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The Emperor is Naked – Part 4 – The Awakening Impulse

“Once the soul awakens, the search begins and you can never go back.
From then on, you are inflamed with a special longing that will never again
let you linger in the lowlands of complacency and partial fulfillment.
The eternal makes you urgent.”

~ John O’Donohue

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The urgency of bad news easily rivets our attention. But something else is happening beneath the surface, beyond all those distractions. Human beings are awakening.

Something is coming that will get the attention of the whole world. It is inevitable. Consciousness is evolving. The measure of that is self-awareness, which is always catalyzed by some form of crisis, personal or collective. This is the real story of 21st century life, the prospect of a mass awakening of humanity.

What draws our attention is the surface play, disasters and catastrophes. Increasingly, millions of us are encountering life or death scenarios. But these are symptoms of something else, almost completely unreported and unknown to the vast majority of the population.

Humanity is awakening from the illusory state of egoic separation.

Confronted with global problems that are becoming increasingly local, many of us ask, “What can I do to help?” The highest level of contribution is to make choices that grow our experience of the spiritual trans-egoic level. Why? Because our contribution from that level is more powerful than anything we can do.

It begins with getting your own house in order.

In other words, become as wakeful and balanced as you can possibly be in relationship to the challenges you face, so that your choices are always coming from love. You can choose to be kind and compassionate and peaceful, no matter what. This means that you are prioritizing the quality of your vibration and the contribution that it makes to the world around you. When anyone rises to that level it makes a significant difference. If a hundred, a thousand, a million of us do that, it becomes the energetic contribution that just might serve to awaken our entire species.

So, how would you describe your personal transmission? If what I’ve termed “the awakening impulse” is the dominant force in your experience, then you are constantly taking personal responsibility for your transmission. It’s invisible by nature but becomes visible through what you say and do. Your real contribution emerges from the inside out.

Life on planet earth for human beings unfolds in the growing field of consciousness. Why did you come here? To grow through experience. Why can the journey be so hard? If everything was truth and love and light and delight, there would be little motivation to grow or change.






The awakening impulse thrives in a crisis. That’s when we rally together and help each other, when the differences that separated us evaporate in the heat of a shared challenge. None of us would wish suffering on others or ourselves but it seems that urgent crises are required to get our attention!

But note what John O’Donohue said in the opening quote: “The eternal makes you urgent.” He’s poetically describing the impact of this awakening impulse. When we feel it, we do know it as urgent, and more urgent than any catastrophe.

What could be more impactful than a life or death challenge? One thing only: The compelling invitation to deepen personal experience of the true nature of life itself. And that’s precisely what is available right now in every crisis, if we have the eyes to see it.

This confronts us with constant opportunities to choose and prioritize. Will we leverage the challenges we face – increasingly extreme as they are – to accommodate this awakening impulse and advance our personal transformation, thereby refining and strengthening our personal transmission? If we do, we are contributing to the awakening of others, because we are all connected in consciousness.

“Others” refers to more than just humans. We are all connected, beyond species type and even beyond time.

In truth, every room is crowded. If you are sufficiently attuned, you can sense the presence of other beings near you. Would you describe them as human beings who have died and gone on? Or, are you perceiving subtler levels of life in this multidimensional world that you are not as familiar with?

Our transmission persists beyond time as well. That’s part of what you are sensing, the eternal echo of lives past. When we awaken from the illusion of separation, when we perceive and acknowledge that ‘the emperor has no clothes,” we also awaken from the tyranny of linear time and emerge into a domain of eternal, joyful community without borders.

This describes the mass awakening of humanity. Our souls are coming alive together in the fire of planetary transformation.



References:

The Emperor is Naked – Part 3 – Beyond the Ego

“Make your ego porous. Will is of little importance, complaining is nothing, fame is nothing. Openness, patience, receptivity, solitude is everything.”
~ Rainer Maria Rilke

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In this series of blogs we are exploring delusion and acknowledging the value of crises to provoke awakening. Now, let’s consider the greatest impediment to our awakening: the control of the isolated ego.

