Diane’s Blog

Here we are, nearly a week into the new year, and I’m just starting to think about what that might mean for me.  How about you?  Does the beginning of a new year bring with it the promise of untold possibilities?  A new chance to rewrite certain chapters of your life? 

 If nothing else, we can choose to see the beginning of each year as a marker — a cue that reminds us to look closer at the life we are living.  Sometimes that’s all that’s needed because what we really need more than anything is to see ourselves differently.  At this point in time and space on planet Earth, it seems increasingly difficult to find something stable to hold on to. 

Time itself seems to be speeding up, and it’s easy to get the feeling that we’ve lost our way, or that we’ve let potentially meaningful experiences slip through our fingers.  I’d like to share with you a realization that came to me gradually over many years — even now I can forget sometimes and slip into my old ways.  I guarantee you that if you can remember to put just this one thing into practice more and more often, your experience of life will dramatically improve. 

Honor Your Own Personal Experience.  What does that mean?  It means that in a world filled to overflowing with experts, pundits, and specialists of every stripe, it is becoming increasingly necessary to ask, “But is that my truth?”  Largely because we have allowed science to dictate our reality for us, we have accepted the “scientific” paradigm that allows “experts” in every field to negate our own, often hard-won experience. 

15 years ago, when I was presenting classes in the Adult Education Department of my community, I decided to present a one-night class about Fibromyalgia.  Having dealt with this syndrome since 1972, I felt that I was well-prepared to share my repertoire of healing techniques.  Shortly after the school brochure containing the class description was published, I received a phone call from a local physician.  He challenged my authority to present such information, stating that I was not a physician.  He was. 

Interestingly, he was not a rheumatologist, which is the specialty that deals with this problem.  Apparently he felt that the initials M.D. after his name gave him special knowledge unavailable to me.  My statement that I had many years of experience with this problem was meaningless to him.  I remember being shaken, but more resolved than ever to share what I had learned.  And so it goes. 

There’s a reason that personal experience or “anecdotal evidence” is not accepted by the scientific community.  The reason is that consciousness is an area about which scientists are so afraid that they won’t touch it with a 10 foot pole.  If you doubt this, try talking to a so-called expert in just about any field about your personal experience and see how far you get.  This wouldn’t be problematic except for the fact that science alone is too limited and too biased to guide our lives in more than a rudimentary way. 

If you take a look at the truly fearless people on earth these days, you’ll see that they all have one characteristic in common — they didn’t listen to anyone who tried to dissuade them from pursuing their dream, no matter how impractical or naive it may have seemed to everyone else. 

So — what will it be?  Will you allow the unlimited capacity of your conscious mind to take the driver seat, by letting it guide you to what ever it finds of interest — for no other reason than that?  Or will you slumber with the masses who nod and shrug every time they receive “definitive” advice from “them.”  As in “They say…”  I’m betting on you.

In my weekly talk with my dad last Sunday, a topic came up that I had hoped would not raise its ugly little head again.  First, let me remind you that my past relationship with my father was always rocky at best — there were times when we did not speak, and in some ways that was a great relief for me. 

 The verbal abuse I experienced from him growing up was something that I carried around with me for many years; it manifested as anger and the need to control others in order to experience what felt to me like safety.  Obviously, this created dysfunctional relationships, and until I hit 40, I blamed others for what I later realized I had created myself. 

 Over the last few years, and to the surprise and delight of both of us, my relationship with my father has healed to the extent that we can actually talk for extended periods of time without getting defensive and/or judging and even attacking the other person in some way.  However, my dad still seems to have the need to reminisce about how “nasty” I was to him in this or that conversation that occurred years ago — the implication being that I had been a very unlikable person until recently, when I somehow “changed my attitude” and turned into nice Diane. 

I have let this go over and over, as I know now that it simply does no good to rehash one’s perceived childhood pain with the aging parent who was involved.  Oh, I tried this a number of times years ago, and was shocked to discover that my father (and mother for that matter) had no memory of any transgression on their part. 

