The Global Conversation

When everything changes…change everything

Written by

Therese Wilson

in

(CA, a non-native English speaker, wrote a very long letter, and I am excerpting some of her content for the advice column.)

CA, I understand that the real purpose of your letter was to get some answers to some of the larger questions of the day, centering around how the world is going to change with so much resistance to change.  That is a subject that I could speak to you about, one-on-one, extensively, but for the purposes of an Advice Column, I am going to focus on something else…how you are feeling about these things.

CA, you used the words below as part of your description of the events the world is experiencing today:

“.. as it is not part of my personality to engage in such conversations simply by fear of being categorized as illuminated or dangerous-

Reactions are strong…resistance…doubt…catastrophe…vicious circle…how?…

I feel very different from others in terms of convictions reactions behaviors since  early age so I stay discrete to avoid discrimination.”

CA, I would like you to know that you are certainly not alone in feeling different.  You are not alone in feeling afraid and confused, and you are not alone in resisting change.  This is what our egos do to protect ourselves.  We stop having the conversations we really want to have because we are afraid of what other people think.  Attachment to family and friends is natural and strong. We are told, culturally, through religion and education, and in many more ways, that it is not possible and not proper for us to do anything that isn’t already acceptable. The problem is, when we do this, we ignore what we think.  I know it has been said so many times before, but loving ourselves is what comes first.  If we want to speak of things that could change the world into a better place, and don’t, we are depriving ourselves of our own voice, and depriving the world of the wisdom that just might have changed the world.   One voice really can do just that…change the world.

Yes, it seems dramatic, but imagine if Jesus had kept silent, or the Buddha, or Gandhi, or Nelson Mandella…each only one voice, heard eventually by many.

“I also read with great enthusiasm his article after election in your country as I am deeply convinced that if we do not share and care for the rest of the mankind and continue to build our society around the concept of separation we won’t go anywhere but to violence and despair for the majority of us. I read today that some readers accused him of mixing a spiritual role with politics, yet I think that this is exactly where we need to start as  society organization is today ruled by the economic and political sphere.”

CA, see, you already know what you believe!  Now you get to choose to voice it or not.  It might not even be true that people will reject your ideas, as they did in the past.  It has been my experience that when I speak my truth, and speak it with kindness, as CWG suggests, I rarely get opposition…I may not get agreement, but I do not get opposition.  People do, however, walk away willing to think about what I have just shared with them.  I often find that others really do feel the same way I do, but are also afraid to speak what they really feel.

I would suggest, also, that you be certain to understand that we are all doing the best we can, given the information we have about things.  When we know better, we do better.  One of the reasons we feel upset, after we know better, is that we think it is unfair that we have to behave better than everyone else!  It feels like quite a burden to be different than others…but I would suggest something else.  It might just be a burden lifted not having to be false to yourself.  Telling your own truth is actually incredibly liberating.

“My understanding after all my readings is  that God sent us these Angels to allow us to experience what we have chosen to feel . But if I experience resistance, calomny , if I keep losing my job for unrational reasons with huge fear of financial precarity , how can I engage in changing the world with discussions?”

Now, CA, you also get the chance to change your mind about how you feel about these things, and change your experience of them!  In “When Everything Changes, Change Everything,” it tells a little story about a rainy day, and how the same event can be experienced in very different ways.  Rain for the parade organizer was a disaster.  Rain for the farmer was a blessing!  Might these things in your life that are now calamities be viewed as opportunities?  Might they be you, on a soul level, asking you to reexamine your life, and your priorities?

I know this sounds very cavalier, CA, and I know how frightening all of the life events you describe can be, but you do get to choose whether or not you are the parade organizer or the farmer.  This column will certainly not give you all of the answers you seek, but, hopefully it will give you some things to think about in your journey of finding your own answers.

I believe that who we are in this world, and how we conduct our lives in this world, really does affect our world in ways that we will never understand.  I believe we must never deny our own voice, when it speaks our own truth, and that we all get to decide what that is.

CA, if you haven’t already read the book “When Everything Changes, Change Everything,” I would recommend you do.  It can be read for free on the website listed below.  This book gives practical tools on how to change how we go through change.   It also has forums where you can discuss the book in relation to yourself and your journey.

This world is sure changing like crazy right now, and the only thing we can really change is how we are in relation to that change.  You, however, are not alone, CA, in your journey through these times.

Therese

(Therese Wilson is the administrator of the global website at www.ChangingChange.net, which offers spiritual assistance from a team of Spiritual Helpers responding to every post from readers within 24 hours or less, and offers insight, suggestions, and companionship during moments of unbidden, unexpected, unwelcome change on the journey of life. She may be contacted at Therese@TheGlobalConversation.com.)

(If you would like a question considered for publication, please submit your request to Advice@TheGlobalConversation.com, where our team is waiting to hear from you.)

 


Comments

4 responses to “When everything changes…change everything”

  1. Sinclair Avatar
    Sinclair

    CA says:

    I am deeply convinced that if we do not share and care for the rest of the mankind and continue to build our society around the concept of separation we won’t go anywhere but to violence and despair for the majority of us.

    This is an age-old hope, of course. However, societies based primarily on sharing and taking care of each other beyond the family unit have a tragic history of either not working, such as the early Christian communes and the first Pilgrim settlements, or becoming totalitarian nightmares, such as the various versions of communism.

