sizzling energy

My husband called me from the voting place early in the morning and reported that the energy was sizzling, a photographer was documenting for the local press, people were chatting, and he encouraged me to come out and vote right away instead of waiting until later in the day.

The parking lot was indeed full when I arrived not long after, and an air of anticipation permeated the voting place.  I felt an almost giddy excitement, the way children anticipate Christmas in the hopes for good things.  The energy was indeed crispy and it wasn't even 9am yet.  The election officers had arrived at 5am to be ready for when polls opened at 6.    Several had their first or second of many coffee cups in front of them, anticipating a long and busy day, until 10 at night.  

I could feel the spirit, the energy, the hopefulness at the polling place.  No matter what your convictions, expectations, or wishes for this momentous and important election - in the end we all come from the same place of hope, anticipation, and a wish for a turn for the better.  Voting is all the more meaningful when you know that every vote counts, as it does in the mid-terms.  It looks like people have been jolted out of their voter complacency. It's encouraging.  Democracy only works if we participate in it.

always new words

There are two words I have come across quite a bit lately, and you won't find them in an older print dictionary.  They are words that express new cultural patterns and sensibilities.  Language is always a work in progress and adapts to new ways of thinking. Shakespeare may be difficult to understand, while the more recent language of Charles Dickens may simply sound old fashioned.  But both are proof that we think and speak differently now than then.  Think of how the meaning of the word gayhas changed over time.  In addition to such shifts in meaning, we also invent brand new words for ideas and products that didn't exist previously.

Othering, used as a verb, is such a new word.  It refers to putting up a mental and verbal barrier, or depersonalizing an entire group of people or even animals, when we distinguish them as "them, not us," or as other. It is a term that has become so relevant in an age of bipartisanship, binarism, divisiveness, and the reduction of issues to either wrong or right.   While the word otheris of course not new, using it as a verb, as in othering, is new.

Woke is the second word.  Woke is a word of African-American origin that means being aware and awakened to social and cultural issues of change.  The word's meaning hasn't changed much, but it has entered mainstream language and awareness.  

It is interesting to experience language changing right in front of my eyes.  Woke and otheringwere not in my vocabulary and awareness a few years ago, yet the need to express what these words convey has birthed them and spread their use.  Do you know any new words?  

the elephant in the room

Recently, I was not only asked to do some writing for producer Dena Barnett's upcoming documentary, Spiritual Healing: A New Frontier, but also to contribute a statement regarding the elephant in the room.

Which elephant, you may ask.  Well, if Spiritual Healing promises such good results why does it have such difficulty finding acceptance, credibility and traction?  The answer is two-fold and lies in the elephant so to speak.  

First, Spiritual Healing is low-tech and low cost - it costs nothing beyond the practitioner’s time, and requires no technology or other salable “props.”  Hence, if Spiritual Healing became widely accepted and gained traction, it would dismantle parts of the medical-industrial complex, which relies on people being ill, and the enormous reoccurring revenues from doctor’s visits, procedures, and pharmaceuticals that come with it.  Our culture is more profit than wellness driven, and there is enormous resistance to this shift from a financial perspective. 

Second, Spiritual Healing operates within the unseen aspect of our earthly existence, that of consciousness, and consciousness has thus far been science's, and our general cultural underpinning’s, "elephant in the room.”  Science, and the medical establishment in particular, has as yet not been willing to openly investigate the connection between consciousness and illness, and how the mind influences the body’s well or ill being.  Consciousness is the elephant in the room that scientists don't dare to mention for fear of being discredited.  

When we turn this tide, when the scientific and medical establishments openly acknowledge that consciousness influences matter, and not the other way around, that healing and ill being happen on the mental plane, it will be a momentous paradigm shift in human consciousness evolution so big we can't even predict all the implications to our way of life.

Here a related earlier post on healing eras and energy medicine.

as above, so below

The other day I was newly setting up my calendar on my cellphone, having previously only managed appointments and events on an agenda book that's sitting in the middle of the house where I walk by many a times a day and peek into it.  What struck me as I was setting up the virtual calendar was that it automatically pulled up event locations as I typed them in, which then automatically would enable me to obtain directions, call the place up, email it, or look at their website for more information.  Many of you are already operating like this, but I was struck and realized something else. 

We may not all fully accept a collective subconscious or the interconnectedness of all beings on the non-physical plane yet, although scientists are coming around to that - see Robin Wall Kimmerer's book Braiding Sweetgrass and similar botanical research I covered in another post. This complete interconnectedness with via the cloud or the interweb is intertwining us via technology and informs how we interact and organize in our physical environment.  

From there it is just one step to fully realize, "As above, so below." "As above, so below" is a spiritual tenet that originates in the hermetic tradition and says that what's happening on a micro level is also happening on a macro level. The technological interconnectedness seems to me like a mirror reflection of this other interconnectedness, the one Larry Dossey, internationally known physician, author and speaker, refers to in his latest book One Mind, the universal consciousness that ancient and newly revived or developed healing modalities also tap into.

