Spring Blessings
Please don’t. Do not lose the ego.
Instead, I propose you find it.
Befriend the ego. Get up close. Listen to what it has to say. Learn everything there is to know.
Begin to recognize: What scares you? What makes you want to hide? What makes you angry? Selfish? Self-righteous? Ravenous? What makes you kind of hate yourself? What gets you stuck? Depresses you? Sends you on a spiral? A high? What do you cling to so tightly you become controlling, anxious, disconnected? And what does it feel like in your body when you face these parts of yourself? What do you hear? What do you see? How does it taste? Where does it hurt?
Learn to see and sit with the ego until it no longer has power over you. Discover the difference between ego and ego cage. Change your relationship with it. Become aware of its grip. Wake up.
And be generously gentle with yourself as you do. Take it easy. Give yourself grace upon grace upon grace. Ask yourself — what might I need to learn from the ego? What is it begging me to acknowledge, maybe even honor before I can let go and move forward? With less reaction, more response, from your whole being.
But please, whatever you do, do not lose your ego. It’s what makes you real and interesting and delightful and complex. It gives you funk and flavor and let’s be honest, basic survival skills. It’s an essential part of your ability to be compassionate toward yourself and this world.
In fact, lose yourself if you need to. You know this is the point and privilege of being human? For that precious ego to grab ahold of you, to have the courage to turn inward and see what it’s about, without judgment. To feel everything and be with ourselves + one another through it. To take that journey that takes you away from center so you can come back again with the wisdom, empathy, and greater capacity for love you found along the way. Remembering you have a choice in the matter. Only to realize that — oh my god! — you never really lost yourself at all. Your truest self was with you the entire time. Meeting and mixing with your ego stuff so you could shift, grow, outgrow, and be more of who you’ve always been.
A divine being. And a human ego. Completely, beautifully, both.
Chocolate Chip Zucchini Muffins Recipe
Ingredients
2 cups grated zucchini
1/2 cup melted butter
2/3 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup plain greek yogurt
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup mini chocolate chips
2 tablespoons cane sugar
Instructions
Preheat the oven to 425°F. Line a muffin tin (recipe makes 12 muffins).
Grate the zucchini on the large or medium holes of a box grater. I’m typically a “wing-it” type of baker, but for this recipe I measured out 250 grams (approximately 2 cups) of grated zucchini using a food scale. And then I added a little more because it felt right.
In a large bowl, whisk together the melted butter, brown sugar, greek yogurt, egg, and vanilla extract until smooth.
Add the spices, baking soda, baking powder, and salt to the bowl with the wet ingredients and whisk until fully incorporated.
Add the flour to the bowl and stir together with a rubber spatula until a batter forms. Stir until just incorporated — do not overmix. Fold in the pre-measured grated zucchini and mini chocolate chips. (The zucchini is what gives the muffins their moisture, this is when I threw in a little extra because the batter felt a bit too thick.)
Let batter sit at room temperature for 15-20 minutes before scooping for tallest muffins.
Spoon the batter equally into the 12 muffin cups. Top each with a generous sprinkle of cane sugar and more mini chocolate chips if desired.
Bake for 5 minutes at 425°, then decrease the oven temperature to 350° WITHOUT opening the oven door, and bake for 13 more minutes until domed and set. A toothpick inserted in the center should come out clean or with just a couple crumbs attached.
Let cool for a few minutes and enjoy.
Notes: I recently made this batter on a Saturday, baked half of it, and put the other half in the fridge overnight to use Sunday morning. For the second bake, I wanted the muffins to be lighter + more moist, so I added 2 additional tablespoons of melted better (sitting overnight also helped) and subtracted 1 minute from the baking time. Both versions were great, but these were my ideal muffins. My point — feel it out. Experiment. Don’t be afraid to go off-recipe. You think making a change would be more to your liking? Go for it.
“Everybody’s got their shit, no one here is exempt” + every other word on the Weird Faith album.
Come one, come all:
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
“I’m much more interested in ensoilment than ensoulment. I want to have actual roots. I want my spirituality to have fur, pheromones, funk. I want it to live in a specific place. I want it to teach me how to be dynamically present and useful to my ecosystem. And I want to tell people that healing isn’t about completion. It isn’t about lightness. It’s about the mixing bowl where nothing is rejected, everything is included. In order to grow a garden, you need manure. You need compost. In order to heal the soil, you don’t clean it, you add to it: Fungi, ferment, bacteria, woodchips.”