    Sinclair, I might suggest that your observation is a good one, of the old paradigm. Couldn’t it be possible that with the expanse of knowledge at our fingertips, including the discussions on this site, that we might be able to see what didn’t work in those attempts, and yet carry forward those bits that did? There are simply more ways to get thoughts across now, and have agreement on those thoughts, than merely aggression. In other words, if we all choose a better way, as opposed to being forced into having a better way, it may just work!

    Just a thought.
    T.

    Reply
  2. em claire Avatar
    em claire

    Smooches, Heartsister! Sure do love your clarity and commitment! LOVE, em 🙂

    Reply
  3. Sinclair Avatar
    Sinclair

    Therese: The problem, however, is that the sharing/caring vision of society always presents itself as the new paradigm.

    Christians had their revelations from Jesus Christ. The Pilgrims had the New World and their new version of Christianity. The Communists had their pseudo-scientific gospel from Marx and Lenin. The hippies had their revelations from LSD and the new Sixties thinking.

    All these groups established social organizations based on sharing/caring and all these social organizations failed.

    Selling the sharing/caring society as the new paradigm is a very old paradigm indeed. The claim, “It’s different this time,” never works when applied to human nature.

    I don’t say this with pleasure — for most of my life I’ve been a leftist. In my younger days I was committed to a communal vision of society. I lived on five different communes back then. But they all failed.

    Unless human nature changes, we will continue to try these idealistic experiments based on some “new paradigm” and the experiments will continue to fail, some horribly.

    Once again, Sinclair, I very much understand what you are saying, and if we continue with the old paradigm, calling it new, it, too, will fail.

    So, what would have to be different? Good intent is obviously not enough. Have you read the book that prompted the initial dialog on this site, “The Storm Before the Calm”? It proffers that we have tried the political, financial, military and religious solutions, and none have worked. Why would this be so? Because it is all based on a separatist idea of who we are in relation to, first and foremost, God. Our idea of who we are to one another flows from that point. Which means what to this conversation? It means that we have been looking at life and one another through a prism instead of a clear pane of glass. It looks like what is so, but it is very different from what is truly so. Right now the prism says that we are all “fallen” if you will. We believe we act in the same manner as Divinity when we punish, or even, when “justified” kill one another. I don’t believe that is acting in the image and likeness of God.

    Without getting into an extended dialog about this, it is believed by many, including myself, that if we can shift the paradigm of separateness into the true paradigm of Oneness, we could have a different experience. Oneness does not have to mean living a Borg-like existence. It does mean that we would never look at another and not see some aspect of ourselves. It does mean that we would define acting in a godly fashion in a different way.

    This will, of course, mean learning a different way, and showing our children a different way. Some adults will change fully. Some will change enough to know how to begin the process, and enable the exploration of that different way in their children. You and I many never live to see it…but we also just might.

    Did you read the guest column entitled, “A Daring Thanksgiving Thought” by Rabbi Michael Lerner? If you haven’t, you may wish to do so. His summation was this:

    “And in the spirit of Thanksgiving, we affirm our dedication to being unrealistic for peace, social justice, environmental sanity, and a world based on love, caring, kindness and generosity.  In so doing, we will make realistic what at first seemed to be unrealistic. And so it is. Amen.”

    I, identify strongly with this way of being, Sinclair. Since I know that up until now we have, as a world, been guilty of living Einstein’s definition of insanity, I think it is time to look at what we are doing and change the pattern.

    T.

    Reply
  4. Sinclair Avatar
    Sinclair

    The Hindu mystics have been teaching non-separateness from God for centuries, maybe not exactly as you and Neale would but close enough, and, if you ask me, with much more depth and insight. However, that paradigm has not transformed Indian society.

    I see no reason to believe it will transform Western society either. It might be better in some ways from say, Fundamentalist Christianity or Scientific Materialism, but human nature is stubborn, and attempting to live from non-separateness from God won’t change that much.

    I appreciate Neale’s conversations with God. At one point they affected me deeply. However, when I read his articles here and the comments from others, I am not at all impressed. The non-separateness from God paradigm does not seem to yield anything special — just more of the usual liberal prescriptions that “separated” liberals have.

    The evolution of humanity is, as I see it, a long song. There is no magic paradigm that is going to speed that up markedly, anymore than a paradigm could mature a child to adulthood more quickly.

    Sinclair, once again, I get what you are saying, and I suppose this is the conversation that CA would really like to have had as well!

    Your thoughts are very accurate observations, of the past, and what is. The sticking point for me in those observations is that you seem to believe that because it was so, it must forevermore be so. The ironic thing is that as long as enough of us believe this, it is, and will be true. I think there are enough examples in history of how changing our minds, and changing how we look at things has changed what was, apparently, an absolute truth, to at least consider the possibility this world, and humanity, is capable of exhibiting changed behavior.

    In my own life, when I am in the space of knowing what works for me must also work for others…things seem to just fall into place. Scientifically, I suppose, my vibration attracted like vibrations, or caused others to vibrate differently. I don’t care, to tell you the truth, how it happens, I just know that it does happen.

    I think your last statement pretty much says it all, though, Sinclair. We are still a young species. We have the tools, yet we haven’t figured out how to use them just yet. Not knowing how to build a bridge, even though all of the materials are laid out in front of us, does not mean the bridge can never be built. It does mean that we should get together with others and figure out how to use all of those pieces, not just walk away and say it can’t be done. Maybe a kinder, gentler world is just a matter of us growing up. Evidence suggests that we had better realize this pretty soon, though, or we might not have a planet hospitable enough to grow up on!

    Reply

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