April/May 2023 Aspire Magazine FULL Issue | Page 29

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“ Looking to the future is an escape from the present , rather than being and feeling your wants and needs and getting that . Looking ahead is what you do when you are unhappy .”

Now I ’ m not saying that reading Teal ’ s journals wasn ’ t done without a pang of guilt , or at least some consideration . But in truth , I was so wrecked by her death that I was desperate to hang on to at least a small piece of her . I devoured her journals hungrily .
In particular , I dove into the beaten-up red spiral notebook Teal had stuffed into her backpack , and carried it with her on her travels around the world . This notebook was filled with small sayings , and bits of channeled wisdom .
I found it when I was cleaning out the room she rented in San Francisco . And the first time I flipped through it , I knew exactly what it was .
I remembered her telling me that she ’ d begun to hear phrases in her daily meditations . They came from the panoply of spirit guides and goddesses that she felt she deeply connected with . “ What should I do with them ?” she asked me .
“ Write them down ,” I told her , and thought nothing more of it . But I was a self-involved workaholic then , who had little time for my daughter ’ s more esoteric concerns .
In fact , not long before her death Teal decided it was her mission to become a healer . It was these small phrases that became her driving principle . Now they became mine as well .
The first time I sat down with her notebook , I read this :
“ Give fearlessly , and you shall never want .” and
“ Looking to the future is an escape from the present , rather than being and feeling your wants and needs and getting that . Looking ahead is what you do when you are unhappy .”
Her words resonated right off the page at me . Mainly because as I sat beside Teal ’ s body and watched her die in the hospital , I made a firm decision . If she was going to die , I had to become a much better person . A more present person .
A person Teal could be proud of .
Page after page of her curving handwriting revealed more and more wisdom as the years went by . At first , I was stymied by some of what I read . But over time , as I slowly evolved , more and more of it made sense .
“ Surrender is the key to the unknown and desire ,” she wrote .
This was cryptic to me at first . But after I ’ d lived in the void of the unknown for a good long while , it became clearer . In fact ,
WISDOM & SELF-GROWTH

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