I guess I was in a sort of prickly mood this time, because I found myself resenting being placed in a position of apologizing for something not only dug up from the past, but in this case, a conversation I know did not go as my father describes it.  I suddenly heard myself say, “Well, you know, ours was the only relationship in the last 15 years that was problematic.  Yes, I know I was not particularly nice to you and at times even hung up the phone on you, but there were reasons for that.  You do remember that when I was growing up you did a lot of yelling. I was afraid of you and as I got older, I felt anger towards you for that.  You would call me “stupid” or tell me I needed to see a psychiatrist if I disagreed with you.” 

Needless to say, my father was shocked and horrified.  He has no recollection of any of this, apparently having always believed he was a wonderful father.  I could tell that he was grappling with it; that it could only cause him pain if he were to accept it.  We both fumbled around for a minute or two, until we agreed that the past truly no longer exists.  Since it doesn’t exist, why go there?  We both agreed that we are very very happy with the relationship that we have forged, that we each forgave the other some time ago, and that we don’t want to jeopardize it now. 

The ex-mental health professional as well as the hurt child within has always wanted to force my father to look at what he did and take responsibility for its role  in undermining not only our relationship, but all of mine until the time that I took things into my own hands.  Over a number of years, I successfully managed to exorcise all the old demons.  It took a great deal of time, effort and inner work, and required brutal honesty on my part. 

I know now that I can’t expect a parent to do the same — it’s just not reasonable.  And after all, if we can take it upon ourselves to meet each new moment with acceptance of someone, no matter what our history with them, won’t we be able to see them more clearly than we ever could through the lens of historical pain?  (End of post–please ignore below)

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Well, it’s good to be home.  Especially since I just learned that the Great Lakes area, which I visited last week, received a very early snowfall — just four days after I left!

Before I go on to talk about the reunion I attended, an announcement: I will be presenting a class or two in Asheville next month.  I have yet to decide on the main focus, but the top contender at this time is Relationships.  Check back here next week for more information. 

Okay, now for the disappointing news — my 40th class reunion was a bust!  Out of 600 classmates, only 70 attended.  70!  And I didn’t even know the majority of them.  Only two female friends were there, which was something; not one male.  In thinking this over since then, I’ve decided that the best explanation is that a lot of folks attended either the 25th or 35th reunion, found it dull, and vowed to never return — as I did last Saturday night.  The question remains — why did I want to go to this thing anyway? 

After the fact, the answer was different than what I had thought.  Well, sort of different.  It’s still true that I was curious to see where life had led so many of the people I had known, and I wanted to apologize to a few of them, whether or not they knew what the heck I was talking about.  But I also had to admit that I wanted to be seen.  And admired, perhaps. 

I noticed that in general the women looked much better — healthier, younger, more well-preserved — than the men in attendance.  There is still a part of me that can’t seem to get past that superficial need for the kind of attention that being attractive brings with it.  I guess it was unrealistic of me to think I had left that behind entirely, when so much of my earlier life seemed to depend on it for defining who I was. 

This seems to be tied in to the false spiritual understanding that as you evolve spiritually in your life, you get to a point where appearances mean nothing.  Perhaps that will happen some day — I’m not there yet.  And that’s OK.  I’m learning that it’s just as easy to beat yourself up over spiritual success (or lack of it) as any other kind.  I see this all the time in healers around me, and I’m no exception. 

Another revelation was that my desire to see and talk to my high school friends was for the most part sentimental.  And therefore it may have been for the best that I didn’t see them.  The truth about these friends is that they fell away long ago, largely because I let them do so.  Not having a clue as to who I really was back then, I tried to fit in, and found a group of simpatico girls –my “group.”  Around the time of our junior year in college, things started to feel uncomfortable to me — largely due to the fact that I was going in a different direction both socially and politically than these people. 

They were on one side of the Vietnam war debate; I was on the other.  They were on career tracks; I was on the hippie track.  Although we stayed in touch for the next few years and I even roomed with one of them, it became more and more painfully clear that we had very little in common.  We drifted apart and I never looked back.  Well maybe a little.  Again, for sentimental reasons. 

