Wendy K. Laidlaw

That have been predetermined by parents and family and community and culture.

Because as we said earlier, the culture will tell someone that they have to be more manly or more womanly when that person may have a completely different plan inside.

Or the fish inside them may have a different idea.

And so our real job in life is to transform that.

And because the world is falling apart, because we live in mythological terms, sometimes they call it the dark times or in India, the Kali Yuga, a long dark period.

And the unusual thing about being alive now is nature is rattling while culture is unraveling.

That's very historically unusual.

And the psyche knows it.

Just the way the psyche knows that the moon is in its phases, kind of whether we're paying attention or not, the psyche, even if we cut the news out, the psyche can feel that something's wrong in the world.

And so when the world is changing rapidly and even collapsing strongly, we can't look to the outside world for security or for centering.

We have to look inside, which is really cool because inside everybody, there is a genius primed to wake up and express itself fully.

But, oh, wait a minute, there's a problem.

inside everybody there's an ego that is afraid of the waking up of the self and that wants to keep everything in the same kind of pots and plants and places and we are all challenged to to not restrict ourselves by the ego and its pretensions of knowledge and its pretensions of understanding

And somehow trust that, and we know it as parents, each child is unique when they come into the world.

You know, I have several children and they're utterly unique.

And even as a father, I could tell that within weeks of meeting the little one.

And we're here to live that uniqueness out.

And that's what we're here to do.

And if we can't do that, then we become victims of the world around us.

And the world around us is very threatening and troubling now.