Opening To What We Are

By Judith Gayle | Political Waves

The mills of the gods grind slowly, so they say, and as far as I can tell, just about everything is grist for the mill. I can’t verify the first; it seems that lately the grinding has gotten faster and more painful, but I’ll vouch for that last: everything we experience was grown from our own expectations and projections, the final product of some collective agreement among us, waiting its turn at the shredder.

With each piece of incoming information, we must extract what wisdom is available and quickly, because no matter how difficult an event, life does not stand still. The turning gears will press out the next situation in no time — a new set of circumstances, a new tableau of challenges and opportunities — because we can’t NOT strive toward some kind of final outcome. We misunderstand what ‘final’ means, sadly, but we’re pretty sure that ‘outcome’ is the measure of our ‘success.’ All three words define our current plane of consciousness. It seems to me that we’ve been on the road to somewhere for a long time but we can’t begin to get there until we redefine those three words.

We’re a busy species, always up to something, always rearranging things to suit us and then chiseling them in stone, attempting a freeze-frame, trying to capture lightning in a bottle. That’s the problem with our attempt to ‘finalize’ what is constantly moving and flexing, a stumbling, inept exercise. Anxious for a 21st century that rises above the darker shadows of the 20th, some want to craft a governmental system that is responsive to the ever-shifting energy of change and progress; others want to recreate what is long gone, fearful of where change might take us, and with whom.

This is a global anxiety, of course, one we’ve been tracking for quite a while, and it’s due to hit harder in the coming weeks, courtesy of the Uranus/Pluto alignment. Because Americans have traditionally thought themselves in civic partnership with their government — most recently lulled by a reasonably stable standard of living and social construct — our in-fighting is primarily directed among political parties. In much of the rest of the world, where citizens have few rights or guarantees, people are rising up against overt political repression and abuse. Where we are frustrated, they are exhilarated; where we are squeezed socially and financially, their very survival is endangered. In terms of social growth, they seem better off than we are: they’re staring reality in the face. Sadly, we’ve got a way to go yet, the deluded among us unwilling to surrender to the social and political imperatives intruding on their lives and making a bumpy road even more perilous for the rest of us.

Again, what we resist, persists. Unless we are willing to surrender to the facts on the ground — not drawing conclusions but also not hiding within some bubble of truthiness we prefer to hard truth — we are unable to draw in new, life-giving energy. But before we can let go of our misperceptions, we must truly see ourselves, glimpse our own ‘stuckness,’ witness our chronic inflexibility. With this rare transit of Venus and mix of eclipses, then, we have an opportunity to take a leap in awareness, even those among us who have held tight to stuffed-down, unexpressed feelings and long-cherished beliefs, trapping them — and us — in limitation. This is our chance to break the lock on our emotions, pulling in a shift of energy that will help us all find ourselves with a foot in both worlds, in proper Gemini fashion. We are standing on the brink of choice, deciding if we want to enter the flow of co-creating a light-filled future or sink back down into what is known, even as that becomes increasingly uncomfortable and unsustainable.

It’s the human condition being informed by these clusters of remarkable transits. Because creation requires emotion, nothing can change on this plane without direct personal experience. In terms of government and god — each and both, together — we’re hampered by our all-or-nothing collective imagination. For instance, humankind has traditionally bastardized the message of most of our spiritual avatars by solidifying some kind of doctrine out of their authentic mysticism and teaching. What is unworkable about that is obvious. Unless we each individually encounter such an experience, we interpret transformative information in material terms, trying to fit transcendence into a tight, ill-fitting box. Historically, we give over our personal power to small men with smaller vision, and until just recently we’ve made no attempt to expose them. Then, when such systems don’t work as advertized, we throw them out with the bathwater without finding the mystical jewel of wisdom hidden in their depths. The lockstep belief of the religious is as faulty as the unyielding suspicions of the anti-religious. When it’s all or nothing, there is “right” and there is “wrong,” but no divinely-inspired cosmic aha!

If we want to discover wisdom, we must suspend judgment and sit with our circumstances to palpate the truth of them. As we discover our personal power, we are suddenly unafraid of anyone else’s. That’s when we remember that it’s our responsibility to bring our best effort to the collective, lifting others along with ourselves. We become bigger still when we are in service to one another. As Venus travels across the face of the Sun, then, as the heart-chakra of humankind trembles with renewed energy, we must remember that we are linked by a common bond. Dr. King reminded us of our oneness when he said, so long ago:

“All this is simply to say that all life is interrelated. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality; tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. As long as there is poverty in this world, no man can be totally rich even if he has a billion dollars. As long as diseases are rampant and millions of people cannot expect to live more than twenty or thirty years, no man can be totally healthy, even if he just got a clean bill of health from the finest clinic in America. Strangely enough, I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. You can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be. This is the way the world is made.”

Along with an expected influx of cosmic energy that is guaranteed to leave us different from how it found us, we each need as large a dose of compassion as we can muster. We need to see ourselves clearly, but unless we can view what we find through the lens of our heart-chakra — loving and accepting — we will be full of self-loathing and self-sabotage, imprisoned by the judgmental ‘original sin’ concept that has kept us from realizing our full potential for a millennium. If we consider ourselves merely our baggage and history, we will be bogged down in discouragement. If we imagine ourselves to be our wounds, we are hearing the wrong voice.

