Sunday, December 16, 2012

Welcoming the Age of Illumination: Choosing Love over Fear

(Dedicated to the memory of all the souls who kept their Sacred Contract at Sandy Hook Elementary School, who are now part of our Ancestor network, enabling us to grieve, to release and transform our ancestral pain. Thank you.)

The cultural transformation from the love of power to the power of love is the drama of our times.  Ours is an era that future historians will look back upon, marveling at the magnitude of the challenges and changes we are now experiencing.  They will call it a time of Great Awakening, a time when the best and the worst of humanity played their parts in the fate of human evolution.  But if future generations are alive to tell this story, it will only be because the best of humanity prevailed and pulled together with a love so profound that the seemingly impossible was achieved.   Anodea Judith, from “Waking the Global Heart”(2006)

A Long Awaited Event

This month on Friday, December 21st, a long-awaited event will take place.  It is the dawning of a new age of human evolution. It is called the Age of Illumination, by some indigenous people and me, and multitudes of people will be gathering all around the planet to celebrate the birth of a more enlightened era. (See website www.birth2012.com)  In preparation for the 2012 Shift, we have grown our collective consciousness by initiating a willingness to choose Love over Fear. Potent evidence of this shift is our learning how to release and transform the pain of the past rather than transferring it and resigning ourselves to a life of struggling and suffering.  It has become more socially acceptable to seek Forgiveness than to seek Revenge.

Mister Rogers Rides Again!

And who knew, that it would be Mr. Rogers who would present me with a powerful insight and teaching for navigating this Age of Illumination.  (Well, I really am not surprised because his teachings helped me transform fear into gratitude back in 2008. But that’s another story for later.)  A documentary was released earlier this year called, “Mister Rogers and Me,” that honors Mister Rogers for the amazing impact his gentle and powerful ministry to children had on adults. The film shows Mister Rogers as a true wisdom keeper, messenger and healer, and I was most affected by the following quotes:

“Deep and simple is far more essential than shallow and complex. Simple is not the same as easy. Simple is often very difficult. Simple is right.  Human life is very deep and our modern lifestyle is not. ”
 –Mister Rogers

Wow!  Ain’t that the truth!  And, I add to these quotes that deep and simple is hard to become because it’s about telling the truth, to ourselves and others. The Age of Illumination requires a conscious effort on our part to choose what is right, and to do it simply through faith, Grace, and gratitude.

Deep & Simple versus Shallow & Complex

The old paradigms that are shifting right before our very eyes are giving way to new thought patterns designed to enable us to experience our Divinity Within, our internal power, which Gary Zukav so elegantly popularized through “The Seat of the Soul” starting in 1989.  It’s so time for each and every one of us to fully embrace the truth, the depth of our human existence, and let go of our dependence upon the Matrix –- the illusion that power as external. For those who haven’t yet taken the red pill, the shift is going to help make that an easy and effortless choice because the Matrix is disintegrating.  So I’m going to share some characteristics of a lifestyle that is shallow & complex versus one that is deep and simple.  And, I’m not sharing anything you don’t already know!

The shallow and complex lifestyle is primarily characterized as a life devoid of loving purpose, with limited emotional intelligence, and having no viable connection to the Divine, to Source.  By viable I mean the ability to believe in the pure Love of the Universe and make right choices despite what others may say or do.  The shallow and complex lifestyle is rooted in fear/victim consciousness and fuels greed (you are never enough), promotes vengeance (you are unwilling to receive the grace of Forgiveness), and breeds domestic and all forms of violence and injustice (you transfer pain instead of being able to transform it). Common belief systems operating within a shallow and complex lifestyle are as follows:

“It’s not me, it’s them. The world is out to get me.”
Control drama and attachment: “If I don’t do it, it won’t be right.
“I’m not enough. What do I have to do/say/be in order to be liked or loved?”
“I’m better than them. I can’t let them win.”
“Why do things always have to change and make it harder for me?”

The deep and simple lifestyle is primarily characterized as a life full of loving purpose, with unbounded emotional intelligence, and having a viable connection to Divinity within and that which is beyond human capacity to imagine or know.  The deep and simple lifestyle is rooted in love/Grace consciousness and promotes gratitude and appreciation (you are enough), ignites compassion (willingness to ask and receive the grace of Forgiveness daily), and creates significant opportunities for personal and interpersonal peacemaking and reconciliation (you are able to transform your pain instead of transferring it).  Common belief systems operating within a deep and simple lifestyle are:

“All that can show up is what I believe about myself.  The world is out to gift me.
“I trust that my efforts are never in vain, but may not produce the outcome I would like.  I can learn to trust the process."
“I am enough, and people can love me exactly the way I am. I choose to grow myself to be in full alignment with my loving purpose.”
“I am unique and my difference is to be valued, not compared to others.  I believe in win-win, not win-lose because there are no disposable people on this Earth.”
“Change is challenging but inevitable.  Growth is optional, and I choose to embrace change as a growth opportunity.  I believe in the truth of my Sacred Contract.”

Choosing Love over Fear

Learning to live a deeply and simply requires a mental and spiritual attitude that is grounded in the pure Love of the Universe.  To master the Love Posture is no different from any other skill-building process – it must be practiced. And, a key ingredient of the practice is learning to regulate how we think, behave and relate to ourselves and others.  Below are 5 elemental Love Postures I recommend for deep and daily practice during the coming year.  I will discuss them in contrast to the 5 primal Fear Postures associated with the shallow and complex lifestyle, which must be transcended in order to support our human evolution of consciousness.  These Postures will be the foundation of my elemental rituals, radio/media communications, and writings during 2013.

