November 11, 2024

MEMO: AN INTRODUCTION TO THIS PROJECT
FROM: THE UNIVERSITY OF FEELING OPEN
FOR: YOU

You might wonder in this stage of chaos, of war, what the answer is?

“I believe if there’s any kind of God it wouldn’t be in any of us, not you or me but just this little space in between.” Before Sunrise

Change starts with hard conversations, and these conversations begin at our own dinner parties and within our own bodies. Vulnerability is its own governing body, and it knows every nation and city-state. This is the heart of our project. Honesty with the intent of creating a gentler, more beautiful world. Come in.

I invite you to open, like a flower.
I invite you to shine, like the sky.

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A few years ago, I lay on a table, and a healer hypnotized me into a past-life regression. He asked me to describe who I was, where I was; what I saw, tasted, and heard.

Healer: Do you feel male or female?
Me: I don’t really feel either.

I soon knew that I was in outer space, on a vessel of some kind.

Healer: What determines rank where you are? What does it feel like?
Me: Based on truth and action; you earn your rank by how you show up in the group.

Healer: Ask them, “What is the purpose of our mission? What do we do?”
Me: We monitor the truth. It does not feel as if we are out spreading one particular message necessarily. I don’t get the sense we do anything or make things happen to make other beings change. It is more on a consciousness level than an action level. We feed the actions but are not creating things. We are not moving the hand to make things happen.

Healer: Are you aware of Earth at all?
Me: Yes.

Healer: Do you have any concern with Earth, and do you work with Earth?
Me: Yes, we definitely have concern, and we work with it in this way of communicating with humans’ higher consciousness.

Healer: What does it do for humans when you do that?
Me: It activates them and helps them realize how they can be their most true versions of themselves in a way that will help themselves and others.

Healer: Ask them, “To what point do you monitor the truth? Why is that important?”
Me: To keep people on track with living their higher purpose.

Healer: What is your origin?
Me: Our original planet was called Zenith. We move around now.

The more I heard what my alien self said, the more I experienced a sense of calm. I feel this otherworldly lifetime in my bones.

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To be fair, strange knowings have settled in my body throughout my life. I remember the Santa Barbara mudslides like they were yesterday. We took refuge with loved ones. My daughter slept soundly next to me, while I awoke in the dead of night.

A voice inside, or from somewhere out there, whispered [truth]. Truth is the thing.

The veil was so thin.

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I told my love about this feeling.
“My beautiful alien,” the love replied.

And it struck a chord.

We are each of us beautiful aliens.
We come here in flesh suits to live out one chapter of a long unselfconscious, unbridled story.

We shine and light up the creatures surrounding us.
How gorgeous is that?

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And yet, we spend so much time silent [hiding]. Why?

We must quiet the voices that reward us for standing in line. Our power comes from being unabashedly individual, or even impossibly bizarre.

This project, these questions, are created to awaken your inner ET. I invited you to ask me something you’ve never asked anyone before. And I, along with some brilliant artist-friends, sat down and answered.

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Questions.
Answers.

This portal is a promise to keep my heart bleeding in a burning world.

Together, here we bear witness to lifetimes of stories.
True stories that foster us to be true to ourselves, to others, to everything that has ever existed.

I invite you to pick a question randomly like a tarot card and ask [during a quiet meditation, or at a lingering long lunch]. Ask a few to extended family. Welcome them into your galaxy. Point out your planet.

Over the past 50 years, I’ve survived cancer, raised a kid, and published a book.

I’ve come into good luck and spent time with young monks on the cliffs of a monastery in Bhutan. I have felt I was too much or too little, depending on the day. Meanwhile I have noticed across space-time that it is rawness itself that serves as the grout to keep our society wholesome.

Below, I’ve included some excerpts of pieces I appreciate out of the 99. May these hidden gems inspire you, and I invite you to add your words to ours like a collage.

“Is there a cosmic order to the telling of our interwoven story? I trust so. I will select your questions in the order that feels good to me, honoring fate and a little bit of chance.” [1]

“Over these past few years, the pandemic as well has felt to me a symbol of trying to domesticate something feral…however, when we determine our sense of peace by seeking to sway our environment, we become more brittle, and our nervous systems can collapse. In my case, I became so overwhelmed that I eventually hit a breaking point. Then, in that puddle, I surrendered […] Surrender begs us to meet Mother Earth as a stranger, as a child, rather than trying to outsmart her or guess what she’s about to say.

