communication does not equal conversation

I think perhaps many of us have a little bit of a blind spot when it comes to communication these days. Communication is not actually the exact same thing as conversation. Instead, conversation is one of many possible ways to communicate.

Today I overheard a woman saying, "I shouldn't have to make assumptions. He should just tell me how he feels!"

I wanted to interject, but it was none of my business. I imagined handing her a copy of The Five Love Languages: How to Express Heartfelt Commitment to Your Mate
and saying, But maybe he IS telling you how he feels! What does he say with his eyes, his touch, and his actions? There's more than one way to let someone know you care!

I hear women declaring to each other with righteous conviction: If he doesn't say it, he doesn't care. And of course, sometimes, it's true! But before you release him back into the wild simply because he's not showering you with verbal affection, consider that words may not be his primary mode of expression. If you love him, a little experimentation may salvage the relationship.

I invite every woman who has been Scrabble scoring her man's verbal output (and finding it lacking) to figuratively plug her ears with cotton for a few days, and to rely upon her other senses to receive communication instead.

Smell those ribs cooking on the grill? He put that extra spicy sauce on half of them because you like them better that way.

See his muddy shoes at the door? When he lived alone he would have worn them into the house.

Feel his strong hands massaging your shoulders? He noticed you were tense and wanted to help you feel better.

Why does he do all this? Maybe it's because he cares about you.

I don't mean to diminish the value of words. If they are your primary love language, you'll probably prefer a mate who speaks affectionately to you often.

But some women find that when they open up their other senses, words are not as important as they previously thought. You may discover that there are plenty of other very satisfying ways to express love, affection, and appreciation. Sometimes, once these other channels have opened, words even become pale in comparison...

soul food from the web

gratitude to Rob Breszny for sharing these in this week's Free Will Astrology newsletter!

paul hawken's graduation speech. wonderful:
http://www.dailygood.org/more.php?n=3697

a magical medicine story. gave me goose bumps of recognition:
http://realitysandwich.com/gathering_tribe?page=1

a radical choice

I sat down a few days ago to write a post about my reaction to reports that Colleen and Daniel Hauser had gone on the run. They are the mother and son who preferred to use alternative modalities to treat the boy's cancer, and fled to avoid being ordered by the court to submit to traditional chemotherapy.

I must admit, this case strikes close to my heart. For the past twenty years or so my family has been using alternative modalities with great success, and therefore we have spent next to no time in the traditional medical system. I even gave birth at home.

I don't like the idea that the courts could have forced my children into conventional medical treatment. If Daniel were my son, I would likely support his desire to reject a deliberate injection of poison.

So I feel a lot of empathy for this family. In fact, I got pretty riled up about the whole thing. I could go on to list all my perceived injustices, but I won't, because that's not the point of this post.

The point is that somewhere along the line, as I was ruminating on this poor kid and his mom and feeling so bad for them, I heard Abraham's voice pop into my head saying, Nothing is more important than that you feel good. (If you are not familiar with Abraham-Hicks, this statement will probably sound self-serving, narcissistic, and even worse, because it's taken out of a much larger context. A visit to http://www.abraham-hicks.com/ might help to put it in perspective. )

And I realized then that the tape looping in my head about injustice and the cruel imposition of values and yadda yadda yadda did not feel good to me AT ALL. Nor was it helping Daniel and his family. So, for what might be the very first time in all my years of listening to good ol' Abe, I decided to take their advice and "reach for a thought that feels better."

And the instant I made this choice, I felt my awareness zoom out, like a camera panning back. I have no idea if the thought that felt better to me is true or not, but that's not really what's important. Here's the thought: perhaps this mother and child, at a soul level, signed up for the job of bringing this issue into the media spotlight, so that change can happen.

I know that's all woo woo and such, but it felt so much better to me than thinking that these kind and innocent and well-intended people were being victimized by The System.

When I panned out, and remembered that there is always more going on than meets the eye, my outrage just melted. I felt gratitude and compassion for the family, and for the courts and others involved as well. Each of them is playing an important role in a larger production.

It takes a lot of gumption for a soul to sign up to play the bad guy, because plenty of venom will be spewed in his direction. A lot of people will forget that at his core, he is light and love just like we all are.

Which reminds me of a book I really like: The Little Soul and the Sun by Neale Donald Walsch.





Anyway, let me back up and say a bit more about my statement that it is not important to me whether this 'bigger production' idea is true or not.

