Big Choices

 

Years ago, I did a training with a doctor who was steeped in the indigenous healing ways of his native culture. He told a story to highlight how sidetracked we can get in Life around Truth. According to his tradition, there is an evil spirit by the name of Iktomi. It’s diabolical power? To get you to believe the wrong thing, and then act on it. To quite literally, make the wrong choices based on false and misleading assumptions.

When I look back over the past year plus, and look for a pattern to help explain what has been happening for all of us on a macro level, I would say this: On every single level of life, to the person, we have got some very big choices to make as we step forward. The first one being, What frames of reference will we choose when encountering the world as it currently is? Next, How will we choose to live with ourselves and with each other? Which is of course, based on how we perceive what stands before us. In other words, what will we choose to believe and what choices will be born of those beliefs?

We can continue to approach the world with out-of-date narratives; unconsciously and willfully continuing to do what we have always done. Or…

We can begin to question. For if you look closely enough, everything that is before us now, has already been there for a very, very, long time. Many would say, too long. The depression, anxiety, and despair that has recently skyrocketed has been quietly devastating us for years now. The chronic, life-style related illnesses that are driving the death rates, have been stealing lives for decades. The soul-sucking and heart-robbing consequences of children spending too much time in front of a screen, have been insidiously, and unfortunately agreed to, long before a culture decided to close schools. The growing disparity through recent job losses, between the have’s and the have-nots, has been a condoned social structure for longer than we can admit. A broken medical system that can’t keep up with cases because it does not possess the medicine we need, is the very same one whose death throes have been spinning off harm for far longer than we should have ever tolerated. And then of course, there are the “Big Everythings” that have changed how we live, relate, and understand what it means to be human. Big Tech. Big Pharma. Big Money. Big Marriage Between Industry and Government. All of which have been controlling a greater portion of our lives recently, are the same unregulated and un-thoughtful industries that have been moving in this direction for years.

One little virus has revealed, exposed, and unmasked the very sickest and the most inhumane in us. So, is it a devastation? Or an opportunity? Most important of all, what are we going to do about it? Will we hunker down, praying someone else will make this go away? Will we desperately choose whatever we are fed to sidestep our own responsibilities in this? Will we continue to feed our minds on fear justifying why we get to do what we are doing?

Or will we rise up? Demanding that money not be the driving force behind the decisions being made on our behalf. Refusing to accept any longer “medicine” that harms. Taking back childhood from predatory interests that do not care about their well-being on any level. Finding our own voice and being willing to respect that in another. Regardless of, and maybe even despite, what that other voice is labelled as.

These are big times. Very, very big times. But not in the way we have been told. For as hard as it is to be going through what we have been going through, that would be easy compared to the personal choices that sit before each and every one of us. That being, to decide what seems fair and life-affirming TO YOU. To get clear on what health is and how best to support it. To stand for what is worthy of your precious attention. To put your voice into the conversations being had that impact us all.

But here’s the really hard part. Deciding to take the long and arduous journey of coming to know your own mind. Not what you have been told and sold. But the thoughts and beliefs that are uniquely yours; having been carefully and painstakingly cultivated by deeply questioning all that you see, hear, and think. A questioning that dives below the constant noise, cultural messaging and imagined fears, until it comes out on the other side to the place where you know your own mind as yours and yours alone. Claiming this noble and awe-inspiring power instead of allowing yourself to be a by-product of a paradigm that cares not for you.