Voice for the Minority
If today was your Birth Day, the first day of your life on earth, knowing what you know now, what would you do differently?
What would you change?
Today, December 21, 2012, may hold significant meaning to you. Or perhaps it may just be like any other day, holding no more meaning or significance other than the fact that it is Friday, marking the end of a long workweek, simply the day before the weekend.
To me, this day represents opportunity. Whether we embrace this day as one of importance or not, the opportunity is still presenting itself to us to create and recreate our idea of who we are according to and in alignment with our next-highest thought and next-highest vision. We can choose to step into that opportunity…or not.
It really is as simple as that.
Perhaps this day is a symbol of the space between “what once was” and “what is yet to come,” a realm where everything is fluid and free, expanding and contracting, undecided and willing, hopeful and perfect….a pristine representation of the Glorious Moment of Now.
Maybe today reflects that moment we experience at the end of our exhale, just before our body begins to inhale another breath, a brief glimpse of nothing needed, nothing wanted…the stillness in our beingness, the peacefulness in our completeness.
Perhaps today will mark the end of life as we know it, but not in the way we have been coerced into believing. Within the space of our next choice, we could put an end to many of the conditions in our world which interfere with each and every person’s ability to experience joy and freedom and love and companionship and prosperity and comfort.
Some people think the opposite of love is hate. However, the opposite of love is not hate. The opposite of love is indifference. For me, December 21, 2012, symbolizes a return to love, a return to the essence of who we really are.
Am I standing in the light of my own truth?
How am I showing up in my relationships?
Why am I right here…right now?
How may I serve?
This particular date has received a lot of attention, but we don’t have to wait for a particular day or month or year to create change. We can do so within the infinite number of Birth Moments in our lives. As Conversations with God offered to us, “The deepest secret is that life is not a process of discovery, but a process of creation. You are not discovering yourself, but creating yourself anew.”
Birthdays are days to celebrate. And birthdays are often a time to give and receive gifts. So today I celebrate our collective birth and offer my presence as my gift so that each and every person I encounter shall have an opportunity to return to love and to know and experience God.
Happy Birth Day.
(Lisa McCormack is the Managing Editor & Administrator of The Global Conversation. She is also a member of the Spiritual Helper team atwww.ChangingChange.net, a website offering emotional and spiritual support. To connect with Lisa, please e-mail her at Lisa@TheGlobalConversation.com.
This one-word question is surfacing in the minds for so many today, December 14, 2012, as the news of the school shooting in the small town of Newtown, Connecticut, quickly spread around the world.
Why?
A question which may never be fully answered.
As we try to make some small amount of sense out of a situation that simply makes no sense, I join Neale in his invitation to feel, to talk, to share, to explore the way you feel around today’s events and to support those around you who could benefit from a mutual exchange of loving energy and a compassionate presence.
So at this point, let’s set aside the “Why?” for now and give ourselves permission to feel what we feel…and feel it deeply; to allow ourselves to grieve fully and without conditions or limitations; and to experience the highest level of Love as it expresses through our sadness.
Let us join together to connect with our brothers and sisters in Connecticut within the space of our hearts, drawing upon the essence of who we really are, and be a source of comfort and hope and unconditional love. If ever there was a moment to decide, to declare, and to demonstrate who you choose to be, I can’t think of a better time than now.
I will close with a reflection from Fred Rogers:
“When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’ To this day, especially in times of ‘disaster,’ I remember my mother’s words and I am always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers – so many caring people in this world.”
(Lisa McCormack is the Managing Editor & Administrator of The Global Conversation. She is also a member of the Spiritual Helper team at www.ChangingChange.net, a website offering emotional and spiritual support. To connect with Lisa, please e-mail her at Lisa@TheGlobalConversation.com.)
It is not unusual for our children to come home with their backpacks overflowing with homework assignments to complete and projects to create. But what would you think and how would you feel if you found this assignment in your young child’s school bag:
“You’ve just turned 18. You’ve decided to end your life. Your decision is definitive. In a final surge you decide to put in words the reason behind your decision. In the style of a self-portrait, you describe the disgust you have for yourself. Your text will retrace certain events in your life at the origin of these feelings.”
