As we sail into 2019, a chronological number which appears more and more like an attachment to the patriarchal structure of time we've all been born into, things truly feel, perhaps for the first time in my 51 years, like an emergency. Yes, I've felt the nightmarish cold war nuclear build up infiltrate my dreamscape in my teens during the 80's. Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher clutching each other's egos in a neoconservative Milton Friedman orgasmic frenzy poised to break up the Soviet Union and propel us toward the neoliberal gridlock we currently bang our heads against daily. Taking with them the last vestiges of democratic fantasy and turning it into privatized economic disparity, unprecedented and creating more separation from our biosphere than ever before. We are in a STATE OF EMERGENCY, so many hanging on to some semblance of an idea of comfort based on the illusion of the Obama years or some past delusion that we live in a democratic society. And hey, I would guess many people would argue with me, holding out hope that we can actually turn back the clock and recreate the same old same old where we're fed comfortable lies on a daily basis, go about our lives sleepwalking through the corporate privatized state while the super rich white male-centered majority of the 1% lead us down the rabbit hole, business as usual. Creating more separation. Creating more war. Creating more distraction. Don't worry, I'll refrain from any Russiagate ranting but I'm sure many of you might suspect where I stand on that particular rabbit hole of distraction.
So what now? As we head into the new year, I have a few thoughts. Nothing new. Pretty ancient in fact. The stuff all of us know and yet continue to push aside for some kind of magical elixir that will save us from ourselves. Yet, I do believe there's some of that available but it's not in the form that you might think... So, we could sit back and do nothing. After all, action is something that many of us would rather avoid. We could allow things to unfold, sure. But nah. IMHO there are things we can DO.
First thing, FEEL. Yep. Reroute, reframe and RECLAIM feeling. Enter back into a relationship with direct experience. Become aware of all the mind tricks that keep us from that - casemaking, judgement, analysis, critique and interpretation to name a few. Then when all that thought comes up, and it will, self-correct when necessary or useful to do so. And then move directly into the realm of feeling, the place where we started back when we crawled around the floor stuffing things into our mouths until the foodgivers told us that was BAD and we should spit them out. Let's face it, we've been taught NOT TO FEEL in too many ways to count so let's reclaim the direct route to FEELING!
What else? Here are a few reminders:
GIVE MORE.
SERVE OTHERS LESS FORTUNATE THAN YOU.
RECEIVE WITH GRACE
KEEP YOUR HEART OPEN.
SPEAK WITH CARE, RESPECT, INTEGRITY AND FROM YOUR HEART.
BE PATIENT.
MEET PEOPLE WHERE THEY ARE.
PRACTICE GRATITUDE AND RECIPROCITY.
EMBRACE THE DIVINE FEMININE (very important) and PROTECT IT. PROTECT IT AT ALL COSTS!
PROTECT LOVE WITH MORE LOVE.
LEAD WITH YOUR HEART.
LISTEN MIRROR AND RESPOND WITH COMPASSION.
LOOK AND SEE WITH YOUR HEART!
STAY QUIET SOMETIMES.
USE WORDS OF AFFIRMATION, OFTEN.
DON'T GO BACK TO SLEEP.
FORGET ABOUT BORDERS, PROTECT THE BIOSPHERE. PROTECT THE MOTHER.
MAKE YOUR OVERALL INTENTION TO CAUSE TRANSFORMATION!
And a word about comparison. I'm discovering more and more that comparison serves very little purpose. It's another form of casemaking, of judgement. Our experiences are both unique and universal so no need for comparison. We're all in it together so there's a common language and it's NON-VERBAL. We don't need to wait for leaders to lead. Leadership is within us all. It begins with a shift of consciousness, by looking through a brand new lens. We can start doing that before the clock strikes midnight. We can do that right now. So before you start the casemaking, the analysis, the interpretation, check in with those thoughts, feelings and sensations and simply let them move through you. As author and self proclaimed anti-spiritual non-guru Jeff Foster suggests in a recent post, "Feel your feet on the ground. Notice your breathing rising and falling. Feel the sensations in your face. Your hands. Your belly. Don't compare them. Feel the weight of your body, let it drop into the Earth. Listen to the sounds around you right now. Feel all the tingly, alive, fluttering, pulsating sensations in your body. Let the body be as it is. Feel the heat, the cold, the aching, the expansion, the pulse of life. Don't compare anything here to anything 'there'. 'There' is the lie. Bring your attention back here, to this living moment. Don't compare it with any other moment. Don't make it 'more than' or 'less than'. Bless it with your attention. There's literally nothing to compare you to."
FYI, thoughts feelings and sensations do not define us. They are weather patterns and always temporary. Important to remember, always. What we're all born into is connection, spirit, essence. It's always been available to us and right now is no different.
Also, fuck resolutions. Try intention. Look past all the programming, all the propaganda, all the lies we're told by media, politicians, truth-tellers, spiritual teachers, hucksters, and take the direct route to what's meaningful by connecting with those who actually see and hear you - your communities, your families, your friends.
Start by looking deep within yourselves. Start with your breath. Start by looking into the eyes of love and turning that gaze around at the rest of the world. I've just finished listening to author Daniel Pinchbeck's "Reality 2.0" a four part series about what Robbie Robertson of The Band would describe in the film "The Last Waltz" as "the beginning of the beginning of the end of the beginning". Pinchbeck talks a lot about paradigm shifts and towards the end of the fourth part introduces us briefly to his idea of creating a new calendar for what he describes as the new age of wisdom starting with year one. In one of his essays he says, "We are realizing that we have the capacity to advance evolution in all areas of life — and in fact have no choice but to accept this responsibility. But we can only do this properly when we adapt a Christ-like or Buddha-like sensibility, based on empathy and compassion for all of humanity and all of the species that share the earth with us." A voice immediately springs to mind, the divine feminine as channelled by my dear friend Libba Harmon (healer, owner of Pranam Yoga Shala), a rather straightforward response to Pinchbeck's quote, also one of the most spiritual words I know, "Duh".
We're taking off into a new realm of consciousness, a new paradigm. The sun is rising for all of us and all we have to do is embrace it. So perhaps this isn't really the beginning of 2019. What if we treated right now as if it was year 1 as Pinchbeck suggests? Antonio Gramsci, the Italian Marxist philosopher, put it this way on January 1, 1916, "I want every morning to be a New Year’s for me. Every day I want to reckon with myself, and every day I want to renew myself... Because it will hurl into the trash all of these dates which have no resonance in our spirit and, if it creates others, they will at least be our own."
Happy New Year.
#CauseTransformation.