So how do we transform consciousness in such a way that it affects everyone on the planet? The answer can’t be found in political parties, social revolutions, or individual changes. For as Emma Lazarus once wrote, “Until we are all free, we are none of us free.” All the attempts by humans down through the ages to create a “better world” have moved us along and opened possibilities but have not eliminated all inequities. We are living in a time when all that changes. The reason? We are moving into a greater awareness on this planet, one sourced in the heart not the head. Our evolution as human beings is reaching critical mass as we open to the heart’s transformative energy. Love will break through all limitations and separations and bring us home to ourselves and to each other.
When we look into our neighbors’ eyes and see brothers and sisters, that is when the world shifts. It is a collective phenomenon. Together, we love a better world into existence. Together we recognize that anything is possible. Together we become limitless. It’s not an individual endeavor or solo struggle. Now is the era of soul family and soul family reunion. We came to this planet to carry love in our hearts and see it through to its ultimate earthly manifestation: universal connection. One after another, we recognize one another as family, and the circle expands. No one is left out this time around. No one rises up while others fall behind. It is the collective heart of humanity that is opening.
Even when it looks like hatred and fear predominate in the world, see it as the last breath of a dying paradigm. Know that nothing is stronger than love, in any dimension. We are here to live the ageless wisdom of the heart in all that we say and do in our lives. We are here to collectively shift consciousness throughout every dimension. It is already happening—in every act of kindness and compassion worldwide. Together we are embodying limitless love on an evolving planet. Now.
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*Many of the ideas expressed here are expanded further in my book Lose Your Mind, Open Your Heart, available online at Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
A few weeks ago, I reached critical overload with the number of non-personal emails flooding my inbox. Political and environmental groups, spiritual programs and teachers, doctors and alternative healthcare practitioners, bookstores and theaters, online businesses. What a waste of time just to delete them multiple times a day! I went through and unsubscribed from virtually everything except a few key ones. At the same time, I decided to cut back on social media, visiting only occasionally. It was a relief. I felt as if I had lifted the heavy weight of contemporary social busyness and distractions off my shoulders. At least one day a week now I don’t even turn on my computer or phone. Wow, what freedom!
In unsubscribing there was also surrender, letting go into the natural flow of daily life, unmanipulated by technology. I was once again the 9-year-old girl who spent summers running through the fields with my dog or sitting up in a tree reading mysteries. Life was rich, full, perfect. It was a simpler time then, both in my life and on the planet. Now we have to filter out unnecessary complexities in order to live a simple life, one dedicated to what’s really important: connection to the spirit within us and all around us.
Spirit has become the focus of my life in recent years. The idea of unsubscribing as surrender somehow fits with that. As my soul’s wisdom moves to the forefront of my consciousness, I make choices that are more in alignment with a loving beingness in the world. Heart more than head. Social media engages the mind for the most part. What we want is to engage the heart, with the mind giving quiet feedback but not dominating. This is the way to balance, to harmony. The heart is directly connected to our soul’s purpose, and when we live a simple heart-centered life, we are living the “why” of our presence on this planet, in this lifetime.
If I remember each day to choose love and appreciation over distraction and dissatisfaction, then I am connected to the natural flow of spirit everywhere in the universe. Even disliking social media or emails can take you to a place of judgment and negativity. The key is to calmly “unsubscribe” from anything that is not positive and uplifting, anything that locks you into busyness instead of beingness. It’s not as hard as it may seem. Allow your computer or cell phone to be an occasional tool for information or connection. Visit now and then, not continuously. Life is not “virtual.” It expresses itself everywhere in extraordinary bursts of color and light. When your awareness expands and your heart opens, life becomes both richer and simpler. Within that is peace—of mind, of body, of soul.
In Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien used the term Middle-earth to describe the land where his stories took place. Situated somewhere between angelic and demonic realms, the inhabitants struggled to hold to the light. Sometimes I feel that is where we live now. Opposing forces are mobilized on all sides. All around are compelling reasons to believe that “evil” is on the rise and that “good” people are increasingly victimized by those in power. Yet holding to the light within darkness means we cannot succumb to what the prevailing belief systems would have us accept as truth. We may live in Middle Earth now, but it is just a way-station on the way to the New Earth. The challenge and balancing act is to accept and live in the present moment while also embodying a new vision for the future.
