Trust and how to live life like you are in a movie

Afterglow musings following the Telluride Mushroom Festival, a week in Boulder, and a second visit to the ACME Wand Co.

The door to Kevin’s shop, where he creates wands

I realize this is a post in two parts again, like last week. So here you go my beloved companions:

Part 1: Trust

I arrived with my trusty computer, back at Puro Surf in El Zonte, El Salvador, to write to you. This was my leisurely day, my free day, my flow day.

Except every day easily gets busier and fuller than I expect.

This is a good thing.

A God thing.

Petals of opportunity fall into my lap and I choose what to say yes to, and when to say no.

I am able to do this because I am learning to trust. Most importantly I am learning to trust myself, and God.

I don’t trust the news. Not the regular news.

There are people close to me that I also don’t trust. It doesn’t mean I dislike them, or sit in waves of re-living past experiences with them that didn’t go well.

I simply see them and know that in some ways, I don’t trust when it comes to our relationship.

So, I limit what I share.

That’s OK.

Two cats nap nearby. They have finished licking one another’s heads and are curled up in bliss. They did this as ACDC played on the stereo here (which is unusual and an amusing contrast).

Sometimes cats here get into squabbles over food which patrons are happy to share with them. But mostly they live a life of bliss. They can trust that in the moment, especially this head-licking moment, all is well.

Twelve years ago, as I took my middle-of-the-Earth deep dive into myself, I realized that I had a problem.

“Houston, there is a serious problem here out in space. The Terra Ship has an issue and she is leaking fuel.”

The issue I realized I had was that I really didn’t have a lot of trust in anything or anyone.

I had been through a lot of painful experiences and some of them I blamed myself for (as I figured I “chose” them). So, trusting myself was out too.

I had been through a few spiritual teachers. One crossed boundaries with a family member of mine. That spiritual teacher was removed from my list. I didn’t trust him.

Another had an affair with a student along with a few other things that happened. He was out too.

I trusted my divorce attorney, mostly.

But honestly, I realized I had a deep issue with trust.

I wondered about it, and I didn’t know what to do. I asked what felt like a distant “divine” God about it and didn’t know how to get a clear answer.

Probably someone told me to trust myself, but I felt my inner compass was pretty warped. I just didn’t. That was the truth.

Now here I am twelve years later and I realize I have learned to trust. I have learned to listen to my inner compass. I have learned that all my experiences have served me and (mostly) I understand that “mistakes” are a human construct and not a God thing.

Growth in the field of love and care is a God thing.

Cats that lick each other while ACDC plays. A God thing.

My day…my day I had planned out in neat lines on my “notes” app, is suddenly up in the air because I have an invitation to go with my landlord, his son and his son’s friends, to bathe in a private Lava Pool next to the ocean. I am also invited to a meal with them.

So, I could prioritize the Spanish I wanted to work on. Or the identity protection service I planned to research and then subscribe to.

I could prioritize simply spending the afternoon writing to you, which is quite important to me and which I prefer to do today, rather than at the last minute.

But I knew, when I heard my landlord and his boys are leaving in the morning, that spending time with them mattered. Maybe on a bigger level. But for whatever reason, I could feel the value in it beyond the exquisite lava pool experience (and I value that too).

I didn’t have to ask myself this question today. But I have in the past and I think it has helped me learn to listen to my inner compass and to trust myself.

The question is:

If this was my last day, would I be doing what I am doing? Would I change anything?

Trust is a funny word in these times. A trigger word.

“Trust the science.” Someone actually said that to me. It left me in shock.

I don’t “trust the science”. In fact, ever since I have been a child, I have sensed that the medical system is more archaic than most people think or know.

I imagine a part of me is aware that sound healing, light healing, prayer, and energy are much, much more powerful than people are currently aware of.

That doesn’t mean I know how to do those sorts of things and could start a clinic for people. But some part of me knows that they exist, are powerful, and much more gentle and loving than our current medical system. And I have seen them work.

