What’s up y’all welcome to Da City & Culture Podcast. It’s ya girl Abba Parks.

Ladies and gentlemen, oh my bad, Theydies and gentlethem; whichever you prefer, wether you’ve been with me from the beginning of the season or if you’re just tuning in now, I just want to say a big thank you for lending me your ears and tuning into Da City & Culture in it’s inaugural year.

It’s been a beautiful journey and as the calendar year comes to its end I’m proud of all that I have accomplished with this podcast. I’m even more excited for the next season but before we get into that let’s close out this series with a bang! 

It’s been a tough couple of years with the pandemic hitting and life overall just being life. But during this time I have discovered that I’m naturally a solitary person, semi-reclusive you could say and I thrive in this modality easily. I can go weeks without socializing, shit I’ve been known to go months; I think that’s what makes me a good writer, although I don’t really know what a good writer is... anyways. If you know me, you’ll know that I am not a shy person at all but at times I can be very reserved. Too reserved some say but my demeanour in social settings is an intentional part of my character.

So last May I started this podcast to create an outlet for me to share my voice, tell my stories, and celebrate my growth during this trying time all while maintaining a reclusive lifestyle. 

I’m telling you the shit that I have witnessed, survived, been through, and otherwise experienced speaks volumes about why I am the way I am in social settings but don’t worry we’ll get to why that is in a bit.  

Today I want to close the season out by talking about the power of intention. Intention is this magical force behind all movement in the universe. Wether it be physical, spatial, elemental, emotional, spiritual, magical, and everything that exists in between. Intention is what makes it all move. 

When we think of intention, it’s easy to confused it with mantra, affirmation, or manifestation. All those spiritual aspects are important to living a balanced life but as different as they are from each other they all have one thing in common: intention. Intention is when we align our mind, body, and spirit complex with the energy of universal consciousness to ensure we are acting according to our purpose. 

It’s not an external thing, it’s an internal process. Imagine your life is a car, you have the body, the engine and all its working parts, there’s a compartment for a driver and any passengers that you’d like to take with you. As the driver you have the ability to power the car and steer it. When you put the key in the ignition and turn on the car, it begins a series of processes that will cause the car to run according to its overall programming; which gives you the ability to use it to go anywhere you like. 

Intention is the key you have that lets you identify the vehicle, get in the drivers seat, allows you to turn on the engine, and motivates you to begin your journey. Intention is what governs the relationship you will have with the vehicle, where you will go, and how you get there. 

Without the awareness of intention you cannot know if you’re the driver or a passenger, you don’t know what car you’re in, and you definitely have no idea where you’re going. Scary right. Or you have no idea what I’m talking about. Just listen closely and I’ll try to confuse you even more. 

Life is a wild beautiful journey but you have to know what you’re doing at any and all times or what could possibly happen at any and all times in order to maintain balance. There’s only one way to do this, through intention. 

We suffer when we become subject to either our own intentions or unknown intentions from others but if we are in alignment we understand; we can observe objectively the intentional laws of the universe to liberate ourselves from unnecessary suffering. 

The first season of this podcast was designed to help you dreamers journey into a new spiritual landscape and begin the work of developing the skills needed to initiate yourself into higher consciousness. Are you still confused? Have I lost you yet. Great, then you’re just where I want you. 

Let me tell you a little story of how I stumbled upon this hidden path and unknowingly dedicated myself to clearing the way so others may come to walk its beauty. 

Earlier I told y’all about how reserved I am in social settings. As true as that sentiment is, there is the odd time I do choose to be a little less reserved. And by that I mean I unleash the full force of Abba tenfold. Take no prisoners. Those moments are very rare in deed but when they do happen I can’t help but smile as others for the first time begin to witness my energy, query my intellect, feel my charisma, laugh at my humour, indulge in my beauty... ahh you get the point; people love me, which is great and all but I find it odd when others speak to me as if I don’t know how amazing I am. 

Now I’m not being arrogant, I’m just speaking my truth. I’m very aware of myself, I have made myself into the woman of my dreams and I love myself more than anything in this world. I am confident, I am bold. I know what I want, I know what I know and I am eager to find out more, so not a lot scares me. I can hang when I want to, with anyone I want to. I can walk into any room and feel comfortable because if there’s one thing I know well in this world, it’s people. I know how to people, very well. 

