I don’t know if there is a more revered coach in that most masculine of sports, football, than 84-year-old Joe Paterno, affectionately nicknamed “Joe Pa.” Once again, the truth of sexual abuse has reared its ugly head and brought down another father—Pater in Latin—of the reigning order.
Simultaneously, Herman Cain, the pride of the Koch brothers and their American Enterprise Institute, finds himself steeped in the mire of sexual harassment charges.
Earlier this year we witnessed IMF head Dominique Strauss-Kahn, France’s heir apparent, being brought down by charges of sexual abuse.
The old king is dead!
All of these incidents, combined with the major revelations of worldwide sexual abuse within the institution of the Catholic church, are signs of the end of an era. An end of an era is represented by death of the father—he who sets the rules.
In ancient times, the people of a kingdom would kill the king in a failing kingdom, declaring: “The King is dead. Long live the king.” Out with the old, in with the new! This is the time we are in now—The king is dead. Long live the king!
It’s the end of an era that put football, church, business, and the affairs of state over the truth of sexual abuse, rampant in the shadows of abuse of power. It’s the end of an era that has allowed for rampant greed, through the abuse of masculine power, to the detriment of the 99% of the world. It’s the end of an era that denies the animal in the human animal. We must reckon with the fullness of our being, of who and what we are and what we really need. This is the challenge of the new king.
Last week, I blogged about the energetic wave of the new era impacting Greece and Italy. Since then both Prime Ministers are stepping down. Greece is installing a banker. This is an old-world father, an IMF move to settle the markets, to restore the status quo. In Italy, similar moves are being made to force the Italians, like the Greeks, into indentured servitude. It won’t hold: Pater-no! The King is dead. Long live the King!
The 1% is “Pater.” The 99% say “NO!” This does not mean the end of wealth. Wealth is part of nature; wealth has a legitimate place. But it does mean the end of unbridled greed as the dominating Father of world principles. The facts of life simply cannot uphold the legitimacy of that world any longer. The facts, as they are rapidly revealed in our information age, immediately shatter the old world spins on reality.
Unsettling truths revealed.
Worlds are colliding now: worlds of greed, worlds of denial of need, worlds of suppressed truth of sexual abuse. Truths are being revealed; truths too unsettling to uphold the reigning order of suppression and trickle-down survival.
As we move from fall into winter now, from decay into darkness, may we all reconcile with our deepest truths, mirrored so powerfully in the outer world right now.
With the end of Pater-no the seeds of new life are planted deeply in Mother Earth, with new life and a new era surely on the spring horizon. Pater-no!
Some of us are born with physical wounds, readily apparent. Some of us are born with deep psychological wounds. Some of us are born into wounding circumstances. Some of us encounter wounding situations at young ages and some of us do not encounter them until much later. Some of us don’t know we are wounded at all. But, overall, if we are born into human existence we carry wounds that we are challenged to heal.
If we are ready to evolve into beings of higher consciousness and spiritual enlightenment our first challenge is to discover what our wounds are, to acknowledge and accept them. Our next challenge is to do everything we can to face them, to work on ourselves and the situations we find ourselves in so that we can heal and grow.
If you believe, as I do, that we choose the life we are in, then it stands to reason that we also choose the wounds and the work it takes to deal with them. I was born to distant, unemotional parents who lived out their own wounds their entire lives. My siblings and I were forced to grow up under the dominating force of those wounded child parents who were deeply cut off from feelings, with the inability to express love. If you have read my book, you know that shortly after the age of two I entered the world of a sexual predator. To what end, you might ask, did I choose that life? What is the purpose of my life?
I have discovered that in acknowledging and freeing my wounded child self, I have freed myself of a burden that I carried through many lives, that of the sexually abused child. In recapitulating, I have freed myself of my wounded parents as well, and I have freed my own children of bearing this wounding into another generation. Of course they chose me as a parent so they will have their own issues to contend with as they take their journeys, but I feel confident that I am no longer burdening them with my own personal issues by hiding them from myself.
As we ponder our wounded child self we are faced with many possibilities. Is our wounded child self known? Does it dominate us? Is it a big baby, like the 1% demanding everything of us, stealing our energy? Or is it like the 99% begging for a place in our lives, asked to be fairly treated and accepted? Is it angrily pushed away, decidedly evil? Or is it tenderly acknowledged as an integral part of our journey?
