We write names on the sand and call it forever. We laugh, we love, we hold on — not knowing that water was never ours to keep. This is a letter to the ocean, and to everyone who has ever stood at the shore wondering why we love what the tide will always take. Some spend a lifetime thinking. A few write anyway.

The loud sound waking me from sleep existed not to mock or destroy, but to awaken the mind from illusion. What once sounded terrifying became almost beautiful, almost comforting, like a song echoing across existence. The sound itself had not changed. Only the mind listening had changed.

In meditation today, a teaching arrived – not as doctrine, but as direct knowing. The Diamond Sutra’s ancient wisdom on the nature of giving, receiving, and the self that does neither. If those words feel distant to you, let this song carry it instead. No tradition required. Just listen with your heart.

She came to my table at the monastery, then darted away. Came back closer. Went away again. The most beautiful squirrel I had ever seen, mustering up the courage each time. This is a piece about dying before you die, about the second life, and about everything the squirrel already knows.

We often approach spirituality as an exercise in deletion. But the longer I spend in temples, and in the world outside them, the more I understand: spirit is not an escape from humanity. It is the deep, unconditional embrace of it. The divine is not found in a pristine, untouchable holiness; it is found right here, in the messy, luminous chaos of an ordinary life.

With the egg I threw away: it is not my first time. In fact, I have done it hundreds of times. As a child, our nanny would prepare breakfast before my siblings and I left for school. There was always a glass of warm powdered milk, sometimes noodles, and always a boiled egg. I could never finish the egg at the table, so I would carry it in my small hands all the way to school and throw it in the trashcan there.

In a dream, the Buddha did not tell me to forgive. He told me to feel my anger fully, name what was owed, and ask for it without shame. He said that what is not felt leaves a mark, and that mark is carried forward into another life where it must still be learned, still be felt, still be resolved. True forgiveness, he said, can only follow true feeling. Nothing gets buried.

I sat with my cup half-empty after thirty minutes, holding it for its warmth rather than drinking, and truly wondered why this was being asked of me. Then the Buddha gave me peace. The food was not punishment. It was grounding, a return to the body, to this life, to this practice.

I sat beneath five large Buddha rupas, surrounded by dozens more along the walls, and felt it all at once. The generosity of strangers had built this place of peace. The land, the housing, the food, the medicine, the water, the community itself, all given freely by many hearts across Myanmar and Austin and places between. And the first teaching arrived before I had even settled into stillness: abundance is not something we accumulate. It is something we participate in.

In the middle of the field, two Eastern Comma butterflies found me and circled for fifteen minutes until time stopped. One landed on my shoulder, the other on my chest, just over my heart. The love I felt was overflowing, and my tears were falling from joy, that particular joy that has no reason except that something true has been recognized.

I walked into nature with a numbed mind, carried there by something I could not name. At the threshold going in, a butterfly landed before me. At the threshold coming out, another. Her name is Vanessa. The time read 5:55 and Guanyin’s mantra was playing. A shop called LOVE was covered floor to ceiling in shimmering wings. I did not choose any of this. Somewhere beneath the breaking, something is being found. Maybe that something is me.

I am a breatharian of a different kind. I eat what my body tells me. The body speaks and I listen. I went without food or water for twenty-two days. When that period ended, I chose to return to the table, to eat with others, as a celebration of life shared. It is just like eating a small slice of cake at a wedding even though you are allergic to gluten. You eat it anyway, because some moments are larger than what the body needs.

I was almost at the end of the tunnel when I heard it. A man’s voice, behind me, saying he could not live this life without me. I had to make a choice between the light I had always belonged to, and a promise I had made before I had a name. I came back. Four years later, I am still here. Still waiting. And I have never stopped believing he is too.

Twin flames are not two halves making a whole. They are one soul in two bodies, fully complete, carrying the same frequency, the same origin, the same light. When they meet, nothing about it is ordinary. I wrote about what they are, why the journey is so difficult, and why their love is not a means to something greater. It simply is the greatest thing.

A few days ago, time stopped. My spirit above my body, a presence settling over me like a second skin. Today, what came through was a transmission on the twin flame dynamic of chasing and running. Why the distance between two souls is not a wound, but a purification. It sheds light on the universal process of shedding darkness and coming fully into the light.

No matter how far away a person is, their love feels right there, because they don’t leave you. Souls can be intertwined from the beginning of time, and no amount of challenge can take them apart. This is not a romantic idea. It is a spiritual law, one that every great tradition has named in its own language, and one that the heart has always known even when the mind could not explain it.

I discovered that setting small, achievable goals while letting go of rigid outcomes brings the greatest happiness. By viewing each day as full of possibilities without imposing excessive pressure on myself, I find contentment.

In spirituality, the "transmutation of light" refers to the process of transforming or elevating one's spiritual energy or consciousness. Light is a common metaphor for purity, divine energy, or higher consciousness.

Life is a canvas upon which we paint our own meaning and value. It is a personal journey without inherent purpose, shaped by our choices and experiences. Rather than chasing a fleeting sense of happiness, it might be more fulfilling to embrace life as it unfolds naturally. Life’s transient nature presents us with a spectrum of experiences—both highs and lows—that teach us compassion and love.

I witness that Life can exist more beautifully than ever. It is surreal. I am now aware that there is an invisible light guiding us all towards who we are. Light is who we are; Love heals.