In the town of Montmoreau-Saint-Cybard, Southwestern France, an unamed teacher handed out this homework note to his 13- and 14-year-old students at the collège Antoine-Delafont.
The Telegraph reports the French teacher has been suspended after the local school authority found out about the assignment and after a group of outraged parents complained in an anonymous letter to the school, saying they were horrified their children were given the assignment.
It was further reported in The Telegraph that the president of the FCPE parents’ union in Montmoreau, Christophe Clément, said such a subject is “practically inciting (pupils) to commit suicide.”
“Jean-Marie Renault, the local education authority head, said the teacher had been officially notified of his suspension, adding: ‘Telling a pupil that he is about to end his life and that he must recount it appears troubling to us.’”
“Geneviève Fioraso, France’s higher education minister, waded in, saying: ‘If the topic was launched in this way, without accompaniment, without context, it’s dangerous.’”
However, in spite of the flurry of disapproval surrounding this unique and controversial story, a large group of parents, students, and fellow colleagues have come together in support of this teacher’s actions, asking for the reinstatement of this beloved teacher into the school system.
One parent asks, “What do you think they talk about in the playground? The images they see on TV are far more shocking.”
Another parent said, “Suicide is part of daily life. Perhaps the teacher wished to raise their awareness of the issue.”
The group consensus within the circle of supporters was that the media coverage had been “over the top and inappropriate,” noting that the subject had “not shocked” pupils and it had been “well presented” by the teacher.
Is it likely that an assignment like this could or would actually cause a young mind to contemplate suicide?
Or could an assignment like this provide a young mind an opportunity to explore and express a part of themselves that is not touched upon in the day-to-day experiences of their lives?
If someone truly were on the edge of ending life as we know it to be in this human experience, what insights and truth might that person feel more inclined to share in the absence of suffering the consequences of being judged or ridiculed or ignored?
Are we limiting the fullest expressions of our children, and ourselves, by restricting what we naturally feel drawn to do – express who we are? Even when that expression may not be what we expect or want to hear?
Where does an assignment like this invite us to go?
And why do we fear going there?
In the book When Everything Changes, Change Everything, we are taught how our minds draw upon and utilize the past data of our lives to help form the basis of our current reality. And the way we experience life – reality – will depend upon what type of data we are relying upon. Perhaps “retracing the events in a child’s life and the origins of their feelings,” as this teacher invited these students to do, will provide to these children at a very tender age an opportunity to understand more fully what source, or data, their thoughts and beliefs are foundationed upon…which would lead them to an understanding of why they might hold any feelings of “disgust” for themselves…which would then present an opportunity to change their thoughts, change their perspectives, and change their beliefs about who they are, thus altering the way in which they experience all of life.
This type of exploration would serve to remind us that speaking our truth about who we are is not something to be reserved for the end of our lives. Maybe a child’s limited idea about who they are or any harsh judgments they have placed upon themselves could be transformed into a remembrance and realization of their own significance and purpose in the world within the parameters of one simple yet profound exercise.
Why would we want to deny anyone that opportunity?
(Lisa McCormack is the Managing Editor & Administrator of The Global Conversation. She is also a member of the Spiritual Helper team at www.ChangingChange.net, a website offering emotional and spiritual support. To connect with Lisa, please e-mail her at Lisa@TheGlobalConversation.com.)
I recently stumbled upon a Facebook page titled “Grief Beyond Belief.” It is a support page, whose members exceed 6,000, created for the specific purpose of being a gathering space for people who are experiencing grief as a result of loss in their life. The common denominator, however, for this unique website is that those who subscribe to the “Grief Beyond Belief” updates are not simply people who are suffering grief and loss, but these are people who do not believe in God.
As I perused through the comments on this Facebook page, I read post after post from people struggling with unanswered questions and trying to make sense of some type of loss, whether that was showing up in the form of a relationship ending or the death of a loved one, or even the loss of a beloved pet. The pattern was quick to see, people seeking and searching, yearning for comfort, but unwilling to adopt any ideology or concept that invites them to consider anything larger than what simply lies before them – many of them so disenfranchised by the “in your face” religious zealots that they have elected to believe in not believing.
