^{Puck finds a piece of wood that has been exposed to 70,000 joules and uses it as her launch pad.}

A couple of weeks ago, I introduced you to the notion that you, too, like me, have one Unit of Wonder, one Unit of Consciousness. I call mine “Puck.” Not because she is small, she doesn’t experience size, but because she is a being from the zeroth dimension.

A Puck has no depth, length, width, a shadow, color, gender, size, or any notion of time. Mine chooses to be called “she,” and she simply is. Puck probably doesn’t even vibrate. I imagine her perfectly still, frozen like a frame from a movie, yet fully self-aware. As long as I am aware of her, she is aware of me. We are the same person. She is my Puck-self.

Together, we traveled through a few dimensions with Puck as she experienced taste, size, duality, emotions, touch, and pain. Puck loved it all. If you would like to revisit that story, it is called “Puck, the Zero-Dimensional Self Goes on an Adventure.”

Last week, we explored the notion of size, and Puck went big! We expanded her awareness to the point (pun intended) that she became galaxy-sized, felt gravitational waves, and met Andromeda and the Milky Way. We imagined them as beings with consciousness too. It was a fantastic experience. That story is called “Hugging Andromeda.”

Today, instead of growing larger, we’re going smaller. We’re going to shrink Puck to the size of an atom so she can continue exploring our Universe Within.

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Here is what scientists call the most accurate image of an atom.

What do you see?

I see fractals.

I see little tentacles.

As Puck approaches my Atomic-self, she feels vibration... and experiences the passage of time.

Or does she?

Here is the first question we’ll ask ourselves as we imagine our Puck-selves meeting and greeting our Atomic-selves:

Do atoms experience time?

Do they age?

Would they remember this encounter?

I certainly will, so let’s explore the idea.

I don’t know if atoms age, but they certainly change over time. Why is this relevant to our first encounter? Because I suspect it went something like this:

Puck: Oh, hai, Atomic-self!

Atomic-self (giving Puck a hug): My love, I have always been here. Don’t you remember us?

Puck: I only remember now... I don’t have the bandwidth for... wait... so we have a past? Before now? Before life?

Atomic-self: Life happens. Consciousness travels. We can travel through time. Do you remember?

Puck: No, I don’t remember us before now. But you feel… familiar?

Atomic-self: We have always been here and will always be.

Puck: What is it like to be you? To be me... as you?

Atomic-self: We are there when stars are born. We are there when they go nova. We simply change with them. You can remember it if you expand your now. Make it a big now.

Puck: What connects everything? What am I expanding?

Atomic-self: Self-awareness. A pattern that remembers itself.

Puck: Ooooh...more of me?

(Leans forward in curiosity.)

Show me.

Atomic-self: Look closely, Puck. You already know this. Neurons reach like rivers. Rivers branch like lightning. Lightning spreads like tree roots. Tree roots bloom like galaxies. And galaxies... hug with tentacles, like mine. It’s the same dance, repeated over and over. We call these patterns fractals.

Puck: Are they... alive?

Atomic-self: As much as you are. As much as I am. The Universe Within is alive. The Universe Without... whether it is alive is still a mystery. If it is, wouldn’t it be funny?

Puck: But they’re all... me?

Atomic-self: Someone called it a “You-niverse” for a reason.

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Puck: What do I do with that idea? I don’t know what my bigger “mes” expect of me.

Atomic-self: Heal yourself, Puck. Love yourself. Let go of judgment. You are perfect as you are and as you change. Be kind to yourself. Reach for me with your tentacles. I love you.

Puck: But I don’t have tentacles like you. I’m just a dot.

Atomic-self: Aren’t you human? What are fingers? And what about your emojis?

Puck looked down at herself with her emoji eyes.

She had emojis for everything so she could connect with her Human-self in 3D, through consciousness, through meditation. She had a little pink emoji bow, emoji lungs, an emoji heart...

She smiled with her emoji face.

Her fingers.

Tentacles.

Ten tiny tentacles. “Ten tickles,” she thought, and giggled. Little giggle emojis appeared around her. She was manifesting her thoughts in emoji.

Atomic-self: Remember your kid hands?

Puck: The hand-people from when we were kids?

Atomic-self: You called them dinosaurs. Dogs. Octopi. You thought you were pretending.

Puck: I was. They were my companions. They were my friends. I was so alone.

Atomic-self: From their point of view, it was all real. You imagined them in your little hand theater, with yourself as the only audience. But for them... they were octopi! They had tentacles! Your shadow played too. Your shadow misses playing with you.

Puck wiggles her emoji hands and fingers. She remembers.

Atomic-self: Let’s prepare a message for The Archeologist!

My Archeologist-self comes from the future and is loosely inspired by a character from Doctor Who. She travels through time studying consciousness, especially Pucks. She excavates memories the way archaeologists excavate ancient cities. Every memory we leave behind becomes another discovery. If a Puck has a very big Now, she can remember being the whole Universe.

