November 16, 2016

The U.S. is on "The Hero's Journey"

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When the U.S. faced the recent election, most people saw it as just an election. I saw it as the start of The Hero's Journey. I was on pins and needles as I waited for the outcome of the election! The hero's journey is a journey that involves: 1. Making a choice – either knowingly or inadvertently; 2. Being confronted with a critical problem that must be resolved; 3. A demand to clean and reorganize the house; 4. Going through a sorting process; 5. Having to align oneself with one's true nature; 6. Carrying some form of light, whether candle or glowing coals, to a destination; and 7. Holding oneself in the place of a humble but grateful, even joyous, witness as the problem resolves itself. The Hero's Journey is a mythical journey of awakening and transformation. It is a journey into the heart of consciousness that results in a changed individual full of wisdom, grace, and power. It is usually undertaken by an individual, but it can also be undertaken by a family or a country. It is a journey into the heart of the self that results in becoming wise, graceful, and powerful. It involves challenges that change you at the core. It involves becoming who you really are. To fail to embark on the journey or to fail to complete it results in death. In the election campaign, people saw Hillary Clinton all polished and pretty and politically correct, running for president. Running against her was Donald Trump who was brash and bold and breaking all the rules of polite politics. She represented the queen, the one with all the power. She represented the status quo, more of what we already had. He represented the clown, the one who distracts us from the status quo and because he is a clown, is not taken seriously. Difficulty is always a factor in making the choice. If the choice was obvious, it would be easy. There are always an overwhelming number of frightening or threatening unknowns. It’s like getting a divorce. We can’t stand the marriage any longer, but we don’t want the financial or emotional hit that a divorce would bring. We don’t want the queen and her status quo, but to choose the clown and the unknown?? This election was the setup for that choice - a choice that asked us, "Do we want to evolve our consciousness and move to a place of wisdom, joy, grace, and peace of mind? Or do we want to go down in ignominious self-destruction?" The choice is symbolic of life and death, of evolution to a more expanded consciousness, of taking a step toward becoming who we really are – or a refusal to look at truth and continuing to live with spirit-deadening lies. As we drew closer to the election, a flood of information began to flow out of the FBI, the New York police department, the CIA, and other intelligence agencies. They knew what was going on behind the scenes with Clinton and were sending their intelligence reports to WikiLeaks. The information contained emails, photos, and other evidence about the millions of dollars being laundered by the Clinton Foundation, the sale of U.S. state secrets to other countries, the murder of anyone who got in their way, and the abduction of children and teens to Jeffery Epstein's island home in the Virgin Islands where they were made "available" to various people in powerful places for sexual purposes. Those who took advantage of these young ones were secretly videotaped and then blackmailed to go along with the wishes of the Bush-Clinton cabal…a group responsible for much more dishonesty and corruption than is listed here…and all of this corruption becomes the critical problem that must be resolved. In many of the ancient journeys of awakening, once the choice is made, the hero or heroine is made to clean up in some way. In the myth of Hercules, he must shovel out a thousand years’ worth of manure from the king’s stables in one day. In another, the young and beautiful Vasalisa must clean and re-organize the witch’s house every day. This symbolizes the need to clean house and reorganize ourselves as a nation. Representatives of the old system cannot clean up the system because it is working for them! Thus the need for the hero to do the cleanup…and in this case, we the people are the heroes. The next challenge is that of sorting. In the story of Vasalisa, she is confronted with a mountain of dirt mixed with poppy seeds and is told she must sort the seeds from the dirt by the next morning. Complicating the problem of sorting is that the seeds are tiny, black, and hard to identify, it is dark, and there is great pressure to accomplish the task. She is hopeless and feels it is impossible to complete, and when she gets tired, she goes to sleep believing she has failed, but in the morning, she finds the job finished! The angels and helpful spirits have completed the job while she slept. The sorting symbolizes the need to sort out good from bad, as well as that which can be used to start new life. The seeds of truth and reality can be planted and used to nurture and feed the souls of the people. The fact that the task is completed while Vasalisa sleeps symbolizes the ancient truth that even though we may become hopeless and are not awake yet, there are hidden forces and factors working in our favor. Even though we are working in the dark (dark night of the soul) the task will be accomplished and the dawn will come. Once the sorting is complete, the hero often faces a decision. The decision is some form of acceptance of one’s true nature and an alignment with this relatively unfamiliar…but seemingly very natural…self. It is a coming home to who we really are…warts, gifts, faults, crazy sense of humor and all! Once the decision is made to align with the true self, there follows a deep recognition of all nature and of what is real in the world. This is the crux of the journey. We cannot live fake lives. It will destroy us. The last task is that of carrying a lighted candle or glowing coals that will restart our fires. Sometimes the hero must carry the flame through the forest and not let it go out despite wind and rain. If he lets the candle go out, he will lose his way and die. If he reaches his destination with the light still burning, the light burns away the darkness and evil that once lived there. In the same way that every plant, animal, and human has a natural life-cycle, every civilization has a life-cycle in which its people must develop and evolve to a place of power, wisdom, and grace. There have been lots of civilizations before us. Some have evolved to become wholly transformed and have gone on to other dimensions of greater power and creativity. Many have collapsed in self-destructive cataclysms. Choosing the path of war, greed, and other forms of selfishness leads to self-destruction. “The Universe” gives us total freedom to do as we wish with Life because it knows there is only one choice - the choice to evolve and grow.  That's why she can be so generous with free will...it's because She knows that those who are foolish enough to choose anything other than Life will eventually self-destruct, thus taking care of the problem they created! The U.S. recently reached the point where a choice had to be made…either continue to look the other way and ignore the ugliness that would eventually destroy us – or make a new choice. That choice has been made and we must now begin the task of cleaning house and sorting things out. These are always messy, painful tasks that take at least several years for an individual, even longer for a nation or civilization, yet doing so will lead to the realization that we must align with our true nature if we want to survive. We will then have to carry the light and protect it from going out.