You really can’t go home again, and that’s the truth. Too often we let what we think “ought to be” guide us.  That never works in the long run.  Childhood and adolescence are a time of seismic change, and we will never feel again the way we did then.  Some wish they could go back — there is no back — it no longer exists.  I don’t want to go back — perhaps I had hoped to glean a little more understanding of those tumultuous years, when Diane was such an unknown element.  Fortunately I don’t have a “need” to do that.  Right now feels better and better to me.

The other night I was watching The Dr. Phil Show which featured a face-off between a young, attractive woman in her 30s and a man of about the same age, an attorney.  The young man, who is African-American, is bringing a lawsuit against the woman who runs a revenge-oriented web site for women who feel they’ve been treated badly by males. 

 The gist of the tale is that more than one woman posted their complaints about this particular man.  Each of them cited a different problem, ranging from asserting that he is actually gay to alleging that he has herpes and did not inform them.  His real name was used and a picture of him posted.  This man argues that not only are these allegations untrue but that they could cost him dearly in terms of future employment, if any potential employer should “Google” his name on the Internet and turn this information up. 

Both he and Dr. Phil made numerous attempts to get this woman to say that she at least understands his predicament; she did not.  In fact, she asserted repeatedly that she has absolutely no responsibility for any of the information posted on her web site.  This is what her lawyer told her.  It is apparently her main defense. 

 None of us except the man filing the lawsuit can know where the truth lies, but where does the responsibility for posting this information line?  It’s a question that’s has been intriguing and bothering me a little ever since.  As the plaintiff pointed out, having this information posted on a web site is very different from seeing it in print elsewhere — on the Web,  it could be there forever. 

 Isn’t this a familiar refrain?  It seems that everywhere I go these days I run into people or organizations or institutions who believe they are being victimized, and they take no personal responsibility for the actions on their part that led to their victimization.  If no one is responsible, how will we ever resolve our differences?  Perhaps even more important, how will we evolve spiritually?  Because evolution of the spiritual kind, which as far as I’m concerned is the most important kind, only occurs when we each make the choice to take responsibility for every word and every action that we put out there. 

I know about this first-hand because I didn’t begin to take responsibility for my actions until I was 40 years old.  Until then I blamed everything and everyone around me for my unhappiness, and that meant that I was dependent on change to occur from the outside rather than how it actually happens — from the inside out.  The wonderful bonus for me (and everyone around me, I’m sure) was that as soon I began to say “I guess I created that”, I stopped feeling victimized.  Who knew? 

 It’s as if we’re being asked to take responsibility now on the global level — anything less seems to be resulting in egos clashing, people dying, and situations becoming worse rather than healing.  While it is certainly possible that the woman appearing with Dr. Phil has the law on her side, I keep wondering where is her sense of moral or ethical responsibility for the space that she occupies on the Web?  Multiply her web site by just a thousand and imagine the possible consequences. 

I had to make a decision a number of years ago that I feel relates to this issue.  When I receive spiritual guidance from a higher source, it doesn’t feel as if it’s coming from Diane.  Many times I don’t even know what I have written in answer to a question from a client — I have to read it over after I’ve channeled it.  But I realized at a certain point that if I didn’t take responsibility for the words I am writing, who could?  Spirit?  I don’t think so.  Although that would be nice…

Last week I finally read Ishmael by Daniel Quinn.  I’d heard about it for years, but never got around to reading it.  As you may know, it involves a re-telling of human history with a different storyline then we have been taught.  The interesting thing to me is how drastically this history is changed by simply telling the story from a different point of view. 

 I started to think about how we are bombarded every day with “facts” about our health, our opportunities for advancement, and our safety, to name a few.  Then there’s the whole realm of political persuasion, in which every elected official and pundit assures us they speak the “truth” with their “facts.”  Isn’t it funny — a large percentage of our U.S. population believes the “facts” spouted by one political party, while an equal or greater percentage sucks up the “truths” of the other. 

 What’s going on here?  Can that many people be wrong?  How do we separate fact from opinion and truth from “truthiness”  before the next generation of history books are written?  I’ve noticed that we are now being lied to.  By everyone.  All the time.  I’m no longer referring to politics alone.  Oh, no.  Apparently the rules changed without fanfare a while ago while we as a nation were collectively napping. 

