Welcome back, and thank you for listening in!

In my last video, I said I "pity" atheists. I wanted to add nuance to what I meant by "pity," it's a word that doesn't quite capture my meaning, but it comes closest. There's no shame in a person holding any belief that's been heavily considered. Still, what information "adds up to" in a person's mind (the belief they choose) reflects what's in the heart. Again, no judgment, just observation.

The heart of atheism can too easily lead to despair. Despair means we've given up and can easily lose the will to live. As an advocate for living and living whole, atheism isn't an idea that I can contain or entertain.

People walking a spiritual path know the importance of believing in a Creator. And people who feel called to a spiritual path, but can't conceptualize a power greater than themselves, must contend with this: you have to believe in something.

As always, the video is after the jump and clicking the picture above will take you to the audio/only podcast.

Thank you for listening. I appreciate you.

Why does having a God concept matter?

It is the difference between today and tomorrow. The difference between then and now. Between despair and hope.

This video is the second in a series on Walking with God. The first step to developing a spiritual practice, deepening intuition, and finding happiness in life is developing a relationship with a higher power.

To develop a relationship with God, we first consider the reality of a higher power in the first place.

If you haven't already, watch the first video in this series, "Walk with God."

Click the photo to be taken to the audio-only podcast. Video below the jump.

If you like it, tell a friend about it. If you hate it, share it with someone you don't like.

Thank you for listening. I appreciate you.

There are three basic tenets for walking a spiritual path. No matter your religion, these elements are essential to your maintaining spiritual walk and loving relationship with God.

We're here on this planet, but we are not walking alone. If we want to go far in life, to be resilient in these trying times, to learn our lessons, we need to walk with God. To elevate our families, our planet, and one another—a basic spiritual walk is essential for basic healthy living. It is the beginning and end of everything we call our lives on Earth. Get into it!

These basic tenets are also essential foundations for developing intuition. If you want more of that, you need to have the basics down. Start here with the basics and keep adding.

Click the photo to be taken to the audio-only podcast. My first foray into video is below the jump.

If you like it, tell a friend about it. If you hate it, share it with someone you don't like. Thank you for listening. I appreciate you.

“Curious” is sometimes a euphemism for “nosey” isn’t it? It’s a polite way to indicate that someone's need to know borders on the impolite. But those impolite answer seekers are people we depend on to help to understand our world. Non-fiction writers (and their readers), journalists, researchers, interviewers, historians, anthropologists—they all make their living getting into other people’s business.

Having worn all those hats at one point or another, I just pled guilty to 7 counts of occupational nosiness.

My favorite topics are those that make people squeamish, giggly, or both. I love stories of virginity lost or given away, first dates, bad dates, birth stories, pregnancy stories, embarrassing moments, arch-rivalries gone too far. But the most precious jewels in the chest of things-people-don’t-like-to-talk-about are the mundane unseen things: How do you pray? How do you hold onto faith when you feel hopeless? What songs make you happy? What are you most proud of? If you could do over any one moment, what would you do differently? How come doing it the way you did makes you a better version of who you are?

Resilience, religion/spirituality, loss, gain, hope, fear. I think what Team Curious really would like to say is:

We want a road map. It may not be the path we choose to follow ourselves, but we want to know that being human and thriving through mistakes and overcoming all the mess life can throw at us is possible. We want to know that the grass really is the same green everywhere.

So, we ask the "impolite" question. We shamelessly mind your business. Our service to humanity is to remind ourselves and each other that we're all (what are we at eight now?) eight billion shades of human. And that is perfectly okay.

You're welcome. ^_^

Fake Fact: 100% of Empresses and Queens spend 90% of their days just being a woman.

After the two hours of court business is complete for the day, she goes to her private chambers and removes her crown. In those precious moments alone with herself, she makes nourishing foods; she prays and dances furiously to the beating of the palace drums. Sitting in her window, gazing into the distance, she daydreams, longing for moments past, and conjuring myriad possible futures.

"Surveying the kingdom," her aides think, but she knows better.

