Beryl 13-02-2002

I think my spiritual journey really began because of the family I was born into. I was really born into quite an insane family. And because my life was so unsafe, as I grew into a young adult I created a kind of searching in me that maybe if I hadn’t had that level of trauma, I would not have done. And my mother as well was – we were born – I’m full-blooded Jewish. But when I was very young, my mother started to look at other faiths. Cause I remember when I was a kid, she was listening, reading Thomas Mertin and she would listen to Bishop Keen, who was a Catholic, get her TV program… So I think something in that must have – cause my mother was somewhat of a seeker, in herself, so I think the fact that she didn’t stay with what she was brought up with created a platform for me to be more experimental maybe than some people.

And so by the time I was – when I was in College, I met a few friends who – we used to have a lot of very deep philosophical discussions. And that was a new thing for me, to be able to talk about deep meanings of things. And then I really had this longing to – I was raised on the East Coast and went to college in New York City, I had this longing to leave New York, then I met my former husband, who actually was named – he was a spiritual guru. He was 26 years older than me, and I met him through a woman that used to hold private Gestalt style groups in New York. So he became my teacher.

And we were together, we formed a spiritual community, and that community was together for 12 years and so by that point, by my early twenties, I was deeply enmeshed with, I was reading Zen Buddhism, and Thomas Merton, I mean that was the major part of my life. But I really think that that quest came from a desire to heal. I think I was so wounded and did not know that, that I was very scarred, and so had this desire somehow to find out how not to hurt, or do the things that could hurt. And so I lived in that community, we were together, I had my three children. You know, many aspects of that were very wonderful and created a kind of a family that I had never had, and we worked through many things together. We dealt with a lot of relationship things, and my ex-husband was also very cosmic, you know, he would talk about very far-reaching ideas.

And he and I came to California. He was English, he was from England, and was on his way to California, where I don’t know that I would have wound up here myself. So we came to San Diego, we bought property, we were here very stable and so the group fell apart. Well I guess it was [inaudible], because in his position, as a teacher, spiritually, he was extremely controlling, and very much of the head figure, very – he really controlled all the money, and I knew too that all the decisions ultimately were his. And as we were all together and people were developing more freedom to express themselves, to do what they felt, and he really didn’t want that. And so ultimately it became oppressive, for people to be – and I know in retrospect I would say that most of those people would have liked to have stayed. But because of the fact that they felt they couldn’t develop more, that it broke apart. So that was the main reason that that situation happened.

I was very depressed after that, cause I had really lost my family, I mean my children were raised by those people, we did everything together. We lived far away from the city, which I loved. My sons, through my ex-husband, began doing martial arts, and through their martial arts teacher I started doing yoga. And I studied yoga with Sunyan Amant. And they were followers of Bhagwan Rajneesh. And Amant’s brother, his name is Pujare, I met him. He was living in Utah. He had started that studio, but now lived in Utah with his wife. And they, that environment was something, it took me into a different place. One I realized that I had a very ancient connection to yoga itself, and that also that those people there, the way their spirit, their spirit orientation was very nurturing to me. And they were very nurturing to me.

They accepted me very very quickly, and then after a few months of studying, Harry – his name was Harry then – he invited me to this 24 hour meditation with his brother. Called it a Tak, and I had never heard of such a thing. He said I think you’re ready for this. And so I agreed just on the fact that he had asked me. And I didn’t know his brother at that time. And that was an amazing experience. I think it was there that I started to feel where I was really disconnected, cause I could see where I was free, and where I had tremendous inhibitions and also Pujare and I did a series of rebirthings together, he’s a rebirther. And we spent a lot of times together, when he would come to San Diego and we’d just talk, and I feel like he was my first real proper teacher, in a sense. He had no hold on me, he didn’t care from one day to the next if he ever saw me again, so what he gave was a way of being with someone and giving this very deep spiritual connection without any possessiveness at all. So he didn’t want me, he didn’t need a following, he didn’t want any of that.

And that was about – my daughter’s 22, she was about 3 or 4 – a lot of years now. And I realized in the last few years that he was a tremendous, what I call “seed planter,” there were many things that he said to me at that time, that I didn’t understand at all. And that I never forgot. Cause in the way that he was communicating, they went in, and so I, even today, I regard him as probably my greatest teacher. And I don’t know why, it’s a very peculiar feeling I have about him, but I think that there’s just something about him, and I haven’t seen him, I haven’t seen him in like 13 years. And I saw him after he came down and I just felt the most amazing connection to him, and it’s just amazing, something like that, someone touches you in such a way, so profound that you know, it’s just an amazing connection I feel with him. He showed me that aspect of spirit, that is so non-possessive, that just gives and doesn’t hold anyone to it. Today, I believe that so strongly.