It seems to me that our lives are made up of a string of moments, like a strand of pearls. We can experience only one at a time, which makes this moment the most important moment of our existence.

There's no one passing judgment on how we choose to spend our moments, so there's nothing inherently wrong about letting myself stew in anger for a while if I want to.

But if I have a choice, and I finally perceive that I really do, I'll choose a more pleasant experience, thank you very much.

As an added bonus, any actions I choose to take from a stance of compassion will be far more efficient and effective than reactions that stem from anger, revenge, or outrage. Since I'm really not that interested in adding to the chain of pain, I like finding ways to call forth the best in others.

After the compassion was flowing again, I found myself simply feeling love and gratitude for everyone involved in this case. I saw no more good guys or bad guys ... just a bunch of people trying to do what they think is best.

And that was a relief.

postscript May 30,2009:
Colleen and Danny voluntarily returned home, and he has reluctantly resumed chemotherapy. The family has started a website and is posting updates on his conditon: www.dannyhauser.com.

brain 101

sort of a user's manual for your brain, written by a self-proclaimed 'grumpy' scientist who is scrupulous about his research and sources.

fascinating stuff.

http://www.brainrules.net/

there's no one in your way

Of the many empowering and inspiring concepts I've learned from Abraham-Hicks over the years, one of my favorites is the idea that there's no one who can keep you from happiness, joy, and success.

You are the creator of your own reality, and so you are not in jeopardy. You do not need to control the behavior of others in order for you to thrive. Your attention to things that you think they do that keeps you from your thriving is, in fact, what keeps you from your thriving... It is not what they do to you; it's what you do to you in fear of what you think that they will do to you. -Abraham-Hicks

In the plainest and simplest terms, it is your attention that determines whether you thrive or not, not the actions or attitudes of others. That's not what most of us have been taught, so it takes a little mental retraining to keep your attention on the roses instead of fixating on the thorns. But even in the most challenging situation, there is something positive to focus on.

For example, let's look at the economic situation. Any roses there? Sure! People are talking to each other. Kindness and generosity are thriving. Families are spending more time together. Creativity is being called forth to provide new and exciting solutions. Communities are coming together. Gardens are springing up everywhere. Values are realigning. There is much to celebrate.

Only your own thoughts can interfere with your momentum. So take the focus off of what anyone else is doing, look around for the positives, and ride that wave of joy until the next one catches your attention. Don't waste one precious minute blaming anything outside of you for your lot in life. Lots of us haven't yet learned how to harness our attention. Luckily, it's pretty easy to master, once you point your effort in the right direction. It's certainly far easier than trying to force agreement, convince others to step aside, or barrel through external resistance.

Let your alignment (with Well-Being) be first and foremost, and let everything else be secondary. And not only will you have an eternally joyous journey, but everything you have ever imagined will flow effortlessly into your experience. There is nothing you cannot be or do or have—but your dominant intent is to be joyful. The doing and the having will come into alignment once you get that one down.
Abraham-Hicks in Portland, OR on Wednesday, July 14th, 2004

If you could get to the place where you no longer feel a need to push against anything that you disagree with--you would become in alignment with what you do agree with. Even within your own body, it is your pushing against those things you don't agree with, that causes you to be out of alignment with what you do agree.
Excerpted from the workshop in Philadelphia, PA on Monday, May 13th, 2002

Since nothing matters to you other than your personal alignment with your individual goals or desires, then that is where our work is. We are not here to debate the rightness or the wrongness of what you, or anyone, chooses. We are not taking sides, for or against, anything. We are here to help you understand that your life can be as wonderful or as horrible as you allow it to be. It all depends upon the thoughts that you practice. And therein lies the basis of anyone's success: How much do I practice thoughts that bring me joy, and how much do I practice thoughts that bring me pain?
Excerpted from the workshop in San Francisco, CA on Saturday, March 8th, 2003

Let others vibrate as they vibrate and want the best for them. Never mind how they're flowing to you. You concentrate on how you're flowing. Because one who is connected to the Energy Stream is more powerful, more influential than a million who are not.
Excerpted from the workshop in Portland, OR on Tuesday, June 10th, 1997

a catchy tune

a big thank you to Jeff, who sent me the link to this catchy tune because he thought I'd like it. I do indeed! The lyrics are deeply satisfying to me.



