Something shifted during the night. There was restlessness but now there is calm. Things are clearer today, the path ahead more visible as calmness becomes the central focus over the weekend though there may be spikes or bursts of energy. We must maintain this calm energy of stability and balance. The universe will back us in this intent to remain calm, just as it has backed our need for restlessness as a catalyst for change.
Calmness is energizing and sustainable. It is quiet and still. It feels right. Calmness is requesting that life be allowed to lead now, that the universe be allowed to offer assistance and guidance. In a state of calm all things are possible. Calmness is the discipline that must take over now so that we may successfully back down from our confrontations. Now is a time of retreat, of waiting, and of patience. It means waiting to see what happens next.
When pulled out of calmness, out of balance, the thing to do is turn away from that which draws so strongly and return immediately to calmness. When confronted with anger, bitterness, hatred, or even over-excitement and exhilaration, return to calm balance. By constantly turning back to the calm self, the calm group, the calm nation, the calm world, all things will have a chance to change in a balanced peaceful way.
I feel the energy of the movement that is now upon us. The media, after weeks of pretending nothing was happening, has finally picked up on the fact that a lot of people have gotten together in a very powerful way. The media eventually picks up on everything. But the media also attaches labels to things, whether they are accurate or not. In this case the media is reporting that we’re angry, and that does seem to be the truth of this Occupy Wall Street and Everything Else movement. We’re expressing our discontent and the media is taking up the cry: We’re angry!
The media machine has been telling us things about how we feel for years. For the past ten years they’ve been telling us that we’re afraid. Acknowledging that fear has led to taking security measures, and taking security precautions has led to more fear. So we became a nervous nation. We wanted something to take care of our anxiety. We looked for things to alleviate the fears. Enter the media again. They tell us not only that we are overweight, depressed, and stressed out but that we need to take drugs to temper the effects of our fears. Enter the drug companies. Now we are a nation of drug takers. There is a drug for every imaginable fear, real or otherwise. In essence we’ve become a lazy nation dependent on synthetic means of achieving security. But the truth is that we’ve been passively accepting what we’ve been fed and we’ve been lapping up the stuff for years now. However, if we listen to what is being said now, not just by the media but by everyone else, we discover that truthfully we are actually very angry.
On the verge of collapse
Anger is a great catalyst. It can wake us up, shake us up, and make us take action, which is what is happening now. But I’m a little worried about where this is taking us and just what it is that we’re really so angry about. The obvious anger, what is driving this movement, is of course true: we are angry at the few who have made the decisions, taken over our country and left the rest of us to grovel in the dust while they enjoy the riches they have reaped. My own fear, however, is that this movement will collapse, that the opportunity to truly become ONE mass movement will fall into blaming and kneejerk retaliation.
In using anger as a catalyst we must question again and again why we are so angry. Are we really, each one of us angry at the 1%? Yes, we are. But where does our personal anger lie? Are we not also angry that we let things get this far? Are we not angry that we have been asleep, drugged and numbed, for the past ten years or longer? Are we angry at ourselves for not speaking out sooner, even though we saw where this nation was heading?
There have been many cries to wake up. One of the most significant was Al Gore’s cry in 2006 when he made his film An Inconvenient Truth. It too was a cry to get angry, to change the world before it was too late. Many of us heeded the cry, changed our ways, became skeptical of what the media was saying, began paying more attention, questioning everything. Many of us have been questioning authority our entire lives. Now a new generation, adept at interconnectedness like no other generation before it—except perhaps their parent’s generation, those of us who grew up in the 1960s and 70s—is taking up the baton that Al Gore handed them a few years ago. They are the next step in the energy of change that has been brewing for years. They are telling us that it’s not bad to be uncomfortable, that it’s not bad to protest, that it’s not a bad thing to say that we disagree and that we want things to be different.
When I study the stories and pictures that are coming out of the Occupy Wall Street movement I see an intelligent generation and nation of people of all ages that understands the truth of where we are. But I also see and hear a lot of blame and anger directed at those who are equally part of this awakening, no more responsible than we each are. For we would not be awakening in anger had we not gotten into the place we now find ourselves in by the choices we’ve all made along the way. I fear that this anger directed at others will keep us from acknowledging our deeper human truth: that we are all the same. We must not separate ourselves in our anger. We must not be afraid of each other. We must shed our labels and become one human movement without labels, borderless and angry in the right way.
