The yogi who is addicted to abusive relationships, the organic paleo chef who inhales cocaine after dark, the eco spa that offers Botox, the bankers who ‘cash it all in’ to become hippies. Whichever road you take the path to enlightenment is lined with irony.
If you think your self worth and the worth of those around you is directly linked to whether you can afford to shop at Wholefoods and Lululemon then you’re also destined to relive the same lessons in your next life, if there is one. Hemp hessian bags and sanskrit tattoos do not guarantee you red carpet access at the pearly gates.
Whether you drink organic beer, grow sustainable dope, choose bamboo over plastic, say no to carbs, choose vegan or drink filtered water you can be guaranteed of one thing. You will be judged by those who choose not to. But there lies the key, choice.
Though supposed freedom of choice in this online world is constantly swayed by rules disguised as affirmations and memes that shout at us from every cyber corner. Be happy, always believe, do what you love, create yourself, be strong, choose life – as though two words on a 500 pixel wide image can pull you out of the depressed funk your doctor is feeding toxic pharmaceutical chemicals to, in order to keep you under the delusion of happy and the pharmaceutical company CEO behind the wheel of his Ferrari.
Who can blame us all for going mad? Western women starve themselves by choice while women in developing nations battle famine just to feed their kids. Asian women spend money on carcinogenic skin lightening creams while caucasians bask in the cancer inducing sun in the hope of getting darker.
Cancer saving cannabis oil is illegal while cancer causing toxins in processed foods are not. You’re legally killed for your sexuality, gender and religion in some countries of the world and in others you’re worshipped for being able to take the perfect selfie.
All the while the earth, our home, is being injected with chemicals from fracking, pesticides from spraying, nuclear fallout and carbon emissions. At the same time forests are replaced with concrete as though when we eventually need them back we can just purchase them from aisle six of the local mega market or with a click of an online e-commerce button.
Really, we should be proud. We’ve killed off entire species from the planet, murdered defenceless animals because someone told us their horn will give men bigger horns in the bedroom, painfully tortured animals in the name of science and kept humans in prison isolation in the name of politics.
Something is seriously off here and it starts with our heart.
Money, greed, ego, fame and their advertising friends have muddied our intuition and become the distracting driver for many searching for acknowledgement in this life who believe the size of your house, your breasts, your bank account and the number of likes on social media determines the size of your life.
What is missing is connection. Without the heart pumping blood to all your connected organs your life would not exist. If your entire body is not connected to your heart then you are physically dead. But according to the HeartMath Institute there is more to the heart than just muscle, there is intuition.
Research shows that the heart can intuitively predict what is going to happen if we listen to it. Participants were given randomly chosen images ranging from calm to violent and the heart registered the correct physical emotional response five to seven seconds before the said image appeared. Go figure.
But we are so busy numbing ourselves with sugar, toxins, booze and drugs from the chaos of the judgemental and terrifying world we have created that we fear vulnerability and ignore our heart’s intuition. Yet it is in the vulnerable heartfelt moments that we grow.
It takes courage to sit with an open heart and say “I am here, love me” or “I can see you” or “this is me” with no attachment to an outcome. You can do a thousand downward dogs and still not get connection if you live in fear of fear and ignore your gut instinct.
That intuition or instinct that says “she’s really just not that into me” or “I don’t really want this high paying job” or “this person is dangerous for me to be around.”
To get what you truly want you must risk and the risk is in the not knowing. Risk is where life is, where the cells of the body are alive, non toxic and fully organic. They are living as they are mean to, with energy, without blocks and with flow and you can’t control that no matter how hard you try to squeeze it into a route you think you can direct. Energy begets energy, good and bad, and risk is only risk because we fear fear.
But risk goes both ways. Accepting vulnerability in another takes compassion and compassion takes understanding. It is where judgement is suspended and acknowledgement in the flawed human condition lies. Compassion says “I see you and I understand”.
We can’t connect if we are stuck in the stories we tell ourselves individually, as a group, a society and a planet and we can’t connect if we live in fear of not being loved because of our financial situation or the size of our thighs.
No one ever lay on their death bed asking for more money or skinnier legs. They ask, instead, for those they love.
Like us, our world needs compassion and understanding. It doesn’t need more war, more hatred, more money driven drilling. It is vulnerable and it needs to be heard.
When the planet’s heart is heard then everything else flows with connection. It is why sunshine creates energy and plant life, why plant life feeds animals, why animals feed each other and why the seasons exist.
Play with that at your own life denying peril.
