Serious turnabout
Nature is slapping it on through climate change: Killer floods, typhoons, tsunami, earthquakes and hurricanes. Environmentalists have been warning of these effects that global warming brings with it almost two decades back. Now we experience it first hand. Ego’s folly is now being seen: Economic and financial collapse where debt situation is unimaginably huge, senseless wars where money for the nurturance of the world should be put is instead assigned to destruction; sophisticated terrorism; energy issues, really serious global shortages of drinking water and food and the population of the world just rising in numbers. Structures and institutions are being broken.
The frequency of these events that accelerate and will continue to do so, and the gravity of the problems show a pattern demanding to be looked at and acted on. The pattern is not so much the destruction of home and property but the need to shift how one’s life needs to be lived. As people face loss of everything they own, look to a future so uncertain that fear and anxiety grips their hearts and minds — what is the deeper lesson being taught that we must take heed of?
All the outward manifestations of our physical world reflect the state of our own inner worlds, our own minds. While esoteric theories may be laughed at as mere mumbo jumbo or “new-agey” mindsets by the pragmatic, there is an urgent need to begin shifting the way our minds, and our levels of consciousness. All things begin in the mind, in the realm of thought. Quantum physics already shows that everything in our cosmos is made of energy. Energy that follows thought. Energy that can be directed to be either destructive (lower) or constructive (higher creative thoughts). The awareness of our energies, our thoughts, our actions and where we direct them is key in the state of our world today. If we think and act, feel and react from the unconscious lower parts of our ego where issues like greed, pride, power, envy, selfishness, despairing, neurosis-filled, fear, judgment, anger, narcissism all reside, then obviously, we aren’t releasing the higher energies needed to help our world. When we react from this level, we slip back to the old world, the stale paradigm and mindset that just doesn’t work. When we live from compassion, understanding, patience, present time awareness saying “yes” to whatever is around us at the moment, then we have a chance of bringing deeper awareness and the higher energies of love into our world. Our love needs to be unconditional - no expectation for anything back. It has to be this radical, this wild, this transformative. Funny but all spiritual Masters and religions have been saying this through time, and we still can’t seem to get it.
We are living the “chaos theory” rising up to an epic shift (marked by a date of 2012 which futurists, old wisdom traditions, researchers, scientists and spiritual explorers have identified as a key date). If a failure of a present system is what we are looking at, it should certainly be followed by a new paradigm.
Lets just talk closer to home. This recent flood catastrophe should certainly bring a serious change of hearts and minds with people in positions: by power I don’t just mean government, but those who are in the points of responsibility to create changes. Let there be political will and visionary leadership to make its stand in all levels of institutions and groups. Ban real estate people selling land areas which are clearly uninhabitable; place government money in poverty, livelihood and environmental problems and not into personal pockets; re-look at the whole system that doesn’t work and see how to make it work.
As we come closer to 2012, the time of the epic shift of consciousness, the early outlines of a future emerging are giving signs of its nature. Collaborative bayanihan spirit is paramount — where people suddenly include community they choose to care for. How can we not be moved to tears with people who express the best of themselves in the worst of time, often giving life up to save others? Or see the outpouring of the spirit of volunteerism and reaching out. In crisis we are awaken. But do we always need crisis? I so believe that change can also be conscious, to choose to shift how one sees things, how one lives one’s life.
In that state of chaos, it is fear expressed in faith that bridged spiritual awareness in understanding that there is a greater force to surrender to when all humanly possible has been done. We need to solidify our faith without fear but in total awareness of the strength that our faith can truly move mountains and create change.
The recent sufferings should bring certainly bring a serious change of heart and mind in everyone who witnessed and experienced the catastrophe. Individually, we must make our own commitment to changing our lifestyles even if radical decisions need to be made for real change to come about. Never mind if you think you are the only one sacrificing to make the change. You are one. I am one. And if all think like this, we create a mass of people making choices, sacrifices, and making a stand for changes.
This spiritual awareness will continue to be in a trajectory of expansion as we move closer to 2012. Behind the scenes, thousands of people are quietly shifting the way they are living their lives and relating to each other. We must make this a mass shift of conscious and in greater number, through our social systems and government institutions, through our networks and associations. We need to shift towards focusing our desires and visions, hopes for the future and stand our ground and course. And not to fall back on criticizing or blaming. So through the days as tireless volunteers bring food together for relief operations, and clean ups continue 24/7, churches bring their flock to pray together, groups come to meditate and sing for rivers, streams and nature. Many causes and advocacies arise to make each individual conscious that he or she can be the change, is the only force for change. Strength is developed in groups who are aware and focus their energies and thoughts for change.
(I lead the Meditation Circle class series at Yoga Manila’s Ortigas studio located at Shangri-La EDSA’s Chi Spa. Saturday afternoon sessions will start Oct. 17 and every Saturday thereafter until the end of the year. For more information, log on to www.yogamanila.com, call 0917-522YOGA (9642) or e-mail info@yogamanila.com)
