by Motavenda Melchizedek
I breathe in the smallest breath to sustain me. I become everything else but what I am. My sister’s words move in rhythms to hypnotize me to despise my soul. What I think, I create. But I think their thoughts, so they create my life through me. I leave everyone behind in search of myself.
Lonely, in the darkest place, I go to find hope and renewal. I must breathe in my self and breathe out all the others. I must think my own thoughts and forbid all that creates what is untrue for me. I begin to face what I have become that is not me and I search for remembrance….for deep within my soul I know that I am beautiful and sacred….and worthy of life and of love.
I must evolve. I must somehow grow into someone capable of surviving this and return to my seat of ascension. I must embrace my divinity in the midst of everything here. I must find the courage to shine and believe in myself once more.
What is survival? Is abandoning ourselves for the sake of existence really “surviving”? What is it to abandon the soul and what is worth such a sacrifice? What happens to us when we do? And what do we become capable of doing and of accepting in our compromised state? What are the conditions for surviving this world as it is? Must we compromise? What is o.k. to compromise? What is o.k. to ask and expect others to compromise? Do we shut ourselves and each other down? Do we hold a space for destruction? What is going on here….where are we….and....how did we get here?
I know how I arrived in the place where I am. I was born into a legacy of abuse. Unquestioned through generations and through time. Abuse not only ancestral, but societal and merciless. My own mother demanded that I comply with her sacrifice of me to my abusive father. She demanded I go along and accept it. And she demands this still and holds me in contempt for defying her. As do my six sisters, their husbands and my large extended Irish Catholic family of fine, upstanding, revered, successful beings, complete with a nun and priest and lots of impressive higher education and beautiful homes and possessions and a whole new generation of children.
I was born unwanted, unwelcomed, dismantled and abused….emotionally, psychologically, physically, sexually and spiritually….throughout my whole childhood. I was systematically broken down by people who, to this day, despise me for defying them. I broke away. I ran for my life. I lived lost and unprotected. Disarmed, unsustained and accessed. Tormented, violated and terrorized for many many years. I sought help. I got sober. I got therapy. I did my integration work. I built a bridge back to my soul. I grew to know and to love myself. I turned back to the world and found it even harder to enter into. I was somehow less equipped. I had become aware of how wrong what was done to me was and could see how pervasive these energies are here. The clearer I became, the more I could see how so very many people here are devastated. And I was shocked to learn that we are all expected to move about as though this is all remedied. And even though many years have passed, nothing much has changed. So I don’t know what to do. Where to go. Or how to be here.
I am also stunned and shocked by what I have experienced for having dared to break out and become free. This seems to be an outrageous act here that is not really accepted or condoned. But I had no other choice. And my escape made me less capable of pretending and going along with bondage and exploitation anywhere. In fact, my job is to help illuminate and dispel these very things. So, I am left with a daunting task. To speak of the unspeakable inside of a world that doesn’t want to hear about it. A world glued together through silence and denial. And it has been so horrifying and haunting to know there really is no place for me that I can see....and to consider what that means....about the world and about how this sickness is so endorsed and held in place here still.
There is so much to say, but I’m not allowed to say it. No. I was not allowed to protest atrocities inside my own family system and the same feels true about this society at large. Because, it is made up of family systems, many not unlike my own. With the passage of time, the righteous tone of the voice of intolerance inside of my family and within this culture has not changed much....except to grow stronger. Now days, I am being told I have created it all. That nothing is wrong in the world if you don’t think it is. That nothing dark is going on here....unless you “believe” it is. And if you believe it is….well then you must have created it all.
I want to say here that telling people that they created the abuse they endured in their childhoods is evil, cruel and just plain stupid. And it really hurts and undermines those of us who have been injured in our innocence as we struggle to move back into our power and health.
I have survived, but I am now here in a lonely confusing place without a clue, without love, without support, without faith. And I am left asking, “How could my refusal to accept such outrageous things….the only choice that was holy and good....have led me here? To such a lonely place?” What is this telling me about these people and the larger world?
I know my choice was right. I know that refusing to be eternally bound and made complicit in the destruction and desecration of my own soul at the hands of those entrusted with my safety and welfare was the only sane choice. Getting away, leaving them behind, was the only chance I had for survival. To accept my own sacrifice was not an option for me. I know this completely. What I don’t understand is why this feels like such a strange and extreme choice in this world or why I find an endless stream of people empowering and justifying the very forces of devastation that I escaped from. This is widespread here.