The individual ego lives in separation. Consider a primary tenet of capitalism: competition. Money is the god of capitalism and we fight for it. If you have enough of it, you should be free to do with it whatever you want, right? Consequences be damned, if we want luxury and we can pay for it, why not?

And, we should be in control, if we’ve earned it. As one absurdly wealthy power player once commented (apparently in all seriousness), “The world should be run by those of us who own it.”

Our politicians love capitalism, because they are well financed by individuals and companies who can afford to buy their support. Leadership today is more about money in the pocket than honorable values and principles. Candidates will say whatever needs to be said to stay in power and keep filling their pockets, all the while mooing about public service.

If they really were public servants they wouldn’t need payment and they would actually serve the public, not just their financial backers.

From a trans-egoic perspective, this doesn’t make any sense at all. But it does represent the dominant majority of the collective consciousness on this planet. We can judge that as wrong and lament about why things have turned out this way or we can re-frame what’s going on: We exist in a learning field of consciousness.

What happens – regardless of how catastrophic it may be – has a purpose: to inform, inspire, and motivate us. To wake us up! And the evolutionary force that does that, the one force that pervades the universe, intensifies when resisted.

Egoic awareness can be described as an “unconscious herd mentality.” Whatever is offered to the herd, the herd buys. These transactions are unconscious, dictated by egoic values. Those doing the selling are not interested in health and wellbeing, they are interested in profit.






We can follow the money. Our systems are all corrupted, because those running them are mired in the egoic level, interested in power over and profit from.

We can expect it to continue that way because most people don’t have enough awakened awareness to even question what’s happening. They are unconscious. They buy and consume what’s on the shelf without question. They enjoy an illusory freedom carefully designed to sustain slavery.

Many of us are familiar with the metaphor of a frog in hot water that will languish there as the temperature gradually rises, finally boiling to death. It could have jumped out at any time but doesn’t, because the heat increases slowly.

How hot does it need to get before we jump?

What will it take to personally evolve beyond our egos into a trans-egoic state where we take responsibility for ourselves and provide leadership based on the genuine desire to help others?

A big enough catastrophe, probably.

Could we avoid that? Those who study life on earth in the 21st century agree that, one way or another, we must face the music. The unintended consequences of our greed based, egoic choices and behavior over centuries are becoming increasingly impossible to deny.

It’s likely that the majority of us will encounter extreme societal, environmental disruption in our lifetime. How will we deal with it? We could leverage it to evolve our consciousness, to shift from an egoic to a trans-egoic experience by dissolving the barriers of separation between us, simply by helping each other. Or, we could choose to dig in and fortify our personal safety, walling ourselves off, just trying to save ourselves with egos intact.

In The Fourth Turning, William Strauss wrote, “When we deem our social destiny entirely self-directed and our personal lives self-made, we lose any sense of participating in a collective myth larger than ourselves.” 1

Here is the invitation of this 21st century, to participate together in a vast awakening beyond ego identification. I am one with you, you are one with me. We can, as Rilke advised, make our egos porous. We could welcome an experience of community based in love… for others and for ourselves.

Here is the great hope of our times, the individual choice to be part of the solution, rather than part of the problem.



References:
1. The Fourth Turning by William Strauss

The Emperor is Naked – Part 2 – Awakening is Slow

“You are one thing only. You are a Divine Being. An all-powerful Creator. You are a Deity in jeans and a t-shirt, and within you dwells the infinite wisdom of the ages and the sacred creative force of All that is, will be and ever was.”
~ Anthon St. Maarten

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In the last blog, we discussed The Emperor’s New Clothes, Danish story teller Hans Christian Andersen’s well known tale of denial. Now, let’s find out what we’re most afraid of seeing.

The evolution of individuated consciousness, a progressive process into wholeness, is slow. The measure is self-awareness, wakefulness, and the challenge to “making progress” is to mutely go along with the consensus in the collective consciousness, because we can’t see anything different.

It’s something of Catch 22: we can’t see what we can’t see.