That it – I think that one of the greatest failing I’ve seen, in so-called teachers, is that control factor. You know, and the fact that they sort of bind you in some way to them, and I myself have no interest in that ever.

And so after I was there, while I was there, I was in tremendous pain, I have to tell you that. And one of the women did yoga, one night we were talking after a class, and I don’t know how we got on to this topic, but she told me about the fact that she was an addict, and that she went to a program for abusing food. Well, I had known secretly that I had had this problem since I was 19. And so that began another portion for me – she told me she’d take me to a meeting, and so at that point I began going to Overeaters Anonymous, and dealing with addiction. And how much that controlled my life. And it had a lot of different aspects. I mean, mostly it was food, but it also could be sex, it could be relationship. There was a way that I had, because of what I had inside me.

So I was in that program for about 5 years. I really devoted myself, I sponsored people, it is a really good program, and it is a spiritual program. And I really, I think I grew a lot. I think I really started to understand the family that I came from, and to see some of the patterns of my life, and to also recognize my power. Because when I would get up at meetings, and I would share, people would come up to me and they would say, “you know you should be a motivational speaker,” or “when you talk, it’s so impacting,” and I had never really known that part of myself, which had been part of my journey as I realized that I’ve been and I’m a very powerful person, who has never really been able to come into that. That real connection to spirit that comes through, and that people would feel it. But I would hold it back.

So, but I left that program and I left it for the same reason that I left my husband, which was that they would say things like, “this is the last house on the block, if you leave here you’re gonna go back to these terrible behaviors,” and something in my head said, “I don’t like that, that’s fear-based.” And I thought, I don’t wanna do anything. I mean I basically understand that, but I thought it felt the same way, it felt like “Oh, my God, if you’re not here, you’re lost.”

And I had met this man there, we became friends, and he met a man who was an – his name at that time was Nicolas, now he calls himself Christ Roses. And I began to work with him. That was… well, I don’t know how to ever give anyone what that experience is, because he is the most expansive… You can just sit for days in this incredible experience of love and beauty and just really going into conditions of mind, space, and feeling so deeply where all tensions and becoming so highly sensitized to everything around you, and it was a very beautiful thing to be there. I feel that it gave me a range of experience that I had never encountered before, or since.

And I was there, I was there for probably about 5-6 years, and we would meet about once a month, or twice a month, and we would spend like two days in the desert, or out in the mountains, and the other thing I loved about it is that a lot of times we met outside, and we held our groups right out in the open in nature, and it was so beautiful to be able to just sit in, you know, in nature and have this experience. Some of these were in a room, but… According to him, as we were doing this work, which was really increasing our energy and our vibrational level, that all our – I think the darker side of us – was evaporating. And I believed that, I trusted that.

But then, I met this man, about eight years ago, and I hadn’t been – I had been in some relationships – when I met Nicolas I stopped doing relationships, I just put them aside. But it was something I always wanted, you know, something that I really enjoyed and really liked. So I met this man, and when I met him, it was all that impulsive, addictive stuff that came to the surface. And I felt, what’s this, I thought all of this was supposed to have gone away, that’s what Nicolas said, you know that we were dealing with all of this and that it was gone, but it wasn’t. So I thought, something’s not right here. Something in this work is not addressing that dark side. And so, because I wanted this relationship, and because I get very insecure when I’m in a relationship, and I felt like, somehow this isn’t working for me. And other people were leaving the group, too, there were other people that were becoming dissatisfied. And he was also, he is very controlling. You know, there was a way that he was saying, “this is the only, this is the best, this is the most rarified,” all of that languaging. Well, here I am again. This selective thing.

So I left, and from that point on, and that was about, probably six years ago, I feel that I’ve come to a place where I no longer would ever have that type of group affiliation. So I feel now that I’ve come to where I really own my own path, and that means that I use many many things, and all things that I have experienced in the past, but I don’t feel I need a teacher, in that sense, or that I want to be ever in a situation were I feel that I’m under someone in that way, or within something that has those kinds of terminology, because I believe truthfully that everything is part of that whole, the way we would heal as a race, as a humanity, is by embracing it, that it’s there essentially in everything. And that when we can really experience that we can really change as a humanity.