I have broken free, but this very action lies at the root of my current dilemma. I am in a world that has been built upon the backs of subjugated people. And the darkness which I faced in that family of mine, is a darkness that is huge and pervasive and reaches far beyond the small system I was born into. It is rare that I meet people not devastated or ensnared. I find people complying with the sins of their ancestors at all levels of life. From the “highest” places to the “lowest”. From the most “sacred” spaces to the most primal. Their loyalty is devout and fierce and they will go to great lengths to maintain and defend it. I have seen with my very own eyes, that this energy moves untamed and unquestioned through this world and that many many people have come to endorse the darkness here by remaining ensnared and unhealed. They have been taught this is the right choice and seem to believe they are being good when they do it.
When people into metaphysics talk about different levels of consciousness....and of moving from one level of consciousness to the next what do they mean? How do we go from one world into another and bring ourselves with us….without leaving here? How do we take what we are now, and use what we are not yet, to guide us to a healthier destiny?
There is “Christ” consciousness, a state of being described in sacred teachings throughout history. A level of existence we are told we are each capable of living in. Where we are immortal, transcendent, whole and light. Where we manifest what we desire at will and in total spiritual alignment. Where we are free and empowered and enlightened in our divinity. Where we are “self-realized”. Where we all express our personal divinity and shine in exaltation. And, there is the “shadow”…the dark space born of intolerance, repression and denial of self.
If we are able to exist in higher consciousness…. if this is a true and real possibility for us, why have we not all been living at this level of life? I believe it is because aspects of ourselves have been undeveloped. We have denied our emotions, leaving us ill-equipped to safely manage higher energies here on that scale. We have been moved apart from ourselves through time. We have been taught that we are less than what we are and we have been told we must accept how that feels by ignoring our feelings. And these beliefs, these thoughtforms, have created the very conditions that we see now. We can not create a world safe for existing at higher levels of life while we are turning a blind eye to energies of darkness. And we certainly can not manifest a healed world while thinking we can carry this stuff forward into a higher place with us. These states of existence are mutually exclusive.
On my journey, and to my great dismay, I have encountered a continuous stream of dismantling thoughtforms and energies. And they have devastated and undermined me and I have never understood why so many people participate in the darkness here....and I’ve never understood the things they’ve told me. And, yes, I have been affected by them….how “unspiritual” of me.
I’ve been so shocked at the sight of what people expect me to accept. And I have come to realize that this world really is an underworld of sorts....where so much of what I think is light turns out to be dark and where so many beautiful and sacred things are harnessed to entrench and disempower those opposed to the darkness of abuse and the desecration of the sacred. I understand now why, in legends from our past, the highest order of magic was demanded of those who ventured through the underworld. They would have never survived if they had not accessed things beyond this world. They were forced to move into their metaphysical seats of power.
Deep within my soul, I know that I came into this world in this lifetime to confront the grip of darkness here. And it has taken everything I have and everything I have ever learned in every lifetime I have ever lived to deal with what is going on here now. And, I know that my path is a noble one and that it is a path of the light. No matter how unspiritual I am told what I am doing is. And, believe me, I have been told that often. I am on a metaphysical mission of sorts. I came here to face forces of soul destruction and lay naked at the mercy of them….to see them completely and to know undeniably of their existence here….and experience what is going on here on that level….to face what so many of us face here….and to survive….and prevail and ultimately thrive. I came here to become stronger than the energy that binds us into manifesting a world that we don’t want here. I came here to become capable of moving into my divinity in spite of what is going on here. And I have done it. I have come through the other side intact and without abandoning myself. I did not leave my soul and my consciousness or my feelings behind. I have succeeded in surviving and it has made me stronger somehow. Too strong now to accept the unacceptable. I have stayed true to myself and arrived in a new place....more conscious....and different....and somehow....extraordinary.
My passage through this world has brought me to a place of great awareness. And, in this awareness, I can see my new potential and I can see, too, how pervasive these energies are. I don’t run from how I feel about this world and my place in it anymore. No matter how devastating it is. And from here, I can see too, that we can not minimize our pain when harm is done to us and expect to go forth and create a world that acknowledges how awful and wrong these things are. Which means we can not create a safe world until we address what is going on here first and deal with it.
In metaphysical circles there is much being said these days about “consciousness.” But what are people really talking about? What is “consciousness” and how does it relate to us here, right now, inside of this very world? What does consciousness have to do with our collective predicament, with our potential and with all of the darkness still here? And what does consciousness have to do with our survival?
