We All Live in the World of Our Own Making

How else could we live alongside others with profoundly different beliefs about so many subjects?

Let’s take one subject: healthy eating. I just read an article by a dietician stating that, for an experiment, she ate a diet of 80% ultra-processed foods for a month. By the end of her research, she said she felt great, slept better, and was happier than before.

This is so interesting because it flies in the face of current research. So why would this be her experience?

One explanation might be found in health traditions like Ayurveda. Eating in a pleasant atmosphere, without rushing, with enjoyable company and tasty food, will enhance any benefits found in the meal. Your body will be primed to maximize the assimilation of nutrients, water, and phytochemicals. Your feelings of satisfaction, happiness, and love for your companions will cause your body to flood with hormones beneficial to your immune system and, frankly, all systems, improving your health.

So, taking this example, we don’t know if this was the case with her; it may just illustrate how we need not be so militant about our eating and not fear when we err from our intentions to eat more healthily.

This can easily be extrapolated to other topics, from cultural beliefs to medical and political ones. The experience of life on this planet is plastic; our attention, interests, and beliefs converge to create our reality. That is the reality we pay attention to.

One person finds research pointing to the dangers of vaccines, whereas another person finds research proving their safety. Researchers also have built-in biases that affect the variables used in conducting the studies and the results.

Our biases will cause one opinion to make us balk and feel unsafe, whereas another causes us to agree comfortably. So certainly, we will move in the direction of those whose opinions we agree with, and our beliefs will be naturally reinforced.

Our beliefs and biases are structures manufactured by our ego. Think of the ego as the software of your mind; we’re born with a blank slate and built upon it throughout our lives. Most of it is completely underneath our awareness. Our likes and dislikes, judgments, and preferences create what we perceive.

As we evolve, we slowly become aware of this. Through our higher self, that which is beyond the temperamental ego, we actually begin to notice there are multiple ways of looking at things. And that there are many valid sides to an issue. We develop the ability to transcend those differing opinions and see their causes. This gives us choice and the ability to create our reality consciously.

It is funny how, in our systems, take health, and politics, for instance, leaders think that one size fits all. If this food, law, or assistance fits one, it will universally be best for all. But that does not work. We are more complex than that. One food may be suitable for one person and not for another. One treatment, drug, or new law may be helpful for one person but not another, and so on.

Essentially, it is more subjective.  Where one sees a world falling apart, another sees the light heralding a new emerging age. What is interesting is the behavior that results from these different views. While some gnash their teeth and complain, others may joyfully create new services and enterprises, finding new ways to help, enlighten, and heal people. Who do you think is more fulfilled and happier?

We Aren’t Enemies, Let’s Stop Acting Like We Are!

 

Welcome to May everyone. Summer is just around the corner. You haven’t heard from me other than an occasional note since January! I hadn’t noticed how long it had been! For better or worse, my life has taken on more tasks, responsibilities, and focus and I have dearly missed this communication with all of you.

It is my intention this year to transform my life, (and yours if you’re game) to a brilliant expression full of prosperity, ease and wellbeing. Let’s all upgrade.

First, laying some ground rules below.

I was going to write about post pandemic PTSD, but frankly, those of you who have been following me for years know what I’d recommend, i.e. take care of yourself, limit news, meditate, eat well, get good sleep, get outside, move etc.

What is going on is so much deeper than COVID. We are in a major transition to something new. So many authors, teachers, and spiritual leaders have written about moving through these upheavals, attempting to explain how the state of chaos in the world came to be, how it is affecting all of us, and what will happen next.

We have been going through a unique period in our lifetime. Information and events have been exploding into our lives faster than we can adapt to it. Not only the health issues with the pandemic, the political storms, lack of consensus on facts (knowledge commons), and the economic issues from lock downs, but also the effects from the stress caused by it all; more divorces, eating disorders, depression, drinking, and anxiety among them.

The media chooses stories to dwell on, magnify, exaggerate and cover day after day after day, until we feel like the whole world is in some sort of hell. Depending on what source of information you tune into the stories vary widely.

In a true democratic system, there is knowledge commons and there is a base line of consensus for what we are, as a nation, attempting to create, what democracy means, and how the government works. Our disagreements have normally been on what government can do to protect that and how.

