Lots of stuff happening in the world, huh? How are you holding up? I’ve been pretty quiet lately as far as writing goes, because, honestly, I haven’t known what to say. But today I saw something and I wanted to share it with you. The last few months and weeks have brought to the surface all kinds of things, some of them quite frightening and even ugly. It seemed for a while that everything that many of us care about was being destroyed. It might still seem like that. It’s like the world has been set on fire and the only way to move forward is to rise from the ashes in a new and more authentic form. The death of the way we have been is upon us, both collectively and individually. What is happening now has never happened in the memory of this world, and yet its roots are in the ancient substance of all that has come before. We are being born again into a new substance of who we really are that has previously been unknowable. Throughout my life, I have often thought of Theodore Roethke’s line in The Waking, “I wake to sleep and take my waking slow.” It’s apparent that the time of waking to sleep is over. None of us have that option anymore. We must wake to the truth of who we are now, and that waking is taking each one of us into places we never expected to go. We still don’t know where this is all taking us. But surely, we can feel in our bones when we tune into the breath that runs through everything that we are going somewhere. We are going somewhere we have never been before in our time together on earth. We are waking up to a new evolution of humanity. And what I realized today about who I am in this awakening is true about all of us. I realized that I have a role. We each do. When I meditate, or feel myself deep in my core, I know what that role is. I know full well what I am capable of. But often I look for my role inside the filter of my circumstances. That is a part of living in the world, right? We go through our day to day lives and try to make sense of things by what is happening to us. For a long time, my circumstances have appeared to limit me. I know that I am capable of much more than has been showing up for me to do. I also know that I am completely and wholly willing. So why have I been stopped in getting where I know I am meant to go? I have been aware for at least a year that I am not moving alone, I am moving with the cosmos. But I have been filled with questions. “Will I do my part? Am I who I need to be? Will I have the life I want and need to have? Is there purpose, and even joy waiting for me when I get through this place of unknowing?” I would feel my light, my truth, I would know in my heart exactly who I am and then I’d look at my circumstances that still didn’t match what I want them to be and it was like I turned a switch and my light went out. But today I realized that I am in my role exactly as I need to be. And so are you. I don’t have to turn my light out anymore by thinking that I am not where I should be or that I will never get where I want to be. I am just as fully in my role as my mentors or my teachers that seem to have better lives than I do. In fact, my circumstances are a necessary part of the awakening of the planet. As a collective, we are transmuting the world into a new form. Everything is changing and shifting. The transmutation of our individual lives is actually the transmutation of the whole world. We are rising from the ashes and taking a new shape. We are all in this together and we each have a unique role that is necessary to the whole. Our awakening can not be rushed. It is perfectly designed to carry us home. Right now, it matters very little what our circumstances look like. We can not be separated from our roles and neither can anyone in our lives. The truth is, we will have everything, we will have fabulous lives and there is no way that we won’t live our full purpose. Everything we have now is enough for now, and the rest is happening, too. We can be fully present to the truth of who we are without question, without limit or ego. That’s waking to being awake. And that’s the new consciousness.