And to me, this is the most important next step: to progress in the right way. We are indeed on the verge of progress, but nothing will come of it, on a mass scale, if we don’t question ourselves more deeply. We must face the 1% within that has allowed each one of us to get into the position we are in now. We must use our anger to turn our individual lives around by looking for the pessimist, the terrorist, the blamer, the addict, the narcissist, and the greedy one within. We must constantly ask ourselves what we are personally so angry about. Just as we confront others and demand accountability, we must accept the personal decisions that got us to this point in our own lives. Just as the Occupy movement is challenging us to join the mass energy of change, we must actually change personally, for the whole is no greater than the sum of its parts.
Most of the truths that Al Gore pointed out still remain unattended and unresolved. We must personally face the same truths within ourselves and question our personal motivation to change. What have we personally done to change ourselves over the past ten years?
I do believe that we have made great progress. As a nation, we dared to elect Barack Obama president. We said: here is a man to carry our hope. But we must realize that until we take action on our own behalf all he will be able to do is carry that hope for us, dashed or otherwise. We must not be disappointed in our elected officials, no matter who they are because, as I see it, they carry the conflict and discontent of this entire nation. We have assigned them the roles they play. Now it’s up to us to take it to the next level, just as it’s up to us to take our personal journeys to the next level.
That being said, the social media, the interconnectedness that we now have at our fingertips is absolutely the power of the people. Yes, it might be power that is fueled by anger, but let’s make it power fueled by our universal oneness as well. Our basic human goodness must fuel us now, for ourselves, our nation, and the world.
The people are rising up. They are questioning the status quo, protesting against the inequities and injustices of a capitalist system that serves the few at the expense of the many. This mass Occupy movement is awakening and invigorating a grassroots sense of power, the power of the people.
Personally, I feel the energy of this awakening movement very deeply, yet I fear that its intent is becoming as splintered as the multitude of factions that are now involved. I ask for a message of guidance regarding this energy of mass protest that, at its root, does indeed seek justice and change for all.
I am proud of the younger generation that is choosing to lead us in this brilliant way, using the technological tools that are in the hands of everyone. These protests are indeed worthy uses of the interconnected ability that is now so readily available to all of us.
If we are to use technology to remain connected and united in changing the world, what is the single most important and worthwhile thing for all of us to understand as we ride the current energy of change at this moment in time?
Here is how Infinity responds:
The power remains in the masses staying together, united in intent. Do not split into factions. Do not separate one from another, by country, religion, ideology, or political party. Do not disperse into groups of race, color, creed, or educational background. Remain instead as ONE.
Only in remaining strongly, centrally interconnected, as one group with one mission, will change be accomplished. Each day a new directive must circulate and all must act en masse. This is not only possible, but will also have the greatest impact, for a globally interconnected movement will be unstoppable.
However, personal agendas and egos, indecision, and disputes of the world you live in, must be swept aside. It is only in total acceptance of all beings as ONE being—one energy, one mind—that change will happen. Humanity must become one without borders for this movement that you speak of to surpass all other movements.
The potential is great, but success will only come with pure intentions and true acceptance of all peoples as one. You are all the same, even the opposition. All of you have equal greed inside you. The desires that the few exhibit and the many abhor must be accepted as occurring in all human beings, for they are part of the human makeup. All must ask the question: Where lies my own greed?
You are all the greedy few and you are all the masses. You all seek fairness, color blindness, borderless unity, with one direction for all humanity to now proceed in. The direction of fairness for all can only be achieved by acceptance of the unfairness that now exits. Greed exists and evil exists in all things, just as beauty, love, and goodness exist in all things. It is only in acceptance and balance and, of course, as ONE that any lasting change will succeed.
Find the ONE within the self, but find also the greedy self within before demanding change. If one does not acknowledge and realize the truth of the self at the deepest level, how can one trust the desire of the masses? In order for true change, the masses must unite in the core truth of being human.
If there is to be fairness for all then let it be for all. Honesty, openness, fairness, acceptance and love for all beings must ride this energy. There is enough energy already stirring to power this movement. Don’t lose sight of the original intent, set long ago: Change for all.
