Doing Better

By Judith Gayle | Political Waves

If intention is everything, then we’ve established our intent, here in the United States. We have set our sights on putting the irrational behind us, committed ourselves to remediating our near-past. There are signs: John Boehner’s demand that Obamacare be put on the negotiating table has been rejected, Pub loyalists are consigning Grover Norquist to the cornfield and the nation has reduced Mitt Romney, deservedly, to a quickly-fading memory.

Yes, these are signs of progress, moving us past the energy of deadlock, in intent if not in fact. There are other signs, as well. Climate change is now being discussed openly, thanks to Hurricane Sandy’s unexpected devastation. Florida Rep Allen “up to 80 Democrat communists in the House of Representatives” West, beaten soundly but unwilling to believe it, has finally thrown in the towel, signaling the Tea Baggers’ fall from power. An energized Elizabeth Warren has joined those legislators who would eliminate the filibuster as an obstructional tool, its rare traditional use highjacked by the radical right. (Go here to sign a petition urging Warren’s assignment to the Senate Banking Committee, where her talents most certainly belong.)

Oh sure, not everything looks rosy in the state of our nation. We’ve only put a toe in to the tidal change we’re seeking. The right continues to throw tantrums over looming tax hikes on the wealthy, as Pub governors march in lockstep to refuse creation of state insurance exchanges (unwittingly allowing the Fed to step up to the plate). Obama’s recent statements raise hopes he’ll more aggressively deal with global warming, although action remains stalled due to economic concerns, even as methane levels have set a new record.

The frenzied Black Friday sales glut was a huge success, if you ignore the WalMart walk-out, the gun-waving and stampedes; [go here] for a disturbing Black Friday tribute from The Story of Stuff’s Annie Leonard, in support of the Buy Nothing Do Something movement. (Find more from Annie at her blog, where you can access her newest don’t-miss offering, The Story of Change.) We still think stuff will make us feel better and improve everything; breaking that illusion will take more consciousness and consumer muscle than we’ve mustered so far.

Still, we’ve made first steps in regaining our political balance, moving ourselves closer, if only by a whisker, to functional government. Such a transformation has not been, and won’t be, effortless, that’s for sure, and much of that has more to do with our personal expectations than we suppose. Over the last twelve years, we’ve made friends with chaos, accepted anxiety as the norm, and shaken hands with despair. We’ve allowed ourselves to mourn security, believing it far behind us. We’ve come to the table as beggars.

Worse, those of us who insist on squarely facing the dangers of the day often imprint ourselves with cynicism and sadness, focusing not just on what we’ve lost but all the problems and challenges that remain unaddressed. As we focus on what ‘unsustainable’ means, we limit our ability to project a sustainable future without dire trappings and dark imaginings. With Thanksgiving just behind us, then, the holiday season looms as a schizophrenic, fearsomely bittersweet exercise in consumption and depression.

The ‘good times’ of the last century are behind us, they say. Our parents worked hard for their children’s future, assured that each succeeding generation would do better than the last, and while some think of that as a lovely (and deceptively nationalistic) goal, me? I think it’s a suicidal set-up, not only unrealistic but debilitating, doomed to failure. We apparently don’t have a full enough understanding of ‘do better’ at this point to manage more than competition for resources and a race for stuff to compensate for our overwhelming sense of insecurity.

“More is better” is a con game. If we are constantly on the look-out for more, there is no moment of realization or appreciation for what we already have. As Epicurus warned, “Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for.”

To truly ‘do better’ than previous generations will require us to do the hard work of getting to know ourselves, seriously looking at how we limit ourselves and one another, getting in touch with how often we refuse to follow our bliss because the joy has been programmed out of us by a competitive, repressive system. Doing better would mean we’d have to face our fears and move past them, tell our truth and let the chips fall where they may, open ourselves to love even if that means exposing our vulnerabilities.

Doing better would require us to see our own failings in those we judge, stop repeating our ‘story’ in an effort to define ourselves before others do, and forgive old grudges we’ve used to excuse ourselves from taking responsibility for our many learning experiences. That’s surely a challenging agenda for a period we have experienced as dark and dismal, but we have to trust that each success comes at the perfect moment, changing our morphic field and impacting our circumstance. Self-revelation can’t be forced, it must come naturally. Re-creation can only occur on the other side of collapse.

We must heal this question of ‘deservedness,’ a notion that makes me uneasy when I hear people — especially our president — use the term “playing by the rules” as a qualifier for all the good we should be experiencing. In my understanding, anyone breathing air deserves all the good imaginable, simply by being a beloved child of God/dess. “Everything comes to us that belongs to us if we create the capacity to receive it,” said mystic poet, Rabindranath Tagore. Until we ALL understand and accept that much love from the Universe, we limit all expression of the corresponding substance we need to preserve us.

