Be hopeful, be optimistic. Our struggle is not the struggle of a day, a week, a month, or a year, it is the struggle of a lifetime. Never, ever be afraid to make some noise and get in good trouble, necessary trouble.
In one way or another, I have been working toward a paradigm shift in our world, my whole life. Witnessing many false starts before this year, 2020, the watershed year. The year where nothing that comes after it will be the same as before it.
At first, I was a little giddy that it has begun, that giddiness didn’t last too long as the amount of ground that must be covered is vast and it will take time for that shift to lock in place, leaving us to be uncomfortable for quite some time.
This requires us to hang on and work on our patience, resilience, and grace. People are going through a lot and not everyone is on a level playing field. This is a birth process and everyone knows birth is a little terrifying, painful, but of course ultimately worth it.
Let’s talk about fear, compassion, and what is ours to do. Fear is problematic when we are trying to achieve something. It wears us down emotionally and physically, leaving us susceptible to illness and anxiety.
It is also essential when we are navigating unfamiliar territory and using our senses to guide us away from dangerous threats.
Fear
Whenever we define an enemy, in this case fear, we begin to build our resistance to it. We want to outsmart it, eliminate it. Unfortunately, as uncomfortable and inconvenient as fear is we need it. Without fear, we are all a bunch of sociopaths.
Overcoming our current circumstances isn’t about bypassing our feelings, it is about acknowledging where we are at on the journey and taking steps toward the world we want to build. A world where our values incorporate our humanity–something like equity, community, co-creation, collaboration, justice, and win/win solutions.
What is our fear about? What is its origin? It may be a wound from childhood or early adulthood that left a scar to heal. Or maybe it is something less tangible, hiding deep within our ancestry where we have no memories of a particular incident.
Exploring the roots of our fear and facing whatever truth lies within them is the work of our lifetime. A cornerstone of a spiritual journey for any empath.
It isn’t a coincidence that so many people are identifying themselves as empaths right now. We came to help birth this new paradigm to reflect our empath experience, one of connection, community, and compassion. But empath or not, everyone here now is needed to participate in this planetary paradigm shift.
We each have roles to play that are necessary to our evolution; protagonist, antagonist, supporting cast, and the chorus. Each player is important in getting us to the goal.
This will likely not be a swift shift. So hang on, and work on patience, resilience, and grace. People are going through a lot and not everyone is on a level playing field. This is a birth process and everyone knows birth is a little terrifying, painful, and worth it.
Compassion and Empathy
Our current circumstances are showing us how unequally the foundation of our society was built. How subtly we have been conditioned to accept true injustice as necessary norms born of economic constraints instead of hateful tenets upon which our foundation was laid for the purpose of benefiting just a few on top.
This is where the compassion and empathy comes in. Shame has never once made people better. Unfortunately, it is one of our society’s favorite weapons to keep people in line. While effective at driving conformity, it leaves broken people in its wake. People full of shame and anger who in turn shame the next generation.
Compassion for ourselves is crucial to our society’s shifting into that new paradigm. Without self-compassion we will never really be able to have compassion for our fellow, imperfect humans who deserve compassion as much as we do.
The great shift in consciousness is about healing the divide within our society by starting with our own wounds. Coming together with those who share opposing views to create a better future requires that we heal where we have become bitter or jaded, those are our deepest wounds.
We are all members of one community, one family, and our futures are entwined together. We won’t get there without each other.
What's Ours to Do
What we are shifting away from and towards is less clear. We get clues all the time, I mentioned themes I see in my last blog Caught Between Ending and Beginning.
Are we ending the Patriarchy? Capitalism in its current form? And what exactly are we beginning? The truth is we don’t really know what is coming. The goal is to focus on those core values of equity, justice, community, co-creation, and cooperation–and work to breakdown the systems and structures that don’t support a future centered around them.
Our hardest task is moving forward without certainty, without a vision of what the next paradigm will look like when it is made manifest. And most of all, without knowing when we will be out of limbo.
We will get there, evolution is inevitable. The way forward requires deconstructing outdated systems, healing within ourselves where those systems have harmed us, and supporting each other on the way forward.