Face the fears
We are further challenged to become the proper adult figure in the lives of our wounded child selves. We must treat them fairly, without judgment, but with compassion and a firm approach. We must become a parent, loving and accepting, yet release the wounded child from its captive role, allowing it to take its own rightful place. We must thank our child self for bearing the wounds that are our evolutionary task, and we must find the means of integration, so that we may become wholly adult, all aspects of self in symbiotic balance, kept well-attended and nurtured, yet fully known.
If we are ready to release ourselves from our own traumas and face new possibilities for life we are more compassionate and appreciative of the challenges that others must face as well. We find that we are detached in a new way, having discovered that, as we recapitulate and face our personal challenges, we energetically free so many others. In freeing myself from my past I not only free my children, but I remove my negative, depressed energy from the world as well.
I believe my purpose in life is the same purpose as all other humans: to become as spiritually evolved as possible by knowing myself in the deepest way, freeing myself from repeating many more miserable lifetimes with the same wounds festering. In facing my wounded self I faced eons of wounded selves.
I understand now what it means to be deeply wounded and to really heal. Healing is what life is all about, finding the means to heal so that the world around us can heal as well. In our present lifetime it may be difficult to assess just what healing the world will look like, for it presently looks quite dire out there. With so many issues arising and coming to a head, the festering wounds of humanity now pose perhaps the greatest danger ever.
Triage is called for on a mass scale, but I still believe that each one of us must do personal triage first. We must go innerly and face the wounded self, healing the wounded child within so we can be fully present as integrated adults. In so doing we may just discover that what the world needs now is not really that much. We may discover that we don’t really need this world to be the same anymore, in fact we don’t want it to be the same because, as we recapitulate, we discover that what we once found so comforting is sorely lacking in comfort. We discover that our earthy needs are really very simple.
We really just need the world as our mirror, to keep us focused on changing our outlook on ourselves and others, to keep us focused on turning inward. We need the world to reflect back to us the real reason for being born into the life we are born into.
Achieve healing and freedom
Find out why you are born so wounded and then find the means to heal. First heal the self and then heal the world by staying deeply, introspectively connected to a healing journey of constant course correction. By living a life of deep inner reflection, intent on healing, we take full responsibility for our wounded child self and we shift our energetic configuration from one of deep sadness, regret, and woundedness to one of power, grace, and freedom. Such inner work will change all of us: our selves, our families, our communities, our world.
In the Readers of Infinity blog on Monday I noted that Jeanne once again gave the same message: Learn to listen. I am struck by how often she speaks of training ourselves to pay attention to what is going on inside us. Listening is the key to doing inner work, to finding the reasons as well as the answers. In learning to listen to our wounded inner child we must be a good listener, but we must also be a good guide.
In recapitulating, or doing any kind of deep inner work, our adult self must be alert and aware, able to flow with what comes without judgment, fear, control, disgust, or dismissal. Each time we face our wounded child we must go deeper, beyond what we think, to what we feel and truly know is right. It is a process of constant readjustment, of learning to view ourselves and the world in a different way. We must all begin to envision ourselves as evolving spiritual beings, rather than human beings stuck in endless personal misery.
I challenge everyone to approach the wounded child self with compassion and love, listening to what the issues are and what the proper approach to resolving those issues might be. The answers for how to do this are available, but we must each decide that it is the journey we want to finally take. We must decide that in this lifetime we are choosing to free our wounded self to evolve in a new manner, both immediately now and in the lifetime to come.
A few weeks ago, I made a change in my intent to be open to all of infinity. You have been a part of my life for ten years, teaching me what it means to change, to face the inner darkness, but most of all to trust. Learning to trust people, my inner knowing, and the signs in my life that appeared to guide me, have all shown me what it means to be a changing being. As I shifted into a more open relationship with infinity, your presence seemed to open as well, expanding generously beyond the confines of a process that worked well but no longer felt necessary, for, as you had once said, I would one day no longer need you in the relationship we had enjoyed as teacher and pupil. In a sense, you were encouraging me to accept my role as a full-fledged partner. And so I have taken up the challenge. I do however, miss the special bond with you, and I suspect others may as well. So, today, I wish to converse with you directly, for old time’s sake, but also for your special brand of guidance.
