Simply Alanis Morissette

Maranda Pleasant : Envy and hate are the same. I’ve never thought about that.

Alanis Morissette : Anytime there’s separatism going on. It happens all the time, because the illusion before us is that we are separate. It gives us this sense of egoic identity, which is lovely in its own way. But it’s almost like that’s step one in a four step process. Because step one is the story, the separation and the individuation and the dualism. I think Neale Donald Walsh nailed that so hard in his Conversations with God series.

The next step is, as Eckhart Tolle says, this further dis-identification from this egoic story— as lovely as it is and as entertaining as it is, for us to continue to step back. I notice that when I feel the most disconnected, once I’m done blaming the moon and everything else, I can see that I am so mired in identification with form and ego and story and identity, and that if I want to, I can read some scripture or read some spiritual book or pray or meditate or sit in the sun or hang around the birds and the dogs, and get a real objective sense of what’s really going on here. That usually softens things. There’s a way for me to quickly return back, and that’s usually praying and meditating and journaling. Which are decidedly feminine, those are feminine approaches.