Be mindful of the company you keep. My world – and yours – is shaped by the conversations that we have and the people with whom we choose to have them. For my world to expand, I must first expand my conversations.
I don’t know about you but I have long tired of the blah blah blah… as we continue on, deep in our denial and mindless march to the edge of the cliff; waiting for someone – anyone! – to guide us out of and past the paralysis of our self-inflicted and intergenerational inability to act on our own behalf.; on the truth of our own experience. We keep searching for someone – anyone! – who will save us from ourselves.
Deep inside, there is an inalienable truth that is waiting to be released; to be heard and more importantly, to be acted upon. For me, that truth feels so important to claim, decipher and share and yet, as adept as I usually am at doing just that in a way that can quickly and easily be related to by others, this time I find myself lost in a heavy silence. Perhaps it is due to what I hold as the critical nature of this particular truth; the great sense of urgency that I know it carries; and the increasing tension in my body that is a reflection of the increasingly sprawling tension that I witness in the world around me. Surely, I am not the only one who knows the turmoil of this nameless truth!
There is no denying: we are a species in deep and imminent trouble. No amount of positive thinking, inspired trusting or bottomless hoping will change the course we’re on! WE are our own greatest hope. Only WE are The Ones, in our own lives, who can awaken to, reclaim and engage from a new perspective that will allow us to choose differently and forge a new reality. WE are The Ones now marked by the intention and stained with the capacity to change the conversation and create a very different world.
We are the only ones who will and can make that happen…. and yet, we flounder. We inch our way to significant and global devastation while we seek to discuss, consider, wonder, explore, ponder, discover, journey, converse, philosophize, hypothesize, and synthesize, etc…. waiting…. waiting…. fiddling away while Rome burns to the ground around us. Were we the only victims of our cavalier, mindless and numbed-out approach to living, it would be bad enough. But we’re not – and we’re taking with us the innocent life around us, as well as the as-yet unborn possibility of countless generations to come.
In my recognition of the immense task at hand; in my acceptance of seeing what I see, hearing what I hear and knowing what I know…. I stare into the abyss and ask myself: Is this it??? Is staring into it and fearing it and seeking to look away from it, enough? And from deep in my belly comes the undeniable truth.
The word ‘radical’ comes to mind. Since it will not go away, I looked it up in the dictionary. It speaks to notions of fundamental or going to the root to create ‘a radical difference’. Notions of thoroughgoing or extreme, especially with regard to change from an accepted or traditional form; an expression favoring drastic political, economic or social reforms; resulting in forming a (new) basis or foundation. And ultimately, ‘radical’ exists inherently in a thing or person, as an expression of character.
‘Radical’ is an adjective; a word used to describe or modify, to add depth or layers to a noun; a word that speaks to the essence of that which it is describing. In this case, ‘radical’ relates to notions of mind, of ideas, of states. It offers insight into an inner world as seen by an outer one. It reflects the inherent quality of ‘radical’ to effect, transform and have impact, simply as a result of that claim of state.
For many, the word ‘radical’ also carries the burden of a judgement of ‘unwelcomed’ – particularly when referring to women. In the global, fundamental, traditional cultural conditioning of women, ‘radical’ is not a word that is typically associated with being female. The conditioning of women streams from life-long mantras of ‘Be reasonable’, ‘One step at a time’, Slow down’, -Know your place!’, ‘How dare you!’, ‘Don’t overreact’, etc. One heaping shovelful piled on top of the next! Such daily, relentless and life-long droning of sound, far too often reinforced by the force of another’s hand, is the significant and profound opposite to the notion of ‘radical’. From that, you can imagine – or already know intimately – the internal cues that reveal the degree to which struggle and angst are alive and well, tearing at the body in some desperate final act of self-silencing.
The ‘original sin of being born female’ (as Ann Wilson-Schaef, would have said) drapes us in our hereditary cape of essential shame and unworthyness… and so, we shuffle along from one day to the next, waiting for permission to know that which is already and intuitively our truth; or to find someone else who will lead the way. In that life-sucking, soul-crushing state of being – even should that forever-longed-for permission come – we remain unable to move. We are crippled by our now self-imposed inability to act; tethered to the life-long inertia that leaves us limp and lifeless in our lackluster lives… and in our decaying world.
Enough! Enough with the weeny, small, incremental, take-your-time-you-have-forever approach to creating change in our lives! Enough with the small-willed and meager expectations of believing that we are not deserving of the fundamental, essential right to LIVE as we see fit; that is part of the essential, blood-flowing and organic nature of our very being! And enough with the waiting and the hoping; with the painful efforts to hold ourselves back, keep ourselves small and bind ourselves in those moments when we notice that someone else has forgotten to do it to us and so, we do it to ourselves.
Women matter. Women count. What women think…and imagine… and envision… matters and counts. And more importantly, what women do, changes the world.