Sometimes, she indulges in childhood pleasures, which are really womanly pleasures, for we were all once young girls. Colors, candies, caresses, clothes all infuse her daily rituals with delight.

Around the fire at night, she tells and listens to bawdy, silly stories, and in moments of pure bliss, she throws her head back, filling the courtyard with her laughter.

Even though such a title implies you see and acknowledge my divinity, I think it also implies that you may not be able to see, tend to, or accept my humanity. A queen sits up on a pedestal. She leads, she makes decisions, she's always in giving mode. Someone has to repay her. Her connection to the Divine refills her, but what about the parts of her you take that come from her own stores?

Men who use the words “queen” and “empress” also tend to use them selectively. As if these men have been crowned with the power to judge and assign women status according to their own criteria of a woman. Only certain types of women are worthy of love, respect, and honor. Any woman who doesn't make the cut is disparaged, discarded, and renamed: golddigger, hussy, chickenhead, ho, bitch.

One of my former favorite rappers comes from this category of men. He's always on and on about “queens” vs “bitches" and how one is worthy of the utmost respect and the others get whatever they get. Sometimes, I get the impression the woman he calls a "queen" in one song, becomes the woman he calls "bitches" in the next.

What makes one woman a queen and one woman a bitch? A woman who speaks her mind, who uses men for their money and power instead of making her own? A woman who hurts the people around her with her words? An aggressive woman? A woman who simply wouldn’t let a man treat her however he wanted to treat her based on some criteria she didn't create in a world rife with circumstances beyond her control? A woman he trusted because she was fine, but he didn't he dind't have any other vetting criteria? A woman who would stand up when he'd rather she lie down? A woman who asked to be on top for once? A woman who had the nerve to defy or deny a man who didn't meet her standards when he thought he was God's gift to everybody?

Those women aren’t bitches--they are simply human. And like every other human on the planet, they sometimes exhibit behaviors, patterns, and choices that come out of an uncovered, unhealed pain or an unmet, unexpressed need. (I could argue here that an unhealed pain is simply an undiscovered one and to discover it is to set healing in motion, but that’s another article writing itself.)

Don’t let my kinky hair, this incense wafting off my clothes, my tone of voice, or my draped fabrics in bright patterns make you think I don’t have anything in common with the women you call bitches. I am a woman. I am a human. I sometimes make choices or act out programmed behaviors that result from an unresolved pain or an unmet need that no one ever taught me it was okay to have and express, let alone that I deserve to have it fulfilled. That I don't have to scream, cry, or steal for it. & with the right person, all I need to do is ask. Expect. Wait. Receive.

They don't got a school for that. It's called "being human."

Because I am a woman, and I am human, I have needs and I have a past that I'm healing from.

See my divinity, know that God's got me, but also see my romantic desires for what they really are: basic human needs. My desires to be seen, held, loved, accepted, understood, and tended to are rooted in my humanity. Every human being needs these things. Isn't that why you're so pressed for a "queen" or "empress" in the first place?

Your real aim is to get closer to the Divine and receive the fulfillment only she can provide. Isn't the royal woman, the Divine Woman, the Goddess the paragon of giving until you are fulfilled your emotional, physical, mental, and spiritual needs and she still has plenty left over for when you come crawling back? (Who is the golddigger now?)

(Message from the cat: .jk2wq)

Divinity, on the other hand, doesn't require love from you, human. Devotion is for your benefit. To become closer to divinity, you must worship, honor, and respect Her, for your own survival and fulfillment. Divinity doesn't require those offerings from you in order to make it whole, to make it come alive, to make it flourish. Divinity exists in wholeness with or without you. She only asks that you go outward and share the love she gave to you with another, for it will lead them back to Her.

Do you know who does need your love, honor, affection, and devotion to flourish?

Woman.

So I stand before you as a woman, not your queen, not your empress, not your Goddess.
A representation of Divine Love, yes.
But a woman, a human, nonetheless.

tl;dr: a woman, no matter how Queenly or Divine or Empressive, is still a woman, a human with a past and with needs. Proceed accordingly.