I know so many people who are hurting or scared right now, and it seems to boil down to one rascally reason: epic change...personal change, global change, painful, profound, unrelenting change.
What do we do when the world we know falls apart? What do we do when things we relied upon disintegrate, or what we deeply desired dissolves before our eyes? How do we accept that what we believed to be true actually isn’t, or that those we saw as our salvation can’t save us? When our personal Titanic sinks, how will hope ever float again?
What do we do when the world we know falls apart? What do we do when things we relied upon disintegrate, or what we deeply desired dissolves before our eyes? How do we accept that what we believed to be true actually isn’t, or that those we saw as our salvation can’t save us? When our personal Titanic sinks, how will hope ever float again?
Of all the paradoxes on the planet, the one that continues to surprise me is that destruction is a necessary part of renewal. Change, I think we can say with certainty, is rarely fun; but if it is necessary for growth, how do we survive it? I have a few ideas I’d like to share with you. I do believe that hope will float again, but this time on a very very different kind of boat.
"Is it REAL or is it Memorex?"
The other day, Joe and I were watching Brain Games on Netflix, which uses fun games to demonstrate how our brains limit our perception of reality.
Our brains limit what we perceive on purpose in an effort to make sense of what we sense. We focus on what we think is important, but we miss the rest of the story. Additionally, our short term memory is fleeting. As time goes by, we remember less and less of the limited perception we had in the first place. What we think is true is never the whole truth and sometimes, well, it just isn’t true at all! We interpret “reality” through our own conditioning and beliefs.
- One episode showed a robbery where all the witnesses remembered completely different things and were firmly convinced they were right. For example, one woman swore the assailant wore a white coat, but a video replay revealed that is was actually someone behind the assailant who wore white.
- Another segment showed us how we focus on specific things (like dance steps being performed) and completely miss other very obvious things (like the 7-foot-tall penguin that walked across the stage behind the dancers).
Our brains limit what we perceive on purpose in an effort to make sense of what we sense. We focus on what we think is important, but we miss the rest of the story. Additionally, our short term memory is fleeting. As time goes by, we remember less and less of the limited perception we had in the first place. What we think is true is never the whole truth and sometimes, well, it just isn’t true at all! We interpret “reality” through our own conditioning and beliefs.
What we focus upon creates our reality.
Now add to this spicy little mixture the physics of consciousness, which basically states that “you will receive more of what you focus upon.” I think Einstein said it best:
Everything is energy and that’s all there is to it.
Match the frequency of the reality you want and you cannot help but get that reality.
It can be no other way. This is not philosophy. This is physics.
—Albert Einstein
Match the frequency of the reality you want and you cannot help but get that reality.
It can be no other way. This is not philosophy. This is physics.
—Albert Einstein
In times of great chaos and change, we are wired to grab onto what we know and stare at what we most fear. This is, perhaps, not the best strategy. If our brains are trained to perceive only what is “most important” or vital to our safety, it will latch onto the big bad scary monster in the corner that we assume threatens our survival, and we will not look away. In fact, we will not perceive anything else (including the shiny super-cool solutions that are sitting nearby). To see potentials, we must expand beyond the problem.
New possibilities ask us to expand beyond what we know.
I’ve been thinking about how this conundrum has played out in my own life. I was a person who had some very strong beliefs about right and wrong, so I saw life through a very specific lens. For illustrative purposes, let’s say that lens was the color blue. I saw everything through a blue filter and wanted to be blue in all things. I was afraid of the opposite of blue (which just happens to be a dynamic red-orange color) and I tried to banish it from my life. I thought red-orange was scary and just plain wrong.
What I didn’t realize was I was actually a meld of both colors (GASP!) and eventually, the red-orange part of me demanded that it be seen and respected. It started popping up in my nightmares and life experiences. The more I tried to be blue, the more I saw red-orange all around me and the more intense the red-orange became. I felt like the red-orange was attacking me, so naturally I tried even harder to push it away. This, of course, didn’t work.
Eventually my dualistic world came apart. One might say the unloved parts of me “trumped” my hand. They blew up my blue system. At the time it felt chaotic. I was very scared. It felt like my world was ending, and I guess it was. Eventually though, I came to see this deconstruction offered me a great gift. It allowed me to create a life that was whole and honored all my contrasting colors.