 Suddenly it’s not just OK — it’s a “strategy” — to lie about the free trip to Florida  you’ve just won but didn’t really; the “natural” ingredients in that jar of peanut butter; how much weight you can realistically expect to lose on the latest 98% caffeine diet pill; how you, too, can qualify for this shiny new house (car, boat, whatever) even with that basement-level credit score. 

 All this has got me wondering — who determines where we go next as the most advanced brainstems on this planet?  Telemarketers?  Political operatives?  Fortune 500 corporations?  In other words, who will we, as sovereign individuals, allow to not only determine the course we take from here on in, but also interpret the story of that course for future generations — if there are any. 

 I keep coming back to the lowest common denominator — personal truth, the kind you can only gain by experience and observation.  We tend to reject personal experience out of hand in our society — it can’t be measured in a lab, so it’s fairly worthless stuff.  If that’s ”true,” I ask myself, then why does my life keep improving and feeling increasingly authentic and “safe” the longer I do all my own testing in the laboratory of Diane’s daily life? 

 Each of us has to make a decision based on the following question: ”Do I need to look to others for “truth” and hope that I follow the “ right” authorities, or is there an innate wisdom within me that I can tap into and allow to guide me safely through life?”  Once we know the answer to that question we can make one of the following our conscious decision:  “I will put the future of this planet into the hands of those whose agendas I cannot know” or “I am now ready to take responsibility for my role in determining the success or failure of the human experiment.” 

As I thought about this topic, I laughed, suddenly recalling a review of Stanley Kubrick’s final movie, “Eyes Wide Shut.”  The reviewer said this movie seems to have been written by someone who hasn’t been out of the house for 35 years, to paraphrase.  These days it sometimes feels like it would be safer to stay in, doesn’t it?  I certainly empathize with people who have agoraphobia. 

Intellectually I know there’s nothing to fear outside the relative haven of my home.  So why do I breathe a sigh of relief almost every time I return home and close the door behind me?  I don’t buy into the propaganda–ish statements made by politicians with agendas.  They tell me it’s not safe out there because the world is now full of people who want to do me harm.  Huh uh.  One thing I know for certain is that we create our own reality according to our beliefs, so if it’s a dangerous world you believe in, a dangerous world is what you’ll experience — it really is that simple. 

How do I know?  Because I’ve tested this universal law over and over in the living laboratory that is Diane’s daily life.  Observation over many years tells me we really do experience what we expect to come our way.  Of course, there are mitigating circumstances, and it can also take time — sometimes a lifetime — to manifest what our beliefs dictate.  But proof is with us daily if we bother to look around, that life is one big, hairy self-fulfilling prophecy.  Or as Dr. Wayne Dyer says, “Believing is seeing.” 

So if I’m not afraid, what has kept me in my house for so much of my adult life?  Yes, I’m a bit of a hermit.  As an only child, aloneness is comfortable for me, not lonely.  But I also know part of me wants to be with people to exchange ideas, feel supported, and just enjoy being social, dammit!  When I lived in Cleveland I went out almost every weekend, but I had a “best friend” then.  For some selfish reason she couldn’t just pick up and move to Asheville in 2000 when I came here. 

And, yes, I got married over a year ago, but hey — I married another only child!  So far we’ve spent most of our time as a cozy twosome, but we’re both starting to suspect there may be a bigger world out there.  There’s a reason that home theaters and computers are so popular — more and more of us are choosing to stay in the house.  We don’t even talk on the phone as often, and don’t try to tell me we’ve “replaced” verbal interaction with e-mail or text messaging.  If you believe that one, maybe you also equate intimacy with having sex? 

The sad thing is, I know in my heart that one of the keys to a world at peace is more of us going out there and mingling.  Now there’s a non-threatening word.  I’m determined to go out there and do some major mingling.  I have a hunch that it could lead to higher-level interaction, even.  Ultimately I want to feel “at home” anywhere I happen to be.  After all, I know our only true “safety” and “security” comes from becoming congruent — that place where finally, our outsides match our insides.  Well, gotta go out for a walk — the rain’s letting up and I’m feeling the need to mingle — if only with a few neighborhood doggies, for starters.

