These posts are always intended to spark change, primarily in our actions, since 70% of what stresses us out is our own behavior. Admittedly, sometimes these posts are intentionally provocative, like this one. š
Forget about politics for a minute ā please. The screaming and ranting back and forth is deafening; no wonder people have stopped watching the news!
One of these pictures represents our outer reality (yes; thereās inner reality; thatās the entire point of meditation!!) Globally, we are split between two sides of virtually every issue. This picture just happens to beautifully capture the depth of emotion on BOTH sides!
WHO, WHAT & WHERE ARE WE?!
I encourage you to reflect for a moment on your earliest childhood memories. I sincerely hope that makes you smile. If those werenāt pleasant memories, know this: you are miraculous.
You are perfect.Ā EACH of us.
Our outer reality is a consequence of everything that has happened since the beginning of time. Thatās karma: the perpetual chain of cause and effect; the breath-by-breath explanation of evolution. If the big dinosaurs didnāt eat the little ones, or our Civil War never happened, or a single act in the fabric of our planetās history happened differently or not at all – you wouldnāt be reading this.
Itās kind of difficult to argue that Karma isnāt real. It would be like arguing that gravity isnāt real – since we all constantly experience both.
WTF IS HAPPENING TO US?!
So how did we as a species get to this point where globally weāre quite literally about to lose our place as the most highly evolved life form on earth?
Donāt kid yourself. If either of those two little fingered, mental midgets hits the button, life as we know it changes forever. Sorry. Iām only human. <3
According to Siri, mankind has been around for a few million years (dinosaurs ruled for 50x that long), but as recently as a few thousand years ago, we hadnāt even come up with an alphabet! If you had an idea, you literally had to tell someone in order to share it!!
A few hundred generations later (not that long by dinosaur standards!) weāve put cameras at the edge of our solar system ā that send back pictures!! Within the last few generations (my lifetime, if you include the knowledge I got directly from my grandparents), weāve gone from horse and buggies to Dick Tracy wristwatches.
Our bodies and minds are not evolving at the same rate as our environment and itās putting a LOT of stress on ALL of our relatively outdated outer hardware and particularly, our internal software.
Humans werenāt designed to withstand this tumultuous, chaotic, leap-frog rate of environmental change. Take any other example from nature (we are nature at its finest and worst) like a tree or a flower, and youāll see that natural change is relatively āevolutionaryā or slow, steady and cyclical.
Iām not saying the sky is falling, but EVERYTHING (except consciousness) has a finite lifespan, including our species and planet. Letās not accelerate the end of our collective lifespan!
HEREāS THE SCIENCE
Everything falls within a range of two extremes; take black and white as an example. At one end of the range is pure white, at the other pure black – and every imaginable shade exists in between.
In that same sense, everything can be categorized as either PRIMARILY black or PRIMARILY white (including each extreme). In other words, everything can be grouped on one side or the other of a median. In the context of Patanjaliās yoga, the median point or zero, represents a perfect balance of both extremes (which only exists in consciousness).Ā Itās the mathematics behind the universal bipolar, energetic concept of Yin and Yang (or as some prefer, the Light and Dark forces of Star Wars).
POLITICALLY
Politically speaking, whatever position exists on an issue, its polar opposite also exists.Ā Todayās arguing and tension is being exacerbated because there are more of us (more cars on the road!), living in closer quarters, fighting ā too often literally ā for increasingly limited resources, and for some unfathomable reason, fighting over different opinions of God ā which humans arenāt physically or mentally equipped to comprehend!!
SPEED MATTERS
Unfortunately, our bodies arenāt evolving at the same rate as our environment. While what we were born with is AWESOME, and it gets us where we need to go, it hasnāt had time to adapt – to catch up. Until and unless that happens (not in our lifetime, sorry!) our bodies (particularly our brains) are going to be under increasing stress.
Thereās always been natural stress: fear of death is instinctive. However, the rate at which our environment is changing is unique in the history of our planet – some changes we clearly and literally brought upon ourselves. But stepping back and trying to see the Big Picture ā its arguable that weāre in the Autumn of our collective lives!
SHOULD WE FLIP OFF TRUMP?
I donāt have the balls to flip off the Presidentās motorcade (those guys have guns!!) but Iām proud to live in a country with people who do, and where weāre all free to.
As my grandfather used to say, āLife as we know it in the States is a privilege – not a birthright.ā People have and will continue to die to preserve our freedoms. And just like in the black and white analogy, others will continue to die trying to take those privileges away.
The trick to sustaining life as we know it here on Earth is to ALL move closer to the middle. Sorry; itās just a mathematical fact.
ITāS UP TO ALL OF US
Enjoy your ride whether youāre peddling a bicycle for all youāre worth, or sitting on a traveling throne surrounded by servants.
Respect other peopleās opinions. Chances that their opinion is the EXACT opposite of yours are pretty slim.
Beneath the surface, at our very essence (our consciousness) we are all identical – not even like snowflakes or fingerprints. Like it or not, your consciousness is EXACTLY like mine.
TE FITI
The picture of Te Fiti from Moana resting peacefully over her island is a personal favorite image of the islandās collective consciousness.
God bless.