For those of you keeping score, I'm taking liberties with what many have interpreted as the end of the Long Count, the Mayan calendar that completes next week on Solstice.  Mostly, I'm taking inventory of events in my life and coming to fierce conclusions about what they mean, or unmean, as the case may be.

Most of you know, particularly those whom I've known since childhood, that I'm a very driven person.  Not so much a planner, though assuredly led by some deeper drive to accomplish a particular desire.  I know how to bring things into being.  I know how to manifest, even if I do it with a sledgehammer and crowbar.  And those of you who know me really well know that drive has always revolved around empowering others.  In fact, a lot of you who go way back probably knew that before I did.  Imagine how fortified I felt to learn in my late twenties that my greatest spiritual goal, my life purpose, as it were, was just that.  Specifically, I learned that I came into form to have as many diverse human experiences as possible, so that when I spoke to others about surviving and thriving, I wouldn't just be talking out of my ass.  I would know; I do know.

I designed many facets of my life by that purpose.  Why wouldn't I?  I had the stamp of approval of the gods.  That's what ego does.  Its job is to protect the form, which is accomplished through taking very esoteric concepts and making them formed, or at least tangible in some way.  It takes classes.  It tests principles.  It jumps hoop after hoop until a concept is wisdom.

I've devoted all of my adult life to this process of centering my many experiences of human strength and frailty.  Through my shamanic work I've even spent 15 years helping others discern their life purposes, so they could set themselves on the proper course of personal development, soul awareness.  This year, though, something changed. More