We’ve entered, over the last decades, a period where we act like those who have different ideas to solve problems are ignorant, enemies, or just plain evil. Groups, organizations, colleges, media sources, and social media, censor opinions they don’t want to hear; we have lost the ability to hear opposing views.  We have fractured pieces of ‘reality’ wherein extreme conspiracy theories gain millions of followers. There is an abundance of mistrust in the ‘others’. Author Charles Eisenstein noted, “How can we have a democracy if we are being incited to hate each other by the very media we depend on to tell us what is real, what is “news” and what the world is?”  The political party in power tries to repress and censor the opposing party’s views.

Our cultural blemishes have risen to the forefront and are being seized upon by different sides. We live in a story that there are good guys and bad guys, and everyone thinks they are the good guy.

And yet:

  • We are all one in the human family
  • We have all been the good guy and the bad guy
  • In our world there are opposing beliefs in which both are true
  • What we call ‘truth’ shifts with levels of consciousness

The likeliest explanation for the current state, upon the revelation of the destructive stories we’ve been hiding, covering up or ignoring, are hopefully, the last gasps of the most primitive of consciousness, as it raises its ugly head for all to see.

For example, there has always been a percentage of people who are drawn to law enforcement and military because of the sense of power and control it gives them over others. (There are ways to screen out these individuals in the application process with psych tests for social pathology.)

Yet we can’t fix what we aren’t aware of. Those of us in the spiritual community are painfully aware of all the world’s atrocities, from the horrors of war, famine, prisons, devastation of lands, all kinds of violence, to the insidious, subtle discriminations and everyday insults by all manner of journalists, bloggers and everyday people.

When I was young in the 60s and 70s, we were filled with energy and ideas for creating a new world: just, safe, environmentally healthy, with gender equality and healthier food. We saw women were treated unfairly and often as sex objects, minorities experienced deep discrimination from every level, senseless wars, and guns and violence exploded in the streets. We charged forward to change this.

We failed. There are more guns, still wars, more sexualization of young girls, still inequities, and we are less healthy.

We have to tell a new story. One not of good and evil, us versus them, but a culture of compassion, listening, patience, creative problem solving, and understanding. It is time for transformation. We know in our hearts that the way society has been isn’t working, and it’s making us sick. It’s making the Earth sick as well.

And not tell a story of what we’re against. The against position is already coming from behind, a weakened state that makes opposite forces strengthen more. Instead of pushing against opinions, beliefs or thoughts, manifest a powerful new vision that encompasses a beautiful story.

Seeing two young children fighting over a toy, rather than make one right and one wrong, an effective parent will work out a solution that reduces upsetting emotions, makes them feel understood, and invites them to help come up with a peaceful one. We are no different. If we are told we are wrong we dig in our heels, don’t we? We are more determined to prove we are right and they are wrong. What you push against grows stronger.

So, I challenge everyone to create a new story.

  • Make one up. Call it fiction. There are always truths in storytelling.
  • Think, talk, write, read, stories with beautiful answers.
  • Envision the world how you know it could be.
  • Be fierce in your determination.
  • Don’t stay silent when others try to drag someone or a group through the mud.

Ask the hard questions when they complain about the ‘other’. Ask why they think the other is that way, challenge them to go deeper.

  • Tell personal stories to exemplify your points.
  • Flood the internet with good stories.
  • You don’t need to defend or explain what your personal politics are, democrat or republican, independent or libertarian. It’s all fine. This isn’t a process for one political persuasion.

In my book, The Light of Grace, two of the characters lived in future time periods: one in mid-21st century, and one in the 26th-century. It was great fun working out how many of today’s problems were solved. So, inadvertently, I’ve already begun this process!

One of the efforts of the spiritual community is to encourage people to go inward more, study scriptures and develop practices that raise one’s consciousness and the desired effect will be the raising of mass consciousness. As the teachings go, when it reaches critical mass, this will change our culture, change society for the better. And we can see the emerging effect. You can find results all around.

But I think we need to do more. I hope you’re with me. Thank you.

Photo by Obie Fernandez on Unsplash