It Begins With Me

 

Change begins with how we manage
the energetic flow of our
individual thinking and feeling processes.

Acknowledging that individually
we are part of everything and
superior to nothing forms a platform
of strength and wisdom.

 

This strength and wisdom is the basic building block to a collective that acts and reacts from the same place of unity, grace and trust.
 

From the personal to the collective, humans are grappling with how to respond to profound economic, biological, scientific, political, climatic and technological changes.  The increasing speed of news/knowledge delivered to our Twitter and Facebook feeds, brings with it an incipient wave of overwhelm.  The question becomes, “How do I navigate this powerful wave of incoming data to generate my own wisdom and subsequent response?” 

Expansion of human consciousness is one area of profound change that is not receiving equal mainstream media coverage, yet therein lays the answer to this question. 

With or without the media noticing, our individual and collective consciousness is evolving right along with all those other media-attracting landscapes.  We are beginning to assimilate awareness that the same energy flow composing you and me also composes all form:  weather, men, Wired Magazine, women, trees, Republicans, your home, Democrats, Yemenites, Hitler, Monsanto, even your iPad. 

Our energy flows, along with all energy in the multiverse, to become the form of everything.  On the consciousness landscape humans are expanding awareness that we are part of everything and superior to nothing.  Our consciousness’ learning curve centers on how to engage empathy, intention, passion, dispassion, and compassion as we form the creative energy issuing from within ourselves.

 

But what about navigating the news/knowledge wave
that threatens to overwhelm one’s ability to
generate clarity, wisdom and an appropriate response?

First notice when you absorb news, what gives you a physiological reaction?
 

Recently I had that chest-tightening, involuntary swallow reflex, shoulder hunching reaction to an article titled: “ It's Official: No One Will Ever Be Prosecuted for Bush-Era Torture.”  My reaction was initially just to the title of the article.  As I began to read, I saw the 2003 photo taken after the death of Manadel al-Jamadi at Abu Ghraib.  He died in CIA custody after he was beaten, stripped, had cold water poured on him, and then shackled to the wall. The photo shows al-Jamadi's ice-packed body lying on the floor with a smiling US Army Sgt Charles Graner standing over the body giving the thumbs-up sign.  My physiological signs of overwhelm were heightened and visceral as I took in the visual.  I am a U.S. citizen and this human rights crime was executed in my name, in the name of keeping me safe.  I can’t change all the complexities that led up to the event,  that the crime occurred, that my government righteously refuses to be accountable for the war crimes committed even as it issues judgment and condemnations of other countries and their human rights violations. 

In this moment I was not forming my response, my response was forming me.

My freeze, fight or flight response had landed squarely on flight; flight from the visual of this reported reality, the narrative of my country’s response, and the profound sense of helplessness that I could not right this wrong.  Internally I was wrestling with what had been sacrificed: a human’s life, what I thought my country was but isn’t, the illusion of discernment and moral certitude. 

Yet, even if this bit of news is not written up in the New York Times, or up next on my Facebook feed, this is where our expanding consciousness can help us employ empathy and intention as we form our energetic response to overwhelming data input. 

First, act on the expanding conscious awareness that reveals all energy is formed by a creative force.  My personal creative force is what was needed for my energy to absorb the irreducible truths I had just encountered. 

I breathed in a deep breath and released it a few times to clear the reactionary mode that physiologically trapped me.  Next I imagined being in the picture with Sgt Graner and Manadel al Jamadi.  Gently I removed the ice from the body, wrapping him in my blanket and putting my pillow under his head.  I imagined pulling Sgt Graner into my arms, hugging him as I put my heart over his to acknowledge the energy that is him is also what forms me.   Then I went further, visualizing Manadel al Jamadi alive, dressed, sitting at a table with Sgt Graner out by a big tree.  I saw the two of them speaking respectfully with each other, their children playing happily at their feet.

It was a quiet, simple exercise with no monetary investment, no outside involvement, yet it thoroughly changed my own energy.  Moments before my whole body had been focused on choosing between a reptilian freeze/fight/flight response and drowning in a sense of overwhelm. These few moments of empathy and intentional re-imagining transmuted the energy of recoil and flight into a stable forward forming picture of something better. 

Change begins with how we manage the energetic flow of our individual thinking and feeling processes. Acknowledging that individually we are part of everything and superior to nothing forms a platform of strength and wisdom.  This strength and wisdom is the basic building block to a collective that acts and reacts from the same place of unity, grace and trust.