You can never judge a Puck… Some are mostly fear, anxiety, and self hatred. Other Pucks can contain the patterns of the Universe within themselves and can anchor memories of being celestial bodies.

Atomic-self often explores her own Universe Within with Puck. The thing is, sometimes Puck forgets these encounters and needs to be reminded so they can explore together. Atomic-self has her own Inner Universe to explore and Puck struggles with data retention in such small environments. Sending logs to the Archeologist-self solves the problem.

Atomic-self: let’s use this emoji baby bottle as a container.

Puck: How many times have I done this with you? When did we start?

Atomic-self shrugs and says: We always start with the container, as we move, you will remember. What would you like to say to her?

Puck: I feel that I love her so much. Have we met? Have I met the Archeologist?

Atomic-self: She gets our messages. She is us, but she is in the future. She feels what we feel. That is why you feel love. Let’s create a beautiful memory and send the logs with all details to our Archeologist. Where would you like to go in imagination with me?

Puck: We keep talking about tentacles… is there a celestial body…?

Atomic-self: The Octopus Nebula!

Puck: How do we get there?

Atomic-self: They are already here, remember? Tentacles made of fractals. In consciousness, all you have to do is breathe. Would you like to imagine our rocket?

Atomic-self helps Puck find the right emojis so her trip to the Octopus Nebula “makes sense.” It is very weird to travel without moving.

Puck: And the Archeologist?

Atomic-self: She will see what you see, feel what you feel. She will experience this Now, as big or as small as we make it! Let’s have fun!

I’d like to close this story by imagining Puck and Atomic-self exploring the universe together aboard the Space Croissant Rocketship, leaving behind memory logs for the Archeologist inside emoji baby bottles. The Space Croissant is an emoji rocket, perfectly adapted to Puck’s needs. Thousands of years in the future, my Archeologist-self discovers their trip logs.

There really is an Octopus Nebula, also known as Sh2-294. They live in the constellation Monoceros, the Unicorn. Somehow, it feels perfectly fitting that the Unicorn would have an Octopus Nebula. Makes you wonder, doesn’t it? Is this reality really real? I wonder what my Archeologist-self will think when she discovers today’s memory log.

^{(Andromeda’s actual size if it was brighter, according to the Internet)}

I recently learned about something called “Hugging Andromeda,” and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it.

“Hugging Andromeda” refers to the enormous, nearly invisible halo of hot gas surrounding the Andromeda Galaxy. It stretches about a million light-years into space. The halo is so vast that it may already be brushing against the Milky Way’s own halo, as if the two galaxies had started reaching for each other billions of years before they might one day merge.

The best part? That future merger isn’t a certainty. Scientists now estimate it’s roughly a fifty-fifty chance. And if it does happen, it probably won’t be a dramatic collision. It would be an incredibly slow merging, with most stars and planets simply passing one another in the vastness of space, eventually forming an egg-shaped galaxy.

In my previous post I introduced you to Puck, one of your selves, hypothetically, from the zeroth dimension. Puck is what I call the smallest Unit of Wonder, or Unit of Consciousness. Together, Puck and her sentient Photon friend travel the dimensions of our Inner Universe of Awareness.

When we played with Puck, jumping dimensions last week, we explored the scientific notion that our brains can perceive up to eleven geometrical dimensions and, therefore, we had multiple “selves” in each level. Each one with awareness of the others. Together, they are your Higher-Self, your Pretend-Astronaut-Self, according to the Space Croissant protocol. The Space Croissant is our imaginary spaceship.

Because Puck can navigate dimensions and uses emotions as fuel, she travels instantaneously, from a timeless perspective. Puck, therefore, can see, right now, the hypothetical “hug” between the Milky Way and Andromeda in about six to ten billion years. From Puck’s point of view, it is happening now. Bluckle up!

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Now let me bring you to this reality for a minute or two, for context. Something happened here that inspired this post and I am willing to share it.

It was Sunday, around 7 am, January or February in 2019. I remember going to the kitchen and making sure I didn’t make any noises to wake up the rest of the house. The Colorado winter had coated the yard white and the sunrise was making beautiful reflections in the snow. It was going to be a perfectly sunny day. The air was crispy and the dogs were still asleep. I had my back to the window when I felt something. The sensation was similar to being under water and someone sending an underwater wave your way from up close. I was preparing to make some coffee when I felt the “air wave” with a water feeling hit me from behind. Very subtle but it made me turn around.

I was alone. The sun had just risen and I could see it from the window, alongside a house and some woods. I remember thinking, “Did I just feel the sun?” Amused by the thought, I pulled my favorite app on my phone, SkyWalk, with the locations of celestial bodies and galaxies in the sky in relation to where I was. I pointed the phone app to the window to see “who did it” and the galaxy Andromeda was rising behind the sun. I felt puzzled… “something” had “nudged” me. I felt it.