Consciousness is really just awareness. If we are to expand our consciousness, we must be free to be more aware and to own much more of our perceptions and our feelings. If we are not allowed to be aware, we will be limited in our possibilities when it comes to consciousness. If we cannot sit present with all of our feelings inside of this world, then we cannot be fully aware or empowered. To be capable of living at a higher level, we must step more fully into ourselves and become more than what we have been allowed to be. More than what we have been. We can not be in our divinity and share space with darkness. We can not be unconscious and conscious at the same time.
From a certain level, I understand the appeal in approaching the problems here by saying, “Let’s move on and become ‘Christ-like’. Let’s just do whatever makes us feel like we are existing in ‘Christ Consciousness’. Let’s play ‘make believe’. Let’s forget about what is here around us and elevate our world up and out of negativity by ignoring what is not light and by turning our focus away from what is undesirable about the world as it is. Then it will all disappear and be gone.”
But what about how all this came to be in the first place? And, what about the fact that ignoring what is not light here and denying the presence of darkness is how these energies grew to take a stranglehold on humanity? In another world at another time that approach might work. But in this world, given our history and how we have evolved alongside and underneath misconceptions about ourselves and our true potential, I don’t see this approach succeeding. Not at this point in time. I see it perpetuating the problem because it is this denial and intolerance of awareness that allowed these energies to multiply and become this pervasive. I can tell by how I feel when I am around people trying to dwell in the places created this way. I feel dirty there.
How well is denying the shadow working for us? Trying to push these things away and make light of them ends up grounding these energies further. All we have to do is look around us to see the evidence of that. We have all heard the latest new age speak, “Get over it....Move past it....Let it go....Forgive and forget.” They believe we must not talk of these things because it constitutes coddling the wounded child and keeping ourselves there in the darkness. They say it is not healthy to “dwell” on these things. Then, they shame people for not being able to abandon themselves. Emotionless people can be cruel.
I have heard the silence too. Of projection. That I am sick for what was done to me. That it must mean something awful about my soul. That it was my karma. There have been so many people who have told me to move beyond this. To let it go. To not talk of these things. And I still am knocked off my center when I hear these distortions. And because I am still struggling to survive, I have not been able to insulate myself well enough from these people, and the thoughtforms they propagate and perpetuate, to feel unaffected in the presence of these things. It’s like they have claimed and taken over the “spiritual” seat of authority in the new age world.
But isn’t burying this stuff the very thing that has led us into this scary place? And do we really want people walking around with powers like Jesus who condone abuse and soul destruction?
Who are these people? Where is the metaphysical value in surviving victimization? Where is the shadow in a new age built by unintegrated souls? What current do we really want to step into as we go forward? I want to be in a world where I can have my feelings, not one deemed a holy ground for darkness. I don’t think that a holy world where I feel dirty, is a holy world for me.
Were we ever “divine” here? Did we “fall” from such as state? And if we did, why did this happen....what had we not yet learned? Or, if we have never really attained higher states of consciousness on a mass scale here, why not? Why weren’t we able to? What is this saying about us now? Are we any closer? What have we learned along the way? What can we see about ourselves by looking at our world and at our collective manifestation? What are we telling ourselves?
I believe can find the answers all around us.
When we see the state of our world we must wonder, “How did things come to be as they are?” What is all the darkness here about really? What is the root of all this suffering? How did all of this come into existence?
I consider these things all the time. I ask myself, “Who is this rabid meth addict living next door to me? How did she become this way? What drove her to that place? Why is she here in my world, threatening everything I have? Why do people tell me I manifested her and drew her to me? Unbalancing and undermining me when I am trying to find safety and strength in the midst of something so threatening and scary. Why are so many people depressed and on medication? Why are so many people checking out? Why are people raping and shooting and killing each other? Why are so many people so unbalanced here? Why do we have to go to such extremes to cope in this place? What is going on inside of a world where a mother can sacrifice her own child without a thought? What kind of a world allows and empowers such things? And how is such a world made? How is it made manifest through time?”
I believe it all boils down to feelings. Owning our feelings and not owning our feelings. Everything going on here has to do with how each of us is addressing the present world right here, right now, around us. We are living creatures with emotional bodies. At some point along the way, we became capable of denying the truth of our own experience by ignoring how we felt about things. We developed the capacity to live in the midst of destructive energies without protest. We learned how to cope and to minimize ourselves and our feelings. We learned to accept the unacceptable and to deny the effects of the impacts of devastation. And we did all this by shutting down and disowning our emotional bodies because we were forced to.
We have systematically, through time, been taught how to live separated away from our feelings and we have learned to dismiss ourselves. I was expected to be inside of the most emotionally provocative, and devastating, and primally threatening circumstances as a child, and to act as though everything was fine and as though I felt perfectly o.k. and safe there. No other expression was allowed. Think about it. This kind of scenario doesn’t just crop up out of nowhere. It is made possible through a long long process of breaking people down through generations.
