Who are you?

So inspired by what a friend asked today on her Facebook page. "WHO ARE YOU? Who are you behind your fb page, your business title, or any other mask you have out there. Deep down, behind closed doors, who are you?" I  wanted to pose the question, too.  When you answer, let it pour out of you quickly. Don't think too much, just let the answer come. Stream of consciousness.  Here's mine: 

I am the most sensitive person I know. I feel everything deeply. Too deeply, I think, at times. I recently learned I get caught up in past wounds more than I was conscious of. I think being a human is unnatural and I don't like it all that much at times. Yet I often exist in a state of opposites. I have felt more in the moment the last couple of years more than I ever have, and I am currently so in love with my life that I get terribly sad thinking I don't get to keep it. I have to die someday. I don't want to. I want to freeze time. I don't want my husband and I to age, or die. I find this heartbreaking. 

I came to this life an old soul, but the memories of whatever I was are getting farther away. As if I am growing younger. I believe in reincarnation only because of how strongly I feel that I've always been here and will be again. I can almost remember the in-between of each round.  I identify with warrior and wise sage archetypes. Joan of Arc. Sylvia Plath. Carl Sagan. I also find it small and strange that we all fit into the same archetypes again and again. I always want there to be more. There probably is, but I don't know enough to see it.  

I believe humankind sets incredibly silly rules about things like money and politics and priorities. I don't like the boundaries and labels we draw with the earth and with each other. I've never belonged to an organized religion, but understand people need to believe what they believe to get through life with comfort and hope. We are all entitled to that, and should never be told or tell another they are wrong for their path. I believe we all end up in the same place, so whatever road you take to get there is fine. 

I think it is impossible and nonsensical to judge another, therefore when you do it's all about you and your beliefs, perceptions. I can't wrap my head around people shunning other people because of who they love, what they wear, or skin color. I suppose it's because I know I'm not my body. I identify with my inside, my soul. I feel my soul is not so limited as the vessel that houses it this round. I don't know if it's male or female or human, or what it is.  But I know it's me.  I also think my shell and my jobs here betray who I am.  Funny, isn't it? I do believe it's meant to be this way, for the greater good of our evolution. 

I crave salt to the point where I swear it could be a medical issue.  Always have. I prefer to sit on the floor rather than on a piece of furniture and have to reassure new people again and again that yes, I really am fine to do so. I have gone longer without red meat and pork in my diet than I ever did with it, even though there was a time when steak, mashed potatoes, and corn was my favorite meal.

When people have conversations about decorating their homes and shopping for material possessions I want to cry with boredom. I'd rather you talk about what makes you sad, and alive, and scared, and where you think our soul is, and what you think it is, and what you know to be true without ever having experienced it. 

I often feel I don't belong here in this place and time because I know better, I see past the illusion. I often imagine there is a force, a presence, or creator sitting back watching all of us here on planet Earth get it so wrong.  I'm sure they shake their head at us.  But I feel it is also loving and patient, and knows all.  I truly believe one day mankind will be enlightened, yet I'm surprised at our slow progress.  But we are young. 

I feel at times a more masculine energy in myself than female. I think nurture and nature have a huge hand in shaping us. I am an aries and only child through and through. For a highly sensitive person who has been on the path to expand and enlighten herself for four years now, at times I am scared how stubborn and borderline narcissistic I am. I try to forgive myself and chalk it up to the fact that I do have to live this life.  I have to be temporarily human.

I tattoo bits and pieces on my shell that mean something and mark phases, memories, and decades. It's a collection of the people I once was. When I die, I like that someone who doesn't know me could look at my body and in seeing those tattoos, understand a bit of who I was. That makes me smile just thinking about it. 

I believe this round my lessons are to learn how to truly forgive other people, to accept, allow, embrace, be present, and have patience.  

I believe my dog and I have been together before. I know it when I look into his eyes.  I believe dreams are sometimes memories.  I have had the same recurring dream about him and it has nothing to do with anything we've ever experienced.  He is always about to drown in various bodies of water, he is sinking.  At the last minute I save him.  I believe it's because we've lived it.  Maybe he's been my son.  

The first time you experience a death of someone close to you is probably the most profound experience possible.  When I did three years ago, I believe now I suffered from the beginnings of cotard delusion . I could feel my soul trying to escape, I felt I could barley contain it.  I kept trying to transition. I felt I was flickering and wasn't here in this world. I kept worrying I'd died.  