So, I don’t trust the medical system.

I also no longer trust the news.

Not since I learned that all the news organizations are owned by the same people and simply look like they offer different, objective perspectives.

I don’t trust they are objective.

This has led me down a rabbit hole of alternative books, news feeds and alternative views.

It has led me to Bitcoin (decentralized money), Nostr (decentralized communication which I still don’t use and intend to), and El Salvador (a tiny country doing decentralized, objectionable-to-Matrix-living-people things).

But refining what I choose to read or listen to, feels very important when it comes to trust.

When the world is filled with so-called “dis-information”, trusting one’s inner compass and intuition feels very key.

Which leads me to some recent revelations.

Sometimes, I have been triggered by world events. When I do things because I am worried or afraid, they don’t go as well as when I do them because something in me says, “Terra, that feels like a good idea. That feels like care.”

Let’s look at the identity protection I wish to implement at this time.

I have considered it for a number of years as one’s data is no longer so private and I am sure you, like me, get fake emails and spam-y fake phone calls. It has recently gotten worse and I learned there was a large data breach from a company that handles personal information of US citizens for the government.

It appears to me that my data was part of that breach. This includes my birthdate and SS #. Which is quite troubling as those are two things often used to confirm I am me, when I try to do important things in the world.

After I learned of this data breach and noticed more spam (scare-tactic) phone calls coming into my phone, I started to wonder if I needed to finally hire one of those services that offers support around one’s personal information.

As I was wondering this, I received an email that an account at an exchange I use was just opened using one of my email addresses.

Unfortunately, that notification came into my email inbox on a Sunday and I wasn’t able to speak to anyone at the exchange, where I have a legitimate account.

So, instead, I spent time writing emails to contacts I have at the exchange to notify them.

I confirmed for myself that I had put a freeze on my credit report a few years ago. I think I tried to do something beyond that as well and at this moment, I don’t remember what it was called.

All of that was through email because, as I said, it was Sunday.

My cousin told me when his data was hacked in the past, he also had to inform the IRS.

So I emailed my financial advisor and accountant.

They told me I didn’t need to worry and that we would go ahead and increase my security in that realm as well.

By Monday, I learned that the original email was spam. No one had managed to open an account in my name.

Some of my energy around all that was less than calm.

But I told myself that regardless of what happened, it would help if I lived it like a movie.

Which is what I am going to talk to you about next, after I tie a bow around this trust piece. Because Trust is important. I am sure you have been tried in this area these last few years along with me.

All of that identity theft stuff involves a lot of energy of mistrust. Yes, there are people out there who try to steal, manipulate, and instigate extreme pain and mischief. They are operating in what I like to call, more demonic and less evolved frequencies.

If I resort to anger, panic, and reactivity, I am not vibrating at a higher level.

So, how do I solve my issue right now?

Well, I plan to evaluate these identity protection companies I am looking at hiring like this:

Do they have phone support with a real person who answers?

Does their service feel like care to me? Do I feel cared for, by hiring them?

Does it feel nice to be doing this? Will I feel better for it?

(And if I feel I am doing it out of panic and fear, it is probably better to wait).

Trust has a calm feel to it.

Trust has a willingness to sit in unknowing and allow life to unfold.

And Trust has a grounded clarity, despite the uncertainty that swirls in life.

When I first panicked a few years ago at the rapidly growing money supply in the United States, I threw myself into trying to “save” my financial solvency.

This led to some learning opportunities. They were good learning opportunities.

Making decisions from fear is not so great. I learned that because I made some decisions that way and it didn’t go as I hoped.

I learned about things I would not invest in again.

And I learned about Bitcoin, which I like (not investment advice…this is different for different people…my landlord loves to own properties…).

The thing is, Trust is also related to doing what you like…what feels good.

