"Action and reaction, ebb and flow, trial and error, change - this is the rhythm of living, out of our overconfidence, fear, out of our fear, clearer vision, fresh hope. And out of hope, progress."
Bruce Barton
Change, even the word itself has a jarring sound to it. Change -short, abrupt, hard.
We live in the delusion that things remain the same as they always have been and that somehow if we control well enough, if we are rational enough, we can maintain the status quo and avoid any unpleasant surprises. We are creatures of habit and find security and comfort in the status quo; it quells our anxiety while it lulls us to sleep our lives away in an unconscious twilight, never reveling in the full sunshine of the extraordinary while we slip closer to the abyss of extinction.
In truth, the only reality is change, every second of every day brings this constant energy flow of change, whether we notice it or not. And we flow with it, whether we wish to or not. Today, our outer world is experiencing lightening fast change, creating constant upheaval in our lives with this or that new update, instantaneous breaking news and ever shifting events: job today, unemployment tomorrow; investments today, broke tomorrow; health today, serious illness tomorrow... It is impossible to keep up, to find any surety and it leads to stress and confusion and total breakdown of the system. The institutions that were originally set up to serve us, we now serve. Applying more rational systems to them is not the solution; it is the problem.
Our entire culture strains against the confines of its structure. The unrest and instability are two surefire lemon signs that the times are a changing and beckoning us to move on with them. We live at a nodal time of history. To heed these signs of much needed change and to choose to move on will propel us forward both individually and collectively. To resist and cling to the past models will lead to further crumbling. We really are caught between a rock and a hard spot. Either choice kicks up great anxiety. It is a time that demands courage and clarity of vision and the discipline to step out of our comfort zones and embrace new ways of thinking and doing. Qualities that only the irrational can supply. And we need to do it now while grace has provided the opening.
Only by turning in and finding that quiet source of balance can we even begin to hope to escape the madness of modern life. For we are the "projector heads", who with our focus and rational thoughts have created our realities. Tuning into our intuition is not an option, it is a necessity if we ever hope to escape the status quo treadmill of insanity that passes as modern life. This is not just true on the personal level but on the global as well. The world that we have collectively created is not sustainable and is poised to disappear with or without us depending on the choices that we make.
Our world is the end product of the Age of Reason or Enlightenment and like the dinosaurs we are doomed to extinction unless we begin at once to exercise our innate intuitive Spiritual powers and quiet our over stimulated rational minds that feed our addiction for control. Only by dancing with what we have long considered the irrational within us can we ever hope to gain enough wisdom to transcend the unreasonableness of our rational mind. The answer to our complex issues does not lie in more research, more facts, figures, statistics. "The answer my friend," as Peter, Paul and Mary sang, "is blowin' in the wind." It is in the still quiet voice within each of us that we have long ignored and continue to ignore to our peril.
In the foreword to Caroline Myss's book, Defy Gravity,Andrew Harvey writes:
"Our survival is threatened on every side - by
the demons our passion for domination of each
other and of nature have unleashed, by our flawed
and tribal understandings of religion that fuel instead
of resolve conflict, and by our continuing refusal to
face the personal and collective shadows of our greed,
fear, cruelty and unacknowledged despair at our
untransformed human nature."
In his book, Voltaire's Bastards, The Dictatorship of Reason in the West, John Ralston Saul makes the statement: "Reason began, abruptly, to separate itself from and to outdistance the other more or less recognized human characteristics - spirit, appetite, faith and emotion, but also intuition, will, and, most important, experience." He continues, "It has reached a degree of imbalance so extreme that the mythological importance of reason obscures all else and has driven the other elements into the marginal frontiers of doubtful respectability."
Our rational minds have certainly given us a comfortable lifestyle -if you can afford it - but no quality or depth of life. We have reached a precipice so scary that we now have drones and robots capable of destroying us with a mere flick of the switch while the fingers resting on that switch are unplugged from any ethical notion of what is truly the right thing to do. Just who are the good guys in the white hats anymore?
In his book which is almost 600 pages, Saul mentions women but three times, not because he demeans their value but because to the men who authored the Age of Reason, they had no value:
"The attitudes of our elites remain even less positive
when dealing with women. This had nothing to do
with and has not been changed by a century of lobbying
and struggling to integrate women into the mechanisms
of power. The simple truth is that they were not part
of the formulation and creation of the Age of Reason.
In fact, women were the symbol of the irrational.
Ever since the birth of the Age of Reason, women
have been perceived by the new elites to be on the
losing side."
On the losing side.....hmmmm. I can't speak for any other woman except myself. Frankly, I am glad that I am seen of no value in this system that is failing all of us. Losing side, indeed. Pray tell, just what have any of us won in this uber world of the rational? Certainly not our humanity or self-worth, or connection and caring for each other.
I am tired of reigning in my intuition that screams on a regular basis about living in the theater of the absurd. I am tired of a world where it is unsafe to watch a community marathon, where planes intentionally fly into buildings, where my hard earned tax money is used to kill other human beings in the name of national safety when there is not enough of that money left to feed children who go hungry. I am tired of a culture where common sense is no longer of value. I am tired of workplaces where people are not valued and are treated as commodities. I am tired of churches that preach intolerance for other beliefs and create guilt and arrogance in their followers instead of love and respect. I am tired of corporate greed and irresponsibility for the common good. I am tired of nature being exploited and destroyed in the name of progress. I am tired of the dumbing down and the slick vaporous fad of the moment that creates false value. I am tired of a disharmonious, disintegrous, meaningless world.
So if this is what the winning side looks like, I'll be proud to sit on the losers' bench. It is all nonsense and life is too precious a gift to waste one more minute on things that will never satisfy our souls. I invite all - man, woman, child - who have had enough of the cheap thrills that our rational minds dish out to tune into that quiet place within that has been silenced for far too long and mine the rich vein of the irrational for the wisdom therein. Only by going into the irrational will we find the answers and true empowerment that we need to deal with this rational world of ours. That is where extraordinary really is. And the opening to do so is now.
