December 2019
Friends,
I have been thinking a lot about Christ consciousness lately, about the idea that we can unify for the highest good of each other and our planet. It is a seemingly impossible task to imagine what this looks like, it is so far outside of what many of us can conceptualize. But I’m trying.
When we emerge on this planet, we experience immediate fear at being separated from the One consciousness we came from. As a newborn we have not developed cognition, yet we seek connection. We need to bond with our caregivers-- we yearn for the comfort of connection. As we grow into children, teenagers, and young adults, we learn what it means to feel separate. We learn what things like loneliness and rejection feel like. We attempt to connect to others all over the place and we create relationships initially based on our dissatisfaction with being alone.
I believe we are designed to evolve. We originate together, we emerge apart, and we spend our lives trying to find the missing pieces. It is a natural process. Because we have been conditioned to distract ourselves to avoid potential emotional pain, we do not know ourselves. Because we don’t know ourselves, we don’t know how to connect. Because we don’t know how to connect, we do not feel the unification we desire and we walk around feeling sure that we are missing something unidentifiable. So we keep searching.
We approach one another with hearts that are bleeding, broken, numb, forgotten. We neglect ourselves day in and day out because we have never known true nurturing-- not because we haven’t loved or been loved, but because those teaching us didn’t know how to do it either. We keep looking, hoping someone will come along that will nurture us and fix the discomfort, show us that we are worth nurturing, rather than looking inward and loving ourselves through whatever comes up. Most of us believe that what we are inherently different than everyone else. Some believe they are never going to measure up, others believe they are never safe, and most collectively use labels and separators as measuring sticks to see how different we are from one another. We are desperate to feel better, but all we see when we look at others is how much better they are at that thing or how much more they have or how happy their marriage seems to be or how much more adjusted they appear from their photos on social media. Our current paradigm is separate. Distracted. Numb. Unsafe.
It can be a difficult thing to realize that we are the only ones who can shift this momentum. There is no one to wait for, there is no one who knows better than you who you are. There is no one who will come along and save you from your sadness or your fear. You are the only one who can do that.
Who are you, really? What do you enjoy? Have you let others determine what you like based on what is cool or convenient or what causes the least amount of disruption to those around you? How do you hurt? Have you ever let yourself move into the normal discomfort we all feel? How can you challenge yourself to feel rather than numb with sex or food or buying things? How can you shift your current perspective?
Since I’ve spent a lot of time on this, I’ll tell you what I have discovered and you can go from there. Look at your life and find the distractions. Everyday (often benign) things can serve as (sometimes malignant) distractions. Things like music, news, podcasts, books, video games, television, shopping, social media, substances, Tinder, and relationships are a few popular distractions. While we can certainly have these things and be in connection with ourselves or others, most of us don’t know the difference. Take a second and name a few of the distractions that you use to avoid inconvenient feelings like grief, shame, or fear.
There are thousands of ways in which we can numb ourselves. A really typical example is the person who wakes up in the morning and turns on the news to listen to while they get ready. They have their cup of coffee while they are listening/getting ready/answering texts and email. They drive to work and listen to that book that is “for pleasure” because their therapist told them to have more fun. They cram in the pleasure during the commute--but they are still distracted. At work, they focus on their work but also the man in the office that they find annoying, or the woman competing with them for the promotion. Thoughts swirl all day long, and as the day progresses the thoughts move into what to cook for dinner, remembering the things you need to remember that evening so you don’t forget to do them. You drive home talking on the phone to your best friend about the lady at work who wants the position that you want, pick up the kids, get dinner going, eat together, clean up with music on, pack lunches, get the laundry switched over and do those two things you needed to get done. Do you see how easy it is to live an unexamined life? Do you see how easy it is to keep people polarized and separate? Do you see how easy it is to never learn what it is to be alone with yourself? What does all this mean?
It means STOP.
Next time you are suffering, stop and ask yourself what it is, what it feels like. Allow yourself to feel it fully, watch the discomfort and see how it behaves, notice what it soothes and what it abrades. Allow your brain to rest. Allow your expectations to rest. Allow your old paradigms to rest. Be willing to move into the vibration of discovery. Allow yourself to release the hold on “what has always been” and see how easy it is to see things differently.
When your perspectives begin to shift and evolve, you will notice that without effort you are connecting more with yourself. When you connect with yourself, your will and determination and self-worth grow. When those things grow, you become more mentally and emotionally agile, better able to handle what is thrown at you--because you are no longer rigid and afraid, holding onto and blindly following ideas that serve no one. You begin to emerge with more fortitude, more passion, more drive. As these shifts occur within you and you begin to live authentically, you begin to connect with others differently. This feels harder at first as we try to apply new thought to our old surroundings but as one expands further, it is easy to see how similar we all are. And connection grows.
It makes sense that keeping us distracted keeps us powerless because it keeps us from fully knowing ourselves and one another. Does it also makes sense that if we remove some of our distractions and allow ourselves to examine our lives, we find our power and the power that lies in unification? What would change in your world if you understood your power? What would change in your family or your workplace or in your relationship if you removed some distraction and began to really know yourself? How could our nation shift if we began to truly connect with one another?
It’s worth the struggle. It is always worth the struggle. Don’t give up.
Angelyn