One more year.

Next month will mark the one year anniversary of my leap of faith into a new future, leaving comfort and stability for freedom, and determined to live the life I wanted. It appears I have become distracted. By money, mostly. The lack thereof, specifically. I believe I have neglected feeding my soul that way it needs. I have having something of an identity crisis lately, as I was explaining to the boyfriend the other day. A person's ego is comprised of identification with a number of "image choices". For instance, "I like movies", or "I am a liberal/ conservative/ socialist/ basketweaver" are all terms that we use to endear us to or ostracize us from a particular group of people. If one is to experience Divine Love, the desire to identify with every form of spirit, including the plant and animal world, may override the particular proclivities of one's own ego. I believe this is what I have been experiencing lately. I am viewing all life as one soul, and therefore I am having trouble identifying with any group. I believe these distinctions are no longer viable. I am hopeful for a solution to this angst (which seems to be the best word for it). I am also noticing the extent to which people use appearance and "cultural markers" to determine an individual's worth. I don't know if I want red dreads or green eyeshadow or a big hippie dress, etc. and so now I am in the awkward in between phase of not really subscribing to anything, which means most people don't know how to deal with me. I believe that this speaks less for humanity that I would have previously supposed. But, it seems to be the nature of mankind. Blessed and necessary is the coming shift of conciousness, in whatever form it decides to take. Mama Earth and Grandmother Spider know what's up, and have been here way longer than any of our incarnations.

I find that even with these growing pains, I have a giddy sense of hope for us. Though a large part of that hope is that we can evolve into our potential. We have the ability to be such amazing creatures, filled with light and love and most of all peace, but it seems everywhere I look I see us embracing the death cult, killing each other over imaginary distinctions. When I see this I think, "Om shanti shanti shanti", and concentrate on people opening themselves up to infinite knowledge. Lately, I am seeing people I care about being chased around by their ego demons. It's just so painful to watch, like seeing someone drown in three inches of water. If they'd just look around, they'd see that they can just stand the hell up, but they put their gender/location/class/previous truth blinders on long ago, so all they can concentrate on is drowning. I am grateful to see and participate in this experience; however, so that I can see the end result of stagnant cultural identification. If we can just see far enough, and see beyond the immediate mammalian fight-or-flight feeling of "bad" situations, we can see that everything is eventually for good and truthful spiritual evolution, and that every second we are blessed and filled with light. I wish the Europeans hadn't killed off so many of the First Peoples (on all continents), because the entire American paradigm needs a prolonged medicine walk. We are becoming both schizophrenic and suicidal, as we stray farther away from the lives that our bodies have evolved to thrive in.

Which is why I am happy to be part of the peaceful revolution. May we find the path back out of the concrete jungle.

Om shanti shanti shanti.