I was watching Oprah yesterday, and although the topic was the widening rift between the “haves” and “have-not’s” in this country, what really got my attention was something else.  Near the end of the show Robert Reich, who was talking about the imbalance of wealth in our country, said that “luck” was an important factor in achieving what we like to call The American Dream. 

Oprah said that she had to disagree; she does not believe in luck.  She said that she sees it instead as the place where intent meets opportunity.  Mr. Reich fumbled around with this for a minute, but couldn’t seem to get away from the “luck” concept.

 I used to believe in luck, but that belief began to fade as the realization of a new truth entered my life: we create our own reality.  It seems that these two concepts cannot share the same space within us.  What does this mean?  In other words, it’s the old debate — there is meaning and organization, versus randomness, chaos, and by inference, luck. 

I now see that where you fall in terms of these two concepts determines not only your worldview but how you actually experience life.  For example, when I believed that circumstances in my life were conspiring against me, I was unhappy and resentful.  Bad things “happened” to me — surely I wasn’t creating them — who would want to?  I was at the mercy of factors I couldn’t control and therefore I was a victim. 

Then I began to open to the universal truth that made its way into human consciousness in the 1960s — we create our own reality.  As I did so, not only did I cease to feel that I was a victim of happenstance, but I began to see that my intention in any given circumstance had more power over the outcome than I ever would have thought possible. 

 Luck is in the category of  human beliefs that we cling to in order to keep from becoming fully conscious.  It gets you off the hook, doesn’t it?  But it also prevents us from becoming the immensely powerful beings we really are, because belief in luck says that you still think the real power is outside of you somehow.

So how do you improve your life if luck isn’t involved?  In the realm of social class in this society, certainly there are long-standing institutional factors and pervasive beliefs and practices that conspire to keep all of us in the same class into which we were born.  Do exceptions like Oprah transcend these factors due to luck, or is it that notion of intent meeting opportunity? 

 This is one of those areas where most people come down 100% on one side or the other; there are no shades of gray here.  How do you see it?  Earlier this week my husband and I received an offer from a friend to live rent-free in a beautiful home in the country not far from here in exchange for being the caretakers for the main house, which is occupied by a lawyer from Washington, DC only a few months out of the year.  As it turns out, this opportunity couldn’t be more well-timed, for reasons I won’t go into here. 

But the question I asked myself was, “How did I create this?”  And I knew the answer immediately — our intention, bolstered by our belief that anything is possible and that we deserve all the abundance that life has to offer, met with a wonderful opportunity.  The same holds true when circumstances are not so favorable. 

 I ask the same question, but I’ve learned, more and more, to stay away from the voice — the ego — that wants to blame Diane and make her guilty for having created something that she will most likely experience as painful.  I’m learning that part of the journey of becoming “conscious” in this life is to stop seeing chaos as an enemy.  What if the meaning behind the chaos is simply our cue to look at everything from a greater perspective than we normally do?  I don’t know about you, but making that choice helps me to stay sane when so much in our world appears to be madness.

I asked for guidance recently about marketing my web site.  The answer I received made me say “Duh!”  Guidance is often like that, in that what it really does is tell us what we already know but haven’t yet brought into sharp focus.  (Often because we don’t want to) 

 So this answer seemed obvious:  “You are an unconventional person — why would you choose to pursue conventional marketing advice?  It won’t work for you.  You will need to allow your creativity to flow freely; then you will find the methods that “work” for you.”

This inspired me to take another look at my life: sure enough, I have almost always been different.  But that square peg-ness was extremely painful in my first, oh, 40 years or so.  I feel compassion now for the Diane who so desperately kept trying to fit into a world that didn’t accommodate her uniqueness.  The thing is, if you haven’t looked within in a serious way over time, how can you know what your needs really are?  Most of us think we know, but we don’t. 