Why don’t we easily gain a level of awareness where we are able to see and perceive things from a truthful perspective? Because we are mired in egoic levels of consciousness, lost in illusory separation. Of course, this creates conflict between us because we all inhabit our own customized delusional states.

The primary illusion, one that we all share, is separation. I am the subject … you and everyone else, everything else, is an object. We perceive ourselves and others that way. We are separate. This is not in fact true but we believe it is true. As long as I/we maintain separate identification, there is conflict between me as the subject and all the objects I encounter.

So, how do we change this?

Regardless of our optimism, awakening to the truth beyond separation is a very slow process. In fact, now faced with evidence on every hand that we may be de-evolving as a species, the most important question becomes: who am I choosing to be in relationship to the happenings of life?

In other words, the process of awakening itself has changed from a solitary affair in a meditative cave, perhaps, to something that happens collectively, simply because of the massive changes in our modern world.






Here’s the new acid test: Confronted by mass shootings, climate disasters, political chaos, can I remain a detached witness, maintaining peace and equilibrium and – in that way – demonstrate an alternative to illusory stories about what’s transpiring? Can I connect with my fellow human beings beyond conflict and not add to the suffering?

Here’s a turning point realization: I am the creator of my experience in relationship to what’s happening. I can choose to be loving and forgiving, or I can pile on with blame… pointing a finger at others without realizing that three more fingers are pointing back at me!

Shamans contemplate the current world situation and acknowledge that it takes a crisis, a series of them, big enough to get our attention and catalyze awakening. We can now easily acknowledge the truth of their perspective.

What happens when hurricanes strike, when wild fires rage, when earthquakes shatter our reality? People come together. We leave our isolated caves of individuated separation and fear to recognize that we’re all in this together. Catastrophes force us to help each other and, through that experience, we explode the myth of separation.

It’s the same with guns and mass shooting. The latest horrifying newscast prompts an immediate expansion of awareness. Wait a minute, what are we doing? How can we stop this and deal with our crises? This kind of concern lasts a little while. Some change may actually result, but if it is not a big enough crisis, then everyone quickly returns to complacency. We go back to sleep, content again with status quo.

Until the next disaster strikes.

Awakening is a very personal matter. Some of us simply open our eyes and get out of bed. Most of us linger awhile, perhaps day dreaming about what’s waiting for us. Some of us are difficult to rouse. Teenage boys, especially, might require vigorous shaking to complete the shift from deep sleep into functional wakefulness.

Overall, humanity seems to be a teenager. And, we’re being shaken. Every day brings more news stories of disasters near and far. Of course, it’s academic until they touch us personally but these days that’s happening with increasing frequency.

Fire may not force us to evacuate, but we have relatives and friends who lose everything. We may not be shot in a domestic terrorist attack but we know someone who was. We may not lose our home when the mortgage interest rate skyrockets but our neighbor does. And, sometimes the crisis does land squarely on our own lap. What then?

Plato said that necessity is the mother of invention. Author John Ashcroft expanded on this. He ventured that “if necessity is the mother of invention, it’s the father of cooperation. And we’re cooperating like never before.”

Evolution in consciousness from separation to connection may indeed be slow but it’s accelerated by crises. It’s safe to say that today’s crises aren’t likely to recede. So, it follows that the process of awakening within our human species may accelerate.

Apparently, this is what it takes to awaken us from the self hypnosis that blinds us to the awareness and experience that we are one with God!



References:

Unicorn

The Emperor is Naked – Delusion: It’s a Hard Habit to Break

“Delusion detests focus and romance provides the veil.”
~ Suzanne Finnamore

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The Emperor’s New Clothes, Danish story teller Hans Christian Andersen’s best known story, has become a catch phrase for delusion and the difficulty of speaking truth to power.