So after I left Nicolas, I did a – it wasn’t, I didn’t wanna do very much – I happened to see an article, in The Light Connection, and there was a picture of this man, Barry Kaufman, on the cover, and there was an interview with him. And I was so touched by this interview, I felt so much love, and he was telling a story, that he has an institute, in Massachusetts, he was telling the story of how he adopted his children from countries where they had been terribly, terribly abused, and that he had taken these children as his own – he had 3 children of his own, with his wife – and that he was talking about love being a choice, that we choose to love. And that we can choose to love anyone. And when I read those words, I realized that I had never heard anyone say it that well. So I said “I really wanna meet him.” Well, I did a one-day workshop with him, and I remember when we came in that day, he said, “well I know this may sound strange, but I’m telling you that this work day could change your life.” And it really did for me. Things that I experienced in that day with him, that I experienced a kind of love in him, that awakened something in me. And he made a statement, which I have taken for all these years as my own, and he said: “We can be a powerful force in this world.”

He’s an amazingly loving human being, and he’s happy. Cause it’s the other thing about it, is we can be happy, we came here to be happy. And people don’t talk about that very much. People don’t talk about happiness. All the sudden I was like, wow! Isn’t that what we all wanna be, we wanna be happy. Happiness is really a very spiritual thing. Happiness means that you feel really connected to your life, to what you’re doing, that you have a sense of goodness, if you’re not suffering, not into pain, and really when people feel it, that’s what we want. It corresponds to things for me, about all these years and my choice to suffer, and the pain, all the things that I had been through.

And so from there, God, it’s just where I’ve been these last years, I just use so many things. I mean Margaret’s working with Don Miguel. I did a week-end with Don Miguel. And I did, I haven’t felt to align myself in that way, but I’ve read his books, I just use whatever material comes my way at this point, to really just keep working on myself. Cleaning my own house. And I like what Don Miguel says, cause he talks about the fact that we are really here to find personal freedom, and I think that when we begin to discover what that feels like, to free ourselves very much [inaudible] from all these beliefs, that hold us in that kind of prison, that the world changes completely, and so when you begin to see the possibility, the more people that align themselves, can experience that, that we have the possibility from that place, of really changing the world.

To me that is the possibility. I don’t see that religions or any of that is doing it. I see it happening through each individual, and they begin to clean their own house, they realize that they are choice-makers, and we don’t have to hold on to these limiting beliefs, that we will have a different [inaudible]. Whether that will happen, I don’t know. But to me, it’s the highest possibility. And so I try to stay amid all the junk that’s out there, these boxes. And I still have a lot of junk in me, that that possibility really truly exists. And so for me, it’s a very much personal journey, but that journey is so much larger than just me, because I feel that what I do makes it possible for other to do that. And because I came from such very very difficult beginnings, I mean, more difficult than most people really do endure. That I know that it’s possible. Because I’ve been able to [inaudible]. I mean there were people who knew me years ago who said you know, it’s amazing that you didn’t wind up in a mental institution, for what you came from.

So when I look at what I’ve done in my life, in terms of my being and who I am, I know that other people can do that as well. So there’s like that interesting thing, that what we do for ourselves is really what we do for the greater good of the greatest. And that’s really how I feel. Most of the time, that’s where I try to relate to people, I try to communicate from that place to – and in business, to relate from that place. And people feel, you can tell. They have a sense that you have something. So I would say that’s pretty much my journey. Plus, few other little things, you know.

There’s yoga that I left and came back to. I came back to yoga mainly because my body was falling apart. And cause I’d been working really hard physically. I had a very strong connection to Mr. Iyengar spiritually as well. He was here in the 80s, and he came to a class I was in, and then I happened to go, he was in La Jolla, in front of hundreds and hundreds of people, and I had this really intense spiritual experience, of just seeing him with this enormous golden light going through all these transformations in his person, and I realized this is a being of very high awareness. And I have great respect for what he’s done, in terms of the yoga that he does, and what its possibilities are.

Cause I know that for me, it just takes me to this very deep quiet place inside myself, even though it’s very hard physically, there is a quality about it, and because it expresses the body being properly aligned, it is an alignment, there is a deeper quality to it than just the physical relevance. And I’ve known that now for a long time. For me that works, it’s like the physical balance for me of everything else. That’s a very spiritual practice for me, even though I don’t do it in a way that I would like to, at this point in my life. It gives me enough, that I feel that, so I’m very grateful that I went back.

Mostly, I think it’s bullshit. I don’t care for much of any of it.