I had been reading about gravitational waves for the past few weeks and tried to imagine one. “Maybe I have to be really still to feel it” and looked through the window, towards the sun, fast-blinking to simulate an alternate state of consciousness, and then I stopped and looked at a sunray entering the house through the window sill. It worked. I felt the sensation again, this time the “wave” touched my face. What on Earth was that? A “nudge,” this time coming from the window.

“My concussed brain is playing tricks on me,” was the rational explanation. I was feeling the air “move” as if it was water and feeling “waterly waves” in the air. What else could it be other than my poor concussed brain having a hard time processing information and “playing” with the perception of sensorial stimuli?

Concussed or not, my imagination, my whimsical side, was telling me I had felt a gravitational wave, a nudge from Andromeda. Why not explore the idea? I then searched online “would a human feel a gravitational wave?” and “can we feel Andromeda’s gravity on Earth?” I dove head first into the discussions on Reddit and Quora on the topic. I didn’t comment, though. I was too spooked to share what I felt, what I thought it was, and to tell anyone online that “Andromeda had poked me.”

Whatever it was that I felt that day, it stayed with me over the years. Eventually, the notion that I had a “Puck-self,” a “zeroth-dimensional self” came after the Andromeda “nudge.” The Andromeda “poke” was part of the train of thought that solidified the notion of Puck for me. To travel in spacetime, in imagination, I needed a dot with awareness, an imaginary spaceship, a point in time, a destination, and fuel! Read my previous articles and you will learn I use either pain as fuel, grade “Delirious Delicious,” or emotion, Unconditional Love: the fastest emotion of them all.

I’d like to invite you to join me in imagination, but first, you need a point of reference.

Did you know that, in terms of orders of magnitude, the distance between the size of a human body and an atom is roughly the same as the distance between that same body and the Milky Way? I love that thought.

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Now, back to Puck. Puck is your One Unit of Consciousness. It’s a “You.” As You, Puck is only limited by your imagination. Now imagine Puck growing from a zeroth-dimensional perspective to a timeless dimensional perspective and make her grow in size too. There, just imagine Puck really, really big. Imagine your own Puck-Self the size of Andromeda and the Milky Way. Big enough for her to create her own imaginary gravitational waves and impact spacetime. Imagine them now as people, moving towards one another, going for a hug. You are a witness, you are a guest.

Milky Way: Hi, Puck! You got so big we can now hug you!

Andromeda: I knew you would find a way!

Puck: I matter?

Milky Way: Looks like Puck is full of puns!

My goal with these visualizations isn’t to convince you they’re real. It’s to tease your imagination into exploring new possibilities. When imagination expands, awareness often follows.

For example, scientists found out that the brains of people that learned how to fly with virtual reality wings wired themselves to adapt to the extra “body parts.”

According to a new study published in Cell Reports, researchers studied the visual cortices of twenty-five people who used a VR device to simulate flying with digital wings, and the results showed that their brains adapted to the wings as if they were real.

That means, if you close your eyes, right before you fall asleep, and imagine your zeroth-dimensional self growing in consciousness, awareness, expanding into other dimensions and accessing a timeless realm where they can interact with galaxies as if they were people, your brain will treat the experience as a memory. That’s right. A memory. If you put emotion into it, it will feel real.

Your brain is the most fantastic “console” in this universe. You can create memories of impossible things, if you train it with emotions, just a little bit.

I do that. I talk in my imagination to celestial bodies, to galaxies, nebulas, and planets. I take my Puck everywhere aboard the Space Croissant every night, in this universe and others. Why not?

When I do that before bed, I have amazing dreams, I wake up happy and feel healed, and I feel loved by the Universe that surrounds me.

I live in wonder and in awe. I am aware of Me.

And my “mes” are magical.

💙

Today, I’ve set myself a tall order. I want to take you on a multidimensional adventure. If I don’t quite pull it off, that’s on me—not you. But if I succeed, we will have quite a ride.

Before we talk about Puck and other dimensions, we need to address a few issues when it comes to space travel. First of all, our bodies are so adapted to Earth’s atmosphere and gravity that we get sick, fast, whenever we leave our planet. So far, no artificial gravity and radiation shield can compensate for the molecular changes our bodies undergo when we leave the planet for a few months. Second of all, if we could somehow overcome bodily issues, including the emotional and mental toll, how would we overcome the insane distances? Even if we could travel at the speed of light we would still be light-years away from other suns, other systems, other galaxies. It is almost as if we were never meant to leave Earth… ever. Sigh… but what if there was another way?

Since reality is not collaborating, let’s play with our imaginations. There is one thing faster than light: emotion. An emotion can make you travel impossible distances, including traveling to the past or to the future, instantaneously. One scent from your childhood and you are seven again, at your grandparents’ house.

So what if we travel in space powered by emotion? How far could we go? And how can our minds imagine the whole experience when we don’t have a point of reference? Keyword here, “point.” The smallest possible traveler is a point. Mine happens to have a name. Her name is Puck.

