Friday, May 01, 2015

Voice of the One

It is taught in Celtic Witchcraft that there are 3 states of evolving magical consciousness (and conditions of Being) known as the Voice of the Many, the Voice of the Few and the Voice of the One.

The first condition of magical awareness crossing the threshold from the Otherworld is the Voice of the Many, a cacophony and sea of ancestral voices, some of which call out for vengeance against past wrongs. The test of this first condition is to resist these calls and to screen out all voices but those which have meaning for your current life and life task.

The second condition of magical awareness is the Voice of the Few. In this state of Being you encounter spiritual teachers who can guide you in your life's work.
The third and most evolved condition of magical awareness is the Voice of the One. This is the voice of the Sacred Land of the world, the First Ones embodied in the land, and the Original primal parents not of this world.

The Voice of the Sacred Land of Antarctica is the One Voice I followed in my recent dream - the Sacred Land of the First Ones of my primordial ancestral anthropoid primate line incarnate during the Eocene "dawn" of the human primate family.

Africa Not the Birthplace of Early Anthropoid Primates

New fossil finds suggest that Africa is not the original birthplace of EARLY ANTHROPOID PRIMATES - and I'll bet that one day we'll find that "out of Antarctica" preceded "out of Asia" for our own ancient anthropoid primate line.

New Fossil Points To 'Out of Asia' Theory

The origin of anthropoids — the simians, or "higher primates," which include monkeys, apes and humans — has been debated for decades among scientists. Although fossils unearthed in Egypt have long suggested that Africa was the cradle for anthropoids, other bones revealed in the last 15 years or so raised the possibility that Asia may be their birthplace. ..
An international team of scientists has unearthed a new fossil in Southeast Asia that may prove that anthropoids originated in what is now the East, shedding light on a pivotal step in primate and human evolution ... The fossil is named Afrasia djijidae ...
The teeth of 37-million-year-old Afrasia closely resemble those of another early anthropoid, the 38-million-year-old Afrotarsius libycus, recently discovered in the Sahara Desert of Libya. The anthropoids in Libya were far more diverse at that early time in Africa than scientists had thought, which suggested they actually originated elsewhere. The close similarity between Afrasia and Afrotarsius now suggests that early anthropoids colonized Africa from Asia.

Significantly, these two anthropoids (Afrasia and Afrotarsius) are 37 million and 38 million years old, respectively. The Eocene epoch lasted from 56 to 33.9 million years ago, so the first 18 million years of anthropoid primate evolution during Eocene epoch is unaccounted for - Antartctica could have been the home of our earliest anthropoid primate ancestors during those first 18 million years of the Eocene. No anthropoid primate fossil aged earlier than 38 million years ago have been found (to date) in either Asia or Africa - go Antarctica!

The scientific evidence for an Antarctic origin for our earliest anthropoid primate ancestors just keeps piling up!

My ancestors, even my not-yet-human ones are freaking awesome! and their voices still live in me!

Eocene Primate Anthropoids

In follow-up to my previous post (Soul Migration to Primordial Antarctica), on Eocene primate evolutionary origins:

The other group of haplorhine primates, anthropoids (from which monkeys, apes, and humans evolved), also first appears in the Eocene fossil record. Over the past 25 years in particular, our knowledge of anthropoid origins has expanded greatly due to new fossil discoveries. A number of these putative fossil anthropoids, however, are quite controversial and are the source of much debate. The geographic origin of anthropoids is also a contentious issue, with competing theories alternatively suggesting either Asia or Africa as the most likely source.

Of course, since Antarctica has since been in the grip of glacial ice sheets for millions of years, we wouldn't be aware of any Eocene primate fossils lurking there buried in the land now buried under the ice.

How did the first primordial primates make it to all of the diverse continents of the world? Right before the Eocene, all of the continents we know today were still joined together into a supercontinent called Gondwana - and at the beginning of the Eocene (when the earliest ancestral anthropoid primate line first evolved), Anarctica was still joined to Australia and South America.

By the beginning of the Eocene, Gondwana had ALMOST split apart, but Australia, Antarctica and South America remained joined. The Antarctic portion of Gondwana straddled the South Pole but because the global climate was warmer it was free of ice and snow. A forested corridor linked Australia and South America.