What we will receive is up to us. Yehuda Berg of the Kabbalah Centre says, “If a person is not ready to receive they simply can’t receive. When it comes to sharing our wisdom, love or even criticism with the people in our lives we need to ask ourselves if they are truly open and ready to receive whatever it is we have to offer. If not, we are hindering rather than helping.” What Berg writes of the Kabbalah intrigues me, especially the notion that when we purposely jump OUT of our comfort zone — facing our fears, for instance; serving not ourselves, but putting other people’s good first — we amplify the Light exponentially, like a snowball rolling downhill. Like test subjects in a laboratory, we pull away from pain as an automatic response, but truly, it’s in our agonies that we take a productive look at our lives, not when we are safe and warm in our complacency.

From an astrological point of view, I’ve always appreciated Uranus for being the Great Agitator it is, provoking our energy patterns on a regular basis, exposing some rip in the fabric of our lives we’ve unconsciously designed to allow for soul growth. If we truly want change, we must learn to appreciate the Tower card, the lightning bolt that turns the status quo upside down. Trouble is most often the guru, isn’t it, shaking us into a new understanding of ourselves? We need to stop fearing the challenges, take Ralph Waldo Emerson’s advice to “Cultivate the habit of being grateful for every good thing that comes to you, and to give thanks continuously. And because all things have contributed to your advancement, you should include all things in your gratitude.”

Why gratitude? Simple. It’s the alchemy that changes our thoughts about what life is and what it holds for us. If we believe that sometimes things are good and sometimes bad — with either capable of impacting our happiness and peace of mind — we’re riding an emotional see-saw; if we understand that whatever our circumstance hands us, we have the ability to use for our betterment, then ‘bad’ loses its sting and simply becomes a puzzle to solve. And when we adjust our thoughts about good and bad, no longer empowering what seems fearful to us, we begin to take control of our lives in a less judgmental, more productive way.

In this rarified season of era change, with consciousness moving and shifting faster now than ever before, what we drag with us from the past still slows us more than we know. Clearing emotional-boulders on the path no longer means we must wrestle them to a standstill; that’s old business. The energy has quickened our ability to heal old wounds, allowing us to step around these obstacles, no longer allowing them to block our progress. If we think of echoes from the past as great, overwhelming tragedy, scripted in enduring sorrow, we have empowered them to lock us in their arms and define us as their captive.

Whatever feeling is left unresolved, whatever we have not yet de-clawed or forgiven in memory, is not just a stumbling block to a better tomorrow but a declaration of intent to repeat, re-live, re-learn what we didn’t deal with in a timely fashion. Until we can let go of what has wounded us, we are destined to repeat it. If we understand that we are still holding energy from incidents long behind us, no longer unwilling to release them, we can lay down burdens that have delayed our rediscovery of our authentic power and joy.

Gratitude smoothes the way for miracles, shifting our perspective to see things anew. Each breath we take, each morning we awaken, we’ve experienced a miracle. It only takes the perspective of an asthmatic — or that of a witness to the Beloved, taking their last breath — to understand such a miracle in all its splendor. No less a realist than Albert Einstein reminded us that “There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.” In the ultimate reality, everything is.

This decade of turmoil, chaos, and change offers us every opportunity to ‘do better’ than the generations that came before us. If we want it, we must step into the willingness to receive such miracles and wonders. This opportunity offers us re-creation, evolution. Here, standing on the brink of the new baktun of a fresh new era, we’re asked to clear our past for a fresh start. Linking arms across the globe, part of one another, the sorrows of an era put behind us are easier borne, dissolved and forgotten.

Together, let us display our faith in tomorrow, offer gratitude in advance of the alchemy working deep within us, healing our yesterdays and pushing us forward into a new way of seeing ourselves, one another and our world. Those few who have gone before us understood that very little else — certainly not stuff or wealth or competition — was worthy of our longing. To quote just one, holding out an alternative path into the future:

But today we kneel only to truth, follow only beauty, and obey only love.

– Kahlil Gibran

With a Thanksgiving brimming with gratitude behind, let’s put aside all that’s petty to welcome this new beginning, this Shift of ages coming on quickly now. Let’s usher in a holiday season where love is — has always been — the emotion most appropriate to offer one another. Let’s be mindful of the miracle in which we live. If ever there were holy days to celebrate, it’s now.