In the story, two weavers promise an emperor “a new suit of clothes that they say is invisible to those who are unfit for their positions, stupid, or incompetent. When the emperor parades before his subjects in his new clothes, no one dares to say that they do not see any suit of clothes on him for fear that they will be seen as “unfit for their positions, stupid, or incompetent”. Finally, a child cries out, “But he isn’t wearing anything at all!” 1

Delusion is a hard habit to break. Delusion defies logic and persists, even when confronted by the most revealing facts. After all, in Andersen’s tale the emperor was stark naked. But onlookers enthusiastically denied that, and it took an innocent child to break the spell.

One convincing proof I’ve encountered that confirms our obstinate refusal to acknowledge and state the obvious is the story about how ostriches bury their heads in the sand to avoid danger. On his website, Mark Wenning, reports on the origins of this belief.

“This comes from the supposed habit of ostriches hiding when faced with attack by predators. The story was first recorded by the Roman writer Pliny the Elder, who suggested that ostriches hide their heads in bushes. Ostriches don’t hide, either in bushes or sand, although they do sometimes lie on the ground to make themselves inconspicuous. The ‘burying their head in the sand’ myth is likely to have originated from people observing them lowering their heads when feeding.” 2

The longevity of this myth confirms our willingness to accept authoritative accounts at face value and to perpetuate them for years by failing to examine even the most obvious facts. In this case, what’s obvious is that if ostriches did indeed bury their heads in the sand they would now be extinct… because they would have all asphyxiated.

Duh…

In Andersen’s story, a child finally blurted out the truth. And, he was censured for his honesty. He spoke truth to power and that wasn’t popular. Of course, that remains true today. But what that child demonstrated is instructive. As Jack Zipes, an author who writes about Andersen, explained: “Sight becomes insight, which, in turn, prompts action.”

A further comment from Wikepedia states, “Scholars have noted that the phrase, “Emperor’s new clothes”, has become a standard metaphor for anything that smacks of pretentiousness, pomposity, social hypocrisy, collective denial, or hollow ostentatiousness.” 3





Do we see any of that today?

We can take our pick from a long list of denials. Here are just three:

– Medical doctors receive less than 25 hours of instruction on nutrition during their many years of rigorous training. We now face epidemics of obesity, cancer, depression, etc. But there’s no official, acknowledged connection between what we eat and our health.
– NOAA confirms that 16 of the last 17 years have been the hottest on record, yet our American president pronounces that climate change is a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese.
– The financial crash of 2008 occurred because of deceitful lending practices that continue today with increased fervor, and the same financial experts who didn’t see that crash coming assure us there could never be another one.

Delusion, it’s a hard habit to break. But it helps to explore the ramifications of Zipes’s comment further: “Sight becomes insight which, in turn, prompts action.”

All of us have had the experience of seeing something we missed before. Those moments of revelation have the potential to inspire insights which can lead to new action. But the key is that moment between sight and insight. That’s where change can be initiated.
Lightbulb in hand
This story plays out in the climactic scene in the war film Bridge Over the River Kwai. Alec Guinness’s character has an epiphany. He “sees” through his delusion. This leads him to a powerful insight. He says, “Oh my God, what have I done?” Almost immediately, he takes action. He falls on a plunger, blows up the bridge he’s been so proud of, and the train carrying ammunition intended to kill allied soldiers, plunges into the river below.

It took extreme pressure to provoke his awakening. What will it take for you and me? We live in a crisis ridden world yet, so far, the official strategy remains “business as usual.”

Railing against “them” is an avoidance strategy. Awakening to the truth is a very personal matter. We can choose to be vigilant about our own delusions and turn what we see into insights that lead us into new behaviors.

That may or may not inspire others, but it’s the example all true leaders provide.



References:
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emperor%27s_New_Clothes
2. http://markwenning.co.za/origins-of-bury-your-head-in-the-sand/
3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emperor%27s_New_Clothes

The Awakening Moment – Do We Really Get the Leadership We Deserve?

“Our chief want is someone who will inspire us
to be what we know we could be.”

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

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AAlexis de Toqueville, a French diplomat, political scientist, and historian, wrote that “In a democracy, people get the government they deserve.” Was he right?

