I am not one human being, but all of us. I am a mixed blood, two spirited, living, breathing, wriggling mass of guts and blood, and I am here to tell you about a new way of being (which some people have called spirituality).
Let me start not with what I believe, but with what I know.
I know that I am alive.
I know that I am conscious.
I know not what life is - it is a mystery I can only live, not explain.
I know not what consciousness is - it is a state that I can only be, not defend.
And here, in the only things that I know - I am alive, and I am conscious - are also held the biggest mystery of being: what is life? What is consciousness?
These two things - the known and unknowable - are forever in perfect balance, reminding me that certainty is always built on uncertainty, that for every in-breath taken for the sake of life, there must be an out-breath for the end of life. There is no answer that can remain forever true, it is always a swinging of the pendulum from one side to the next - it is what drives the clock forward.
So these are the things I know. Everything else is something I believe. Beliefs are, at their core, choices. I can choose I how see the world, and I have experienced, tangibly, how I choose to perceive life changes the way that I experience it.
I choose to believe that there is one unifying meaning to life: love. I choose to believe that there is a Source of all that is, and that Source is made of pure love. It cannot be any other way, if it were there would be no point in living. Why is there such beauty, if not because of the fact that the fabric of the universe is woven from a place of compassionate, unconditional love and generous sharing?
I do not believe in absolute truth, or absolute right and wrong. Truth is relative, right and wrong are relative. I believe in balance: there can be no light without darkness, no healing without pain, no life without death and no growth without decay. It is the cycle, the balance, the motion that keeps harmonising, that creates the possibility for life, for the experience of life. There is no point in wishing parts of your existence away because you dislike the experience of it. It is part of the dance, and as necessary as the parts you like more. When you sit with it long enough, you will realise it is as beautiful, if not more so, as it adds so much depth to you being - you are not one dimensional. You are multidimensional. You know laughter, and pain, and joy, and heartache, and jealousy, and lust, and passion, and silliness, and peace, and anger, and compassion, and love. You are a complete, complex, beautiful human being, perfect in every nuance, because you are also made with the same perfect love as the rest of the universe.
You are the universe.
And so is everything and everyone else.
You owe yourself and everything around you the same compassion, love and understanding that you owe yourself.
We are done with hate. We are done with fear. Fear of the other. Fear of not being enough. Fear of not having enough. We are enough. There is only abundance, no lack, all we have to do is reach out and accept it. Not claim it - it is a gift. We need to accept it with enormous gratitude and share it with everyone around us - that is how you multiply the blessings. It is in creating an open channel for giving and receiving that the blessings can start to freely flow - like music through the instrument in the hands of a master. Fear stops that flow - fear of not having enough, of not being enough. That fear is not a reality, because in reality in simply being you are already enough.
You cannot judge another, because you do not know the experience of walking, completely, in another person's shoes. Every being is unique, because every being is a different, beautiful facet of creation, a unique reflection of the Source of all things, which cannot be known in its entirety, unless you can know All Things. The best way to know the Source of all things is to know yourself, for you are an incarnation of the Creator.
You are alive, and conscious. Use it to know what it is really like to be alive and conscious. Be present in every moment, and get to know the being that is closest to the Unknown: you.