Can I get up in the morning
Put the kettle on
Make us some coffee, say "hey" to the sun...
Is it enough to write a song and sing it to the birds?
They'd hear just the tune
Not understand my love for words

But you would hear me and know
I want only this, I want to live
I want to live a simple life.

I dreamed you first
But not so real
And everyday since I've found you
Such moments we steal
Like little thieves, we rub our hands
We hold our hearts between them.

But will you hear me and know?
I want only this, I want to live
I want to live a simple life.

Move on, move on
Time is accelerating.
Drive on all night
Traffic lights and one-ways.

Move on, move on
Parking violations waiting
Turn off the car, breathe the air
Let's stay here.

I'll kiss you awake, and we'll have time
To know our neighbors all by name
And every star at night.
We'll weave our days together like waves
And particles of light.

I want only this, I want to live
I want to live a simple life.

a sweet story for mother's day

have some tissues handy ... it's about a Boulder woman who offers to give birth to her best friend's baby. My eyes still well up every time I think about it.

http://www.boulderweekly.com/20090507/coverstory.html

who said that?

omg, this is my 300th post! that's especially trippy in light of what I have to say today, which is that I'm not sure who wrote any of them.

Many energetic healing modalities suggest that some of us have more permeable energy fields than others. Those of us on the more permeable end of the spectrum, like me, not only absorb the energies of people we are in close relationships with, but also anyone we pay attention to -- including the cashier at the grocery store, and various strangers who are standing nearby. Absorbing their energies means we might find ourselves thinking, acting, or feeling like they do.

It's not too hard to clear their energy out and restore ourselves back to being full of our own energy again. It just takes intention. Thinking, "Clear. Be all here." is one way to do that.

Some people like to use a visualization, picturing their own energy as a colored mist, floating back to them and settling in, while sending the energies that don't belong back home to their owners. You don't need to identify the thoughts or feelings individually, or send them to specific people - just intend to release them and let them find their own way home.

Some people like to shower or wash their hands, and imagine that anything they've picked up energetically that isn't theirs goes down the drain and is neutralized by the earth. Some like to lay on the ground, imagining the core of the earth as a magnet that pulls out and recycles any energy that doesn't belong to them.

There's no right or wrong way to do this -- whatever harnesses your intention will do the trick. It's just a matter of remembering!

Sometimes it takes me a while to notice that I'm not myself. I'll write something that feels so right on, and then read it the next day and be like, "Huh? I don't really feel that way!"

Or sometimes the wake up call comes from readers who knows me well, and they will write to say, "That's not how you are at all!"

When I pay attention, I can usually figure out whose energy I was narrating. But even if I'm not sure, I can still release it.

One of these days, I'll remember to clear myself on a regular basis! But for now, I'll take the lemons of forgetfulness and make lemonade out of them by simply enjoying the interesting read ...

You say "Narcissist" like it's a bad thing!

[Ramble alert: This post goes all over the place, and may be impossible to follow.]

Like a kitten with a new catnip toy, I've been sparring with an intoxicating theory all day today: What if the way I think, speak and act has virtually nothing to do with Who I Really Am?

All of my life I thought these things were an outer representation of my inner being, and therefore required some serious monitoring and management. But I now suspect that I might have misidentified myself somewhere along the way.

For example, I'm often as surprised by what comes out of my mouth as my conversational companion is. And even more frequently than that, I can't repeat or even remember it moments later.

My mind has been proudly taking credit for generating what it thinks are pearls of wisdom for all these years, but maybe it's never been anything more than a conduit! What if the ideas have lives of their own, and they are just using my mind and mouth and hands like puppets? Maybe they were just in the neighborhood and I happened to be available!

I've got plenty of experiential evidence to support this theory. Moods come, and moods go. Ideas come, go, and hopefully return again later if I don't record them right away, but sometimes they just disappear forever. Feelings, emotions, desires ... all are transient. Nothing seems to stick around long enough for me to cobble together into a cohesive identity that could consistently generate these 'pearls of wisdom'.

The only constant seems to be my awareness of motion. Breathing in, breathing out. Muscles contracting and releasing. Thoughts passing through. People passing by. You get the idea, right?

So maybe I am on to something with this conduit thing. And if so, maybe I can just blurt and release without worrying that my tactlessness and insensitivity make me a terrible person. Maybe none of this is personal at all!

I have suspected for years that I have an undiagnosed learning disability. There's no chalkboard in my head. I can't add double digit numbers mentally to save my soul. Can't follow my lesson plan and connect with my students at the same time. Can't remember my grocery list even when it's right there in my hand. My memory is like Teflon. Its non-stick surface doesn't hold on to anything long enough to generate a mess that needs scrubbing.

