After all this, what now?
The primary aim of this journey has been to connect you deeply with yourself so you can direct your energy, attention, and power in the direction of who you truly are.
A secondary aim has been to dispel the illusion of powerlessness and equip you to wield real influence in shaping your future and that of our collective.
The journey is neither selfish nor selfless. It’s balanced, harmonious being.
The way of the future as I see it.
Lost In Dichotomy
Our lives are arrested by binary, this-or-that thinking.
Good vs. bad. Men vs. Women. Dark vs. light. Biden vs. Trump (AGAIN). Worse? Heart vs. mind. Left-brain vs. right-brain.
I don’t mean to suggest that the poles these dichotomies often represent do not exist, but I’d like to draw our attention to the (often intentional) energetic pull toward one or the other when they nearly always exist on a spectrum.
Probably the most commonplace, but no less silly, dichotomy is being left-brained vs. right-brained as if a preference for numbers or an appreciation for impressionist art means the lights go dark in a whole hemisphere of our brains.
One of the most grave and pressing of the aforementioned binaries is the Biden vs. Trump dichotomy as neither choice represents a clear end to genocide in Palestine, Congo, Sudan, or elsewhere. However, every 4 years it seems now, we get the opportunity to choose our lesser evil.
The problem with only seeing the extremes or the poles is that so much of the middle gets lost. If you only consider the north and south poles then your extremism causes you to miss all the variety, culture, and life in between on the continents, for example.
If you move through life thinking you’re left-brained and creativity is unbecoming of you, you never see how your logic and “math-titude” can be applied creatively and constructively. If you choose between your heart and your mind, you never get to fully experience what it means to be human and life then is always a struggle.
The future I see is one where we each live from the fullness of who we are because we actively honor and appreciate all we are.
We work to integrate and make sense of our experiences wherever they fall on the “good vs. bad” spectrum knowing a lack of acknowledgment (to whatever degree feels safe and supported) sets us up to repeat cycles. (Which side note isn’t a “bad” thing, but can be undesirable.)
The days and challenges ahead will demand we employ new ways of thinking and being to solve them. Logical, driven, results-oriented “left-brainedness” has built most of what we see and also caused the destruction we find ourselves at the mercy of. The old way no longer works.
Every system and structure we have here in the West seems to be collapsing before our eyes and under our feet. Regulations that existed to protect us and our health are being dismantled and the gap between the haves and have-nots is widening by the minute while episodes of extreme, mass violence increase in frequency. (Overall, interpersonal crime and violence have decreased significantly, though.)
The slated and likely policy changes and transfers of power won’t address our most pressing issues. What’s necessary is a shift in our consciousness in addition to these things.
We have to first see ourselves as we truly are to see others as they are resulting in our seeing humanity and this experience for all it can be. And I think we’re moving in that direction.
I wonder if we would have seen or been as moved collectively by the atrocities we’re seeing on the world stage now pre-COVID. Pre-Black Lives Matter protests. Or pre-2008. I, by no means, think these things were necessary, but they have had a reverberating impact.
Each of these global traumas has seemed to connect us with our humanity and the true reality of this brief experience underneath the hustle and bustle, the grind, the climb. The power struggles.
Unfortunately, given the parasitic nature of power and control and the grip of capitalism on the world, things won’t get easier externally. Things will likely only get more expensive, harder, and more stressful until we do something differently.
Be ourselves.
An Integrated State Of Being
Like the cover image of this post of a waterfall rushing down a rocky mountainside, it’s our job to identify and honor the sturdy, unchanging aspects of ourselves like our talents, personality, and interests establishing them as a foundation on which we’ll build our lives. Then, as inspiration surges, ideas stream, and support flows, they have direction and somewhere to go.
As we integrate the “soft” and “hard,” logical and intuitive, masculine and feminine(!!), organized and chaotic, creator and consumer aspects of ourselves, we become more powerful participants in this Earth experience.
Once we act more as channels or conduits through which creative energy and power flow instead of static, unchanging dispensations of creative ability or talent, our contributions naturally increase.
I’ve said it before, but I never anticipated creating all this. It all just flowed. However, it flowed in a way distinct to who I am and drawn inextricably from my lived experience.
This journey has also caused me to question the “specialness” of creativity.
I’m beginning to see creativity more as simply a singular way of seeing, being, and creating, which we are all inherently capable of since we’re all different; as opposed to a sacred, laudable ability to make stuff.
If there were a school or class of people who made paintings exactly like Picasso, it wouldn’t be considered creative. It’d be a method, an approach everyone could learn.
Likewise, the beauty of rainbows is their brilliant variety, not the intensity or “specialness” of any singular color.
As we collectively advance, it will be increasingly beneficial to all of us to de-pedestal creativity and adopt it as an ordinary integrated state of being.
Who’s to say your vantage point isn’t instrumental to your family or community? Who can say that an ordinary notion to you isn’t revolutionary to someone else without your experience? With all our tools, access, AI(!), and the library of history at our fingertips, who’s to say a model for a “better” tomorrow isn’t within one of us?
This is my point. At this stage, we should no longer rely on external indicators of readiness, qualification, or capability to determine who we can be. We must tune into and decide for ourselves what is ready to pour out of our being.
