You are called to nothing short of creating a new Heaven and a new earth. This does not, however, entail specificity any more than the miracle does. It does not entail choice. It is a way of being. When you are fully aware of your oneness of being and begin to create in unity and relationship, you will do so by simply being who you are being, just as you have “created” during the time of your separation by being who you have thought yourself to be.
~ A Course of Love
• Work and Play in America
It’s been roughly four years since I started focusing on the American workplace in 2011. At that time Gallup’s State of the American Workplace report found that over 45% of U.S. employees were disengaged or actively disengaged at work. Multiple studies addressed the crisis of workplace misery, and still do, but so far nothing has been able to halt the growing dissatisfaction of U.S. employees. Gallup’s 2014 report found a mere 31.5% engagement rate, with businesses sustaining an estimated $450 to $500 billion loss in productivity annually.
Workplace misery and how to increase employee engagement is the subject of numerous studies. Without fail, the proposals coming out of these studies focus on the tangential issues. Look at these examples: organize employees based on a buddy system, partnering disengaged employees with other disengaged employees, and engaged with engaged; or, offer empathy and mindful training for managers and business leaders; maybe paint employee lounges a brighter color, try canary yellow instead of colonial beige; increase bonuses and vacation time or change the name of human resources to something more welcoming.
U.S. employees are increasingly disenchanted, working for the bottom line. At least that’s my take on it. What I’ve observed is that working actually impoverishes employees, their families and communities, and the environment. Totally disconnected from the new knowing that we create physical reality, employees, business owners and leaders narrowly focus on the dollars and cents of the epidemic. But if one wants to know about cost, take a look at the migration to and from workplaces, better known as the commute. It averages 211 hours, at a cost of roughly $2,600 per year, per worker. Working at a job is so insidious that in most cases, people ignore the fact that, in some cases, they are paying to do it. In the city of Philadelphia, for example, employees pay a 3.92% city wage tax. This is tributary for the privilege of working in the city.
All of this leads me to my point: never underestimate the power of a belief. The American workplace, and I would venture to say the global workplace, is controlled by insatiable greed—the bottom line. This greed wields power over people’s lives, insuring that the fear of starvation remains first and foremost in workers’ minds. And this is all because we have accepted the separation and its belief that you have to earn a living.
• Indigenous Prototyping
In the discussion of humanity’s detour and descent into separation and the search for a compass of ascent, there is a growing consensus that the ways of the indigenous people, those least impacted by the separation, may share some coordinates. On the surface, this idea seems benign, but in its application, it is fraught with discord. Keep in mind here that these are my thoughts, and I welcome correction and clarification.
My first concern is in the categorization: the indigenous, who have been impacted the least by the separation, and the non-indigenous who find themselves mired in it. If we accept this concept, then in the effort to escape our current state of affairs that are a result of the dualism inherent in the separation, another duality is formulated: indigenous/non-indigenous.
This duality, indigenous/non-indigenous, is a result of the separation belief that our identity is ours to determine, and that reality is ours to interpret. In relinquishing the truth of who we truly are, Source, in physical form, we have set ourselves upon a futile quest to discover our identity within the separation. The indigenous/non-indigenous duality insists that we are separated by time, history. This is a favored technique of the separation because of the impossibility of consensus regarding a state, the past, that is not real yet which we believe we can make real. How many interpretations exist about what actually preceded the Atlantic slave trade? How many interpretations are there about the historical basis for the conflict in the Middle East? How many interpretations are there about why women, and not men, give birth? People spend their lives engaged in these futile exercises.
There is a broad range of experiences that we are having on the planet. Certainly there are some who have maintained an ancient awareness of our interconnectedness with the earth and all life on it; others have, as a result of adopting and practicing the beliefs in separation, eclipsed their awareness of this interconnectedness, but are now returning to it.
No one has a “copyright” on interconnectedness. It is not a creation of ours. It is a universal, eternal principle by which we were created and the awareness of it was extended or gifted to us by its author, the Source. Awareness or non-awareness is not a condition of the function of interconnectedness. In other words, we are interconnected with and in All That Is whether we are conscious of it or not. It should be clear that if it were otherwise, we would have destroyed ourselves a long time ago.
My second concern with indigenous prototyping is that we might be failing to take into account that, yes, while some of us have lived and continue living in a manner that represents a consciousness of interconnectedness, the retention of this consciousness did not, and does not, form a barrier against involvement in the support and maintenance of the separation.
For example, it is well known that the Iroquois Nation of North America conceived of and practiced democracy long before European settlers stumbled upon Plymouth Rock. The Iroquois introduced the idea of democracy to some of the so-called founding fathers. The Iroquois formulation of democracy is the basis of the Iroquois Confederation.
The Iroquois Confederation includes six nations. The Confederation established nationhood and borders. It maintained that the elders held power over the young, and the young must be obedient to their elders. They believed in war, and that war could be waged against the “other” nations. Some should rule and some should be ruled over was a basic tenant of the Iroquois Confederation.
Who would deny that these tenants smack of the separation?
Democracy is a separation belief. Where in the world does the practice of it not reflect the separation, the discord and conflict, the duality of the separated mind that created it? We must be very careful that we have not taken the separation as our guide in the formulation of ascent, nor as a mentor in the formulation of the new earth narrative.
Interconnectedness is a universal principle, an aspect of who we are. Democracy is a belief. Interconnectedness is peaceful and inclusive; democracy is exclusive, almost always disruptive, conflict- oriented, a wolf in sheep’s clothing.
Those of us who have maintained an awareness of interconnectedness have much to share; that much is true. But do not dismiss the value of experience of those who have been in an intimate relationship with the belief in separation, those who have had to become aware of its dynamics and mode of operation. The coordinates suggested by those with this experience might be of some value in our ascent out of the malaise.
• A New Narrative
We’re doing the best that we know how to do. Even when it doesn’t seem like it, we are. Some of us may be a little farther on the path, some may be lingering around a rest stop, some may not be aware that they are on a path. But we’re all headed home.
We talk all the time about the conflict and discord, the senseless deaths and the wars, the poisoning of food and water, the neglect of our elders and our young. We know this old narrative well. But truth be told, we’ve recited it enough.
The belief in separation has veiled our awareness of our eternal and inseverable relationship with Universal Consciousness. And yes, it has clouded our vision of our relationship with each other, and all of our relationship, singular, with the one Source. We have forgotten that the oceans, the earth and the plants that are born of it, the canyons and the valleys, the stars, the birds whose songs greet us in the morning, the rocks, the fig tree that grows in my backyard, the carina nebula, the ants that seek refuge on my kitchen counter on hot humid days, the sky, and the moon that lights it by night, the sun…. are all our brothers and sisters.
Most of all, the separation has clouded our relationship with joy, which is ever present and ever accessible. Despite the upheavals, the shifts, our own dysfunction and the rapid disintegration of the old narrative, we have created and are still creating some bomb shit here. Celebrating, laughing, hanging out with the fam, partying, making love, dancing, going to the beach, cooking and eating delicious food, walks in the park, camping, making music and art, photography, gardening.
These are the experiences of joy that we must claim, reclaim and recover. These are our creations and should form the basis of the new narrative of what it means to live life on this planet.
We always have been and always will be, the creators of our reality ~Akilah