I've always admired people with good memories, especially my friends and colleagues who can systematically examine and dissect their interactions to learn from them. It's amazing to me to see them review their own words, ponder the reaction they received, and adjust their future dialogue and actions to bring the outcome into closer alignment with their relational goals.

True confession: This seems like a worthwhile pursuit to me. I've tried to do it. I just can't seem to figure out how.

First of all, I rarely remember what I said or did, even just moments later. Second, I rarely notice your reactions, and if I do, I rarely change gears in response to them. I'm riffin' on my self-expression, babe! Don't step on my buzz with your body language or verbal feedback!

And third, I seem mostly unable to identify any goals other than self-expression. Doesn't sound very relational of me, does it? Ah ha! This, dear reader, is why I like to write. It's a one way street - me to you. I can't see how you receive it. Know why I like that? Because none of this is really about you anyway! It's about arranging the words and concepts so they sound just the way I want them to in my head.

Put all of the above together, and I think we might have ourselves a gen-u-ine narcissist! I never really understood what that term meant, but from the way I hear other folks bandy it about, it seems to fit me pretty well.

In days gone by, that might have bummed me out. You know what I say about it now? So what? Maybe I am a narcissist. Maybe I'm not. Regardless, just like I'll continue to breathe in and breathe out without consciously managing the process until one day it stops by itself, I'll probably keep spouting out opinions and then forgetting them.

If you think I 'am' what I say, or attach any meaning or intention to what you hear from me, that's your business. My business is just to let whatever shows up in the moment move on through me.

Maybe my words or attitude in any given moment will shock you, remind you of what you don't want, or prod you awake. Maybe you will get really clear about what you prefer instead. And that's all great stuff that I'm happy to precipitate. (wait a minute ... doesn't that word mean rain and snow and such? what's the word I want here? the one that means 'come before'? just substitute that here if you know what it is ...)

Whatever happens for you, it's quite likely that my contribution to your process will evaporate from my memory as soon as the sound waves dissipate. Which now makes perfectly elegant sense to me. Why use up storage space on something irrelevant? That would be like cluttering up a hallway with piles of old newspapers.

My Teflon memory magically clears the slate for me effortlessly, so new ideas can pass through. Out with the old, in with the new, and none of it means anything about the Real Me.

And to be congruent about it, nothing you say or do is a true reflection of Who You Really Are, either. So all that remains, after we no longer take ourselves and each other personally, and stop reacting to ideas or words as if they mean anything, is a moment to moment opportunity to express love and acceptance. Oh my. I need some more time to process the implications of this ... it sorta turns the whole world upside down, doesn't it?

I was here

on a hike yesterday, we stumbled upon this magical mountain meadow. can you see the deer? she's hidden in the grass next to the tree in the middle.

I feel so incredibly blessed to live here ...

my disclaimer

I read an interview with Bill Maher in the Boulder Weekly newspaper tonight. Truthfully, I have no idea who the guy is, but I'm a readaholic, and the paper was just sitting there, so I read it. It happens with the cereal box, too.

Anyway, I was fascinated by one of his responses:

We need more people who say things that make everybody else go, “Oh, my God, I can’t believe you said that!” Yeah, well, just think about it then. At least the idea is out there. We can reject it. We can say he’s wrong about certain things. But at least he’s saying The Things That You’re Not Supposed To Say. This is such an “Oh, my God, you can’t say that” kind of country, and if someone says one thing that makes you a little bit uncomfortable, they have to go away for all time. Well, that’s not really what this country was founded as. So, yes, I don’t agree with everything he says, but I’m glad there are people like that speaking out.

So here's my disclaimer: I think maybe I have a split personality.

One side of me really does try to be nice. She believes that if I want to be helpful, (which I do,) then I have to be kind. She guides me to present my ideas gently and respectfully -- as hypotheses, so as not to trigger defensiveness or resistance.

She encourages me to hold the space for people to generate their own solutions, rather than telling them what to do. She values tact and patience and restraint. And she tries very hard not to come across as too arrogant or too confident or too convinced of her own rightness.

She has lots of friends who are therapists, and she tries to learn from them. She keeps up on the latest therapeutic modalities -- reads the studies, implements the techniques. You probably don't see much of her here in this blog, although sometimes she will take over editing duties and soften things up a bit. She normally makes her appearance during private consultations.

