Keep going. Don’t stop now. Reinvigorate your intention. Like a seed planted in the ground attend to it so that the change you desire comes to fruition. Nurture it with love, feed it your attention, and give it your energy. Remind yourself often that you are important and that your intention for your own growth and happiness is important too. Remain optimistic and keep your intent alive. With love it will thrive. With care it will grow. With your unbending intent it will evolve, and so will you!
Question your life. Question what you think, what you think you need, your judgments of others, your beliefs, your staunchly held ideas, your perceived duties and obligations. What are you doing that is good for yourself and others, and what are you doing that is not? What is the best use of your energy so that you may grow and evolve? Each day is a new opportunity to change something, to add or remove something, to do something that you have longed to do, or to simply stop doing something that is not good for you. Choose health over habits. Choose conservation of energy for what really matters over energy expenditures that are wasteful. Choose new life over old habits. Be adventurous within your own mind. Adopt a new thought today. “I am different today,” may be enough. Change one thing, one thought, one habit. Just change something, and then see what happens!
Change begins on the inside, in making a decision to institute something new to combat something old. Though there may be discordancy and doubt, there is always the possibility of unity and oneness. The key lies in awakening the heart center, in bringing forth the love that lies there waiting, in stirring up love rather than fear and hate, in bringing forth goodness, acceptance, respect and appreciation rather than doubt, intolerance, mistrust, and judgments. Others are not the enemy, the enemy lies within. Stir the heart center and let its messages of oneness, unity, and love awaken. Let love guide the way now. For indeed, it is the only way if harmony is to be achieved. Stir up the energy of love and use it for good.
“There’s always a bit of heaven in a disaster area!” exclaimed Wavy Gravy, as the rains fell and the traffic snarled at the Woodstock Music Festival, fifty years ago this August. When I listened to Marianne Williamson at the 2020 Democratic Presidential Debate, I shared Wavy Gravy’s reaction, toward the chaos of now, “there’s always a bit of heaven in a disaster area!”
Love has arrived at the top echelon of political discourse. Love rises when it faces a truly worthy opponent. To continue on a path of knowledge in the world of the Shamans of Ancient Mexico, one must encounter a truly worthy opponent. In a recent Netflix episode, David Letterman and Howard Stern respectfully acknowledged the power of love’s most worthy opponent as they discussed the many personal interviews they had each conducted with Donald Trump over the past 30 years.
Last week, The Wall Street Journal called this past June the warmest gain in the Dow since 1938. This past week, France suffered the warmest temperatures in its history. Where’s the connection?
Last week, Duke Energy representative Randy Wheeless, in North Carolina, explained his company’s reluctance to pursue renewable energy. “I think a lot of environmentalists talk about the end of the world, but there are a lot of people still worried about the end of the month, and how to pay bills,” he said. What bills will be left to pay “when the Garden is gone,” as Neil Young sings?
The truth is evident. The issue of now is not what is true but what is right. Immigrant children are taken from their parents; this is government policy, which will cause deep, perhaps irreparable psychological damage to those children. This is scientifically known truth.
In this case, the coveted ‘end’ of illegal immigration is said to justify this inhumane ‘means.’ America First has supplanted what once made America the world’s great beacon of hope. America has lost its connection to the heart in the service of personal gain at all costs.
This national foray into heartless narcissism has been an incredibly humbling outing of America’s shadow. We all must face the preponderance of self-importance and the facade of altruism behind our noble American Dream. America stalked the heart center at its founding but has always masked its self-serving intent.
Thankfully, but dangerously, that facade has crumbled. As individuals we are challenged to face the preponderance of our narrow personal survival fears. Is the stock market’s contribution to our retirement more important than the survival of the world? Is trade really the highest god?
The worthy opponent of now is fixation at the third chakra, the home of narcissistic personal power. That fixation is obsessed only with the accrual of its own power. From its perspective, personal needs trump the survival of the world. We must all reckon with our attachment to this fixation. Masked altruism is what landed us here.
Real love awaits at the heart chakra. Real love embraces the truths and needs of the one world we are all part of. The heart chakra faces the truth of survival needs and will require, of all, great sacrifice to survive as a world.
We find our way to the heart by facing our own deepest truth with compassion. We then turn that compassion, however ruthlessly, to all the worthy opponents who boldly honor narcissism. No parts can be left out of the whole. From there, the heart will guide.
I hear Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young singing to me, from within, “Carry on, love is coming, love is coming to us all…..” Happy 4th. Celebrate true Independence.
The river of life flows through you. You are the light of the sun, the winds blowing, the oceans rocking, the moon shining, the mountains rising, the trees growing. You are life itself. Like the Earth beneath you, you are alive with energies, subtle and vibrant. Respect life within you and respect all life that surrounds you, that shares the planet with you, that supplies you with what you naturally need. Remember always that you are simply a part of it all, an instrument of the great experiment that is life. Live simply, with gratitude, respect, and love for all beings, human and nonhuman species alike, and for all that grows and keeps you alive. Take only what you need and leave only beauty behind you. In that will be a life well lived.
