When it comes to change – to any way of life, really, given how they effectively amount to a slow process of change – how are we to find our way between all the options we’re presented with? Sometimes it’s as if we’re simply surrounded by choices: all the things people saw fit to lay before us as potential paths we might take. Every decision we make forever altering this world we’re living in.
Doesn’t it all come together? All the habitual or deliberate choices, subconscious ingrained patterns and their strangely contorted modern forms flowing into this marketplace of suggestions accepted, locked in and lived. All of our words and attitudes flitting out there as examples of how to be or condonements for how things are. All these ways we’re going along with what’s enveloping us each day. (Notes One)
Almost as if it’s all one big picture of what we’re thinking, what matters to us, and how well we’re understanding what we’re engaged in. Ideas spreading between us in the social or virtual worlds we’ve embedded ourselves in, reinforcing things to the point where we’re conceivably all living in quite different versions of the same reality. All caught up in our own interpretations of what’s going on. (Notes Two)
Yet, as with fitness, isn’t it all connected? All part of one body where weakness or imbalance affects the whole so only a holistic approach can fully restore health. If it’s all one system, what happens if we pull in different directions with different ideas in mind? If we’re not understanding what we’re doing or why it matters, how can we hope to move together toward common goals?
Given, in the West, those systems are based on the fundamental notion of personal freedom, how are we ever to operate with one mind, one set of intentions or priorities as to what’s most important? Especially when we’re being ushered down whatever paths our interests or wounds led us towards – every possible temptation or addiction having been placed before us as an option. (Notes Three)
Sometimes it all seems like an incredibly fractured whole; imperfect ideas engulfing us to create wounded people and damaging situations as things freely work themselves out across the generations. Everything feeding into this one complex problem without any clear, straightforward solution. As if freedom without values or discipline is a dangerous prospect: which paths will be chosen?
If the lives we’re living – the realities we’re creating – are to be built on notions of freedom, don’t we “need” to understand it all? As if what’s needed is nothing short of everything, everyone, and a constant growth in both knowledge and compassion. Otherwise, won’t we forever be creating problems? Any ignorance or lack of awareness rippling out to become another thing we’ll have to resolve. (Notes Four)
Without looking to the whole body – be it national or international, given how few lives or lifestyles are actually contained within any one set of borders – how can things ever work well between us?
Notes and References:
Note 1: All we’re expected to understand
Note 1: All we concern ourselves with & encourage
Note 1: Gaining clarity on the choices before us
Note 1: How are we supposed to choose?
Note 2: Do we live in different worlds?
Note 2: Responsibility for the bigger picture
Note 2: Everything’s interconnected
Note 2: Connecting truthfully with life
Note 3: Are we wise, living this way?
Note 3: Solving all the problems we’re creating
Note 3: Markets, and what they might mean
Note 3: Tuning out the static
Note 4: Times of revelation
Note 4: The incredible responsibility of freedom
Note 4: Being trusted to use our discernment…
Note 4: How fast can it all unravel?
Thinking more about the process, there’s also How quickly things can change.