It is interesting how this particular page showed up for me today as I recently put my own belief system “to the test” while visiting the website of Sam Harris, a well-known critic of religion and one of the “four horsemen” — together with Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, and Christopher Hitchens — in the “New Atheism” movement. A wonderful quote taken from his writings on stem cell research led me to his website, where I watched several hours of him debating the existence of God with religious and spiritual leaders from around the world. And while I understand that his pushback is more particularly directed at organized religions, namely Christianity and Islam, for a brief period of time, I allowed myself to imagine a life without God.
I imagined how it would feel to not know, or even consider the possibility, that I am connected to all of life in some significant way.
I imagined how different my life would be without a higher purpose for any of my thoughts, any of my expressions, and any of my choices.
I imagined for a moment that this was it, that my life was reduced to the 60, 70, 80, or 90ish years that I may randomly and singularly experience and how I could possibly “make the best” of them…or what that would even mean.
I imagined for a moment that my relationships were circumstantial – and, for that matter, that everything that happened in my life was circumstantial, arbitrary, and spiritually meaningless. What would now be the purpose for my relationships?
I imagined the day my son was born and how that would have been an entirely different experience. In the absence of God, the overwhelming sense of divine perfection and soul connection would have been diminished to a matter-of-fact scientific explanation involving sperm and eggs.
There were times in my life where it felt scary and lonely to imagine a God who punishes and judges, a God who condemns, a God who is separate from me. But imagining that God did not even exist allowed me to experience aloneness and fear on a whole new level. The fundamental question of “Who am I?” suddenly meant so little as it could no longer produce an answer that expanded beyond physicality, thereby limiting my entire human experience to simply a body made up of cells, blood, tissue, organs, veins, etc.
If there is no God…then who am I?
And why would it even matter why I was here and where I was going?
The atheism movement is growing at a surprisingly impressive rate, presenting a robust resistance to religious fundamentalism and righteousness. This secular segment of our world is made up of people who are no longer buying into the story which casts as its leading man an angry, needy, and vengeful God; yet this same group of people have likewise abandoned any concept of connectedness, divine design, higher purpose, and eternal life.
And this is why the New Spirituality movement is vital, a collective consciousness that does not support the “man on a cloud” theology, yet embraces divinity and oneness. The New Spirituality is a space that gives hope and cultivates purpose and bridges the gap between “no God” and “that God.” The New Spirituality does not teach people what to think, but rather that they can think; it does not tell you how to live your life, but rather how to create your life.
(Lisa McCormack is the Managing Editor & Administrator of The Global Conversation. She is also a member of the Spiritual Helper team at www.ChangingChange.net, a website offering emotional and spiritual support. To connect with Lisa, please e-mail her at Lisa@TheGlobalConversation.com.)
As we transition into the first week of December, the radio stations are also transitioning into their holiday musical line-up and beginning to play Christmas tunes, some stations devoting their entire program exclusively to “sounds of the season” 24 hours a day, seven days a week, all the way up to Christmas Day. So during my early-morning commute today, I was not surprised to hear Elvis Presley crooning “I’ll Have a Blue Christmas Without You” and Jon Bon Jovi belting out “Please Come Home for Christmas” and Mariah Carey sorrowfully singing “I Miss You Most at Christmastime.”
I’ve heard these particular songs hundreds, if not thousands, of times before. But today these three melancholy tunes caught my attention in a new way, one which invited me to think about how many people, myself included, are physically separated from their loved ones not only at Christmas, but for prolonged periods of time, whether that separation is as a result of children growing up and moving on to the next chapter in their lives, or due to a special friendship parting ways, or perhaps a loved one who has left this earthly realm to continue on in their eternal spiritual journey.
These physical separations have the potential to stir up a wealth of emotions and confusion, especially when the way we desire our relationships to be experienced is entirely different than the way in which they are actually physically showing up – or not showing up – in our lives.
But are we as separated from our loved ones as we imagine ourselves to be?
Is there a way to actually experience the presence of those who no longer share a physical proximity with us? Not only at Christmas, but all the time?
If we limit our definition of “relationship” to include only that which we experience in physicality, our answer to that question may cause us to miss a most extraordinary spiritual opportunity.
Have you ever experienced the essence of someone you love without them being physically in the room with you? Have you actually felt the wonder and intimacy of a Beloved Other even in the absence of their physical being beside you? Has a particular aroma or unique sound or distinct taste triggered an opportunity to actually relive, in a palpable way, a moment with somebody who is no longer physically here?