Well, it seems to create more of a separation than it does unity. And that, it certainly doesn’t encourage people to question. It encourages them to accept, without questioning. And I don’t agree with that. I don’t think all of it does, but I think a great deal of it does. I think it’s soothing to most people.

I think yoga’s one. Creativity. Talking with people that are in a similar condition to me, being able to use them as mirrors, being quiet, dancing, for me creativity is really – and I found that in the last years – it’s a really strong connection for me. When I was in college, well when I was in High School I wanted to be a professional actress, and I studied acting and, in my early years always my fantasies were around being some kind of an artist, that was delightfully appealing to me, that very bohemian, those were my fantasies, of that life, they still are. So I think I just, I realized in the last few years that I always and even as a child, that was the life that I wanted. Those are the people I like, those eccentricities, I like being around people who are creative, so…

Everything is.

Oh, ya. I don’t know, I think that they’re just well, like how Margaret and I met, or how I met my friend Stephanie, who I’ve known for about 14-16 years now, and we both home schooled our children. And I met her through home school, and realized right away that we were soul mates. We’ve kind of been on this journey and through her I’ve met a few other people, and then one woman – I mean you just meet people – one young woman I met, I had this website and I saw her ad, she was doing website design, and I called her and asked her if she’d do a trade with me and she’s like, we have this incredible spiritual connection. So to me, it’s like, you could be anywhere and you just start talking to somebody and you find out that you have this similarity of you’re aligned in some way or other. I met people in all kinds of different ways.

It’s a pretty happy story. Wasn’t always, but today it is.

I don’t know. One of the people that I like, his name is Greg Raven, he has a few really good books, and I’ve done a couple workshops with him. And he talks about – and I believe this is true – simultaneously, there are many streams, many choices, flowing out like streams. And we can be flowing in this one stream, and if something in our belief changes, we can jump in to this other stream. And so I don’t know. I see that there is, you know when you look at some of the books that are on the best-seller lists, you realize that there are people who are reading things today that they would have never read 20 years ago. And so there is something that is more alive in a lot of people’s consciousness. And that’s hopeful. You know, that we could reach a place that we – that I always talk about as the hundredth monkey theory, and you never know when that’s going to happen. So things could look very grim, but you don’t really know how much momentum is building on a certain level.

The hundredth monkey theory is like, if you get all these monkeys, and the 99th monkey is standing up and you put that one other monkey on it, the whole thing changes, because it can. But you can’t predict. To me it’s sort of like that. I can’t predict that. I can hold a vision how I would like to see things begin to change. And I think some of that is there, I think that we’re trying in some ways on political level and all of that, to do some different kinds of communicating, I think people don’t really want war, so those things are indications that there’s something in people that is saying, I don’t know that I want the old way. That maybe I don’t know what a new way is. So, I don’t know. It’s like the people that I respect, they all say that. It’s like, we could destroy this planet, and make it uninhabitable for us in a very short period of time, or we could make decisions that would be respectful, sustaining and begin to change the way we relate to one another. I can’t say it’s what I really believe, I just predict, I just try and keep a vision. And I try to personally say what I believe is possible. Sort of like Pujare to be a seed planter. There are different seeds, there are different ways of seeing things. It feels pretty grim. But then I try not to hold on, because, you see I realize in terms of cosmic time, this is such a small event, you know we look at it as such a small event. So you know it’s like our own little life, from cosmic time it’s a small event. It’s a big event to us. So I just try more and more to detach myself from this huge significance. I don’t know ultimate reasons. Nobody does.

Yes. I use the tools that I’ve acquired. So if something is creating a dilemma for me, or is being out of order, then I try to look at what are those elements and come back and understand what it’s triggered in me, and how do I find my way back to that place that feels the most expansive, the most creative, and the most loving. And to me, any situation like that, I know I’m not always [inaudible] but I always try to feel it as a gift. To know that something is trying to take me into a deeper place, and I see those things that in the past might have knocked me way down don’t because I realize that it’s just something else that I need to look at.

I don’t like it. It feels very limiting to me. It feels like another clippy kind of thing, it feels like it shuts some people out, and I don’t choose to be there. I really, where I am now, I like to be able to go out there and people can’t tell who I am, they can’t identify me that way. I can talk to anybody, relate to anybody, love anybody.

I don’t think it’s new.

I’m comfortable with none. I’m much more comfortable with just – to me it’s just like, being fully alive. It’s not new. People have been doing it for centuries. People have done it within every major religion. It’s connecting, that’s all.

