By Donna D’Cruz
Carl Jung once said that most people who sought his help did not come so much to quell their own neurosis, but rather to understand how and if their life had meaning. He also predicted that reductionist psychologies and the endless pursuit of materialism would create feelings of “loneliness in the cosmos.”
Can you relate? We, as individuals and as members of this incredible tapestry we call humanity, are experiencing the most debilitating trauma: The trauma of a global pandemic riddled with complex coping mechanisms, financial hardships, isolationism, the deluge of misinformation, questionable leadership and seismic upheavals in geopolitics have left us all feeling fearful, angry, frustrated, disoriented and stuck in an endless blame game. To what end? How do we begin to recover and heal? It’s time to release the negative self-talk and let go of our judgments and liberate ourselves… ”Free your mind, and the rest will follow.” Thanks, En Vogue.
Are you—are we—ready to transcend the ego, the attachment to resentment and suffering and let go? As has often been said, “Resentment is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die.” Traumatic experiences can rewire the nervous system and place it into a constant physiological state of alert that supports fear and a primordial need to protect. That’s great in the rare instance we really need to defend—but jacked-up endlessly, not so great. This can make us highly nervous and hyper-vigilant about impending dangers, and it sometimes causes us to dissociate from the world and from each other.
Perhaps on the deepest level we all yearn inexorably for connection—inner connection. The path to this oneness, to this connection, is stillness. Call it what you want and resonate most deeply with—Source, the Divine, God, prayer, meditation, or as I like to think of it, a “Dip Into Bliss.” The deliberate quietening of the inner noise allows us to access the boundless ocean of bliss within, so that we may fully awaken on a soul level to our joy and reserves of compassion and hope.
“Remain true to yourself, but move ever upward toward greater consciousness and greater love! At the summit you will find yourselves united with all those who, from every direction, have made the same ascent. For everything that rises must converge.”—Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
Let’s awaken together!
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