An Unconditional Warmth…

You have made an identity from the things you forget about yourself. And you defend yourself from anything which might remind you.

I did the same, for a time, so I understand, truly. But I know even to suggest that all isn't well and amazing is a thorn in the side at best and acid in the face at worst.

Perhaps you’ll decide you resonate with this, but of course this will be a decision, a thought, well placed in support of your excellent self. And the truth of what I’m saying will feel abrasive.

You might not know why to read this feels threatening. In fact this letter isn’t addressed to anyone in particular, so you’ll either pick this up or put it down, whoever you are, in your own manner.

Some will know this isn’t for them, and to those people—welcome—to the place on the path where you know you’re walking it.

For in truth we are all walking the path. Some veer off it, but we’re all corralled in the same direction, just with various aspects to the journey.

That is not to say that we’re all on the ‘beauty way path’, as some Native Americans call it in Diné teachings. Some of us are quite off and determined to be there.

This is the imaginary self, the object self—the curated image, the polished persona—who we vehemently fortify as the best version of ourselves, all the while unaware that there is only One.

There is no better and no worse. No hierarchy. Though we’d be forgiven for believing in such a thing because our grouping does operate in such a way still.

But this is a throwback. It is our animalistic side, that part of us we’re evolving from, which still tells us things are scarce and to have more is to be better. Safe.

Coupled with the unconscionable way in which our greatest companies and institutions bend themselves to their quarterly targets, growing but not improving, like a tumour, or a city expanding without soul—Omelas—tempting the human spirit in any which direction necessary to achieve… what?

I know where I am, which is little solace in the scheme of things. But perhaps it is. And perhaps it could be for more of us—empowering—in a sense which doesn't require more, and doesn't mean better, but instead True.

And I mean true in the old sense of straight, just, level, oriented. Jesus was a carpenter, He knew what True meant. Or perhaps he felt it.

Not in the way one might feel that the way the world works just isn’t Right. But feel in the sense that orients him to Being a certain Way. A Way which doesn’t deviate from the beauty way path. Perfectly poised along the Way.

Like an exquisite dancer, whom we might look upon as the quintessential expert on movement and beauty, every breath he’d take, step he walked, gesture he made, would have radiated with a certain warmth.

An unconditional warmth.