According to Toqueville’s premise, the results of the latest U.S. election – which has thrown American into something of a political free fall – is exactly what we deserve. Whether that is entirely true or not, over 60 million Americans voted for President Trump.

Let’s be realistic about something: our current system of democracy is not truly democratic.

As one astute blogger observed, “The public doesn’t get to choose who the nominees are. The powers that be (the two major parties’ leadership and the corporate media) decide who the “legitimate” nominees are going to be. They weed out of serious consideration any other candidates…” 1

But this doesn’t negate the fact that 60 million voters chose to support the values that the successful candidate and his cohorts represented. They agreed with those values. We can complain about this, rail against a rigged system, etc., but that’s just a smokescreen, effectively distracting us from acknowledging what’s really going on.

What’s really going on is that we humans are less evolved than we’ve thought! We still embrace extreme selfishness, we crave attention, we are intoxicated with personal power over others, and we attack those who disagree with us.

We might protest, “Oh no, not me!” but remember, whenever we point a finger at someone else, there are three fingers pointing back at ourselves! Have you ever witnessed such finger pointing, since this election? Forget about “Him” and “Them” for a moment. What about us? What about me?

Here’s more from that post. “The candidates who are left… are then “democratically” elected by the people. This process is like a child who is told by his/her parents that they can either have the peas or the carrots, but they must eat one of them. If the child chooses the carrots does that mean that the child is in charge of what s/he eats?” 2

I wanted to include this statement before offering an alternative, just to ensure that we do understand how impossible our political choices are. Given that, and the realistic assumption that nothing much will change any time soon, what’s left for us, for any of us who feel urged to make a difference? Because, clearly, voting doesn’t accomplish much.





There’s always a third candidate.

You.

You can vote for yourself. Not in a voting booth, but in your assumption of personal responsibility to live your values. In the opening quote, Emerson wrote, “Our chief want is someone who will inspire us to be what we know we could be.” What if we saw that person when we looked in the mirror?

That would be an awakening moment.

Imagine giving up on the hope that someone else, anyone else, could represent that for us and becoming 100% responsible, totally self-empowered to provide what was needed in the reality of the moment, and to be fully accountable for the results. Yes, we can still vote and choose the best candidate in our eyes. But we can also stop hoping they will save us. No, they will represent the values of the voters… until they get into office. Then we get to find out what values they really represent, based on who funded their victory! If those values are radically at odds with our own, we can relapse into judgment… or, we can produce our own “third party alternative.”

You know I’m not talking about an alternative political party.

Here’s the catch: that alternative would need to be inspiring and no-one gets inspired by complaint. What inspires is kindness and the kind of strength that lifts others up rather than putting them down. Confidence, teamwork, compassion. And, as I wrote about in the last blog, Love with a capital “L.”

At this moment in our human history we are confronted by a crisis of leadership, because we have projected what’s truly needed onto others. Yes, we will always elevate men and women to positions of power where they can help (hopefully) mediate the affairs of a town, state, nation, and the world. We do need those who are skilled at management.

Meanwhile, here we are, with the opportunity to fulfil Gandhi’s injunction, to “be the change we wish to see in the world.” What might this accomplish? Who knows? But we’ll never find out unless we try. And that begins by separating inspiration from management.

It’s unfair to demand that every superstar athlete or celebrity be a paragon of personal virtue and it’s the same insanity to demand that every elected “manager” will provide enlightened inspiration. BTW, those truly inspiring leaders that have come along periodically always pointed their finger at us and said, as Gandhi did: “be the change.”

If the power of Love can, as I like to say, “beat our hearts and steer the stars,” imagine what else it could accomplish, if it was more widely expressed. That’s what we are here for in these wild days on planet earth. Despite our insanity, we humans are uniquely designed to express Love. I wonder what might happen if we took that responsibility seriously?


References:
1. http://www.worldcantwait.net/index.php/organizers-mainmenu-223/85-organizers/dennis-loo/5837-do-we-get-the-leaders-we-deserve
2. Ibid

The Awakening Moment – Learning How to Love

“The most important thing in this world is to
learn to give out love,and let it come in.”

