You know your higher self. She is the one you picture when you think about how you will be better, richer, thinner, more confident, more successful in the future. She embodies who you want to be and the best of who you are. And she’s already in you. Your job is to connect with her and to become her. Think about who you would be if you had no more excuses and no more reasons to do exactly what you want to do. Think about who you will be in one or two years. How you will have excelled in your career path, crushed motherhood, and taken fabulous, exotic vacations. Maybe you will have invested in a condo in Tulum, Mexico, or written a novel. You might have performed in a play or created a new podcast. You can feel how awesome that is right? Now, move that feeling to the present. Be that person now. How does she stand? How does she talk? What does she think about? Is she fearful or authoritative? Flustered or calm? Angry or joyful? What does she believe in? Does she believe in you? Do you believe in her? Bring that reality to you. Feel the vibration of it. Breathe into it. Feel it with your heart. Follow that feeling. Follow your heart. You know that woman intimately. You are that woman. Be at home in her. Rest in her company. Your higher self is always with you. She is guiding you at every step. She knows exactly what you need, and she can communicate it to you precisely and articulately because she is you. She knows you intimately, what you are learning, what you are missing, and how to integrate it all. When you recognize that, you will believe in your own magic that has been there all along. Now when you align with that vibration wherever you find it, you will never go astray. The yellow brick road will lay itself out before you. And you will discover all you need to do is to click your heels to go home.
I had seen this movie before, and I knew I was being called to watch it again at this time because it carries messages about the interplay of feminine and masculine desires. This rewatching proved to be deliciously powerful. The sisters, Stella and Blanche, represent the two options available to women of that era, the 1940’s in the American South. Having earned the right to vote two decades prior, women were still very limited in terms of employment and mostly unable to financially support themselves. Stella falls in love with and marries a blue collar laborer, Stanley, who is the epitome of raw masculinity: brash, strong, aggressive, competitive, and virile. Blanche was previously wed to a young ‘boy’ when they were both teenagers. She recalls that he was sensitive, a poet, artistic, evidently embodying traditionally feminine qualities in a man, which she was clearly drawn to. However, as she reveals later in the film, he was unable to hold down a job, failing at his masculine duty of provider, for which she harshly reprimands him, accuses him of being weak and tells him she despises him for it. The young man flees from her, takes a revolver to his own mouth and kills himself. This tragedy haunts Blanche for the rest of her life.
At the beginning of the movie, Blanche has come to stay with her sister and her husband after she loses the family estate, Belle Reve (“Beautiful Dream”) under mysterious circumstances. She withholds the exact details of that loss until Stanley, suspicious that Blanche has swindled her sister and, by extension, him, forces her to show him papers of the sale. It comes out that the estate was lost by foreclosure. The sisters’ forefathers had repeatedly mortgaged the property to finance their lavish lifestyles, no longer sustainable by the family business. After their parents’ and her husband’s deaths, Blanche is unable to keep up with the payments on her meager English teacher’s salary, especially as she is still in the habit of living beyond her means in her family’s tradition. To make matters worse, she is fired from her job for being caught having sexual relations with a 17-year-old student.
As the movie progresses, we discover via Stanley’s sleuthing that Blanche had resorted to prostitution, taking up residence at a second rate hotel called The Flamingo. We also learn through Blanche’s own confession that her promiscuity began before that, as she recalls how drunken sailors would stumble through the front yard of her family’s estate on their way home from the local bar, calling her name, “Blanche, Blanche!” the calls of whom she presumably obliged. These truths trickle out through the course of the movie as we untangle the web of lies Blanche has artfully arranged about her past and current circumstances to uphold her image of a refined, Southern lady.