When I was in my 20s, I began to catch glimpses of this “New Earth.” Like many others of my generation, I envisioned where we were meant to evolve and how we were meant to get there. The where and the how were both Love. It sounds like a Beatles song (and it was), but it was/is so much more. “All You Need Is Love” is the oldest wisdom on Earth, handed down in every spiritual tradition for thousands of years. Compassion, loving-kindness, generosity of spirit, oneness—all names for love, for living as if there were no separation between any of us (and there isn’t, at the soul level). If “otherness” falls away, fear and suspicion also fall away. War and violence fall away. Hatred and abuse fall away. If you see every being as just like you on the inside, then how could you hurt them or turn away in aversion and rejection? If you look in another person’s (or animal’s) eyes without preconceptions or guardedness, there is only God looking back at you.
That is the vision we had so many years ago, and I still hold it in my heart. It is a dream that becomes real as we live it. Equality; respect for all ages, abilities, races, and religions; gender fluidity; shared resources and abundance; love for and protection of nature and the environment. Kindness, compassion, and gratitude as the basis of all interactions. No privileged classes served by others or elite groupings that exclude the “undeserving.” No higher and lower. No kings or presidents or top dogs. No hierarchy. All remnants of the patriarchy will fall away, to be replaced by ever-evolving circular structures that support both individual and collective creative growth and flowering. A living social agreement that changes with the always changing awareness and potential of those who are part of it. Our lives will be defined by infinite possibility and vision, not dead-ended rules and laws that only benefit those who make them.
Some may consider all this utopian fluff, not grounded in the real world. But every dream is considered unrealistic and impossible before it manifests into reality. We begin with the dream and we dance it into existence. Right now, we are in Middle Earth, seemingly stuck somewhere between the old and new paradigms. We haven’t yet crossed the line of “critical mass,” at which point, momentum picks up and impossibility gradually becomes possibility, becomes “reality.” The key, the secret, the incentive, is to live now as though it has already happened. Because ithas—in our hearts. Every single one of us was born with love at our core. When the layers get peeled back and the masks fall away, that’s all there is. At some point, we will stand soul-naked before one another and realize at the deepest level who we are and why we are here.
The day I read these figures, I wept. I could feel my heart breaking. The losses are so huge. Beloved warblers in all their colorful variety: 617 million gone. Two of my all-time favorite birds: Baltimore orioles, 2 in 5 gone; wood thrushes, 6 in 10 gone. It is hard to fathom. Almost unbelievable. The birds that I eagerly anticipated seeing and hearing each spring are vanishing and may one day be gone forever. What would spring be without birds? Without the robin’s cheery song and the redwing blackbird’s flashing colors and ringing call? Dead air, everywhere.
Everyone who knows me knows I am an ardent lover of birds. I grew up in rural Illinois surrounded by countless birds nesting in our yard and visiting our feeders. Birdsong was an integral part of life, like the rising and setting of the sun. As an adult, I became a more focused birdwatcher. For more than 35 years, I was blessed to live near Mt. Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where the spring bird migrations are well-known, even beyond New England. Birders there are often blessed with more than 100 species passing through. I visited Mt. Auburn at all times of the year and knew it as intimately as I knew the 5 acres where I grew up. Almost every tree and bush held a memory of a bird sighting or song. The brilliant red of scarlet tanagers and the startling orange and black of orioles. The husky song of the rose-breasted grosbeak and the ethereal trill of the wood thrush.
The wood thrush—a bird that touches my heart in the deepest possible way. Each spring I waited to hear it, not just see it. Standing quietly in the early morning silence in the Dell at Mt. Auburn, listening—and suddenly I would hear it, a piping flute-like call that gently echoed among the trees. Tears always fill my eyes at the sound of the wood thrush, a miracle of sweet music offered to the world, for free. Virtuoso performances daily by all the spring migrants. Each bird’s song unique and irreplaceable. Each one a miracle upon the Earth. A friend of mine refers to the “unreasoning cheerfulness” she feels when she sees or hears birds.
And this beauty is what humans are destroying so carelessly. Correction: big business and agribusiness are destroying it, with ruthless intentionality. Mega-corporations like Monsanto (now owned by Bayer) have spent decades laying to waste wildlife and human life throughout the world, making their products ever more lethal, from Agent Orange to Roundup. Not only birds, but butterflies, bees, and other insects essential to our ecosystems are dying in huge numbers because of herbicides and pesticides sold by these companies. Thousands of lawsuits have been brought against Monsanto by individuals who have gotten cancer from using Roundup, and at last the courts are beginning to decide in their favor.