Genetic memory tells me that our earliest ancestral primate line first evolved in Antarctica, and science has no significance evidence to the contrary of what my genetic memory has revealed to me. Equally significantly, science does support the plausible possibility that what my genetic memory has revealed could in fact be true - First, during the Eocene, Antarctica was a warm forest covered land quite capable of hosting early primate (anthropoid) evolution. Second, during the Eocene early primates are known by science to have inhabited every major warm continent currently amenable to exploration by fossil hunters. Third, warm forested Eocene Antarctica was still joined to continents proven by science to have hosted early primate evolution - so a physical way for early primates to migrate to and/or inhabit Antarctica did in fact exist during the Eocene epoch. Consequently, there is no reason to suppose that ancient warm Antarctica (like the rest of the ancient major warm continents) did not also host primate evolution as did the others. In fact, the known scientific facts support that Antarctica very likely also hosted early primate evolution.

In summary, the known facts of science support the plausibility and good scientific probability that my shamanic dream experience delivered to me information, critically evaluated in the light of scientific rationality, more likely to be true than not true.

Soul Migration To Primordial Antarctica

I had the strangest dream last night - my soul flew to and hovered over primordial Antarctica (like many earthly creatures return to their places of origin during periodic migratory journeys). In the dream, Antarctica was the original source (even long before becoming "human") of my unfolding existence as a creature of the earth and I had returned to it. Odd.

These facts about Antarctica are interesting - during the Eocene epoch Antarctica was an area covered in warm rainforests, not ice sheets. The Eocene epoch is also notable for the "dawn" of modern ('new') fauna - new evolutionary forms of creatures upon the earth - so perhaps in my dream my soul was returning to the "dawn" of the evolutionary line which would eventually give rise to humans and to me. During the Eocene epoch, the earliest members of the order of primates evolved - cool! I think my dream (and very deep genetic memory) is revealing to me that my earliest primate ancestors first evolved in Antarctica.

Sunday, December 28, 2014

New Genetic Analyses

I've been playing with updated GEDmatch analyzers (of my raw genetic data) and here are some of my results! These results pretty much confirm what I already know about myself - that I am predominantly Northern and Northwestern European. The second image also supports my Anglo-Saxon ancestry as a primary one for me as I am genetically closer to the West German (historical territory of the Angles and Saxons) population than to any other, with Southwest England (the English Anglo-Saxon kingdom) coming in second. Although the next orders vary a bit depending on the type of analysis, then comes the Norweigian Viking contribution. Then comes North Sea Celto-Germanics (Saxons and Celts in the area of the Dutch Netherlands) contribution. Then comes Swedish and Danish Viking contributions. Then comes the Gaelic-Celtic contribution. So, even though my interpretation is simplistic, this explains why I am most drawn to the pantheon of my Germano-Scandinavian ancestry than to any others - I am mostly Germanic (Anglo-Saxon-Scandinavian) with Celtic contributions coming in a close second.

Northern & Northwestern European

Western German & English Anglo-Saxon, Norweigian Viking, North Sea Celto-Germanic, Swedish and Danish Vikings, Gaelic-Celtic

Northern & Northerwestern European

Northern & Northwestern European

Wednesday, December 17, 2014

My Upper Paleolithic Lappish Peculiarities

Me at various ages.

I often write about my Saami (Scandinvaian Lapplanders) ancestors, but my U5b1b1-T16192C! motherline is most likely proto-Saami (although my motherline is also found among the Saami without the extra mutation), as most (but not all) modern Saami carry 1 extra mutation at np 16144 that I don't carry. The defining Saami-specific motif mutation at np 16144 is believed to have split off from my motherline about 4000 years before the present. So, my motherline and the Saami (also known as Lapps) shared a common ancestor (and were of a common genetic people) at least over 4000 years ago.

This being understood, given the high likelihood that I inherited my short 5'2" stature from my circumpolar Lapplander ancestors, the proto-Saami/Lapps, I decided to evaluate other features of myself I may have inherited from these ancestors.

First, my ash blonde hair - while I am also a mixture of Nordic (Germanic Anglo-Saxon-Fennoscandian-Keltic) European racial stocks (where blondism is common), blondism is also found among pure Lapps (without Nordic admixture). When blondism is found among pure Lapps, it is ashen blonde. Ash blonde hair is characteristic of Lapps found in Finland and the Kola Penninsula.

