“Wake up. You know what you need to do. Love. Forgive. Take action. Discover your power. Live your truth.”
I woke up at 4am feeling myriad emotions watching messages come into my inbox and Facebook feed asking for advice about what to do next. I have never sent out a “political” email, but I feel a responsibility to respond to you, my tribe calling out. Here is the best response I could come up with this early, utterly sleep deprived. This is not, in the end, about politics – it is about fear, compassion, courage, and the human heart. And why your purpose indeed matters very, very much. Much of this post contains some of my writing on Facebook I have already posted, and it is not perfect or exhaustive – but I hope it will help.
What has been helping me in the immediate moments is to first allow a deep mourning for the loss of a dream. Do you have dreams that you now feel are lost? Allow yourself to cry and to mourn. This is essential to moving forward with heart and courage.
Then I choose to focus on what I want, the changes I want to see happen. I am deep in prayer and filled with resolve to be a cultural change agent who helps open the hearts and minds of my people. I continue to have faith in the goodness of others, in humanity and in the power of love and compassion. You don’t need to do everything. You just need to do what you do best in this beautiful world you want to manifest (more on that further down).
I know that it is exactly these times that wake people up who may have been asleep, like a massive thunderbolt on a granite peak. I am witnessing the awakening of my people, and know now that my work needs to be on a much, much greater scale than I have ever imagined it to be. I am up for the task, and welcome you to join me.
I look up to the sun, to the sky.
I will wake up and face east, to new beginnings and with a courageous heart.
I know and understand that sometimes, a deep loss is what is required to make one’s desires and dreams more tangible, urgent, real. I see the eagle’s view of what is happening. We are being called to not be complacent. To sense the urgency. To rise up. To never fall asleep to the dying of a people’s soul – ever again. Wake up. Wake up. Wake up!!!
Then, we need to focus on how to be the leaders in our community that do not act out of fear, which got us into all our mess in life anyway. I feel we need to remind ourselves that when a culture is centered around consumerism and its people are constantly fed the notion that they have no deep inherent worth beyond what they do or own, and then that culture also does not prioritize the teaching of compassion and the cultivation of soul and one’s divine soul purpose and the belonging to a unified culture with deeply held values – connected to something greater (humanity, earth/nature) – that this is naturally the outcome: fear-based decisions and actions.
It is a symptom of our cultural Achilles’ tendon. It is a cry out that people are afraid and that they don’t feel the ability to cultivate love and safety from within – that as a culture we have failed helping our people learn this.
I will see this as proof of our nation’s need for its people to be treated with compassion, and to fight against the cultural current that takes us away from our humanity and our sense of purpose.
I will remind my people that when people don’t feel love within, that they look outside of themselves for safety. I will remind myself and my people that it is time to stop pretending everything will be ok if we continue as we are.
I will remind my family and friends and community that when so many people are asleep, sometimes the Universe needs to come by with a 2×4 to wake them up. This always happens. Indeed it is deep suffering that has spurred the most powerful of changes.
I will encourage my people to learn the skills they will need to weather the challenging times ahead. And that I do believe – as humanity has shown over the millennia – that while sometimes it takes too much pain to awaken our hearts, that people do awaken.
I will remind my people that we are a young nation – adolescent when compared to other nations. That adolescents make foolish mistakes. That this is an unwanted yet perhaps necessary growing pain.
That love and compassion will prevail.
To take action to protect the vulnerable.
To stand united. Because no matter who won this election, some of the most important things we can do is love even harder in our own communities and live the example of what we want to manifest.
To send compassion to all those suffering so much that they act from fear.
To realize people are very afraid, and to remind my friends and family and community that this level of fear is what happens when we forget our roots as humans living one wild and precious life, and when a people don’t experience feeling loved and valued and purposeful.
We need to work on helping people not be so damn afraid.
This means that YOU need to continue to work on living a life filled with purpose, love, and compassion. I know there are some out there who feel knowing one’s life purpose is not urgent – and I respectfully disagree. The journey a courageous soul undertakes to discover one’s life purpose is full of growth in self love, self awareness, profound maturing and social responsibility. When people seek life purpose from their soul – and not their heads – it becomes a warrior’s path of growth instead of an anxiety-ridden search.
The initiated adult who knows their unique place in the world does not act out of fear. They act from a courageous, compassionate heart because they know what truly matters in this world.
So indeed, your life purpose matters, and you need to discover what that is. As fast as you fucking can. Did you know in some cultures, if an adolescent does not glean insight about their purpose from their Quest, they do not return? In cultures that value a sense of purpose in the greater scheme of things,they also know that a culture with people who have no sense of purpose is directionless.
Wake up. You know what you need to do. Love. Forgive. Take action. Discover your power. Live your truth. (tweet it)
I am with you.
Will this be easy? Hellz no. Nothing in life truly worth anything is easy. But it is going to be worth it.
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