25 Things About Me

This was a recent "game" going around on Facebook.

If you'd love to share your 25 things, please post them as a comment to this post!!!

Here are my 25 things:

1. There are currently 2275 people in my Microsoft Outlook contacts.
2. I cry often.
3. I feel deeply, and I am learning to appreciate this exquisite gift.
4. I love the beautiful peace lily that I have in my dorm room.
5. I love Facebook.
6. Singing brings me more joy than just about anything else I can think of.
7. I am constantly amazed by both the similarities and eccentricities of people.
8. Traveling is a state of mind for me, and has taught me most of what I know.
9. I prefer to spend most of my time with other women.
10. I experience every day is an epic adventure.
11. Every day, I trust myself a little more fully, and that is one of the most exciting things I can think of.
12. I love writing my blog. http://erinpillman.blogspot.com
13. I am learning to listen to my heart more and my head less.
14. My heart is tender and sensitive, and I cannot remember a moment in my life when it did not ache.
15. I have had to edit #1 about five times since I started writing this because the number keeps getting bigger.
16. Raw chocolate, avocados, berries, and coconuts, are some of my favorite foods.
17. Practicing Yoga with my teacher Dharma Mittra while eating a 99% raw vegan diet in 2006 in New York City transformed my being more quickly and profoundly than anything else I have done.
18. I yearn for so many things – complete union with the divine, fulfilling livelihood, a sense of purpose, a close circle of women friends, singing in front of large audiences, feeling fully supported and empowered, a deeper connection with Nature, growing my own food, living in a place where I feel that I truly belong, living more simply…
19. I’m constantly alarmed by all the plastic I see everywhere.
20. I wonder if our species will die out because we are acting like such idiots.
21. I don’t know where I want to live, or if I want to be in school next semester (which starts in a week), but I’m only mildly concerned.
22. I am in the process of recording a children’s album with Lynwood King, the dean of my university.
23. I am a certified yoga instructor, but I have not taught yoga in a couple of years.
24. I want to start singing and sharing my own music – be the star of my own show – touch people’s hearts – inspire and uplift audiences – bare my soul on stage.
25. I am really glad that I am me.

Nature

I am reading "Anastasia", the first book in The Ringing Cedar Series, and it is so much fun to live in her fantasy while I am reading it, but the moment I put the book down and look around me at the reality in which I live, I feel downright depressed.

Oh, how I yearn to prance daintily and blithely through the forest, without a care in the world, knowing that the abundance of the universe will never run out, and that I will always have everything I need.

In this fantasy, magic is everywhere, and so obvious and wondrous to behold.

I imagine running though the forest, with utmost ease and grace, with butterflies and breezes tickling my nose, and fairies blessing my every move.

I dream of living harmoniously with Nature, in the truest, purest sense. To sleep in the arms of the Mother, lovingly resting my head in her soft grasses, as the luminous heavenly bodies sprinkle stardust and starlight upon my sleeping body.

And to awake to rays of sunshine dancing upon the sparkling, pristine waters of the rivers and lakes that have not yet been touched by man. This is where I spend my days swimming, dancing, singing, praying, and rejoicing in the goodness of God's Creation.

I long to eat the nourishing food that the Earth provides, just as she provides it, in its pure form, without the temptations of the many processed foods that I am bombarded with everyday.

I want to leave behind all these pressures to succeed and to "be somebody" and to earn a living and be a productive member of society.

I yearn for all of these things, and yet, here I sit, at my computer, connecting with people in such an artificial way. Blogs, Facebook, MySpace...such superficial ways of connecting. I am starved for human touch, as I sit here at the computer, reading the words of other human beings, but not sharing space with them.

So maybe I should just go live in the forest somewhere. I'm sure there is an intentional community somewhere where I could go live close to the Earth. But there is a part of me that will never be satisfied with a simple life like that.

I have grown to love airplanes, although perhaps if I lived a simpler life, I would have more time to practice astral travel. I have grown to love eating exotic foods that come from far away, although perhaps if I grew my own food, those desires would just melt away. I grown to love the Internet, although it's just a manifestation of the interconnectedness that already exists between all people.

This "progress" of the industrial age and now the information age does not seem like progress to me. It seems primitive at best, and pales in comparison with the infinite, innate, divine qualities and abilities that humans had before we forgot that we had them. Part of me remembers these qualities. Part of me still possesses some of them. And tears run down my face as I contemplate what we have lost in the name of "progress."

Oh, it is a sad state that we live in - being a modern day human being. Or maybe not. It's all a matter of perspective.

But the way that I am seeing it right now, I feel very, very, very far from home, and I see no possible way of returning to the simple life that my ancestors enjoyed. And it feels very, very sad.

"How happy is the little stone
that rambles in the road alone
and doesn't care about careers
and exigencies never fears
whose coat of elemental brown
a passing universe put on
and independent as the sun
associates or glows alone
fulfilling absolute decree
in casual simplicity."
-Emily Dickinson