I’m slipping into my December/winter night/self-indulgent/meditative mode. I love to sit here with just the Christmas lights on (we don’t have a tree yet, but we’ve got the colored lights up on top of the shelf in the living room along with the fake pine garland and real pinecone garland) listening to relaxing music and burning incense.

There’s something about the smell of the incense the just transports me--to my childhood and to other times and places. There’s one piece of music in particular “Fragile Majesty” by Eric Tingstad and Nancy Rumble that never fails to bring up all sorts of images and memories. Combined with the woodsy incense--I see a cabin nestled in the pines, smell the wood smoke, feel the cold, crisp air. I ache for Pennsylvania. I’m bathed in grief and relive feelings of grief and sadness from my childhood.

And even though I don’t often experience sadness anymore in my life, I recognize sadness to have been a very core part of my experience in this lifetime, and very integral in shaping who I am. The feelings of sadness and beauty have always gone together--a luscious ache. I think I was born with too big of a memory. I retain so much of what went before and carry the ache from having lost it. So much natural beauty and rich cultural beauty has been lost. The world has been incredibly uglified in the past few generations.

I’m still toying with my new way of framing consciousness. When I’m driving especially, as I’ve mentioned, I ascend out of the ego. I was thinking last night as I was driving back in the dark after dropping Collin off with P in Roggen--maybe the reason I tend to hallucinate when I drive at night is because I so easily slip the bonds of ego. With no reference points at night it’s much easier to do that in the dark. There should be some sort of warning: do not operate heavy machinery without an ego. It’s definitely dangerous because there’s not exactly anyone at the wheel.

The neat thing is that I’m catching hold of the experience as a slip into and out of that other state. I suppose all of the times in my life when I’ve experienced past life memories I’ve slip the ego and ascended to something else. It’s neat now to be more conscious of it and to recognize the absence of a little self.

What would it be like to move through life as an expression of place rather than as an isolated dot? To ascend to an identity that encompasses the environment, the whole ecosystem, of which I am a part? Can you imagine the depths of integrity I would embody? An aware expression of this place--how cool would that be?

But that gets me back to one of my major challenges in this lifetime--how would a largely egoless being survive financially in these times? I think I struggle so much with earning money precisely because my bond to ego is so tenuous. In other times and places where there isn’t a cash-based society I would do fine. That’s why I think I’m so strongly pulled toward homesteading and achieving self-sufficiency. There would be no more struggle if I just didn’t have to participate in the cash economy. Egos know how to earn money. The more ego, the easier it is to participate in the economy.