Living wedged apart from our emotions gives us the capacity to move around in darkness and danger without feeling compelled to protect ourselves from it. Over time, this has become normal here in our world. And we have come now to a place where we are able to hold a huge space for evil and feel nothing about it. Or, at least, pretend and convince ourselves mentally that we feel nothing. But all the violence around us tells another story. There is a big disconnect here. When somebody disowns their rage in some insulated pocket of upper class suburbia today, someone else will have their head blown off in the ghetto tonight.... If we can’t feel deeply, perhaps we can incite others to….and in doing so, keep the truth alive. But how fair is that?
What has been dismantled inside of us? What is missing from a mother who can destroy her own child without shedding a tear? Where did things go wrong and when was this capacity developed in human beings? How does this come to be when it is so against our nature? A mother is the greatest protectress in our realm. What has happened to drive her to such an outrageously egregious and untrue expression of herself….of womanhood and of the feminine…. and of her feelings about her own children? What has become of a father now capable of devouring his offspring? What has been dismantled inside of him? What has been destroyed in him that makes him so despise the sight of himself? And what has led him to such a desperate act to feel a scrap of power?
Something is terribly wrong. And no one can convince me that it isn’t.
The situation we face now took a long time to create. And it will take all our power, all our feelings and all our consciousness to dismantle what we no longer want here.
We must move toward awareness now, not away from it. And that means personal, private awareness of our feelings about ourselves, our own lives, our past and the possibilities here.
I know there are people who are happy and fulfilled here. But, I’m talking about the rest of us. I’m talking about what feels untrue about who we really are and what we can be.
We feel the way we do for a reason. We have been boxed in and fighting beneath a paradigm that is inherently flawed and crippling. Sure, some “win”, but I think we are all compromising way more than we need to, and in all the wrong ways.
I say, we have the right to talk about what is going on here and about how we feel, even if we are shamed and called unspiritual for it. I believe that, as we honor and listen to what we are telling ourselves about the world, and our place in it, we will begin to design something that feels much better....for everyone.
People who undermine consciousness by shaming feelings are not living in the “light”. Even if they are being taught that they are. Living synthetically inside of a tiny little range of emotions and condemning anyone who is feeling something beyond that, is not holy or high. That kind of world feels even more dangerous and precarious to me than the one I was born into. There are so many people now trying to be “spiritual” by forbidding “bad” feelings….when, in fact, what they are doing actually empowers the very energies that lead people to suffer here.
I always feel so dirty and unholy there, inside their fluffed up worlds, where anything but “high” emotions are so distasteful and are rejected with the force of downright repulsion. When I am around people trying to control things this primal, I feel afraid. And I should. We all should.
We will feel good when we do. And it will be natural. Until then, we should listen to what our feelings are telling us. We don’t have to force it on ourselves. The last thing we need right now is to add more distortions and confusion to this world....by forbidding anything but happiness. That just seems so crazy and dangerous to me. And really unhealthy and cruel. And it reveals something tragic about the emotional state people who do this are in.
I meet people all the time who have been shamed, and frightened, and oftentimes, bullied into going on medication by professionals who can’t handle feelings. This is a different approach, but the goal is the same. And, when I talk to these people, and give them some space to share and to exist, they always seem to be so right on, and their feelings seem absolutely appropriate to the circumstances of their lives.
I’m always left wishing they weren’t medicated. I always want to help untangle and free the child within them who has been systematically bound and gagged. I want them to be conscious and to honor their perceptions, so that they can use what they feel to change the world into a better place for them, and for all of us.
Persecuting people, shutting them down, belittling their feelings….these are some of the latest methods used by those who think they are being “spiritually evolved” by pushing people away from undesirable emotions. I run into people all the time now who believe it’s “evolved” to feel nothing. They limit their emotional spectrum to just a few “good” feelings. Anything outside the zone is shamed and condemned and considered “bad”. This particular method of maintaining and perpetuation self-estrangement is quite sinister. If you are convinced that what you are doing in holy, then it becomes very hard to question. If you think you have arrived into the sacred, but have had to leave most of your emotional body behind to get there, how do you wake up and save yourself if you can’t feel how bad it really feels there?
We can not be cutting off parts of ourselves and not expect to see the results of that reflected back to us in the world “out there”. People who split off from themselves are both vulnerable and dangerous. Going out into reality and denying unhealthy energies by shutting off our feelings and pretending everything is o.k. when it isn’t, can’t possibly lead us to a desirable place. Faking our way through life to fit in, or for acceptance, leaves us out of our power. We have no voice there because we are not really existing. Going along with the status quo is no good unless the world is as we want it to be.
