Have you noticed that when you like someone, I mean when you really really likesomeone, you may start to laugh like, walk like or dance like them? Have you considered lately all of the hundreds of people that you have met in your life of 20, 30, 40 or 88 years? How those hundreds of Authentic Spirits have influenced your life? How they have added to your personality, to your taste for food, to your choice of clothing or to your selection of music?

What I know is that I was not born to be on this Planet alone. My Authentic Personality is divinely my own, this is true, and yet it is 108 percent clear to me that my physical presence is a reflection of every single person I have ever met in my 31 years on this planet we all agree to call Earth.

When night falls sooner than I expected on a hike, the light vanishes and I have no choice but to make my way back to my car in the pitch black. At that moment, I embody Blind Maggie in Yelapa who cared for me as a child. When I gift someone chocolate, Bill Murphy is really the one gifting the dark sweet. When I laugh from my belly I become my father, but when I laugh from my heart I become my old friend Kaysi Contreras who’s laugh I have always thought the most divine sound to my ears. When I dance Sintè i become Youssouf Koumbassa, but when I hear the N’Goma drum, Shawna Yambire is suddenly in my feet. When I talk about Sudan, Farah Council is in my spirit and in my blood. When I dance with a 10 year old girl, Yeni Chavarìn is controlling my movement. When I teach a really epic dance class, it is truly Elise Gent who taught the class. When I make a pot of black beans, Esperanza is mixing in the salt. When I search the desert for lost Migrants from Central America and Mèxico, my 7th grade teacher Maestro Pedro from Yelapa is looking out of my eyes.

I am my Authentic Self. But I am made up of every single person I have ever loved in this life. I am my own Universe, but I am tenderly dressed in a quilt of every imaginable Authentic color and pattern who’s path, even if only for a day, has crossed my dusty-jungle-fringed Life-Trail.

I am me, but I am also you.

I am heartbreak gifted to me by a wild musician in Puerto Vallarta when I was 16. I am ecstatic joy awarded to me by 500 onlookers as I soloed at a Dununba dance ceremony in Conakry, West Africa. I am him. I am her. I am me. I feel so utterly free…

“I am more and more convinced that the next Buddha may not be just one person, but he may be a community, a community of love.” -Thich Nhat Hanh