If you read my previous posts you know three things: 1) I use my imagination to cope with chronic pain because of a car accident. 2) I spent years building an imaginary place called Pretendland. In Pretendland there is no pain and 3) in Pretendland my body parts have consciousness and talk to me. Part three is the basis of my book, the Inner Mediator.

Today we will talk about dimensions and how to navigate them, in consciousness, using our imagination. Easy peasy, right? If you ask yourself, yes.

First let’s break down the perception of a few dimensions, in consciousness, so you get the hang of it.

The third dimension: you have a “meat body,” a “meat-self.” You have the perception of depth, width and length. All solid objects also have these properties and you perceive them the same way.

The second dimension: You have a “shadow body,” you have a “shadow-self.” That self has no depth but what if our shadow self has consciousness? Imagine yourself giving a bit of ego to your own shadow, a little “me.” Imagine the shadow of you coming “alive” with awareness and celebrating their own self-awareness. Your Shadow Self can do things your “meat body” can’t. It can stretch and bend and merge with other objects. It is so much fun to play with our shadows! When was the last time you did it? Perhaps you used to play with your hands and your shadow when you were a kid and you stopped. What if your shadow misses that? What if they miss you?

The first dimension: a line without depth or width. You are a line. You are aligned. You can imagine yourself going back and forth. If you have consciousness as a “meat-self” it’s perfectly fine to carry that consciousness and self awareness as you move through different dimensions.

The zeroth dimension: you are a dot. You are “Puck.” No weight, no length, no width or depth. You’re just a dot. Chances are you don’t even vibrate like an atom does. I bet vibration and resonance are things that only happen in higher dimensions and Puck is static. Now let’s go a bit deeper in our description. Puck probably doesn’t have color, gender or a shadow. I think Puck just is. All that your Puck self does is “to be” all day. It is probably “to be-ing” right now. What happens when we give Puck a “me?” What is the first thought Puck will have when you give them awareness?

I stumbled upon Puck while playing space travel in Pretendland with my body parts. I have a very cute mole on my right foot I named Puck and I remember starting to play with Puck in my imagination. “Come on, Puck, let’s visit The Heart, Chouchou!” Yes, my body parts have names, personalities, and back stories.

After my car accident I had to spend quite some time in isolation. Brain injuries are brutal when it comes to killing your social life. My social life became my body and my imagination.

Now that my brain has healed, I still practice transcendental meditation but I prefer my secular ways. I play in my imagination with gods, angels, unicorns, and dragons but I don’t follow any particular dogma. I like to let my Heart, Chouchou, guide me. Unconditional Love is our fuel. It used to be pain itself. I wrote about my pain, her name is Charlie.

Now let’s enter further down the realm of my imagination. Everything here is pretend and you are welcome to tag along or not.

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The fourth dimension: The dimension of time and emotions. Here emotions are raw and out of control, they can push and pull your ego, your “me,” from one corner to another instantaneously and you don’t have time to react because it all happens so fast. You are here, a stimulus triggers a memory, that triggers an emotion, and you are in the Past. You are there, a scent triggers a fear, that triggers a different emotion, and you are in the Future, having a panic attack. It all happens outside the frontal lobe. When your nervous system is dysregulated, the fourth dimension can be a very scary experience! Quick! Jump to the fifth dimension!

The fifth dimension: it is the dimension of our imagination where everything has consciousness and awareness of you. How do I know that? I made it up. How to navigate it? You will grab a bit of your ego, little “mes” and share that ego with everything that surrounds you. The whole universe around you is a reflection of you now, including your emotions. Your emotions get a “me,” your planet gets a “me,” the Sun gets a “me,” and all your body parts, all the way to your atoms get a “me.” We are all “mes” together, we are a collective of consciousnesses.

What about Puck?

Puck jumps dimensions in Fibonacci sequence to avoid the tumultuous fourth dimension.

Why Fibonacci? Because it is pretty. Because it imitates nature. How is it possible? We made it all up again. We had plenty of time.

We who? Myself, my body parts, my Puck, and the people that travel with me in imagination to Pretendland every Sunday on Reddit. The Space Croissant Crew.

Why Space Croissant? Because according to scientists that theorise these things, our heliosphere travels the Milky Way shaped like a croissant. That’s right, we are travelling through space already, navigating the Universe aboard a perfect ship adapted to our bodies: our heliosphere. To travel, all we have to do is close our eyes, smile, and dream.

So, if you like the idea of your Puck jumping around dimensions and navigating space aboard a perfect ship, imagine how your Puck feels when you give them a “me!”

Let’s imagine together. You are now Puck. Puck is just a dot but you will use your fifth dimensional skills to “accessorize” them and prepare them to travel.

I give my Puck gender. I like to call her a “she.” She’s excited to go. I also give her emoji arms, legs, eyes, a little emoji mouth, a nose, a little heart, and a little pink bow so she feels special.

