In one of my poems called, Walking into Uncertainty, two of the lines were, “Things are exactly as they should be, given the patterns and belief systems we have internalized throughout time.” It was a poem I had written while in Moncton, New Brunswick in August of this year. This morning shortly after I woke up, I had a flash to that moment when I was living in Austin, TX, sitting at a coffee shop and that revelation washed over me. “Things are exactly as they should be.” In that moment I felt freer than I ever had before. It was this moment of complete allowance of everything that was happening around me. For a moment, I could see beyond the surface and at how family patterns, media, education systems, language, and personal experiences to date influences what is happening now, in this moment in time, for each person living on this planet. Now by no means am I saying that I have things figured out, or that what is happening now on this planet is good or desired. What this meant for me though, was that the weight of judgment that I was carrying about someone or something based on a snapshot of time dissolved. Instead of carrying all sorts of thoughts about how things should be…i.e. people should be more kind, loving, understanding….and less angry, aggressive, and violent, I could see that I had no idea what had unfolded in all their moments on this earth leading up to the one I was witnessing them in. Who was I to say how they should be? And who was I to say how I should be? I wasn’t in a state of conscious choice my whole life. I would simply react to life in the way that I knew how, based on what I was taught and whatever other imprinting I was carrying. When I woke up, or realized that I had a choice of how I was thinking/feeling/experiencing life then I could take a greater responsibility for how I was being in the world, but before then, I was at the whim of my environment. Who knows where the person I was witnessing was at, in terms of realizing or reclaiming their ability to choose. And even if they had become a more conscious participant on this planet, who knows what the current state of their mental/physical/emotional system was in that moment.
So, where am I going with all this? Well, this concept that things are exactly as they should be is equivalent to saying, this is what is happening now. This does not mean that I think it’s good or right, or even bad or wrong, it’s just what’s happening. When I can really move into that state, I can free myself from being entangled in it and shift to asking, “How would I like to be? What can I choose right now? What sort of environment would I like to live in?” Basically, by shifting out of judgment (which is always based on limited information), into awareness, I can stay connected to my creativity and ability to choose. It also helps to free me from the desire to change people, or tell them how they should be (for my sake), because I get that they are where they are (and I don’t know the least bit about the whole concoction of events that let them to that moment in time) and I can’t possibly know how they “should” be. The beautiful thing that this shift from judgment helps with as well is connecting me to my vision, or my ability to envision future possibilities.
Speaking more generally, by shifting from judgment to awareness (being present with what’s happening as best as we are able to), we can sync in to our creative ability to envision other possibilities for our life, our community and even this World. We are not denying the current reality, but we are also CHOOSING not to get stuck in it. Instead, we are seeing what’s here and envisioning what’s possible based the highest creative capacities we can muster up in the moment. Know that we are starting where we are. We’re starting with what we’ve been given to date, and working with it. We’re starting with the current state of our mental/physical/emotional systems and the more we can acknowledge where we are, the more able we’ll be to tap into a creative force through which we can generate something new in our lives. I am as I am right now. Everyone is as they are right now. What else is possible?
So, where am I going with all this? Well, this concept that things are exactly as they should be is equivalent to saying, this is what is happening now. This does not mean that I think it’s good or right, or even bad or wrong, it’s just what’s happening. When I can really move into that state, I can free myself from being entangled in it and shift to asking, “How would I like to be? What can I choose right now? What sort of environment would I like to live in?” Basically, by shifting out of judgment (which is always based on limited information), into awareness, I can stay connected to my creativity and ability to choose. It also helps to free me from the desire to change people, or tell them how they should be (for my sake), because I get that they are where they are (and I don’t know the least bit about the whole concoction of events that let them to that moment in time) and I can’t possibly know how they “should” be. The beautiful thing that this shift from judgment helps with as well is connecting me to my vision, or my ability to envision future possibilities.
Speaking more generally, by shifting from judgment to awareness (being present with what’s happening as best as we are able to), we can sync in to our creative ability to envision other possibilities for our life, our community and even this World. We are not denying the current reality, but we are also CHOOSING not to get stuck in it. Instead, we are seeing what’s here and envisioning what’s possible based the highest creative capacities we can muster up in the moment. Know that we are starting where we are. We’re starting with what we’ve been given to date, and working with it. We’re starting with the current state of our mental/physical/emotional systems and the more we can acknowledge where we are, the more able we’ll be to tap into a creative force through which we can generate something new in our lives. I am as I am right now. Everyone is as they are right now. What else is possible?
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