Tears of joy for common ground

by natalia | Jul 4, 2022 | Health & Wellness, Personal Development

I honestly could cry tears of joy as I listen to the sound of the fireworks exploding around me right now.

My fellow Americans, we are all brothers and sisters and we must stop the division and hop off our high horses if we are saddled up on them. We have absorbed different perspectives based on who raised us, where we were educated, how life has impacted and affected us and the traumas we have endured. If we were switched at birth we would likely have a switched political position.

That’s something to think about!

We are none of us so much at odds that we should not be able to understand each other, our mutual fallibilities and our shared history of wanting to do the right thing, because that is one thing that connects us as Americans even if that ‘right thing’ is at times, misguided.

We are all misguided to some degree. Let’s start there. I have dear friends on both sides of the political spectrum and to all I beg you to realize that there is a game at play for your energy. Refuse to play into it and insist upon love and higher consciousness. This does not mean that you relinquish your values but that you do not over-invest your energy on issues that are playing you, destroying the fabric of your national-family bonds and the fabric of the country, so that it’s easier to infiltrate the nation. Our sovereignty as a nation depends upon our ability now to listen to one another and come together, not stand at odds!

Now, at the risk of sounding hypocritical and sounding off too fervently on my own trip, I’ve seen and heard accounts declaring that America is no longer the greatest country in the world. After living for nearly eight years in a country that I was greatly seduced by for its beauty and seeming freedom, South Africa, I can state first-hand that there is truly no place like America – not by the widest margin. It is put to us now to fix, secure and protect our magnificent country. We do this by rejecting all forms of extremism and embracing sanity, support, understanding and the constitutional values that are a beacon for us, given to us by our forefathers who could envision the entropy that would set in after a good 100 years.

I’m all for having the highest values and I don’t think there’s any question about my conservative leanings among those who know me well. But I also see a big game at play pitting Americans against one another and I’m not going to fall for it; I’m going to call it out. The division at play here is a distraction created to incense, confuse and destroy our collective family and our close relationships. I’ve never seen people so infuriated as I have in the last few weeks and, on both sides, there is so much erroneous, illogical, blindingly conviction that is only serving those who would like nothing more than to see whatever we still have going for us here (which is more than any other country) destroyed. Let’s band against that destructive force instead of banding against half of ourselves (our National family)!

Question the biases of everything you see in the media and ask yourself whether it is divisive or unifying. This will enable you to sus out who is for America and who is against US. Think critically. Become clear and self-realized/self-actualized. Don’t fall for the dysfunctional emotional sway of extremists. Stay compassionate, humble and analytical without being too attached. Be ready to drop error on a dime if need be.

We cannot replicate this great country if it falls. That will take a superhuman endeavor of unthinkable effort to even attempt. WE HAVE IT NOW. It is being challenged but it still STANDS!

Breathe, think and act with clarity and compassion. All is still well within our ability to surge upward and rebuild. As we do, any un-American forces in operation will be forced to fall away. If we want our Constitutional Republic “Of The People, By The People and For The People,” we can have it.

We are so fortunate. We still have our country – We can protect it and turn the trajectory right-round! Let this not be the end of an empire but the legend of what no previous empire was able to do!

I love you, my fellow Americans! Let’s drop the division, find common ground and be better than ever.

Gratitude & Freedom (+ an afternoon nap & some green juice)

by natalia | Jul 3, 2022 | Health & Wellness, Personal Development

If you asked me what I most love about living in this sacred, little sanctuary in Palm Beach, I’d have to say it’s the peace. I’ve never known this level of peace before from a place. I am just steps away from the modern world and yet it’s so still here that you can practically hear the thoughts of the iguana sunning himself next to you.

In my peace today, on the eve of Independence Day tomorrow, I’m also reflecting on the gratitude I feel to be back home in the USA, which I won’t wax on further about as I’ve no doubt expressed enough on that happy subject.

But it does feel like a big day for reflecting given the various options we all have right now in terms of where to go with our free will and precious consciousness.

It is up to us as individuals to choose if/how we will live our lives, independently!

Independence Day means more than being collectively independent from outside sovereign rulership. It also implies individually independence.

Can you operate Independently of the influences of others?

Can you chart your own course based on what you have found to be worthy of your sacred life?

Can you peel away from the group hive-mind? What does it mean if you cannot?

Are you independent if you cannot? Are you free if you cannot? If you are not free, then how can you be fluid and flow?

If you cannot move fluidly and flow but are attached then you are stuck. If you are attached and stuck then your energy cannot breathe, conduct and be renewed so you will be stagnant (the first stage of the decay cycle).

What happens to stagnant things? What do we know about stagnant waters?

What does this mean about perceived safety?

Answer: It is not safe to be stuck and yet, most people who are stuck and cling to the hive mind/hive actions do so out of fear.

Do you see how ludicrous that is? The more you hold to the group mind, the more perilous your life is because you will be steadily decaying like stagnant water.

So, yes, let’s raise the flag high and sing our beautiful national anthem and certainly deeply consider what our nation needs and does not need in order to be healthy and free long into the future. But collective freedom is only as good as the individuals harnessing that freedom.

