Staying conscious in a collective coma

I had breakfast today, with a woman who has become a deeply meaningful part of my life. I would trust her with my life and, perhaps more importantly, I would trust her with the lives of my sons. I do not say that easily or loosely!

My time with her is always a great adventure of discovery, about myself. She and I both know that as we share aspects of our lives, we listen to the other knowing that we are hearing expressed some aspect of our own consciousness, playing itself out in the life of the other. I’ve discovered that sometimes, when I talk to myself, I need to hear the words through the voice of another.

We talked about family. We talked about responsibility and commitment. We shared stories about the Holiday Season…about Christmas past and present…and about the experience relative to the commercial hype. We concluded that it was time for us to create new rituals for ourselves and the people we love, that would better reflect what we have come to hold as valuable.

I left breakfast with a sense of being real. I felt that in the great hypnotic trance that is my cultural conditioning, I had just had an awakened moment. It reminded me of days long gone when I would swim from one end of the pool to the other, holding my breath, and finally breaking through at the far end, gasping for air! In that moment, I could breathe again and knew the essential nature of breathing. There are times when I had taken it for granted and just forgot its place in my existence.

Over our third cup of coffee, we agreed that we created it all! The new directions and the capitulations; the joys and the resentments; the frenzy and the tranquility. None of it belonged to anyone other than each of us, in our own way.

We talked about change and transformation. We explored our experiences in corporate environments, marveling at how robust these constructs of collective agreement are as they continue to unfold, unchecked in their unspoken determination to keep us in line. How else do we feed a collective driven by consumption?

And finally, we agreed: it is not about trying to fix or change the world we have – it is about creating the world we want. When we withdraw ‘energy’ (life force, mana, prana, attention, focus, etc) and we cease to engage with something, that thing begins to fade away and disappear. Nothing can survive without the energy that feeds it. However, when we invest energy in bracing against or fighting something, it gains strength. A wise person once said : "What we resist, persists."

We agreed : we must give ourselves permission to walk away. No arguments, no need to explain, no rants or big investments in getting anyone to understand – just walk away. Sometimes, walking away can be as simple as ‘No, thanks!’. Or, it can sound like ‘No more!’. Or it can be as simple as redirecting my attention to those people, places and things that feed my soul! But no matter how we looked at it, we concluded that the two things that present in all of life’s situations is that a) my life is always about me (just like her life is always about her); and b) there is nothing to struggle with.

I am keenly aware, particularly at this time of year, of how difficult it is to NOT be drawn into the collective consciousness…the collective coma….that causes us to second guess ourselves; to abandon all that is true for us and stumble into the march-step of those around us; to silence ourselves rather than speak when what we have to say causes the conversations around us to pause abruptly! And yet, I know deep inside me, that the future lies in learning how to do just that.

I am so grateful to have, on the holodeck of my experience, those who are willing to come face-to-face with themselves. In those moments, I become more.

Breathing is good……