In 2022, Choose What Lights You Up: Create With Intention
I am writing this post today looking out my window to a gorgeous winter day that is much too cold to be invitational for me to be outside. Yet I already went out and embraced the totality of the day and it made me smile...but not as much as coming home to a warm, cozy fire did.
As I'm moving through my first few days of 2022, I find myself thinking about life this last year. It has been a particularly challenging year for most people globally, with consequences from our collective actions that we have yet to feel, but that are lingering by to make their presence known when the time is right. I suppose, as usual, when the consequences show up, most of those left to bear witness will be flabbergasted: how did we let this happen? What were we thinking? Where was everyone? The long and the short of it is: steeped in fear within the cult of overwhelm.
The default is the cult.
While I have spent much of last year talking about the potential consequences of going down this path that the collective has now definitively chosen, this year I am choosing to focus my attention elsewhere. I am uninterested in educating anyone to any content knowledge that to me is self-evident. I move forward in my life now knowing that we have entered an era that we won't go back from. We have entered the era of post-truth, massformation, and the noble lie. A world of increasingly more concentrated wealth and power. A world where disagreement is met with censorship and violence. A world where a group of people is openly and unapologetically rewarded by the powers that be and the culture itself for discriminating against another group of people. For those who are confused by the idea of how this is discrimination, consider that righteously yet unjustly excluding a large group of people from society and shunning them while privileging another group is the definition of discrimination. In this world, righteous rage continues to be on the rise and the targets have been identified (that's the role of scapegoats, after all).
Some people believe this dare-I-call-it-discrimination is temporary and some how justifiable because of the framing of the narrative as "they have a choice". Throughout history we have experienced discrimination based on race, gender, class, age, ability, etc... you know, things that are not one's so-called-choice. This discrimination along medical lines is new, and therefore unacknowledged. Especially because it is brilliantly framed in the language of "choice" (when really all people are given are shitty options), there are those who are doing the right thing and those who are impeding. The righteous and the scapegoats. Black and white. No room for discussion, because science said so.
Despite what most people in the West seem to believe, what's unfolding around us is a modern form of authoritarianism. A form of post-fascism that none wants to call that because to do so is much too scary. Most would rather focus on the narrative of beating the C-word and "building back better", all the while not noticing all they are giving up for the semblance of "safety". It's all been done before, and in my opinion, it is so played out. None in the masses, as per usual, seems to be noticing. Ultimately, all this means for me is that we'll have to move through this as so many have moved through blatant authoritarianism in the past and hope that eventually someone will notice and make it stop. The only thing is, this is monstrosity is global...it seems, none will come save us.
In my world, I see what I see and I know what I know and I'm unwilling to pretend otherwise. Thankfully I have chosen a path of perpetual self-discovery and evolution for it's own sake. That is the only thing keeping me sane in an increasingly more insane world where the majority cannot think for themselves, nor can they think of the inevitable consequences of allowing the powerful to impose sanctions upon our very bodies. There was a reason medical choices were previously private. Now we have entered an era where the powers that be can discriminate against whomever they choose based upon compliance of medical choices, citing the collective good as an excuse, creating "good" citizens and "bad" citizens.
It's not like we don't know concentration of wealth and power breeds danger. It's not like we don't know imposition of a singular narrative on the collective with a singular solution that demands compliance over is dangerous. We've been through this before, and it seems we are going through it again. So be it.
- What are the spaces you are noticing, right now, where capitulation to the default is killing you?
- What are the lies you tell yourself to just keep going with the life you've already got?
You cannot have my kingdom.
And you most certainly cannot have my children.
Here's truth I hold as real: we are living in an era of transformation where the skills, beliefs, values, attitudes, and identities we have held as real are now no longer useful. Society is crumbling, and along with it are institutions and paradigms alike. The question is: will I choose to go down with it, or will I choose to create something else?