Despite her deceitful behavior, I found myself empathizing with her. She was a widow trying to survive on a meager income. Her options for financial survival were extremely limited. Despite her high society upbringing, her teacher’s education, and her cultured mind, she needed the support of a man to survive. When she was called upon by masculine desire, her feminine inclination was to acquiesce, maybe out of desperation or maybe out of her own sensual longing, or both. While no one berated the men for their fornications with her, she was run out of town for her promiscuity: a clear illustration of the double standard of male and female sexuality. When she arrives at her sister’s home, she is playing her last card as an aging (and by aging, I believe she was in her early thirties), out-of-work spinster in 1940’s America, not to mention her torrid past. She needs to find a man who will marry her and provide for her before her past catches up with her, or she will have nowhere else to go. She comes close, but Stanley’s investigation reveals the truth of her past before her gentleman suitor, Mitch, agrees to marry her. Interestingly, when he learns of her promiscuity, Mitch declares she is not clean enough to marry but still attempts to have sex with her, clearly illustrating again the cultural double standard of the era. Mitch will take her as a wife only as long as she fits the cultural standard of a lady, but if she is a whore, he will only use her and discard her as an object. The masculine can play the part of a cultured gentleman but can easily slip into the role of sexual predator without repercussions. However, the feminine has no such latitude. Once a whore, she is branded forever.
At the beginning of the film, Stella is a happily married woman. Stella and Stanley are poor by the standards of Stella’s Southern aristocratic upbringing, but they are seemingly happy in their lowly New Orleans apartment. Stanley is brutish and virile, much to the delight of Stella, who revels in his primal, masculine energy. Stella is in the early stages of pregnancy. She has the protection and the intense passion of a man, and the promise of motherhood. She embodies the sensuality and joy of the desired maiden becoming the mother. Everything is rosy until Blanche shows up and rocks the boat of her happy home. The lack of privacy in the two room apartment and Stanley’s suspicions about the loss of Belle Reve put an immediate strain on the couple’s relationship, which only intensifies throughout the film. Still, the deep, primal love between Stella and Stanley persists even after Stanley strikes Stella in a drunken rage. In the famous scene, a sober and regretful Stanley bellows her name from the street, and Stella slowly descends the stairs to him, clearly feeling her power over him, the embodiment of feminine power over the masculine. Despite his greater physical strength and financial status, he is weak without her. He needs her just as much, if not more, than she needs him. Stella seems to represent the new, empowered feminine. She has successfully navigated the cultural structure of her day to achieve a marriage that satisfies her desire while owning her personal power. This is evidenced by the way she tells Stanley, after he tells her and Blanche to stop cackling in the other room while he and his friends play cards, “This is my house, and I will talk as much as I want to!” She is his equal and she lets him know it. While Blanche constantly frets about her appearance, what others think of her and whether men desire her, Stella radiates an inner confidence. She owns her sexuality. Yet, despite this, the story ends tragically for Stella as well.
Her sister has gone crazy as a result of the combination of Stanley’s brutish treatment of her and her complete lack of any positive future outlook. While she has imagined a suitor has invited her to cruise the Caribbean on a yacht and dresses for the occasion, in fact, she is being escorted away to a home for the insane. Stella reluctantly abets the extradition, believing Blanche’s story that Stanley raped her while Stella was in labor at the hospital to be another one of her made-up stories. However, after Blanche leaves, Stella apparently finds the accusation intolerable and declares she will leave Stanley with their baby. We are left to wonder how she, a single, unemployed, new mother, will fare in this masculine dominated world. Blanche’s parting words as she is escorted by a kindly doctor from her sister’s apartment, “I have always depended on the kindness of strangers,” seem to echo that soulful longing I acknowledged in myself through the EK practice of being a child of the world, of everyone and everything, a free spirit, fully supported by the universe at large.
To me, the two women in this film symbolize two parts of the contemporary woman. The old, fading archetype represented by Blanche, tries unsuccessfully to suppress her erotic desire to conform to the societal ideal of a lady. She tries to manipulate the masculine into supporting her both financially and emotionally by use of feminine charm and deceit. She conceals reality and calls it magic. Yet her subconscious desire bubbles to the surface and gets the better of her. Her inability to integrate her ego and subconscious ultimately ends in her losing herself entirely.