There is no way for us to be fully empowered here while denying the truth of this reality. We must start with ourselves and with our feelings. When we say that nothing going on “out there” has anything to do with where we are collectively, we only grow our problems further. When we systematically and collectively chip away at the human spirit by forcing ourselves to become separated from our feelings, we end up here.
And, when we live cut off from ourselves, we become capable of terrible things. If we have no compassion for ourselves, we can not have it for others. This is why split-off people in positions of power are capable of such horror and mass destruction. If they have no compassion for themselves, they can not have it for anyone else. If they have been taught, and have come to believe, that accepting devastation without protest is heroic and right, how can they possibly stop themselves from committing atrocities? How can they do anything but mock and belittle the protests and pain of their victims?
If we have no compassion for ourselves, we can not create a sensitive and beautiful place to live and thrive in together. A world not based on honor of self and others, has room for anything. Anything but consciousness. Without tolerance of consciousness, there is no room for real power for the people there. But, there sure is a whole lot of room for abuse. Without people in their power, we have a ripe environment for darkness and exploitation.
We can not have it both ways. We can not exploit people and expect to have a safe world to live in. We can not hold space for inhumanity and be shocked when the world looks unbalanced and frightening. All these things stem from disowning our emotional selves. We must be free to see and to feel everything. We must honor our perceptions. We must come to know that our emotions can lead us on our way to creating something sustainable and beautiful and desirable for all.
I believe that connecting to ourselves and to our histories is key because that is where we became separated from ourselves. Trying to create something holistic for our future, while remaining self-alienated and cut off from our feelings, is a flawed and hopeless proposition. But, if we can build a bridge back to ourselves, then we have a way to heal the wounds of self-alienation. As we face and heal the past, we come home to ourselves and arrive in the here, in the now, with all of us present. As we embrace ourselves, we feel whole and we will naturally and easily manifest a healthy world.
A psychic one told me, “Your ‘dharma’ in this life is to be invincible”. She said my job here is to move through this world and be unwavering and unaffected. I don’t know about that. One of the truths of surviving such severe exposure to destructive forces is that it makes you aware. You are tuned in. And you are present with yourself as you see and acknowledge when these energies are moving around and toward you as you go through life. When you come to respect your feelings after being forced to not feel....you become unwavering and unwilling to hold a space for such unholy things. And when you are inside a reality that won’t tolerate that, well, it’s hard to be unaffected.
I can see that there are many wounded people bound still. I also know that, because of where they are with themselves, they can not help but operate in alliance with energies of darkness. They are compelled to normalize, minimize and hold space for atrocities. Even little ones, in everyday affairs. And they expect others to do the same. Destabilizing and undermining anyone who won’t go along. Accessing anything they can to keep things in place as they are….even using the language of the light to affect the unseemly outcomes they desire.
I never thought I would live to see the day when the language of metaphysics, the language of the light, was harnessed to empower darkness on such an epidemic scale. Now we are told that every little abusive act committed against us has happened because we created it. How can this be? How can such a profound law be so bent and taken out of context and used to undermine the light? How can these sacred things be harnessed to destabilize people who are trying to protect themselves from harm? How can these highest truths be used to knock people of the light off of their center?
If I had been born an innocent child into a Nazi concentration camp would they tell me I created that whole world too? This is an utter, total, and absolute distortion of cosmic truth. If anyone is creating anything, it is the people who continually knock people off balance who are trying to dispel darkness and hold the light. Those who undermine people who are trying not to participate in darkness are creating more of the very things that none of us want here.
I want to thrive inside of a reality that empowers the light and expands our potential. I don’t feel safe in a world filled with darkness and with people trying, with all their might, to ignore and pretend it isn’t there. I don’t want to live in a world that tells me, “Get rid of your past. Forget about it. Get to the place where you can totally live, look and act as though it never happened. And then start on a clean slate and create your own reality and it will all be perfect because you say it is. And you’ll be happy because you decide you are....because you say you are....and because you feel only ‘good’ feelings.”
I just can’t see that working for me. Not in this world as it is. Sure, I look forward to a life where I never have to even think about or deal with this stuff. But that time is not here yet. And not because of me. So, I need to use my past to move into an empowered destiny and in doing so, help to create such a world. Every ounce of what I have learned here is essential to my ability to move now into a more divine experience in safety and to be able to ground myself there.
