Things are heating up, and I don’t mean only in Arizona. Things are heating up in nearly every relationship, every school, every business deal, every corporation and in every religion. They are heating up because we are being pushed to the brink with issues of character, morality, civility and honor. We are all being asked on some conscious level to begin an authentic exploration of who we are through honest, willing and truthful evaluation of our own souls. You can no longer be one person with one face in this place and another person with another face in that place. The dissonance is creating disease in our bodies and in our minds. More people are on anti-depressants than ever and more diseases are manifesting than we can keep up with. Nothing less than an authentic – no cheating allowed – alignment with the best of who we are even feels good anymore.
We are being asked to nurture a new kind of wisdom, an intuitive wisdom rather than a materialistic one. Each day, nearly with every breath, in some circumstance or opportunity we have a chance to choose who we shall be. Shall I be the person who walks out of the grocery store having been given too much change and not mention it? Or shall I go back and correct the error? Shall I be the person who sees a homeless person at the edge of a freeway off ramp and thinks …Oh too bad I can’t give him anything, I only have $20’s, or shall I be the person who is grateful to have a $20 to give?
Shall I be the person who will withhold forgiveness so that I don’t have to take personal responsibility for my own decisions? Shall I stay in the power position by acting as if I didn’t participate in some way? Or, shall I move quickly into a forgiving release so as to heal my own energy and let it go? Shall I be a person who cheats so that I can have a moment of adoration and quasi-good feeling or shall I be more invested in the long-term quality of my own character? Shall I treat those who work for me as if they were of lesser value or shall I treat people as equals no matter what language they speak, no matter what color their skin or what their position in life?
It’s getting hot because we can’t lie to ourselves any more. It’s getting hot because those old excuses about why we do the things we do, don’t cut it anymore. It’s getting hot because somebody finally spoke the truth that no one ever makes us do anything we don’t, at some level, want to do. The cat’s out of the bag and we all know the truth – the only person who has ever really been in charge of our lives is us!
Women have to admit that it wasn’t men who never gave us equality, it was that we never gave it to ourselves. Men have to admit that it wasn’t women who taught them to choose materialism or power over compassion. They made those choices themselves. We are starting to see that no one else made us pollute the planet, create more war and terrorism than has ever existed in history or poison ourselves with synthetic or toxic food. We decided to do that – or at the very least each one of us decided we’d allow it to be done. The game is over and guess who could be losing?
So what do we do? We take an honest inventory of who we are at a core level and we start being that person instead of the person led by survival needs and ego. We start examining the things in our life that really have meaning and we give energy only to those things. Fosdick says, “If you want to know what you believe in, look in your checkbook.” I will add and in your date book. Whatever you are giving money and energy to is what you believe in.
We have to be willing to notice when we are about to take a step or an action that doesn’t feel right inside and stop immediately and change what we are about to do to something that feels more aligned with the truth of who we say we are.
We have to start prioritize and spirituality – whatever you believe that to be for yourself or whatever form that takes for you – needs to be at the top of that list. Believe it or not Fortune 500 Magazine recently did an issue that revealed even the top management in these companies has now begun to meditate and center before making huge business decisions. When we are not connected to ourselves and our real feelings, we act out of fear. We distance, control, intimidate, interrogate and over power. On the other hand if we are connected to ourselves and realize that our feelings are never bigger than we are, we act out of path and destiny instead of pathology and fear. We can stop being a nation of wild children acting out at any cost to get our needs met.
Can you and I make a commitment to stop acting like we don’t know what the right thing to do is? The bottom line is we do know. We have just not been doing it and the good news is – there is still time and a great deal of joy waiting for us the moment we stop lying to ourselves. Getting authentic and acting with integrity with yourself is a tremendously joyful gift that you get to have this time around. All it takes is a simple decision about what matters most to you. So, what does?
© Dr. Dina Bachelor Evan 2008