My Nature

I think I spent many years looking for and finding that higher version of myself. That perfect and eternal being. That spirit that is connected to some other world and the collective consciousness of all existence. I feel like I was born with a glitch, or a mutation... Remembering that me and some other, perfect and eternal place that seemed to be made of the same stuff as thoughts and dreams, yet shared by many. A place where nothing is born and nothing dies. A place with no pain and no passion.

I strived early on to find it and connect with it and become it. And I did, at quite a young age, find it, understand it, and at times fully embody it.

But all the while I hated this life and this form. This animal creature, born of this earth. I satiated it with simple pleasures. I was eager to shed that self to become fully the other.

But eventually, knowing that I must know myself fully... After searching through all my darkest shadows and learning to love and understand them... I saw that animal. That primal and simple thing. I saw that it is connected to all that grows and scurries through the forest. It gives me the vehicle I need to exist here. To love here. To connect here. It gave me my children. It gave me my voice.

It was not, as I had thought before, that holy being of light, that protected me. The eternal spirit doesn't even understand fear or pain. No, it was the creature inside me, the creature that I am that warns me of unseen danger, that tells me who I can trust, that warns me of illness and guides my hand in so many things by instinct and the knowledge of my ancestors carried within my blood and body.

So I found my light. I found my darkness and I found my nature.

Then I was complete. Not flawless. Just whole.

And now, I know that when I die the spirit within me will leave my body and go off to become something else, but this body.... This body and the spirit that is born and dies with it will return to her mother, to all the green that grows and all the scurrying creatures, and soaring birds and buzzing bees, and swimming life at sea. And she will become the world. And when the world ends she will be the universe.