Stella is the emerging feminine ideal. She does not depend on her family’s inheritance. She forges a path of her own. She marries for love and desire, not money. She finds joy, satisfaction and personal power in her relationship to the masculine. Yet the same brute force and domination that turns her on in the beginning becomes repulsive to her by the end. Her masculine counterpart is still rooted in the old patriarchal ways of aggression and domination, and as she grows tired of his unconscious, destructive nature and his exploitation of the weak feminine, embodied by her sister Blanche, she must leave him. Her leaving him represents a pivotal point for the modern feminine woman. The future is uncertain. How will this new, strong, feminine woman make her own way in the world? We are left to answer this question for ourselves. It’s a new era that is yet to be written. We are writing it now.
I feel both Blanche and Stella living inside me. Blanche is the part of me that is as fragile and vulnerable as a wilting flower, that wants to surrender fully to the masculine and to the world, to belong to the other, to be owned, desired, cherished, protected, and supported. That feels deeply satisfying. I could give myself completely and simply be a vessel for desire, sensuality and joy. There’s also that part of me that identifies with fiery Stella. Empowered by motherhood, by the recognition that I am a divine portal for life, that I can bring a man to his knees with my femininity and sexual power, that I can create my own destiny and a new paradigm for the world. What do I do when my ‘weak’ feminine persona shows up and undermines me like a long-lost sister, a relic of the past? Do I heal her or shun her? Do I integrate her or disown her?
Women have been owned by men for many thousands of years. To think that the scars of this generational trauma don’t live deep in our psyches is to live in denial, as Eunice, Stella’s older neighbor encourages Stella to deny Stanley’s rape of Blanche. The ghost of our wounded feminine lineage lingers in our collective psyche. Hiding her and suppressing her only means she will turn up again and again unannounced and unwanted just like Blanche appears at Stella’s home and continue to hinder our evolution and be exploited by the unhealed masculine. Just as there wasn’t room for both Blanche and Stella in the tiny apartment, there isn’t room for us to keep these parts of ourselves separate. It will always cause tension. Healing ourselves, integrating our desire to be submissive and our desire to be powerful, to be the whore and the queen, to own and honor all of ourselves, will allow us to evolve. After so many generations of having our sexuality be owned and controlled by men, the modern woman is now being called to heal her fractured shadow self and reinvent her identity as the embodiment of the feminine in the physical world.
Perhaps instead of burying that weaker feminine self in shame and judgment, it would be better to acknowledge, forgive and even indulge her. Perhaps, just perhaps, there was a part of the feminine that was complicit in our historical subjugation. Maybe we have a secret, shameful desire to be owned, dominated, controlled, and yet we keep this part of ourselves in the shadows just as Blanche avoids harsh lighting in the film. It’s not socially acceptable for the modern female to feel that way. We are supposed to be progressive, self-determining, autonomous, strong. But how do we retain our femaleness while going through this transformation? Our female essence is supple, soft, submissive, surrendering. These qualities are deemed as weak in our patriarchal society. Men desire us but when we give them what they want, we are whores. So we are constantly toeing the line between men’s desires, our own desires and what is socially acceptable. The masculine and feminine are inherently drawn to each other. Yet, while men can let their desire run rampant we have to be the keepers of proprietary or risk ostracism. This double standard still lives on today. So as we forge the path of reinventing ourselves, the modern woman is tasked with the chore of constantly fighting off not only masculine sexual desire but her own desire as well. How can we love ourselves and each other when we recognize our weak feminine? If we do not, we are only upholding the patriarchal legacy of separation and shame. If we do not love every aspect of ourselves unconditionally, we cannot fully heal. If we do not honor our shadowy submissive side, she will continue to invite exploitation at any cost. Her deep, unconscious desire will powerfully undermine our efforts to claim our sovereign identity until we integrate her and give her what she wants. And what she wants is to be wanted.
