I began blogging back in 2003 at Zadz/Gaia/A New Gaia. That early writing I characterized as my “spiritual travelogue.”

We all carry history forward from our past lives. I have brought a deep reticence regarding the influence that I have over people. My father asked me one day “Brian, do you understand how you keep on finishing people’s sentences for them?” When I said that I did, he asked whether that wasn’t a talent that I could use to accomplish a lot in the world. I replied, “Well, but that wouldn’t be fair.”

And I was focused on other things. I didn’t understand why until I was about forty two, but I spent most of my life pursuing knowledge of the world. While I was working on my Ph.D. thesis, I was reading the Christian Science Monitor and Science cover-to-cover every week, as well as the monthlies Scientific American and Foreign Affairs. I told my father that I was trying to reduce the world to an integral to be solved. There was a certain anxiety about it, and when I came into my spirituality, I realized that I had been running as hard as I could to find a way around, under or over a wall of pain that was crashing down on us.

As the millennium turned, I became frustrated with my failure, and began to express derision and anger about the people that possessed the power to make a difference. That led to some paranoia about my relationships at Gaia. I said some things that weren’t helpful, and spent a lot of time trying to understand my spiritual landscape. We move through time together – powerful events bind us into spiritual clusters. Sometimes to take the next step forward we have to reorganize ourselves. I have done a lot of that over the last fifteen years. I suppose that to the people around me I appeared narcissistic.

The wisdom that I brought out of that period was this: People that hurt others are often walking around the world doing unto others as was done to them, hoping desperately that they will find someone strong enough to show them how to heal. And so I try now to focus on offering the best wisdom I have regarding the power of love that I have been given to experience.

Over the last seven years or so, I have been struggling against fear of love. It’s sad to me, but people do the most terrible things to themselves in the name of material success. They try their best to ignore it, surrounding themselves with shallow diversions. Then along comes love, and they see all these great big, gaping wounds in themselves. It’s kind of like a soldier in shock looking down and realizing that he’s missing both legs. They become frightened, and often simply try to make the love go away.

So I’ve been struggling with that fear and anger, and it’s been brutal. Again, I’ve said a lot of things over the last seven years that haven’t been helpful. I’ve been really fortunate to have had my Shia colleague at work. He’s finally given me some affirmation.

I feel that period of my life coming to a close now. We take anger and fear into us and it can erupt unexpectedly when we’re tired or frustrated. I’ve just kept on pushing it away, and it’s been slowly dissipating from my relationships. I realize that a lot of the people around me have been simply the tip of the spear. Many of the behavior patterns they manifest are ancient. I’ve just made it steadily clear that the love that they want won’t collaborate in those behaviors, and tried to describe the alternatives as I see them.

That’s been the thrust of my writing here. There are so many wonderful, caring people in the blogosphere. They are passionate, and sometimes that flares up in expressions of anger and frustration. I do my best to express the alternatives, and to share my confidence that there is an enormous reservoir of good will waiting for Humanity to grow up and learn to play nice.

This has been coming to a focus for me. I went out to a new social venue on Thursday night, and had to rise above some unwanted attentions in the early morning. When it was over, I felt this beautiful glow in my heart, and the world appeared next to it. I wasn’t entirely awake, which always leaves me open to suggestion. For whatever reason, I began making circles around the world with my heart: around the equator, and two circumpolar passes that divided the globe into eighths. It was just the most beautiful thing – my heart was filled with warmth and peace.

But now I don’t know how to describe what I am about or why. It’s a raw energy that courses through me. I can explain why I do what I do, but that explanation means nothing without the axiom of that relation. I don’t know how to describe it, and I can’t prove that it exists. When I feel it moving through me to someone else, the common reaction is one of disbelief.

So I feel like I’m dissolving, adrift in this deep ocean in which food and cars and buildings simply sink out of sight. There is nothing left but the raw flame of the friends that have chosen to draw close to my heart.

Thank-you all for your company!