Yesterday morning my daughter hopped into bed with me, snuggled in tight then asked me what she was in a past life.

Me: You believe in past lives? (We had never discussed this.)

Marlie: Yeah, I think I was a cat lover.

Me: Or a cat. That could be why you like them so much. But you know, time is a human construct. Truly there are no past lives as they’re all happening right now. But it’s easier for our human minds to process linear experiences.

Marlie: You were a star. Then an angel. Then a peacock and then human. Probably, a queen.

Me: You might be on to something little one. But I definitely wasn’t a queen in the monarchy sense. (minus the peacock and nobility—for which both are symbolically one in the same— she just described the lineage of Lux – the angel I’m writing about in Glow. Which, truly, is a repackaging of my own soul’s journey.)

Morning time has always been one of magic and connection. When she was three she asked where we go after we die and wanted to know more about the land of spirit. We had never discussed spirit either.

The only thing that popped into my head was that I wanted coffee. Scratch that, I needed coffee, before even beginning to answer that question. As the parent we always want to answer. And mine was: I don’t know.

I shared with her that I have beliefs and ideas. But I don’t know. Then followed that up with the fact that I had never been dead before.

Do any of us know? Nope.

We think we do. We have ideas. We hold onto beliefs.

And while I was more open to spiritual things back then. It was still so new to me. I previously felt that spirituality or religion were for those people who needed. And I wasn’t one of those people.

I can only laugh at that now. I understand how I felt in that what I had seen as spirituality and religion were not something for which I wanted any part of. For two main reasons. One, it just didn’t make sense. No proof. And two, look where religion and spirituality have gotten us?

Wars, oppression, the great divide between those who have and those who don’t. Much harm in the name of their God or religion.

No thank you, I didn’t want to be a part of that.

But I’ve come to believe that we all wired for what has been filled by what we call spirituality or religion.

It’s a feeling.

Not a thinking. And often, in thinking, we disconnect from the feeling to capture the essence via words or thought.

It’s another part of our self that has been drilled out of us and placed outside of us.  The lie being that we have to do anything to connect to that which is our deepest essence guiding and loving each of us along.

But I get that too, in a sense. Even I felt it wasn’t necessary. Except I hadn’t experienced it in the way I’ve come to intrinsically know.

And I know not from a book or a weekend retreat or even from what others have told me. I know because I’ve experienced and continue to experience this connection.

It flows to me and through me. It is just as much a part of me as my lips, eyes, voice or thoughts.

It’s more than a prayer or mantra or manifestation.

It’s a way of being. Which doesn’t have to be some lofty ideal, but the simple act of opening up to the connections that are already present.

When I say we’re wired for this, I mean our brain is literally wired to experience life and live this way.

From the earliest times when primitive folk created cave paintings with motion to capture the animating force that courses through each one of us to right now when so many of us are searching for that something that calls and nudges us along whispering, “there is more to you than what you already know.”

From time-to-time we tap in. But to truly live from that presence, more than a rock skipping along the river surface, we have to dip, then dive, in.

Because, there is a you before you knew yourself. And to know that self you must let go of the knowledge you define as self to find the source.

Are you ready?