What I didn’t realize was I was actually a meld of both colors (GASP!) and eventually, the red-orange part of me demanded that it be seen and respected. It started popping up in my nightmares and life experiences. The more I tried to be blue, the more I saw red-orange all around me and the more intense the red-orange became. I felt like the red-orange was attacking me, so naturally I tried even harder to push it away. This, of course, didn’t work.
Eventually my dualistic world came apart. One might say the unloved parts of me “trumped” my hand. They blew up my blue system. At the time it felt chaotic. I was very scared. It felt like my world was ending, and I guess it was. Eventually though, I came to see this deconstruction offered me a great gift. It allowed me to create a life that was whole and honored all my contrasting colors.
Quantum COLOR is coming!
When change happens and we lose the paradigms that once defined us, we feel scared. We become angry. We tend to cling to the color we know with a death grip and cry, “BLUE is right!” or “Only RED will save us!” We limit our focus. The more we dig into our color of choice the denser our illusion of reality becomes and the more we attract conflict into our experience.
What if…play with me here…what if we considered the possibility that there is so very much more available to us than the dualistic “color du jour” we cling to (or its complement, which we resist)?
My highest priority these days has been to expand my perceptions. In doing so, I’ve discovered my beliefs always present my greatest challenge. Everything I once thought was “true” has been revealed to be a limited perception based on an old belief. As I go beyond my beliefs and let them go, I am starting to see that there are many many colors out there beyond blue and red-orange. There is every color of the rainbow AND there are beautiful multi-dimensional colors that have not yet been experienced by the human eye or mind.
The more my awareness expands, I am starting to see that these colors aren’t just “out there,” they are in me. In fact, they are in every one of us. These colors hold new potentials, new wisdom, new creative solutions, but we haven’t seen them yet. We have been focused on a limited perspective.
I wonder what might happen if we started looking for those amazing colors (even the ones we can’t quite see, and especially the ones we don’t understand) in the most surprising of places?
I wonder what might be possible if we saw each other not only as spectrums of color, but as painters, extraordinary artists, who can completely change the landscape of our reality?
Profound change is chaotic and non-linear. It brings endings that are new beginnings in disguise. New potentials are brought forth one person at a time, from the bottom up, from the inside out. My friends, we are the ones we are waiting for. To bring healing to this planet, we must see all the colors within ourselves, and then in each other, and begin to paint with them.
When faced with the “unfaceable,” I invite you to be curious. Some say curiosity killed the cat. I say it freed the inner kitten. When we are curious, we let go of the weight that holds us earth-bound, we follow the winds of inconceivable wisdom and are taken to new heights of understanding and possibility. When we are curious, we remember how to play again. We create safe space. We become creators.
What if…play with me here…what if we considered the possibility that there is so very much more available to us than the dualistic “color du jour” we cling to (or its complement, which we resist)?
My highest priority these days has been to expand my perceptions. In doing so, I’ve discovered my beliefs always present my greatest challenge. Everything I once thought was “true” has been revealed to be a limited perception based on an old belief. As I go beyond my beliefs and let them go, I am starting to see that there are many many colors out there beyond blue and red-orange. There is every color of the rainbow AND there are beautiful multi-dimensional colors that have not yet been experienced by the human eye or mind.
The more my awareness expands, I am starting to see that these colors aren’t just “out there,” they are in me. In fact, they are in every one of us. These colors hold new potentials, new wisdom, new creative solutions, but we haven’t seen them yet. We have been focused on a limited perspective.
I wonder what might happen if we started looking for those amazing colors (even the ones we can’t quite see, and especially the ones we don’t understand) in the most surprising of places?
I wonder what might be possible if we saw each other not only as spectrums of color, but as painters, extraordinary artists, who can completely change the landscape of our reality?
Profound change is chaotic and non-linear. It brings endings that are new beginnings in disguise. New potentials are brought forth one person at a time, from the bottom up, from the inside out. My friends, we are the ones we are waiting for. To bring healing to this planet, we must see all the colors within ourselves, and then in each other, and begin to paint with them.
When faced with the “unfaceable,” I invite you to be curious. Some say curiosity killed the cat. I say it freed the inner kitten. When we are curious, we let go of the weight that holds us earth-bound, we follow the winds of inconceivable wisdom and are taken to new heights of understanding and possibility. When we are curious, we remember how to play again. We create safe space. We become creators.
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