What If This Wasn't the Only Way?
What have we accepted as the only way because it is the way we inherited? And what might become possible if we started imagining again?
Written April 21, 2025. This began with a strange dream and the question I asked afterward. What follows is what came through when I sat down to write. I’ve cleaned up the grammar and obvious places where my typing couldn't keep up with the words, but I've otherwise left the message largely as it came. As always, these are words to sit with, wonder about, disagree with, or simply leave here.
I had a dream where my parents won a $17 billion lottery. My stepdad had cashed the money out and had it in the house, taking no precautions to protect it or the household.
A man came in with a shotgun and threatened me but told me to stay out of the way if I didn't want to get hurt. The money was stolen. My stepdad said I wasn't going to have gotten any of it anyway. He was still mad at me.
I didn't care.
I was just wondering how he could have been so careless, and how he and my mom would never get ahead even after winning the lottery because of their grudge-holding.
So I asked:
What is the message for me today?
This is what came through...
Don't we all hold grudges against those who we perceive have wronged us? Grudges are like large ruts in the ground. When it rains, they fill up, hold stagnant water, and make for uneven terrain to travel on. Eventually, the road has to be made level again to be usable.
Grudges and unforgiveness just waste resources of time and effort. If a relationship no longer serves you, release it with the knowledge that while it may no longer serve you, it did indeed serve a purpose. Give the relationship its due with acknowledgment of that fact.
It doesn't have to be labeled as all good or all bad, or even labeled at all.
Everyone wants abundance, but grudges can prevent people from enjoying or obtaining the abundance that is and always has been theirs. Fear of losing it, pride in receiving it, concern over sharing it, power wielded with it—so many ways you humans have of messing abundance up so you can create and continue with your scarcity mindset!
There is a push and pull with abundance. Your stability comes from receiving and sharing at the same time. A push/pull, give/get balance that brings stability and also makes it flow and move.
Strength is not found in hoarding, nor is ease found in giving everything away. It is the balance of giving and receiving that creates true abundance, with everyone enjoying the abundance.
Many of you are worried about money and survival right now. Food and shelter are real concerns for people for whom they have never been concerns before.
The levels of what are considered “food” and “shelter” vary greatly in definition and practice across the world. The level of convenience created by capitalism affects populations' perception of food. The idea of shelter is affected by government. What is allowed by law or governance to be lived-in is affected.
We the people are losing our rights to live and raise our families by our own convictions and morality and are increasingly affected by the governing of a small percentage that is not representative of the masses.
But if the masses rise up and claim their own individual sovereignty over their own bodies, livelihoods, and means of living, we could thrive once we learn to lean into our own abilities, recognize that we are creators, and move away from systems that tell us what to do, what to believe, and how to live.
We all don't have to believe the same things.
The American Dream isn't just one dream of a house, dog, two kids, and a picket fence. Dreams can be solitary living, family compounds, community living, homesteading, or a house with a picket fence.
Choose your own adventure as many times as you wish in order to experience the full gamut of life here on Earth.
We have given up some of our sovereignty for ease, so someone else can do the planning for us while we work and follow a blueprint provided by people and institutions that may have their own interests at heart.
It's different—and a bit unnerving—to be responsible for your own well-being in aspects of life that we have previously handed over to governing institutions.
Start asking the questions: What would your own family's healthcare, schooling, nourishment, and “retirement” look like if you were the one responsible for planning and providing it? What might it look like within a small community of like-minded people?
How many different working concepts could be dreamed of and implemented to replace what has been, or is becoming, broken?
Even now, when food is so expensive, there are places where laws prevent hungry homeowners from having chickens in their own backyards. Laws may have been created for previous reasons but can become setbacks for individuals trying to lawfully provide an alternative source for the basic human need of food.
Instead, that family remains dependent upon—or at least participating in—the larger machine of food production and distribution.
This must and will change.
But it will definitely be messy.
The new generation will know how to make money in new ways that take flight because of institutions failing. They will arrange communication between groups of people to create harmonious ways of distributing resources. They will develop unique and efficient ways of producing food with minimal land requirements.
The older generation will use their knowledge in relearning and passing down the true “recycling” of items: reusing, repairing, repurposing, and, of course, cooking without the waste and preparing nutritionally dense food again.
There is not a “clean slate” for the Earth to start fresh again.
This “reset” has a lot of the old still lingering that will need to be cleaned up at the same time that the new is being created.
It can and is being done, though.