_A meditation on rebar, karma, and the courage to stay_ --- I think about embracing it all—the carpentry and building business that's become part of who I am, the creative spirit that moves through musician and writer and yogi, the husband emerging, the male coming into his forties and defining himself as an adult through sacrifices, through achievements, through taking life step-by-step. Looking for opportunities where there is momentum. Where you know that if you choose that path, if you follow up on an opportunity, it's going to continue to unravel. This creative process of manifesting your reality gains its own energy, this sense of divine orchestration, because now you are collaborating. **You're collaborating with three important things:** **KARMA** You're taking past seeds that you've planted, now ripening, and the way you choose to engage with those ripening circumstances is live, in your hands. You can continue scripting how you want to eradicate the karma, how you want to perpetuate it. But it takes awareness as these challenging circumstances unfold. **HEART** Your heart is really there to be not a litmus test, but a barometer. It will vibe, it will resonate with your truth, even though that might mean it's scary, even though that might mean there's some lack of belief. But your heart doesn't have that lack of belief—that's the mind. That's the emotional body too, getting hyper-sensitive, getting all the feels. But your heart will resonate, and it will be a sense of knowing. This is intuition: when the feeling in the heart is known, there is a truth that is gleaned from how you're feeling in your heart. This is an intuitive process. We can learn to trust our intuition. We won't feel that we have to tear ourselves up making choices, wondering, not knowing, living in between different convictions. When we can trust our intuition, we take on the challenge. We're like, "I know this is going to get me to the other side, and I know the other side is where I'm going, so I know I have to move through this as gracefully and as authentically as I can." **INTEGRITY** Integrity to yourself, integrity to your values. As you move through these circumstances with integrity, you build—that builds character, that strengthens and reinforces who you are and who you're deciding to be in the world. We constantly need this reinforcement. We can always be looking to reinvent ourselves—there are times for reinvention—*but reinforcement is what builds foundation*. It gives us those opportunities to reinvent ourselves without losing ourselves. We have to be reinforced. ### REBAR METAPHOR I think of rebar. When you build a concrete form, you put rebar in the middle of it so that the concrete can have something to adhere to, and it reinforces the concrete. Reinforcement bar. Think about that reinforcement bar you have—that thread inside you, very concentrated energy, your own personal rebar. It has tensile strength and it's dense and it's malleable. You know, it's still malleable. That is really where your 'who-you-are' lives. What you believe in. That's where it all is. *We have to reinforce ourselves as much as we reinvent ourselves.* The reinforcement comes through moving with integrity. Through choosing the path your heart knows, even when your mind creates doubt. Through engaging with your ripening karma consciously rather than reactively. *Through trusting the momentum that builds when you align with what wants to emerge.* This is the art of staying. Not staying stuck, but staying present to the unfolding. Staying committed to the reinforcement that allows for authentic transformation. Staying with your own process long enough for the rebar to set, for the foundation to cure, for the structure of who you are to become strong enough to support whatever comes next. Because the truth is, we don't need to become someone else. We need to become more fully who we already are. The carpenter, the creator, the contemplative, the committed partner—all of it woven together by this central thread, this personal rebar that's dense enough to hold it all, flexible enough to bend without breaking, strong enough to support a life of meaning. The divine orchestration happens when we stop trying to conduct the symphony and start playing our part with complete presence. When we trust that our heart knows the melody, even when our mind can't read the music. When we reinforce rather than replace, deepen rather than discard, integrate rather than abandon. This is the practice: staying long enough to discover what wants to emerge through you, rather than what you think you should become. Building the reinforcement that makes all true change possible. --- _What in your life is asking for reinforcement rather than replacement? What part of you needs strengthening before it can safely transform?_