We are provided infinite opportunities to experience our loved ones through the path of our consciousness. For me personally, the smell of roses delivers to me an experience of being a very young child, cuddling on my mother’s lap after she bathed and luxuriated herself in Rose Milk Body Lotion, instantaneously drawing into my consciousness my mother and an opportunity to be with her in a way that transcends physicality. The gentle sound of an acoustic guitar gifts me with an opportunity to linger within the essence of my 18-year-old son and his music, who now resides on the other side of the country. A large percentage of the people in my life with whom I share an intimate or especially meaningful relationship live nowhere near me, yet their presence is significant and certain.
And this is because what we choose to focus on and what we choose to see will determine What we experience and Who we experience and How we experience. Life calls upon us to do and be many different things. And as a result, we may find ourselves physically separated from what we have come to know as our most important and cherished relationships. Yet day after day, year after year, lifetime after lifetime people manage to move through these transitions and changes, most often to experience an even deeper level of love and a more profound level of awareness. And this is because we truly are never separate from each other.
Our relationships never end, as we imagine or perceive they do. The existence or magnitude of a relationship cannot be measured in terms of physical distance or closeness. Relationships simply change the form in which you experience them, and a physical “separation” may be just the thing that allows us to know and experience not only who we are in relation to each other but who we are in relation to our Self.
Perhaps this holiday season will provide you an opportunity to create a new experience, one which celebrates the presence of a loved one in an extraordinary yet familiar way. Maybe the warm embrace of a loved one will be experienced through the surrogacy of a child’s tender hug or seen in a stranger’s smiling eyes or warmly felt through the gentle touch of an unknown passerby.
Maybe, just maybe, you truly are as close as your next thought.
(Lisa McCormack is the Managing Editor & Administrator of The Global Conversation. She is also a member of the Spiritual Helper team atwww.ChangingChange.net, a website offering emotional and spiritual support. To connect with Lisa, please e-mail her at Lisa@TheGlobalConversation.com.)
The mere mention of a “man with muscle” conjures up images of a male with rippling abs and bulging biceps. However, I am NOT speaking to the kind of muscle that develops as a result of sweat-filled hours in a gym or the kind of muscle whose size grows and whose form is sculpted against the resistance of heavy dumbbells.
I am talking about a man who is developing his spiritual muscles.
…A man who, rather than gazing into the bathroom mirror, sees All of Life as a reflection of who he is.
…A man who measures his strength not by his physical attributes or material gains, but instead gauges his greatness by his life experiences of compassion, service, and gratitude.
…A man whose purpose in life is not to see how much he can get out of it, but rather to see how much he can place into it.
In a spiritual partnership, brute strength has little value at the end of the day. A Partnership of Souls requires no more than a common desire to experience God. A man who knows Who He Is and Why He is Here and Where He is Going brings into a relationship a level of authenticity and presence that cannot be bought, controlled, coerced, manufactured, strong-armed, fabricated, or misunderstood.
The spiritual muscle of a man is not cultivated through acts of aggression or power. It is not fine-tuned through abusive or dominant behavior. It is not crafted through apathy or indifference. A spiritual muscle’s potency is not fed by its need to be right or its willingness to simply blend in. The magnitude of a man’s soul is not dependent upon bulging biceps or powerful careers or financial wealth.
A man’s spiritual muscle is developed through awareness and intention, through humor and humility, through presence and purpose. A gentle and consistent introspection is the type of exercise the muscles of the soul yearn for and respond to. The female spirit is drawn to empathic energy. Passion between the feminine and masculine is ignited within the light of truth and transparency. And intimacy is fostered and experienced within the realm of vulnerability and emotional nakedness.
Society, unfortunately, has got it all backwards. A cursory glance at some of today’s top headlines demonstrates that. As a result of society having it backwards, the outgrowth is a large percentage of men who are confused into thinking that their masculinity is defined and preserved through their high-ranking positions or their sexual prowess or their exertion of physical or intellectual control over another. This same percentage of “confused” men wind up in relationships with women, equally confused, who are buying into the same illusion and collectively expecting the same return. And at the end of the day, the quest for more…more sex, more physical control, more money, more power…produces the same stark realization: Something is still missing.