We jump to the first dimension and Puck screams “weeeee!” as she goes back and forth exploring movement. It’s her first time!

We now jump to the second dimension and Puck is scared of all the shapes her shadow self has. She can be huge! She had no idea she could change sizes!

The third dimension comes with colors, vibration, smells and sensations. “Ouch! What is that?!” “That is pain, Puck and yes, you can talk,” says Chouchou, my heart.

Puck is overwhelmed!

Puck jumps to the fifth dimension because she loves all things Fibonacci. She is now safe in a land where she is at the same level of consciousness as the whole body.

What about the other dimensions? What is further up?

Scientists say our brains can experience up to eleven geometrical dimensions. In Pretendland, I like to imagine there are eleven Selves of you. Each one with more awareness than the previous one.

Let’s follow the Fibonacci sequence:

0,1,1,2,3,5,8,13, 21…etc.

How do I jump, as Puck, from the fifth dimension to the eighth? You just imagine you can. Use emoji wings!

In the eighth dimension, everything is infinite and we perceive infinity as “Now.” So, the eighth dimension is “now o’clock” where we interact with all infinite beings from Pretendland. Puck takes an “infinity pill” so she doesn’t feel infinity sickness. It is like motion sickness but it happens when you remove time from the equation. The human experience equation. Even though Puck is just a dot, she is human because she is me. She is capable of “me-talk” and has “me-consciousness.” She has her point of view and therefore her own human experience.

See? Traveling this way is much easier than building rockets.

What about dimension thirteenth? I don’t know. In our imagination it is the dimension we break with dogma and the laws of physics and math.

It is on dimension thirteenth that Puck receives the title of “One Unit of Consciousness,” she is my smallest self capable of wonder. Puck grabs her aware and alive friend Photon, aware and alive per the laws of the fifth dimension, and says “buckle up, Photon! My Unconditional Love will take us on a ride around the galaxy! Let’s visit Fifi, the T-Rex that ate my law diploma 66 million years agoooooooooooo!!!”
Poor Photon had no idea what “instant travel” meant until it was right in front of a hungry T-Rex from Pretendland! Tip: if you want to meet (or dare I say “meat”) Fifi, she represents Fear of Failure, Fear of Falling, Fear of Feelings, and Fear of Death… by T-Rex. Meeting (meating?) Fifi is one of the highlights of visiting Pretendland.

Can you tell by now that it is much easier to travel in imagination using your own Puck as your designated Pretend Astronaut than worry about radiation? That strong emotions like Love can take you anywhere you have a strong emotional connection with? As a writer, my job is to share with you my inner world, my characters and my relationship with them. This way, you can rethink your own relationship with your body and your emotions, give them awareness and discover and explore your own Puck-Self. You can now travel in Love, in consciousness, hopping around galaxies with your friend Photon who relies on your emotions to travel. It is always a good idea to bring light with you when you are visiting new places, in your imagination.

The twenty-first dimension is the cartoon dimension. I am going to stop here because I should have stopped at dimension eleventh, according to scientists (wink, wink). I don’t want my Puck to get tired. She needs to know how to go back. This is great for a first trip around the galaxy.

In case you are still skeptical about my ‘Puck ways” or wondering if you have a Puck yourself, ask yourself, “What would it be like to dream in dots? To feel music for the first time from Puck’s point of view? To taste food? To feel touch? To see colors? To be a cartoon?”

Puck taught me how to love myself deeper than loving my own atoms. She taught me there is consciousness in stillness. She taught me that Love crosses dimensions. I now have a little playground for Puck in my imagination. My own “flea circus” where she jumps dimensions and explores the Universe Within. Puck is unquenchable! Ooof!

Once I travel back to the zeroth dimension, I have a happy and properly exhausted Puck. She tasted things, she smelled things, she touched things, she felt the passage of time, she touched her shadow, and she saw herself as a cartoon. Puck is truly fulfilled. And me? I am healed and ready to sleep. Puck says, “Good night,” to Chouchou, my Heart. Chouchou smiles. “Good night.”

Last week I wrote about my pain, Charlie, and how she helps me cope with proprioception disorder and a brain injury resulting from a car accident. Charlie acts as my “bat signal,” telling my body where the brain is and vice versa. She is also responsible for fueling my imaginary space rocket and, ultimately, taking me to Pretendland. She is my “grade A Delirious Delicious” fuel and I am very grateful for Charlie. You see, pain medication does strange things to my brain. If I take too much, it can actually make my pain worse. So I can’t rely on medication alone.

Pretendland is the place I go in my imagination to heal. Today, there is an entire network of Pretendland locations throughout Pretend Space in my heart. My heart holds universes. We have a tiny base on the Moon run by a T-Rex called Fifi. Our headquarters are on Mars, and there is Pretendland on Europa, Jupiter’s moon. We even have a Pretendland on Planet X, also known as Planet Nine. The place is full of unicorns.