Interestingly, the single moment when Blanche appears to own her sexual power is right after a young newspaper boy appears at the front door asking for a donation. Blanche checks her purse and finds she has nothing to offer, then tells the boy that she is not the lady of the house. The young man turns to leave but Blanche stops him and proceeds to seduce him, instructing him to come closer to her so she can kiss him “just once.” Her fragility and self doubt seem to melt away, and she is suddenly bold and lusty. This seduction is not a means to an end, such as with her gentleman caller, a marriage prospect and potential provider. This is pure, unadulterated desire. Did the young man elicit this desire from Blanche, perhaps reminding her of her young husband? At first glance, that would seem to be it. But is it a coincidence that she was forced to admit her destitution to him first? Her admittance of having no money and not being the “lady” of the house, just an impoverished, transient being, is followed by irresistible, passionate desire such that she cannot contain herself. Is she turned on by her own poverty, by her lack of stability, her need to depend on the kindness of strangers, just like I was in my EK meditation? I believe this is why I was called to watch this movie. The synchronicity is just so powerful. Women, once kept as property, are now not allowed to like being submissive. It makes no sense. We are not one dimensional. Our shadow sister, Blanche, still lives with us. Let’s not ostracize her and send her away to the looney bin. She is our sister after all. In fact, she is us. We are not meant to become like men in the new paradigm. We are meant to create a new paradigm. We must not deny or hide Blanche, our shadow sister, because the patriarchy will no longer sustain her. We must seek to understand her and learn from her. We must let her be without judgment. That is, we must allow ourselves to feel our shadowy feelings without judgment, such as the desire to be taken care of, even subjugated and owned. But that doesn’t mean we have to act on those feelings. In fact, the movie teaches us that we must claim financial independence on a large scale so that we may become emotionally independent as well. Without the potential to survive independently, we cannot fully step into our sovereign power. That is to say, even if a woman chooses to be a stay-at-home mom or housewife, she does so out of choice. If the situation ever becomes undesirable, she has the option to leave and support herself. “A Streetcar Named Desire’ was set in the ‘40’s and was released in the ‘50’s. The female characters in the film did not have the option of financial independence and thus, Stella was unable to leave her husband at the end of the film because of her sister’s accusation of rape, at least in the original version. I learned in a Google search that Hollywood later changed the ending so that she did leave him. Even though women at that time had achieved legal equality, the film illustrates that, until they have economic equality, they cannot be truly free. We are much closer to that now but still have a way to go. And the emotional dependency persists whereas it’s no longer a result of financial dependence so much as a cause of it.
Female financial independence will undoubtedly threaten and very likely enrage the masculine as male financial superiority represents the last remaining vestige of male societal dominance. Knowing this inevitable reaction of the masculine ego to the increasing power of the feminine, the only appropriate counter-reaction is grace, as Stella so poignantly shows Stanley in the scene where she descends the stairs to comfort him, stroking his head on her lap like a child. We know the ego will lash out in defiance and self-protection. That’s what it does. It is futile to fight ego with ego, as is the masculine behavior that has resulted in countless wars over the millenia. Now, we must meet ego with loving grace to let it dissolve into nothing, which in truth, it is. The feminine does not seek to dominate but to mutually support.
Blanche lives in the world of her fantasies. She is endlessly creative in her ability to embellish upon what is, which is not necessarily a bad thing, except when it hinders her ability to be present in the moment. If we could embrace our desires the way Blanche does, as if they are already real, and also accept and enjoy the present reality as it is, like Stella, we could conceivably integrate the two realities, the two disparate parts of ourselves and manifest heaven on earth. The magic that Blanche perceives would live not only in her mind but in the physical world as well because we would be able to see the potential in the present and be happy just as we are without needing external circumstances to change first. To conceive of a new world paradigm, we must first have the fantasy and then step into it. Yet instead of fantasizing about the past, we must fantasize about the future. And we must not condemn the present. The present is the portal to the eternal and is all we ever have. To deny it is to deny life itself. So in relishing what is, even relishing our desire as part of that what is, with shameless abandon, we open up the gates to powerful, magnetic receiving.
