No man is an Island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the Continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friends or of thine own were; any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee. Jonn Donne

I have been feeling so many mixed feelings these days because of many things going on in life and in the world. It is not easy to stay happy and positive when you can feel the pain and heaviness in the world of so many sad, hurting people. So much fear, darkness, hate, war, violence, killing, separation. All of this deeply affects me. I truly have a compassionate heart and feel deeply for people, for animals and for our planet. I love people. I love to connect with people and I love to get to know new people, but sometimes it can feel so hard to actually make that connection. We are separated because we are all uniquely created individuals. We are separated because we all have an ego as well and we allow our differences, our beliefs, values, or lifestyle choices too often to give us an air of superiority over our fellows.

This is something I constantly struggle with, facing the ego’s sense of pride and superiority. It feels like every time I (we) make strides toward bettering ourselves and growing and evolving spiritually, I (we) face greater darkness. I like a quote that I found the other day, “Don’t be afraid of your shadow, it’s really just a constant reminder that there is light all around you.” When you are learning lessons and keeping your eyes open, evolving spiritually as a human being through life’s constant lessons, there is always just another level to face, another challenge, and a new dark area that we need to allow the light to shine upon.

What I am learning more than ever these days is that we need each other. We cannot do this alone and more than anything, we need love. We need to stop talking about it, pinning quotes about it, preaching about it and listening to and singing songs about it and we need to actually be love in this world. We need to do our inner work and clear away all the dark shit that is keeping us entrapped in our ego’s and our fears and really be love. We need to stop playing the same sob stories over and over in our heads about why we remain at a certain level in our spiritual evolution or consciousness, be honest with ourselves and allow the light to shine on that darkness so we can heal and help others to heal as well.

I believe that we are all connected. When you feel pain and sadness, I feel pain and sadness. When you continue to live in fear, I continue to live in fear. When you stay small, I stay small. If we look around at the world that we live in, it can be a pretty sad and depressing place. If we get caught up in the negative and darkness that seems so prevalent, we can so easily lose ourselves and allow our light to get snuffed out. If we get caught up in our mind and allow our past experiences or the future to cause us grief, sorrow, self-pity, doubt, depression, confusion and anxiety, we stay entrapped and are not able to fulfil our mission here on earth, which I wholeheartedly believe is to love others and to imprint love on our planet.

The time is now. We need to stop making excuses. We need to stop blaming others or our past for why we are the way we are and why we feel the way we feel. We need to free our minds of separation (especially religious separation) and superiority because of our beliefs or our differences and finally co-exist as human beings. To see each other eye to eye, soul to soul, spirit to spirit, human being to human being. You are not a label. You are not a vegetarian or vegan and others are meat eaters or omnivores. You are not a Christian and the rest of the world needs your saving. You are not a Buddhist and everyone needs to learn to meditate like you. You do not need to convince others to see the light as you see it. You are a human being and so are the rest of us. We need each other. We need to see past the labels we put on ourselves and tear down the walls we put up in our minds that create barriers of separation. We may all see God and spirituality differently or word our spirituality differently, but deep down it simply does not matter. We may live our lives differently and with different values than others, but if we could all see that deep down we are doing the best with what we know and take a minute to imagine ourselves in the shoes of another, we would have a lot more compassion. We may have different interests and our happiness may come from different places, but who cares? We need to stop trying to be someone else or running from what we know in our hearts that we should do and really let our own light shine. We need to accept each other and stop judging others according to our ego’s standards (and really admit that all judgement does only stem from ego and not spirit)  and encourage others to let their light shine, even if it shines differently than ours.

We are here to love. We are here to love ourselves and allow ourselves to be happy, without feeling guilty about it or bad because what we love and how we live is not the same as others, “normal” or perhaps how our parents would have wanted us to be like. We have to drop the standards that were placed upon us by society or our parents and live up to our own potential. We are here to learn lessons and to see past our judgements of others. Everyone can teach us something about ourselves and the ones that we really have trouble accepting are really only mirroring back to us a place in ourselves that needs a little light to shine upon it (take a second look, if you just really can’t see it and you will be amazed, even humbled). You are not better than me. I am not better than you. We are both just human beings, living our different lives as we were destined to. I have my beliefs, you have yours. I have my likes and dislikes, you have yours. I shine my light my way, you shine yours your way.

Let’s co-exist as human beings. Let’s break past all that separates us and confines us to an island unto ourselves. Let us love ourselves and allow ourselves healing so that we can love others and help them to heal as well. Let us fulfill our mission in love and freedom as uniquely created human beings on this planet while we are here and actually do what we came here to do.

Much Love,