Awakenings and Changing Social Expectations

It’s been a while since I’ve written here, as the responsibilities of graduate school managed to override my ability to keep up with my public musings about the current themes taking place around us. I suppose the lessons at play in my personal life dragged me into the depths over these months as well. As healers, we are sometimes asked to step away from our work with others in order to dive more deeply into our own darkness and healing.

What makes one a great healer has little to do with what certificates and titles we’ve accumulated over time, and more to do with the advanced courses of soul we have completed that fall into our lap initiated by the very world of spirit itself. While I knew I was enrolling in a Master’s program this year, little did I know I signed up for a very different Master’s program simultaneously, instructed by my ever expansive soul. She’s a fiercely brilliant professor to be reckoned with.

Awakenings, dark nights of the soul and rebirths are endless. For some, there may be greater rest periods in between, or more likely substantial distractions that keep one from plunging inwards. Many may even go their whole lives floating on the surface. Inside of us though, if we are brave enough to hear the inner calling, there will always be new labyrinths to navigate- new lessons, greater levels of perception and awareness to gain, and heightened understandings of personal truth to be illuminated.

For as intimidating, traumatic and fear-inducing as it might be when you’re in it, the storm eventually subsides, and the light once again shines down- or more appropriately out from the core of our beings, to be shared with the world around us.

This world… this society, really… It often doesn’t make space for the soul’s journey. In fact, our dominant societal beliefs tear us apart, from one another and ourselves. Our worth is judged upon our contributions, a literal monetary value that favors privilege and competition, and predominately demeans the majority. The more machine-like you can be, the more you will be rewarded. The more you feel your emotions, feel your frustration, your hurts, your losses, your discomfort and unhappiness, the more likely you are to experience serious setbacks.

Did you know that paid time off for a death in the family is typically 3-5 days? “Here, valued employee, take a few days off, suck it up, and then be back at work by Monday.” Those with greater privileges in this society can possibly afford more time, but for the most part people don’t have a lot of flexibility. And this is what we get for a death! Everyday community members experience a wide range of personal difficulties that we ask people to hide away so that they can keep contributing to the bottom line, because collectively we’ve been brainwashed to think profit is more important than people.

“Oh, you’re unhappy? Having uncomfortable physical symptoms? Well, take these pills and get back out there.” We are continuously band-aiding serious festering issues of the soul, body and mind. But, you know… Bills needs to be paid. Someone needs to keep profiting off of you, because your money and time is what keeps this system running, you ‘ol cog in the machine, you. For anyone who determines they aren’t functioning very well as one of those cogs, and asks for assistance, in this society a pretty disturbing percentage of people out there demonize anyone who they might think are freeloading (whether someone is aware of it or not, the underlying vibe, no matter the argument sounds like “because if I have to be a cog in this crappy system I have been brainwashed to think is normal, so should you!”).

Otherness has segregated our humanity, whereby judgement colors the lens in which we see out into the world. We’re quick to make assumptions, quick to lump one human being into a generic category with another because stereotypes make it easier not to have to see the very real human being behind the need. The thing is, being human is hard. And in actuality, it’s harder for some than others based on many factors: race, age, culture, gender, sexuality, religion, geography, etc. The saying goes, don’t judge a book by its cover, but most people never bother to pull the book off the shelf and see what’s inside. Those who you think might be getting away with free handouts have demons you don’t know the half of.

Now for what might be an unpopular opinion: Maybe we shouldn’t require everyone to participate in the dominant system. Maybe some people aren’t meant to work 40+ hours a week at jobs they hate. Maybe those people have other skills and things to offer the planet that they haven’t been given the time or resources to explore? Maybe that person really is better off at home with their children, or flourishes more working on their hobbies. Maybe this system could collapse at any moment and the person who ends up helping you the most was the person you didn’t want to feed because you didn’t think they were contributing enough? Maybe your beliefs are wrong. Maybe they could be altered in a way that would make you a better human being, but your own culture actually makes you more of an asshole than you realize.

Anyway, this post is about awakenings and rebirths, which stems from decay, death and destruction. I can look out into our world and understand the madness of it all because of the times my ego, which was once very connected and dependent on that world, was dragged into the depths of hell only to have the crap society built around me burnt away. Upon emerging from those depths, time and again, something more raw, authentic and sacred was left in its place. I became less of this world, and more… part of another world, a world that is slowly making its way into this one. That world is what some might call “heaven on earth.”

For now, that heaven on earth is still just beginning to make its way into people’s everyday realities, but more and more of us are remembering why we’ve come here to this planet at this very moment in space and time. When we are asked to step away from participating in this world, in order to be with our darkness- with our sadness, apathy, insanity, guilt, rage, loneliness, depression- without trying to escape it or deny it, we learn the special gift these experiences bring. Each one helps us to awaken to what’s wrong on this planet, and wrong with us as a product of that world. With grace and surrender, spirit then guides us back home, back to our heart space, to remember our mission and why this world needs to change.