Archive for March 2018
4 Things We Need To Do Now To REALLY Make This Country Great Again
I’m exhausted. Yes, from all of life’s stressors about earning a living, maintaining friendships (in a world where everyone is stressed and has no QUALITY time to spend with one another), caregiving family members who need vital help, yet also trying to balance lagging career activities, dates with my hubby, sleep and overall health. Well-being? HA! That’s a struggle lately for sure. I’m working on it…I did start back with some yoga recently…
Sound familiar? You are not alone. We each have our own list that sucks the life force right out of us. But really, it’s not just with our personal lives…it’s with our current society…really our entire culture as human citizens.
“Society”. I decided to look up the word because quite frankly we’ve so lost touch socially. It was defined as “the aggregate of people living together in a more or less ordered community”, of “a particular region”, or with “shared customs, laws, and organizations”. Hmmm. I decided I had better look up “culture”. It said, “arts and other manifestations of human intellectual achievement regarded collectively”.
Clearly our society has dramatically gone in the direction of “less” ordered. My mind jumped to the word “entropy”, defined as “gradual decline into disorder”, stemming from the thermodynamic measure of unavailable energy. I laughed inside. I didn’t start out to write about energy or physics. But the humor of my mind going there was not lost on me, since I usually post about the intersection where quantum physics (all things energy) meets psychology and spirituality.
My mind went back to contemplating our status as a society, and the defining characteristic of “shared”. Hmmm. I thought I’d better look that up too, since the “giving to another” aspect isn’t too evident today, especially in our political circus. Okay, we do “jointly possess” whatever laws are in place. Kind of. Well, I’ll give us that one and concede we are still a society, though quite entropic and plunging hastily into disorder.
But not only is that true for us in our American society, it seems overwhelmingly evident of us as a global culture. In our recent decline toward greater disorder, our status as a “collective” has perceptibly eroded.
To live as a collective, we need to care about one another as one large global family and work together toward our joint achievement in human intellectual pursuits. I believe most of us are literally sick and tired of the entropy created when energy is unavailable for greater human advances due to the degree of our “disorderedness”.
So, I’ve put together this list of 4 things we need to do to really make this country (and world) great again.
1. Realize our connectedness. If quantum physics has taught us anything, it is that we are connected. When you look at the energy out of which we are composed, it is fluid and without apparent physical boundary. Our building blocks we thought we were made of turned out to be energy “quanta”, bundles of light. Collectively and individually, we are in fact a body of light. And, our energies are continuously intermingling, like colors of a rainbow. Human, animal, plant, mineral…each kingdom connected and intricately interdependent upon one another as one rainbow system, one global collective.
2. We were designed to, and MUST, work cooperatively with one another and with nature. Each part in this collective system is a significant aspect of the whole. We each bring something of purpose, meaning and significance to our society, even our culture. (But how many of us believe that? Far too few. And I suspect this is an underlying reason for the rising trend in anger-generated mass shootings and retaliatory violence.)
The physicist David Bohm initially described this truth in the concept of the “universe as a hologram”, where the defining characteristic of a hologram overall is that “within each part lies the information for the whole”. The reason this matters to us in our daily lives is twofold. For one, this means YOU have access to the information embedded within the whole of the universe, just like our spiritual teachers have told us and why they have encouraged meditation or contemplation to receive this universal information. Two, what you receive (aka intuition) is usually meant for you, and designed to move through you out into the world for a purpose you will likely not realize until years have gone by. Which is why when you hold back, you hold our cultural collective human intellectual achievement back from evolving as it could. You are that significant.
Imagine if we each embraced, and took responsibility for, our individual unique perspectives, skills and talents. But instead of declining into the chaotic disorder of fanatical individualism, we humbly stood up to do our part while also standing side-by-side as others did their part in this multidimensional circle we call Earth. Respectfully recognizing what others bring to the table. Gladly, even “joyfully”, working together toward our collective benefit and cultural advancement.
For there is nothing that brings more joy than aligning with the whole. Whether linking mind to body, and mindbody to spirit. Or connecting one another in true fashion as a shared society and global culture. Tears of joy fall when I meditate on intentions of a cooperative whole, and see in my mind’s eye each person offering their best talent for the good of the all of us. Each person a shining bright light in the lantern of a country, and in the campfire of our planet.
3. Imagine if we replaced our outdated pre-internet political party way of doing things, with a more advanced election system. We simply don’t need political parties anymore. Before the internet we did, because we had to come together in smaller groups to exchange ideas, before our representative leaders could know our thoughts in Washington D.C. That is now obsolete. And, no parties, no need for party-based primaries, no need for PACs. Simply, clear majority vote rules. If we want, we could have nonpartisan primaries, or we could have top candidates who are only a few percentage points apart do a runoff vote. Today, we each could effectively elect another into a leadership position based on how well we believe she or he could advance our human collective. Our one vote would be as valuable as the next. There is no fundamental reason why, before filling out our ballot, we couldn’t compare a fact-checked website listing of candidates, their past accomplishments and interests for our country, as well as their qualifications and readiness for office. And vote our conscience as to who we think could potentially advance us, not individually, but collectively into greater “order” and synchrony. Instead of candidates having to waste their efforts raising money for campaigns and thinking up strategic ways to take down their running colleagues, they could focus on answering debate questions. They could devote their energy walking their talk to let us see who they really are. We wouldn’t even have to change much else about our election system or even our structure of government as established by our founding fathers to move us forward. Imagine our Congress and our Senate, each able to conduct business, without a party to worry about, with only a country and globe to wisely consider. Serving the whole as one collective, one body. In the words of Abraham Lincoln and Sam Houston, one house, one nation. I’m pretty sure if they had the internet back in those days, they would have used it as part of our process of government. Such great leaders would not have meant for us to stay totally in the 1700’s way of doing things. We now have more than enough ways to know the thoughts of the people! And, if we can send a Tesla into orbit, we have plenty of genius tech savvy folks we could put on solving the election meddling and security breach issues.
4. Respect. It’s a word hugely distorted these days, morphed into some peasant-to-king kind of admiration for another (usually some violent alpha dog), and used to hold others back from the circle.
Not too long ago, the word respect meant to convey noble attention and consideration, that is, highest regard for another. And this is what we need to get back to. True respect.
It is time we respect each and every one of us in this collective whole. We are all individually unique (another fact of physics, where even each atom of a single tree has a signature energy pattern). AND we are equally deserving of respect, attention and consideration. This doesn’t take much from us to improve in this area. This very day, we could:
- Respectfully, hold a door open for someone.
- Listen to someone express an opinion that contrasts with ours, without pushing them to change their point of view. We usually hear something we were meant to, in order to learn, grow and evolve.
- Smile. To the cashiers handing you your coffee. To the waiters bringing your lunch, when they probably should be studying for some college exam. Especially to those we haven’t met, but of course to loved ones who often get the worse version of ourselves.
- Be gentle and have patience. Citizenship begins with civility. In the playground, classroom, boardroom, and above all, in the halls of our Senate, Congress and White House. If we can’t be polite and courteous, something’s going on with us. We have become disordered and need to work on ourselves.
It starts and ends with us. We are the beginning and ending point for this collective circle of humanity and global citizenry. When we each take responsibility for bringing a better us to the circle, we can’t help but to initiate changes in others. Our energy is contagious, for better or worse. So let’s REALLY make this country (and world) great again.