Life as we previously knew it…yeah…you feel it. I don’t want to write these days. I don’t want to talk. I seem to switch back and forth between two states: crippling grief, or a vaguely definable altered reality that I can only call pure awe. Joy. But not an excited ecstasy; not bliss. Calm knowing. A peace like nothing I have ever known. Nothing else registers – terrifying grief or cellular peace…for lack of the language to adequately describe it.

After weeks spent in terror and grief and yet surprisingly, not dying, I think I might be coming to terms with what is happening. Maybe. I’m not certain of anything right now. I do trust my intuition, the currency of life.

If I were a betting woman, which I am not – but wait – I am! I am betting my life. I am betting my life that this shift is planetary, it is cosmic, it is being universally experienced by everyone, and it is real. This is happenin‘, baby.

It isn’t aliens. It isn’t astrological. It isn’t your diet causing this wobbly reality. It’s your heart – and I do not mean the organ in your chest: I mean the intelligence in every cell of your body. I mean your spirit. Everything is psychic now. It always has been, but we are now becoming critically aware of that. And as of yet, I do not have enough language skill to explain this phenomena, but I will share with you what I can as I can.

The planet you are currently living on has transmuted. We are now living on the surface of a 5th dimensional being, no longer in a 3rd dimensional reality. In the event that you wish to stay in your comfort zone, you will need to learn to transform gold into lead.

In this mornings’ meditation, I asked for help to keep my heart open. The world is closing in on me. I don’t want to harden back up. That would feel like all this pain had been in vain. How do I remain soft in the face of terror? How do I embrace being defenseless?

The opposite of defensiveness is not safety. It is not vulnerability. Don’t you believe the people selling you vulnerability. They are telling you that vulnerability is somehow noble, or will get you where you need to go. It’s a halfway measure. You can still tether yourself to the past with vulnerability and avoid truth. Don’t settle for that.

The opposite of defensiveness is forgiveness. And I, for one, do not know how to do that. I do not know what forgiveness is. I know some things it is not. It is not acceptance. It does not mean that you accept the people who have wronged you back into your life. It does not mean you accept bad behavior in any form. It doesn’t mean you allow yourself to be treated poorly. That much I know.

Forgiveness is a concept to me; I don’t really know it in practice. I’ve grappled with understanding it for decades, held onto my righteous anger in order to survive, whether I was the recipient of the abuse or the self-righteous abuser. So I can’t fault the usefulness of my defenses; they got me this far. But I didn’t come this far to come this far. I have to take the lead shoes off now. I have to learn to forgive.

This awareness has blindsided me, as awareness often will. Moving forward with this new information will be an adventure; an experiment. I don’t really know where to start. I know that I will have to muster all the curiosity possible. And I know intuition, holy spirit, never leaves us alone here. And so I will begin with prayer: “show me how to forgive.”

“If it is impossible for you to go on as you were before, you must go on as you never have.” – Cheryl Strayed