Releasing the Hidden

There are so many hidden things, as well as hidden things being revealed, problems, brokenness’s in the systems of society in every area you can think of, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed, hope-less, frustrated to want to do something, but not being in a position to, or so we’re told.

So much of the news has become either shoptalk or inside-talk, and so much of every public form of communication has become contentious, mean, predatory, gaslighting and telling us it is all up to us — and — there’s nothing we can do.

Advertising has the right to infiltrate every form of friend-to-friend medium we can come up with, literally trashing a wonderful thing with harvesting our human connections to make their living. And lying and predatory practices have been in place so long, the social engineering so ubiquitous, no one even thinks to regulate their lies or practices.

Most of advertising is both cultivating and harvesting their profits from our private, personal fears and insecurities. That’s grooming and predatory practices in the open, and unaddressed, therefore condoned.

Then you personally think there’s something wrong with you because you’re edgy or twitchy or depressed or anxious and that same society tells you it is only you, that everyone else is just fine, and it must be a personal problem for you and only you, isolating you further like all good gaslighters do, and the solution is to buy this or ask your doctor for this drug or drive this car or, or, or, manipulate and pretzel you until you’re so miserable and can’t sleep at night and your nervous system is screaming all the time — because the society is not taking any responsibility or accountability for how things are run, and making it all the individual’s fault/problem.

There are massive, seismic systemic failures going on in plain sight these days. The only healthy, reasonable response is to scream “fire!”, sound the alarm, and run around trying to do something that helps. But that doesn’t help. So there must be other possibilities, even though this society’s reality says there is nothing that can be done.

The closed-system of what I call the Time-Warner version of reality, or the accepted conventional wisdom reality, is inherently misleading, dysfunctional, inaccurate, manipulative, and now, gaslighting, or crazy-making.

Thinking it’s all you is not accurate nor a productive point of view.

Thinking it’s everyone else isn’t either.

Thinking there’s something you haven’t thought of yet, something you haven’t perceived yet, some possibilities outside the box that if you’re open to them, could lead you to something more generative, creative and thrival, is the most accurate truth there is.

There are things that only you can do. Things, possibilities for the new reality that is in the process of birthing, that need you to bring them into being, into reality.

These are not wrongs to be righted, because that point of view upholds and empowers the old reality of domination, oppression and the cruelty that comes with that.

It will be tender, vulnerable, magnificent things that get you excited, that turn you on, that get you energized into that space of — “hey! Let’s to this great thing!” enthusiasm, shining a light so others can find you and participate!

Buckminster Fuller said:

“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something,
build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”

The man in Los Angeles who started guerilla gardens in abandoned lots and easements, growing food for anyone to pick, getting neighbors and kids involved till he started a movement of gardeners in the wilds of the city.

In Detroit, where they’ve turned abandoned city blocks into gardens growing organic foods for anyone to pick.

One of things civilians were encouraged and empowered to do in WWII was Victory Gardens, to grow your own vegetables, and cut down on supply chain demands; to be self-sufficient and it had the added benefit of helping people’s mental health because unlike now, they knew they could generate what they needed to support their families in case of mechanical (technological) disruptions.

Here’s the thing about reality; there isn’t just one.

The famous person with millions of dollars, private jet, multiple houses and lots of paparazzi and fans does not live in the same reality as a pay-check-to-pay-check, apartment renting 24-year-old, or a retired schoolteacher, or a Manhattan stockbroker.

And the reality of a 10-year-old in 1962 is not the same reality as the 10-year-old in 2034.

There are as many realities as there are people, but the agreed upon, mass-accepted, conventional wisdom reality only exists as long as people buy into it.

Malala Yousafzia does not live in the reality of the Taliban, or the reality of men over women is right or valid.

Greta Thunberg does not live in Elon Musk’s reality, nor ExxonMobil’s; she does not buy the Time-Warner version of reality as destruction of the planet is inevitable or has to happen.

The non-famous people spending their resources — time and money — on planting trees around their part of the world… there are many of them you never hear about, and some organizing to reforest the Amazon… people and realities the Time-Warner version of the world ignore, invalidate as puny attempts, or paint them as hopeless losers or burn them with too much attention — anything to disempower them and make them go away, either way.

You have within you the guidance system that is true and real for you, that you can navigate by.

You are built that way, no matter how cluttered and obscured your guidance system may have gotten, you do have the power to clean it up and navigate your way to thriving, if you so choose.

So, what are the antidotes that you can begin to employ to get out of the disempowered thinking of the Time-Warner version of reality, and start creating and generating a reality that honestly supports you into thrival?

1. Start navigating by Light or heavy, flow or no flow of energy.

Right now, you navigate by judgement: right, wrong, good, bad, for, against, and justifications that are often mistakenly called reasons. This is good/bad because of that and therefor ___. It’s what the schools teach, it’s what employers, institutions, newspapers everything uses, as though that formula is reasoning, and the only one worth using.

But when you are making choices about what’s right and thriving for you, arguing for your choice as if to a banker or disapproving parent it not the most thrival way to go about things.

You can feel energy. You do all the time. You can feel the difference between stuck and flow. You can feel the difference between light and bright or dark and heavy.

