphed into outright lethargy.

A crushing apathetic melancholy.

Why am I not myself ? 

Was I preparing for a major shift ? 

I felt as if I was stuck in-between,

sandwiched inside two liminal realities.

My most primary purge plan was immediately dealing with my sizably plump body weight. A flattened lumbar disc had forced me to remain rigidly stiff for over 15 months repressing most all body movement. My plan of attack to deal with the fat was joining Weight Watchers. Quitting the heavy-duty alcohol habit I picked up during my flattened disc phase was also, a big plus, or I shall correctly say, a really big minus. Eating healthier dissolved the weight. After being freed from the excessive freight load, I physically felt much more like myself.

The extra poundage definitely had contributed towards my existential burden,

yet, something more, something else, has, and is,

still weighing me down.

What is this ?? …This unresolved atmospheric oppression ?

A book title jumped out at me when I was reading MEDIUM, an on-line magazine I enjoy. The book was titled : “Claim Your Power” - by Mastin Kipp.

Possibly, hmmm some answers to my unexplainable uneasy woe

could be found within. I read the library book taking voracious notes.

I resonated with much of what I read and found some valuable guidance.

The author explained how we easily assimilate limiting beliefs.

The limitations are used as adaptations to circumstances.

These “beliefs” mask underlying fears.

Beliefs are merely “stories” you have created around events that have happened to you. Your beliefs carry strong feelings of absolute certainty about what something means.

The bottom line :

1. You live within circumstances and patterns you have created.

2. Your circumstances and patterns can be changed at any time.

Hmmmm I said as I read.

Patterns are behaviors.

Behaviors are how you react to your circumstances.

The author described the top 4 archetypal models of behaviors.

Hmm I said as I read.

I wrote my personal findings to his questions about my own behaviors,

and examined exactly how I have related to the world since childhood.

The author spoke entirely within a feeling, or heart model and not a thinking, or head model.

I came to see many of my own stuck or “dead” behaviors in life.

I discovered that loud raised voices shut me down in fear and I run.

I was playing it safe, only later, to find out I was only playing it small.

I dug deeper to realize my own modus operundi and adaptations in behavior,

the false self stories I have told myself, and all the cosy comfortable Kris labels

that I have claimed, identified with, and worn.

And now, I see, have worn out.

The main premise of the book :

people who claim their power

have this one outstanding

Super Power skill -

they choose their response to what happens to them in life as it is happening.

They are masters of each and every one of their responses.

They assign meaning to what happens to them in life.

By choice. And. Not by habit.

Not by the beat goes on and on and on over and over par for the course

with all those deep ruts in the same robotic road.

The final conclusion :

discover your limiting beliefs

and assign new meanings to them.

Shift those themes to ones that carry strength and positivity

instead of blaming others and shaming yourself.

You let go of what does not serve you.

You examine where you have given your power away.

And, you lift yourself up for doing the very best you could at that time

instead of dragging yourself down for not ever doing good enough.

Music to my ears. A reboot symphony.

Your happiest earliest memories are remembered and, most importantly,

the Why,

they are your happiest.

You unbury the single common denominator or emotion each memory held.

I discovered my happiest moments all included

overwhelming tears of joy awe

and silent heart struck reverence.

One learns that most all these recollections are mostly randomly fleeting casual life moments and not major written on the calendar big deal milestones.

One investigates what specifically is it about those happiest memories

that left such a powerfully strong impact.

The key. Your key.

The key opens the lock to understanding.

That which vitalizes you. That which connects you directly to your soul.

Reading this book opened me up and was exactly what I needed.

I came away from the experience of finding this new knowledge

with determination to practice what I had learned in my daily life.

I found myself not being so easily and comfortably complacent.

What is it I want ? What do I need now ?

How can I practice more self-love towards my-self,

which is not the same as being selfish, as I had thought.

Why so quick to please people. Why so quick to place others before myself.

I felt more engaged with my life.

I focused on not being comfortably numbly just duh routinely surviving.

I strove to be a much more active participant in my choices.

I was beginning to actively listen louder to my very own heart.

I cranked up the volume to my heartbeat and heard a new stronger pulse.

The beat changed from the beat goes on,

to the beat goes tra la la boom dee yeh. 

Zippity doo dah zip -a-dee-hooray.

I am beginning to come home to myself.

Soon after, I experienced a predictably-happens-in-life-scene that unfolds occasionally.

I made my own leap of faith my own leap of power that day.

I interrupted my normal Kris-self stimulus response impulses.

When my partner got upset, raised his voice, and got frustratingly angry

over technology’s failings, I did not run away.

I sat down next to him and we talked about the problem.

Slowly he calmed down.

Yes, I agree, 7000 spam emails on your email account are a bear to delete.

I told him gmail has no spam so he gave yahoo the boot and rebooted to gmail.

I tried something different

this time and grew

cosmic that day.

It felt epic.