Here’s a test: How many times have you agreed with someone in the last week without digging deeper to take stock of how you really feel?  Then look at your life and ask, “How often have the important events and turning points in my life been governed by “shoulds”?  For example, I married my first husband because I was 37 years old and held the belief that if not now, when?  There’s a “should” for you. 

 Or going back further, I went to college right after high school even though I hadn’t a clue about who I was or what I wanted in life.  All my friends were going, and it was assumed by all that I would, too.  “Here’s the application; pick a major.  Well, put SOMETHING down.  You can always change it.”  Only since my early 40s have I really celebrated my different-ness, and that was pretty wobbly until more recently. 

 Now I realize that the very qualities I once felt I had to hide are the ones that comprise my gift to this world; it is always so.  If there is one pearl of wisdom I could give, it would be this: Choose to dig deeper and find your own different-ness, because within it lies the key to your greatness.  Okay, two pearls: If something isn’t working for you — look more closely.  Maybe it isn’t meant to, if it doesn’t fit who you really are.

On Monday of this week Jim and I visited his daughter Kara, who lives about 45 minutes from us.  She is a lovely, complicated, endearing 22 year old who I am delighted to have in my life, never having had children of my own (that I know of).  We get along famously, but every now and then I suddenly feel like I’m 85 years old, for God’s sake.  Don’t get me wrong — she never intends this response, but there it is, all the same.  What’s the demon that rears its ugly head? 

Technology — plain and simple.  This is the dividing line between generations now, as I see it.  When I was her age it was the “generation gap”; code for our rebellion against the old guard’s societal attitudes.  Now I ARE the old guard, and I will not go quietly.  Here’s the latest of numerous incidents: I just realized this sounds a little disgusting, so try not to get grossed out.  I was sitting in Kara’s living room, talking and idly running my hand over the nape of my neck when I felt a bump at my hairline.  “Hey — look at this — does this look like something?”  I asked Jim and Kara.  Well, her first impulse was not to run over and look, but to pick up her digital camera.  “Here, I’ll take a picture of it!”  She said.  I’m sitting there thinking, “What good is that?  What’s she going to do — mail it to me?  By then it’ll either be gone or I’ll be dead.” 

What I actually said was more like, “Huh?”  She grabbed the camera and stood up, saying “You know — I’ll take a picture of it, then we can zoom in on it!”  I forgot — Digital.  No waiting.  Zooming in AFTER you shoot.  Egad.  So that’s what we did, and it looked harmless in close-up; at least I’m not in a coma yet. 

I heard a segment on National Public Radio the other day about how this is the first generation that knows more than their parents about everything technological.  And with every new advance, we lose ground.  I don’t doubt the truth of this for a minute.  But the question is — does this mean we have nothing to offer these children of the post-information age?  Should we just throw up our hands and wheel ourselves off into the Sunset Retirement Home? 

Happily, I do know the answer to that one.  Hell, no!  There is something which is at the same time the most valuable gift my generation has to offer and also among the least valued by this society.  If you said “advice”, you’re close.  Personally, I have finally learned this about advice — nobody wants it; they just say they do.  So it’s not that.  What they do want is answers about life’s challenges, e.g. “How do I get out of THIS one?” “Why do I get so depressed about things?” 

Life experience is the only way for young people to feel that they are okay, but they don’t have nearly enough of it yet, and the world they live in is so much more demanding and fast-paced and cynical than the one we knew.  We can share our experience with them.  But there’s a catch — you can’t provide helpful examples of how you got through something unless you gain some perspective over the years, because chances are you screwed up at their age, too.  I know I did. 

So it’s only now — now that I have a sensitive young woman in my life who is so like me at her age it’s uncanny — that I realize how far I’ve come.  15 years ago I was still struggling with my own identity.  In the interim I looked within and worked at letting go of my need to judge, my inability to forgive, and my mistaken identification with the ego’s idea of who Diane is rather than with my heart’s knowledge. 

