Changes

Do you ever feel that we’re all in the middle of a profound change now?

Everyone I know thinks that something’s going on, though they seem to disagree on just what it is. Maybe a lot of our fellow Americans seem to be in deep denial of what’s really going on and straining to maintain an illusion of normalcy, but I have a feeling that almost everyone has at least a subconscious impression that we’re facing something unprecedented.

The other week my friend Allen said “Seems like it’s one thing after another. First, we had the war on terror, they told us that they were going to keep us safe, but we’re still in danger. Then we have environment and climate change they’re going to protect us from, but that doesn’t get fixed. The economy starts going down the toilet, the Treasury and Congress throw gazillions of dollars at it, but it still seems we’re sliding toward doom. They say our healthcare system is broken and needs their remedy, but it still seems to be terminal. Immigration is in crisis, we build a fence, deport people, send troops, but it’s still a mess. Finally, there’s this oil volcano in the Gulf, they’re doing everything they can, but the end is not in sight. When are we going to solve something for a change?”

One big factor in all of this is that it seems that human institutions everywhere are dominated by hierarchies that are struggling to preserve their status quo at any cost. They seem to be actively resisting any new and hopeful ideas that might help things – particularly solutions that might free people from dependency on their control systems.

One feeling I often hear expressed is along the lines of “I have a feeling that the walls are closing in,” like the trash compactor scene in Star Wars. Or, “the center cannot hold” from the I Ching by way of William Butler Yeats. People don’t see how things can continue on within the parameters of changes that seem possible.

So the alternatives that present themselves to our imaginations are of catastrophic failure. Some say this is because our entire species has been massively traumatized in the dim reaches of a half-remembered past. Doomsday scenarios abound – we have the pole shift with world-wide tsunamis, atomic warfare, solar coronal mass-ejection, the return of Niburu/Planet X, the arrival of interstellar aliens of dubious intent, the death of the oceans, the failure of our technology, or the establishment of a planet-wide tyranny. Or some mix-and-match combination of the above. Whoa.

But perhaps what’s coming is a shift not of our circumstances, but of our model of what Life actually is -the famous Paradigm Shift. I think that this fundamental transition may be a change in the way we see reality, from living in a world we’re separate from and that ultimately threatens us with annihilation, to living in unity with a process that supports us, in which we are never truly threatened.

The trick question is “How do I know that the experience I’m having is the perfect one for my continued growth and unfoldment?” When it becomes real for us that the experience we’re having now is one of learning and of friendly, loving support, instead of “one damned thing after another,” we’ll be through this shift.

Let’s envision possibilities that we can go through this without being slammed back to the Stone-Age or worse. Maybe then we don’t have to keep looking to the future for some perfect time. Maybe the change will be us realizing that the perfect time is right now.