There can only be one dream and that dream requires you to dream of being you so that I can be me. In that space of you being you and me being me, we will find ourselves as one.

Things add up differently when you look at the world with your heart. Where there is just one flower somehow you can see depth in its petals and memories in its smell that seem to speak beyond the singularity of how we are taught to experience the number one.

I remember knowing this when I was a child. Nothing about the number one seemed to add up to the voluminous experiences of me just being me. Because of this I always experienced the world as we. I moved through the world that way, and as I did so, I would be so confused about those who would ever think that I was doing a thing to hurt them, as if I would ever breathe without them.

It took me years to name my confusion, and when the words came to me it was so easy to see where all the traps had been set for humans to fear their collective existence. My soul asked me a simple question: “Can they not see that we all are we?” In that breath, it became even clearer that people were only turned towards the numbers in their brains, without the connectedness in their hearts, that they were literally only seeing, experiencing, and feeling one as 1.

I could feel the terror of one all around me. The anxiety it conjures. The frustrations that exist in a more disconnected world. The constant uphill battle and neverending climb of a desire to be seen in a collective that seems to be buzzing all around me but that I can’t seem to find the door to. The not-knowingness of where to even begin to get anyone to know that I am here, and the feelings of insufficiency that I could ever have enough to make it all the way into that world that seems so outside of me, without losing my ever-loving self.

Then, this butterfly fluttered by, lifting itself up and over the tufts of wind in a way that seemed to call me back into my body and right out of it, like a wink from the universe. I felt like I had seen a star. I remember feeling the soft breeze of its mighty wings across my cheeks just before it called me out of the depths of the neural pathways in my brain and back into my soul. My heart smiled with gratitude for the sweet simple reminder that no one exists alone. Stars are everywhere and all around.

The butterfly and I were one. And, in that oneness, we were divinely connected. When I move through the world with heart, I see the divine connections in all living things coming towards me, moving past me and even those leaving my space. I receive it all with the gratitude of knowing that every star has a divine purpose. I am curious about the calls of the universe that the squirrel along the fence has to offer. What the calls of the cardinal that I seem to hear everywhere I go are actually saying? And what blessings am I receiving from the magnificent hawk that seems to only visit when no one else is around?

Seeing stars all around me all the time, I am curious about my own purpose and what message my soul carries. That is how I am always connected into a world of curiosity, wonderment, and delight. It is like the outside world slows down and I can catch a breath on that which is most important in a way that I honor the purpose that I serve in life and the universe. Like water, I flow through the world with great purpose carrying an energy that drives my flow that cannot be constrained by life outside of me.

If, on the other hand, I follow the noise of life that pulls me out of my breath, I might become lost in my brain just as quickly as anyone else chasing after things that don’t really matter and trying to find solutions for life’s challenges that seem to always be just out of my sight. Stay in my heart where my breath is constantly called into greater awareness as I accept the invitations to share space with butterflies, squirrels, deer, hummingbirds, trees, flowers, and all of the living things around me, and it feels like I am guided through life, from one breath to the next, in a way that illuminates even the darkest of skies with such brilliance that I constantly feel like I am in the sun. I breathe in. I breathe out.

It becomes so easy to choose heart over brain when tapped into all of the ways in which the universe is connected. 1+1 may be two in my brain, but in my heart, it is three, for I see all around me the divine connections that we all share.