I live my life knowing that I choose the quality of my life, not because of the limited, rather shitty options (note: not choices) the powers-that-be impose on me, but because I know I AM the chooser. I am the one doing the choosing. And so long as I choose congruently, my life unfolds exactly as it should. Plus a bonus: I am not confined to one choice; I can change my mind on a dime, and choose again!
In my life, my reason d'etre is clear: I am here to transform consciousness. Not collective consciousness, but that of individuals who seek to live fully and create differently in a world they notice is crumbling.
There is no destruction without creation. The two coexist. Where there is creation, there is destruction, and where there is destruction, there is creation. They are intimately intertwined.
So while this ten thousand year old patriarchal mindset of domination over is crumbling, there is a simultaneous shift in consciousness happening globally. I'm calling this the rise of 'matriarchal consciousness'. The rise of the matriarch where humans and other living beings on the planet are not merely bodies to be acted upon but Forces of Creation that create reality. That's the structure of thought, at play. First there was the word...
Take this moment consider...
- Who am I?
- Who am I capable of becoming?
- How is all of what's unfolding about me?
- How is it not about me?
- Am I willing to begin to claim my own power?
In this parallel world that is being created, I know where I stand. I want no part in that which feels counterintuitive to LIFE! Instead, I choose to build. I choose to expand....first and foremost, my own mindset. I choose to listen to my own voice before anyone else's. I choose to create with intention that which brings me joy and meaning. I choose resourcefulness and resilience to live a life of meaning day by day. I choose to become increasingly more familiar with my own sense of Self so that I can decipher my voice from that of habit. I choose to own my mind so that another does not take up space without paying rent.
This means that my choices at the physical level will sometimes feel hard because I am choosing not to fit in, but instead to create...and it is always harder to create something out of thin air than it is to simply tread the party line. Yet I know that fitting in now would mean the surrendering of my mind, and that of my sons and therefore the future, to a dying paradigm. I am simply unwilling to do that. After all, I as the parent and the delivery mechanism of culture, choose to teach my son how to live at cause for his life, not at the mercy of the decision-making of the collective. Creating something new with my son, now that's freedom!
It isn't easy to choose the choices that light us up. Everything in our cultural conditioning has taught us to choose only that which will give us material comfort. Keep up with the Jones'. Live the American Dream. Noone says how these are all mere illusions. They are the carrot dangled in front of us so we don't pay attention to the stick and the direction in which it is leading us. All we know is: I want that carrot, damn it!
This year, I invite you to reconsider what the carrot is. I invite you to simply, look UP, and notice: there is a stick and a stick master intentionally leading you further and further away from your sense of Self. All distractions intended to keep you locked down, no matter how hard you try and "do the right thing". My question is, are you noticing how it is never enough?
- Where do you stand in the midst of all this collective transformation?
- What role are you playing in this game of life?
- What choices light you up? Do you mindfully choose that?
- What is the future you are creating?
Honour the sacred with radical, directionless empathy.
In my world, this year, I will continue to choose to give myself permission to honour the paradoxical, personal, intimate, crazy, wild, insane, immense, intense, unimaginable, undeniable wisdom that lives inside of me and is accessible by me through one single breath. My reality is my creation, I am at cause for the quality of my life. I honour and respect the cues that move through my body, because they are the only source of truth that is available to me at any given moment. I refuse to deny myself that which I know any longer...no matter what.
Because I know: when I live from an internally referenced space, I am unshakable.
And that, dear reader, is the point of the brutalization toward external referencing. The giving up of our own power to some "expert", waiting for them to tell us what our version of truth is, or at least, ought to be. That is the adult version of the horse in carriage coming to save us from ourselves. I, for one, have long been done waiting. And now, I am done fighting. I am done bracing against. I am done trying to change what has already happened. I am done trying to wake sleeping beauty up, as well. Turns out, unless she chooses to wake up, none can wake her...because she is unconsenting.
Fighting that which I don't want is futile. There is no 'winning'. There is only loss of Self. Creating that which I do want, that is the future.
