Colourful Chameleon, it's most encouraging to read what you say. No matter how we regard our spiritual selves, we still have to live out our time on the physical plane and engage in what's necessary to survive. We strive, we have our earthly ambitions but there will always be obstacles simply because we can't organise everything to fit in with our particular whimsies.

Nature....Yes, we are part of the physical ecology. It's a system in the real sense, everything functionally interrelated. Every time we humans impinge on it we force it to readjust and one day those readjustments will simply give up trying to support humanity. Until we respect it and admit we are just components within it, it'll serve us increasingly poorly. We will never dominate it any more than a germ in a culture dish can dominate the experiment that put it there.

The rising of personal spirituality was something predicted long ago and has been associated with the arrival of the Age of Aquarius - rightly or wrongly, fact or fiction - but it was epitomised in Aleister Crowley's received teaching in 1904: Every man and every woman is a star. Individuality is the new order.

It opened the gates for many new gurus some of whom saw a chance to cash in on the failure of orthodox religions with some of their own slants on the underlying drivers of humanity - but without thinking things through. With the best will in the world they can't hope to match wisdoms evolved over millennia. Some were pronounced outright fakes - Lobsang Rampa, for instance, although a wonderfully inspirational person who did in fact help many, he was not what he claimed to be. Was he a fake? I could never decide.

Deepak Chopra was shown for what he is by a reporter in the Guardian (newspaper), who concluded the man wished he could believe the things he was trying to teach others to believe.

Some people imported Hindu practices (on the cheap, in my view). This chakra thing, for instance. What passes in the west for this etheric energy maintenance is a faint shadow of its root (which, although I know no more than many here, I did bother to read the somewhat difficult Arthur Avalon (Woodroffe) which told me that I really didn't know! That one can condense perhaps years of study into a couple of months of glib practice is risible. Disappointment is inevitable.

But there it is. There's evidently a vast amount to "life" more than just the physical. We have imagination, creative abilities, dream worlds; we have powers and can change our relations with our environments. If so disposed we can reach into our Mysteries.

Some people awaken one day and want to extricate themselves from the unfortunate stresses of getting though their days - the life-frittering, soul-destroying work they're forced to do just to eat and keep a roof over their head. Going back to nature wouldn't entirely give us peace but people wouldn't get themselves trapped in satanic stuff like materialism, being puppets to the consumerist High Priesthood, the worship of worthless celebrities and still bowing to the now distorted conventions of a society that no longer coheres.

My own background was none too salubrious and it took finding a "real me" to break from its ravages (an ongoing process obviously) but I am one of those stars Crowley spoke about, as you are, and your journey sounds to have fulfilled a lot. You said it in your closing words, as without so within...and I suppose what we can refine within us thus will be refined without...and vice versa.