Inside the Pilot's Heart

This is a first. I’m writing from the place of my strongest fear: onboard an airplane. Seat 24D, Southwest flight 4006 from San Francisco to San Diego, 15 minutes after take-off. In the cockpit, the pilot’s heart is beating, calmly enthused, healthy, ready.

It’s a short flight on a sunny day, down the state of California. There’s no typhoon happening, like there was when I flew to India in 2006. And yet, my handwriting is unusually messy, my palms are sweaty, and I am present to a vivid degree of fear in my body and mind. Hmm… my writing just got extra messy, when the relatively mild up-and-down jolts escalated and the pilot announced we’d be hitting a few bumpy spots along the way. His voice was calm and clear, no state of alarm conveyed, yet still… I write, to ‘make love’ to my own state of fear.

clean pre-board lunch helped calm my nerves

Chances are, we will land on the runway in San Diego on time, and I’ll get to see one of my favorite people this weekend, my dear friend Pete, who I came to visit.

Chances are, in two days I’ll return home to see the greatest human Love of my life — my daughter Helena — and our irresistibly affectionate dog Jerry.

Chances are, I’ll get to keep earning a living doing what I came into this life to do: illuminate the beauty of the human spirit by seeing through the eyes of Love.

Yet those are chances.
They’re not guarantees.

If there’s a 99.99% chance that will all happen — and I accept that this is true — then there’s still a .01% chance it won’t… that instead, somehow this plane or the sky will do something else and this life I’ve lived for almost 51 years will end.

I clearly remember the first few days after I got home from India in the autumn of 2006. One afternoon, I went walking with a colleague named John Carlon, who shared my reverence for rivers. John noticed my heightened state of aliveness after rafting a dangerous stretch of the Zanskar River, headwaters of the Ganges, and he told me that he, too, intended to feel that alive with his one precious life.

He said that, in order to support himself to live up to that high bar, “I do something every day that scares me.“

I understood what he meant.

Being fully alive feels really good.

My level of aliveness was fertilized by a monthlong experience of courageously rafting a very cold Himalayan river, and flying through a typhoon that led to an emergency landing at a Chinese military airport. Not to mention, walking the streets of New Delhi with air so dirty I couldn’t be outside for more than an hour without feeling sick, thinking, Good God, I am fortunate to have clean air to breathe back home. Back home, bright beams of gratitude-lit presence streamed from my eyes and fingertips. Before then, I had never felt such all-encompassing thanks for being alive.

“Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” Howard Thurman

It took another 17 years before I realized—

Humans need pain to wake up. What do I mean by ‘wake up’?

Being fully alive, with our soul’s eyes wide open, living our own unique truth.

Vibrationally, energetically, pulsing with aliveness. Breathing the vitality we are gifted at birth. Living from the electric sensitivity of a baby‘s face when she or he feels joy. Moving in a state of reverence, accepting that—

Life actually IS

an extraordinarily

beautiful

gift.

It was 2 1/2 years ago in 2023 when I was hiking up a hill and heard the words making love to fear come through me. I had been asking — within, asking the Light inside of me, not asking AI or a spiritual encyclopedia — do humans need pain to wake up? These words were offered to me, making love to fear, as part of the answer.

In other words, yes, we do. As it stands, humans need pain to wake up. This couldn’t be more obvious given the state of the world today.

Let’s tell the truth. Yes, we do. And—

Love is the

only

way

through.

I could’ve driven to Southern California today. It’s an 8-hour drive and people often prefer to fly. But flying takes almost as long, with the shuttle and airport security lines and waiting in the lobby.

Today I chose to fly because I have fear to love, and every time I show up to do that, my lifescape opens up to greater awe, greater wow, greater joy.

Jerry, basking in the sunlight of his easily found joy

Yes, chances are, this plane ride will smooth out again after this current set of bumps, soaring safely south over the beaming golden light of the California sky.

Chances are, the pilot will eat dinner with his family tonight after another day on the job. A well paid job he’s proud of, that makes little kids smile when he tells them what he does for a living.

Chances are, inside the pilot’s heart, there is a vision. He will brush his teeth tonight once he gets home, safely, just like he’s done thousands of times. And his little kids will joyfully pounce on him tomorrow morning once they see he’s home from work.

Chances are, the woman sitting next to me is unconsciously coping with some form of her own fear, as she eats candied gummy worms after eating a bag of M&Ms after eating popcorn after eating the bag of Maui Onion pretzels passed out by the stewardess. Her choices are like mine were, for most of my life while I lived with a food and sugar addiction, coping with my own pain — an inability to choose sweetness, comfort, and pleasure in healthy ways — before a brain tumor came to scream through my head, inviting me to wake the fuck up.

For me, this fear, of flying on an airplane… is up.
It wants my attention.
It wants me to fully embrace it — to make love to fear.

After all, that’s the spirit of what I do for a living. It’s what I guide my clients into: the repetitious building of self-love muscle, the willingness to tell the truth enough to feel the passion their pain came to liberate. To embody the knowing that—

The Love inside of them is what will heal their fear, one sky-bump, romantic rejection, lonely night or empty wallet at a time.

As this plane took off today, I quietly repeated these words over and over again: Multiple redundancies, multiple redundancies, multiple redundancies…

I heard them just a few weeks ago from a man named Rene who works with private aircraft pilots in an office near my apartment. We frequent the same café, and I had seen him there many times with a group of mostly men, dressed in snazzy suits, with accents from all over the world (Italian, ooh la laaa…).

As Rene waited for his cappuccino, I felt an urge to introduce myself. “You’re not with your entourage today,” I said.

He smiled. “They’re here once a month.”

I asked if I could share something with him that’s kind of personal. (Yes, that’s me: Hi. Let’s go deep.) He said, “Sure.”

So I told him about my fear of flying and the 10 minutes that followed were unforgettable. He said many people are afraid of flying, and that airplanes today are engineered with “multiple redundancies.” He kindly tried to soothe me in a surprisingly charmed moment of “Hello stranger, nice to meet you, can I tell you about my greatest fear?”

When I get both tears and chills within a short conversation, that’s a holy moment.

I knew Rene’s wisdom and gentle way of sharing it were expressions of an evolutionary moment for my soul. He told me planes these days are engineered with layers of safety that make it very unlikely they’ll crash, with “catastrophe“ being the only likely chance.

I believe him. And I’m gonna ask if I can interview him this year because, as he tells me, fear of flying is quite common. And—

I am here to love humanity into being eyes-wide-open in awe of the beauty of its own spirit.

And so, dear fear…

I’ve got your number. I’m at your door. My Piscean whale wings are riding through your wind gusts in the sky. And I’m gonna love you until you melt in the arms of God’s golden honey. Meanwhile, the plane just began its descent. San Diego, here I come.

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admiring the Golden Gate with my daughter, MLK Day, the day after getting home

Update, one week later —

The 99.99% chance won out and I made it home. Our plane landed safely and I had one of the most spectacular weekends of my life, visiting my friend and basking in the soft San Diego winter sun. Now back in Northern California, I will soon get to rise from my bed where I write, make breakfast for my daughter and give thanks for another day in this extraordinary gift called being alive. If you are a woman who’s ready to embrace your fear and melt it in the presence of your Love, reach out to see if my coaching is a match for you.