Now I’m able to say to Kara, “Well, sweetie, I did the same thing when I was your age.  I got into trouble for it, and I lost some friends.  I finally learned that I’m okay just as I am, and I don’t have to pretend to like what everybody else does just to keep their friendship.”  Or whatever the topic is — you get the idea.  I’ve also learned to add something my parents rarely, if ever, gave me — unsolicited cheerleading.  Maybe it’s BECAUSE I didn’t receive it that I value it so now, but whenever I can I add, “You are such a fabulous person.  I know you don’t see it that way yet, but you will.  Some day you’ll look back on these days and wonder how you could possibly have underestimated yourself so.” 

Don’t we all need to hear that more than we need to know how to use an MP3 player?  Interesting, isn’t it, that we still choose, as a culture, to place the public “achievement” (almost always in terms of dollars) above personal triumph over old, dysfunctional attitudes and behaviors?

I’m feeling a little snarkey this week.  I snapped at my husband this morning.  I’ve had zero patience with myself.  I didn’t even feel like “blogging,” to tell you the truth.  It’s been one of those weeks that you can only describe this way: “It’s been one of those weeks.”  I can’t quite put my finger on any one thing.  Hmmm — My hair made me a cinch for the “Kramer” look-a-like contest, if they ever hold one.  I’ve felt tired all week — low energy, nothing serious.  Oh, and every time I turned on the TV or radio or went online, I heard horror stories of innocent people dying and rumors of World War III.

   Oh.  That could be it. These are turbulent times we are living in, people.  Or as my elderly ex-client Doris from Pittsburgh used to say, “Turrible, turrible.”  How are you affected by all the global gnashing?  Do you tune it out?  Does it make you feel impotent?  Resentful?  Angry?  Have you ever just cried for the hatred and greed that are playing out on a world-wide level? Or do you feel nothing at all? 

 When I heard the author and mystic Andrew Harvey speak here in Ashevile almost 2 years ago he said the reason we aren’t outraged 23 hours a day is simple: “We’re in a Coca-coma.”  This is a consumer society, after all.  Consumerism is the national religion.  And if it does nothing else, our religion helps us to go numb just when the appropriate response for any normal human would be, “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore!”  Or perhaps, “It didn’t have to be this way,” if we are one of the more forgiving, compassionate ones.

The beauty of this religion is that you don’t even have to get high and alter your consciousness to zone out.  Hell, that would be redundant — we are all zoned out.  All the time.  If you doubt it, ask yourself, “How horrible would things have to get for how many living beings on this planet for me to break down and sob?”  I don’t know about you, but I think of myself as a fairly empathetic person who gets upset if an animal is mistreated.  But I can focus my eyes and ears on stories about thousands of innocent people dying in Darfur or Iraq and eat my dinner at the same time.  Isn’t that denial, folks?  Yeah, I know — we all need a little denial just to get us through the day.  It’s one of the holy sacraments of consumerism. 

 But I’m beginning to suspect we’re in it up to our necks.  Otherwise we would be marching and protesting and banding together to make our voices heard.  We wouldn’t sit there and say, “Oh, that’s awful.  Is American Idol on yet?”  At least I’d like to think we wouldn’t. So what does it take to respond, if not with anger, which is useless anyway, then with compassion and with a resolve to do SOMETHING to improve the lot of humans?  It seems to me that we’ve sedated ourselves so successfully for so long that we now have whole generations growing up thinking that reality TV beats the real thing.  Their parents can’t really help them sort things out because they’re too tired from working overtime to make the mortgage payment and hopefully avoid losing their good credit rating.  What is THAT about?

I know this — everyone I meet is too distracted almost all the time to focus on the one thing that counts — the quality of life on Earth.  It’s no longer possible to act as though what happens in equatorial Africa doesn’t affect us here in the U.S. On the level of Spirit, All is One.  So that even if we don’t necessarily know what’s bothering us, on the inner planes we are all suffering from the damage we are inflicting on each other as an interconnected part of the collective mind of this planet.

 Sometimes we just have to turn our focus to those areas of our lives that make us feel good about who we are.  I’m now finding that it no longer seems possible for me to separate the quality of my life from that of the other 6 billion souls.  Maybe that’s a good thing — if you choose to see it as an indication that we all are, indeed, one.