Most people are afraid of owning their truth, because to do so puts them at a choice point. It makes them responsible for the quality of their own lives. And most people are terrified to take charge of their lives. they would much rather the institutions they've surrendered their decision-making to does the choosing for them. But if we stay status quo, individually and collectively, and if we teach our children to replicate that, we will get more of what we've got. If that works for you, great! Keep at it. But if it doesn't...consider, there is a different way to live!
Claiming "I am at cause for my life" is freeing. It is the only way to create a life of meaning beyond the conditioning that keeps us small.
The following list is what I mindfully choose... Consider saying this to yourself, out loud, as though this is your reality. How does it make you feel to say...
- In a head-centered world, I choose to listen to my body.
- In a patriarchal world of increasing control over, I choose to surrender to the totality of the moment.
- In a world where we are stripped of our orientation, I choose to follow the direction of my heart.
- In a world where every person is asked to justify their position to some authority, I choose to let go of the need to be understood or validated by another.
- In a world where individuals are encouraged to disconnect from themselves and their families, I choose to embrace my self and connect with my family fearless.
- In a world where we are being homogenized into a faceless, nameless, compliant collective of QR codes, I choose multiplicity, diversity and inclusion.
- In a world where we are being herded to follow the conventional narrative legitimized through "science", I choose to follow my own internal cues moment to moment.
- In a world where we are committed to one path, I choose to give myself permission to change my mind anytime.
- In a world where we are herded into tunnel vision, I choose to expand my mindset and vision to peripheral.
- In a world where we are bombarded with content knowledge that keeps us disagreeing about unverifiable details, I choose to notice the patterns and discover the context from which everything operates.
- In a world that keeps us fighting over details, I choose to move my thinking up logical levels so I'm not stuck in the muck of the unverifiable details.
- In a world that demands answers, I choose to ask the infinitely bigger questions.
- In a world that wants to fix everything and everyone, I choose to believe I am whole exactly as I am (and so is the world; there is always a higher intelligence at play).
- In a world driven by the intellect, I choose to live from the truth residing in my belly.
- In a world that desperately wants to "go back to normal", I choose to let go of expectations of old and create my future from an unstoried space.
- In a world fixated on control, I choose to surrender to the unknown.
The paradigm I operate from demands that I continuously let go of outcome. Choose mindfully in the moment, and let go of the outcome. This, is the hardest thing for most of us to do. We have habituated the desire for control, therefore to keep things the same. But control is an illusion and status quo is killing life on the planet.
What I'm more interested in is acting with radical, directionless empathy. Choosing to notice the sacred in it all. What is sacred about war? About division? About fear? What is sacred about grasping? Illusions? Concentration of wealth and power? I cannot say I have an answer, and I never will; but what I can say is that this line of thinking aligns me with my higher intention for being here: Sparking the Sacred!
In this world, which is only a mindset, I live as if...
- respect, integrity and generosity of sprit are the norm.
- internal referencing / internal cues / voices of reason / voice of divinity is the only guide of truth and the only reference point from which to choose from.
- coming back to my center is the only thing that matters.
- continuously letting go of expectations of what "should've been" is the only healthy response to embracing what is.
- I own the quality of my life, because I am at cause for my choices.
- I shape my own reality within the external reality.
- I honour all of what I know (the good, the bad and the ugly) and live in the now, making choices that lead to my desired future.
- my body is my only messenger of truth. It has ancestral wisdom within it that my intellect can never begin to understand.
- the subtleties in life make the biggest difference in the quality of my life.
- surrendering my head gives me the most inner peace.
- life is paradox and metaphor.
- my foundation is fierce compassion.
- personal evolution, for it's own sake, is my only "goal" in life.
- slowing down is medicine.
There is a space within all of us that is still uncolonized. That is the space I choose to come back to, time and again. That is the space I am called to make decision from, now and foerever. That is the place of deep inner knowing. That is the place of of deep integrity. That is the uncompromised space that is forever congruent.
DISCOVER WHERE THAT LIVES IN YOU
Reclaim Your Self