In other words,
What is actually happening?
What is actually being asked of me?
What is actually mine to hold?” [10]

“Loneliness may be part of it, [AND] I promise the world will continue to shift once you make best friends with that beauty that lives at your permanent address. Practice being more comfortable in those in-between spaces. Plan a perfect solo date. Listen to your favorite record. Be brave enough to be big. Act on behalf of your beliefs. Discover a hobby or book or tree that keeps you in conversation with the part of you that yearns and dreams. Walk with the you that desires more connection, inspiration, resonance. From that open, vulnerable place, regardless of who you are with or where you are [be it a music festival or an office gathering], you will move more confidently. Alien, I invite you to use loneliness as fuel. Explore. When we learn how to make being alone an adventure and we follow our north star, we will forever voyage with the most harmonious company. You are your own twin flame.” [43]

“Allowing ourselves to ask uncomfortable questions and welcoming the unexpected answers is the essence of this very project.

We can be so quick to cling to a binary, far beyond bodies. The countless ways we delineate everything around us construct a believed sense of external safety and order. [If you are this, then I am this.] When we question the labels imposed upon and around us, we start to bring down the house of cards. There is a potential disruption to the order and ways of being that we are all asked to uphold.

Some may see chaos, I see possibility.
You speak of containment. I speak of expansion.
It is a challenging task to describe something that feels in perpetual motion. And yet, when we are alive and awake, everything is in flux, allowing for nature’s inherent fluidity. Who are we to cage a shooting star?” [81]

“When I contemplate what will bring Nature [ourselves and Mother Earth] into a higher state of beingness, I am reminded of Bhutan. When I was there last April, our group visited the 7th century Jambay Lhakhang Temple. After precious time with the temple’s holy lama, Jigme [our guide] led us to a tiny chapel that is usually off limits to visitors. He wanted to share a sculpture of Kalachakra and Vishvamata. Similar to the Chinese concept of Yin Yang, the union of Kalachakra [the male energy representing Compassion] with Vishvamata [the female energy embodying Wisdom] instructs us on how to meet the polarity within ourselves. There was something so peaceful about this holy work of art. These two deities are depicted melting into an embrace: a folding of duality into one gorgeous creature.

In order to create harmony, we must acknowledge all sides of ourselves with compassion and wisdom. We must be willing to lovingly and frankly be present with the light and dark within ourselves and our systems. It is in the dark that we find the light. They share the same great sky. They are intertwined, like humans and earth, like you and me. Be unafraid of the dark.” [98/99]

Alien, I fled my cozy Jewish Beverly Hills nest when I was a teenager to study across the country. Then I went abroad to Rome, only to come home with thyroid cancer. What came after was nuanced. I was so lost. I kept my cool. I smiled on the outside. I got migraines. I couldn’t sleep. I started having panic attacks, which grew frequent and fierce.

I married the right boy and got the right house. I wanted to feel safe. Yet I left myself behind somewhere along the way. I grew miserable until I let myself free. I opted for a double-mastectomy to be proactive, and on the way home, I broke down on the street where I grew up. I cried 20 years worth of tears and began talking to a therapist. Here, I deconstructed my life and started to find my way.

Alien, I implore you not to lose your compass. You are your own friend. Forever. In my thirties, I got divorced, I moved, I began again.

The thing is, while my story has relatable dramatic and compelling moments, the most important lesson I have learned is how this vulnerable, open way of moving through the world carries more than any single one of us as individuals. The way we show up for our relationships, our communities, our globe shifts dramatically when we get real within our inner landscape. The harmful, separatist modes of being show their true colors when we connect with a vision of love.

Take the monster from under the bed and hold her in your arms.

Amid patriarchal-capitalism and its pervasive borders and orders of separation, I study and piece together how my work might nourish and heal the planet. This is a space to explore our individual and collective memory of who we are, why we are here, how we can live more harmoniously. We discuss. We grow. We change. We live. We learn.

This is the ethos of the University of Feeling Open [UFO].
We come in peace.

“I’ve come to think of writing as an act of reciprocity with the living land. Words to remember old stories, words to tell new ones, stories that bring science and spirit back together…”
Robin Wall Kimmerer,
The Democracy of Species