These are all sensations in your body, and contrary to the conventional wisdom of the times, your body is one of your greatest assets, wisdom centers, and absolutely on your side. Learning new ways to listen and co-operate with your body is a total game changer.

Right now, take a deep breath, then a few more, and as you breath, some into your body more and more… notice the sensations without judging, changing, or fixing anything… just notice… and have the intention of greeting your body, like meeting an old friend… hello body…. Good body…

Now ask your body to give you a sensation in your torso, though it could be anywhere, to the following….

Say to yourself: Truth, my name is (say a name that is NOT yours) and see what you feel… then

Say to yourself: Truth, my name is (say your actual name, or whatever name you do go by) and see what feeling/sensation comes up.

Notice the difference between the two?

Let’s try it another way to add to the experience.

Truth, my body likes paint thinner (or poison) and see how your body feels.

Now try this; Truth, my body likes water… and feel the sensation that comes with that.

Repeat the sentences to get the hang of asking your body for a sensation and perceiving your body’s response. Use whichever of the 2 — your name or water/paint thinner — to start to get used to the practice.

We make something like 50,000 choices, decisions, assumptions, conclusions a day.

If you start to navigate by this light/heavy, flow/no flow instead of judgement a little more each day, the more you are building that spiritual muscle of your own, innate guidance system, which will increase the soothing peace and security bodies crave, because you’ll be navigating by your own spiritual Operating Guidance System.

2. Start using questions to open to new possibilities

In this regular reality, questions are used competitively. They are used to stop the flow of energy and prove who knows more. Answers and conclusions stop the flow of energy.

Questions can be used to open you up to the infinite possibilities that are all around, instead of close you off in definition, judgement, assumptions, conclusions, aka answers.

Questions used in this flow/no flow way open things up for more possibilities, more flow, greater.

When you ask a question, you keep asking the question, like leaning into curiosity, wonder, and allowing all the “answers” that float up first to roll on by like clouds on a windy afternoon.

It’s not about the definition, judgement, assumptions, conclusions, aka “answers,” but it is all about the infinite possibilities that you haven’t even imagined yet.

Asking — “What else is possible?” Especially when you can’t imagine any other possibilities will, with practice, make it easier for you to perceive possibilities out of the bounds of the conventional thinking. Start asking What else is possible? When it seems like there are no other possibilities and you will flush through all the usual possibilities and how they won’t work but keep doing it and you’ll get to where things you never would’ve thought of start to arise, and some of them will have excitement/flow energy, and you’ll remember there really are things available that you hadn’t yet thought of. You will start to see how the terminal thinking; the roadblocks of conclusions are not as solid as you’d been led to believe.

Asking — “How does it get any better than this?” Is counter intuitive when things are going not how you want them, and it is a potent way to turn things around in ways you could not imagine possible.

Convention says when things aren’t going well that saying, what else could go wrong is conversationally useful or relatable.

However, experience shows us that when you say that, worse things will happen.

So, use the moment of most power — now — to invite the Universe to turn things around, and invite yourself to look for what else IS possible now, that you hadn’t thought of? And how DOES it get any better than this, which things are not great.

In fact, the more not-great things are and the more you ask how does it get any better than this, the greater change you can perceive, and yes it takes a while to recalibrate your head from perceiving the worse into perceiving something greater/good.

Practice is key.

3. Heal yourself and you heal the world.

This may sound overly simple, but it is a potent truth.

As Rumi said: “You are not a drop in the ocean. You are the entire ocean in a drop.”

The more ease, confidence, joy, enthusiasm, you experience running through your mind and body, the more you are anchoring and generating that in the reality you’re creating day by day. The cleaner and clearer you are keeping your drop of the ocean, the more you are cleaning and clearing the ocean, even though the Time-Warner version of reality says otherwise.

That version of reality tells us that we have no power to affect society, but it also tells us that everything that’s wrong with the world is our own, personal, fault and responsibility and a lot of other crazy, contradictory shit.

The antidote to that crazy making reality stuff is to repeat this phrase over and over till you feel a shift and easing in your body:

“Everything is the opposite of what it appears to be, and nothing is the opposite of what it appears to be.”

Repeat that at least 10 times and you’ll notice your breathing slowing down and deepening, more ease in your body, your rat-brain will subside, and your nervous system can stand down more.

A word about Practicing these things, and practice in general.

You are either practicing new, chosen responses and awareness tools to enhance, improve and ease all areas of your life, or you are practicing the same-old-same-old thoughts and conclusions that have brought you your life thus far.

If you so not consciously choose to practice new things, you are unconsciously practicing numbing, confusing, disempowering things over and over.

You are still doing the same old things, that produce the same old feelings of inadequacy and not-enough-ness, invalidations, anxiousness, and the like.

In every moment of every day, awake or asleep, you are actively choosing to create and generate a greater, more wonder-full life, or you are choosing to be unconscious, reactionary, mediocre life of fitting in, usually with people you don’t even like.

But you are never “doing nothing.” That’s not even a possibility for you. You are by nature a constantly creating machine.

The more you make a game of it, make it fun to see what you can see, say, and do different, and generate more of what supports you and makes you happy, the easier it all gets.

Fun, by the way, is vastly underrated. Fun, amusement, joy are facets of the highest healing vibration there is, and the more you employ them, the more they change not only your world, but everyone around you.