Agreed Luke. Everything changes when we get clear on who we are, and then start expressing it - out loud. 🙏🏽🙌🏽 And it's most certainly easier when you have the means to self support, or even better, a community that supports you being you . When we are relying on a job, a boss, a parent, a spouse etc for support or self esteem support (aka approval) then we feel like we should just play nice, keep our nose clean and our mouths shut and just play along with the game of life to get the support. So I absolutely agree with you that this freedom you and I share to fully express ourselves out loud is a first world privilege. It's hard not to feel gratitude for our predicament every day. 🙏🏽

You seem to have a strong innate desire to help those less fortunate than you, and I love that about you. I have seen that desire show itself in other posts and comments you've made, so I sense this is something deeply a part of who you are? I too have long had an innate drive that my life somehow benefits others. But I sense a difference in our philosophies. Please forgive me if I'm reading you wrong Luke, but what I hear you saying is that people like us who are awake, and first world privileged, that we are morally responsible to try and directly use our gains (mentally, financially, or somehow) to pull others up from the bottom. Or at least that you personally feel this way... That those on the bottom of the Socio economic ladder don't have the means to lift themselves, like we do, and therefore must be rescued.

But my experience is that things don't work that way. I used to have the idea that I could just give and lift...and for years I personally supported, encouraged, financed and mentored numerous friends and family towards having a better life. For YEARS I've paid off their debts, given them the specific material items they said they needed in order to change, outright just fed them cash for years, and even moved friends into live with me who "just" needed shelter. Spent innumerable hours holding their hands as they talked through their shit and cried on my shoulder... I have almost been like a homeless pet shelter for the downtrodden humans that I loved. It seems I attract folks like this because I wanted to help people so much. But almost every time nothing I could do would make their shit go away. I could not raise them up. The only way out is through, and only they can do the work to get them through. IMO the single greatest thing we can do to help the world is work on ourselves and not hide. Me, us, them ...all. To know our self, and then, to be that. Knowing and being your true self IS the pebble in the water that impacts those around you. You're right. It doesn't impact those folks way out there at the edges who need it most. But working on ourself is everyone's best hope and those directly around you are positively impacted by you being more you...and they impact their friends, and their friends impact their own relationships and so on expansively like the ripples across the pond from that 1st pebble. Help is not reaching out to scoop up the outliers and bring them in. Has to come from the initial source first, otherwise it's reverse rippling and that just doesn't happen in nature. (Is that a Naturalistic fallacy like I hear Sean talk about? Idk, but you get what I mean. 😉)

I can't argue with the goodness of your heart or your intentions. I know you as a very brilliant and very kind human who genuinely wants to help others, and I love you for that. Maybe I should reach out and focus more on lifting other people up vs continue to only think about seeing myself more clearly. But all we can each do is trial and error through the methods that best resonate with each one of us. Truth probably lies somewhere in the middle in that each method works best in differing circumstances.