Ego is a funny thing. Ego is going to tell you that you are special, unique, seperate. This serves an important function: it allows us to individuate, to have new perspectives, it serves the root chakra, the primal survival instinct which serves each of us. One thing that ego seldom encourages is the acceptance and importance of each individual's unique specialness. My mom likes to say, "yes, you're special, just like everybody else." When we honor the differences in others and embrace them, our partnership with them is strengthened, the system we share with them is strengthened. I challenge myself and yourself, this week, examine your unique role within the context of your systems, your family and work systems, your greater community and the world at large. Are we choosing to strengthen our system by participating from our special position within it, or are we merely adrift, waiting to satisfy our ego's need to feel special and ultimately, isolated from our systems?
My father liked to say, "there is a rider for every seat." We each play our part and act out our roles to make this great life go round, but I wonder how much we play in this game in conscience, fully engaging our active and curious fascination at the structures we find ourselves supporting. Is your attitude supportive? Do you seek opportunity or merely maintain the status quo? The great fascination I have is in the existential truth that any one of us, or group of us, can choose to "check out" at any time. In what ways do you "check out," or reject the experience offered to you in each moment? I think of the grocery store so often in this context. Everyone with their goal in mind, even running into a familiar face can seem somehow jarring from the "I need..." Script we're running. Approaching each moment with awareness, acknowledge that each moment of present is a choice, a chance to participate fully in the game of life. Regardless of the peg of the ladder on which you stand, only one can stand in your shoes, only one can participate as you, and never again as you in that moment, never, ever again. What will you do with this moment? How will you choose to contribute? May this new year bring us all new awareness of the conscious creation in which we each participate, and may our awareness increase exponentially as we honor and validate the uniqueness of each moment and of each other. 💖
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I was asked in my remote healing meditation to work on healing the mother/son relationship. I have been thinking a lot about the parenting issues I see most common in myself and socially, so I was not surprised when the message came through the ether to specifically focus on this relationship.
The mother is described by Yogi Bajan as the first teacher. She is the one who usually instills our core values. She is the one who teaches us all the basics of being human, how to eat, how to walk, talk, how to take a shit. The necessity for healing come in both the guilt and perceived failure of the mother, as well as in the judgement of the son. The son views his mother as a kind of paragon, or archetype in a deep sense. For example, the son can't believe his mother isn't a virgin. Not literally, but this is the idea. The mother (any parent, really) cannot have flaws. This is the way our minds work until we truly grow up and actually mature. Eventually, as we choose to grow up, we see our parents as humans who did the best they could. We recognize that the flaws they instilled in us, the child, simply became the platforms for our first success: to do better, to become more than what they offered or taught us to be. As a parent, it can be extremely difficult to watch your child struggle and fail and the impetuous to "play hero" for the child can be overwhelming. But this type of parenting reinforces a victim mentality, where one expects to be rescued from the foibles of oneself or perceived "evils" of this world. Why do our prayers sometimes go unanswered? Why does God allow horrible tragedy, why in almighty power, does God not "save" us, every time? One of the most vital lessons in human life is self-reliance. It is from the seed of our own will and determination that we are ultimately capable of believing in a God that resides within, in a power inside that is greater than what we believed we contained. When everyone is gone, and you're alone, do you lay down and wallow in self-pity and abandonment, or do you dig, all the way down, to that very first step you took as a baby, when you fell flat on your face and your mom cried in misery as you cried but she waited and let you pick yourself up because she knew that you could do it and her love for your success was greater than her own ego to be your savior. This relationship relates to Mother Earth, and we, her children: are we honoring our mother? It relates to imbalanced romantic relationships which get caught up in trying to heal the "wounded boy" with the woman assuming a role akin to parent. Let us stop seeing the brokenness as pain and wounds, and honor the opening for light and love to enter all our relationships. See it now as you look into the hearts of people all around you, into your own heart, and ask yourself where you stand in relation to your inner strength. How you can spread this inner courage and strength around? How you can live it more fully for yourself, for everyone you love? Even if your parents didn't teach you this, you don't have to continue being a victim and waiting for a hero. Become your own hero, encourage others to do the same. When you leave the nest of comfort and security, soar like an eagle with confidence. Fly high as an example for others, that our pain and suffering is one more kind of experience, meant for us to grow and expand. "Many speak of courage, speaking does not give it, its in the face of death that we must live it... Daughters of the Khalsa, in your strength our future lies. Give our children fearless minds, to see the world, through the Guru’s eyes" -Song of the Khalsa, Livtar Singh Khalsa No Lives Matter All Lives Matter And Why Both Are True We live in an exciting time! Right now, before our very eyes, the true significance of our very existence, the nature and purpose of our values and how our past and future influence our collective consciousness are all under question. The beautiful thing about all of this is that we are each actively involved in this dialogue, even myself. I decided a long time ago to stop watching the news, to quit paying attention to politics, fashion, etc. None of these things directly influence my life in any way. My interest is in the level of consciousness we experience as a species and I participate in that best through daily experiences. I enjoy focusing on active experiences with individuals. This is why I truly love my job. The cafe is a proscenium of human life. Everything happens around cafes. But I digress. I started this post because I want to talk about duality. Duality and the illusion of separateness has been on my mind a lot lately, and I see it reflected in the greater community. Do our lives matter? Do our values matter? Are values a reason to kill, a reason to die, a reason to fail at your job or to sabotage another's chosen experience of life? In the grand scheme of things, absolutely nothing we do or say actually matters. When you zoom way out and see the biggest of pictures, our individual life experiences mean absolutely nothing. But the widest picture isn't necessarily the truest picture. The truth is that there is actually no dichotomy. There is no big without the small, no outer experience without an inner experience. There is no community without the individual, and there is no life without death. These are all natural truths which we are being asked to face RIGHT NOW in this time and in this place. We have an EXTRAORDINARY opportunity RIGHT NOW to examine ourselves as both individuals and as a greater community and ask ourselves, what are the most important values which we all share? We say we value life, but we allow our institutions to treat life as a cheap commodity. We say we value freedom, yet still we ridicule and punish those who choose values that differ from our own *which do not in any way affect our lives*. The question is simple and we all must decide. That is what the singularity is about, viewing it from a spiritual modality. Nothing is going to collapse down into a singular point of existence if we dissolve the illusion of separateness. This spinning ball of mass we all call our home has already been set into motion and it will keep spinning until it runs out of juice or smashes into some other mass or gets scorched by the sun. Who knows?! The question is, can we all agree that this experience which we are all sharing matters enough to protect and nurture it, not for the sake of some value set, but for the love of existence itself. It will take organization on a global scale to develop a post-Earth strategy which maximizes lives spared. It will take love and acceptance on a global scale to put an end to hunger, unnecessary suffering and death, war and disease. Until we can put the ego-centric mindset which raised us aside, we will continue to struggle with the questions of whose lives matter and why. This is the pivotal moment. We are asked to examine our own ugliness, our own shadow, our ungodliness. We are being offered a chance to awaken. It is a spiritual renaissance. Our descendants will look back on this time and say, "that was when it all changed." Will it be for better, or for worse? Now is the time to join together and create something better, despite ourselves and our history of pettiness. That was the purpose of the labor movement, civil rights movement, communism, etc. That work isn't done, but look at all the was accomplished! Our past brought us the where we are now, gave us the opportunity to examine ourselves honestly and to finally put to rest this seeing the other as separate because of sex, race, religion, lifestyle choice, all the reasons we join and identify with our "camp". Each one of us is called to action. Be the change. Happy Tuesday! |
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