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Consciousness may be defined as the ability to hold two opposite or paradoxical realizations in the same moment….what might be called radical inclusion. It is this ability to stop identifying with either opposite that evokes a third force called presence.

Often experiencing traumatic events springboards this awakening – breaking open consciousness, and catapulting us into new perspectives, perceptions, possibilities, and realizations about self, other, and life on earth. It is embodied in the saying “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” as trauma (i.e. the overwhelm of the nervous system) can force us to reflect upon what it is to be human and not human and holds the potential for awakening deeper questions regarding the meaning of life.

However today’s traumas are well-worn, trodden down, overgrown, out-grown, and quite frankly quite exhausting. Beyond being a marker in our own personal life and professional holding-place in the market place, trauma has now expanded into an all-inclusive global event, touching every plant, animal, person, social, economic, political and unspecified expression of life. Suffering on a global scale now seems almost unavoidable and yet the ability to stave off suffering, to recover, and reestablish safety seems paramount not only for surviving but also for thriving. Life on earth is having an existential moment…

Sensing through the field of awareness I ask myself what is my role in this moment? Is it impossible to see ourselves as an overwhelming species attacking and destroying our very own? Is it not overwhelming to witness even from the distance of web-outlets and photo shares what humans do to each other? Even more intimate is what is emerging deep within my inner terrain, flowing through bloodlines and emanating from living bone exposing this maddening dis-ease – a species gone mad… numb…dissociated.  

To try and ignore this madness is part of the dis-ease. Although I am not one to fancy zombie stories I do find myself more and more awe struck whether I am standing in a Bath & Beyond or my local Health CO-OP watching people stock up their baskets full of plastic waste and wondering what the fu#@k is going on – are people numb or are they truly dead asleep?  

For me, a biological imperative moves me to reframe the story of humans. Piled deep under the rubble of our personal history and familiar story is an unraveling (or in-folding) of the cacophony of dissonance drowning out what I might define as rational thought, conscience, and common sense while simultaneously awakening a longing to renew and thrive. 

I recently heard astrologer Ari Moshe Wolfe explain that sensing our 3 dimensional selves within a framework of time helps us land and locate in the now. Doing so reduces fragmentation. He explained that although time is a construct it can free our awareness. Time is therefore to be used and when we intentionally use time we are no longer victimized by it.  I like that idea and find it profoundly comforting. As we can orient ourselves in time and space we show up in presence. This moment is the kiss that awakens so we are curious of what we can learn in this moment. We are no longer simply entrained i.e “sleeping dead” rather we are literally remembering ourselves as expressive living organisms.  

For anyone privileged enough to reflect on, pursue, and long for world peace i.e. safety, justice, and harmony and who can perceive themselves as both individuals embedded in local communities but also global citizens, I find this scrambling of the nervous system results in no other appropriate response than a longing to show up more fully as who I am in this moment. I can feel my empowerment by simply allowing my self to both infold and unfold from within and without that ignites the longing to be now.  

As we stand on this threshold – at this turning point.  My years of teaching shows me that turning towards our center of being is the first great gesture of compassion and revolution. Doing so strengthens our sense of self awakening our embodied agency. We begin to literally stand up and be present in life.…as Wolfe clarifies ”holding relationship to all of this with a sense of inner authority”…our core actions resonate from a deep coherency within our bio-intelligence. Landed and located in this moment we ask ourselves how do I choose to create and shape my world?

Credit: Photo Source Stanislav Kondratiev usplash

Photo by Majkl Velneron Unsplash

A few years ago my daughter took a university course on Genocide in undergraduate school.  The Psychology of Genocide by Steven K Baum was required reading.  I had no interest in focusing on this horrific and tragic subject. My thinking at the time was that genocide is a perverse and terrifying phenomenon happening in some other worldly place and time. Frightened by what human beings can do to each other I felt only revulsion and terror.  So my thinking goes…as I am helpless to change the past, I simply do not want to dwell on feeling into a horrific story that I have no power to change or influence. 

While skimming the book the words authentic self and Core Integrity caught my eye. Baum clarifies that an individual’s core integration can be classified as levels of perpetrator, bystander, and rescuer.  Curious I took a deeper peek and eventually re-evaluated my early life as it plays out in self-identification and motivation to see where I scored on my potential participation. Little did I know that I would one day directly have to face participating in genocide by the policies and actions of my home government living here within the United States.

In this moment I am aware that I do indeed have a global psoas, a social body, and a cultural story that informs my choices. As part of a species I am always participating even if it is to simply stand by witnessing the atrocities of others.  I am not only kickingly and screamingly part of a cultural body – my core informs and thus affects all other living beings. I can no longer be helpless or innocent. I am a participant.

“Core” is defined as a clear inner personal identity where I have attained a solid sense of self from other. However, “average” people Baum suggests from psychological studies have little sense of core,  so although they may seem “well adjusted,”  they actually have “only fair levels of emotional stability and poor resilience against stress.”  This puts the “average” person on the chart as a potential “temporary perpetrator”.

Just my ability to think that I am capable of standing apart from the cultural body reflects a dissociative frozen belief that can be uncovered and understood as part of my personal, cultural, and historical story. There is no way to simply bow out of life and not participate. I can’t stand my ground and ignore or refuse to participate. Feeling  into my own core, a gut wrenching lack of will is embarrassingly perpetuating this cultural story. My childhood conditioning and ancestral insanity awakens nightmares that still live deep in my bones. To evaluate my core integrity in the context of a cultural body is to intimately face the sticky truth that I, perhaps unintentionally, aid in atrocities right under my cultural body’s nose.   

My only real power and hope is with growing an integral Core. I am a being in a fluid process of core development with an intention and hopefully a growing awareness of what Fromm referred to as becoming fully born before I die. Developing this integral core is indeed within my power and with it comes a responsibility and the capacity to defy what does not sit right in my being, to think independently from those who identify with any particular ideology, and to stand up for human dignity and International human rights.