If you don’t like something and it doesn’t feel good, it is good to trust that. And when you do, your trust muscle grows a little bit.

I think learning to trust has been a slow process for me. An imperceptible one. It is only today that I realized the problem I saw twelve years ago is not as much of a problem anymore. I think it happened in small steps. It happened by not listening to what felt good, or calm, and learning how that went. It happened by doing things most people did not understand, simply because something in me felt they were right, despite other’s opinions.

I learned to trust in the end, by losing everything. And through that, I found myself, my “team” of subtle-trustable beings, and the field of the divine, which I feel I have only the tiniest inkling of. But even an inkling, when it comes to God, is a lot.

I hope this is helpful to you in deepening your own awareness of your inner compass as it relates to Trust. I hope you feel how choosing things that feel calm, or caring for yourself, is trustable and leads to positive outcomes. And that life is a process and sometimes a journey you don’t even know you made until you realize suddenly that you are something you didn’t used to be. Something you wondered about. Maybe like me, you realize you do know how to trust, or to pray, or to love…more than you used to. And that is sweet.

And if you are at the beginning and realize there is something you don’t do that it seems like most people “out there” can…well, that just means you are at the beginning. You will unfold. And at some point, I imagine you, like me, will find yourself surprised to find yourself knowing how to do what you used to wonder about. That’s a beautiful thing. It is beautiful that life is also about simply unfolding and growing, sometimes imperceptibly, into a different state of awareness and capacity. You are doing it, whether you realize it or not. I truly believe we all are.

So, now let’s move on to Part 2.

Part 2, How to Live Life Like You Are in a Movie:

First, let’s talk about why you might want to. The “how” part is really pretty easy after that.

I believe I started exploring this when my friend, David, said something to me after we had completed the business portion of our business call.

“Terra, some of my friends actually are wondering if we live in a simulation.”

It was one of many interesting comments my friend made. I respect him a lot. He is smart, successful, competent, and thoughtful. He supports my efforts to live in a more energetically and financially secure way in the world. And he understands a lot about things I only have an inkling of (which he is writing about in his upcoming book).

I played with those words now and then for months.

“Terra, some of my friends actually are wondering if we live in a simulation.”

I really saw a lot of truth in the movie, “The Matrix.” I also know and can feel that what we call “reality” is much, much more than I see or sense in this body.

I watched as AI offered more and more realistic “experiences” of a simulated reality.

Sure, it was possible that we all could be living in a simulation.

But I don’t feel we are. Not like that.

And the only way I know is because I trust myself now, and my sense of things.

However, as I played with those words and felt them now and then, like a soft feather I would pick up and explore, I realized that they were not incorrect either.

You see, if we can bend spoons, and some people can live on Prana without food and water…if Jesus really did walk on water, and Moses really did part the Red Sea (and unlike a lot of devout people I have met, not-in-a-formal-church-me thinks they did)… If people can put their hands through walls and levitate themselves (again, I feel this is possible), then we are not in the world the Matrix-version of the news describes.

That is when I started to play with the sense of being in the center of a movie.

When I imagine I am in the center of a movie, I am more relaxed and more willing to allow the scenes to shift.

Life becomes more of an interesting exploration for me. I hesitate to say “game” as that feels like it diminishes things. But it certainly is more fun and less restrictive.

This outlook recently helped me a lot.

Because despite how things look with my current lifestyle that came about from selling my lovely home and giving away most of my belongings, I like to be settled a bit.

Change can feel hard. Even when it is as simple as moving from one location to another while traveling.

I am someone who likes to nestle in.

And the life I have chosen, or perhaps has chosen me, involves a lot of nestling in, again and again.

I remember how I had the opportunity to move to the place I am living in now. It is so lovely. A young man here who is my friend looked at me when he came to visit and said, “Wow, Terra. You are really living the dream.”

And he meant it.

I pointed out that my kitchen sink doesn’t have hot water.