Gees, I don’t know. For me personally? It’s always been in nature. Nature is always the most spiritual place for me. For me, I haven’t traveled a lot in the last years, so I like the Laguna Mountains, there’s something there. It’s very quiet there, there’s very few people. And the ocean itself, is just really amazing. Just to sit with the ocean. Sometimes it’s just, even for me to be surrounded by the beauty of flowers, I mean if I see a garden that’s incredibly beautiful, full of colors. I often go out to the Lagunas, the desert.

I haven’t traveled. I traveled a lot when I was younger, but I haven’t traveled , so it’s hard for me to say. When we were in – I went to Arizona a few years ago, for a while, and I really felt a lot being where Native Americans have been. So that definitely had a sense to me of connection with both earth and sky. I didn’t spend a lot of time in Sedona, a lot of people go to Sedona, there is too many people in Sedona for me, so I couldn’t, that wouldn’t be fair, cause I don’t think I traveled enough or spent enough time in different places to be able to give a good answer.

I spent a summer in Scotland, and that was a real awakening for me. The Isle of Sky. Incredibly mystical forces… There are places I went when I was in Mexico, that I felt – it’s been a long time since I really traveled, so I’m not maybe the greatest person to answer those questions.

It’s a hard question, you know, because I feel from my own background of being Jewish, that… I guess to me there is changes, I think that the more so-called civilized that we became, that I think that spirituality became more in the mind, and when people lived more simply, that they had such a different connection to nature and the planet that it was, to me, more alive. So I think that as we, so-called progressed, that I think that aliveness has really changed, in my experience, it’s a feeling, experience level, and that we’ve gone so much more into our heads, you know, people write books or they try to analyze, but ultimately it always belongs to experience, so I think we have somehow – I mean when I look historically, you know like, the Jewish God was so – it lived in so many things you know, it wasn’t in your head. It was alive, as a feeling. When you think of the people when they lived in the desert and they lived in those places, it was just this aliveness of the spirit, and things. You know, you have it with native people too. Native people, not just like Native Americans, native cultures, there is something, as you grow into these more collective communities that something changes along there. For me I would see that shift as somewhat confining. And I have been looking at where we are now, there is somehow how do we reinvest the sacred. Which is what I think native people have, that sacredness of all things, into this world that we’ve created. Because it exists, and that’s one of the great challenges. And then the death of ritual, you know when ritual is no longer alive, it’s only performed. And I think even within religions, I think there were times when ritual was really alive. But I think for the most part as we experience it now, in the way we do things, that ritual is not alive, it’s just performed. So now I think that those are essential things historically.

I’m in an emotional place, or feeling… Well, I guess I look at it, like a lot of things I think it is also overworked today. To me it’s, it was a time, I don’t this for sure but it feels the feminine aspect was more dominant on the planet. I think the two have to work together

I turned away from that word, now I’m coming back to it… It’s linked to too many old beliefs. I need to know what it really means to me, I think it’s the most difficult term.

I love the earth. I probably have the most, greatest affinity for the earth. The nurturer, the mother, the giver of life, the wise, the beautiful… I resonate very strongly with earth.

Dualism is intellectual. It should be left to intellectuals. And I think there’s a place beyond dualism. I don’t think we have that, or we are that. I think we’re greater than that.

I would relate more to archetype than to mythology. To me, those are the stories that show us who we are. They are the great unifiers, they express our journey, they’re meaningful stories. They communicate beyond language. There are certain things that you find in every culture, that show that we share the spirit.

I think that, I don’t have a lot of personal ritual, nor do I have a lot of joined ritual. And yet I really believe in ritual. I believe in that sacred aliveness that comes through in ritual. I think it’s a very essential thing. Like for me, I do – I found that taking a bath, it’s a very simple thing, but it’s a ritual for me. The simple act of submerging myself in the water, and letting myself just be there and fully relax, that’s a very powerful ritual. I do it when I know it’s critical for me, that it’s an important action to me. It says something to my subconscious mind when I do that. It’s very important, so… I think that rituals are real connections to the subconscious.

I think love is magical. I think for most people it’s transforming. Magic can happen at every single moment, like when something clicks, it’s magic. Up to this point, it never looked like that before. And now it does. So I think we’re all magicians.

I love them, I think they’re beautiful, I always look for them. I don’t relate to them symbolically. I do always think about the psalm in the Bible about the rainbow, that it was put there as a kind of promise to humanity. It’s amazing to see a prism in the sky.