Gimme a man who flexes his spiritual muscles regularly, a man who “works out” every day, a man who exercises his greatness, a man whose presence in a room exudes an unmistakable knowing and an unquestionable understanding of Who He Is.
Gimme a man who knows himself as God.
(Lisa McCormack is the Managing Editor & Administrator of The Global Conversation. She is also a member of the Spiritual Helper team at www.ChangingChange.net, a website offering emotional and spiritual support. To connect with Lisa, please e-mail her at Lisa@TheGlobalConversation.com.)
As we once again find ourselves on the threshold of the Thanksgiving holiday, the season of gratitude, I want to thank God for everything in my life that is wrong, for all the things in my life that I have either lost or never received, and for all the outcomes that did not turn out right.
…I want to thank God for the relationships that are no longer a part of my reality in the way they once comfortably were, for the friendships and lovers who transitioned out of my life and moved in new directions, and for the encounters with my Brothers and Sisters on Planet Earth that were less than pleasant and far from an experience of Oneness.
…I want to thank God for the money that is not in my bank account. I feel especially grateful for having to give up some of the things in my life I truly enjoyed because I could no longer afford to pay for them.
…I want to thank God for the moments in my life when I felt alone, as though nobody understood me or even cared, the moments where the silence in the room echoed loudly, the colors of life were drained of their vibrance, and time stood dreadfully still.
…I want to thank God for the professional promotions I did not receive, the career opportunities I was overlooked for, and the jobs I was matter-of-factly asked not to return to.
…I want to thank God for the aches and pains in my physical being, the nights where I am plagued with insomnia, the extra body weight I have had a difficult time shedding, and the way my mirror stares mockingly back at me some days.
…I want to thank God for the rattle in my car, the leaky faucet in my bathroom, the slowest line at the bank, the disproportionate number of red lights during my morning commute, last night’s quarrel with my spouse, the empty orange juice container, the paper cut, the stubbed toe, the neighbor who mows his yard at 6:00 a.m., and the one red shirt that mysteriously found its way into my washing machine along with a load of what is now formerly white clothes.
Yes, God, thank you.
The wonderful and lovely occurrences in life present us an obvious opportunity to experience and express gratitude. Appreciation flows generously in moments of ease and abundance. But how can we experience thankfulness in the midst of strife and turmoil? How can we feel abundant when we feel as though we have nothing? Is it possible that the events in life that reveal themselves to us under the guise of calamity hold within them the same opportunity for self-realization as those which seem to appear peacefully and effortlessly?
The people, places, and things which show up as “wrong” serve to illuminate that which is “right,” remembering that it is only within the human understanding of “wrong” or “right” that anything can be judged as so. There is not a single occurrence which does not lead you to a higher experience of Who You Really Are, whether you are being invited to that remembrance through an experience of having or not having, losing or finding, propelling forward or retracting back, feeling frustrated or feeling overjoyed.
I will be expressing my deepest gratitude to God for the “nothings” in my life this Thanksgiving and thanking Her for the expanding awareness that continues to allow me to see the possibilities within what might otherwise appear to be “wrong.”
How about you?
(Lisa McCormack is the Managing Editor & Administrator of The Global Conversation. She is also a member of the Spiritual Helper team atwww.ChangingChange.net, a website offering emotional and spiritual support. To connect with Lisa, please e-mail her at Lisa@TheGlobalConversation.com.)
Financial uncertainty can create some real challenges in relationships. Unpaid bills stacking up on the kitchen counter, an almost-empty gas tank in your automobile, looming medical expenses, kids in college, rising insurance premiums, maxed-out credit cards, all paralleled with shrinking paychecks or maybe even the threat of losing a job are situations that many, many couples are up against and struggling with. These issues, demanding center-stage attention for couples finding themselves at the end of their financial ropes, are often significant contributing factors leading to the demise of even the most loving relationships.
Modern conveniences, tantalizing advertising campaigns, and overly commercialized holidays cater to and feed our fragile ego’s desire to have more, do more, have it faster, do it faster. Attempts to keep up with the seductive and frenzied pace of “more, more, more” draw us further away from the essence of our own innate abundance, misleading us into believing that the true measurement of “wealth” in our relationships, or lack thereof, is directly correlated to the way in which we measure financial wealth.