He looked at me and replied, “Terra, for 99.9% of the world, your life in this place would be their dream.”

He’s right.

And I like it.

It isn’t a place I see myself getting old in, or using as a base from which to travel though. I need a file cabinet. I need a closet. I need a drain that doesn’t sometimes smell “interesting”.

And I am living “the dream”. My current life is exquisite.

Now when I travel, I continue to pay my rent here. I want to keep this lovely place until I find something I wish to buy.

And it is almost hard to travel away from it.

I have become nestled-in.

So, when I leaned into my recent upcoming trip to the Telluride Mushroom Festival and then to Boulder to see my cousin, I was excited. And also I was a teeny, tiny bit resistant.

It was going to be expensive and I was already living in a nest and was fairly happy in it.

I knew that was a strange thought as I was going to see my son, which was a huge gift, and my cousin, also a gift. Plus both locations are lovely.

But I felt that resistance in myself to flow with it all and that is when I started to pretend I was in the middle of a movie.

In a movie, like life, the scenes always change.

And when you watch a movie, the changes are what keep it interesting. Even if the location of a scene stays the same, the people in it and events keep shifting.

If they don’t, it would be like watching someone in a coma for two hours. It would be hard, you know what I mean? It would be frozen, energetically.

That’s no fun.

But if your life is a movie, it is interesting to know that the scenes can change and that’s ok.

Once I did that, it was easier to wave goodbye to my casita here and flow back to the Mountainside Inn in Telluride to say hello again.

I nested there quickly.

Soon, I had a routine.

My favorite rock to sit on next to the river in the morning, my favorite breakfast at my favorite restaurant, the shop with the best Turmeric latte with pure almond milk and honey.

Gluten-free organic blue cornmeal waffles, with organic whipped cream, organic fruit, and real maple syrup at Cocina Luz, in Telluride Colorado. The only organic Mexican restaurant I have ever found. Family owned and operated.

Then my cousin came, the scene shifted, I was in a car with him, then in Boulder sleeping on what I named, The Cloud Bed.

He gave me his bathroom to use with a giant bathtub which is one of my most favorite things in the world, and a rare occurrence in my life here in El Salvador.

I nestled into that bathtub. I took a picture of it. I gently touched it after shining it up for him before leaving and thanked it.

I went every day to a place called, Wonder, and got an organic drink called a Blue Lagoon: filtered water, lemon, lavender, peppermint, spirulina algae, raw Colorado honey.

The people recognized me. I settled in for a week as a regular.

I decided to visit Kevin at The Acme Wand Company again. I had purchased a lovely opal wand from him a few years before. He says they are not magic. But I think everything is.

A few people from the Harry Potter movies have bought wands from Kevin and his home-based workshop.

When I arrived, Kevin pointed to his new sapling just planted outside. He told me he had named it Kamala, after the new candidate for President. In a divisive world, that could be a divisive comment. But not in a movie. In a movie, it is sweet. It is Kevin, saying that in his way, he cares and has hope. Love can feel that, when it listens. And it is easier to listen with love, when one feels the world as movie scenes with characters and beautiful people wanting a place in it all.

Kevin held up ancient pieces of oak from Irish bogs that were almost petrified. He showed me a stick of wood so rare, he felt it was worth $2000. He opened boxes of crystals as we chatted in his workshop. And I left with a gift of ironwood from the desert, imbued with sand that ruins tools that try to work with it.

Kevin Brady, with a sampling of his creations

My cousin took me to a sound healing workshop and I watched colored lights dance on the ceiling as I wondered about opening an energy channel in my system that allows me to feel more worthy of love.

He took me to Taco Tuesday with the Daman Hur group and I saw a painting by Falco, the founder of the community in Italy that created The Temples of Humankind.