If I drew a picture of her, she'd be wearing long and spotlessly white lace gloves, a dainty hat with a big brim for maximum shade, and sipping a tall cool glass of lemonade. She sort of looks like the stereotypical Southern Belle.

But then there's my other personality, which seems to usually win out in the end. She's the one who blurts out unsolicited advice, imposes her perspective and interpretation on you, and is pretty darn confident that her insight is accurate.

She's dressed in a power suit, and she's on a mission. No lounging around with lemonade for her - she's got work to do. Deliver the advice and move on. Let people figure out what to do with it on their own time.

What I kind of like about her is that she trusts you a lot. She figures you will take what resonates with you, and leave the rest, so she doesn't baby you at all. She sees you as an equal, and respects your right to disagree. In fact, she kind of hopes you will, because she loves a good juicy contentious conversation.

And she won't tiptoe around you. She doesn't think she needs to, because she sees you as capable of exercising your own discernment. She's like the person Bill Maher was talking about who says The Things That You’re Not Supposed To Say.

Oh, and what's really funny about her is that she coaches probation officers in a technique called Motivational Interviewing, which is all about not imposing your opinions! She gets rave reviews from her coachees. But don't ask her to live what she teaches, okay? She's quite comfortable with her ability to teach directly rather than by example. She carries no judgment that she should be a master herself before she can work with others. (And that's another thing I like about her! She's relatively unencumbered by 'shoulds.')

My personalities are like Forrest Gump's box of chocolates -- you never know what you're gonna get. So if you are feeling fragile, craving kindness, or need to be empowered from the outside, you are sort of gambling with me. If you don't feel like risking it, I can refer you to some consistently empathetic and therapeutically gifted colleagues.

But if you are okay with being told what to do by a self-appointed know-it-all, you have come to the right place! And you can't say I didn't warn you.

the nature of 'reality'

I'm so excited to recently have come across two attempts to describe the nature of reality that really resonate with me. (goes without saying that words won't ever really capture it, right? The Tao that can be spoken is not the Tao...)

The first is an excerpt from Michael Neill's book, Supercoach, which he included in his email newsletter this week. It's his copyrighted material, and you can visit his website here: http://www.geniuscatalyst.com/:

... we each live in our own separate reality. This is not some kind of an esoteric theory, but a physiological fact. Our brains filter information through the five senses then make representations of that information inside our minds. We then experience these representations, first as thoughts and then as emotions. But as we re-present the information in our mind, certain bits of the data are inevitably deleted, distorted and generalized. And since we all delete, distort and generalize that information slightly differently, we all have slightly (or sometimes completely) different perceptions of what is going on around us.

In other words, the way we think determines what we see, hear and feel, regardless of what is actually going on around us in the world. Or, to put it slightly differently, there's what happens and there's what we think about what happens. And what makes this important is that the lion's share of our decisions, feelings and actions in life will be based on our thoughts, not the objective facts.

This is neither a new idea nor one associated with any one particular field of study. In quantum physics, the uncertainty principle says that we can never study anything objectively because 'the observer always influences the observed'. Psychologists talk about 'the Pygmalion effect' and linguists say, 'The map is not the territory.' Shakespeare wrote, 'There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so,' and in the Christian Bible, Jesus says, 'As you think, so shall you become.'

Perhaps my favourite way of thinking about this secret comes from one of my early mentors, author and supercoach Serge Kahili King. He describes the principle of thought like this:

The world is what you think it is.

While at first glance this may seem an innocuous idea, its implications are far-reaching. If the world is what you think it is, then life becomes one giant self-fulfilling prophecy. Your expectations create your experience, and if anything happens that confounds your expectations, you will most likely find a way of explaining it away or fitting it into your existing worldview. And any attempt you might make to 'prove' your theories about the world objectively will never gain universal acceptance, because you're creating that world through your thinking in one way and other people are creating it through their thinking in another way.

The second is a transcription of a speech given by Deepak Chopra.
http://www.ascension-research.org/reality.html :

There was an experiment done at Harvard Medical School about 20 years ago. A group of scientists took some kittens and brought them up in a room that had only horizontal stripes. All the visual stimuli in the room were horizontal. Another group of kittens was brought up in a room that had only vertical stripes. And when these kittens grew up to be wise old cats, it turns out that one group of cats could see only a horizontal world. The other group of cats could see only a vertical world. And this had nothing to do with the belief system of these cats.