According to the latest new age thought, acknowledging your past experiences is believed to be the great transgression that locks you out of prosperity and fulfillment forever. I actually heard a new age “teacher” say that a child abducted by a sexual predator from her own bedroom, who was raped and murdered and buried alive, had created it all. He said, with absolute authority and conviction, that she had manifested that experience and attracted it to herself. As I listened to him speak these words to millions of people on tv, I wondered how he could spout out such maliciousness and call it spiritual truth? And I wondered how on earth I could be in a world where he existed on such a scale. And I felt outrage and indignation and horror. And then, I felt as small as a pea.
Another form of spiritual abuse I encounter here is being deemed karmically deserving of the atrocities and violations of my childhood. I still can’t believe that people assume and say such cruel, untrue and unfounded things to me after all I have already been through in this life. Even though I know intellectually that they are simply revealing the details of their own self blame for the things done to them. Because they don’t feel allowed to blame their abusers.
It took me years to get my mind around what they were saying, and to find my balance in the midst of it, and it still hurts me and makes me feel dirty when they do it.
Even though I am a devout metaphysician, I have never been received in honor in those realms whatsoever. No one there sees any value in my path at all. The very fact that I was victimized, is seen as evidence that I was somehow deserving of abuse, and they assume it reveals something gruesome about me and about my “unevolved” state.
I often wonder, “What is the point of my knowledge here? Why do I feel caged and now condemned by these ones claiming to be grounding the ‘New Age’? What kind of a world are they setting out to manifest?” It scares the shit out of me. There is no consciousness there.
The state of our world has much to tell us about where we are with ourselves. If we can stand to look at what we have manifested collectively, in our self-alienated state, we can let what we see out there in the world guide us to make different choices. The truth is that the shadow can only exist and grow stronger in the places where its presence is denied. It only gains a foothold when we pretend it isn’t there. And in this current world, when we look around us, we can see the results of our collective choice to repress ourselves and deny the darkness created from not addressing our traumas. We see what kind of world we have to live in when we only allow ourselves to partially feel and partially exist.
We are expected to abandon ourselves in order to survive here. We live in a time where denial, and the repression of the self, is the average price of a ticket to outward success. But what about a reality where self-honor is the law of the land? Why not create a world where our feelings guide us? If we look and see what repressing our feelings has brought into being, we might find the inspiration to bring about something new....perhaps a place and a space where all is possible and everyone matters and honoring feelings is the way of the world.
In order to be able to exist at the next level of consciousness, we must start with feeling able to be inside of this reality fully awake and aware. Not split off. We can not realize a higher collective potential and not realize what has been done to us personally here. Self-realization can not be attained while holding space for energies of destruction. We can not know ourselves or realize our divinity and still believe we deserve desecration and abuse and a life without tolerance of our emotional selves. These states are mutually exclusive.
I think it is the people who have never denied reality who are the ones capable existing fully present inside of it. And from there, creating something profound and new and beautiful.
There is much unaddressed here still. No matter what the mass media or consensus reality tries to tell us. No matter how forbidden talking about the “problem” has become. There is no real solution for our larger predicament without acknowledging the deeper state of self-alienation forced upon us and solidified throughout history. Our past, plus our present, will create our future. If we do not look....if we do not see the truth….because we accept that as the rule of law....well, what can we expect to see in the days ahead?
If someone is being victimized in front of us, is it really “the spiritual thing to do” to ignore them? To shame and squelch their protests? To humiliate them and coat them with degradation? To blame them for being “victims”. Such is the way of our violent world today. And such is the way of tomorrow. Unless we change our relationship to our own consciousness.
I know the power of denial. I know its effects. I know there are great rewards to gain for going along and not questioning the “program”. I know this because my family has never moved an inch and yet they cultivate lives of success with ease, where mine is still so unsustained. I know this because I feel no place for me here yet. I know this because I would not feel this way if things this disturbing were not sanctioned and all around me still.
There’s no way to be in this world and to not be surrounded by this stuff. So, how do we move through it? How do we stay grounded and self-honoring and self-validating enough to protect ourselves and be fully conscious and not shut off our energy and not deny our feelings and not pretend like the world is safe if it isn’t? How do we move ahead and not put ourselves back in a closet somewhere and say, “I’m going to go out in this world and act like I feel good here or act like it’s safe if it isn’t?” We must begin to feel more deeply and more completely. And support one another as we do.
This is what must be done even if this current reality does not acknowledge it as an option. This world says get medicated or find another way to shame and shut your energy off and go out and say you feel safe when you’re not. Say you’re happy even if you really don’t feel that way. Go along with the program even if you’re sacrificed in it.
