THERE MUST BE SOME KIND OF WAY OUT OF HERE #4 TRANSCEND This is taken from my book WORLDBRIDGER "We did not find ourselves in this immeasurably privileged position - embodying an instrument of sentient capability, each one of us an autonomous instrument of sensuality, of divine Consciousness, seeing beauty, feeling love - so that we could, upon finding ourselves challenged by the shadow, run 'home', back to the 'One', to the Void, to the undifferentiated ocean of potential We had come to tread between the worlds, between agony and ecstasy, between the dream and the nightmare, to become strong and courageous, to surrender any shallow dream of happiness, cruelly torn away as the light and the shadow fashioned our joy and sorrow in equal measure, to fall deep in the waters of perpetual renewal and be weighed not against the laws of man but by the sacred law that exists beyond the rule of culture. Happiness is for children. To reach for its sticky sweetness in the midst of an age of obvious terminal decline, whilst wars and genocide rage a short plane ride away, is to reach for the snooze button. Happiness is a dangerous seductive detour; a way to make the prison more comfortable, the lies more palatable; to make this mutant paradigm, riddled with abominations, work for you personally by ensuring that all your ever-expanding comfort zones are satiated through a hollow consumer-based definition of abundance. All the conditional components of your well-being need high maintenance to perpetuate this erroneous form of stability on the tightrope of survival between the cradle and the grave. Happiness is for mortals. Bliss and ecstasy are not reliant upon the arrangement of circumstances but are realized by the loss of denial rather than adherence to it. Intellectually, I know that it is against the flow of the wide, deep river of life to harbor regret and yet to this day there are words, deeds, moments that I would unashamedly reclaim from time's steely hold...if I could. In my mind and heart I have re-written some parts of the play and yet if it were any other way, would I be here today?

Thank you for my welcome message Bear and Inanna and good to be here with you all and my Template family. I shall be exploring this much needed portal of kinship. All strength Janet 💗

There are many ways we practice gratitude. We give thanks for the people we love, the opportunities we've been given, the roof over our heads, the food on our tables, and the moments of beauty that remind us how much goodness still exists in the world. Yet there's someone we often forget to include in our gratitude: ourselves. Not simply the person we are today, with the perspective and wisdom we now have, but the person we used to be. Think about a version of yourself who lived through one of the hardest seasons of your life. Maybe you were navigating the end of a relationship, grieving someone you loved, struggling financially, raising a family, facing a health challenge, questioning your purpose, rebuilding your life, or simply trying to make it through a period when everything felt uncertain. You can look back now and know at least part of what happened next, but that version of you couldn't. They woke up each morning without knowing whether things would get easier. They made decisions without the benefit of hindsight, carried responsibilities while privately wondering how much longer they could keep going, and experienced days when simply getting through the day was an accomplishment. Yet somehow, they kept going. We Judge the Past With the Wisdom of the Present It's easy to look backward and criticize ourselves. We wonder why we stayed so long, why we didn't speak up, why we made a particular decision, why we allowed something to continue, or why it took us so long to recognize what now seems obvious. Hindsight has a way of making the past appear remarkably clear. Once we've grown, healed, or gained distance from an experience, the choices we wish we'd made can seem so obvious that we forget something important: we're judging an earlier version of ourselves with wisdom that often came because of what that person lived through. You know things today that you couldn't have known then. Maybe you understand boundaries differently. Perhaps you've learned to trust your intuition, recognize patterns that were once invisible to you, or understand yourself and your needs more deeply. You may be stronger, more discerning, more compassionate, or more willing to walk away from something that no longer feels right. That wisdom didn't appear from nowhere. Some of it was earned through the experiences you now look back upon and wish you could change.