And I love people but in my early days of socializing that wasn’t the case. I was finding it hard for me to be myself around others without attracting excessive attention; both good and bad. I would find myself entertaining conversations centered around me, debates about why I am the way I am or attempts to convince me to do things I genuinely did not want to do. This was mad stressful. 

So true to Abba fashion, I chose to no longer let others have access to me. I held back all the good things about me and became as dull as I possible could around others. It was like a cloak of invisibility. I could engage without drawing attention to myself. And overtime I began observing people from a closer perspective and this is when I started using writing as a way to chronicle all that I was noticing for the first time. 

I didn’t know it then but looking back now, I can see that this was when I started flirting with a reclusive lifestyle. The benefits of this lifestyle appealed to me greatly, but what I failed to notice until almost too late was that I was existing unbalanced in this modality. I began to see that I was losing the ability to give others the time to show me love and how much the people in my life needed that outlet. 

I’ve always been good at loving on my people and if I fuck with you, you’ll know it but it never occurred to me that my people needed opportunities to love on me too. Ok, weird, how do I do that? Do I just stand there awkwardly as everyone sings happy birthday or what? This concept was new to me. I was so used to just being in my own world and only stepping out into others that I couldn’t fathom the idea of allowing others into mine. 

Imagine you are OCD level of clean and someone else comes over and cleans your house. First of all I wouldn’t even hire someone to come clean my house, weird right! But apparently some people not only like cleaning your house, they like cooking in it too and if you let them they’ll fuck in it too. Gross, I know. What I’m trying to get at is this: 

I guess that’s some of the perks that come along with having a nice house is that others will want to come over, move in, use it to host a party and in order to be a part of society you have to figure out a way to let that happen or people won’t like you. Does that make sense? 

Your life is the house, cooking and cleaning are ways we can show ourselves love or allow others to show us love. The utilities we have in the house are our intentions and they determine how well our household runs.

You can have the most beautiful house in the world and you can make the most amazing things in that house but if you don’t cook or clean, if you don’t open up, let people in or have guests over from time to time, you’ll never know how amazing it is to have a home.

Also, If you don’t get up out of your house and get in the car to go see your people’s houses or cook and clean for them you’ll never know what more beauty can come from existing in a community.

I didn’t always know this. I thought I had it all figured out but really I was so caught up in controlling how others engaged with me to protect my boundaries that I didn’t even notice I had lost the ability to connect with others or let others connect with me. I was missing out on so many beautiful experiences because of this mindset. Life became scary and fear was the underlying root of all my intention. 

As I moved throughout life in this chaos, depression manifested in many different ways, showing me the long term affects of living in this way. I knew I had to change something but I didn’t know what to do or who to turn to, so I bought a journal. I wrote, and I wrote, and I wrote, and I wrote until I couldn’t write anymore; then when I was finished I wrote some more. 

Stroke after stroke, sentence after sentence, page after page my words began to chisel away at the rock of chaos and I began to see light again.

Thats when I became aware of how powerful of a force this thing called intention is and how easy it was to use it to change directions in life. Life can change in an instant. One decisions. One moment. One choice. That’s all it takes. 

From there we can choose what serves us and what doesn’t, intentionally choosing to hold on to the light or to let go of the chaos. 

When I look back at my formative years I can see that sometimes things happen in our lives and we don’t know why. We cry, we scream, we run, we hide, we try to fight it but all along it’s our higher self showing us what we need to see, so we can gain the courage to intentionally change perspective and understand our selves deeper. 

So I started this podcast as a way for me to see myself and learn to accept that others will come to love me, for me to have a way to remind myself of my overall intention; to not let reclusiveness keep me from sharing myself with the world and to allow others the opportunity to show me love however they are capable. 

When we understand self knowledge, we begin to know that self starts with others. We cannot know ourselves without the existence of everything and everyone around us. We can’t sit out in life, we must engage, we must become aware, we must hold intention for intention holds us and we must play our part or forever wander dreamlessly through this wonderland. Missing all the beauty that surrounds us. 

We must choose intention or intention will choose us. So as we prepare for the coming cold, the dormant days of winter, and a season of rest are you aware of the role intention is playing in your life? Are you letting others into your home? Are you visiting your people? Is your car running? Let me know if you’re brave enough to take it for a drive or don’t. Do you and I’ll catch you here next year. Same time, same place. Until then take it easy and be kind to yourself. Much love.