I often feel like I don’t fit in. Into what? Conventional forms.

When I was in elementary school, I was often asked by students in other grades, “Are you a boy or a girl?” I secretly enjoyed the question but never gave an answer.

I went to Swarthmore College and dropped out after my sophomore year because I felt alienated from the philosophy department (where there was very little room for a personal voice), and I couldn’t see myself getting an academic degree in religion (would any of the mystics I loved have chosen to earn a degree in mysticism?).

I started my own company because there were no ready-made jobs that made any sense for me.

Two and a half decades later, I still feel “freaky” quite a bit of the time. I enjoy spending time with successful businesspeople (I learn a lot watching how their minds work) and yet I notice how different I feel from most entrepreneurs. Most businesspeople I meet evaluate a business in terms of its capacity to scale, its gross margins, and its mass appeal. I feel more like someone running a messenger service who wants to make sure there is a flow of income to support future delivery.

I have been a member of a practicing spiritual community for the past 8 years. Recently I had the experience of feeling like I didn’t fit in, even though the group welcomes all serious spiritual practitioners and has been my “tribe” for almost a decade. I felt like I didn’t fit in because a certain practice form is followed, level after level, and my inner experience is not tracking along with these levels in a linear way. The spiritual teacher of our community told me I was “atypical” and that I need to follow my own inner sense of how to practice. This was quite a relief. I could still be part of the group and be in my integrity. However, the whole process of discovering that I was not progressing “normally” was painful. It reminded me of all of the other times in my life when I have not fit in.

I have received many gifts from Sounds True authors over the years, but one of the most important gifts has come to me from Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés, best known as the author of Women Who Run with the Wolves. I first met CPE (as I call Dr. Estés) in 1987 when she was a guest on a radio show I hosted on KGNU, Boulder County Public Radio. CPE saw that I was not a “this” or a “that,” but something one-of-a-kind. She affirmed that in me, and I believe her work does that for many, many people.

In just a few days, CPE will be launching a new series of online events called Mother Night: Learning to See in the Dark” (you can listen to a new free podcast with CPE on “Diamonds In The Dark” if you want to get more of a sense of what she will be covering in this new series). For me, part of learning to see in the dark involves accepting my “freakdom” – accepting the fact that the conventional, daylight world does not hold my future. I can’t fit into a pre-made path – academic, business, or spiritual – and find my way. What I can do is descend into the darkness, into the unknown, into the never-before created and give birth to my own uniqueness. When I look at myself through the outside eyes of convention, I still sometimes feel like a “freak”. But when I look at myself with inner vision, seeing in the dark, I feel like a mystery—a geyser of unknown energy coming into form.

I could take this even further and say that one of the things that is needed now is for more and more people to descend into their own darkness and find the unprecedented expression of their individual life. The pre-made forms are obviously not working (and in fact are collapsing around us). Will you join me — by, of course, not joining with me, or with anyone or anything, but instead by giving birth to your own uniqueness?