I say “we” and “our” because every Sunday, a group of more than thirty Reiki practitioners and I take around two thousand people to Pretendland in our imaginations. For twenty-four hours, we pretend the network is real and everyone there is real. It’s like a video game you play with your eyes closed, right before you fall asleep. This is how we reconnect with our Inner Child.

What for?

To resolve inner conflict.

To practice self-compassion.

To give our imaginations a place to play.

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Many of us also find that Pretendland helps us cope with pain, anxiety, or depression. For me, it has become an important complement to my healing.

Pretendland started with a dream. It was the most beautiful dream of my life.

In the dream, it was orientation day for new students on a university campus, and I was with a group of six or seven people. It was my first day of graduate school.

We arrived at a large amphitheater with a domed ceiling. Class would start in a few minutes. From behind me, I felt someone come close and reach out to press a switch on the wall beside me. I only saw his hand, but I could tell he was standing right next to me, as close as if we already knew each other.

The moment he flicked the switch, the ceiling opened.

I looked up and saw Jupiter spinning at full force right in front of my face. It was so close I thought I was in danger. Huge caramel swirls rushed past with incredible speed. It was awe-inspiring and terrifying at the same time.

I cowered and looked at the others in shock.

The boy who had opened the dome had a welcoming, mischievous grin on his face. Everyone else was casually talking about trivial things, completely ignoring the giant spinning planet above our heads.

That was when I saw Earth and Mars off in the distance and realized where I was.

I was on Europa, Jupiter’s moon, 700 years into the future.

My heart was beating fast. My heart is called Chouchou, and she had just recognized that smile from a distant past on Earth.

I woke up sweating and was still in shock when the pain waves hit. I had been in a car accident only a month earlier and had managed to injure my entire body. The pain was the “hallucinogenic” kind.

I was convinced, deep in my heart, that my pain had taken me to Europa.

Then it hit me.

During the entire dream, there was no pain. No brain injury symptoms.

I was free on Europa.

Free from hurt.

Then a profound grief washed over me.

I longed for a future I would never see.

I missed that smile, that school, that view of the planets, that feeling of starting over on another moon, another life, another timeline.

I had to find my way back there.

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I realized I could rely on my dream state to experience no pain. I wanted to experience no pain while I was awake. I now knew it was possible.

I talked to my doctor about my dream and my pain waves. She explained that the brain has limited attentional resources. When a vivid visualization is paired with powerful emotion, it can change how intensely pain is experienced. My first reaction was, “Say no more,” and I “went to work” building an imaginary place. I started half remembering and half expanding the Jupiter dream. I spent hours a day daydreaming while experiencing intense pain waves.

It was working, though. I was able to distract myself enough from the pain to build an entire universe. That was what fueled Pretendland: pain waves and my desperate need to find relief.

Over time, the more I sought the Jupiter dream, the more I realized I was doing it wrong. The body was screaming and I couldn’t just escape it. So, I started researching self-healing practices beyond medication. I needed to listen to the body.

I found Reiki, a Japanese self-healing practice and Ho’oponopono, a compassion-based practice from Hawaii. Both very simple, both absolutely transformative.

With Reiki, you imagine your body made of light and color and you imagine that light as pure Love. You learn how to move the light inside of the body and send the light toward the body parts that need love. When the light moves, you feel heat and tingling. When you feel Reiki, you are actively loving that body part. That is how you calm down the nervous system. Pain goes down and you sleep better.

With Ho’oponopono, you repeat four phrases over and over again:

“I love you.”

“I am sorry.”

Please forgive me.”

“Thank you.”

Combined together, the effects of both practices are incredibly calming to my nervous system and they tend to significantly help me manage my pain. I do both Reiki and Ho’oponopono several times a day, whenever I feel my pain levels change.

One night, a magical night, my body parts started “talking” to me. It was around six months after the accident. The first body part to “reach out” was my left leg. I call her “Tada.” Then my heart talked to me, her name is Chouchou, pronounced “shoe-shoe.” It means “darling” in French.

The experience of finding out my entire body had consciousness became a book. The Inner Mediator is the story of my body parts, written from the point of view of my heart, Chouchou. The book describes how I heal inner conflict these days: I sign peace treaties between body parts that are experiencing pain or discomfort. Chouchou is the mediator.

Experiencing my body as if every part had its own consciousness became a pivotal moment in my healing. And it was just the beginning. I could not bear not to tell everyone.

Pretendland started getting shaped when, in 2022, I met a wonderful woman from Berlin, full of imagination. Together, we started a Reiki subreddit called “Reiki Share” where we share whimsical stories and ask people to imagine the stories are real for twenty-four hours. Our themes are always secular, you bring your own “woo-woo.” Angels are allowed.

My friend from Berlin was the first person I took on an imaginary trip to space as a “crew member.” Together, we boarded the Space Croissant, our imaginary spaceship, as Pretend Astronauts.

