The Shift Begins Within Me
What transformation is possible beyond the COVID pandemic?
Tell a wise person or else keep silent for those who do not understand will mock it right away. I praise what is truly alive what longs to be burned to death…And so long as you have not experienced this: to die and so to grow you are only a troubled guest on the dark earth. ~ From The Holy Longing, Goethe
Everyone is noticing how nature is reviving even as we, humans, are becoming sick and dying. Is there a lesson that to date we have ignored at our peril, that can no longer be avoided?
Some people are hopeful that this is the end of a way of life that wasn’t sustainable, indeed, it was an illusion of wellness and prosperity that really didn’t exist. That bubble has popped.
If we are to learn something from this, what is that?
Some say that it’s to value our world and each other more, to shift our approach to life from materialistic to simplicity, or to finally understand our interconnectedness as fundamental to all life.
Standing by the ocean today I couldn’t help but look out onto the horizon and wonder what was on the other side. If we believe that we must come into a deeper (even spiritual) alignment with all life, nature and with each other, how will we do that?
When I think of having less cars on the road, factories not polluting the air and water, our daily lives choosing natural things instead of things like plastic, slowing down the pace of life, creating a completely new paradigm about food and the production of food and so much more, I become overwhelmed and that keen hurt of hopelessness finds its foothold in me.
At that moment the ocean responds telling me that the shift doesn’t begin with the systems and organizations and governments. The shift doesn’t begin with anything “other” and large or “out there”.
The shift begins within me.
I must first be in harmony within myself then from there with the outer world.
The Longing
I work with hundreds of people who come to me because they are unhappy. It doesn’t matter how much they have. Many of them are highly successful by society’s standards. Nevertheless, they come to me with a longing.
Essentially, that longing is to be in alignment with who they are deep down inside but for some reason they don’t feel they have the permission to be exactly who they are. They are afraid of losing…relationships, money, prestige, status, privilege.
That fear is so great that they suffer until they are completely exhausted from trying to be something they’re not, by trying to follow rules that don’t make sense, by trying to shoehorn themselves into jobs that may pay well but suck the life out of them.
This is the most fundamental misalignment in our world today. We are not only out of alignment with the natural world, we are out of alignment with ourselves. Our lives are based on artificial structures and arbitrary schedules that oppose our biorhythms to the point that we no longer notice when we feel hungry, tired, sad or happy. We believe that less sleep is a badge of success and that powering through promotes resilience.
Interconnectedness: Our Old/New Reality
That very personal misalignment affects everything because everything is connected.
Every choice I make affects the whole. That is the premise of interconnectedness. The illusion of separateness is the reason for so much suffering. If we understood our inherent unity and lived accordingly suffering would cease.
If I begin to choose differently, from how I work to how I travel to how I connect to others, to the quality of my relationships and how I choose to invest my money, to planting a garden that feeds me (and others) to kindness to my neighbors, or if I chose to nurture, instead of destroy, natural habitats for animals…then that personal choice becomes a part of the collective.
This is how a massive shift in how we live can occur. Person by person. The systems are too large and unwieldy to confront directly but they are made up of individuals who make choices and decisions.
If each of us commits to making the change within ourselves, first coming into harmony with what is true for us, to exploring our beliefs, challenging our assumptions of how life is supposed to be, inquiring into our choices about what we need to thrive — and what we don’t need at all — then perhaps our situation now would render something new and positive for our future.
Imagine that we can create a new world order that focuses on wellbeing instead of illness, on creation instead of destruction, on generosity instead of greed, on peace with our neighbors instead of war, and on thriving instead of surviving.
If we all focus on coming into harmony with our true nature and the planet and each other and all living beings, it’s possible to transform the world.
The earth is a living being. It’s time we treated her as if she were our mother…because she is.
The question I’m left with is, how will my choices reflect my true nature so that my being on this planet contributes to the web of life? I invite you to join me in this inquiry and empower yourself by shifting your focus to your inner life. Now is the time to challenge the conditioning of a life time and set yourself free.
Originally published at https://www.aliciamrodriguez.com on April 15, 2020.
