Justin:
The word spirit points to that aspect of our nature that is our source of focused attention here on this planet, nominally “ours.” It is also what our individual awareness appears to arise from. As part of that arising, I believe, there is some form of intent that our particular curiosity led us here in pursuit of. In the course of manifesting through what might be called denser terrain, that intent becomes masked by the generation and ongoing flow of our other intentions, which were required to accommodate the frequency ranges that our awareness had to pass through to bring our attention here in a way suitable to the exploration of that curiosity. We got very busy and the flow of our “downstream” choices tend to mask our original intent, though we are still fed from that stream.

When one is lucky enough to find someone in life whose spirit both arises from an energetic neighborhood of mutual resonance, whose fundamental flavor of curiosity is also in resonance, and whose differences elicit more fodder for joyful exploration, you’ve hit the jackpot. Such is the case with my dear friend, Kim. The deep mutual resonance reattunes us to the natural gravitational pull of our home neighborhood. The resulting velocity back towards that known common residence is experienced as love and the shared curiosity brings forth a delighted playfulness and a reinvigorated desire to explore. Looking out from this life into that deep resonance illuminates the entire pathway to and from that home, revealing past choices made, and paths taken, that were long ago forgotten. Prior choices that now appear to be impediments can be examined and explored for possible value, or conversion of their energies towards mutual exploration. In addition, the awesome vastness of the playground is revealed. Looking out together from our relative home in the universe puts us in the resonance range from which our original intent was formed. From that vantage point we can come to see more clearly the patterns and rules by which the playground operates, while still in this world, reigniting the joy of exploring together, both from unity and contrast. This also gives us the ability to tweak that original intent based on now sensing each other’s primal intent and within the now recognized contours of the playground that we are now living in and alive to.

Find a deep, resonant friend here on this planet and go exploring in this vast, awesome and multidimensional cosmos.

Kim:
I recall a cartoon that Gary Larsen, of the Far Side comic strip, drew. It is a room full of adults sipping martinis and socializing in a crowded room. Somewhere below the hubbub of conversation two short “aliens” recognize and point to each other from across the room. That is how Justin and I met.

Justin’s alien quality is more overt than mine, but we meet each other outside of this planet.

For whatever karmic reasons, I landed in an extraordinary family of spiritual seekers and was blessed with a unique childhood in countless ways. Despite this foundation, a Quaker upbringing, and exposure to remarkable spiritual elders, I somehow made it into a realm of normality. Except I didn’t… entirely. As my outer and inner worlds converged over time, my own, perhaps innate, alienness increasingly revealed itself. I found it more and more difficult to find close relationships that offered enough room for the complexity I brought.

In walked Justin. I read his book. I followed his blog. His cosmic language made sense to me (though foreign to many others). We don’t come from the same planet; in fact, we are almost entirely opposite in most aspects of our present beings. And yet we are intricately aligned. As Justin says above, we come from “a close energetic neighborhood”.

Somehow, Justin and I cross an unseen spiritual threshold. Even though our weekly zoom calls have subsided, that galactic connection is ever-present. I can feel our hands reaching out for each other across the room, across the universe, and we are one.