​When you hug someone, a whole chain reaction of endorphins and love and yummy feel-good feelings get released, for both the hugger and the huggie.

​When you hold someone’s hand, this same happens. When you put your arm around someone, in a romantic or friendly way, or even in professional side-hug way, the same thing happens.

We receive a blast of connectivity, the walls of perceived separation break down, we allow our auras to merge, and for just one tiny moment, we connect as One.

Some people are very good at this: open and affection. This warmth is easy for them. Others are reserved, painfully shy, have trouble being touched. this warmth is especially important for them.

Notice today, how many people you touch in a warm, friendly way: a hug, a hand shake, a pat on the back. Notice how many times you are touched.

Becoming more open as a soul, means that you will become more spontaneousy affectionate.

This idea of nations, factions, areas, regions, races: it will all dissolve, over time, and and we will understand ourselves as humanity.

Right now, we’re like a body that has gotten confused: each part of the world, a different body part: the right arm is Africa, the left foot is China, the stomach is America, and so forth.

And we think… oh, if I just make my left foot, or my right arm or my stomach to be absolutely pefect, thenthe body will be fine. If I just make my left foot really, really strong and fit, then all will be well. But of course, this is not true.

We’re One body. All the parts must be working, fit, strong, healthy together.

If one part is strong and the others sick or weak, this is not a healthy body.

When we finaly see the world as One, we will understand this. We will, then, begin to raise our entire Self up. 

People are starving and suffering, being shot at and raped right now. No matter when you read this, it’s happening, right now. Why is it so, that some have such luxury and providence, and others survive in the most meager, violent way?

It is because we are not all conscious.

It is not the idea that those who have abundance are conscious, that they have manifested this for themvselve, and those who are poor don’t know how. This isn’t true.

It is true that struggling is a choice, and that a lot of times we choose to live a life of pain and struggle. However, what it's even more true, is that we are One.

What affects the least of us, affects the All of us.

Until we become conscious, and this includes the haves and the haves not, there will not be equality or freedom for anyone. To have abundance while someone else starves; this isn’t freedom. To have peace while someone else is in agony; this isn’t freedom.

We must each raise our little light, so that we are all Light together.

This is how we become conscious, and change the world. 

You’ve probably heard how a using a crystal can help clear you? How the nature of the crystalline energy serves as a way of balancing, healing or clarifying you?

The same thing happens with nature, but on a bigger, more diverse scale.

When you first enter into a patch of nature, whether this is the more subtle nature of a park setting, or into wild nature that is rarely inhabited by humans, you can feel it.

In some big nature, the feeling is such high holy it almost feels frightening; there is the sense that you are not in charge here, because you are not.

In nature that is more used to humans, such as field, meadow, forest, there is the sense of great liveliness and aliveness, of all sentient beings, of course plants and rock and lichen and moss included, celebrating life with you.

You enter into these spaces, the high holy, the lively holy, and every cell of your body, both physical and etheric, responds in awe.

Nature clears us, because it takes away all illusion that our egoic lives matter: striving, doing, succeeding, needing.

All of that becomes nothing, when we are in nature, and when we understand nature is what we really are. 

In my own life, I’ve inhabited a lot of skins: daughter, student, lover, wife, mother, worker, teacher.

At the time, each seemed so important:  I “had parents” or “had a career” or “had a partner” or “had my life’s work” and so on.

Of course, we can’t have anything.
Nothing can be possessed, we can’t take anything with us.
We can’t even "have" it now.
We can just be in the experience.

When you consider your identity, or the skin you are wearing right now, consider it like a scarf you might put on for the season. Wear it for a year or so, wear it every day, all the time, with delight!

And when the time comes, take the scarf off, and put a new one on, that better reflects who you are, how you want to live, and what you have come to understand.

Try on many scarves. Until one day, you’ll find you don’t need to wear a scarf at all. You can show up as your true self, without need for identity, transparent and open to everything, leading from soul. 

If you have children, enjoy them. If you don’t have children, enjoy this too. If you’re letting go of children as they leave the nest, enjoy this also.

We are here to live in many ways, and to experience many identities.

You might be daughter, lover, mother, grandmother. Yet each of these stages isn’t meant to last forever; there’s a time to be in each stage. And even when you are deep within each identity, you must remember that all identities are simply illusion, projection, mask: they’re not your true self.

Don’t mourn the passing of an identity: if you’ve been a mother and now your children are leaving home, don’t hold yourself or them back with tears and guilt. If you’ve been a lover or spouse and now a relationship is over, don’t hold yourself or the other back with fear and shame.

Everything comes to its natural conclusion. Some identities hold for a lifetime. But most do not. Most identities are stages and passages that we move through. It’s natural to have change, letting go of what’s done, and transitioning into what’s next.

When you reach the end of your life, whenever that is, you’ll look back and not be concerned with all those identities you grasped so fully. You’ll remember the small thing, the small experience: holding hands with someone you love. The beauty of flowers. The way the air felt on your skin.

That’s the real stuff: your experience of Nowness, no identity needed.