All people have stories that they carry and I listen to them.
I also listen to the stories I hear from the land and the creatures that live there, and my body tells stories too. What I hear internally is so often the confluence between my internal and external world. My inner world mirrors the outer world in subtle and extraordinary ways.
I remember a time during a program I was guiding called “Turning Toward a Breaking World” when I was hearing some particularly devastating stories of our times, when I cried out in anguish and despair. I said in the most somber tones that I felt like there is an invisible and poisonous underground stream of corruption, that seems to run under everything these days. The truth of that in me was sobering and debilitating. There are times when our rage enlivens us and pours us into action and other times, when our feet are knocked out from under us and we seem to have no will to confront the powers that be…the powers that be that are seemingly dead set on destroying all that is earthly and Holy.
And…I’m aware in these days as well, that there is a growing, largely underground movement, that is diverse, wide spread, innovative and commanding, that is focused on building beauty, actively loving and repairing the world and the beings, and bringing justice, equality and respect back into the forefront. These multitudes of visionaries are driven by Love and have a reverence for Life at the helm.
For years I have been tracking my personal stories of feeling imprisoned, silenced, not enough and small. I have listened and looked and enacted and sniffed every border and boundary and ancestral story I could find to understand it’s roots. Then…now, after 20 years of guiding others, I realize what a pattern there is of resonant stories…particularly in women, but in many men too, and frequently in my age bracket of people, but that certainly spills out in all other directions. If I were to guess I’d say that thousands…maybe millions of us are inflicted with a wound pattern of being not-enough, of the experience of oppression and with a bodily fear that has us feeling unable to be as big, as effective, as articulate and as courageous as our hearts tell us we are. In my own body I literally feel bound at times…as if my outer body itself was made of iron mesh…an enfleshed cage that holds me in…in ….in!!!
And how many of us have something to say…especially when tested by authorities or situations that abhor our ethical and heartfelt view of the world…but then go mute and “nice” under the auspices of bringing peace to the situation. We appear to be “nice" and peace-loving individuals while meanwhile there is a war inside of us between the one of us that would have said something, had we been brave enough, and our good girls and boys who are to be seen and not heard!
Someone…something has done a damn good job of brainwashing us!
Recently I heard a woman tell a story of literally having a lifetime full of dreams bearing themes, characters and events of oppressive regimes. She said they are pan-cultural and throughout time. This gave me pause to wonder about the drug of suppression in our conditioned collective bloodstreams that is inordinately dangerous and extremely addictive….even deadly.
Where does this come from?
Seth Godin, in his book entitled The Icarus Deception, says “The industrial age built the trap we’re mired in, but it didn’t build the trap all at once; that took centuries to perfect. And we were seduced. Seduced by the bait of decent pay and plenty of prizes. Seduced by the apparent security of the enclosure. And once the gate was shut, we were kept in by the threat of shame, the amplification of risk, and society’s reliance on more and shinier prizes.”
“Ta da” well there is a cage if I ever saw one.
Godin sparks an ancient and buried memory in many of us when he says that we were, in so many ways, told to “get your resume in order, to punch your ticket, to fit in, and to follow instructions…” i.e. swallow your pride and your voice and for God’s sake, don’t follow your dreams.
As I read his words and then walked in the bright white light of knee deep sparkling snow this afternoon, I realized the masses of us that have created good little loyal soldiers in response to the world (the operative words being good and little)…survival mechanisms. In this time perhaps the “regime” is the Industrial Revolution, but no doubt humans have almost always had oppressive political bodies or hierarchical systems in place that made us feel small, fearful and silent.
It is cultural.
And it is personal.
And it is changing NOW.
We are living on the lip of a revolution bigger than we know. It is tremendous and it must not be bigger than we can imagine...for we MUST imagine it's greatness. This will grow it too.
It requires that we wake up, buck up, and dare to be all of who we are!! Re-evolution is absolutely necessary.
It demands that we sever our addictions to being good, liked, small or even “smart” and it asks us to follow that impulse that can swell to a far greater river than the small streams of corruption that live underground.
Right now there is a ground swell, a building tsunami…many many tributaries that are moving towards a living flood of Life Loving,
Honesty Driven,
Creative,
Authentic,
Wise
Human Beings
waking up NOW!!!