I walked in the snow last night as the light, white flakes fell benevolently like kisses from the sky.  The powers that be weren’t plowing, it would have been silly, perhaps since the newly plowed roads and walkways would most assuredly be covered again before long.

I came home from Campus Pizza where I’d shared a long conversation with the bartender about life, The Gophers, biking in the Twin Cities, her boyfriend and snow.

I decided to shovel the walkways of our house at midnight just for fun.  The walkway was covered over again by morning but I am still glad I shoveled snow.  The light from the streetlights, reflecting off the pure white gave the neighborhood an opalescent glow.

I had seen a jackrabbit run through the parking lot of the townhouses across the street while I was talking to my friend Penny.  She said, “There’s your fertility sign.”

I smiled at that.  It is great to have friends who can see the magic of life, ones like Penny who don’t just push aside your “signs and symbols” as myth and stupidity.  Penny recognizes the mark of the goddess as she sends the jackrabbit across the white snow in front of my bedroom window.  A sure sign of growth, beauty and life, even during the cold snowy night, the rabbit quickly made his way out past my view.  He gave me his message with the bob of his tail and moved on.

I dreamt of The Captain and I having a conversation and hanging out in a living room, somewhere.  Is it the future?  I do not know.  His presence is getting closer, it seems.  He spoke of seeing signs, also in his life, of awakening to some psychic powers – seeing things he wasn’t sure where real, or knowing things before they occurred.  It’s all so new for him and disconcerting.

I get a feeling that his friends may not be as supportive or understanding of his burgeoning world view.  They may just not get it.  They have fears about things that they cannot prove, perhaps.  They’ve been taught that Santa doesn’t exist and they choose to believe that when you are an adult, you stop acting like a child – full of wonder and magic.

When we open to our gifts, there is often a fear that we are losing our sanity.  How could this really be happening to me?  You are afraid of being judged and condemned; sent away from the pack or the group into a world of loneliness and ostracism.  Maybe you know someone who was ostracized.

I think it is easy to find evidence for whatever you believe.   If you are a closeted something or other, you can find so many evidence based examples of how you probably should stay in the closet to be “safe.”  What if that belief that you will not be safe, leads you to create the evidence?

What would happen if you ventured outside of the closet?  If you were fully and authentically yourself what would be the result?

When we live an empowered life – a life that is you being fully expressed – we give rise to the notion that we can truly love ourselves – warts/gifts/attributes/talents and all.

No one is born with something wrong with them.  We are what we are for a purpose.  We can end the struggle with being accepted when we accept that we are indeed exactly as we need to be.  There’s nothing wrong with us at the core.

If you were to see yourself as naturally creative, resourceful and whole – complete as you are and here for a purpose, how would that change the way you perceive your interactions with others?

Would you have compassion for the blindness that creates the need in them to see you as anything but whole?  Would you sense their judgments and accusations in a new light?  Could you open your resources – mind, heart, body – to present confidence as a mindset of “I am whole” and see what evidence shows up to support that vision?

It is true that you may have to find new friends, or be patient with the ones you have.  It is true that in being truly authentic you may have to “hear” some accusations that you aren’t acting the way you used to or that you frighten those who used to be friends to you.  It is true, you may have to run on your own steam and seek validation in those who can support the new vision.  In the end, however, in wholeness and authenticity, you are free to be.  There is a freedom from this viewpoint that no other way of being allows.

You will learn a level of compassion and heart for those who choose to live in a box of sameness out of fear.  You may see, in time, how gray and empty that world of sameness appears in the face of those who choose such a path.

You will know yourself on a deep and consecrated level.  You cannot be hurt because you know the truth of your wholeness…those accusations and ostracisms will seem strange and silly to you.  What’s the point of that stuff, you will say.  You will experience love on a grander, bigger scale, so powerful it can only come from a connection to the source of All That Is…from the core of you – being YOU.