A Loose Association of Free Thinkers

What do I want?
I struggle to find happiness in the day to day.  I suffer loneliness and dislocation.  This melancholy has been with me all my adult life.  It forms a big part of what my ego likes to define as “me”.  Persistent dissatisfaction brings only weariness.  But, it is also the motor for all my most persistent and faithful delvings into the spiritual life.  When we are awake enough to perceive our own slavery, it is inevitable that we will rattle at the bars until we glimpse freedom.  The great trick of modern social organisation is to enslave everyone in its machinery, but make them delight in their drudgery.
Today, my friend listened a while to my longstanding list of grumbles.  Then she asked:  “what do you want”.  Well, Naty, here is your answer.
I want to connect with others on the path of change.  I want to surround myself with a community of like minded believers – a loose association of free thinkers.  I want to work towards the betterment of womankind, mankind, humankind, in concrete, daily ways.  I want to better myself deep in my core, so that I can shine that same light out into the world.  I want to see clearly – without the clouds of deception caused by drugs, alcohol, television.  I want to be one of a tribe of lovers-healers-dreamers-thinkers who truly believe that a safer, stabler, more honest and free world is possible – and doable – now, within my lifetime.  I want to teach my daughter to think big, to dream beyond the boundaries of tradition, location and education.  I want to sit still in group meditation, solitary contemplation, with others and feel the spirit rise and fall in my breath.  I want to look into the unguarded eyes of other adults and know that within lives true Love.
I can’t do this alone.  This is something so big, so beautiful and so dear to me that I have to share it . I don’t hate Altea.  I just despair that amidst such glorious natural beauty, can live people so fearful, suspicious and stuck.  I miss the modern world, where ideas, creativity and faith mix to build new shapes for living.  I don’t dream of escape by any means.  It’s the opposite – I am so completely alive, so completely aware, that I need the comradeship of others on the Path, all too aware the change is hard, painful, but infinitely worth it.
Most of us had big dreams when we were young. Life taught us to give up our dreams, finish school, get jobs, earn money, save up for holidays and retirement and…oh, forget about those fanciful dreams.  I never stopped dreaming.  My teenage angst is still with me, torturing me with questions like “why is the world so unfair?” “why do we spend more money on arms than on schools?” “why is the world run by grey-haired men?” and “why are so forgetful of our divine birthright?”.
Why am I not happy here?  Because this angst is with me, wherever I am. I practice yoga and meditation and I focus-re-focus-re-focus on my inner light.  But I am not going to retire to a cave or an ashram.  Krishna taught that the yoga of action is the path of the true seeker.  When your karma (action/work) and your dharma (path) unite, you achieve liberation.  I know that my own healing journey is only to make to strong and resilient to face whatever it is I have to face in this world.  I know that my karma is to effect change, but not alone.  That, I know.
For now, I am on the road of humility.   Humility, vulnerability, honesty, deep faith.  Idealism.  That’s it, in a word. I am an idealist.  I will never stop believing.  But, it is crushing to dream alone.