Our earth home is suffering because we are suffering. Humanity and its individuals will have to change. This will require that each of us move out of our comfort zones to help Earth, and help humanity.
Gaia is all of the Earth and its manifold inhabitants. Gaia is a superorganism, existing in a vast Universe of space time. A few of Gaia’s inhabitants are causing most of the problems. An international consortium of bankers, petro oligarchy, and military industrial complex mafia are mucking up Paradise. We have become so used to this muck, and so desensitized to the making of the muck, that we just carry on with the status quo of our lives, our comfort zone, and ignore the muck.
Gandhi once said the now famous line, “We must be the change we wish to see in the world.”
Here are some ideas.
Part I–The Comfort Zone and The Hero’s Journey
A major aspect of my work is assisting people in recognizing and breaking through the limiting fears, beliefs, and mindsets which have served to encumber their lives like a ball and chain. Both positive and negative beliefs are formed in the vast and fast processing subconsciousness, and these beliefs then filter up to our conscious mind where we play them out with thoughts, words, and actions. The subconsciousness is fully formed by age 7.
We all are encumbered to lesser or greater degrees by beliefs formed during this early period of life, and people can spend a whole lifetime holding onto their various beliefs in order to maintain a feeling of safety and familiarity; thus maintaining a sense of control over one’s “comfort zone.” We may believe that stepping out of our comfort zone carries some inherent risks and troubles. We might lose something, or we might get hurt.
At some point, many people sense that their comfort zone of maintaining the usual status quo is shifting into the “discomfort zone” of a more problematical perpetual status quo. Such an awareness often includes the realization that things could be better, but might not ever turn out the way our Heart desires unless we move off of the square.
We begin to feel the baggage and the weight in our lives that we wish we could be done with, so that we can feel free and happy. If we can’t make a positive shift and evolution, then more self judgment ensues. The Judge, Critic, Skeptic, Pusher, and Victim mentality of self sabotage emerge. The Heart Mind is subdued by the noise of the left hemisphere into yet another round of contraction.
We continue to attract the events and synchronicities which serve to reinforce our Identity crisis of feeling that we are limited. We continue on with this façade, and with an ongoing play of relinquishing our connection to Unbounded Mind. We feel separate, and this feeling is a grand illusion, or Maya. We relive our enmeshment patterns which were learned in the first 4 years of our life.
Enmeshment is a wounding pattern, or trauma, of the time of development of Chakras 2 and 3, roughly ages 6 months to 4 years, largely in the preverbal period of childhood. The subconsciousness is developing in this time, and is completely developed by age 7. Age 7 also marks the time of completion of the Heart Chakra, the seat of the Mind.
To be enmeshed is to live the emotional identity of the family of origin, not one’s own. We are taught not to develop our own emotional identity. We are taught to assume the emotional identity of the family. A child’s needs, griefs, fears, and angers are to be held in check. Buck up. The family is not there to supply the child’s needs. When the child attempts to supply their own needs, they feel guilt and shame. The individual learns to look outside of self for the self worth and the self esteem they were never taught. The result is a life lived without individuation or authenticity.
Reverse enmeshment occurs when this training comes back on the older parent from the older children who then enmesh the parent with their overriding dictum on how things are going to be. What goes around, comes around, to borrow a cliché. The term “reverse enmeshment” has now been coined. You have not encountered this terminology before. I hope I’m not enmeshing you here.
On the other hand, other types of events and synchronicities may also arrive in our lives to help nudge us into the wider world of who we can really become as we align with Source energy. Some of us then begin to feel a strong desire in our Hearts to move forward out of the old “comfort zone,” and take the big step of Courage through the threshold of adventure. We begin our Hero’s Journey, moving onward beyond the requisite tests, challenges, and helpers, and into the apotheosis.
The term “apotheosis” is a Greek term, and it signifies our understanding and ability to align with our Divinity, an allowance of the operation of Grace in our lives. From this experiential alignment, a peak experience, or a “moment of joy” unfolds, and we come away with some sort of Gift.
Having taken hold of our prize, the Gift, we can either mindlessly squander it, or we can return to our prior, and now evolved “comfort zone,” and share our Gift with ourselves and the rest of humanity in some fitting fashion.
I have just rendered a version of Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey. It may also be described as the journey of moving through the 5 stages of competence, or consciousness:
1) Intentionally Incompetent, or Intentionally Unconscious—intentionally staying in the comfort zone because you have no intention of getting out of it. You know that you don’t know, and you want to keep it that way.
2) Unintentionally Incompetent, or Unintentionally Unconscious—staying in the comfort zone unintentionally because you don’t know any better. You don’t know that you don’t know.
3) Consciously Incompetent, or Consciously Unconscious—staying in the comfort zone, but beginning to understand that you alone are keeping yourself there. Desire to move on is close at hand.
4) Consciously Competent, or Consciously Conscious—waking up and following the Call to leave the comfort zone. Your desire is greater than your fear, and you allow movement.
5) Unconsciously Competent, or Unconsciously Conscious—allowing yourself to be guided out of the comfort zone, developing trust, and evolving through the apotheosis with the assistance of tests, challenges, and helpers. You are in the flow and the zone of being.
These states were reviewed and described in detail in a May 21, 2009 blog entry entitled “The Quandary of the Evil Tongue.” Those are good descriptions, and I hope you will read that entry sometime.
A brief description of these 5 states might also go like this, entitled Life in Five Chapters, adapted from the Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, by Sogyal Rinpoche:
- You walk down a street. There’s a hole. You fail to see it, and you fall in. It’s not your fault. It takes a long time to get out.
- You walk down the same street. Same hole. You fall in again. Again, it’s not your fault. Takes a long time to get out.
- Same street, same hole. You see it but you still fall in. This time you take responsibility and are able to get out quickly.
- Same street, same hole. You see it and walk around it.
- You walk down a different street.
Signing off from Crestone and Beyond.