Contrary to what we are being asked to embrace by society, could a shoestring budget and a dwindling bank account be just the thing that reconnects us with an experience of inner wealth, unconditional love, and deeply fulfilling partnerships? Could the experience of having nothing remind us that we already have everything?
A partnership is much more than the physical cohabitation of two individuals. It is more than the wedding and the house and the kids and the careers, and is most certainly more than the unpaid bills. A partnership is a Union of Souls on a Spiritual Journey. Refocusing our attention on the larger purpose of our relationships and the ultimate outcome for All of Life helps us to measure how tightly we hold the day-to-day happenings in our life and how meaningful they are to us.
When waves of panic, worry, and obsession dominate our thoughts, we lose sight of the experience for which our Souls yearn. Sure, we still experience something. We are in a constant state of experiencing ourselves in relation to every encounter in life. But when the question becomes “Why is this experience creating conflict and tension, rather than joy and happiness, in my relationship?” we may want to ask the next important question: “How can I CHANGE that?”
Everything we experience in life — the perceived lows, the perceived highs, what we label “good,” what we label “bad,” those events that appear to propel us forward, and those events that appear to hold us back — are simply touchstones for us to choose in relation to. Each experience weighs in somewhere on the “scale of life,” teetering in one direction or another, depending upon what we choose. Perhaps today we will choose a long walk in nature, holding hands with our Loved One, engaging in heartfelt conversation. Perhaps tonight, instead of eating at a restaurant, we will prepare a wonderful homemade meal together. Perhaps this evening we will dance underneath the moonlight to our favorite soulful music. Perhaps we will gift each other with a sensual massage and surrender to a lingering night of making love. Perhaps in the evenings, after a long day at work, we will greet our Beloved at the door with a warm and loving embrace and each morning awaken them with a tender kiss.
If we choose to experience this level of Soul connection, in spite of the unpaid bills stacking up on the kitchen counter, an almost-empty gas tank in the automobile, looming medical expenses, kids in college, rising insurance premiums, maxed-out credit cards, all paralleled with shrinking paychecks or maybe even the threat of losing a job, then we will have truly experienced what it means to be rich beyond our wildest dreams.
(Lisa McCormack is the Managing Editor & Administrator of The Global Conversation. She is also a member of the Spiritual Helper team at www.ChangingChange.net, a website offering emotional and spiritual support. To connect with Lisa, please e-mail her at Lisa@TheGlobalConversation.com.)
7-year-old Maggie gently picks up her brand new baby doll and swaddles her tightly in a warm, fuzzy polka-dot blanket. She tenderly kisses her baby’s tiny forehead and serenades her with a sweet lullaby. Continuing to affectionately tend to the comfort of her make-believe newborn, Maggie lovingly removes the infant doll’s soiled diaper and replaces it with a fresh clean one and proceeds to her miniature rocking chair, where she patiently and tenderly attempts to comfort her baby doll. Realizing that her brand-new baby must be hungry, Maggie carefully lifts her baby to her specially designed halter top, which has nipples covered by petal appliqués and sewn-in sensors to simulate suckling sounds, and begins to “breastfeed” her infant doll.
Maggie’s new doll, The Breast Milk Baby, is creating quite the controversy and has received intense criticism since its introduction into the U.S. market. Many retailers are refusing to place the Spanish toy company’s product on their shelves even more than a year after its initial release. Critics claim that the doll “over-sexualizes” young girls and “forces them to grow up too quickly.” Bill O’Reilly declared on his show, The O’Reilly Factor, “I just want the kids to be kids. And this kind of stuff. We don’t need this.”
Berjaun Toys’ US representative, Dennis Lewis, says, “We’ve had a lot of support from lots of breastfeeding organizations, lots of mothers, lots of educators. There also has been a lot of blowback from people who maybe haven’t thought to think about really why the doll is there and what its purpose is. Usually they are people that either have problems with breastfeeding in general, or they see it as something sexual.”
