According to dictionary.com, pros-per-i-ty is defined as a "successful, flourishing or thriving condition, especially in financial respects." Prosperity can also refer to good fortune. However, there are a few truths found within plain old fashioned "luck" - one of which is the heartbreaking inequity of life as we know it. Luck and fortune can be foretold at birth, much like the Oedipal story that predestines a man's life to fate. Where one is born and to whom both affects and alters the paths we choose as well as the choices we make along the way. I have been fortunate to have luck on my side ever since I last came into this current existence (back on October 21st, 1976 in a suburb of Toronto, Ontario, Canada).
Although luck has always smiled sweetly upon me, I have certainly had to trudge through my own fair share of mucky shit and into the deep mires of human suffering in order to arrive here, n-o-w. It hasn't always been pretty. In fact, there have been times that have been down right ugly and painful. Nonetheless, they have led me to where I am, n-o-w - which is claiming PROSPERITY as not just my own birthright but as yours, too. As staking a rightful claim to PROSPERITY for ALL San Diegans in a city where skyscrapers are popping up at an indeterminable speed and, yet, the everyday person is being sold news that their city is near broke and unable to pay for healthy human services, such as shelters for the homeless, libraries for the youth, and senior centers for our elderly, among other things. For this reason, and many more, prosperity - today, right n-o-w - is a dire necessity.
I've spent most of my adult life not really believing that I deserved to fulfill all of the dreams that I have spent a lifetime dreaming of or to give myself the fighting chance to, at least, die trying. I have spent too many hours at jobs that fed a consumer way of life while leaving my spirit parched and my soul withered. I have slaved through 9-5 days of carrying a capitalist economy on my strong back while earning mere pennies for paying the rent and other supposed necessities. I have succumbed to the numbing coma of must do's and gotta have's. I have committed to others out of tradition and societal mores even as our relationships sucked the energetic life force right out of my beating heart.
At some point, the soul aches. My spirit cries, "Basta!" "Enough!" Enough of the madness and the subjugation. Enough of not believing in me and my Goddess-given rights and talents. Enough of following the crowd simply because doing otherwise would render me different or "weird."
Yes, enough.
This is enough.
This moment, n-o-w.
The shopping malls fill with silent footfalls as the music keeps marching time.
What we seek cannot be bought, or sold. What we seek - what our deepest of hearts truly long for and desire - is not found with-out. It is within you, n-o-w. It is your racing pulse, your pumping blood and your lightness of be-ing. It is the gifts that brought you here, n-o-w, to share with the magnanimous world around you. Offer up your sweet fruit, whatever that may be. A twisted sense of humor, a brilliant smile, a helping hand. Keep offering until you don't think you can offer any more. And, then, get up tomorrow and do it all over again. This, my friend, is not just PROSPERITY ~ it's LOVE. It's why we're here. All else pales in comparison. When we finally learn this is when the thriving, flourishing state of true health-wealth follows.
May it BE
and so it is.