I put on black light glasses and watched color float off the paintings and hang in the middle of the room, like magic. And I knew once again that regardless of how Kevin feels, magic is real.

this is with black light…with 3D glasses, the effect is enhanced and patches of color and shapes come off the paintings and appear to float in the room

I managed to see an art gallery that was locked when I first attempted to enter, and found a painting I wish to own by an Aboriginal artist for the house I don’t yet have:

this painting depicts the artist’s home, called Utopia. The description mentions it represents wildflowers and healing herbs that grow there. For me, it felt like it was wind or water moving fields of plants.

Most nights, my cousin sang or drummed downstairs. I went down and savored sometimes and sometimes I read my book in The Cloud Bed.

And all of these activities were held by my new routine, in the middle of this new movie. A bath every night. A Blue Lagoon drink from Wonder and daily greetings from the people there. Shopping in bookstores. A walk.

I had nested again.

Now I am back in El Zonte, the place I call home.

I arrived an hour late as one of my flights was delayed. I stood at baggage claim where I learned that I was not alone in bringing things back from the US. I never saw so many bags come off a plane in my life. One man pushed a cart that seemed in danger of toppling over. It was towering with packages that must have been 4 x5 feet each and there were a lot of them. The bags were stacked higher than his head.

He looked at me and laughed. “I have a large family,” he said.

I was home.

I was relieved to see my suitcase on the carousel. It had taken some time. I too had done some shopping and it was packed with clothes and supplements.

Outside, it was raining.

Edouardo, who runs a taxi service here, had sent a driver to get me and in less than five minutes, I was in the car.

Despite wearing my contacts, I could hardly see the road.

There were no streetlights, and the water was coming down in inky sheets. Once in a while there were invisible speed bumps and unexpected streams to ford. Lightening would tear through the blanket of darkness surrounding us and I could see nothing at all for brief moments.

I asked my driver if his vision was adequate for the task at hand and he assured me he was fine. He didn’t speak English, but he was playing music from the US. Classic songs from the 50s and 60s. At times, he would sing along in the most beautiful voice.

I remembered I was in a movie. This was another scene. I didn’t have to drive (which was good), so I relaxed and reminded myself to continue hiring taxis to take me to the airport, even if I eventually bought a car.

It was a pleasant trip.

I had been gone two weeks and it felt like much more.

My nesting instinct is strong so despite the midnight hour, I slowly unpacked and settled back in. I was home. In this scene. For now. Again.

And I am happy about that.

It is a really interesting experience to feel yourself in the middle of a movie. I imagine it may be somewhat related to the popular suggestion to “be in the moment” but that often seemed abstract and a bit unreachable for me. Plus, I think when our minds wander, it may be a good thing. I like musing about things like: Is this reality a simulation? I don’t think musing makes me less alive, less present in a real way, or less “spiritual”. Musing is part of the moment too. It is part of flowing with changing scenes and making space for wonder, awe, and questions to float… Questions around realizations about myself like: I don’t trust anything…

…and answers to flow in twelve years later like:

…oh my, I have learned to trust again.

My movie is about to change to a lava pool in a gated community called Xanadu. And somehow, I got my writing to you done after all.

And it was fun.

Now, on day two as I edit this, I can also report that I hired a company to help me with identity protection.

I hired the one with a representative available right away, without a lot of buttons to push and AI “assistance”. There was a company like that. They called me back after I had selected my plan with the other company. The message said they had been “overwhelmed” with calls from the latest data breach.

I get that.

I am sure it was true.

And I want to work with a company with lots of staff to help me even when they are busy.

So far, I have only tested the sales department and the lady spent a lot of time answering my questions.

The whole process felt nice. It felt like care and comfort.

And that is what I want.

More of that.

Even identity theft protection can feel good if you let it.

—Thank you to all of you for reading and the many new subscribers who have recently flowed in. I am deeply grateful these words and musings have laps in which to land. And some of you have signed up as paid subscribers as well, which has touched me deeply. I hope to get an audio or two up for you soon. XO

Butterfly