Is The Breast Milk Baby an inappropriately precocious toy for our young daughters to be playing with? Or is the backlash swirling around this particular baby doll grossly misunderstood and just another symptom of how far off track we have ventured in relation to who we really are? We walk past a mother cat nursing her kittens and smile at its sweetness; yet we exile new mothers to their cars, we usher them into private rooms, out of the public eye, covered up, to breastfeed their newborn infants in an effort to avoid offending others around her.
Is it heartwarming to stand witness to a young female, 7 years old, emulating one of the most beloved relationships of all, a mother and her baby, a nurturing Maternal Being providing life-sustaining nourishment to a tiny new life, and appreciating her body’s remarkable ability to be the source of that? Or is it premature and inappropriate to draw attention to our daughters’ bodies so boldly and unreservedly, encouraging them to express this aspect of their physicality so freely and perhaps in a manner that is too provocative or too sensual?
If it is the avoidance of “over-sexualization” of our children that we, as a society, are leveraging for, then why are the scantily clad Bratz dolls flying off the shelves and landing in the homes of so many young girls? If given the choice to purchase a Fashionista Barbie or The Breast Milk Baby for your daughter, which would you choose? And why?
The answers to those questions invite a conversation to begin around the issues we are not talking about (sex, intimacy, and love), affording ourselves an opportunity to take a closer look at what it is we are really afraid of and how those fears may be distorting our thoughts and influencing our choices.
Why do we fear our children learning about, talking about, and embracing their bodies, and understanding the purpose for which they were created? Why are we attaching the same thick layers of shame and stigma to something so natural and meaningful as breastfeeding that we’ve sadly used to suffocate our own sexuality?
Dysfunction thrives in an environment of restrictions and conditions, where the essence of who we are is stifled, unexpressed, forgotten. Love unexpressed mutates into a “conditioned” version of love. Sexuality ignored mutates into shame and confusion, rendering ourselves unable to appreciate and celebrate each aspect of our divinity fully, blurring the lines between who we think we should be and who we actually are…and what we imagine is happening and what is really going on.
What will YOU do if this particular toy finds its way to your child’s Christmas or birthday “wish list”?
(Lisa McCormack is the Managing Editor & Administrator of The Global Conversation. She is also a member of the Spiritual Helper team at www.ChangingChange.net, a website offering emotional and spiritual support. To connect with Lisa, please e-mail her at Lisa@TheGlobalConversation.com.)
On Tuesday, November 6, 2012, President Barack Obama was re-elected to serve four more years as President of the United States of America. This particular result may be cause for celebration for some and perhaps feel disheartening for others, depending on where you personally stand in this year’s heated election. It is not unusual for clashing belief systems and opposing views to quickly turn an election into an experience of conflict and discord, even among those who most often are agreeable. But no matter who the perceived “winner” of this presidential race is, let us not lose sight of Who We Really Are.
There IS something much bigger going on here.
Many people hold a belief that politics and spirituality do not mix, that they are opposing energies. However, the freedoms and liberties we enjoy in this country provide us the perfect opportunity to flex our spiritual and intellectual muscles and to demonstrate and experience individually and collectively why we are here. Because while our Ultimate outcomes are guaranteed, we do have the ability – the gift – to choose how we desire our human experience to be, where we want our human experience to go, and, of course, who we desire to be in relation to ALL of it.
Therefore, the most important “win” of all is the one in which we use an experience like this, the election process, as a catalyst to unite and connect, not to divide and segregate. Even if in this year’s election there was an absence of a candidate that embodied ALL of the concepts and ideas and visions that are important to you, continue to lean your energy in the direction of what you would like to see our world evolve into and watch that consciousness create and give birth to that future leader. That is spirituality in action!
The most important win of all is the one that facilitates an experience of Oneness, not division; the one which holds our relationships with each other as Holy, not negligible; the one which uses our differences and diversities as a context within which to experience our Highest Self, both as aspects of Who We Are and Who We Are Not in this never-ending process of experiencing, expressing, demonstrating, and remembering.
It is not possible to lose in this Life Game…so who will you choose to BE in relation to what it is presenting you now?
(Lisa McCormack is the Managing Editor & Administrator of The Global Conversation. She is also a member of the Spiritual Helper team at www.ChangingChange.net, a website offering emotional and spiritual support. To connect with Lisa, please e-mail her at Lisa@TheGlobalConversation.com.)