I've known what it is like to want to die, and what it's like to want to live.  I have had a thing for awhile with wanting to be in the air, off the earth. But as I seek and find my truth in this life, I am far more okay with being rooted to earth. Love is my number one, above all else. It is our essence, after all. I probably love too much, nearing the point of worship. I am so full of it, it hurts sometimes.  

Social media is a blessing and a curse.  I secretly long to live off the grid. I've got a hippie soul. Being in nature away from technology feels most natural.  I believe we are all one. I am another you, you are another me. If we all understood this there would be no enemies, no war. 

I believe happiness is not a place you get to and sustain, but society wants us to think so. All emotions are fleeting. It's okay to exist as something other than happy, and more often than not.  Sometimes I think I feel most in my natural state when I've got a bit of melancholia or nostalgia.  

I wish I was a cosmologist. Science is spiritual. If I could dub my "religion" with the title "Scientific Spirituality", I would. When I remember how we are so much tinier than we can ever comprehend, I want to cry over the fact I'll never be out exploring the universe in this lifetime.  

I feel most like "me" when I forget "me", and experience something that reminds me I am part of something bigger. I believe the universe is kind, and will give you what you need at every single moment.  It might not be what you think you want, and you probably won't fit the puzzle pieces together until far down the road.  Every time you trust your instincts and jump, the universe provides.  Everything is a lesson. And all, all, all, is temporary.  

I don't know if I've ever truly met another of my kind, but take comfort knowing they are out there somewhere, feeling the same way I do.

So, who are you?

Thanks for reading,

Deena Marie 

Jacque Fresco

"I make more mistakes than anybody I know, 'cause I try more things.  There's nothing wrong with building something and finding out that it doesn't work.  This is where you get your experience.  There's nothing wrong with criticism...

...all of us stand on the shoulders of one another.  And we shape the future."

Jacque Fresco
creator of The Venus Project

I discovered him today and have been watching clips of his talks and interviews on YouTube.  I strongly suggest you do the same.

Listen with an open mind to his thoughts on government, money, religion, god, science, democracy, socialism, communism, depression, language, why a utopian society is impossible, invention, groups of people around the world, land, our history, and our future.

I know this post is a little general, but there really is just too much I'd like to say.  Much more than I can write.  It's just so comforting to find what aligns with your soul, isn't it? While watching I've teared up, clapped, and cheered.

Here's a good place to start: US Has Never Been a Democracy 

Made of Stars

When I'm asked about my religious beliefs, it's hard for me to answer.  Simply because I don't know that there's an existing label that fits, nor do I find the vague answer of "I'm spiritual", satisfying or informative.  I can claim New Age more than anything, as I don't dig dogma.  I can tell you I lean toward Eastern Philosophy.  That I find a lot about Hinduism and Buddhism both beautiful and sensical. That maybe a part of me deep down feels like we can't be anything other than agnostic.  That I believe all religions are true, because they are all someone's truth, meaning it's their reality and their right to believe what they need to believe to guide and comfort them through their human experience.  That "if there is only one nation in the sky, shouldn't all passports be valid for it?" That "we are all just walking each other home".

But maybe the pairing of words that ring truest for me are a combination I came up with myself back when I was writing my speech for the funeral for my uncle Chuck, last May.  I called myself a Spiritual Scientist.  I feel the most comfort and the deepest sense of truth in my Scientific Spirituality leanings and learnings.

Funny enough, my deepest sense of home, truth, soul, magic, absolute wonder, view of humanity, and comfort have come from science.

Some people come to Earth with minds so ahead of their time.  We are so lucky that sometimes they not only choose to share their thoughts and knowledge, but find themselves with a vocation or status to do so.  Like Carl Sagan.  Nothing has opened me up quite like his influence of understanding the universe, or of finding and trying to endlessly understand our origins.

So much so, I recently tattooed "star stuff" on my arm to serve as a reminder that we are so much more than these physical bodies and will be so much more again when they expire.  Literally.  As much as I'd love to think our consciousness goes on, and I'll wake up time and time again as something else (and even feel as if that's what I've always done) right now the literal is comfort enough.  The thought of recycling.  Reincarnation in the most literal sense.

It's enough that I can look into the sky and know I'm looking into my origins.
Ancestors.
My future.

Nothing else has ever brought me a deeper feeling of complete and total spirituality.

We are Literally Made from Stars

by Gerald Grow

---

I was moved by an editorial about how the Hubble telescope is showing us the immensity of the universe. With our sun one among 50 billion stars in our galaxy, among more than 50 billion galaxies, it is easy to think of ourselves as lost on a speck in space. 

