WINTER NEWSLETTER

1st half of Winter (November 6 - February 5)
Element of WATER
Revealing unknowns, chaos, innovation and creativity
CHANGE

THE STRUCTURE OF BELIEF: THE WINTER OF AMERICA

What an amazing time we are in! This newsletter is devoted to the Winter of America, and the optimistic belief that we can collaboratively recreate our country to better reflect our highest choices.

Fall is a time of revealing structures. As leaves lose their chlorophyll, their true colors are revealed. As the leaves drop from the tree, the true structure of the tree is revealed. During this time it is easy to see if there are limbs that are weak or broken. If there are too many new limbs for the tree to support, winter is a great time to see and prune for maximum health. Winter is a time of pulling in - of survival, doing only what is necessary as we gather strength for the coming spring. Like a well that has been depleted, we need to allow our Water to seep in and fill us, so that we can provide nourishment to the dreams we plant in the spring.

In the spirit of fall, the form of our structures are being revealed, often to our combined denial. I am going to address what I see to be the biggest cracks in the foundation of our collective community.

Us vs. Them

At it’s heart, the Democratic party stands for social responsibility. At it’s heart, the Republican party stands for personal responsibility. The Democrats are good at making people feel included; part of something larger and more meaningful. The Republicans are good at making people feel exclusive; that they are unique – the “special” snowflake. The Democrats stand for the idea that we are global citizens, players in a larger venue. The Republicans stand for the archetypal hero, off on his own having unique experiences that change him and make him different and exceptional. And before I go any further, let me be clear about one thing – both parties have nearly destroyed the integrity of what they stand for. That in large part comes from outdated structures, which are now collapsing.

Observing the circus going on around this election, I ask myself this question: why do we have to choose between personal or social responsibility? When did those things become separate? Are we not asked in our own lives to be both socially and personally responsible? As parents, aren’t we putting tremendous energy into raising children who understand and implement those philosophies? Then why, in the most important job of our nation, are we being asked to separate these two things and choose between them? This is a polarity that is no longer sustainable. We MUST learn to meld these two areas of ourselves together in an AND rather than an EITHER/OR.

There is such hope

Whenever I hear tales of doom and gloom, and “oh, this will take a long time to recover from”, or “things will never be the same”, I silently cheer. Why would we want to “recover” back into such a sick structure? Remember, the generations who are coming into their own were brought up on films like The MATRIX, What Dreams May Come, Starwars – movies that are moving their thought processes beyond the baby booming ideas of nuclear family, security and America as the exceptional country of the World. Those of us who grew up with the Depression-era thinking, the 50’s nuclear family model and the “work the best years of your life at a job you don’t care about so that you can retire and be taken care of”….our world no longer exists! The environment has changed, in large part by technology and new thought patterns. 40 years ago a wave of ideas swept through our nation, in large part fueled by an unpopular war. Today, a similar wave is happening. These waves are connected. If those of us who went through the 60’s can remember being part of something bigger, can remember the delicious passion of wanting things to change, perhaps we can align with the young people of today who have taken those feelings even further. If you are in your 40’s or 50’s, and have children, believe me when I tell you your children do not think as you do. The technology they have grown up with is not technology to them – it is an extension of their brain process. As such, they do not respond to the same things that motivate us; they do not have the same fears, and they do not have the same limitations. Every day I hear “oldtimers” talk about how spoiled this generation of kids is, I laugh. How many times did we hear that in the 60’s? The 70’s? The 80’s? Every single generation hears it. The thing is, the youth of today have had a tremendous amount of practice in reality shifting. All those hours on computer games? They have taught and are teaching our children that if reality is indeed an illusion; if we each have our own reality going on, then the big game is really about how do we accommodate all these different realities with the resources we have! Or, maybe, how do we tell a story that EVERYONE wants to participate in? I’am not sure it is possible, but it beats the either/or paradigm in my book!

Here's the other thing - the world is changing, in large part because the children of the techno-age are creating it. There are things we must let go of, because they are out of time. Imagine what would happen if every tree in your yard refused to give up its leaves at the end of the fall? If it stubbornly held onto them, and forced the chlorophyll into the leaves, determined to keep those leaves up all winter, because it had put so much time and energy into making them in the first place. Imagine. By spring, that tree would be so exhausted, there would be no resources left for any new growth. The cost of maintaining those leaves over the winter would pretty much wipe that tree out. We are like those trees - we must gracefully release certain ideas that are no longer relevant. The biggest one, in my opinion, is that we cannot take care of ourselves as we age. We are designed as humans to manifest exactly what we need when we need it. We have forgotten that we have this power, because we have been brainwashed into thinking we are supposed to have more than we need. This is a relatively new idea - less than a hundred years old - yet one we violently defend. What if it's time to let go of that idea? What if we embraced the thought that we could always manifest what we needed when we needed it? I sincerely hope that those of us who can remember the potential of our youth can align with the youth of today and birth a new consciousness.