I am dumbfounded by what I see happening now on the collective level with these issues. People are trying more than ever to talk and wish it all away any way they can. And I am continually shocked by the changing characteristics and mutations of the shadow and by how it’s adapting to meet new challenges and defeat higher levels of awareness. I am struck when I see how it manifests and disguises itself to defeat people trying to become empowered enough to face it down and dismantle it. The stakes have risen. There is a war underway between the darkness and the light and it is playing out here, in this world, around these very issues.
There is a sensitivity that I have now. A great awareness born from this life I have lived. I don’t deny it and I won’t be destroyed for it. I honor it. I support and bear witness to it. But many days it feels like a burden. A burden I carry into everything, because these negative energies seem to be everywhere I go. And it makes it hard to move through this world. No matter how much I hope to never encounter this stuff again, it seems to be all over the place. And there are so many people involved in holding these things in place here. Like the abusive professor, who has been devastating her young students for years, and is given tenure anyway, even with all the people in her world, and in that institution, knowing exactly what she is doing and turning a blind eye.…not caring about the victims. And, the domestic violence shelter director who creates a sick and horrifyingly dangerous environment for the people working there….and all the people who know this, and let it happen, and watch the innocent get really hurt and sacrificed to the shadow. And, the endless stream of new age people using the language of spirituality to shame and disempower those trying to live in consciousness and truth….who have now begun calling awareness “dark”….and saying that addressing the harmful energies here, is to manifest evil and create bad things….things that were here in this world before we were even born. How crazy making is that?
Some days I wish this was not my path. My burden. My dharma. I wish I had a simple life where I belonged and succeeded. It’s like I don’t fit or know where I fit in this world. So, I have lived on the edge. Scanning the cosmos for a way to come in....to sustain myself....to be alive without disowning who I am or denying the truth of my life and the power of my soul. I never stop looking. And I have never really found a way.
I have a heart and I have feelings, so I can understand why most people who are self-estranged stay where they are. It just costs too much to move out of there. The price has been too high. The journey has been too treacherous and too hard to try to undertake. They believe they could never survive it. And they’re probably right. I know what it takes because I have done it. And it has been awful and painful beyond comprehension. I am amazed that I have survived to tell the tale.
But things are changing. There are people now who have made the journey and who have made it out and have broken the grip of darkness. They have repaired the separation from self forced upon them. And they have healed and they can show the way. The path has been illuminated now and the way out….the way forward….will not be as hard for those who follow in the times ahead.
I have yet to have the chance to really breathe and move, to quest and synthesize....or to journey in joy and be really free here. And I think it is because of all of these things I have talked about here, and because of where I sit with these issues. I have been too busy feeling terrorized, floundering inside of this slave race that is our culture. Trying to survive without participating in anything that feels wrong. Knowing that this....right here....is my path. And not knowing how to manifest my truth….and living unsupported and unloved. Knowing that I can’t even begin to affect things here if I am not allowed to exist. If all my energy is used up in desperation, trying just to survive, then I’m not left with much to work with. I have just been trying not to be exploited and used up completely. Like most of the people here.
I want to live free. And I want to empower freedom and honor here. I don’t want to be exploited and I don’t want to exploit. And I have not yet found my way to self-sustainability.
I am frustrated in this state of stuckness. And there is no way that I can see to move. To turn....to go on....except forward into something new. Because there in no place for me inside of a reality that does not have room for the awareness I embody….I must come forth and exist more fully in order to create that space where I can be.
I have felt all my life that I was to move through and out of and beyond the grip of the darkness here and that I am to use what I have learned to empower the light in this world by speaking out and illuminating these very things.
I have been frightened and unsupported and now I am here. At long last, doing it.
I believe what I have lived through has made me somehow different....extraordinary in a beautiful way. I am capable now of not turning a blind eye or minimizing things I shouldn’t minimize. Things I would never minimize from an integrated, healthy, empowered place. I am capable now of higher consciousness.
I have not manifested a life worth anything by the standards of consensus reality or what is deemed success here. I don’t have money, property or prestige. But I do have my soul and my consciousness and my voice….and all my feelings. And I do know at times, that what I have done is amazing.
I am clear that I don’t want to infuse a world that empowers abusers and condemns those who break free. That is the paradigm I inherited from my mother and father. An ancestral legacy. Now broken.