Lapp hair is usually thick and wavy, mine is fine and straight - so while my hair color may have come from my Lapp ancestry, it's texture most likely did not. So, it's still unclear to me if my blondism came from my Lappish or Nordic ancestors.

Graying comes late for Lapps. I haven't a gray hair on my head yet, even at 53 years old, so this physical trait may be Lappish.

Second, my eyes, both color and character - while pure dark eyes are found in Reindeer Lapps and in a few in Norway, fairer light-mixed green-cast brown irises in eyes like mine are also common among Lapps of Finland. (My eyes are lighter than they appear in the attached monochrome photos).

Increasingly, based on my Lappish phenotypic traits, it looks like my proto-Lappish ancestors lived in or migrated specifically to the area of circumpolar Finland.

Not so much as an adult (though still minimally present), but more pronounced during one portion of my childhood, my eyes have a mild fold of skin slightly above my eyelid (see red arrows in attached photo) - this fold is a Lappish trait - it is not a Mongoloid epicanthic fold which covers the inner corner of the eye - according to Schreiner's detailed study of Lapp craniology, it "signifies that the original ancestral Lapps represented a stage in the evolution of both Upper Paleolithic Europeans and Mongoloids (in other words, the eye fold.characteristic of the Lapps is a trait which developed among homo sapiens predating the racial split between Europids and Mongoloids) .. In view of the Upper Paleolithic white and of mongoloids, this divergence of the Lapps from the others must have taken place as early as the Laufen glacial retreat*. Their area of specialization was presumably Western Siberia. Their specialization there shows little interference (from other genetic groups). From there they spread over Finland and northwestern Russia, then to Scandinavia during the first millennium CE". Scientists further write that "some of the Lappish peculiarities may have been common possessions of the Upper Paleolithic peoples (and) there may have been transitional forms between Lapps and Europeans. In other words, Lapps may represent a pure ancestral form common to all admixed European strains of humanity.

*The Laufen glacial retreat refers to the warm phase of the Würm glaciation, the glaciation dated to c. 24,000–10,000 BP (before present).

Interestingly, I'm finding that studying racial phenotypic characteristics is a really good way to find out about one's ancestors and ancestral migrations - information can be found in these studies tracing development of racial phenotypes about ancestral migrations that one won't find anywhere else.

Friday, December 12, 2014

My White Racial Phenotype

Images of me throughout childhood and as a teenager.

I know my genetic ancestry is primary Northwestern European Keltic-Germanic (Keltic-Anglo-Saxon-Fennoscandian with some Saami), so I decided to see if my phenotype matches my known genotype. I know I have a genetic contribution of up to 12% from Central Europe (which includes Slavic and Keltic populations).

Me as a young woman.

The photos shown in this post are of me at different ages throughout my childhood, as a teenager and as a young woman (when my facial features were more sharply defined than they are now at age 53). My eyes look darker in the photos than they actually are - they are a dark green-cast brown in real life. I'm short, with fine bone structure (as opposed to a robust bone structure). I was really pale when I was a child, so much so that school officials thought I was anemic. I do tan without problem though, and I'm not as pale now as I was when I was younger. My skin tone is still pale, but it's a bit more rosy now than it used to be. The white-blonde hair of my childhood has darkened considerably with age, it's now very dark ash blonde. My lips are rather thin. So, I know I'm a phenotypic mixture as well as a genotypic admixture.

After looking at photos of other subrace phenotypes of Caucasoid Europeans, I've decided my European racial phenotype (also supported my my genotype) looks like a hybrid Anglo-Saxon-Keltic-Nordid type touched with some Saami (based on comparing my facial features with types shown on the linked pages and compared with descriptions of the stature/height of the Saami) -

Anglo-Saxon Nordid: http://www.theapricity.com/snpa/rg-anglo.htm - "Iron Age Hallstatt Nordid altered by mixture with Cro-Magnid and probably additional Corded elements. The influence of a Borreby or similar brachycephalic strain may be of secondary importance."