Soon, again, after that, I reflected upon the change within :

how differently I perceived the world.

I had grown & made a positive shift.

I was letting go of the unexplainable now understandable

helpless powerless mode that I had constantly carried.

I was letting go and going in the right direction.

Yet yet yet.

A prevalent squalor

vibe still filtered home & hearth & psyche.

An obscure gray pallor

seemed to seep in overall from above.

A sort of dark sub-current languor

from below. 

With concentrated Sherlock & Holmes effort I seek out to determine the cause, the source, the reason. Aha. I witnessed within myself and the home environs a feeling of helpless frustrated torment that had centered strictly around consuming the news. I vowed quickly to quit my continual curiosity with wanting to know. Now !! what has happened today ?? followed by my usual freaking out rant. I found a once-a-weekly Friday re-cap on NPR instead that informed me about the whole week in very short neutral sentences. No auto-play videos no nonsensical opinions no who cares what so-and-so thinks no shock value attention-getting forced fed feeds and no sick to my stomach blech visuals. I cut the feels-like theatrical puppet strings that now seem to me to only be strangling the masses with orchestrated daily dark doses of immoral illogical inane chaos. Not once, a news story relating an item of positivity, forward motion, or goodness. Since cutting the strings, my days are noticeably much brighter, lighter and clearer. I stay on course focusing upon my immediate surroundings and what a difference I can make on all that immediately

surrounds me.

Soon, yet, again, once more, after that latest realization,

yet another MEDIUM article, right out of the blue !! unexpectedly jumped out !!

at me. The timing was truly auspicious and it compactly summarized with meticulously concise precision what it is I have been trying to convey in this essay.

It was just exactly hit the nail on the head bang a gong what I needed in that moment to hear.

The article was about rebooting at 63 yrs of age.

I avidly read and aligned completely with the author’s viewpoint.

Aha !! I feel the same.

I felt as if she named, described, and pin-pointed

what this exact process, journey, change, metamorphosis,

apprehension, dreary, and wheely wheely weary was,

that I was now currently in the midsts of investigating.

The author (  Foteini Ntelopoulou ) felt stuck and was living on auto-pilot.

Yes !!

These are all similar aspects of my current reality

that I have been striving to break free from.

The true shining bright beauty of this author’s let’s have a reset realizations

were deeply personal, yet, also, and much more importantly,

she related them to a broader and much much more world-wide audience’s malaise.

She included the whole world into a shared global equation of existential emptiness.

Yes !! I agree completely.

She published her discontented viewpoint on-line and

received a massive following of

yes-sayers heads nodding up&down

in-agreement-with supporters.

We take notice of this same odd, brave new world, now, out of sorts reality.

The author called for a universal call to action.

She notes that her despair is “profoundly personal” but “disturbingly communal.”

One of her insightful readers shared this comment :

“You are absolutely onto something here.

The entire human world needs a massive reboot,

fueled by grassroots movements

toward compassion rather than cruelty.”

Hmmmm.

I see an inter-relatedness, a link, a tie,

a big badda boom bond,

a similar similarity, 

with all the sentiments I have just now,

as a whole, previously profusely profess-ly proclaimed.

Stuck-ness. Time for a really big start things over reset.

Altho.

Also.

Something more concerning seems to be happening here.

But what it is ain’t exactly clear.

For “What it’s Worth”

I am having a time warped deja vu.

Is a change gonna come ?

We all joined at the hip

in dis-belief over the detach,

the disregard

over our ignored basic core beliefs,

the dis dis dis dismissiveness that leaves us empty,

disconnected, not whole only hole ?? 

Where is The Holy of Holys, The Unite,

The Connect, The Join, The gorilla glue ?

We all floating ‘round in a void of the empty ?

Are we all separately disconnected ??

The last year and a-half I personally experienced an entire physical body disconnect from my being. The years preceding were filled with uninterrupted disconnects within our country. Our judges, our courts, our House, our election, our Capital, our rights. Besides, a major breakdown disconnect in how we treat each other. Preceded by years of a globally disconnected quarantined population. Disconnection from family members from our ceremonies from our rites of passage from seeing each other from each other. Scores of years with ceaseless countless disconnects, and on so many levels : from the intimately individual to the closely familial to the city, state and nationwide community to the planetary populace to the all the species naturally worldwide to the universally outer spatial.

Disconnect : the act of detaching one thing from another. Termination of the connection of a household : to water, electricity, gas, or phone.Take out of action by detaching it from a power supply. The state of being isolated or detached. Interrupt or terminate by breaking the connection of or between. Remain apart in order to prevent the spread of disease.

Detach, disengage, separate, cut off, sever.

Come between. Keep apart. Split. Divide.

How do we re-connect ??

What is the way back home to the soul of humanity ??

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all 7 intaglio etching illustrations of "transformation story " were etched & printed

by KrisFalconerStrell.

at the Island International Artists' print studio -

The Black Raven Press

located on Guemes Island, WA.