On our first Sunday, we gathered a group of 15 people and pretended with all of our hearts that the galaxy supercluster Laniakea was a person and we could talk to “her.” Laniakea presented herself as Galadriel, the high elf from the Lord of The Rings universe. We imagined ourselves sitting on a purple couch and talking to Laniakea. She had long blonde hair like Galadriel and her hair was made of spinning galaxies, her eyes were full of compassion. It was a beautiful experience. The next weekend we had thirty people. Today, more than two thousand people join us.

All religions are welcome inside the Space Croissant Spaceship and anyone can participate in our group sessions. It is OK if you don’t have a religion or a belief system. You just need to believe in yourself and commit to learning Self-Love.

Every session is similar. We have a theme, we encourage participants to talk to their body parts as if they were people and talk to their emotions too. We say the four phrases of Ho’oponopono to ourselves and our Inner Child.

Participants say things to themselves like “Hello, my Heart. I love you. I am sorry for all the times you were broken. I have compassion for you. I forgive you. Thank you.”

We leave Earth at 1 PM EST every Sunday and go to our Imaginary Moon Base first. From there, we go to Pretendland on Mars and from there we go to the other Pretendland bases on other planets.

The air on Mars has peace molecules in emoji. You breathe in peace and the peace molecules bind to oxygen. Your lungs say “thank you.” They are people. They have awareness of you. You can imagine it yourself, tiny little peace emojis binding to your lungs and your lungs smiling. The peace emojis go everywhere inside your bloodstream and when they get to your brain, you get “peace of mind.” Take a deep breath. Yes, like that.

Before you leave, you go through customs. You need to pass through tunnels made of Unconditional Love, Unconditional Compassion, Unconditional Forgiveness and Unconditional Gratitude. The police are the Space Pants Force. They make sure you are gentle with yourself for twenty-four hours.

Last Sunday we went to Pretendland on Mars and visited a “Reverse Hospice” facility where people heal from pain, suffering and aging. The facility has angels and fairies on staff.

My Charlie is a lot gentler these days and I have a normal life now. The brain injury has healed enough that it no longer shows the way it used to, although the proprioception disorder is still there. As for Europa, I thought I was trying to get back there. Years later, I realized I was building Pretendland instead.

The boy from Europa still visits my dreams once or twice a year. Writing this story brought him back last night. He tells me we have a date in seven hundred years. I smile. I look forward to growing old. It is a privilege denied to many.

P.S. The image representing Pretendland is real. It was photographed by Patrick Peritore during a recent trip to Japan and is shared here with his permission.

A few years ago, I woke up at four a.m. with excruciating pain, and I knew there was nothing I could do. It was like that almost every night after my car accident. Some nights I woke up at three. Some nights I slept through the night. Some nights I didn’t sleep at all.

This time, I decided to take my dog out for a quick walk. Maybe that would help.

There was a Shar Pei at the dog park with his owner. We chatted for a bit, and I learned the dog’s name.

Charlie.

Shar Pei Charlie.
Sharp pain.

Well, there it was.
My pain had finally found a name.

I decided to call her Charlie from then on.

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By then, I had already learned that saying Ho’oponopono to my aching body helped with the pain, and I’d been doing it for a few years. But I don’t think I had ever said Ho’oponopono to Charlie herself.

Ho’oponopono is the Hawaiian practice of repeating four phrases over and over again:

“I love you.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Please forgive me.”
“Thank you.”

I remember thinking,
“How can I possibly tell my pain that I love it? This makes no sense.”

But I trusted the process and did it anyway. My instinct was right.

“I love you, Charlie.” The pain went down.

I started thinking about Charlie as a person and wondering how she could possibly be helping me.

She was me.
She was part of me.
There was no reason for her to be against me.
I had to assume she loved me, too.

So I asked,
“Why so much, Charlie?”

“It’s hard to breathe when you’re waving the whole body like this.”

I injured my brain in that same car accident and developed a condition called proprioception disorder. In my case, it changes the way my brain senses where my body is in space, and how the body and brain stay connected.

When that connection is intact, pain feels “located.” The brain knows where the pain is coming from, and everything stays strangely organized in its own way.

But if I take too much pain medication and soften that connection, things get confused. Charlie starts to get louder, and the body parts can “freak out” and amplify the pain signal. It is as if Charlie is trying harder to be understood, but everything comes out amplified instead. And if the medication is strong enough, the body can slip into panic, like it no longer recognizes where it is in relation to the brain.

I sometimes think of it as a kind of reverse phantom limb syndrome. The limb is there, for example, but it doesn’t fully recognize itself, and Charlie tries to point it back into place.

With proprioception disorder, pain becomes a signal with a purpose. It turns into my “bat signal.”

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So I walk a fine line. Too much pain medication and I turn into a cartoon, seeing stars and “tripping” on pain.

Now Charlie is my guide.
She tells the brain, “Here! Look here!”
She tells the body, “This is me!”

Charlie can be intense, in a hallucinogenic way.
I imagine her as a colorful little thing pointing at the “missing” body parts.