The question is: Will it stop Monsanto and the other businesses? And if it does, will it be in time? The birds cannot bring lawsuits. They can only continue to do what they have done so beautifully since the beginning of life on Earth: sing. The planetary songlines they have created vibrate the world into being. We are the blessed recipients of their musical gifts. The very least we can do is reciprocate with gratitude and love by speaking out and taking action to save their lives: by not using poisons on our lawns and gardens, by always buying organic, and by donating to and joining advocacy groups for birds and other wildlife: https://abcbirds.org/; https://www.audubon.org/. My greatest hope is that the number of birds rebounds and that we are able to hear their songs for years and years to come.
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*Other factors, such as habitat loss, air and water pollution, collisions with power lines and glass skyscrapers, also contribute to the overall losses. On a more hopeful note, a growing number of cities have passed ordinances to use bird-safe glass and lighting practices and designs. And activist groups like CELDF (https://celdf.org/) are working at community and state levels across the U.S. to protect the “rights of nature.”
Life has a way of smacking us down, hard, sometimes repeatedly, when we least expect it. Things can be going along smoothly, and then out of the blue: wham! You are knocked off your feet by a sudden turn of events or twist of fate. It can be a minor passing upset or a major trauma. Life doesn’t tell you ahead of time what’s coming up around the next corner. Each day can be really wonder-full or really challenging. This is how I would describe my life over the past year.
In July 2018, I moved from one part of the country to another, diving excitedly into a new adventure. Massachusetts to Florida—what could be a greater jump into exploring differences and new horizons? So, all went beautifully the first six months or so. New home, new surroundings, new friendships, new possibilities. Then gradually everything started to dissolve around me, and I began to experience emptying out, loss, closed doors, lack of possibilities. It all seemed strange and unexpected. I had been so open and optimistic, centered in a positive outlook and certain I was living my best life, stepping into even more expansion. When it all started to fall apart, I began to seriously question whether I should be in Florida at all (even though divine guidance for the move had been unmistakable).
Over the months, I tried to view each change with acceptance, continuing to trust that it was all part of my soul’s evolutionary path. Yet the challenges seemed to get bigger and the losses deeper. I felt as if I had signed up for a master class in spiritual surrender. Every time I brought myself back into balance after some unforeseen occurrence, something else would arise. Finally, one night last month, I had the wind completely knocked out of me, literally, by an actual physical smackdown.
In the middle of the night, in the dark, I tripped over a new living-room hassock and fell flat on my face, teeth first. Teeth cracking, bloody gums, pain radiating out to my jaw and head. The shock shook me to my core, and the trauma of that facedown impact stayed with me for days. I relived that split-second in tears and disbelief again and again, each time longing to rewind and erase what had happened. The next day, I could hardly move because of pain in my arms, legs, neck, and head. My brain felt dazed, my teeth ached and throbbed, and in the mirror I saw the reflection of a distraught woman with swollen, black-and-blue cheeks and haunted eyes. Inconsolable, I wanted to cancel every external-world plan I had made for the future and just curl up in a ball under the covers. Used to moving unhesitatingly through the world, I found myself instead extremely cautious when I walked down stairs or got out of the shower.
Post-traumatic fear affected my thinking as well: I suspected that the energy of Florida was kicking me out, that clearly I didn’t belong here. I also envisioned losing all my front teeth, roots included. When I did have x-rays done, it looked like the roots had not broken in spite of the strength of the impact. The dentist said I would need veneers replaced on a couple teeth and perhaps a root canal, but she wanted to see if the one loose tooth would stabilize on its own. So we are waiting to see how my mouth heals before any decision about restorative work is made. The kindness of the dentist (who took my emergency call early on a Sunday morning), as well as my partner’s, were huge factors in my gradually feeling more like myself in a few days.
Still, I kept wondering why I had to experience this particular trauma on my soul journey. What is its meaning in my life as it is now unfolding in all its complicated contradictions and direction switches? Unanswerable questions. There is a thread of ultimate meaning and connection in every event in life, but we often don’t know them at the moment of occurrence (or in this case, impact). Once again, I am being asked to trust…and continue with a faith and an inner peace that “passes all understanding.” This is the master class we all are a part of at this time on planet Earth.
The external world can look like a senseless madhouse with no possibility for hope or renewal. Yet, in the midst of that, someone reaches out a hand with kindness, and your heart opens in gratitude. Trust and love again seem possible. This is our journey now; this is our assignment. To stand back up when we have fallen and to use our pain as a way to shorten the distance between ourselves and others. Together, we humans are experiencing the birth trauma of a new consciousness, a new planet. It sometimes hurts terribly, but just look at what is on the horizon.
Spiritflower 
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