What's next?

How about a country where personal and social responsibility are NOT exclusive to one another? How about a world where the playing field is level? How about a world where natural resources are valued and held in trust? (for example, Ecuador just passed a law giving natural resources the same rights as humans. How cool is that??) Personally, I would gladly pay Russia $1000 per year to keep the Siberian forests standing, creating oxygen for the rest of the world. I would however insist that anybody - corporation or business or private citizen - USING that oxygen for profit must pay a tax – a tax that would pay us all dividends, which then supported the forests.

You see, we as Americans have withdrawn our belief in our government. Each of these polarities – the left and the right - has withdrawn its belief in the government – belief that the government could actually be the balance point between us. Once we believed in our government, and for many years we had a good balance. But our underlying foundation is rotten, and so we must understand why it is rotten, then find a new way to believe. Without our belief, government cannot evolve and will only reflect our own immature fighting and need to defend our position.

Because let’s face it. We are all carrying the seeds of tribalism – fear of the unknown, and fear turns to hatred when it is not recognized and given enough information to evolve. I believe we are the repositories of all of our ancestors unexpressed dreams – their hopes, their desires, their hatreds, their fears – all sweeping across generational lines to end up smack dab in our collective emotional self. And because we are as ignorant of emotional evolution as we are of the true nature of electricity, we are doomed to run on our imprinting while trying to justify it. What a lot of energy, to find reasons to justify the fear of “the other”!

So, it really doesn’t matter who wins this election. There are only two ways we can go with it, regardless of the winner. We can stay polarized in our perspective, and, if our guy wins, we can smugly wait for him to “fix” the problems we face. If “the other” guy wins, we can invest our belief into “I want him to fail”. And exactly half of the population will be doing just that. So there is no winner – not a president, not a country, not a racial evolutionary leap that is so close some of us are already drinking from its nectar.

Or, we can do this. We can choose, that no matter who wins, we will invest our belief that WE, as a country, can evolve beyond the dualism, and we can hold a space that whoever gets elected can evolve with us. We can become the driving force that STEERS the evolution of our country. By believing that our leaders will follow our own lead; by continuing to look at our own lives and change what no longer works; by demanding accountability from ourselves and each other, thereby extending that accountability to our elected leaders; why, I believe we can not only weather this economic collapse, we can come through this stronger than before. There is NO LACK OF RESOURCES – there is only a lack of imagination in how we use those resources.

On a recent shamanic journey, I asked for and received some interesting information about the current changes. I was confused about the upcoming election, the wildly divisive responses to it, and people’s consistent anger at the government. I could FEEL the millions of rituals going on – the traditional churches, the pagans, Wall Street, secret societies – all of them yanking and pulling to manipulate reality. I felt ashamed and exhausted – who was I, to try to manipulate reality, thinking that my story was better than someone else’s? So I asked for some clarity. The answer I received was, “it’s your story. You each have your own story, and you should be loving your story. If you don’t love your story, rewrite it, but please do not make somebody else responsible for your personal happiness. All stories are expressions of (insert deity of choice here) (I’ll use God/Goddess as that is how I experience this energy). God/Goddess does not choose between stories – the stories are God/Goddess’ own experience, being played out through every expression of life. Your only job is to take responsibility for your own story and love it”.

I have thought about this advice a lot in the past six weeks, and realize that as long as I see government, or religion, or anyone else for that matter, as the bad guy, there is some part of my story that I don’t love. So I am now working at making my story one I can embrace fully. I am challenging myself that, no matter who wins the election, I can hold a space of belief for them that they can evolve and increase in consciousness immediately, and move from the “Caligula” energy of a ruler to the King Solomon energy. Rather than buying into the fear of a collapsing economy, I am calling upon my belief to find a better story to invest in. I do not know how I will respond in the days after the election, but I do know I will not sit around waiting for someone else to fix my world. I will fix it myself.

And, on this oh so historic election night, not knowing who will win this election, I send you a challenge. I challenge you to take back your power and write your own story, a story that excites you, that makes you feel good about yourself, and that leaves the world a better place. A story that, when you leave this planet, is so rich and juicy that it nourishes you for a long time to come.

Peace to you!!

Cat

"Divine chaos is a course corrector, a way of bringing down the systems
that distraction built in order that they can be replaced with systems or
structures designed with conscious thought."

-Caroline Myss, "In Times Like These

"Not everything that is faced can be changed. But nothing can be changed until it is faced. "

James Baldwin