~ Morrie Schwartz

 
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The Beatles sang, “All You Need is Love.” Were they right?

Khalil Gibran wrote that “Life without love is like a tree without blossoms or fruit.”

That’s a poetic reminder of how important love is. But, realistically, we need more than a fruiting tree and loving sentiments to survive and thrive. Don’t we?

Perhaps what we really need is an expanded understanding of what love is. For any of us who’ve enjoyed pop music over the years, it’s difficult to hear or read the words “the power of love” without recalling that song by Huey Lewis and the News. Surprisingly, his lyrics actually illuminate our topic.

Lewis sang, “Change a hawk to a little white dove… more than a feeling, that’s the power of love.”

In other words, love is transformative. Love is alchemical. Love changes us.

If you google “love,” 99% of what shows up relates to romantic love. Some acknowledge there is more to love than that… but they don’t elaborate. So let’s do that here.

First, here’s a comment that confirms my point about traditional definitions of love. This comes from a blog credited to South University.

“According to the triangular theory of love developed by psychologist Robert Sternberg, the three components of love are intimacy, passion, and commitment. Intimacy encompasses feelings of attachment, closeness, connectedness, and bondedness. Passion encompasses drives connected to both limerance and sexual attraction. Commitment encompasses, in the short term, the decision to remain with another, and in the long term, the shared achievements and plans made with that other person.” 1

This seems to be a clear and thorough articulation of key components in romantic love. It’s interesting to apply Sternberg’s triangular theory to an expanded definition that I propose, namely, that love is the power that runs creation. That’s just a bit of an upgrade in our understanding!

Love is the power that beats our hearts and steers the stars, as I like to say. You can use a different word if you prefer, like God or spirit or life force. I like love. By whatever name, “it” connects us all and when I say “all” I mean everyone and everything. So, if we embrace this expanded definition, then Sternberg’s “intimacy, passion, and commitment” model also seems to apply to our relationship with Love, capital L.

I wrote a book last year about learning how to love. I believe this is our “major” here in the University of Earth. So, how would we grade ourselves in this subject?

Here’s a 21st century reality check:
– There’s no intimacy to hiding within gated communities, separated and afraid of the village around us – full of people different than us.
– There’s no passion when religion replaces spirituality with rules instead of authentic worship.
– Where’s commitment when our allegiance swings from one addictive intoxicant to another?

Love, the expanded love we’re describing, gets so easily forgotten. So, how can we develop that relationship?

Think of a romantic relationship you’ve enjoyed or are enjoying right now. That feeling of love, flowing back and forth, it’s wonderful! In fact, we can reference another song to remind us again of our expanded definition: “Love makes the world go round.”

Here’s some practical guidance from the same post I quoted from above, a comment attributed to “Elizabeth Kane, a South University adjunct faculty member who teaches clinical psychology and behavioral science. ‘To be romantic is to make a choice to wake up each day and ask yourself what you can do today to let your lover know they are adored,’ Kane says.

“’Have fun in your romance and remember that the more effort you put into your romantic relationship, the more love you will receive in return. Be the partner that you seek and live a life filled with passion and romance.’” 2

Imagine applying that same strategy to our connection with Big Love. “… what you can do today to let your lover know they are adored?” Prayer comes to mind, meditation, and mindfulness, living in this relationship with Love as our primary one.

This doesn’t require us to downgrade our human relationships. In fact, personal connections infused with Big Love are stronger. There’s a stability inherent in them that helps us navigate the inevitable personality wars.

What if we lived in adoration then, with intimacy, passion, and commitment as the key components of our operating system? Imagine a world where we loved each other from that high place, loving not just personal qualities but also the innate presence of Love, the universal power of love, translated so uniquely within each individual human being.

If we were able to learn to love that way, then the Beatles would be right. Love is all you need … when we’ve awakened to the real thing.



References:
1. https://www.southuniversity.edu/whoweare/newsroom/blog/the-psychology-behind-love-and-romance-70700

The Awakening Moment – Horses Will Drink

“You cannot train a horse with shouts
and expect it to obey a whisper.”

