When we become experts at ignoring reality...

                                 


It’s so easy to pretend like we don’t know what’s going on in the world. It’s so easy to distance ourselves from other people’s pain. It’s so easy to shift blame and responsibility onto someone else.

It’s so easy for this country to see pictures of starving children in third world countries and then go right back to throwing away a third of our food. It’s so easy to say we love animals and get upset about abandoned puppies and then turn around and eat meat from an innocent animal that was slaughtered more horribly than we could imagine. It’s so easy to ignore the fact that sex trafficking isn’t just an issue in Thailand and India, but that girls are getting used, abused, and killed right here in our cities and towns and neighborhoods.

Most of us our so comfortable and sheltered from the raw harsh reality of the world around us that even when we catch a glimpse of it we want to pretend it’s not there. Or we post some heated words on facebook or donate to a charity and think we’ve done our part and can move on and forget about it.

I have been on the other side. I have been the less-than-human junkie living on the street that everyone wanted to ignore. No one wanted my pain and brokenness to intrude on their safe, happy little world. And that’s just the problem: our society has created two worlds. One is the world we see portrayed in Hollywood, the white picket fence, successful businessman, American dream world where everyone complains about everything while even the poorest of them have more money, food, and luxuries than the rest of the population combined.

The other world is the underbelly, the world that exists in rotting trap houses and dark alleyways, the world where stability and safety are non-existent, the world where basic human rights are violated daily. The world where having a roof over your head is a luxury and food for the day is a blessing. The world where you can’t trust anyone, not even the police, and every day is a fight for survival.

We seem to think we could fix things by pulling everyone from the second world into the first world. But what we fail to see is that there are not two worlds. We are all part of the same world. We are all human beings. The CEO is no different than the homeless man outside his office building, and just a few adverse life circumstances could land him in the exact same position. By ignoring this and ignoring the blatant corruption and suffering around us, we are actively contributing to the problem. The person who stands by and watches abuse happen is just as guilty as the abuser.

Change starts with you. Change starts when you begin to see people and treat people differently. Change starts when you stop projecting what you want reality to be onto everything around you and become willing to see the world as it truly is. Change starts when you stop numbing and desensitizing yourself to the cruelty and suffering of others and begin to have compassion for every living thing.

Change starts when you stop thinking that what you do or don’t do doesn’t make a difference and you start taking responsibility for how your actions affect everyone and everything around you. Change starts when you stop living for your own comfort and start thinking of others. Change starts when you stop assuming someone else will do something someday and you become that someone who is doing something right now.

All the things I wish I could tell you.

     There burns inside of me a light and energy that I wanted so badly to translate into words so I could share it with others. I get so excited by the things I’m learning and so awestruck by the things I’ve seen that I want to shout them from the rooftops and tell the whole world what an incredible universe we’re living in. I am so grateful to have been awoken from the nightmare of half-consciousness I was living in that I want to wake everyone else up. My joy and excitement about existence is overflowing and I don’t want to experience it by myself.

     I want to be able to paint a picture of the world, a picture of life, that’s as vibrant and mind-blowing and intricately simple as I feel it to be. I want to be able to tell people things in a way that will make them understand it in their heart. To tell them that everything happens for a reason and for them to be filled with the same peace and confidence I get from knowing that. To tell them that they are perfectly loved and nothing they do can change that, and for them to then stop living in fear of rules and of making a mistake. To tell them that there is so much more to this world than what they experience with their five senses, and for their consciousness to be expanded to experience the great spectrum of existence. To tell them that we make life much more difficult and complicated than it has to be, and for them to see how simple are the natural laws of attraction and karma.

     I want to tell them that we exist so far beyond this life and for them to stop living for momentary satisfaction but do the things that will benefit them long-term.

     I wish I could show them how meaningless are money, power, careers, social status, and material possessions, and that the meaning of life is to spread love and hope and truth. I wish I could explain that everything is energy, that happiness is a choice, that suffering is our greatest spiritual teacher, that time and space are an illusion, that we are the universe discovering itself. I wish I had the words to express the beauty I find in pain and darkness, the perfection of the plan being unfolded, the timelessness of the story we are telling with our lives.

     I long to find a way to communicate the fire that woke me up. I want to wake everyone up out of the fog of fear and suffering. I want to verbalize the Truth.

     But I can’t. I can’t wake up anyone who is not ready to wake up, I can’t make anyone see what they are not ready to see. It took experiencing darkness for me to find the light. And I would be arrogant to think that I can verbalize Truth and wake others when I am still waking up myself. I have barely begun to crack open the book of all there is to know. I am still learning and I just want to learn alongside others. All I can do is speak my heart through both words and actions, and people will understand or they won’t.

     In any case, perhaps some things are not meant to be spoken, at least not by me. Some things can only be felt. Some things we just know and understand although we can’t speak about them.

     Everyone is on their own path of learning and the teacher is experience. Experience lets us feel those things we cannot speak, the things we cannot learn from a book or by someone else telling us.

     So all I can say is embrace experience. Experience as much as you can. In time we learn to listen to that voice inside of us that doesn’t have to use words to convey Truth. Listen. Learn. Ask questions. Pay attention.

     There is so much out there to discover. Seek and you shall find. Open your heart and mind and let yourself be swept away by the whirlwind of experience.