An accidental calling
I founded One Golden Thread by accident. I might even say a personal necessity.
Here’s the back story.
For 92% of my life (yes, I did the math), my people pleasing ways created a false understanding of love summarized as the following: I believed I was worthy of receiving of love, only after I have given love. And because I was giving to receive, it wasn’t pure. It was conditional. I was selling love. I did whatever was necessary to being liked, long before “likes” were a thing.
In this “selling cycle”, I tended to push love away from those that loved me. I never practiced giving it to myself, more corded in other’s experiences and desires. My identity was unknown to me, as I was more governed by others. Prior to that summer, if you asked me a question about what I was “feeling” and wanted in life, I would flip it back to you so fast you would have forgotten you even asked me a question.
I was a master flipper.
Happy on the outside, there was a indescribable dis ease inside, I would become sick 2–3 times a years, always the same: Blocked throat, dropping into my lungs, twice experiencing walking pneumonia.
I decided I needed to do something “radical.” I saw a Chinese Medicine Doctor who after feeling my pulse, asked me if he could give it to me straight. I gulped. He said as gently as he could, “You are not long for this planet. Your liver is on fire, you are a shallow breather, and your kidneys are depleted.”
Something had to give.
Enter Esalen in July 2012, a transformational workshop called Claiming Your Voice was the doorway to usher me into a jetstream of forgiveness and allowance. To see myself in ways that I had never allowed myself to see. I was able to (re)see my greatest pains as my most cathartic teachings. I learned about self-love without my eyes rolling in disdain. I was a beginner. Again.
Doors of self-awareness opened where walls once existed, and incidental teachers openly shared their gifts, their wisdom. I became insatiable with curiosity, and sat with teachers, took workshops, experimented with plant medicines, and listened to people’s stories from all walks.
When something landed for me as true, I took notes. Lots of notes. Everywhere. Picture Momento, the movie. But with scrawled handwriting that approximated a high schooler with a broken arm — and writing with his off hand.
I’ve come to embrace this truism: “Knowledge is what we horde, wisdom is what we share.” And I was a classic horder. In the Fall of 2014, I told myself it was time. To take my self-appointed muzzle off, and share wisdom, not stories — starting with myself first.
Based on what resonated most in my experience, I wrote a deeply personal life 2.0 humanifesto to myself in 2014, a weaving of the experience and wisdom I had learned since this current chapter of my life began in July 2012.
As I sat staring into the colorful hills of Vermont that crisp Fall day in 2014, my pen channeled a flowing consciousness of the recent life lessons I was just beginning to put into practice. Living gems wove as what I amused was floetry, as I hadn’t written something rhymed since my 6th grade roses are red missives to my mom.
I kept my lesson “floem” to myself, almost embarrassed reading it from time to time when my rubber band snapped back to past patterns which I know no longer served.
A year later in the fall of 2015, I shared for the first time with another soul because her pain was speaking to my experience and what I had written about. It was the deepest of dives to share something from within with another. She looked at me after I shared over 4 minutes with a blank slate, and every fear limiting belief came crashing down on me. Did it suck? Was it too raw? Did I upset her? Just as I was about to open my mouth and apologize for sharing something too much, she softly voiced, “Thank you, you just put words to my journey I hadn’t accessed. You should share this.”
I immediately changed the subject, dismissing her suggestion.
Enter early December 2015, a moment that would change my life path. It came in the form of an total stranger from South Africa, at an art gallery opening in NYC. After sharing what I wrote for just the second time, he asked “What are you doing with this?” I responded, “Nothing.” He said “What are you going to do with this?” I said “Nothing. It was just intended for me, and who am I to share it anyway?”
And then this stranger did and said something that actually changed my life. With a three finger point at my chest — who does that? — he emphatically said, “Let me tell you something. We are put on this planet for three reasons. To learn, to love and to share. And if you are not sharing your gifts, you are being selfish. Quit being so fucking selfish.”
And he turned and walked away, it was a like an anvil drop on my soul, as my past belief was erased inside me that if I was playing as big as what was inside me, I was being selfish, narcissistic and egoic. I never even got his name.
I sat with this newfound permission to pivot for a month, and awoke the morning of December 31, 2015 emboldened that the time was now to cease playing small. To work on purpose, and with those who are I felt life aligned. I told my business partner at the time I wished to separate, and I began to share what was on my mind with those who invited me.
One day in February 2016, it came to me that what it was all about was that it starts with every one, revealing their gold, it is that return to self that threads us together. And the words literally formed as One Golden Thread. Two months later, the number 108 — my favorite number without definition why for some time — I realized was the embodiment of One Golden Thread, as it starts with 1, and we then can be better in community (0) and that is when love becomes infinite (8). We are calling 108 as the source code for the message of One Golden Thread, and in collaboration with the mystical artisan Maor Cohen, the 108 pendant was created.
The self-love humanifesto ends with a … because I always saw what I authored simply as a humble conversation starter, to welcome every one to follow the thread to their heart and claim their voice. I hope the sharing of my gifts, inspires others to share theirs, here. As the incomparable Heartist Jess Magic coined, “We don’t do what we do to be good, we do it to be free.” Thank you for welcoming me in.
I believe that every one is Golden, and my jam on the planet to shine the spot light to step into their shine. To reveal the gold that’s already inside. For some crazy reason, many of us grow a muzzle. Shed that, and share your gifts. Receiving, in order to give, is the highest form of living. Coming from abundance, we are boundless.
Who knew the airline industry in the 60’s would be our greatest elemental teacher — “put your oxygen mask on first, and then help others.”
Life is elemental.
Life is sensuous.
As Red said in Shawshank Redemption, “get to living, or get on dying.” I’ve chosen to live and love from the inside out, and wish that for every one. That is to live life golden.
