There’s a lot to process right now. It’s overwhelming for many people I know. Between their own personal feelings and responses from others to political pundits’ takes to thoughts about the future, it’s an endless cascade of things to sort through. Like ping ponging across multiple timelines.
I’ve personally been taken aback a bit by all that’s bubbled up in my system. This outcome isn’t a surprise to me. I’ve been squarely looking it in the eyes for months. But still, the heaviness and fog and heartache and confusion are here and real.
Take ‘em out back and get rid of ‘em!
So often in social change circles, emotions like these are talked about as something we need to take care of to get back to work.
Process your grief so you don’t burn out.
Make space for your anger so you’re not an asshole.
From this frame, our emotions are something that need to be dealt with so we can get back to the real work. Take ‘em out back behind the barn and deal with ‘em!
Maybe you’ve come across this too?
The thing is, farm-themed exaggerations aside, this idea that dealing with our emotions is a means to an end misses out on things. It’s a quite limited understanding of what emotions are, and feels part and parcel to other ways we still misunderstand the Feminine.
Instead, the practice I’m knee deep in right now, is letting all that’s moving and stirring within me shape me. Letting the feelings and fog that are kicked up in my mind and body be in process in whatever way they need. Not just for me or ‘the work,’ but because this is where rubber meets the road when it comes to consciousness shifts.
Collective consciousness shifts, specifically
The type of consciousness shifts I’m pointing to here are ones connected to the collective, which is why there’s so much energy kicked up by this current event.
These aren’t shifts just related to my own personal path of enlightenment or healing or growth, although they’re intertwined. No, instead they’re directly related to changes going on for the collective.
They go hand-in-hand with the breakdown and disintegration society is going through, reflecting this hospicing process of things shifting shape and dying.
And they also hold the seeds of what wants to be born. The insights of direction and guidance about what’s meant to emerge next.
Seeing myself as a conduit for the collective
Being in this work is hard. Especially because our culture heavily focuses on doing and thinking, which keeps us away from work rooted in our feelings and bodies.
But this frame of seeing all that’s alive for us as fodder for consciousness shifts gives me new direction for what to do with what I feel.
I see myself as a conduit for the larger shifts in collective consciousness that are going on. I’m a tendril for the collective body that I’m part of. Uniquely tapped into specific subsets of collective bodies. Spiritually positioned to play a specific role.
We all are, I believe.
Systems change, through our minds and bodies
I wholeheartedly believe that everything we’re feeling right now is here for a reason. Like so many other aspects of the Feminine, this emotional energy and the whirls and swirls of confusion tied into it is misunderstood. Yes, we need to work with it so we can keep going. No, we can’t let ourselves get stuck in it or use it to excuse bad behavior.
And there’s even more to why it’s here than that.
Our experiences right now are entry points to systems change. Systems change work that we can do through our minds and bodies. Slowly, gently, lovingly working with what’s present within ourselves in order to usher in consciousness shifts our collective body needs right now. Consciousness shifts we don’t even know how to name yet.
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