The complete interconnectedness of almost the entire human population now through cloud computing and the internet/interweb physically mirrors the complete interconnectedness we have with all of life on a consciousness level.  As above, so below.

new right-brain culture

I so love the new values.  I can feel it in my bones that a more meaningful culture is lurking underneath all this mess and morass.  Already in 2005 Daniel Pink wrote in his insightful and very readable A Whole New Mind:  Why Right Brainers Will Rule The Future,  "We've moved from an economy built on people's backs to an economy built on people's left brains to what is emerging today: an economy and society built more and more on people's right brains."

The Age of Creativity!  You probably remember, at least by title, the book Drawing On The Right Side Of The Brain, that taught drawing intuitively rather than intellectually.  The right side of the brain governs our creative-emotional aspect, the left our rational-analytical.  Neither can function without the other, or rather both sides inform each other to make us human, although we're not necessarily perfectly balanced. In general terms many really creative people lack a bit of rational-analytical, and many sciency, techy or businessy people lack some creative-emotional.  Others seem perfectly balanced (my daughter can navigate both complicated scientific details and concepts, and she is very creative at the same time).  In addition, more women are slightly right brain heavy, while more guys are a bit left brain heavy (that's what that other fun book, Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus was all about).  Here a link to a good article that compares the two sides of the brain.

Pink is saying that we're moving towards a more creative, empathic cultural and economic model.  That is also the reason why the humanities are on the rise again. Corporations are finally understanding that people who have learned to think, to look at broad cultural patterns and ideas, and who are creative, will do well in many different business environments because they think laterally and out-of-the box, instead of linearly within their field.  Right-brainers can make connections between seemingly unrelated fields. Waldorf Education has always taught to make such lateral connections, and speaks to this cultural shift (Rudolf Steiner, its founder and a brilliant visionary, was way ahead of his times.  We're only now catching up to his many ideas.).  

So, are you well balanced between both sides of the brain?  More left brain?  Or more right brain?

value or not?

Yuval Noah Harari writes in Sapiens, "For decades, aluminum was much more expensive than gold.  In the 1860s, Emperor Napoleon III of France commissioned aluminum cutlery to be laid out for his most distinguished guests. Less important visitors had to make do with the gold knives and forks."

Value is not intrinsic to an item or a service. It's made up based on cultural beliefs we buy into together.  Think Netherlands tulip craze that imploded, think sugar price drop from the Middle Ages to now. In our culture we believe that time is precious, so precious that American employers give very little of it away for vacation and personal time off, while indigenous people, even though their lives are often shorter than ours, seem to have lots of it to sit around a campfire telling stories or making music together, and Europeans get six weeks vacation on top of all of their religious holidays.  We also believe that money is scarce since we love a good bargain and  try to pay as little as possible for our acquisitions.  

Now we laugh at Napoleon III's "precious" aluminum cutlery, but it goes to show how values come and go, and are based on scarcity, perceived or actual.  Value is really a made-up story.  Your values may be slightly different from mine, so that I might spend more money on things that you might not value the same way I do, and vice versa.  I think some luxury cars are cool looking, but would not spend the money on one.  I'm totally fine with a utilitarian car in which I can transport all of my recycling items to the various drop-off points, and my (sometimes) mud caked organic produce fresh from the farm to home, without fear of messing up my car.  I value my health first and foremost since my life depends on it, hence I value highest the best food and the best healing services I can pay for.

What do you spend your money on?  What do you value?  What do you not value?  What do you not spend your money on?

pondering death

Our life expectancy has roughly doubled from about forty years in the Middle Ages to around eighty years now, and the number of living centennials keeps growing.  There are now around 450,000 people on earth who are a hundred years or older, up from 316,000 in 2012. We tend to look at a long life as an accomplishment.  Our medical establishment has worked on prolonging life at the far end in many ways, and when someone dies early we often believe that the doctors could perhaps have done better, or that the diseased was robbed of many more years on this beautiful earth. We are especially sad when children die. 

Our culture is quantitatively oriented, not qualitatively - bigger, taller, older, and more is supposedly better.  We not only value life, we especially value youth, because we fear death.  Hence we tend to push death out as far as we possibly can so we don't have to deal with it too soon.  We have removed it from our lives as much as possible, and in general it's not a subject we feel comfortable delving into deeply.  But will we ever live forever?  Probably not. So, sooner or later we have to deal with our own mortality.  Besides, all other life on earth is subject to this birth to death lifecycle as well, so why would we be an exception?    

But there are some indications of a shift in this conversation.  Models tend to be older now, and show up confidently with silver hair; movies tell stories of older couples; the Times recently wrote about the Positive Death Movement.  Buddhists have always said that "you need to die while alive in order to live," a transcendence that can only be achieved through a mystical experience.

How do you feel about death and dying, and what do you teach your children?  What if a life's quality, or a particular break-through that was achieved, were more important than the number of years alive?   Here a previous post on this, and another.

the crack in the story

When I grew up things seemed certain, and most things were straightforward. The story behind our culture worked. We went to the market and grocery store to buy our food, no questions asked.  We went to the doctor for relief of whatever ailed us, no questions asked. The weather was the weather, no questions asked.   People seemed mostly content plugging away at living their life.