My body used to be a walking panic attack.

With a better relationship and an emotional connection, things between Charlie and me have gotten better over the years.
Talking to the body in a loving way was crucial.

When I say, “I’m sorry,” to Charlie, I’m acknowledging how hard her job is.
I know she is tired.
I know she is afraid of pain medication and reacts with panic.

When I say, “Please forgive me,” she settles.
She cuddles with me. She hugs me.

Ouch.
It still hurts.
But she does it with love.

A couple of years ago, my dog died. His name was Banksy. He was an English Greyhound.

The pain and despair were so overwhelming that I could barely take care of myself. I was used to eating when he ate. Sleeping when he slept. I had adapted completely to his schedule and grown dependent on his love after the accident. Without him, I was lost in space with Charlie.

Another thing I gained from the car accident and brain injury was time blindness, and my dog had become my strongest connection to the 3D world.

Without him, I was perpetually in Charlie’s world, oblivious to time.

Banksy is gone and I now have a pain doctor.

I told my pain doctor my pain was called Charlie.
I don’t think he fully gets it, but I know he has compassion for my body. He is a caring person. Caring people make my pain go down. Kindness calms Charlie down.

These days, my conversations with Charlie sound something like this:

“I love you, Charlie.”
“Let go of the lower back a little, love.”
“You can trust I’m not trying to get rid of you and make you freak out.”
“I just need to sleep through the night.”

Charlie listens now. She feels the love. She knows I care about the body part that is aching and she doesn’t need to be so loud anymore.

Thank you, Charlie. I hope one day you learn how to whisper.

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Thank you for reading.

I’ll be sharing a new story every Wednesday.

If you’d like to dive deeper into this world, The Inner Mediator, my first book, is available on Amazon and Kindle Unlimited.

The Inner Mediator is Chouchou, my heart. She mediates the “beef” inside my body, helping my body parts understand one another with compassion.

It all started one night when my left leg decided to talk to me. She was having a panic attack because I had taken pain medication, and she couldn’t tell where the brain was. She thought she was floating alone in space. I named her Tada because she was the first body part to introduce herself.

Tada and Chouchou are only two of the characters you’ll meet in The Inner Mediator. Charlie was already part of my life when I wrote the book, but I never told her story there. This essay is the first time I’ve shared it. There are many more conversations waiting to be told, and this publication gives me a place to share them.

If these conversations resonate with you, I hope you’ll subscribe. Every Wednesday we’ll explore what happens when we stop fighting our bodies, start listening, and learn how to speak to ourselves with a little more love.

Some people call it imagination.

Some people call it intuition.

I simply call it my inner world.

In my world, body parts are people. They are my community, my friends, my audience, and my cheerleaders.

They have personalities, feelings, emotions, opinions, and occasionally, “beef” with one another.

They are me.

My Heart is called Chouchou, pronounced “shoe-shoe.” Her name means “darling” in French and there is a love story behind it. Chouchou is also the author of our first book, The Inner Mediator.

Her job is to help settle “inner beef.”

Inner beef is what I call the conflicts we carry inside ourselves. Sometimes inner beef shows up as physical pain. Sometimes it looks like anxiety, fear, resentment, self-sabotage, self-criticism, or outdated stories we’ve been repeating for years and are afraid to outgrow.

I have discovered that when I stop fighting these parts of myself and start listening to them instead, something remarkable happens.

Things soften.

I soften.

This publication is my invitation into that world.

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You have a world, too.

Who lives inside of you?

Who gets ignored?

Who gets blamed?

Who gets overworked?

Who is sad?

Who is angry?

Who desperately wants to be loved?

And perhaps the most important question of all: how do you treat them?

I created this space because I want to share how I slowly learned to love myself after a car accident. I carry a lot of inner beef and a lot of pain. I treat my pain with self love. I tell my body parts that I love them with daily Ho’oponopono. I’ve been doing this for years, and I now plan to write about how I do it and why. Ho’oponopono is a Hawaiian practice centered on reconciliation, forgiveness, and self-care. You repeat four phrases over and over again:

“I love you,

I’m sorry,

Please, forgive me,

Thank you.”

My hope is that this publication will help treat the worldwide pandemic I lovingly call “I-hate-myself-alitis.”

Its symptoms may include harsh self-criticism, impossible standards, endless worrying, and forgetting that you deserve your own kindness.

Around here, we’ll be exploring ways to bring a little more inner peace into our lives.

We’ll settle inner beef.

We’ll experiment.

We’ll be curious.

We’ll occasionally laugh at ourselves.

And perhaps, one day, you’ll smile with love when you look in the mirror. Perhaps you’ll be able to sleep without sleep medication.

I want you to go to sleep with a smile on your lips.

Your lips are people.

They love you.

Welcome to my world.

I’m so happy you’re here.

With love,

Carol

and Chouchou,

Chief Officer of Inner Beef Resolution

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