We are being shaken now. Perhaps shaken until we awaken. And some of us may feel more shaken than others. Some of us may feel overwhelmed. Uprooted, plucked or perhaps even dashed.
If you are at the front line of the pandemic, my heart goes out to you. Thank you for being where you are right now, and for all you are doing in service to others and your community.
The rest of us each have our own response-ability. The responsibility to help the frontliners as best we can, through innovation or material support or by containing the numbers through staying at home, the response-ability of making and wearing home-made masks (in case we have the virus and don’t realize we are spreading it), the responsibility to presence all the feelings arising in ourselves and others and the response-ability to hold enough space for these feelings to be digested or to settle.
How can we do this?
Here are some drawings that may help.
Image A: This is where we are now
Image: Katsushika Hokusai’s The Great Wave off Kanagawa (1829)
Image B: This is where we are aiming for
Vishnu, as himself, as the thousand headed snake of eternity and the cosmic ocean
Now squint your eyes.
Do you notice any similarities between the two images?
It’s probably the same place! Just Image B is a higher resolution. (Has more clarity.)
In image A we feel swamped. Totally overwhelmed. Our solid ground is in danger of disappearing. Overwhelmed by feelings. And/or overwhelmed by information.
In image B we feel more on top of things. Perhaps we are starting to wake up to the game.
Here, the enlightened one, Vishnu, sees the game, (the thousand headed serpent, Ananta-Sesha)
and that he is the game
and the master
at the same time.
All of us are somewhere between A and B right now.
And perhaps there is also a battalion of angels hanging around to help us. Actually we all are these angels. We just haven’t noticed yet because we are so busy playing our unique part.
Our part in what?
Being Wind or Air (spreading wild or calm thoughts)
Being Earth ( solid ground for others…. perhaps resistant to change.)
Being Water (feeling, nurturing, flowing. Or sometimes flooding. Perhaps driven by Wind to re-carve Earth.)
Being Fire (spirited, transformative, innovative, re-creating through destruction.)
Which role are you playing now?
Earth, Air, Fire or Water?
Or are you holding space by being pure presence. The void. like the gap between 2 exponential curves, an open window for infinite potential to come through.
To give yourself and others more space to calm down. And more space for a higher level of intelligence to land.
These are all ways you can help others, or hinder them if you over-play your part.
What to do about fear?
Some of us may feel frozen by fear.
If you feel frozen right now, honor and thank your ancestors. At some point way back, this is how they survived. You are here now because this strategy worked for them then. But it may not work for you now. It may be time to shake out all that fear and reclaim a rich inheritance of energy from your lineage.
If you feel you are being shaken more than other people, again thank your ancestors. It could be that your predecessors put stronger survival structures in place that were really successful and perhaps useful for eons. Some of us need a bit more shaking now to free ourselves from old habits or to dissolve old structures that are now no longer useful.
What’s really going on and who is to blame?
There is no time for blame. (2)
In our hearts we’ve prayed for this
For our precious Earth to keep its forests
For the oceans and poles to stay cool
For us humans to wake up
For us all to open our hearts
To find the courage to put shame aside
and dissolve old grievances…
To connect with each other, collaborating beyond space and time….
Moving from Freeze to Fight or Flight or Flow.
Which way are you going to go?
Join us for two free calls with Markus Hirzig
Topic: Digesting Fear with Markus Hirzig
Many of us don’t feel fear, instead we project it onto others as danger, or blame. Or we numb ourselves with alcohol or news or dissociate in order to feel safe due to past experiences. The problem is, fear shuts our minds down so we can’t do anything new or think in new ways to bring more intelligence and innovation into our community or the world in general.
What can we do to become more conscious of what we are feeling, or not feeling, and how can we digest these un-integrated feelings so as not to project our past onto the future?
Markus is a senior mentor who has been helping people digest and integrate fear for many years.
