Here we are at a crossroads. A cosmic crossroads of sorts. I am waiting. We are all waiting for a new world to emerge. This waiting is by no means passive, it is an heartbreakingly active way of being. In order for a new world to arise, we must first be awake to the wonders within our own hearts. It is so easy to numb in the face of all the suffering. It can all be so overwhelming at times. Our systems, our institutions, our entertainers are all so focused on both numbing us and terrifying us. How can we find hope when we are ruled by corporations, watching our children being gunned down and Mother Earth burning? I hear so much hopelessness in the people I meet yet I feel empowered, hopeful and optimistic about the future. This is by no means a blind optimism but an active one. I have worked hard for this stance. Perhaps you will too.
Maybe you read these words and think I am ill informed or ignorant or have had an easy life and my privilege is what provides me with this hope. I am here to tell you, my life has not been easy. I am sure I have had so much more than so many and so much less than others. This is the life and the karma and the work that I have been sent to help heal and learn in this lifetime. I have struggled with my own shadows and my own desire to self destruct throughout my life. I remember being a child and questioning the status quo. I couldn’t understand why we talked about and valued the things we did and why we didn’t focus on love and connection and justice and instead focused on material success as a measure of worth. These were some of my first lessons in feeling disconnected from myself, my body and the very ground I walk on. I learned that my big emotions were too much, that I was too much and no one wanted to hear my truth. So I stuffed it. Just as so many women before me has had to. Women throughout the world, women in my lineage, women that I call family now.
These disconnections resulted in finding many ways for me to numb from the pain I felt inside. I found drugs and alcohol and sugar and sex and cigarettes and TV and books and dance parties and adventures. While these tools helped me to temporarily numb my own pain, it also deadened me to the world. I was lost and hopeless. I did what I knew to do: SHRINK. I shrank deeper and deeper into my vices and learned how to put my smart wit and tongue to use. For me, I have often oscillated between no voice at all or a sharp shrill begging to be heard.
As a child, I learned to use sarcasm as a tool to help protect myself from my own pain, my own heartbreak of living in a world that I was told I was too much for. I learned to adapt and took nothing seriously and found I could use words to self implode. I became known for my sharp tongue and stinging words. It all came from a place of deep wounding. A place of total disempowerment.
My social circles reflected this belief system, this way of being back to me. We all have our own versions of disempowerment. I remember always searching for a deeper understanding of the why if it all. I searched for what was true as an adult. That seeking, that curiosity saved me. I remember being in a therapist’s office in my early 30’s searching for meaning. I felt useless in a world focused on outward achievements as I was constantly seeking. I was working at coffee shops and nannying and floating along but not feeling connected or inspired. I tried service in prisons and rehabs searching for truth. I felt lost and vented that this seeking was the one thing I focused on in my life but I had nothing else to show for it. My therapist told me that seeking was everything and the most important lesson in this life is to know thyself. I didn’t get it then as I was deep in self pity and martyrdom. I get it now. This inner search for meaning has led me to get closer to my own truth, to my own hope, closer to that hard earned optimism.
I eventually found myself in social work school as service to others has been one of the most powerful cures for my own self centeredness. In my search for truth, I started working in hospice. I remember a fellow hurting soul telling me I just did this as an act of subversion. They assumed this was my way of rebelling against the status quo. While that may have been partly true, I knew it was something so much deeper than that. I wanted to go to the places people were afraid to go and find what truth lies there. I wanted to know what was beyond all the niceties and numbness and fear. In a society that fears death and refuses to face its own mortality, I found hope and truth in working with dying people and their families. I witnessed incredible moments of love and connection and kinship. I also witnessed how our circumstances and choices can inform how we die and who is and is not there to support us in our most vulnerable times. I saw the pervasiveness of trauma and poverty and the painful effects they have on beautiful souls. I also witnessed how in a capitalist culture, even death is something to profit from. In moving head on into these spaces, I got closer to this longing for connection and meaning. Yet, I saw so many people in this world giving so much that they were falling apart. I saw leaders exploiting tender hearts for productivity and profit.
Again, I felt this need to implode as the anger I felt towards the systems and the greed was only directed back to myself. My deep desire for justice and seeing the lack of it made me feel more hopeless at times. I was allowing myself to be taken advantage of because fear and shame were driving my choices and actions. Despite all my work, I did not see how I was contributing to my own misery. I was digesting the pain of the world and wanting to self destruct when the pain of it feels like too much. There are many vices I have let go of in the name of my own evolution and I still have many as this world offers so many opportunities for trance and distraction.
What does it mean to live in truth and let go of distraction? What does it mean to desire to live in world of love and compassion and fairness when we cannot offer that to our own hearts? The more I heal my wounds, the more I see the value of my truth seeking. The more I face my own pain, my own shadows, my own fears, the more I understand the meaning behind what my therapist was saying to me. As I take responsibility for my own shit, I harm less and am able to bring more light and love and truth into this hurting world. I am able to stand up to injustices from a place of deep integrity and conviction instead of a disempowered place of sarcasm and hurt and sadness. I have experienced how all the seeking and pain and struggles have and will continue to provide me with the knowledge and ability to live in truth.
With crumbling systems, genocide, wars and corporate greed so rampant it is often difficult to feel hopeful. We, as a whole are collectively at a cosmic crossroads. Do we as individuals want to be apart of this false sense of good/bad polarization that has been magnified to separate us from our inherent power and connection? So many of us awakening as a necessity to heal the destructiveness resulting from our fear and the false narratives being fed to us. We cannot do this alone. We need one another despite what the zeitgeist of rugged individualism tells us. My hope is we can find ways to heal by remembering who we are outside of the corporate machine of our society. This should not be subversive. This could be the goal, the status quo. In honoring my shadows, I have healed in ways I didn’t know were possible. I have tapped into my intuition and knowing and connection to earth and it’s beautiful and diverse inhabitants.
We are a unique species in that we have created a means to cause so much lethal damage. My own life has been its own fractal of this collective suffering. I also know myself as a fractal of a much larger collective evolution happening. More and more of us are awakening to a new world, a new yet ancient way of being. An awakening that many of our indigenous brothers and sisters prophesied so many years ago. We are waking up and finding ways back to connection to ourselves, to one another, to reciprocity with Mother Earth. I can see it in the faces I meet. I can feel it when I see these children growing and understanding in ways we were never offered.
I see the news. I know there is so much pain and suffering. I feel it in my blood and bones. I see weakness in the faces of those flaccid politicians that cling to greed and power and status quo as if that may stop them from their own humanity, their own mortality. Yet, I remain incredibly optimistic because my own healing has led me to experience a much more beautiful world through a deeper connection and presence. I no longer need to use sarcasm or self alienation to numb my pain. I know it and I embrace the truth of it all. I do what I can in my little corner of life to alleviate suffering and serve others. I am so imperfect in this. I stumble daily as I always have yet now I understand I am connected to a much wider net that supports not only me but all of us. I have seen how healing and learning can create a domino effect. The more of us that can wake up to our collective power, the more I see a new earth coming. This is the cosmic crossroads. We are all fractals of a much larger picture, emerging and learning from all this pain and darkness. We are awakening together from the dark ages to help co-create something far more beautiful. Something based on love and connection and justice and reciprocity. What do you need to heal in your own wounded heart to let go of the protection needed to survive this forced reality? Whatever it is, I hope you find ways to move towards less polarity, less division in your own heart, in your life and family and service to help bring in healing and service to this hurting world. Let’s not forget that we are plenty and they are few.
