Those few people who have followed this blog, even fewer of whom are friends, may notice that I have once again reinvented its appearance. The good news is, it isn’t a complete overhaul this time. What it is, is more of a refinement. This time, instead of “fixing” it, as if something had been wrong with it before, I have distilled it to what I hope – and believe – is the fundamental nature for its existence. For that reason, I have retained my “tagline” as the name of my blog, and changed the graphics to ones that are more likely to represent who I truly am at my core.

I have long identified with the relatively unknown South Asian goddess Akhilanda. Akhilanda’s name means, “Never not broken.” According to many sources, including the Sutra Journal (Sutra Journal, Akhilandeshwari: The Power of Brokenness by Laura Amazzone) the double negative is to “emphasize the truth of her brokenness.” But looking at myself through that lens was, actually, doubly negative. The fact is, while it may be more advantageous to look at something through a negative lens than to not look at all, it is difficult to see the positive aspects of a situation. And there are always positive aspects. One must remove the negative lens and reexamine the situation through a positive one, often struggling just to reach neutrality and avoid getting stuck in the negativity. And so many people are stuck in negativity these days. Why go through all that time, effort, and usually, accompanying pain and suffering, if it isn’t necessary? The distance between neutral and positive is much easier to achieve than the shift from negative to positive.

From where I now stand, a neutral lens, albeit still subjective in many ways, is a much better place to begin. Akhilanda may have had her place in a bygone era, but as we move further into the Aquarian Age, there are better archetypes with whom to resonate.

My reality now is that I never was broken. It often felt that way; the Universal lessons of life that we all come here to learn are often painful – but that is usually because we ignore them or are otherwise oblivious until the pain we inflict upon ourselves by avoidance becomes impossible to ignore. Moreover, emotions of a lower vibration (such as pain, anger, fear, frustration, etc.) are the product of thought, not the predecessors, as many still believe.

I suppose some of the unconscious trauma we put ourselves through we chose prior to incarnation, in order to provide the challenges we needed to achieve our desired growth in this life. Certainly, we chose the conditions into which we are born, although many would heartily disagree with that belief. Some of it we bought into after we were born. In any case, it is all eventually surmountable if we put our minds to become aware enough to catch those initial negative thoughts when they first occur.

My hope is, as I move into a new phase of my life, that I will be able to rekindle my joy in writing, reestablish my clarity of thought, and reintroduce a semblance of regularity into my blog. While I write for myself, if you are here, I hope that you will find something of value for yourself.