Fire Posture - Acceptance and Faith: When I accept the truth of my Earthly existence, both the good and the bad, I can then impact the quality of my living through my Faith in my Divine existence.  As a human being, when bad things occur, I will go into denial (This can’t be happening to me!) and plunge into despair (There’s something wrong with me!).  But I can choose to transcend this reactive response and adopt a creative response, by going beyond the limits of my trouble box through asking and thanking my God for revealing the treasure that is always embedded in the challenge.  Immaculee Ilibagiza’s “Left To Tell” is an awesome example of the power of Acceptance & Faith.  She survived the Rwanda Genocide in a closet-sized bathroom with 6 other women, and taught herself to read English while enduring starvation for 90 days.

Water Posture - Trust & Unconditional Love: Trust can be easily broken, but it can be repaired, because the ability to trust resides within and is not dependent upon the actions of someone else.  And, people can grow and heal from their pain and fear, which is the belief of unconditional love.  The lack of trust in a relationship fuels the need for external control (Men/women/teens can’t be trusted!) and attachment (I need to figure out how to get that person to do and be what I need in order to trust).  Once someone demonstrates that they are untrustworthy a boundary must be set, but we can’t make someone change. What we can do through the grace of Forgiveness and unconditional love is to release our attachment to the victim role we played, and accept the person as an evolutionary teacher, come to reveal our pain so we can heal it. 

Earth Posture - Personal Sovereignty & Vulnerability: We must be grounded in the truth of who we are –- Divine beings on a mission to choose love over fear-- in order to have relationships that are authentic, loving and supportive of our truth.  Until we are able to believe that people can love us for our truth, our insecurity and co-dependency (external focus on what someone thinks of me and no internal consideration of what I think of my Self), are evidence of an undeveloped belief in our supreme and independent power/authority over and responsibility for our thoughts, choices, and resulting behaviors.  Authenticity emerges from vulnerability which comes from a willingness to feel and to experience “not knowing.”  In a numbed out culture, emotional intelligence is hard to come by, although in her Ted Talk video, www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4Qm9cGRub0 that has over 800,000 views and counting, BrenĂ© Brown says, Vulnerability (tenderness) is the birthplace of love, joy, happiness, and fulfillment.” 
As we continue learning to appreciate the depth of our human existence, our connectedness to everyone and everything, we will stop denying our feelings and giving our power away under the delusion that these actions will insure our safety, our happiness, and our experience of love. 

Mineral Posture - Curiosity and Excitement: As humans, our natural curiosity and ability to learn is what makes life exciting.  Before standardized testing, a person was more able to discover and value their genius – like Phyllis Wheatley, Thomas Edison, and my grandfather, who could fix anything in and around the house. None of them took an SAT or an ACT.  Arrogance and our addiction to anxiety are the obvious results when the love of learning and discovery of loving purpose is overshadowed by competitive measurements of intelligence to determine quality of life. 

Education/learning has become a survival mechanism versus a tool for living on purpose.  People leave academia more afraid than when they went in because traditionally there are no conscious spiritual growth opportunities involved in the learning process.  Education/learning becomes an accumulation of knowledge in order to prove that one is worthy of “white collar” employment, and salary above minimum wage.  Education is not meant for achieving meaning and purpose in life, and it ought to be.  Education/learning is supposed to involve authentic communication, sharing of knowledge, practicing wisdom, and making a significant contribution to the community. How shallow our educational systems are for the emphasis on “making a living,”(math & science over wood shop and orchestra) or feeling superior to those who don’t have a college degree.  A deep and simple lifestyle is fueled by your ability to remain curious and excited about your purpose, that of all life forms, and the power of love until the day you die.


Nature Posture - Fulfillment & Gratitude: Fulfillment is the experience of fullness and satisfaction in the heart and soul, and gratitude is the attitude that enables us to live fully.  We feel fulfillment and then we act grateful. Then along comes some form of trauma that awakens our pain body which teaches us coping mechanisms for numbing and ignoring the pain.  And, when we numb our pain we also numb our ability to feel what is enough. Combine this with satisfaction overshadowed by competition, and the forgetting of the cosmic law that to everything there is a season, we will embrace greediness (The more I have, the better I will be), and envy (The grass is always greener on the other side) as postures for success. Of course we will only succeed at becoming more insatiable and frustrated by a no-win pursuit of happiness. 

Thank God we live in an ever-changing Universe that is cyclical in nature.  Thank God we also have free will.  Thank God we can choose to transcend these postures of fear and embrace the postures of love (acceptance & faith, trust & unconditional love, personal sovereignty & vulnerability, curiosity & excitement). The practice of Love postures not only greatly contributes to the transformation of our pain, but it will always manifest fulfillment.  This in turn will enable us to practice “gratitude attitude.”  Melodie Beattie, author of that classic self-help book, Co-dependent No More, says, “Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough and more.”


In Conclusion:

 It is my hope that conscious awareness of the 5 elemental Love postures will enable you to recognize and shift away from the thoughts and behaviors of the 5 primal Fear postures.  The more of us who commit to walking the Awakened Path, the more our ability to choose Love over Fear will become as easy and natural as rolling off a log.

I leave you with this quote:

We stand at the dawn of a new era.  Immersed in technology, yet hungry for the sacred, there is deep longing for a story that balances masculine and feminine, progress and sustainability, order and freedom, power and love.  The stories we tell ourselves shape our world.  They guide our relationships to each other, to the environment, and to the future.  Life in the twenty-first century is spinning a new myth.  It is time to listen to the growing chorus of voices that make up this story.  Together, we are discovering and inventing a way to the future.
-Anodea Judith, from “Waking the Global Heart” (2006)


2 comments:

Anonymous said...

This is wonderful food for the soul. Thank you for your wisdom.

Aisha Karefa-Smart said...

Brilliantly and simply rendered! Can't wait to discuss this on Creatively Speaking.