Chuck and I live in Red Hook, New York, a rural community in Northern Dutchess County. We are surrounded by fields and rolling hills, with nature at our door. There is another Red Hook, New York, in Brooklyn, quite a different environment. Sometimes people think we live there. Although Chuck and I have both had our city experiences, at this point in our lives we are quite contented with our rural existence. But that does not mean we are free of the issues that Red Hook, Brooklyn faces in its urban chaos of growth and change, as rustic an environment as our own in many senses. We too have our gangs, coyotes that roam the neighborhood at night, owls that swoop down and grab the unsuspecting ones. We have the unseen hovering always over us, destructive forces of nature and environmental catastrophes abound. At any moment something can happen, just as it can happen in a city of millions, in a rural Red Hook just as in an urban Red Hook. These two places with the same name represent contrast and sameness, two worlds equally offering darkness and light.
Today as I sat and meditated, gazing out into the backyard from my favorite spot, I allowed my eyes to note what was outside, when normally I would have turned my gaze inward. It felt important to take note of what which was happening in the outer world rather than refuse its insistent, distracting call.
King of the Sky
I heard the blue jays, like warning sirens, loud and clear. I saw the squirrels leaping from tree to tree, their mouths full of large green hickory nuts that seem to have grown in abundance this year, perhaps portending a harsh winter. I breathed in the colors of the changing leaves and accepted that autumn is now in full swing. I noticed the large black crows, calling to each other as they swooped low over the house.
I noticed another bird, lighter in color yet the same size as the crows, flying across the sky, going in the opposite direction from the crows. I was struck by its struggling, flapping wings, looking more like the fluttering wings of a butterfly than a bird. I couldn’t remember when I had ever seen a bird fly like that. It did not soar as the crows had done, but seemed singularly intent, flying in great, breathless haste.
Energy of Light
I was struck by the light and dark of the world we live in, the urban and the rural, the soaring black crows equally as intent as the flapping white bird, though their practiced, narcissistic moves appear so calculated, their stature as rulers of the sky taken for granted. I was struck by the synchronicity of this scene before my eyes and that which is happening in our own world, in our earthbound world, the grassroots Occupy Wall Street movement taking up residence in the narcissistic world of money, fledgling white birds daring to own the sky too.
I’m struck by President Obama’s fight against the dark crows of republicanism, his every effort to enact the change we all want shot down again and again, the struggling white bird constantly knocked from its perch. In our electing him as our president we set the intent to fight this fight that now is being waged, the light against the dark, the fledgling prince of the skies against the dark kings who so easily swoop over us, dismissing the kind of change that is so right for all humanity. We did indeed set the intent for this clash of worlds.
I see it as no different from setting the intent to change our personal world: to recapitulate or not, to divorce or not, to move or not, to change jobs or not, to become a spiritual being or not. The time has come to realize that we must change because even if we are not personally choosing it, change is happening.
We have to change. It’s not a choice anymore. Everything about the world, as we know it, is changing. It’s not fair, in my opinion, to argue that President Obama is not bringing the change he promised, because, as I see it, he is bringing us the greatest change we’ve probably ever seen. Simply by us, the American people, electing him as our president, we also elected to engage the universal energy of change. We set our intent to change along with him and his slogan: Change we can believe in.
Change Direction
So where do we go from here? The first thing to do is to embrace this change, to indeed believe in it and to accept its inevitability on a national and a personal level. We must all allow ourselves to be engaged by it, both innerly and outerly. We must find out why we live during this time of change and what it might mean to us personally.
I think we are all being asked to let go of the old world and flow into the new, but we can only do that by acknowledging that the old one no longer works for any of us. When we get so fed up with our own lives, when the way we function no longer gratifies or fulfills us, when we finally accept that we have reached a point of total despair, boredom, frustration, sadness, anger, or whatever else comes as a catalyst, we must be ready to open to new ideas and new ways of living. These are the moments of enlightenment that we all need, but the trick is to handle them properly, in balance and with pragmatism, so that we don’t just create a new wall, so we don’t just construct new structures impossible to penetrate or scale.
We must not turn from one darkness into another. We must find the light in all of us and use that to change the world. But we must all face our own darkness first, even as we ask the government to do the same. We must reveal our own deepest truths to ourselves, even as we ask others to be transparent. We must all become honest, with ourselves above all. For if we, the people who are protesting the dishonesty and the backhandedness of those we consider the culprits, the evil ones, do not face our own darkness we will not have a leg to stand on when it comes to the final battle.
I exposed my deepest self in my book, The Man in the Woods, and yet each day I am confronted with still more work to do on that deepest self, for that self offers endless opportunities to explore and discover who I really am, why I do what I do, why I conclude the things I conclude. It’s a little daunting to be so exposed, but I know it’s right in alignment with the times we live in. It’s time for all of us to face the truths of what we hide inside us, to free ourselves of that which keeps us stuck, so that we can be the change we so desire in our world. We can only be a world of truly changing beings if we each individually change ourselves too.
