Sometimes I get flashbacks of random moments from the past. Like 11 years ago when I was still in the music industry, walking past coffee shops on Main Street in Santa Monica, feeling so small and displaced. ⁣
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The flashbacks always feature a random moment, but they’re mostly of the feeling. The feeling is always the same. It’s smallness and displacement. It’s letting the need for acceptance control who I was. ⁣
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I’ll be meditating, and a flashback will come. It used to feel like a haunt. But now, I get curious about these things; focus on closeness, pray for integration. Sniff my way through the dark to whatever makes me shudder. ⁣
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The flashbacks don’t make me shudder anymore. It’s still a peculiar thing–to see a scene from the past like that, and such a forgettable moment. ⁣
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But oh, the cultural despair. The soul-displacement. The smallness. The pain of the cultural conditioning–and man, the Western conditioning is just a total soul bully. The pain of going through the motions–of succumbing to the blatant cultural lie that “this is how life is.” I found out that it’s not. ⁣
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Life does NOT demand that we negotiate with our souls. That we live with some unquenchable thirst for living in alignment with our souls. F*ck no. Billions of people drink that drink–I know because I was served it daily for decades–and no one has to. We do not have to dumb down and numb out to survive. ⁣
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We all have the ability to face ourselves; to let the layers shed; to dare to find out that we’re not who we thought we were. We all have the ability to self-inquire and discover the ways we have been impacted by our culture, our families, our peers. To decide NO MORE, and instead–to take risks. To let the whole house burn down. To dive into the unknown. And to see what happens. This was the beginning of my life. What about yours…?