Those times are over.  Food has become a complicated conversation around pesticides and sustainability.  Healing has become a complicated conversation because many of our ailments don't respond predictably to standardized treatments, many of which have disconcerting side effects on top of that.  The weather is kind of crazy these days.  And people are depressed, confused, distraught, suicidal, and uneasy.  Things are changing.  The old story that upheld our culture no longer works.  The cracks are showing up everywhere because the usual standard answers and solutions have stopped working predictably.  

Life has become so unsettling that we need to begin asking some deep questions of ourselves and our culture.   Why is our story changing?  How is it changing? Are we changing the story, or are we being changed? Are we evolving, or are we being evolved?   Author Charles Eisenstein calls our in-between stage The Space Between Stories because we have one foot in the old story, the profit based story of competition and aggression that we are all tired of, and that makes us stressed and sick.  Our other foot is already in the new story, the one of a non-poisonous, healthy agriculture, the one of inexpensive and gentle healing methods, the one that leaves us energized and inspired about our work, the one where we have more leisure time, and the one that heals us emotionally.  

Along the way I have seen many cracks in my story. I went to art school and the professors tried to funnel my creativity into rigid parameters.  I felt restricted.  I was pregnant and was treated like a patient.  I felt violated.  I've watched how my children were being taught to so many tests. I feel sorry that this has taken the fun out of learning.  I cannot trust the integrity and healthfulness of grocery store foods. I feel unsafe.  

What cracks have appeared in your story?

a new time culture

In order to be creative, productive, effective, enthusiastic, and inspired we need downtime or me-time in between all the tasking we have become so accustomed to.  Whether meditation time, gardening time, family time, beach time, hiking time, art time, poetry time - it doesn't matter.  But it's better if it's right-brain time to balance all the left-brain thinking we do so much of.            

This country has not been terribly supportive of the need for personal time because we believe that time is money, time is scarce, time is of the essence, time is precious, and time should not be wasted.  Hence companies don't invest much in their employees' well-being through increased vacation time, and a culture of guilt has formed around taking time off to the detriment of our mental health  (here an earlier related post - enjoy your weekend, really).

In contrast, most Europeans receive between four and six weeks of vacation time on top of all those long religious holiday weekends they have, while we have to scrape by with two lousy weeks unless you have built up serious seniority.  But all these underlying beliefs depend on your perspective.  My husband's company employed a young man for a few months who, before quitting, inquired if he could work part-time instead of full-time because he needed more me-time.  He was willing to take a substantial pay cut in exchange.  I think the younger generation is ready to take their time back.  There is an actual organization, TakeBackYourTime.org, that promotes cultural change to that effect.  Take note, it's coming.

If you are an employer you are in the enviable position of being able to experiment with allowing more time off and experiencing for yourself if it makes your staff more creative, more enthusiastic, more balanced and relaxed, and ultimately more productive.  I believe that two weeks vacation with productivity at half-mast is a bigger waste of time than offering more time off and seeing your staff work at full throttle. 

here's some fabulousness

Wow, it is so easy to get dragged into the go-go-go and work-work-work mode of this culture.  If you don't make a conscious effort to raise your frequency - fabulous emotions have a higher frequency - you sink because you get thought by your subconscious beliefs (our subconscious informs 85% of what we do!).  

We need inspiration on an ongoing basis to remind ourselves of the magnificence of this earthly existence, and if yours is not wondrous you can learn methods to make it so.  To inspire people you need to be inspired.  If you're not inspired you lose your luster.

Currently I am reading Mike Dooley's Infinite Possibilities to remind myself how magical this world really is, and how much I'm in charge of my existence by way of what I think and conjure up that way.  I am always inspired by accounts such as Anita Moorjani's amazing (at least in our limited and limiting way of thinking) healing story, and there are many others like hers.  It's just that our Western medical paradigm does not yet allow for acknowledgement and scientific research into how this works. 

In addition I try to go to at least one inspirational conference each year.   Not only do these conferences inspire me personally and bring renewed inspiration to my thinking, they also contribute to freshening my messages to you.  Here a post, divorce is not an option, from one of the previous inspirational conferences I have attended, Omega Institute's Sustainability Conference.  

At the end of June I will be attending Charles Eisenstein's conference,The Space Between Stories, at the Garrison Institute.  Eisenstein, together with many other inspirational authors and speakers, is leading and lighting the way through the chaos of our cultural redefinition.  Civilizations have come and gone, and ours, in its present expression, has made us and our environment sick.   It is no longer viable and sustainable because it leaves not enough room for fabulousness, inspiration, individuality, freedom, meaning, creativity and all those other great heart based values.  I will report back after my return from Garrison at the end of this month.  

Meanwhile, think about what inspires you?  What lifts your energy?  What puts a smile on your face?  What makes you exhale and say "ahhhhhhhh" in delight?