Indeed, one common outcome of modern education is the widespread feeling that we humans are forever separated from the rest of the universe by unimaginable distances, and that the forces operating in the universe are utterly alien to us. 

Spiritual traditions give us ways of feeling connected with the universe. I want to remind you of another, scientific, way of feeling connected to the stars. 

The same science that reveals to us the vastness of the universe also tells us another story: Astronomers explain that all the elements heavier than hydrogen originated inside stars. The carbon in the ink on a page, and the silicon in glass and microchips, were created in the heart of a star, long ago, as that star shined by fusing hydrogen. The iron that carries the oxygen in your blood as you read this, was created when a star, in its dying phase, exploded. 

You and I are not merely separated from the galaxies by unimaginable immensities of space; we are also connected to them by unimaginable immensities of time. We are literally made from stars. We are their descendants. The only difference between us and stars is time. 

I don't know how this way of looking at things strikes you, but it raises in me an absurdly wonderful sense of celebration, and I look at the night sky not with a sense of hopeless separateness, but with a feeling of kinship: There shine the origins of every element in our bodies. Because stars exist, I exist. The processes that created those billions of unimaginably distant galaxies also created us. 

We human beings are not separate from the universe. Those galaxies are not merely distant--they are distant cousins. 

With this in mind, I urge you not to miss the nightly wintertime rising of Orion in the Southeastern sky, followed by the star, Sirius, flashing red, blue, and golden light. Or the summer rising of Scorpio across the Southern sky, with red Antares burning at its heart. 

That is a kinship worth celebrating. 

Her name was Athena

There once was a little girl named Athena.
Formed in a star, created in eternity.
She came to live on Earth sometimes, and always found it difficult.
For you see, she simply didn't fit.
She carried too much recycled warrior stardust to pack neatly into human form.
The parts inside were just too big.
Ancestor tapestry of Sylvia Plath, Carl Sagan, Joan of Arc 
seemed at times the perfect, albeit unfortunate, melancholia.
Although lightly pinned together, she is trapped.
A temporary purgatory of constant fighting, forging, blazing,
It is relentless.  She must push through.
Until she returns once more, parts scattering,
releasing, before she becomes something else.
She longs for the day when she'll feel it again,
The freedom of the in between...home.
Where she belongs.
In the sky.
The galaxy's aching poet child can do nothing,
or she can do everything...while she waits.


- Deena Marie  3.11.2013

The Meteor

Right now a meteor is passing above us.
Above you, above me.
Above the blue planet everyone you have ever known or heard of dwells.

Can you feel it? 
Can you feel the stir of the cosmos?

I long to see past the sky beyond the blue and into the infinite
I try to imagine the rush, the sound, the look, the spinning, even the smell

Ancestor in motion,
I wish I could meet you.

At the beginning, there was...

Have you ever felt like your life was just about to begin?

I am standing at the precipice of a great beyond.  I am not scared.  I have been led by everything I've ever done, every experience I've ever had, and everyone I've ever known to get to this very spot.

I had no idea how many times we can be reborn in the course of one physical life.  Sometimes it is involuntary.  Sometimes it is a conscious decision.  Sometimes one leads to the other.

I am buzzing from head to toe.  I am a flutter.  Something is happening in me and around me and I knew this was the year for it to be so.

I want to shout from the rooftops all of my plans and all of the new directions I'm about to take.

I craved these changes for the last few years but didn't recognize what it was I needed, and often found the wrong thing.

Everything in its time.  When things align, when we learn the right lessons, when we begin to awake...only then we know what is calling us and what direction to take.

I will be a new person.

The old skin is shed.

I don't think I've been this excited for what is next.  I can't believe what lifting your limits, tuning in, and truly following your heart can do.

When things don't feel right, they simply aren't big enough for you.  Keep seeking.  Let the universe be your guide.  You wont go wrong.

I could never have guessed I'd be who I am and wanting what I want right now.  But I couldn't feel a stronger sense of right.

There is so much more to life that I'm supposed to explore.  When the world opens for you, you want to laugh and cry and tell everyone you know just how limitless we are.

I don't know if this is coming off vague, maybe.

Obviously I've been talking about really big life changes a lot.  I can't wait to dive in.  I can't wait for all of them to be official.

I get a lump in my throat thinking of all the new possibilities...

Near-death experiences occur when the soul leaves the nervous system and enters the universe, claim two quantum physics experts

What used to be "enough" for me before, simply isn't anymore.  :)

More later.

Everything in its time.