When the cave takes you, it swallows you whole
It's the belly of the beast
And yet I was not scared
I was protected
And secure in that cave
Not only from the outside forces
But from myself
In that sanctuary,
I could unleash the full power of my being without fear
I could let go of the rigidity of my form
I could surrender the fullness of all that I am in safety
I could let the confines of my mind dissipate and become infinite
Within the dark sanctitude of the cave
The walls held me as I exploded in ecstasy
Such release
Such sacred love pouring through me
The cave is the tomb of my ego
And the womb of my eternal self
This sacred container is
The chalice for my rebirth
Blessed be the darkness
For in it we find the light
Do you remember when
We danced with crystals in our hair
and prayers carved into our skin
Under the moon and stars
And in the caves of Inanna
Shafts of light finding us
In the cloak of night
Drums beating with our hearts
Rhythms pulsating with our souls
We danced inside the music
We knew we were eternal
We knew we were everything.
When I was in sixth grade, I woke up in the middle of the night and saw a naked man lying curled up in a ball on my bedroom floor. Sleepily, I went upstairs to my parents’ room and told them there was a man in my room. Naturally, they thought I was dreaming, but it turned out to be true. Apparently, a young man living nearby in the our apartment complex had snuck in through a sliding glass door that was left open.
My parents called the police. By the time they got there, the man had vanished. All I remember from the rest of the scene is the police officer suggesting that I make sure my curtains were always closed when I undressed and warning me and my parents quite bluntly that if this happened again, there may be a prostitution charge. The message was clear: conceal yourself or else. Never mind that I was a child asleep in my own bed, and this man broke into my home. Thank goodness, he seemingly meant no harm, but the experience was unnerving just the same, and the insidious lesson that came from it was: my beauty is dangerous. Unwittingly attracting men could bring personal violation, physical harm and unfathomable shame. To even consider that at 12 years old, I was intending some kind of prostitution was unthinkable and repulsive. Yet that’s what was being suggested because in my innocence, I sometimes forgot to draw the curtains and conceal my body from prying eyes.
No doubt most or even all other women have had similar experiences, many more traumatic than this, where they have found themselves feeling victimized by their beauty. Rape, sexual abuse and misconduct, objectification, harrassment; I’m sure most women can relate to some form of this realization that it’s not safe to show their full beauty for fear of being violated somehow. So we hide, withdraw, shrink, brush off compliments, deny and downplay our beauty, never stepping fully into the power of it, owning it. When someone else, i.e. a lover ‘makes’ us feel beautiful, we give them our power, make our sense of self worth dependent on their positive regard. Yet owning our beauty is owning our power.
When we believe in our own beauty, we radiate it freely, and we are in charge. We get to say who gets the pleasure of our company and for how long. When we own our beauty, we are no longer the victims. We have what they want; we ARE what they want, and we are fully in control.
When we accept and embrace the parts of ourselves that we previously rejected and shamed, we are practicing a loving surrender to what is and a transmutation of our deepest fears into a recognition, reclamation and fulfillment of our deepest desires.
In the paradoxical duality of our human predicament, our spirits long to experience all that physical existence has to offer, not only the light but also the dark. In fact, we must know the dark parts of ourselves so that we can appreciate the light. We must fall so we can know ourselves as strong enough to rise again. We must be hurt so that we can heal. We must have anger so that we can know peace. We must feel separate and alone so that we can become one.
