It seems like ten years isn't that long, but wow. A whole lot has happened. I was staffing a Sudbury school. I only had two kids, and they were 9 and almost 6. It was a presidential election year in the US, and some of us were still naive enough to believe that the worst was nearly behind us and that Obama would bring positive change for the world. It seemed like we were on the cusp of a beautiful flower opening.

Like all politicians, he wasn't who he said he was. And now we seem to be pretty much living in Idiocracy. The police state all around the world, particularly in the US, has swirled completely out of control. US police killed more than 100 people in the month of January alone. Sex abuse and harassment charges are swirling all around. Discoveries about the abuses of child protective service agencies all around the world are being uncovered. And only God knows what the FBI, CIA, and other similar agencies around the world are up to. Darth Cheeto and Lil' Kim seem to enjoy trying to push each other to the edge of global destruction for fun. Personally I've had one baby leave the nest and birthed two more. I freed myself from an unhappy relationship and found another. I sold pretty much everything I own and moved to Belize. I had a massive plan fall to pieces and lost a shit ton of money. I have lived in destitute poverty and am currently rising from the ashes.

We are seeing really serious consequences from centuries of abusing our planet and our seeming lack of willingness to change our naughty ways. Younger and younger children are killing themselves from the stress of school, bullies, parental pressures. Jobs are harder to come by. The middle class seems to be disappearing. Banks and corporations have been bailed out while families have been allowed to slip into poverty and homelessness. Our education systems have become more stressful for both teachers and students while seemingly becoming less effective at educating children. Our food is being poisoned. People are shamed, abused, and murdered just for being who they are. Racism, homophobia, xenophobia, anti-immigrant sentiments are all raging. Pharmaceutical companies are killing people without repurcussions. People are consuming, consuming, consuming.

And yet I remain confident that we are ultimately moving in a positive direction!

Am I crazy? Well, maybe. I do have a foundation for my beliefs, though. And a lot of it actually stems from some experiences I had about ten or so years ago.

Awakened Children

Like I mentioned, I was a staff member at a Sudbury school I had helped start. It would be reasonable to think that only kids from very alternative families would attend such a school. It turns out that's not the case, though. Because the school was so radical, it was also a last stop for people whose children simply would not accept the modern education system. Some of those kids came from pretty mainstream families. I noticed that all the children really intuitively get the Sudbury model. They absolutely understand true freedom and responsibility, even if they haven't experienced it at home. Beyond that, I noticed they were aware of and understood so many spiritual and philosophical concepts that I never delved into until my late teens or early twenties. I watched them waking up younger and younger until it came to the point that many of them had never gone to sleep in the first place.

As @likedeeler mentioned in his answer to the question of the week, consciousness is key. Conscious children, to me, gives more reason than anything else to believe we are evolving in a positive way and that we may yet survive our series of catastrophes. People like to say kids are getting "worse" or absorbed in their virtual lives. I find this to be almost entirely untrue. Those who are checking out are often doing so as a way of dealing with the intense stress of their lives. The education system has become incredibly high pressure, and at the same time it seems that many parents are in a constant state of trying to protect their children from every single tiny obstacle or danger they encounter leaving them with zero resilience in a high pressure environment in which it seems almost certain that they won't get a job that will actually pay their bills no matter how hard they try. Gee. I wonder why they check out?

They are also often unwilling to engage in petty banter. They want to talk about meaningful things. Give them engaging conversation, and I assure you they will engage! I found so much amusement in an article I read some months ago lamenting how Millenials are killing certain industries. Among the hardest hit? Franchise restaurants and paper napkins. Seriously, the young ones have good values. I taught my kids to eat local and use cloth napkins. Looks like a whole bunch of them listened. Social media and video games are not ruining them. If they're checking out it's either because you're not that engaging or they are overwhelmed by the stress of a world we keep pushing on them that they are simply not interested in (modern education, boring jobs, etc.) because it's not interesting.

The Crossing of the Buffalo

Recently @mountainjewel was sharing about some mystical experiences she had during eye gazing, and it reminded me of a beautiful experience I had, again about ten years ago. I want to preface this with a brief bit about cultural appropriation. I am aware that some indigenous people believe that white people should not be involved in indigenous ceremony. I am also aware that this is not my call to make since I'm not indigenous. I do believe cultural appropriation is a real problem and that it's not ok to just co-opt the parts of another people's culture that you think are cute. I believe spirituality, like all matters of the heart, is outside appropriation. I am more than happy to engage in conversation about this. I believe all people can be blessed by indigenous ceremonies and that it could actually help to heal the world.