Keltic Nordid: http://www.theapricity.com/snpa/rg-keltic.htm - "The Keltic Nordid type probably shares its earliest formative history with the Hallstatt variety, or a similar proto-strain. The migratory existence associated with the ancestry of the Keltic type clearly involved the absorption of several non-Nordid strains, most importantly central European Dinarid (probably by association with the Bell-Beaker culture of the Neolithic and Bronze Ages). In this respect, one might say it is intermediate between the Hallstatt and Norid types. Additionally, the Keltic Nordid has mixed with Atlanto-Mediterranid (cf. North-Atlantid), the latter of which is probably present at a low level in the Keltic Nordid population as a whole."

None of the other type faces on the website look much like mine. I guess what threw me a bit when first trying to pin down my own phenotype is the fact that I am short, my mom is short and my daughter is short (while the types above tend to be tall types). Nevertheless, my dad is tall and my sons are tall, so maybe the female shortness in my maternal-line female family comes from my Saami genes (especially since my paternal grandmother and paternal aunts are tall, and my Saami connection is through my ancestral U5b1b1-T16192C! genetic motherline).

Saami (stature) - This page ( http://www.theapricity.com/snpa/troeplate01.htm ) shows photos of Saami people, and while my face doesn't at all look Saami, the Saami are of short stature. So, I am pretty convinced that my shortness and the shortness of my mother and daughter comes from our X-chromosome Saami genes.

So, it looks as if my phenotype matches my known genotype - AngloSaxon-Keltic-Nordic-Saami (i.e. Germanic-Keltic-Saami) - My facial features are therefore, basically admixed Nordid, and even though my overall bone structure is rather fine (as opposed to robust), my height is short.

All of this taken together also identifies some the more ancient genetic cultures which contributed to making me - Hallstatt Nordid, Norid, Corded Ware, Bell Beaker, Cro-Magnid, Saami, European Dinarid, North Atlantid and possibly Borreby.

More information:
a good summary of the Europid types
Nordid / Cro-Magnoid Types 

Monday, December 01, 2014

My African Ancestry

Some of my STR autosomal DNA genetic results from DNATribes.
I have some North African DNA (which is considered to be part of the Caucasoid European - Near Eastern genetic group, see below) and a miniscule amount of DNA from the Horn of Africa (which is considered to be part of Sub-Sarahan Africa, see above). My own North African genetic connection is through the Berber tribe (to which I have distant genetic matches and which are considered to be of Caucasian origin).

The Horn of Africa is known from ancient manuscripts to be the original home of the Berbers (Bilad al-Barbar or Land of the Berbers). My Northern European Saami-North African Berber connection (through my U5b1b1-T16192C! genetic motherline is at least 9000 years old, and given that the amount of genetic input I received from the Horn of Africa is very miniscule as compared to the North African genetic input (which is itself miniscule as compared to the pan-European genetic input), I'm guessing that the Horn of African genetic input likely occurred before anatomically modern humans (AMH) left Africa - in other words, before the differentiation of the races as we know them today.

At the time anatomically moderns humans were all in Africa, the racial type distinctions we are familiar with today (Caucasoid, Mongoloid, Negroid) did not yet exist. The different human racial types evolved through time as AMH mixed genetically with other archaic hominids particular to their regions of evolutionary development.

One cool thing I found by re-examining my African genetic ancestry - by oral family tradition, I have some Native American ancestry, but my specific Native American genetic panel came back all negative, yet evidence for it is here in this chart - my Native American genetic ancestry is seen as Mestizo in the graph, which is a mixture of Native American and European ancestry.


Sunday, November 16, 2014

Outbreeding Enhancement Or Depression

Perhaps hybrid vigor (also known as outbreeding enhancement and heterosis) resulted for us from interbreeding (also known as crossbreeding and outbreeding) with Neanderthals (who had bigger brains than did archaic humankind *prior to* the arrival of the Cro-Magnons) - that is, we inherited improved biological traits as a result of interbreeding in this case - but that does not mean hybrid vigor resulted from *every case* of interbreeding. "Not all outcrosses result in heterosis. For example, when a hybrid inherits traits from its parents that are not fully compatible (contradictory instinctive patterns, for example), fitness can be reduced. This is a form of outbreeding depression." There is also such a thing as inbreeding depression.

This is why, historically, and even today among many ethnic groups there are strong feelings that children should "marry within the ethnic group" as the norm for the majority of people, and the group or tribe will only accept bringing people of other groups "into the family" (so to speak) who have traits likely to eventually benefit the group as a whole - in other words, those who will contribute good genes to the gene pool of the group. Rare but occasional inclusion of other people into the gene pool is aimed to minimize inbreeding depression and to maximize the possibility of outbreeding enhancement. Especially for ancient peoples, acquiring mates was not about romantic love (a fleeting human experience), it was a social responsibility toward ensuring and improving the survival odds for the group's descendents.