On this journey, we have examined who you are from various vantage points to demonstrate how endless and multidimensional you are. The only (or primary) limit is you. And you can change.
How will you “change?” You will use everything.
Using Everything
Everything you’ve experienced and all the contents of your life can be used to provide clues into who you most dream of being, what you most want, and the things you secretly desire but feel are beyond you (*cough* jealousy *cough*).
As we’ve covered, the things you like, the things you hate, and the experiences you seem to repeat don't have to mean anything, but they can absolutely be used to help you examine yourself, as no one else is experiencing life as you are.
Every single day presents opportunities for reflection, introspection, and advancement. Through the lens of your soul, nothing is wasted. Nothing is unusable. Everything can be transmuted into power and purpose.
I also keep noticing the pattern in people that “purpose” is rarely far off.
Since we are what we are and can’t help but be ourselves, we’re usually just a step or two away from the thing(s) that comes easiest to us or will bring the most fulfillment. These things are usually eclipsed by our over-investment in something we hate or don’t like very much so we can’t recognize we’re almost perpetually in the presence, or neighborhood, of them.
They’re there. We’ve just got to look with fresh eyes and take stock right where we are.
We use everything, but we don’t take everything.
A Trip To The Earth Mart
We all take too much from others in the way of guidance, rules, and advice.
We’re inundated with so much saying, “Do these things to arrive at x … Get rid of lattes so you can save y … Here’s what it means if you experience z,” and a lot of it can be helpful. However, humans are so distinct and complex that we can rarely find the path or our truth outside of ourselves.
Although people mean well, everything we come in contact with from others needs to be à la carte. It should be like going to the grocery store. The Earth Mart, if you will.
Imagine you have an unyielding craving for pasta so you plan a trip to the grocery store. You identify your ingredients, you make your list, and you’re on your way. Once there, you don’t see a deal on hamburger meat or carrots in someone else’s cart and decide you don’t want pasta or it’s wrong for you to eat such a carb-heavy meal compared to someone else’s quinoa scramble.
No. Despite all the options of food to consume (or versions of you to be here on Earth), you don’t typically make a drastic change based on someone else’s cart (or life choices). You stay your course so you can prepare the meal you came to the store for.
Likewise, you need to decide who you most want to be, based on and drawn from your eternity to stay your course, collect your ingredients, and create something delicious. Something never before seen or experienced on the planet.
Can you imagine how satisfying that would be? This is what’s before you, behind you, and surrounding you: all the ingredients to a magnificent life waiting to be rearranged by you.
Before You Reconstruct
Trust me. I know how idealistic this can all sound, especially given everything going wrong on the planet. However, the reconstructive work of the world has to begin at some point with someone, or all hope is lost. (In this case, I don’t understand why people haven’t begun the purge, but I’m glad they haven’t.)
Will it be us or are we going to pray, put our heads in the sand, run up the clock, and punt it over to our kids (or cousins’ kids)?
Someone has to be willing to do something differently.
The thing about all the necessary reconstructive work, as we’ve explored together, is that it comes after reckoning and realization.
It is largely unhelpful to attempt to “change the world” without being aware of who and what we truly are and creating from this deep-seated place of personal power. Otherwise, we overwork ourselves and limit our effectiveness.
With everything we’ve covered in tow, though, we can feel more capable of effecting change at the level appropriate to our missions, our communities, and our spheres of influence. Anything beyond that is, frankly, not our business.
Additionally, the work isn’t even to change “the world,” but to change ourselves and how we relate to it. As you change, your world changes. As we change, our world changes. We can only ever start with ourselves.
I learned recently that a fossil fuel company hired a marketing firm to deliver messaging that individuals had a larger responsibility in slowing climate change than corporations. Therefore, an established action destabilization strategy is overwhelming individuals with undue responsibility. Sneaky right?
The way of the future is being exactly as we are, the entirety of our design to bring forth creations and solutions that only we can.
It’s calling fear a tricky bitch and moving forward despite the doubt. It’s imagining your “dream” with your “right brain” and making a plan for it with your “left.” It’s remembering you’re a soul in a body and that solutions are always only a heart-breath away. It’s mining your experience to connect the well of who you are to the groundwater of your eternal essence. It’s using everything in your experience to identify who you are, align with this version of yourself, and create them into being. And, finally, knowing you never have to take more than the step right in front of you on your path.
Benediction
May the prologue to your destruction be the heralding of your transformation.
May you reckon with your power and the opportunity before you.
May you realize your eternal essence and connection to all things.
May you reconstruct a life beyond what your dreams have mapped.
And may you live forevermore from the wellspring of who you are inspiring and replenishing others to do the same.
You are the way of the future. Not AI, not robots, but the eternity designed to come through your unique vessel.
So share who you are with others. Take a blank sheet of paper and fill it with musings of who you could be. Share your playlists and your poetry. Follow up on your friends’ dreams. Memorize monologues that connect you to your power. Build something. Organize something. Design something. Love something. Identify where you’re bored and fill it with something new until it’s exciting. Say the thing you’re afraid of. Do the thing you’re terrified to. Try and track all your evolutions and decide where you’ll grow next.
Be here in this life and in this moment fully.
You’re a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Don’t miss it.
It’s time to expand into all you are.
Melvyn ♾️
Fin.