I have a new perspective. Metaphysically. I believe that acknowledging the truth of our lives and how we feel now is fundamental to our collective health. Recognizing and owning how we really felt, when we were inside of our past, about everything we experienced, aligns us with ourselves and brings us forward and lets us be fully present in the here and now. When we exist in the present, we can move ahead in strength on the pathway to fully existing empowered, stable and conscious. And from this place of power, we will be capable of flourishing in our full potential right here and we will be strong and healthy enough to create something much holier than what has been possible here before. A better world than the one we were born into. A world that doesn’t harm or ask us not to exist.
As I go forward now....and write these very words....I consider what is possible. What can I be a part of? What will I enter into this new world, and new age, having experienced and grown and learned from? What is the legacy that I will come with? What can I bring to the table?
I want to be with people who are existing on deep and penetrating levels and who are using that capacity for depth to bring about safe environments, instead of misusing it to harm and annihilate. I want a destiny capable of change and worthy of my trust. Where I am not expected to leave my truth and sensitivity at the door. I want to be able to use everything I became through surviving this life to enjoy deeply existing inside of something much better. I want to revel in a place holistic, safe, conscious and rich with people fully awake and alive. I want to feel everything inside of a world ripe with potential.
So, what happens next? Well....we begin to manifest a place of existence which empowers the light by letting ourselves and letting each other feel. We begin to bring forth a world that does not require cutting off our power in order to thrive. We decide on a world where we all have our needs met and we all have sustenance. We dream of a place where all that we desire is here. A world where we all totally flourish and we all are fulfilled and fully alive in the next phase of our existence. We begin to imagine a world free of exploitation....a place where no one loses….where no one has to lose....for another to survive.
In this new world, who we are, and the nature of our destiny, will be created by us as we go. Just as this one has been. But, now, things will be different because we will be coming from a place of wholeness, and consciousness….and what we are capable of experiencing and manifesting in emotional health is new and has never happened before. Not on a mass level.
I know there are people here now who have found a way to be happy, and to grow and thrive in the midst of darkness. I know, too, that there are many others who have been devastated and are denying it and trying ceaselessly to move about acting like it’s all ok. Believing there is no other way. And, until now, there really hasn’t been. And my heart aches for them….and for how hard it has been.
And there are people like me here too. Who have survived and become strong but don’t know quite how to move forward. We don’t really know where we fit. We have been on the forefront, and we have been so rejected. And we are left wondering….is being conscious, but feeling unable to enter life, really “existing?” Is such a reality really worth surviving for? Somewhere, we know we have done all of this for a reason, and we know that our commitment is pure and high and mighty and good.
As we start moving into new and more sustaining realities and begin creating....and pulling forth from the ethers....a world that actually nourishes people of the light…..well....that will be brand new. And it will make more people feel inspired and capable and courageous enough to come forward. The choice will be more appealing. And as more and more people feel permission to be who they are, and feel what they do, we will all revel in the beauty of the fallout of that unfoldment. And what this will do for humanity’s potential is breathtaking to contemplate.
I have lived many lives here on earth. I have been loved, I have been exalted and I have been taken down. I have been terrified and terrorized. I have been sacrificed and betrayed for being and for living on deep and penetrating levels. I have been empowered and I have feared my power. I have lived long in the horror of disempowerment. I have known love of the highest order and I have known mastery and the sweetness of sacred contemplation. And I have known worthlessness beyond that which any soul should know.
This life has been hard. Some days still, I wonder if there is nothing but sacrifice for me here. And some days, I am ecstatic with potential. I just want to live in a world where people aren’t abusive. And where I’m not asked to accept the unacceptable or be penalized if I won’t. And I don’t want to be slave here either. And I don’t want to be asked to accept what doesn’t feel good to me or be shamed for how I feel. And I don’t want my life force used for anything I don’t believe in.
My journey in this lifetime has taught me much. I came into this world a strong and integrated soul. There was no destroying me. There was no subjugating me into compliance with the shadow. There was no capturing me and there is no shutting me up.
But I want more.
In the metaphysics of survival, we can see how making it through this reality with these forces of darkness moving through this world on such intense levels, without losing ourselves, makes us somehow capable of living at a higher level of consciousness. As we realize this, we can embrace who we are and use what we have learned powerfully for a higher purpose.
In a way, our whole world is stuck in a sort of time warp until we deal with these things. We are not just split off from our selves, but we are split off from the rest of the universe. We are stalled in this place in our evolutionary process.
With this step, I leave the places I have been shamed into. There is an untapped power that is in me now that I will carry into the new age. There is place of exaltation for those of us who have not abandoned ourselves along the way….no matter what. I am ready now to take my seat inside of the new world we will manifest in the days ahead.
I can see it from here….it is a beautiful world….a world that I want to be a part of.