It's also possible that the outbreeding enhancement which gave rise to the Cro-Magnons was not due to interbreeding with Neanderthals at all but from interbreeding with some other archaic hominid that existed on a continent that now no longer exists (like Atlantis) or in Doggerland (now submerged under the North Sea).

Tuesday, October 21, 2014

A Seer's Job

Catch last night's episode of The Walking Dead? I did. In contrast to the season 5 premier episode, last night's episode is one I can relate to as pertaining to the human condition as opposed to a political ideology based on historical half-truths and outright untruths about what happened during world war 2 in Nazi Germany (to which this season's first episode was associated according to the show's producers). War is an ugly thing, but my view of what happened during world war 2 does not match the propaganda as to what happened. I do not demonize it as Hollywood misguidedly does demonize it. That doesn't mean that there aren't people like Joseph Mengele and Levi Aron in the human community, but these kinds of individuals are anomalies, not the rule - even for Nazi Germany. This is why I object strongly to the association the producers of The Walking Dead tried to make with Nazi Germany in the first episode of the season - they maligned the whole human race of homo sapiens by doing that to Nazi Germany. That being said, now on to the second episode. Human cannibalism.

I agree that there are people in the human population whose civilized behavior is a facade that can be stripped away - Joseph Mengele and Levi Aron attest to this.The only difference between Mengele and Aron is that Mengele lived in a society broken by war while Aron didn't. Mengele's sickness was enabled by war to escalate, while Aron's was not enabled to escalate in peace time America. Cannibalism is also reported to occur in Africa in recent times - a restaurant in Nigeria was shut down early THIS YEAR for reportedly serving human meat. So, without question, there are people among us who do horrible things to other people.

I think the revulsion to eating other human beings is what generally distinguished early modern humans from other hominids now extinct, including the Neanderthals. We know from the archeological evidence that Neanderthals and Homo Erectus were cannibals - they ate members of their own species. We know from the archeological evidence that Neanderthals ate early modern humans. We have genetic evidence that our early modern human ancestors may have also been cannibalistic. But, we changed as a species. We developed a revulsion to this practice of eating other humans and human types. A record of this pivotal change in the direction of human evolution toward social consciousness is preserved in the Jewish Torah in the Noahide laws, one of which prohibits eating the flesh from a living being, and another which pertains to a system of justice.

We know that our advantage over Neanderthals and other hominids of prehistory was the penchant of homo sapiens to create social structure and social bonds - to help one another to survive. Social laws help social groups to create a workable society - one where you don't have to worry that your neighbor or comrade is going to eat you instead of the mammoth your group is hunting - it's dangerous hard work to hunt a mammoth - you don't want to have to worry that your hunting partner might decide that it's an easier meal to just spear and eat you. You have to be able to trust the people with you, otherwise the society built to help you survive breaks down and few survive. Neanderthals lived in very small family groups, and though these small groups certainly hunted together, they never managed to create a larger society able to pass on knowledge between social groups. Neanderthals never managed to create this kind of larger cultural society, in my opinion, most likely due to their penchant for cannibalism. You can't trust your neighbor if he might just eat you, so a large society never evolved for Neanderthals.

Importantly as well to the development of a social consciousness in early modern human populations is the concept of evolving incarnate conscious awareness in early modern humans as a manifestation of the hybrid-vigor resulting from interbreeding with other human types. I believe that what DROVE US as a unique species toward greater social evolution (in contradistinction to the Neanderthals) was the expansion of consciousness we uniquely acquired from interbreeding. As I posted before, I remember my preincarnate journey into physical incarnation. One of my preincarnate memories involves genetic memory - the memory of personal past incarnations, of my own consciousness as an ancestor. Science has confirmed the existence of genetic memory.

