A couple of weeks ago, I gave away all my furniture and half of my belongings, loaded up a pod for storage, and packed my car up with four suitcases, a blender, an instapot, and four plants.

I’m moving myself somewhere new in order to build a completely new life for myself. Most of the places I have lived were for school, or to stay close to a spiritual teacher or a job. This one’s just for me.

It’s not just that I am moving.

As I sit in some small town off the old historic Route 66 after a magical week in Sedona, I realize this isn’t just about the home I long to build, but a pilgrimage into the heart of something sacred, mysterious, and good. Something gnostic and mystical, but pragmatic at the same time.

I’ve never resonated with phrases like “being in your power” or the wielding of the word sovereignty in ways that to me felt like a creation of separation, or false hierarchy, rather than a feeling of rootedness in something refreshing and essential.

Even self-love has, at times, felt like an elusive path filled with this mysterious thing we are all supposed to have toward ourselves, yet it seems like no one does.

I don’t think most of us realize how deeply insecure we are. This is the current that underlies most narcissism and the cultural splits within narcissism that are the foundational ground for codependency. But, we call it “love.”

We are taught to see insecurity as something unworthy of love, so we become so separated from the most crucial parts of ourselves that we need in order to feel exactly how we long to feel.

Good.

We say that our pleasure is our power. Or our sovereignty. Our divine nature. Our ecstatic, blissful 5D consciousness. But, none of it lands for me.

So, you could say I’ve been on quest to understand this. Not just in an intellectual way, but deeply in my heart. To know what my “power” is inside my own heart. To have a gnostic experience of this place inside of me—this light.

This basic nature.

This basic goodness.

I’ve spent most of my life trying to be good.

Let me back up a moment.

We are born good. All you need to do is look at the glowing light of innocence in a child’s eyes, the bubble behind their laughter, and the power of their wisdom that lacks self-consciousness in any form.

Life in this world has us travel from living inside our basic goodness into scripts, agendas, and rules about what is lovable and what is not, what is worthy of reward and what is not, what makes other people happy and what does not.

Throw a little trauma in there for an added side of disconnection.

After a while, we lose sense of this basic goodness, this basic sense of self as existence that is good, wise, happy, and filled with vitality regardless of how things are going.

Whole religions are built on this. But, in this new age culture, we build an identity around being “good” or “conscious,” while adapting teachings from cultures that innately understand goodness in a way we do not.

Having an identity as a good person or a “conscious” person is not the same thing as living inside one’s own goodness.

If we are acting and doing all the things that a “good and conscious, evolved” person would do, then when we might do something or say something outside of that ego identity, shame kicks in and we project it, gaslight it, deny it, and built up the defenses of an ironclad, advanced state of spiritual consciousness because of all the work we have done on ourselves.

Consciousness itself is much more simple than that.

Ego has built hierarchy because that is what we are taught in the patriarchy. We must climb the ladder, and then higher we climb, the more gold stars we get on our uniforms.

Goodness doesn’t care about that.

Living inside of goodness is much more innocent than that. Unfortunately, this culture doesn’t like innocence because it is a strong mirror back of our pain, separation, and unmetabolized grief we deem as lower, or merely “human.”

Moving from this kind of goodness takes cultivation, deep prayer, an ability to sit in the in-between without knowing, and, from my personal experience, quite a bit of grieving that wound of separation from my own goodness within my self.

Trying to live like a good person landed me in relationships that I needed to validate my goodness, prove my goodness, to mirror to me my goodness, or to fill that space in me that didn’t know how to feel good in a natural way. I tried to force pleasure or build myself up with my academic and spiritual accomplishments.

That is why I eventually drank—because seeking “good” leads down a road that first seems to feel good, but ends up feeling worse. We end up needing to consume more—alcohol, tinder dates, or medicine ceremonies.

That’s why we unconsciously associate new with better or perfection, because we haven’t learned to see that the ordinary is in fact the shining goodness of love itself.

It’s not easy, but it is very, very simple.

I am learning.

I sat on a mountain last week praying to know my own goodness, only to first work through all my dissatisfaction, to dissolve blocks and vows I made to protect myself that blocked my clear seeing. I was guided to learn how to ask for help, to notice where, who from, and how to receive it.

I learned that awareness applied opens up so much and that consciousness is vast and wide, that the divine herself isn’t so petty as to only reward me when I am “good” and punish me when I am not “good,” that this is a projection of cultural death parents onto the divine.

To sit through this inner fire of dissatisfaction, of deep grief of longing and grasping for something in that ache in my heart and not knowing when it will end. If it will end. If I will end up where I am going. If I will get to experience certain things before I die.

And, eventually, sitting in the dark, with only a candle lit, in the silence of running water and red rocks, I felt something new.

Goodness, like a lightning storm breaking through my heart.

She is the wind, the water, the grass, the sound in the wind chimes, the beating of my heart, the feeling of cold on my feet. She is expressing herself as me, as you.

This riptide of changing and dying and being reborn is the goodness that is indestructible and carrying us all on her wings.

This goodness, this goodness is my power.

It is our power.

It has never been, and can never be destroyed.

But, I had to be willing to give everything up that I thought was important to me to claw, crawl, scavenge, pray, dance, move, hike, write, give up seeking, and create a space that would help unfurl me into the mystery.

It’s deeper than an intellectual knowing and something that takes time to cultivate. Like true joy or any sense of well-being, we encompass the whole spectrum of life and death in an instant.

We are each all of that.

Goodness is our power.

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