It was a Cherokee man who asked a group of us and several other groups that were meeting to do weekly pipe ceremonies to help the buffalo. The buffalo had come to him in a dream and told him that, when they were slaughtered, they chose to remain in a purgatory-like space to hold the sacred while the people were in a period of darkness. They told him that the people were again ready to hold the sacred and that the buffalo could finally cross over to the light. There were thousands and thousands of them, though, and they needed people to help guide them. We did pipe ceremonies and shamanic drumming, and they crossed over in droves. It was astounding. It was mind blowingly awe inspiring. It flooded my whole heart. That the buffalo believed humans were again ready to carry sacred ceremony and sacred traditions was overwhelming and gave me my first sense that there was hope for us yet. If they believed in us, who was I to question?!

The Dark Night of the Soul

My last bit of evidence that I present to you that we are indeed evolving in a good direction is the cultural dark night of the soul we are in right now. Stay with me a minute. I know it seems backwards to say that darkness means light, but I believe we are healing old, old wounds.

Have you ever read Don Miguel Ruiz The Mastery of Love? In it he talks about how we heal our old wounds in relationships. Healing the wound means several things have to happen. First we have to uncover and look at it, and it's probably ugly and gross. We have to pour medicine on those wounds. Don Miguel says the medicine is truth. We have to tell each other and ourselves the truth. And that shit hurts sometimes. On occasion we have even been known to poke at each other's wounds as a subtle reminder to take care of it or maybe just to be irritating. And sometimes it gets ugly and pussy and disgusting before it gets better. You're welcome for not inserting a picture of a gross wound here.

That process is happening in our culture on a larger scale. A lot. In a lot of areas. The death of Trayvon Martin affected me profoundly. My oldest was 14 at the time, and the school he went to was more than 90% black. Almost all of his friends were brown or black. They all wore hoodies all the time. They were just kids. People crossed to the other side of the road when they saw them walking. People assumed horrible things about a group of sweet, silly boys who mostly played video games, picked on each other, and told dumb jokes. And I sat soul crushed as the media started to pick apart that boy (oh, dear heavens, a 17 yo that smoked pot - who ever heard of such a thing!). And I sat in furious grief as they acquitted that hateful sack of shit for the cold-blooded killing of a child. And as it seemed to get worse and cops got off even in the face of video evidence, I realized how ashamed I was that I had not known how bad it was. None of this was a surprise in the communities of people of color because this has been happening forever! It dawned on me that most of those interviews I had seen of mothers who knew their baby couldn't possibly have done what the police said he did were probably right. The only difference is that now we have dash cams and body cams.

And we are all having to take a close look at this wound we have. We are all having to look seriously at ourselves and recognize our own prejudices. We all have to look at the systemic racism embedded in our society. And we all have to acknowledge the priviliges we have had. It's ugly. It hurts. But that's the first step to healing. There are quite a few out there who aren't ready for it. There are those who think they should get to decide how those who have felt the wound get to respond. All the same, it's in the open air now, at least a little bit. This is an old, old wound, and it is nasty and infected and worldwide, but we have begun the healing process. We have begun to listen to those whose lives and hearts have been hurt.

We have a similar issue with the tidal wave of sexual abuse and harassment information flooding the public consciousness. Here again, none of this is a surprise to women. I always balk at those ridiculous statistics about how many women have been sexually assaulted at some point in their life. They always have some dumb number like 1 in 3. Poppycock! More like 9 in 10 or 99 in 100. I know so very few women who have never been assaulted. This isn't just Hollywood or Michigan State or the US or just anywhere. It's everywhere, and it's been happening forever, and it is finally coming to light. This is how we stop it. This is the only way we stop it. We have to tell the truth. And that includes men needing to own mistakes they have made, times they have abused their power, and times they have brushed the sick comments of friends and acquaintances under the rug. Open the wound. See how ugly it is, and pour some truth on it.

I believe there are other issues like these coming to light in similar ways, but these two are huge. Racism and the abuse of women and children are both rooted so deeply in our history and our current lives. The fact that we are even beginning the process of healing these means that things are getting better. We are healing. It's just ugly, gross, and painful right now. Those who have been through a dark night of the soul experience know that this darkness is often followed by the morning. Pray for it. Envision it. See the truth of the new day.

All pics are mine or Pixabay

I am a proud passenger on the ecoTrain! Check out the posts of other brilliant, giant hearted warriors doing amazing work in the world @ecotrain.