What if it's the stress, judgment and separation that is the illusion? Seriously, what if that isn't just woo-woo bulls**t talk?
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I really enjoy learning more about life is like for other people. It's important in the growth of my empathy and in widening the acknowledgement of and celebration of other lifestyles, cultures, points of view, etc. There are plenty of pros and cons to the internet, and one big pro is how we can use it to educate ourselves bit by bit and feel connected to people thousands of miles away. Of course I'm preaching to the choir, here, but I love that someone in Hartford could get the sense of community they need from people in Oslo, Nice, Lisbon, Austin, Reykjavík.
A friend of mine has been in a long phase of refusing to take in much news, be it local, national or global, and that decision has its pros and cons, especially because in some cases, my friend has formed opinions on things about which she knows none of the details or possible repercussions if her ideas were somehow enacted. Beyond news media, though, there is also a wide variety of essays, blog posts and videos from which one could glean more understanding of what it's like to be polyamorous if the reader is not, to be pansexual, gender fluid, or what it's like to have Crohn's disease, to be raising twelve children, perhaps both, living in a region that gets a lot of snow, traveling the world while a Black American or maybe the reader has never known poverty and wants multiple day-in-the-life glimpses, even if it's through little facts or habits sprinkled into a post in the Personal section of the Huffington Post or a photo slideshow from a journalist who interviewed people of varying socioeconomic statuses who were all in line at the San Francisco-Marin Food Bank, all willing to say a little about their current situations. Consider what laughs and lessons in compassion could be had when listening to Dave Asprey interviewing people, or conversations between two professional drag queens and their friends, colleagues and other artists on The Bald & the Beautiful. I think Rich Roll is a great listener on his podcast, from which I keep hearing generous back-and-forth that feeds minds.
I absolutely love learning, whether it's for fun work (researching to write a story about a town's debate over the building of a pipeline in their soil, which included aspects of being an in-the-dirt environmental scientist, as well as going down a rabbit hole of information about yet another way multiple governments have trampled Native peoples for the unearthing and transportation of oil) or just fun, like the above.
I'm under the impression that I really do understand how someone can believe that the easiest way to get through life and feel good is to keep your world tiny in a sense, committing to being uninformed, and I'm not interested in making an effort to veer any specific person away from that lifestyle. As you can imagine, I have friends and relatives who function that way, but I couldn't help noticing that most of those friends and family members will be so bothered by certain behaviors they see, certain headlines; some of them will generalize that, for example, people don't ask 'how are you' or say anything friendly to the barista at the coffee shop drive-thru "anymore", where is this other cultural shift coming from, or they might form a firm-sounding opinion on a topic about which they've chosen to learn little or nothing, and I posit that these people in my life believe that maintaining a tiny, uninformed life is the most natural way for them, but that in fact, it is the opposite of natural. I don't think they're looking around and forming opinions simply out of habit but instead because we are all connected due to being energetic beings, and so many of us have empathy as well. I'm wondering if these people just don't have the tools with which to manage their stress and their ratio of self-love/love for others, that they struggle with keeping life small and these moments of judging others are, um...how do I put this...runoff? A body can only contain so much cortisol, adrenaline and whatever other stress chemicals, and most of us humans are so hard on ourselves, that harshness builds up within you, so why wouldn't some of that judgment and stress leave the body via lashing out at others?
In Cincinnati in 2018, a mother said some profound things I agree with in regards to the teenager took her son's life just for $60 and a bag of food. The woman approached the shooter at his hearing, with his permission, gave him a hug and made it clear she wanted to communicate with him during his prison time. The quote I want you to see from Cincinnati.com is:
“Those young men – although they took my son’s life in the manner they
did – we need to fight for them. Because they are going to come back
out. And they will be older. But if they have no light, then this same
disease is going to repeat itself and they are going to take another
person’s child’s life and eventually their own,” Rukiye said. “And every
mother’s heart must feel this.”
If we each made the effort to change some of our thought processes, doing what Dr. Joe Dispenza refers to as "thinking about what they think about", we would find that so many of our selfish choices, so much of our violence and short-sightedness, stem from each of us feeling and believing that we are separate from others energetically, emotionally, and perhaps ethically, morally. We keep perpetuating, in our own minds, the idea that we are on our own, that there is no such thing as collective consciousness and that community, that unity, are simply groups established by standalone people who put in effort to feel togetherness. I just...maybe this is entrenched thinking of my own, but I just keep getting the message that the attitude that's actually forced is not the unity but the fear, the mindset of scarcity, the "me and mine against the world" survival mentality. What if it's the stress, judgment and separation that is the illusion? Seriously, what if that isn't just woo-woo bulls**t talk?
Of course we can't/shouldn't all be seekers. If we all had the same personality, that would be such a boring planet of mind clones, yuck. My point is that we could all benefit from rethinking beliefs about how life works and how to prioritize money. We could all benefit from changing how we see success, empowerment, adaptation, emotional intelligence and stress. Are you enough? If we could relax, get negative ions coursing through our bodies, laugh and
deeply embrace and celebrate ourselves, we would have fewer things in life about which to get all, "I hate people", "Why would anyone do that?", "What is this world coming to?", yada, yada. I ask that every day, you and I each reconsider when we catch ourselves in limiting thoughts and learning about what life is like for others really helps.
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