It took individually free-minded people to even be able to envision the essential principles and structures required to create and sustain a free republic. Hive-minded people could not ever have done that!

I know there are choices you want to make and paths you wish to pursue that fly in the face of the hive-mind. My suggestion: do not suppress them out of a sense of fear. Your spirit, not to mention every other part of yourself will suffer for it.

We cannot have true freedom and true safety at the same time. Freedom requires taking the risk of being an independent thinker/doer. The kind of illusion of safety most people confuse with real safety isn’t ever ultimately safe. Anything that comes at the cost of remaining stuck is ultimately a destructive choice.

Benjamin Franklin famously said, “Those who would give up essential Liberty to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.” This quote is typically referenced in regard to maintaining our collective sovereignty. It is a searing reminder at that level. But, I wish to apply it now to the level of the individual, personal independence for which it is equally poignant.

It will be an awakening of the spirit of individuals reclaiming their personal independent thought and life choices that will rebirth, restore and renew the values of our constitutional republic. It won’t be group thought and people who need group acceptance. Those things are antithetical to the essence of the American Way.

To find yourself is to remove all that is not yourself. Anything you cling to that you did not come into this world with is not yourself: ideas, habits, inclinations, perspectives, patterns, reactions, likes and dislikes – these are all conditioned and artificial. Who or what put these things on you?

To what or to whom do they belong? So why do you cling to them so strongly? Fun questions to banter around at your July 4th BBQ, LOL!

With so much love from my big, fat, independent heart to yours!

How to say goodbye to Mother Africa…

by natalia | May 24, 2022 | Health & Wellness, Personal Development

How does one say goodbye to Mother Africa, to the great, glorious edifice we call “Table Mountain,” to the crashing South Atlantic, to the place that would not let me pass into my greater future without paying the proverbial troll? Oh, the dreadful, painful lessons that Mama Africa says, in her way, are, “For you own good.”

In the countdown to my return to America after seven and a half long years here in the Jurassic beauty of this land, juxtaposed with the totally unexpected disappointment of its social structure (which, to be fair, I was well warned about but didn’t grasp until, in my still relative naiveté, I was singed by the sting of its scorpion tail – which ultimately brought me to a sort of maturity I hadn’t even realized I was lacking (but I was – so thanks, Mama Africa — mother did know best!). It was all a blessing in the end and only a place like this can pull you in and reshape you. I am endlessly grateful for the experience, even though I would never have invited it or agreed to it consciously (are you mad?!).

There are too many goodbyes to acknowledge one by one. But there are a special handful of precious souls that made the journey bearable, sane and even joyous. You know who you are.

Sometimes we have to go so far away from home to appreciate home. And boy do I now appreciate home (as well as how & why we must venture far away from home to have the opportunity to become our next level self!

My Chatham Hall friends will well recall the traditional song sung at ‘Senior Night in The Well’ — the “I’m coming back when,” song!” Well, I guess all those things have happened, cuz I’m coming back. And to quote Jon Bon Jovi, “Who says you can’t go home? There’s only one place they call you one of their own…”

But we have to go out into this big, wild world – stretch out and put our big toe in, feel into all the things that call our soul to experience LIFE!! And I did that. It wasn’t misguided. It was right on target, even if it strangled and even very nearly mangled me. But, I’ll tell you this one thing (otherwise your outcome might not be so good): be pure, keep your integrity and watch for dragons! On the old maps they used to write, in uncharted areas, “Here be dragons.”

Look, I’m an adventurous old soul and I will always take the road less traveled. But, my advice is to be ready for dragons because dragons there will be! And you’ll need to make sure that your inner fire is bigger and badder than any other fire you might be confronted with. The ONLY way to do that is to cloak yourself, saturate yourself in integrity, purify your life, raise your consciousness above the world’s and keep going when the journey is tough. Like Winston Churchill said, “When you’re going through hell, keep going.” That adage, among others, got me through.

And then, remember this: you will heal. You will recover your energy if you stay focused on virtuous things, if you keep “thine eye single to the light.” Stay virtuous. Stay pure. Harbor zero dysfunctional anger. Never look back. Do this in your worst situations and you will come out intact. Don’t ‘watch the clock’, per se. Just stay the course for as long as it takes and you’ll find yourself healed and free.

Thank you to all the beautiful souls I have encountered on this journey! You have touched me deeply and I wish you the greatest happiness.

It’s time now for me to go home. What is home? Home is OHM – so it’s always in the heart and soul of each of us, geography is not the measurement of it really. But, when we can couple our heart space with land and friends that bring us a sense of familiarity and support, there’s certainly nothing wrong with bolstering our lives with that if we’ve got it. And, fortunately I have.

We cannot end and begin simultaneously. We must end and then begin. So, a chapter is closed, is blessed, is over and in less than two weeks I will cross an ocean and leave Mother Africa and take all her great, valuable, cherished lessons and reconfiguring with me back OHM to a country with plenty of problems of its own…but all that notwithstanding it is where I belong.