As I personally opened up to trusting not only my relationship with you over the past ten years but also my own inner process, I never felt special. I always knew that everyone could learn to be so open and available to outer guidance and learn to awaken the often deeply suppressed inner knowing. Through my own process of recapitulation, a process of doing deep work on the self, I reconnected with the self I always knew existed, the self I was afraid of because she had so many secrets and mysteries to tell me. I knew that what she had to tell me would shake my world, and I had to be ready for that. Now I can only say that in beginning to listen I did indeed have to face a great shake up, but it was only through that process that I was able to rid myself of all that inhibited me and kept me from truly enjoying life. Only in daring myself to change was I ready to engage in life, gaining insight and a new outlook on my entire existence as I went through my recapitulation. It is my greatest wish that all people find the courage and strength to face their inner darkness and in that process to find that they are more than worthy of this life, discovering that it is pretty spectacular to be human, especially in these times.
I wish to converse with you on many things, but I will start with a few simple questions for today. First, when I open to guidance, open to you or infinity as a whole, (I interpret you as the same thing really) what is it that I’m actually doing? Can you explain this so people can understand it? And what could others begin to do to learn how to be open to guidance as well?
Here is Jeanne’s response:
My Dear Jan, and all you Readers of Infinity: You may not realize that you already access the greater intent of being human, that is, the intent to change, evolve, and continue in energetic form beyond the confines of that world. Infinity is always available to you—it is the great secret of being human. By that I mean that your opportunities to receive guidance abound, you just have to listen. That is all that Jan does. She has learned to listen.
All who are in human form have the ability to receive guidance, yet the mind often refuses the invitations to listen. The mind fights with inner knowing. You have to admit this, for all of you have had instances in your lives when you knew what to do, how to act, react, or be; what to say or do to change or shift out of one situation and into another; how to grab the right moment and, yet, you hesitated long enough to let the clarity of that moment blur over.
That moment of hesitation is a missed opportunity for growth. One must have a certain amount of daring to grab onto such moments of change. These moments are the catalysts in life and, yet, even in missing them one must not fall into regret but discover instead what one is meant to learn. Meaningful encounters with infinity require a little self-searching and often much more than that. Often deep inner work is what is necessary for greater change.
If one is ready to accept that life is indeed full of lessons, for a reason, then one must get in the proper alignment, humble enough to accept the position of student, though one may be very learned and quite brilliant. To become a student of life one must set the intent to be open, as Jan calls it, open to the truth that life is indeed a journey of the spirit, seeking growth and higher understanding.
In order to truly accept the grand opportunity to be a student of life in a new way, one must learn how to trust. For that, as Jan mentions, is how one will be available for making decisions and choices in alignment with awakening the inner process of self discovery.
In learning to trust, one must also learn to be daring. Although daring to listen to the inner knowing may sound like a simple enough process, it is not. One must first acknowledge that the self is full of inner knowing, grounded in ancient truths of the universe. Then one must pay attention to this inner knowing. But the biggest feat and the biggest challenge is daring to act, to accept its guidance, its truth, and its process as a whole as it unfolds.
This means that as one learns that inner knowing is available one must shut down the normal chatter and judgments of the mind, attaching only to the inner truth, the right guidance from deep within, and dare the self to pay attention.
Find a quiet place to listen
For this day, I suggest a concerted effort be made to engage inner listening. Learn to quiet the mind. There are, as you all know, many ways to quiet the mind. Pick one that works for you. With quiet mind, begin paying attention to what else is happening inside you. Are there other voices? Are there deep truths emerging? Are there answers to your questions? Find a means of listening, even once or twice a day for a few moments to start. A good time is when you first awaken or are ready to fall asleep, the natural transition times in a busy life.
Begin listening. Start with that. Other guidance will come to guide you, perhaps from me, from Jan, or infinity, or even from you. It doesn’t matter, you each have it in you. Begin a practice now of change. It’s time!
As Jeanne finished her message, I was reminded that whenever I asked her for help, she would invariably tell me that I already had the answers inside me, and indeed she was right. I just had to dare to act. I had to get to the place of ruthlessness and no self-pity too, not in a mean way, but in a gentle way, pushing away the old voices as I allowed myself to trust the process I really wanted to engage in. It was a process I’d intended long before it started, because I needed to change, I’d known it for years.
Sometimes, however, we just don’t know how to enact change. Letting the process itself guide us may be the only way to get started, and that’s a fine way to begin acquiescing to the inevitable truth that we are all Readers of Infinity. I truly believe this is true, and I fully support your endeavors to prove this to yourself. The entire universe supports you! Once you set your intent the universe supports you—this is what I experienced during my own recapitulation and every day since. All I had to do was start looking for all the signs that proved this. They appeared every day.
Thank you Jeanne! I hope you enjoy the message today. I’ll be back on Wednesday with something new.
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.