Kahlil Gibran told us, ” … your hearts know in silence the secrets of the days and nights.” Whatever our minds tell us, whatever scenario for ‘success’ our minds construct for us, the mind can only analyze the details of our past; it is not able to project itself into a future unlike anything it has known before. If we are looking for truth, we must not ask our minds: we must instead consult our hearts. As Neal Donald Walsch says, “Only your heart can see beyond memory’s horizon.” For those seeking liberation from Karma’s wheel, the choice between head and heart has always been the most critical decision we can make. For those anticipating Shift, it’s imperative.

Perhaps this is our time to truly learn about love: it seems to me that we don’t know much about it. We’ve spent decades learning what it is not, perhaps now we have enough information to take that to the next level. As powerful juju, more grist for the mill — and with nothing being random — we got another look at what love isn’t this week. This was the week that the History channel made actual history with the highest-rated entertainment telecasts for ad-supported basic cable, drawing more than 14 million viewers for the final installment of its three-day historical docudrama, The Hatfields and The McCoys.

Originally airing historical documentaries, the History channel attempted to make up for several years of semi-hysterical offerings about the apocalypse, Nostradamus, space aliens and Satan’s influence by giving us a first-class, network-worthy docu-drama replete with gritty filming and real movie stars. Keeping close to the known facts about the infamous post-Civil War blood feud between West Virginia’s ‘Devil Anse’ Hatfield and Kentucky’s Randall McCoy, viewers got six full hours of murder, madness and family/tribalism at its worst. Reviews are in, with most approving the effort, although some thought it too much blood and violence. Others thought it had too much explanation of legal issues and too many examples of insult and slur, but how else to deconstruct a true tale of American vengeance and hatred which lasted over thirty years, based on little more than a personal grievance between the family patriarchs?

There’s more than a bit of Appalachian folk history in this yarn, but facts speak louder than the tall tales of backwoods violence (along with a tragic Romeo and Juliet subplot) put forth, starring Kevin Costner and Bill Paxton. Kidnappings, imprisonments, law suits and head-bashing marked the relationship between the Hatfield and McCoy families, with members and friends cut down and buried for reasons still mysterious and unclear, a grudge fight involving notions of god, honor and property that escalated into years of full-scale border war, ultimately coming to the attention of the Supreme Court.

This is a tale of what love isn’t, an infamous story of thin skin and pride that nearly wiped out two bloodlines and whatever happiness the warring families might have enjoyed. McCoy was the least able to deal with his losses, a fire-and-brimstone sort who eventually burned to death in a drunken haze, unrepentant and unforgiving. Hatfield had long before published a letter in papers across the nation throwing in the towel, calling an end to hostilities; he died peacefully enough in his own bed. In the year 2000, Hatfield and McCoy descendants came together at a reunion in Kentucky and signed a truce.

Costner making yet another big budget wilderness tale is no big deal except perhaps to the gods, milling this grist very fine. Those who watched the three days of dark 19th century dealings got a fresh look at the human condition not so very long ago, an echo of the irrational and mindless skirmish going on between people today. It was a story about bad blood. We know such stories too well, a plotline some say began over ownership of a wandering pig and ended up being about family loyalty, political corruption and states’ rights.

This was a revealing, timely presentation. I think it’s possible that many who watched this backwoods marathon noted how far we’d come, or maybe how far we have to go. Perhaps they saw themselves in the plot, or their politics, or their inflexibility. Maybe they heard echoes of the innate racism, “other”ism, tribalism that mark our own decade, or maybe they were startled by the meanness and the violence that reflects our current problems with bullying and vigilantism. Perhaps some saw what unforgiveness produces, what unwitting family agreements earn us, and bemoaned the tragic waste of lives and fortunes. Perhaps this was grist for the mill at just the right time.

Yes, examples of what love isn’t in the 1860s aren’t so very different from those in Syria or Darfur or neighborhoods around the globe today. We know that love could fix it all, but we keep looking in the wrong place. We let our minds get in the way of our hearts. Love isn’t something we’re searching for, it isn’t something we give to get, it isn’t some mold we need to fit ourselves into lest we lose it. It’s what we are. Love is what we are, what we came to express and experience, the one single thing that gives hope to the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, no matter how difficult.

Love is ever with us, if we are with it. Even when we aren’t, we cannot separate ourselves from love, peeking out from behind our neediness when we can’t feel its reflection. Because it’s at the center of our soul-signature, it takes a bit of practice to feel it in the worst of circumstances as well as the best, but it’s a constant light, informing our choices and asking us to adjust our mental attitudes by consulting our hearts. And with Venus set to display her big energies so close to home, we have a renewed opportunity to allow ourselves to feel what’s within, surrendering to the facts and conspiring with our hearts to create anew.

The words that need change — final, outcome, success — look different if we’re shining awareness out of our heart-chakra. Nothing is final, it is ever-shifting and expressing, finding new co-creation in the universe. Outcome is a finite concept that is instantly replaced by another option, ongoing and alive with possibility. And success? If we feel even the smallest vibration of the love within ourselves, if we can give out of the deep well of self knowing that there is always enough, we are a resounding success.

Life is simple enough, when we whittle it down. If we remind ourselves that our authentic center is fueled by pure love, nonjudgmental and all encompassing, the details will take care of themselves. Einstein said, “Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius — and a lot of courage — to move in the opposite direction.” As Venus opens us into our own loving power, then, let’s find the courage to take the simplest — and most rewarding — path. Let the planet of love remind you of who you are and let your heart open to reveal not only your authentic power but the wisdom of your soul.