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Changing Times: Dialogue and Reconfiguration
It is a tribute to shifts in our collective consciousness that the Occupy Wall Street movement has engendered much dialogue, opportunity, and connection! We are, all of us, in this together! There are misguided entities still trying to colonize us (corporations, for example), and others insisting that all is OK. Yet we understand deeply that the changing times are upon us; that our actions and intentions create the world moment by moment; and that "We walk upon Her sacred ground with every step we take" as the song goes.
Dialogue
On an Internet radio panel on "Activism and the Shamanic Path" a few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to share with and learn from four other amazing participants as we explored how we integrate our traditional social activism with our shamanic and spiritual practices. All of us had been "on the streets" during Vietnam or later; all of us had continued working for social, political, and environmental change all our lives. Yet we didn't want to talk agendas; we wanted to address the questions we all ask ourselves about being in the world as we do things. Questions like "How can I best serve? How can we support change without holding anger and falling into "otherness" and blame? How can we shine our light? Do our words and actions reflect our intentions?"
All of us reading this, and thinking about consciousness shifting, ask ourselves these questions. It's important to have space to ask, to step aside from the old. The same kinds of questions--how can we respect ourselves and one another? How can we come into harmony with the planet as well as each other? How can we shift back towards income equality?--are being asked across America, in every kind of group. (Even the "ultra right-wing majority leader of the House is holding a speech on income inequality this week" according to an email from Progressives United!) As Starhawk writes in her blog from the Occupy Oakland General Assembly:
"They did something at the beginning that I really like-an hour of what they call the Forum. The facilitators pose a question, and people break into small groups to talk about it. Then they open the mike for the rest of the hour for people to speak. The question was about how we can respect ourselves and one another, and the speakers were the best theater I've seen in a long time, each one different: the grinning young Asian American woman who tells us that smiling is a revolutionary act, the red-haired older woman who urges us to listen to one another, the graying leftist who exhorts us to get back to why we're here and organize the working classes, the angry young man from the Black Panther Party who says he's disgusted with the whole thing, that real revolution is about bloodshed and long prison sentences, and names the brothers who are still in prison from the sixties. And many people who make simple, sensible suggestions for improving the camp, from picking up garbage to connecting with your neighbors. Everyone gets a hearing. And because the Forum is relieved from the necessity to make decisions, we can disagree, and listen, and take what is of value to each of us while leaving the rest."
Whether we apply such questions in our local occupy actions, in school meetings, or in our families, they are continually important, for we are creating the world we live in.
Reconfiguration
We reconfigure out IPods and computers frequently, and without question, every time new software comes out. What about reconfiguring our minds and our cells as the world changes?
Our aunts and great-grandmothers reconfigured their material world with quilting. Strips of cloth reclaimed from worn-out shirts and dresses, carrying the memories associated with them, were quilted into new patterns and different use.
Now we are challenged to reconfigure in bigger ways. Seers are re-minding us "If we take [old] memory with us, we will recreate the same old world" (Aluna Joy) and "delete any memories that may impede you now...have no expectations except your own" (Guardian Alliance via Helen McCarthy). We are challenged to look: what no longer serves?
I've written before about releasing stories we tell ourselves, and releasing the heavy energies that depress and re-traumatize us, leaving no room for reconfiguration. As we move into becoming new humans, we also have opportunities for cellular reconstruction.
Often such reconfiguration happens to us: initiations, visions, "downloads," experiential learning, and shamanic journeys are frequent sources. The challenge, as always, is to listen, to make the changes conscious, to feed them with our awareness and attentiveness to metaphor.
Here's an example from a journey where I was asking about the next steps on my path:
A young Anasazi child leads me through a dense star tunnel, shining white light packed like diamonds. Entering a cave, I take the white light into my body. Then my body dissolves and becomes faceted rainbow light. A rainbow star I met in vision quest many years ago comes; we dance and merge in a sensuous, deeply known connection. I begin to see rainbow reflections in every cell of my body; I ask that the weak areas, like third chakra/belly, get healed.
I have been gifted with many mystical experiences like this, yet each time I am astonished. I have taught myself to reenter the field of such experiences in both conscious awareness and dream. In this way, I learn what my cells feel like as rainbow light; I practice using this awareness in my interactions; and I feed this kind of experience instead of feeding worry or the despairing stories and heavy energy my brain brings forth!
It helps me to consider the parallel realities that surround us. There's the mundane reality we share, where our back hurts or we've lost our job or our community meeting is becoming tedious. There's the dream reality, where if we are lucky our dreams tell us what we haven't been able to see in our conscious minds. And there are the many parallel realities of spirit, from those we stepped into as children when our surroundings weren't supportive, to those we visit in journey and vision. Since all are "real," I find that the more time I spend in the "non-ordinary" worlds, the more I am able to hold and feed visions for the "Fifth World," or what lies beyond.
What About the "Other"?
Humans have always had the ability to experience, explore, learn to see through the eyes of others, to become something new. Our ancestors and indigenous relatives entered the "mind" of animals--deer, mammoth, quail--to hunt, be safe, and gain a wider perspective. They explored the consciousness of plants to learn healing qualities. Some ate an enemy killed as a way of honoring and ingesting his power.
All spiritual traditions honor this importance of embracing what is not-me. Yet it is challenging to embody, to find the commonality between ourselves and someone who is perceived as different, whether Tea Party, recent immigrant, police person, or anti-abortionists. Finding the point of commonality is what creates an opening, allows dialogue, as we learn in non-violent training.
Finding the point of commonality also involves changing language and paying attention to meaning. For example: your ancestors and mine were immigrants, so are we "illegal?" Or are we all simply immigrants? When we say "they" to refer to the other, even unconsciously, we separate ourselves. Even as I was writing this blog, I heard myself blurting "they" in a conversation about water use and water rights. Our brains, our habits, and the words we use can be insidious!
All week I have been hearing the Mayan words "In Lak'ech Ala K'in" meaning "I am another yourself." I believe it is a message emphasizing the importance of finding our commonality with all species in these changing times.
Meg Beeler/Earth Caretakers
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"There is this crazy paradox in life. For when you look through the eyes of spirit there is no judgment about the life experiences we have: everything is divine and perfect. But on a human level/egoic level there is pain and suffering." -- Sandra Ingerman
"Think about the whole. Anticipate needs, and how to fill them. Be strategic. Push the edges in the cause of justice. Take space boldly, and hold your ground. Take action not just from anger at injustice, but out of love for all you cherish. Never waver in your faith that we, the ordinary people of the world, can shape our fate and take our future into our own hands. Just keep spiraling!" -- Starhawk
"We are in a profound and hefty preparation mode. We are moving from manifesting in linear time to manifesting in spherical time. [think galaxies] This affects the way we live and the way we create. We are learning to create spherically, from multiple directions, within a new heart center. It is a lot to learn." --Aluna Joy
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