The Dark Side

Original post: Dec. 15, 2012

It occurs to me that as 12/21/12 approaches, there really is a cultural transformation playing out.  A big big transformation but also a very subtle one.  It’s been going on for a long, long time but maybe the tipping point is here.

 

When I was working in the Hawaiian Leadership Center on a program integrating Eastern, Indigenous and Western perspectives on leadership, we could pretty much recognize the ‘dark side’ of each of these cultures as cruelty in the East, exclusion in the aloha culture, and using/controlling/absorbing individualism in Western culture.  I would say that all 3 are different versions of cultures based on ‘stuff’ and grounded in separation, ‘lack and limitation.’  We are different, you and I and it is a dangerous world.  [We are born into a world with opportunities to earn and enjoy our own stuff.  I don’t share mine with you.  You make your own.  We compete for scarce stuff and I need guns to protect my stuff and protect me from you.  The planet is just a source of stuff and separate from us and exists for our use.]

 

But there is another worldview arising out of our ancient philosophical roots cloaked with the discoveries of modern science.  This lens on our reality really takes a much different perspective on how we perceive reality and our place in it.  Stuff isn’t our focus.  We are really connected, not separate.  Connected to others, connected to the planet at a spiritual level of shared consciousness.  Our planet, itself, suffers from mis-use and consequently can impact our individual psychology. [Contrast your psychological health if you work in a coal mine or commute in heavy traffic every day compared to working and living closer to nature in harmony.]  Everything I do impacts the whole; the currency is relationship and the driver is love .  It is a world of abundance not lack and we have the ultimate power to rid ourselves of the scar tissue of old thought forms and perceive our reality differently whenever we choose.  If I raise my own level of consciousness and awareness and focus on light rather than the hard-eyed world of the material, the communal level of consciousness grows.  As one Buddhist monk said, “If you want to change the world, stay in your living room and think differently.”  That may ultimately have more power to make the world a better place than we ever could have imagined.  [Think TM research with communities meditating on decreased local crime.]

 

I am blessed to be surrounded by others seeking to stay in this transformed awareness when the daily pull is back down into that dark side.  It is a daily struggle.  When school shootings happen, my first impulse is rage and to take a machine gun to the NRA glass covered headquarters out by Dulles airport.  What a great fantasy!!  My second emotion is so much sadness, and that sadness is like an electrical current that connects us at a very deep level – irrelevant of age, nationality, time or place.  The world’s deep sadness is palpable.  The agony of the world in search of the ecstasy.  Sounds familiar… ever moving toward the light.

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