I see a poll that claims Americans just don’t trust each other anymore.
Poll Reveals that Americans Don’t Trust Each Other Anymore
The poll is no surprise. How many decades have we been driving in our steel skins now, faster and faster on bigger and bigger roads, in a big hurry to get somewhere else?
Here’s another interesting article, about just how many Americans would rather live somewhere else!
The U.S. States People Want to Flee the Most
Geez! Check out Connecticut and Illinois!
I know I’ve told this story before, but I’ll tell it again. How, when I was like a bird flitting from place to place, tree to tree, I attended a talk by Gary Snyder in Jackson, Wyoming (where I had landed, I expected, briefly) and heard him say something like this: Pick a place, and dig in. Stop running around, escaping.
I know way too many people, including some of my own relatives, who assume that the reason they’re unhappy is because they’re in the “wrong” place. Well, I want to say, maybe. Or maybe it’s because you never really allowed yourself to settle in, to put a root down from crown down through root chakra into the center of the Earth. Maybe it’s because you’re still running — from some aspects of yourself that you prefer to remain unconscious. Well guess what? Your unconscious IS your body, and your body IS the Earth! So preferring to remain unconscious IS to prefer to remain split off from your body, the Earth. Bingo. The old Cartesian “I think, therefore I am (therefore only my thinking is me), is alive and well in the 21st century. And who said academic philosophy was abstract? Hell no, academic philosophy reflects common-sense, a so-called “common sense” where we have no senses in common! Or, we think we don’t. Actually, we’re all connected, on the unconscious level. We’re all in dreamland, together. That’s the big joke. And the joke’s on us.
No matter where we are, there seemingly are a lot of godawful things — and people — we can point to, as not like us, not worthy of us, or crushing us in some way. Equally, no matter where we are, we can center, ground, open our hearts to allow the vastness to enter and rush through us — and it will, you bet it will; once the intent is set for Love to steal in, it will, bringing the miraculous capacity to transform the entire atmosphere in which “we live and move and have our being.”
And yet, and yet! It’s not just when we’re in our cars that we feel separated, or in our homes, fending off the big bad world outside, or inside ourselves, blaming everything and everything else for our current dis-ease. Especially now, in the past few years, has the sense of solipsistic isolation increased, gone viral.
How many times, while out walking, has the person who walked by me been reading his/her cell phone, or listening to music on his/her ipod. Not only are they oblivious to the birds as they call out the new morning, it’s as if we don’t exist for one another. As if we are all strangers, with tiny little virtual worlds at our fingertips, and no touching, heart to heart.
Except when we’re not.
Whenever puppy Shadow and I meet someone on our morning walks, if they are not entranced by tiny devices, then, when I look into their eyes, and smile, and say hello, they do too, sometimes breaking into an astonished grin that feels as if it’s been stored in some closet somewhere, uninvited.
(I especially like saying hello to young black men, since they are so surprised when I, an “older” white woman, turns out to be not just friendly, but welcoming.)
This practice, of saying, and truly meaning, hello, and good morning, to “perfect strangers” as we pass each other by, I have mentioned often here. And in fact, it’s probably my most significant daily spiritual practice. On any one walk, I get to have this meeting/greeting at least several times, and sometimes dozens!
And each mutual greeting lifts the heart.
And each time the heart lifts the atmosphere shifts, subtly, kindly. The matrix lines of force that hold us apart dissolve, however briefly.
Which brings me to the subject of this post.
After I posted about our wonderful early morning Green Acres Neighborhood Solstice gathering, I got a number of comments that struck me as completely missing the point of what we are doing here, and how we do it. The comments were in the form of, “Gee you must have nice neighbors!” — the implication being that if only I had such nice neighbors I could also have a nice early morning Solstice gathering, or whatever . . .
The point is, folks, there are nice people living everywhere, even on your block or in your apartment building! They may not have the same education, or interests, or prejudices, or familiarity with various levels at which the world is operating, as you do. They may be just as preoccupied with all sorts of weird, difficult stuff as you are — but so what! They are human, you are human, we are all human, and we are in the business of transforming the atmosphere, so that Trust, an old and venerable attitude, is once again establishing itself into this earthly commons. And so that, eventually, we can all get our needs met by expressing ourselves fully into the world, sharing who we really are with one another — to everyone’s surprise and delight! The sharing economy is above all, that.
Our NEW WORLD ORDER is an altered frequency field, an atmosphere of allowing, trusting, giving, receiving, its energies swirling to and fro, immersing, including, relating. The beautiful natural way that Nature self-organizes all her species and scales can include humans, too. And will if we just stop trying so hard to be “safe” (controlled, separate) and take that first trusting leap into our Mother’s welcoming arms.