So the white bird fluttered away, butterfly-like in its insistence on getting where it needed to go. I didn’t see where it went, somewhere beyond the trees, but like the butterfly spirit it embraced it had set its intent and nothing was going to stop it.
As I watched it fearlessly make its way across the sky I sent my own intent to ride along with it. It was only then that I turned inward and asked myself to take up that intent, to never stop challenging myself, even though, on some days, I must force myself to confront the uncomfortable questions that arise within. I know that I must respond by facing my fears and questioning myself once again with the universal question that never seems to be fully answered: what am I so afraid of?
I’ve already learned that change is good, that each time I face down a fear I face down something that has been standing in my way. I’m as fascinated by the rural Red Hook that I live in now as I was fascinated by the urban Brooklyn I once lived in, not far from the other Red Hook. Life flows in both places and right now we’re all living in the same place. It doesn’t matter who we are or where we live, the place we’re in is the place of change.
Let’s go for it, in whatever way we can, personally first and then universally, because we are going anyway. I prefer to go openly and honestly, challenging myself to face what I do not like in others, learning from them what I must also face inside myself.
Find solace in quietude today, for it is only in inner calmness that the deeper self may be realized. There is need for such inner seeking of self and not only now during the times in which you live. This is a truth for all times. It is only through experiences of the deeper self, the spiritual self, that humanity will realize the eternal connection that all human beings possess, not as a gift, but as a reality of being human.
In moments of quietude seek the deeper self, the universal self, and ask for guidance of this deeper universal self, which is the source of all knowledge.
Your guidance will come from within the self, though your outer reality will signal your way. Your direction in life and the necessary steps to discover the deeper meaning of your life will be in alignment with your outer reality.
Perhaps your outer reality signals a direction that will lead you to a new level of awareness or perhaps your outer reality signals that it is time to take a new direction. Your outer reality will approve or disapprove of steps you are considering. You will be offered choices that may or may not be right. How do you choose? How do you know what to do next? How do you know if one step will lead to growth or to disaster?
Inner quietude will bring the answers you seek. The trick is to know just what such inner quietude feels like for you. Seeking inner quietude as often as possible will train your awareness to know what to do. Eventually, you will feel this inner resonance immediately arising upon questioning. In inner calmness you will learn that all the answers lie waiting within.
Often the answer may be accompanied by discomfort because it will, of course, be challenging you to change, to choose something out of the ordinary, to perhaps greatly disrupt the life you have been leading, daring you to face a new direction. Discomfort-in-resonance is perhaps the most challenging inner place to be.
Be aware that such moments are evolutionary ones, the moments when you are fully aware that you must change, that you are being challenged to go beyond the present self. They can be frightening moments, but if you stay firmly attached to the resonance of the moment—the clear voice of your spirit calling—you will find the strength and guidance you need.
Training the self to listen and act on your spirit’s call to change will lead to greater awareness of your spirit’s ways and means of guiding you and you will also have learned a new step in acquiescing to your journey.
Pay attention to your spirit calling you. The call today may be for you alone, a call to grow, but in the future it may lead to the growth of others as well. As we all evolve upon this earth, as we all listen to the truth of the spirit’s call, a greater sense of ourselves as interconnected beings, all desiring the same things in life and in spirit, may arise as a new reality of being human. This is already a known truth: that we are all just struggling to become more than we are; that, in reality, we are all on the same journey, but as humans we become so wrapped up in our personal woes that we forget that we all suffer.
Do not forget that each one of us is on a similar journey, the point of which is to grow in awareness of why we are here. And that is why inner quietude is such an important tool in both our spiritual practices as well as in our lives in the world. Through inner quietude the two worlds may merge and we may begin to flow through our lives more seamlessly each day.
Find inner quietude, heeding the spirit’s call, as often as possible. Find the calm self and the calm mind and let the knowing mind of this state of being human guide you. We are all readers of infinity and our training is in our own lives, in the circumstances that make up our realities and the choices we make.
May you find quietude and make a decision based on your spirit’s call today. Even if it is only a small or seemingly insignificant shift in self-awareness, such a step may offer more than you can imagine. It may release you from the place you now find yourself so caught in. Change the inner self and find how easily the outer self grasps at the opportunity for a new and different life as well. If we are hungry for anything, truly that thing is change.