Wednesday 8 April
Access the replay here
Some tools and resources
1. Know yourself
a. Your inner GPS
Gratitude (for what is)
Pattern Recognition (of what is) (understand your polyvagal ancestral program or your fingerprints pattern)
Surrender (to the feeling)
(Be here now without thought. Feel whatever is arising and allow it to pass through you. You are the sky not the cloud passing through.)
b. Know your current role
Are you being Earth, Air, Fire, Water or the Void (Spaciousness/pure potential)?
Are you being the wave (feeling overwhelmed) or the same Water with more space and less thought (wind) ?
Are you being the solid rock or mountain (old habits or structures now feeling threatened)?
Are you being the wind (stirring up the storm with frenzied thought)?
Are you being the fire (transforming and re-creating)?
Are you being the Buddha (feeling awake and response-able)
What is your response-ability?
Are you able to respond: To reach out to help. To reach out for support. To take positive action. To be a global witness? To hold space? To bring a higher future into the present moment?
2. Build resilience. This video by Thomas Huebl is helpful: Honoring Our Fear, Finding Our Resilience In Times of Crisis and Pandemic
watch here
Some key points:
“….We have been thrown into a river. If it feels too overwhelming we reach out to support each other while we are swimming. We don’t have time to look back and point fingers. We are all swimming in this river together and need to be fully present and support each other to survive.” He also said our spiritual practice is our resilience. It helps us swim. we have far more intelligence as a collective. Regarding under equipped medical teams, he said we need to provide relational support to the care givers while we are locked down. We need to be present for each other without trying to give advice. Just being there and feeling each other’s presence we co-regulate each other. Advice often separates us. Heartfelt connectivity creates relaxation. What can we do about fear? “Ground yourself in the body through breath. I slow down my exhaling and follow my breath into my body. Presence allows me to digest my overwhelm….Yes there is collective fear but it shows me my own fears which are often related to past trauma. The collective trauma field is speaking all the time and it has clouded our thinking. The work for many in lockdown is to both individually and collectively presence and help integrate undigested collective trauma from the past. Co-regulation and group presencing enables tremendous healing for all of us. For example, as laid out in Otto Scharmer’s book TheoryU Also, the medical teams need to take time each day to attune to each other as a group. When you have more coherence in the group you are more intelligent and effective as a team.”
The replay of this call is on the website collectivepresencing.com.
Or check out the flow research collective on building resilience.
Created by a bunch of futurists and neuroscientists yet still teaching gratitude, breath work, and how to achieve flow states.
3.Set a clear intention. A couple of years ago I watched a panel discussion hosted by Sam Harris, on when AI might take over. Elon Musk really impressed me because, unlike everyone else, instead of giving a date or a length of time, he said: “Well, what would you like to happen?” Now that’s what I call clear thinking. Start with the end in mind. Then work backwards from there.
Here’s an excellent book on solving climate change that takes this approach. And is totally. do-able. A must read while in lockdown.
The Future We Choose: Surviving the Climate Crisis by Christiana Figueres and Tom Rivett-Carnac.
Thoughts, feelings and body sensations In Sync: Another must read is Winslow Eliot’s fine book Be Still on bringing the elements within you into sync. She’s completely in sync with Huebl’s 3 sync/4 sync approach.
4. Improve your mindset. Here’s an excellent post by futurist Peter Diamadis: Why I am hopeful, even optimistic As Peter points out, for the first time in millions of years of human history, people are working together against a common enemy. Scientists are sharing data and findings with each other before going to publication. Peter is coauthor of The future is faster than you think. Another must read during lockdown.
Perhaps the next big Xprize in planetary abundance could be how to connect humanity globally while enhancing our health and intelligence at the same time. (See next post on this.)
5. Also scroll down for other posts such as Safeguarding your family against covid, global social witnessing or the case for masks.
6. Lastly, an exercise from me from 2015 on turning up the dimmer switch in your heart.
There are no mistakes
Life happens for you not to you
“I said: what about my eyes?
He said: Keep them on the road.
I said: What about my passion?
He said: Keep it burning.
I said: What about my heart?
He said: Tell me what you hold inside it?
I said: Pain and sorrow.
He said: Stay with it.
The wound is the place where the Light enters you.”
― Rumi