You know… I never really listened to these lyrics. And now that I’ve have, I’ve been playing this one song over and over:

As of last night, there is no doubt in my mind that eating more raw produce puts me in a more emotion-based state of mind. I feel moved more often. I feel connected. I verge on tears more often, in a way that identifies what is important to me, what must happen next, what it’s time for me to do. All issues with internal and external motivation aside, the explosion of emotional growth I’m experiencing has served as a compass for the decisions I make and the energies I expend. I’m getting more sensitive to it all the time. It’s one of the things that makes me truly wonder about being completely, 100% raw, even considering the dramatic change that would mean for my lifestyle. (Well, I suppose I’ve undergone some pretty dramatic changes already. Big deal, right?)

For those of you who are curious, I’m not completely sure when the step from 90% raw to 100% raw will happen (or if it will happen?), but I have a feeling there will be a time for it and I’ll know when that time is. I’m looking for the right route, the one that feels the best and results in the healthiest, strongest, most stable Megan. It’s not going to be exactly like anyone else’s, but that’s what makes it interesting. ;}

I feel like I’m understanding, in touch with, more than ever. Or maybe it all just spoke too quietly for me to hear, or maybe I just wasn’t listening. And although I’ve been following these ideas for awhile now, the understanding just continues to get… louder.

Your number has been called. Don’t let yourself down, don’t let yourself go. Your last chance has arrived. You’ve got to be the best, you’ve got to change the world and use this chance to be heard. Your time is now.

That’s pretty straightforward, folks.

Listen to the band.

There is no feeling quite like gratitude.

If you’re feeling bad, or tired, or negative, or angry, or scared, or worn down, or doomed, or deadened, the salve you’re searching for is gratitude. Hell! If you’re feeling great and want to do something neat, want to funnel your energy in an excellently positive direction, gratitude’s your man.

I participated in my first (and only) sweat lodge almost a year ago at Burning Flipside, and one of the things that stood out about my experience was the effect gratitude has on me. It was very intense emotionally, but the most intense part was the gratitude. It was also the most important part, though I didn’t know exactly why. It was an essential part of everything. Maybe it’s the life blood of the cosmos. Whatever it was, it was powerful.

I learned to generate gratitude accidentally, when I was at a Learning Strategies weekend seminar. Millicent hooked me up to a (somewhat silly) heart rate game and told me to send love to the planet. So I did. It felt surprisingly awesome. I didn’t know I could send love to something until I tried sending love to something, but that wasn’t even the best part. Sending love is neat, but an amazing side effect of sending love was discovering that I could manufacture gratitude out of nothing.

Feeling feelings on purpose instead of just reactively is a super useful tool (for dozens of reasons). With very little practice I have gotten to the point where I can be grateful for something completely random, or absolutely nothing. Sometimes I use it to encourage good behavior in my body (like remembering something useful, or having sudden inspiration, or staying particularly healthy, or doing a new feat of physical exercise), but sometimes I use it just to feel good. I’m grateful for you, universe, I say. I’m grateful to be in you / around you / you. You are freaking awesome.

Sometimes I give my unconscious a cake. Hello, unconscious dudes, I say. Here is a nice cake for you! (I have noticed in the past that the cakes I give to my unconscious dudes are always normal mainstream cakes—expensive sugarsome confectionary concoctions, the kind of thing I craved before my jihad against poison. I don’t know what this means, but feel free to psychoanalyze.) In whatever case, it’s a symbol of gratitude. (Or of bribery.)

As I got better at it, I didn’t give cakes so often anymore. I mostly just created the feeling.

I can make it very very intense. Grateful! It floods me, it’s warm and electric and extremely mellow. It tends to obliterate lesser feelings. It fills up and heals and makes better.

It’s quite worth a try!

I recommend starting with something you know you’re grateful for, and focusing on feelin’ the feelin’. Pay attention to the shape and texture of it, the expanse of it, taste and color, and remember what it feels like to feel it. Later on, you can make it happen just by remembering it and feeding it.

Go! Gratitudify.

At some indeterminate point in the last few years, I began to feel emotions much more strongly than I used to. Most of the time, they’re normal. But more and more, they rise like a tide, or hit me like a wave. (WHACK! Broadsides me.)

The really amazing ones are about people. An urge to connect with someone—to get to know them better, to find out what makes them who they are. A realization or an epiphany, like suddenly understanding something that hadn’t occurred to me before. Or last night, in the car, when I had this flash of insight: Em and I are both doing what means something to us. We’re doing what feels powerful and right. I thought about that from the perspective of my parents, and I thought about how many people never do that thing, in their whole lives... and I felt an overwhelming pride, that I’m part of this family, that I’m doing what I do, that I have a sister like her, and that we have parents that—for all our collective domestic flaws—raised us to be the kind of people we are. Whatever that actually means.

And that we’re only going to grow from here.

Music is a powerful emotional trigger for lots of people, but it’s gotten much bigger for me. Old music, new music. Em’s work is becoming a large part of the ongoing soundtrack of my aspirations to world domination, slowly but surely. And usually the music that moves me is about people. Connections, plans, urges, motivations. There are so many subtle pieces that fit together in complex ways, and I often feel like I can hear all of them. They all have an effect on me.

So why is this happening? There’s obviously a difference from even just a year ago. Maybe I’m growing up. It could have a lot to do with food: I’ve certainly been eating progressively better over the last several years, and I’m more solidly whole-fresh-produce now than ever. (I’ve read enough about food changing one’s perception of the universe that I think that’s a pretty good bet, right there.) I’ve also been making incredible in-roads in terms of learning about and understanding myself and other people. I’m doing things, now, that have great purpose for me, that make me feel something. And let’s not forget that I’ve been off birth control for at least a year and a half. (Hormones, anyone?) There are lots of explanations—and maybe all of them have a part in it.

Whatever the reason, it’s increasing steadily. Maybe I will be an emotional experience superhero by this time next year. The thing that bothers me, though, is that I’m not sure what to do with it. It’s fascinating (sometimes exhilarating) to experience, but other than leveraging it to motivate me to bigger and bigger pursuits (which I do), I almost feel like it’s not useable. Is that not enough? Is there something else?

There’s this part, too: I am wanting more and more connection, and I am less and less patient with my inability to communicate what I’m feeling. How do you tell someone you’re that proud of them? How do you tell someone you value them that much? Words fail me.

Maybe I just need new words…?