Yet in our society, we are raised to feel ashamed of ourselves for having inappropriate desires or negative feelings. So we hide them from the world and even from ourselves. We pretend that if we don’t acknowledge them, they don’t exist. We cover them with layers upon layers of secrecy, shame and guilt. And yet they continue to lurk there, deep in our subconscious. And the incredibly powerful subconscious magnetically attracts the situations, events and relationships that fulfill and reflect those subconscious desires and beliefs, not just once, over and over but in repetitive patterns. We consciously think we don’t want to feel poor, angry, victimized, lonely, scared, stressed, but, like an addict, we keep creating the circumstances that bring these emotions about. We keep reliving the same dramas again and again like a cheesy soap opera. Why? Because like picking a scab or watching a scary movie, it’s perversely satisfying. We do self-destructive things not only because it keeps us in our comfort zone but because we secretly enjoy the way we get to play the powerless victim, be the martyr or stay in survival mode. To stop the subconscious pattern, we must acknowledge and honor the shadowy desire. It’s ok that we have irrational and even conflicting desires. The moment we take them out of the closet, they lose their surreptitious power over us.
Everything we desire is already available to us as soon as we define it. In the field of infinite possibilities, anything we can imagine is already available to us. Just as a child can conjure a whole world where they can be anything they want to be and make anything happen, so can we as adults. The limitless potential is all around us, ripe for the taking. Ask and you shall receive.
What do you want? What do you really, really want? Do you know?
The only thing stopping you from getting what you want is your ability to define it.
When you raise your vibration, you will discover that everything is available to you, and the universe wants you to get what you want. But you have to know what that is, and you have to let the universe know. If you have vague desires or conflicting desires or confusing desires or weak desires, then the universe cannot oblige. Once you truly feel it, physically and emotionally, then it can’t help but become yours.
Focus on what you desire, not the lack of having what you desire. What you want is just what you want. It is not you. You do not need to be attached to it. It will not make you happy. You can be happy right now without that thing. Be happy in your desire. Relish the sweetness of your longing. Enjoy imagining how lovely it will be to satisfy that desire or accomplish that goal. Feel good about it, not bad. Delight in your desire, don’t resent it. Let it uplift you, not depress you. Love and cherish your desire. Let the thought of it send tingles through your body. See yourself having it. Feel what that will be like. Taste it. Savor it. That desire is yours.
Delight in your desires yet know that you are already whole without them. If you are not happy right now without the object of your desire then you will not be happy when you obtain it. Why? Because you are externalizing your happiness. As long as you believe that something outside of yourself can make you happy, then any happiness you receive from the external world will be fleeting. After a moment of satisfaction, you will find some other external desire to attach your happiness to, and that will become the thing that you need before you allow yourself to be happy. Your happy place is not a beach in an exotic destination. It’s inside you. The lover that will sweep you off your feet and give you your happily ever after is not a beautiful stranger; it is you. The riches that will satisfy your every need are not at the end of the rainbow; they are already within you. Knowing that you are boundless takes a lot of courage. Limitless choice can be scary. Don't be scared. Just think, what do you want?
Pain is sacred. Just as Christ suffered on the cross, died and was reborn, so does pain offer us a chance for growth and renewal. Pain is a sign of healing. We instinctively try to avoid it, shove it down, numb it, blame others for it, etc., but only by going right through it can we learn the lesson it has to give. When we face our pain, our fear, we are baptized, initiated, consecrated, healed, renewed by it. We complete the hero’s journey. We release our karma. We up-level ourselves. The constant avoidance of pain robs us of all of this. In fact the fear of suffering causes more suffering than the actual suffering, if that makes sense. We go to great lengths to avoid facing our fear and our pain. We use every kind of band-aid and numbing agent we can imagine in order to avoid facing the root of the problem. We take drugs, we drink, we blame everyone and everything else, we consume food, products, services, supplements, we hide, we lash out. Anything to take the focus off the very the thing we need to focus on. Pain is a signal, a message, calling your attention to something that needs to be healed. We avoid heeding that call at all costs. But in that pain lies our journey, the journey of our healing, the journey of our lives. Releasing resistance, surrendering to our fear and to our pain allows us to move through it, to discover a stronger version of ourselves.