Well, I’m not a patriot, but I do love this country, it is my home. But I don’t know that I couldn’t love being somewhere else too. So I don’t have any… I think that some very special things come out of this country. It’s been good soil for lots of new ideas. For this short period of time, we seem to be a great leader, or a model. People want to have the life, all over the world, that Americans have. And I think it’s a mixed blessing. Some people have had a wonderful life, and the life we offer them is not so great. That dream of materialism that seems to really be very strong in this country. That other people suddenly become desirous for things. And yet there is a lot of freedom here, there is a lot of opportunity. People do have a lot of liberty to express themselves, if they don’t have… It’s a strange environment. I used to be more down on it than I am.

My friend Stephanie and I, we talk about this. I think what we create is really a mirror of who we are, what our possibility is. So I think technology can be our worst enemy and best ally. Because until we know that we created it, and that we can be what that technology is, within ourselves, it will be our master. And I think right now, we have been mastered by the technology. I think it’s amazing, the things that we can do. I like computers, I appreciate what technology has to offer, I think it created complexity rather than simplicity, but I think it has the potential to create simplicity, but I don’t think we’re using it that way.

You know anything about complexity theory? For me I can’t look at evolution without looking at complexity. Because I think there’s a way that we evolve, there’s a point at which something changes, it is out of the cycle of just evolving, and I think complexity theory deals with that, effective looking at it that way, so that actually the whole idea that the sum is greater than the parts, or different, not greater. I think things evolve, they come together, they join, they do all of this, and something happens that’s magic, so to speak.

I guess darkness is the same as dualism. It’s another side of light, it’s the opposite of light. So, I could say – but I don’t know what I really could say that I truly believe… I could say that I feel darkness, but I don’t look at darkness as a negative thing. And I don’t know that I wanna say, that when I look at the dark side, that I wanna bring it into the light, I don’t know if I even wanna say that. It’s true in some way. But I think that if you go out there at night, it’s so magnificent, this darkness is so beautiful, so mysterious, so deep, that I think it’s misaligned to look at it as negative, there’s nothing more beautiful than sitting outside in a dark night. You can feel that dark enveloping. Something about darkness relates to the unknown, and it’s always frightening. It’s something that I have to work on more, myself. I tend to look at it more as the dark part of myself that you want to bring out in the open, but there is such beauty in darkness. I mean I love the night, when I’m most creative, is in the dark, cause it’s quiet, and the quality to it is so beautiful.

Well there’s two kinds: night and day dreams. I’ve always been into real incredible night dreams I have. I have had people doing horoscopes and things, tell me I’m prophetic through dreams. That I have a lot of… My dreams are fascinating. My younger years in my dream state, I worked out a lot of my, I had what you call a lot of dark dreams, scary dreams. But today I’m learning to dream consciously. I think, dreams to me now are really uncovering what brings the greatest joy and happiness, and letting myself dream. So now I’m beginning to learn I could dream into reality, what it is that I have lacked. So there is two kinds of dreams. Don Miguel said that we could be active in our sleeping dreams, so that we actually bring them together. I don’t know that I’ve done that, but…

I think that’s individuation of the whole, that’s how I see self.

I think we are community, I mean our bodies are in community. The nature of life is community. I think part of the difficulty with the world is that lack of real community, this sense of belonging, you know this thing that come out of a systems that really works. I think it’s biologically what life is, community.

Life is mysterious, I don’t know what I could even define what life is.

Implications… It is my daily life. I can’t separate that.

I guess I would say, to me… I don’t even use the word spiritual much. I think what comes to me when I use the word spiritual, it’s that quality of what I would call being truly alive. So it’s imprecise boundaries. You know, there’s no way to confine it. It’s such difficult things to talk about in certain ways. For me being alive is just, it’s a connection, just that thing of connecting to everything. And so when I say that’s how I live, I don’t always have that connection. But that’s the few and only I take that away from me, because it exists. It is the essence. It’s like being in nature and we watch the interplay of that connection. It just exists. It doesn’t have to be defined, it’s there. And we can become cut off from it through our intellectual feelings, the emotions. But it’s there. We can tap to it, it can be there all the time. And it’s really, I mean when you feel it, and you know it, but you can’t talk that to anyone. And that’s the magic. You can see it, you know it’s that connection. It’s one of the reasons I like dancing. When people dance a lot of times, not just social dance, but like African drumming, you can see it, it’s like, there’s the connection, and then you start to like, let everything just drop off, and that part of it is beautiful, those moments when you let that essential self be seen. If I could sustain that, and I hope to, what a place it would be! And I’m sure there’s so much more than that, that we haven’t even touched because… the magic of what is beyond that…