So
I have heard from several different friends who are experiencing an
unusual amount of worrisome feelings and a general sort of depression
about the state of world affairs and the future. Certainly it is normal
to experience such feelings during January and February, following the
big holiday-end of year blitz.
However, a lot of challenging
“stuff” happened in the past few months and the issues seem to keep
piling up. We are faced with some pretty daunting and depressing global
issues. There are some very heated debates and differences of opinions
about where to go and what to do.
In many ways we may feel
disappointed that there wasn’t some tangible and dramatic shift of
energy during the much emphasized end of the Mayan Calendar. What we
experienced though on Dec 21, 2012, was one culture’s method of marking
time - and our cultures have so many creative ways of marking and
measuring time. The Mayans apparently measured a rotation of the galaxy
(how they did it so precisely is a marvel to be sure), and while so much
more was mythologized around that event, the basic thing that occurred
was that the alignment of our planet with the sun made it seem that the
sun was positioned at the dark center of the milky way galaxy - in what
they considered the birth canal. So it was like experiencing a cosmic
rebirth.
If that is the case…we must remind ourselves that any
form of a birthing process is painful and difficult. A human birth can
take hours or days. A cosmic rebirth…who knows how long the process
really takes, but certainly it wouldn’t be simple. It requires a lot of
work and effort on our part. I don’t have any firsthand physical birth
experience, but they say you have to push and to bare down and breathe,
etc.
The same ideas apply within our spiritual lives and as we
grapple to find and sustain happiness. We can’t get by with mere
illusions and delusions that may have helped us get by in the past. We
can’t wait around for a savior, or aliens, or magical miracles to do the
work for us. We can’t be complacent. We CAN contribute and create
miracles by staying focused and committed and by transforming these ill
feelings into something productive and useful. We may have to trick
ourselves at times to shake off our worries and fears to move forward
with some momentum as the issues pile up.
There is a
mountainous obstacle of life to climb. Our culture has to “get over
itself.” The key is to enjoy the process and journey as much as we can.
We’re all part of a big experiment, and while more and more of it looks
pretty complicated and devastating toward the point of collapse, we have
to try out new things, keep doing things that are playful, keep doing
things that are Foolish and could lead to new possibilities. We will
constantly go through periods of forgetting and remembering these
processes. The great thing is that so many people are remembering and
sharing and moving together.
I remember some teachings from the
tantric perspective, that the womb to an unborn child is like paradise.
But it can’t stay in there forever. Birth, requires destruction, a
removal from the womb, which leads to the creation of a new life in a
new world, but the transition is painful and brutal. A baby cries for a
reason — it’s paradise was just taken away. But over time, we’ll learn
to breathe and accept this strange, new world. It may not be the warm,
comfy, dreamy, womb….but it holds many treasures to behold and many
opportunities to create. Nothing is created without destruction, but we
want to be sure what we create is worth what we lose in the process.
Hopefully more of us wake up to what we are losing and do something
about it, and that we are consciously creating some beautiful things to
keep us going and to keep us sustainably happy, not just deluded and
distracted - but it all serves a purpose! We don’t live forever. Our
time here is short. And that may truly suck, but it sucks even more to
miss out on what little bit we have. And if part of that is feeling
down, then make it be the greatest fertilizer and fuel for the next
adventure. The simple things can offer the biggest rewards. The biggest
reward can be experiencing the simple relief of just being in the moment
of now unfolding into now, now, now, now…
so if you ever feel unlucky remind yourself; out of all the millions upon millions of determined, strong-willed, competitive, focused, fierce, bold, adventurous, awesome… sperm that struggled against each other while seeking out that most cherished prize of the egg -- you were the lucky one who hit the jackpot.
