the Big Quit
I’ve been so internally focused I didn’t realize I was participating in the world-wide ‘Big Quit’.
Without reading any analysis on the subject, it seems the added variable of a global pandemic, to each of our individual challenging situations, was just enough to propel millions of us to realize we are not victim to our circumstance, that we are not trapped, and that we DO in fact each have a choice. Thus, a mass awakening of people who have identified where they’ve been misaligned with their purpose or their values (whatever they might be) have reclaimed their power by taking the huge risk of letting go of permanent, benefitted, retirement planned roles without any knowledge of what security there might be around the corner.
For me, there became no other choice as I got to better know my Self.
It was as I became more familiar with, and more skilled at, embodying my inner Self that I got better at listening to and trusting what she had to say. I also became more skilled at discerning between the voice of Self and all the other busy-body voices chirping around in my mind. I was able to see more clearly how incredibly well armoured and defended I was with all those active cast members hyper-vigilantly keeping me protected. It turns out I was way more familiar with listening to the voices of my defenders like self-doubt, fear and inner critic and I didn’t necessarily know my authentic Self very well at all. My assignment was to get to know all of the players, to give them all a voice and their own space to feel safe, to express and to process. It was only once I authentically spent time with all defenses that I was then able to have a better sense of Self. With time, I was able to truly imprint the signature of my essence and to integrate knowing what truth really felt like. I reconciled all facts and data couched in the best advice from my protectors as to why I ought to play it safe and still, my skin tingled with the waves of knowing my truth. I had to walk away. I had to resign. The truth that was the ultimate in risk, but paradoxically I was the safest in my vulnerability.
Through this work, it also became clear to me that this true essence is universal and infinite. The more I connected to that shared unified field of awareness, the more I was able to shed the skin and dismantle old fear-based frameworks and to fly away from the cocoon. (yes, I mixed metaphors…I guess to highlight metamorphosis is everywhere.) Just like the shell of the cocoon, my inner critic was an important guard for a time, however her incessance no longer serves me. The metaphor continues in the comparison to that of our health, education and other institutional systems that were built in the Industrial age. They served their purpose and, like the no longer useful cocoon of some internal voices, these once seemingly functional systems are now archaic ways of doing business that ought to be deconstructed, dismantled and sloughed away in order to allow for regeneration.
As we wake up from our trance and no longer need our old, internal, conditioned reflexes we can see how the same approach could be applied to greater external eco-systems. The sooner we can diffuse and transform the fear in our hearts, the sooner we are able to dismantle those fear-based structures on which our regional, national and global systems are organized.
Everyone spewing opinions and taking stances, posturing and politicking. Everyone distracting one another with projections and righteousness with the predictable internal and external cast members of anger, blame, judgment, deflection and so on. We’re addicted to the battle of ‘us and them’ and ‘other’ and we need to stop, to sit still and each of us re-connect to our essence. It’s impossible to fight from this place of loving oneness, you just can’t get there from here.
It is the divisiveness and the polarization that are the distraction and it turns out the truth is not at either end of the pole. The truth is in the centre, in the quiet neutral space in our hearts, in our unified oneness. We need a global turning inward into our collective Self to catalyze a universal shift fueled by our connected peaceful hearts. The 2020 image of the dolphins swimming in and out of a Venetian Canal is a beautiful illustration of how a time of chaos is alchemized into opportunity and the freedom that can result. Just like quietening of the waterway, with less traffic in our minds, like the dolphins, we are free to play.