We think of Heaven as a place where everything is perfect and good, and there is no evil or anything bad of any kind. But what if Heaven is actually a state of being where you accept all that is, the bad along with the good? When we fully understand our trauma is also our best gift, we are healed and redeemed. When we realize our suffering has purpose and meaning, we transmute it into grace. We turn pain into power. We turn fear into love. Jesus had to die on the cross to give his greatest gift. There has to be dark for there to be light. So then, maybe Heaven is not the absence of darkness but the making of peace with it.
Religions are based on spiritual messages filtered through human channels, each with their own backstories and biases. As the messages manifest in the physical world, there are bound to be details that are specific to that human’s framework of experience and understanding. Their life experiences will color how they translate the messages, the result being that other people will see it differently, through the lens of their own perspective. As cultures collided, people latched on to these differences rather than realizing the underlying sameness of their beliefs. To find the space of understanding is the mission now.
The most pressing issue here is the divisiveness that has existed around religion. The feeling that it’s us versus them, and that we are somehow better or more enlightened than the other. Self-righteousness is a trap that prevents compassion and increased awareness. Ironically, as soon as someone points the finger at someone else for self-righteous behavior, they too are embodying it, and so falling into the trap. They are making that person the “other.” “I can’t believe they think they are right and everyone else is wrong,” we say, and in taking that stance, are doing the exact same thing. Of course, everyone thinks they are right. They are. In accordance with their experience, their perspective and their understanding of the world. We are all right. There is room for all of us to be right. We were all given a diversity of experiences and points of consciousness so that we can see the world differently in a prism of colors and frequencies. Is one color of the rainbow more right than another? Is purple more correct than orange? Is one musical note more enlightened than another? Don’t be ridiculous, you say. Well, that’s how we act. As if one person’s views carry more merit than any others. No matter how outrageous or repugnant they may seem, everyone’s perspective has merit. It’s a stripe in the endless rainbow of human experience. No one can really be wrong. It’s just an outlook shaped by their experiences and belief patterns. Walk a mile in their shoes.
Strong opinions are popular and appealing. People love to have strong opinions, especially in our country. It makes us feel smart, gets us fired up. But taking strong oppositional stances based on our opinions is creating a rift in our society. Many rifts. It’s hard to agree with anyone on everything. Talk to them enough and you are bound to find things you disagree on. So we stop talking, afraid to find something that will cause us to confront the divide. Most of us don’t like conflict. So we avoid topics that will be controversial. It’s too messy, too emotional. Unless we are on the other side of a computer screen or we know we are in the company of those who agree with us. But how productive is that? Wouldn’t it be better to disarm ourselves from our opinions long enough to engage in a conversation with someone of an opposing view long enough to understand where they are coming from? It might be helpful to ask them about it in a quiet moment when there are no public battles to be won, with only the goal of human to human understanding. It takes courage to open up your heart and create space for these kinds of discussions. So often, we see them take place in the forum of political debate, in staunch opposition, with huge stakes on the line. But we don’t win any badges of honor by proving ourselves right on these topics. We are the people. We can decide to take up the mantle of understanding rather than that of hatred. Ego separates. Communication brings together.
If you’re asking, who am I to change the world? The answer is, you are the only one who can. You are the one we have been waiting for. You are the hero of the story. You hold the power. Not just in a metaphorical sense. It is all up to you. You must own your power now. Rise to the challenge. This is your time. This might seem hard to believe as you search your cabinets for a hand wash refill. But it is so. Realize your power and your importance, and hold it. This is your calling.
I know there are plenty of reasons to not believe this. After all, the entire process of socialization has trained you to believe otherwise. Indeed the entire physical world seems set up to the contrary. You have been trained to think you are one of many. Fall in line; you are just another brick in the wall. It seems as though you are separate and alone. Your life has been full of experiences in which you have failed or fallen short of expectations. And yet, these are lies.
There is only one truth. You are God, nothing more, nothing less. You are the expression of the Divine, and you are the Divine. The entire universe exists inside of you. It is because of you. Your consciousness unlocks eternity. Your very existence makes the universe possible. Don’t wait for anyone to save you. Take control.
We are waiting.
I Awakened Like This 