~ Dagobert D. Runes

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They say that you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink. But, some horses do drink. What makes the difference?

There’s a funny story about a boy scout returning to headquarters, his lip bleeding and his uniform in disarray. “What happened?” asked the scout master.

“I just helped an old lady cross the street,” the youngster replied.

“But what happened to you?”

“She didn’t want to go!”

If we could pinpoint one frustration that interferes with our personal evolution and enjoyment of a meaningful life it would be our insistence on trying to change others.

This reminds me of an Ashley Brilliant cartoon of many years ago: “The fact that I have accepted you as you are doesn’t mean that I’ve given up hope you might still change.” That’s funny but also true for many people who tacitly accept each other but secretly wish they would behave differently (and believe more like they do).

In the last post, I introduced the idea of “the awakening moment” and emphasized how suffering can only be relieved by examining the cause: the experience of illusory separation that produces conflict.

So, how can we accept our differences? It’s natural to provide guidance for children as they mature into being able to take responsibility for themselves, but how do we treat other adults? Do we assume that we know how they should be?

Of course, common sense tells us that we shouldn’t give a flame thrower to a pyromaniac! And some rules and regulations are essential. In this country, we agree to drive on the right side of the road. That’s not an imposition on personal freedom, it’s simply a necessary rule.

But what do we do when someone fails to follow the rules, especially when they hurt others? We punish them. Is that working?


Writing for Psychology Today, Michael Karson, Ph.D., says: “Punishment does not change the tendency to engage in the behavior that was punished. Instead, it makes the person want to avoid the source of punishment.” 1

He goes on to describe how a punished child will continue their errant behavior… they’ll just do it when their parents aren’t around. This breeds a false assumption that our actions don’t have consequences unless others are aware of them. A husband can cheat on his wife, an accountant can fudge the numbers, a government can mis-report war casualties, etc.

“What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas” may be a successful market term but it’s patently false. Everything we do creates consequences, whether anyone else knows about it or not.

If secrecy is an illusion and punishment doesn’t work, where does that leave us relative to positive change? After all, “personal improvement” has become a billion dollar industry. We want to change! Some horses do drink. Some people do change. What works this miracle? In a word, education.

I wrote about my experience in a 2008 terrorist attack. The murderers who attacked me and my friends had been trained, indoctrinated, educated in a hateful paradigm from early age, and then compelled to carry out their deadly mission. All but one was killed by the Indian SWAT teams. The lone survivor was executed years later. By then, he had come to his senses and expressed regret for his actions. He realized that he’d been manipulated by faceless puppet masters behind the scenes.

Since then, terrorist acts have exploded all over the world. Could we ever manage the courage to step back, examine this trend, and honestly address the failure of our response, which focuses on punishment?

So, what might one do about terrorists, then? Education. Until there’s an alternative to what is being taught, what choice does a person have? If there’s only one source of water… they will drink there.

If we pull our heads out of the sand for a few minutes and look at the world around us we can witness catastrophes of all kinds happening at an escalating rate. We can point to war, climate change, etc. but what is really happening?

The results of our choices are showing up and we seem to be nearing the experience of “instant karma,” which refers to the immediate awareness of repercussions arising from those choices.

If our choices are delusional, born out of the chronic condition of separation I wrote about in the last post, we will continue to take sides against each other and maintain the suffering that results. But we could make different choices. We could model something different.

Imagine, if we personally demonstrated appreciation for each other, differences and all, if we let go of our addiction to trying to change others… what might that affect in our immediate relationships? What education would that provide, especially if we made it obvious that this sort freedom from coercion is enjoyable!

Life is sending us powerful messages right now. If we’re getting them, then we’re awakening to a new world of personal responsibility. Whether others know our thoughts and deeds is less important than the fact that we know them. That’s motivation enough for any person of integrity.

As the old saying goes, “To thine own self be true.” Perhaps that’s the real answer to constructive change, to simply be true to oneself and respect that others will do the same.