In a recent speech given by Helen Caldicott, she speaks of her belief that throughout history, meaningful social change – the change that allows LIFE to continue and grow – has come from women. Women have been The Ones to lead… to act… to propel others to action… and once completed, have been written out of the story and fade into the background once again, hoping the next crisis will not call. I believe this is true. So much of what is occurring in the world today, – at the hands of the greedy, gluttonous, insatiable, violent, power hungry men who run the world – has occurred because we, as women, have not been willing or able to rise to the full measure of our own potency and demand: ENOUGH!
We are still the hand that rocks the cradle. THAT is an inalienable, unquestionable, organic truth that cannot be changed. We are the givers of Life at many levels – and it is our birthright to OWN that, in ourselves!
When we birth our children, it is messy. And when we do, we do not seek to hide that or find fault with that or try to remove the impact of that very gooey process of Life, arriving. Why can we not recognize and own that THAT IS how we give birth… how we create… from new human beings, to new ideas and to new ways of being in our world. We are intimately connected to that which we birth. We are profoundly and forever AFFECTED BY that which we birth, unable to divorce ourselves from the very impact of what we create. We are tied to… bound with… our creations, from the moment of their intention until we draw our last breath. Perhaps THAT is a process of creation that has for too long been lost to our species. We have come to think that what we created could be dismissed or ignored or unclaimed; that it could be left to itself and still thrive and sustain LIFE. As we look around the world, we see our bastard creations; creations whose impact have been abandoned to their own demise. Creations crippled and twisted from the absence of any intimate connection to those who bore them, along with their outcomes and impacts. We can no longer do that – our world is dying.
Radical! Women choosing to rise to the much larger occasion of their own intuitive, organic, intimate creations and owning them, now! Women ceasing to take forever to decide… and even longer to design the alternative. Women standing in the moment; welcoming the chaos and the intensity that NOT turning away will bring. Women marking off their time for themselves; to own what lives inside them and what moves them to live differently!
Radical woman! Radical EVE! Radical EVEolution!
It’s time. That time is NOW! That’s where I stand. And I know that as I take that stand, there will be others. There will be more to come.
For now, be the Radical EVE you are born to be! Vote with your feet and your wallet! Find your voice! Dare to ruffle a few feathers!
Look around you. Seek each other out! See what you see. Hear what you hear. Know what you know. And ACT meaningfully and daringly, for yourSelf. Being willing and able is the essential formula to manifesting a different life. One without the other leaves us impotent, helpless and yet again, a candidate to be victimized. Choose otherwise, for yourSelf.
Look inside you. Turn into the layers of inner cues that must continue to be ignored in order to remain silent. Look at yourself and to yourSelf, to determine the path of your unique and singular choices. At every turn, choose mindfully. In every enquiry, choose intelligently and not from habit. With every doubt, choose to trust your own inner truth and let the suffocating external references stand silent in their irrelevance.
In the coming months, pay attention to all those moments when you compromise; capitulate; surrender the truth of your own experience. Pay attention to all the times you lie – to yourself and others – in the hopes that the lie will bring you a better life. Nothing powerful ever came from deception – so pick another path!
Pay attention to all the ways you stall… hedge your bets…. hide behind a half-truth or one withheld. Pay attention to how you defer to another; silence your inner truth; abdicate to the so-called ‘better view’ of another – then resent and gripe for months to come.
Pay attention… to all that goes on inside of you: the chats you have with yourself that you dare never say out loud to another; the gripping in the pit of your stomach; the migraine headaches; the joint pain; the vague yet debilitating sense of lifelessness; the avoidance and dodging to ensure that you need not declare yourself and be seen for the truth of who you really are.
Choose wisely who you spend your time with! Your conversations shape your reality. What you allow yourself to talk about, becomes the truth by which you live. Small conversations make for small lives. Look around you and find someone with whom to engage who will make room for the bigger, uncertain, chaotic, life-altering conversations that will make room for YOU to emerge into your own potential! Stop putting it off – you have little to lose and much to gain!
Take action on your own behalf! Dare to consider that there is another way. Care enough to test the waters and discover your intuitive capacity for movement in flow. Reach out to someone! You don’t have to do it all; and you don’t have to do any of it, alone.
Radical! Enough of the teeny weeny thinking… that leads to the teeny weeny steps we take… that leave us with teeny weeny lives. Coming in 2014, Radical EVEolution will come to you; and will invite you to rise to the full measure of your own potential… and choose! Choose now! Choose often! Choose big! And get on with the life of your own design.
As our world continues along a path of profound and life-altering change, you’re going to be invited to take a stand, in your own unique way. You’re going to be asked to find your edge; to let go of your abiding ability to tolerate the intolerable. And you’re going to be asked to take a stand in your own life and be The One to engage that life, meaningfully.
Take the hand that rocks the cradle and put it on the throttle of your own life. Nothing less will do. If you are not willing and able to be The One in your own life, then who will?
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