Kerry Ivan Kurian

Solstice invites us to look forward to the next year, sharpen our vision, and let go of things that no longer serve us. My friend Heather describes solstice like this: "It feels like you step into the void and it is quiet and peaceful there. The void is an incredible place to create from." From this place the following transmission arises. We Are One We are minuscule zones of awake awareness in a vastness of space and time that emerge from spontaneous arrangements of universal energy. When we get all the way down to the bottom of it, we arise from the same interchangeable stuff. That stuff has no sense of yours or mine. We are one. There is no standalone individual experience. We find ourselves born into contexts that are themselves born of causes and conditions propagated forward from every generation of thing in our lineage back to the origin of us all. We are one.  Awake awareness looking outward yields an "I am" illusion of self. There are things out there. I am in here. But what is in here? Looking inward we find awake awareness itself. This is not an intellectual exercise. Don't think about it. Just look and see. We are one. We Surrender Spending time together in awareness, integrity and love is the ultimate positive sum game. As my friend Kelly puts it, "This isn't a connection you find online. It's too human and too raw." Indeed. Our animal bodies speak to each other when we share physical presence. Our energies connect. So, after "enjoying" years of disconnected living thanks to remote work, pandemic lockdowns and cravings for something else / somewhere else, we're surrendering to reality. It's time for those of us who have been floating around in the ethers to attract/build/join/enable intentional communities in real life. That's the easy part. The Hard Part™ is steering clear of the causes of suffering in the process, especially craving or desire. (It's too much to detail here but most people tend to blow right past this one. If this point feels unfamiliar, get curious about the Four Noble Truths.) Fortunately, surrendering to the hard part provides us with a potent mission: We build communities to spend time together in awareness, integrity and love not because we want to but because we recognize there's nothing more important for us to do. Our Journey Our journey together has begun. I suspect that calm social networks (not social media) will be instrumental to us by providing a means of discovery from which we launch into real-life interactions. I'm looking forward to sharing our findings here and would love to meet you along the way. As always, you may schedule to meet me via my calendar on Fantastical. ✌️🧘🏽🌞 (Written at home on the couch in Bellingham, Washington, USA)