References:
1. https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/feeling-our-way/201401/punishment-doesnt-work

The Awakening Moment – Choosing Freedom

“As long as you think that the cause of your problem is “out there”
—as long as you think that anyone or anything is responsible for your suffering—
the situation is hopeless. It means that you are forever in the role of victim,
that you’re suffering in paradise.”

~ Byron Katie

Press play to hear an audio enhancement as you read.

 

The most popular game in the world is the Blame Game, where you choose between three roles: victim, persecutor, and rescuer. But there’s another option.

That’s our necessary starting point for discussing how to choose freedom. As Byron Katie said in the above quote, “As long as you think that anyone or anything is responsible for your suffering, the situation is hopeless.”

So, is your situation hopeless or hopeful? An honest answer to that question will immediately alert you to your degree of personal investment in the Blame Game. Read on if you’re interested in playing a different game.

Anyone who identifies as a victim – and they can usually prove why they truly are a victim – is living in an illusion of separation. That illusion generates this formulaic result: separation = conflict = suffering.

Let’s take them one at a time but first establish the inconvenient truth that to relieve suffering one must address this chronic problem of separation. Working on conflict resolution is not enough, if the source problem remains unaddressed.




Separation from what? We can start a list with separation from God. Ironically, one technique we’ve perfected for that is called religion. Religion separates us from God by inserting a priest, rabbi, or guru between “me and Him.” Apparently we need that middleman.

Of course, religions are separate from another as well. In fact, true believers routinely go to war with each other, each claiming that God is on their side. That’s separation!

Nature. What about our separation from nature? For many millions of people, nature is no more than a vague backdrop. Consider the successful business man who rides an elevator to underground parking, drives to work, takes an elevator up to his office, goes to a restaurant for lunch, has cocktails after work, drives to the theater or home… day after day separated from nature. Of course, he or she may jog… but that’s about fitness, not simply enjoying a connection with the natural world.

Separation means that conflict is inevitable. The “other” is a problem. Wherever we have built a conceptual wall between ourselves and other people, other beliefs, other customs and practices, etc., conflict will follow and turf wars are not primarily geographical. Sports fans routinely fight each other, based on allegiance to their teams.

There’s no simple remedy for a chronic malady like the disease of separation and the conflict it produces, but nature can sure help. “Forest bathing is the practice of taking a short, leisurely visit to a forest for health benefits. The practice originated in Japan where it is called shinrin-yoku.” 1

The Wikipedia entry goes on to state: “Studies in Japan have measured changes in immune markers and stress hormones in people who regularly walked in specific forests in Japan. In addition, people with diabetes but not taking insulin found substantial benefits by lowering blood glucose levels.”


Of course, nature provides more than physical health benefits. Being in nature, where everything is so obviously connected, can restore our sense of being included, of belonging. And that’s what so much suffering is about. Regardless of our exploding global population, loneliness has become epidemic and, as a recent New York Times article stated, “Researchers have found mounting evidence linking loneliness to physical illness and to functional and cognitive decline. As a predictor of early death, loneliness eclipses obesity.” 2

Separation = conflict = suffering. Inevitably.

But there is another option. We can choose freedom. We can embrace what I call “the awakening moment.” When is that moment? Right now.

This awakening is not necessarily about content. That is, we don’t need to have some sort of remarkable epiphany to experience waking up. Think about your experience this morning. You probably just… woke up!

The spiritual corollary is similar. It just happens, and it’s not usually that dramatic. It’s also easy to describe. The choice for freedom, embracing the awakening moment, exiting the Blame Game, happens when we take responsibility for authoring our own experience. Victims don’t do that.

BTW, we are where we are. It’s easy to judge ourselves and others but this is it… this moment is either the moment to be a victim or the moment to be free, including all our judgments, concepts, etc. Nothing needs to change in this moment except our choice. Everything else follows.

Either we will suffer in paradise, as Byron Katie warned, or we can enjoy this moment. Some choice!

That’s true freedom.


References:
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forest_bathing
2. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/06/health/lonliness-aging-health-effects.html