It's a phenomenon that psychologists call Premature Cognitive Commitment. Premature, because we make it at a very early stage of our development. Cognitive, because that's how they cognize or see the world. And commitment, because it fixes us to a particular reality, it imprisons us in a fixed mode of perception.
...

All these experiments, and there are many variations of these, are pointing to a very crucial fact as far as the mechanics of perception is concerned. And that is that our initial sensory experiences and how we interpret them or how they are interpreted for us actually structure the very anatomy and physiology of our nervous system in such a way that ultimately the nervous system serves only one function: to keep reinforcing the initial interpretation. Anything that doesn't reinforce the initial interpretation doesn't even get into the nervous system. So if you don't have a concept or a notion or an idea that something exists, then your nervous system won't even take it in.
...

I was surprised to learn that some people interpret these findings to mean that there is an Objective Reality out there which we simply cannot perceive. My surprise is, of course, evidence of my own blind spot. I thought science had proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that nothing exists independent of the observer -- that the reality which each of us individually perceives/creates is all there is.

I thought it was common knowledge that reality is just a soup of pure potential until a perceiver comes along and makes something actual via a completely private act of perception. In essence, sort of like a rainbow, reality is an interaction of perception; a relationship, rather than a separate thing.

So I thought everyone knew this, but maybe the news just hasn't trickled down into the mainstream yet. Most people have other (and better) things to do than study research about the nature of consciousness! (not me, though. LOL.) So for the cliff notes, here's Deepak again:

Sir John Eckles who won the Nobel prize in physiology and medicine several years ago made the statement, "I want you to understand that there are no colors in the real world. That there are no textures in the real world. There are no fragrances in the real world. There is no beauty, there is no ugliness. Nothing of the sort. Out there is a chaos of energy soup and energy fields. Literally. We take that and somewhere inside ourselves we create a world. Somewhere inside ourselves it all happens."

Why does it matter whether there's an objective reality or not? If we agree that we can't perceive it, isn't that good enough? Excellent question! My answer is Maybe. Maybe it is good enough. It might be good enough if we can truly agree to give each other the freedom to see things differently.

Yet how much pain, suffering, and persecution have humans historically inflicted on others who disagree with their notion of objective reality? How much effort have our chosen leaders invested into snuffing out those who see and interpret things differently?

I wonder ... if we all were to acknowledge that there is no Objective Reality, then maybe we'd realize that no one is more right or wrong than anyone else. And perhaps we could get busy figuring out our individual realities instead. We could focus our energy on fine-tuning our own filters to enable us to perceive that which inspires feelings of love and joy, rather than manhandling the filters of others so that they can suffer right alongside of us.

I also wonder ... if you believe something objective exists, and you try hard to see it as clearly as you can because you want to be accurate (or because you see yourself as a realist), then aren't you sort of missing the opportunity to get your hands in the clay and create? Are you so busy digging to uncover 'reality' that you pile the clay into a big lump behind you and leave it alone while you keep digging? Could you be missing the journey while seeking the destination? I think it was Neale Donald Walsch who said, "Life is a creation, not a discovery." I like that a lot. No doubt not everyone finds that as exciting as I do ... I betcha some people just love to dig. That's cool.

It seems to me that the folks I know who have left notions of Objective Reality behind are already busy doing their individual creative projects just for the fun of it. And I suspect at some point, critical mass might be reached, and the collective concern with polarizing into positions such as right and wrong will dissolve into a different orientation instead. It might be one that consults other criteria when making decisions; not "Is this right or wrong?" but, "Does this behavior/attitude/perception feel expansive, joyful, and authentic to me at a core level? "

It's hard to write that without sounding like a 'bleeding heart liberal' as my dad used to say. I'm not sure how to convey my vision of the question or decision bubbling up from within, like a natural spring, rather than guidance being sourced in a replacement dogma that is imposed by some external authority.

It feels like it won't even really be a question - more like an inner leaning that will become harder and harder to violate. Rules won't need to be imposed externally, and no council will be necessary enforce them. Hurting others will hurt ourselves, and we won't want to do it. Making others wrong will make ourselves wrong, and we won't want to go there. That's all. It's kinda simple, really. We will connect in creation, rather than opposition.

It will be interesting to see what happens in my lifetime, that's for sure. It's such a privilege to be alive right now. We are witnessing so much profound transformation!