I had my first experience with what I now know is called “awareness” around the age of 4; my first sense of my own personhood; that there was a me and a you and a them.
White Americans are more obsessed with defining their unique identities, separating themselves from everyone else than most populations I know. Maybe one thing we can learn from indigenous people, in the US and the Global South, is that we are the sume of our experiences, relationships and communities. We are a part of the whole, and as such, constantly changing and evolving. The idea that who we are can be predefined and static is very constraining. Useful to appease the ego, that always crave for stability and certainty, but useless for the human need to constantly evolve.
I love this discovery for you and the inherent invitation you offer to your readers in this passage. I've been immersed in gnostic mysticism myself this year. Falling in love with myself as the only true path to Divine. Living in the tension of a dualistic world as I encounter unity and one-ness with all things. Deconditioning (or as Virginia calls it, decolonization of the mind) is a wild ride. I'm grateful to both of you for sharing your truth publicly as guides and muses.
Justin, I AM, as Whitman said, is really the key. I can tell you as an old dude that who you are keeps changing along the road, but you’ve already figured that out. So man, life keeps getting more interesting and exciting. And I believe there is a core, or maybe more accurately, core values that don’t change. Mine are honesty, integrity and kindness. Ya, they don’t always get followed perfectly because we are human, works in progress. I really do enjoy your stories of becoming. It does take work and introspection to become a whole human being, but well worth it in my book! 👍🏻💜
White Americans are more obsessed with defining their unique identities, separating themselves from everyone else than most populations I know. Maybe one thing we can learn from indigenous people, in the US and the Global South, is that we are the sume of our experiences, relationships and communities. We are a part of the whole, and as such, constantly changing and evolving. The idea that who we are can be predefined and static is very constraining. Useful to appease the ego, that always crave for stability and certainty, but useless for the human need to constantly evolve.
I love this discovery for you and the inherent invitation you offer to your readers in this passage. I've been immersed in gnostic mysticism myself this year. Falling in love with myself as the only true path to Divine. Living in the tension of a dualistic world as I encounter unity and one-ness with all things. Deconditioning (or as Virginia calls it, decolonization of the mind) is a wild ride. I'm grateful to both of you for sharing your truth publicly as guides and muses.
Justin, I AM, as Whitman said, is really the key. I can tell you as an old dude that who you are keeps changing along the road, but you’ve already figured that out. So man, life keeps getting more interesting and exciting. And I believe there is a core, or maybe more accurately, core values that don’t change. Mine are honesty, integrity and kindness. Ya, they don’t always get followed perfectly because we are human, works in progress. I really do enjoy your stories of becoming. It does take work and introspection to become a whole human being, but well worth it in my book! 👍🏻💜