One of my preincarnate memories is of preincarnately SEEING (like the ancestral völva of Germanic folk tradition I wrote about in my earlier post) the violence of archaic human prehistory and the penchant for cannibalism among human types who hunted one another. One memory of mine marks and records the boundary (as do the Noahide laws of Jewish tradition) when I believe homo sapiens as a species developed an evolving conscious social awareness. I believe that Jewish tradition preserved the record of the social structure which early modern humans imposed upon themselves in an effort to create greater social structures to improve survival and quality of life for survivors among our kind. I believe Germanic folk tradition preserves a record of the changes in consciousness which occurred which DROVE the creation of these social structures.

Homo sapiens decided to create a social system to improve survival and the quality of life for our species. The Noahide laws of Jewish tradition record this beginning of this system of self-regulating the behavior of our species - DON'T eat limbs from living beings, DO create a system of justice so that we can all live together without fear of one another thus improving the likelihood of the survival of our group. The Germanic folk tradition of the Völva tells WHY we did this. Because WE COULD CARRY THE MEMORY OF BEING HUNTED AND EATEN WITH US BETWEEN LIVES AND INTO THE NEXT ONE. We became aware of ourselves as being something more than a passing piece of meat. We exist beyond this physical plane of experience. In the beginning of our transformation from archaic human to fully modern human, in that time when we were early modern humans - hybrids between what we are now and what we were before becoming fully modern - we experienced the memory and vision I describe below which propelled us to say together as a species:

try as I might to rewrite the story, I cannot forget the truth
and some things can never be fixed

Cannibalism is something that cannot exist, it cannot be "rewritten in our memory of experience" to be something other than what it truly is, it cannot become fixed as a permanent feature in our human society because as many of us (the völva and other early modern human seers by other names) reported our memories to our groups in prehistory, "I cannot forget the truth and I will not allow it to continue in my group." Hybrid early humans recorded the WHY we changed, WHY we created laws regulating the behavior of our species.

This is the poem I wrote over 20 years ago (and as I've shared on this blog before), describing the horror which drove the TRANSFORMATION of our species from archaic human to modern human. This is a early modern human Cro-Magnon memory written in my biology, marking and recording the impetus for evolution of the species group (the also encodes the symbolism of Thor's Hammer - imposing structure upon conditions of chaos: THE THORN (þ)

from the mind inscribed before time
in a dreamlike primeval existence
before my life began, at your side,
I loved you
set before seeing, witnessing
the violent play of creation
rising jagged with twisting thorns
ascending toward there
wild and fierce the bloody storm from below,
a churning pit of cold fire and coal
dripping with pain torn from earth,
cutting edges
raging from a lawless horror,
a terror untamed upon the earth
spreading as a plague coming near
with powerful fury, iterating screams
reverberating with dysrhythm, the battering melody
shattering the noise of silence
in agony melding together,
into a cyclone of spiraling shrill despair
hopeless, the sound of an inky blackness,
line upon line writing
a writhing scroll, twisted with affliction,
death and blood everywhere
below the colorlessness of the sanctuary
where I stood, immobile in the sight
testifying, not forgotten, revealing
some wordless cry of terror
embedding beyond the throat,
becoming chained in the belly
burning my world, descending
into the hallowed depths of my heart
with no way to restrain it,
its direction of attraction
toward me the knife came to cut
please see me! I am here! I cried without sound -
to you as you watched it climb up
as you watched it climb up
with some curious, strange fascination
not seeing me, or disregarded, either way,
outside your direction of attention
as the rabid destruction erupted up the wall,
and all I could do to escape the blade
becoming broken, I turned away,
pulling myself in ... only to be thown away
thrown down, as a coarse grain
into the only history I ever knew, and I know
what you did, throwing me down to be ripped apart,
for those who would destroy me
why do you hate me - still you don't see me,
you don't hear me, and you don't care
try as I might to rewrite the story,
I cannot forget the truth
and some things can never be fixed

The record of this memory from Germanic folk tradition:

She that remembers, the first on earth,
when Gullveig they with lances pierced,
and in the high one's hall her burnt,
thrice burnt, thrice brought forth,
oft not seldom; yet she still lives.
Heidi (Heidr) they called her, whitherso'er she came,
the well-foreseeing Vala (Völva):
wolves she tamed, magic arts she knew, magic arts practiced;
ever she was the joy of evil people.

—Völuspá (21-22), Thorpe's translation

Why was she the joy of evil people? Because she turned us from (evil as we judged it for ourselves) cannibalism and drove our evolution (a joy to us) from archaic humans into modern humans.

Dare to be true to yourself.