Have you been feeling it? A pressing sense that something more and different is on the horizon? Something that doesn’t have anything to do with anything you’ve previously been involved in or identified with or gotten wrapped up in before?
A sea change … a transition from old ways of thinking and acting into something … else?
Collective creation
It’s not wishful thinking on my part.
Many millions (billions?) of people on planet Earth have been experiencing a deep yearning for positive change for some time now. And that kind of planetary desire cannot, will not, go unanswered.
We’ve reached the point where we know “Something’s gotta give.” Society can’t slide any deeper into the abyss and get any more degrading and deranged than it already is.
Right?
I mean, I went to the movies a few weeks ago to see the second Aquaman. I hadn’t been to a public movie since 2020 and, as it turns out, I was utterly unprepared for the experience.
Twenty-five minutes of non-stop, visually explosive, repetitive, consumer-driven commercials—25 minutes!—was followed by 15 minutes of low-brow idiocy, violence and mayhem in the form of “previews.” By the time the onslaught was finished, I was beyond horrified—I was struck dumb.
I swear to God my IQ dropped 10 points just sitting there subject to it all.
In that moment I swore never to darken the doors of a movie theatre again. But now the second Dune movie by director Villeneuve is coming out and I want to see that on the big screen. So, I guess I’ll just go 45 minutes late to miss all the stupidity.
But in the meantime I have to ask: Who on God’s Earth is all that crap aimed at?
Have we truly sunk so low? Or is this just more of the same commercialized poison we’ve been drip-fed and conditioned to accept over the last 50 years—now just in larger/longer doses in lurid 3D Panavision with surround sound? Something we know we have to put up with before we can get to the good stuff? Like Pavlov’s dogs, resignedly permitting ourselves to be assaulted and diminished because we know there’s a treat at the end?
Nothing new
As you might have guessed, I’m a total movie fan (of quality films!) Or at least films with an interesting message.
So, a friend came over the other night and, having read Cracking the Matrix, he wanted me to watch the 1988 movie They Live … an action/sci fi/horror film presenting the idea of an alien species hypnotizing humanity into our own demise through media messaging. When the hero put on special sunglasses, he could see the bold subliminal messages underneath the content of TV shows, billboards, magazines, and newspapers:
Consume, buy, watch TV, don’t think, submit, obey.
And that was geared towards the media in 1988. Today, the information blitz has assumed Biblical proportions.
Even “alternative thinking” and “alternative media” are packaged, monetized, and sold the same old way. Click funnels, pay to play, social media campaigns, more and more images, faster edits, neon colors, screaming music all vying for the attention of our over-saturated senses, delivering the same message over and over again:
Buy me! Listen to me! I have the answers! Follow me! Do this! Do that!
Jiminy Christmas! When are we going to change the channel?
Easier said than done
If you read my essay “Leaving Storyland” a couple weeks ago, you know I was contemplating starting my own TV show on a great new network. The opportunity actually grew far larger than that, with the CEO of the company eventually offering me the opportunity to run a whole alternative channel within what was already an “alternative” program offering.
Can you spell t-e-m-p-t-i-n-g?
My head screamed “Go for it! This is the opportunity to do something new that you’ve been waiting for! You can get great information out to the world! You can monetize this, do you own thing, and eventually afford to stop taking on clients to pay the bills! This could be HUGE!”
My past years in network TV production spoke to me. “This will be fun! We can crack out our editing skills and create cool visuals!” Feeling like a warhorse hearing the bugle’s call, I started hunting for video footage and listened to hours of music clips searching for a show opening sound track.
I had the theme and the show title. I had the energy and impetus. I had the old “wake people up” mission. My Leo ego looked in the mirror, approved the blonde hair and Hawai’i tan and got ready to enjoy, if not prime time, then at least her time in the media’s sun.
The only thing stopping this massive creative juggernaut was … it didn’t feel right.
It didn’t feel like a sea change. It felt like “Been there, done that, got the t-shirt.” It felt like pressure. It felt like performance. Worst of all, it felt like I would be creating more stories. Even though the theme of the whole channel was “transcending storyland,” I’d be utilizing the most in-your-face, over-saturated, over-commercialized story-telling medium ever devised to get the message across.
Of course, my brain countered all of this resistance with fierce, logical arguments. When that didn’t work, the guilt kicked in. I was being lazy. I didn’t have enough oomph. I was losing my edge. The What’s wrong with you? question played me like a fiddle.
But eventually even my brain finally had to capitulate to the reality of the singular truth I’ve come to and been trying my best to promote these past few years … namely:
Follow your heart.
Trust your gut. Follow your feelings. Trust your body to tell you what’s right.
If I didn’t follow my own best, most heart-felt advice, I was nothing but a hypocrite. And yet even knowing this, the impulse to go with the show and make a choice based in past actions and past mission and purpose was still so powerful it was a hard decision to make. Days after I delivered the final, “Thank you, no,” I was still torturing myself.
And then … last Sunday morning I woke up excited and energized.
Excited about what?
Peacefulness.
There was a sense of quiet spaciousness in me. An absence of pressure. A sense of relief that there would be no more, “Once more into the breach, dear friends” mission-driven sorties into the marketplace.
There had, indeed, been a sea change.
It was like all the old motivations matching the old social paradigm had geared up to deliver one last temptation in the guise of opportunity. One last Technicolor Are you sure? offering.
Yeah, I’m sure.
Mostly.
Pete and Repeat
“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.”
Einstein is often credited with this comment. And I wouldn’t put it past him to come up with such a pithy insight. But having just put myself through this latest emotional washing machine, I can finally understand why I—and a lot of other people—keep hitting the “repeat” button, doing the same things over and over again, getting pretty much the same results.
We think we’re doing things differently because we, ourselves, have changed.
Our insights are keener. Our motivation is clearer. Our intention is purer. Whatever. Great. The problem is: We change, but our focus and the methods from the old paradigm we use often remain the same.
I, for one, have been focused upon fixing the world for a very long time. I’ve focused on fixing the world by righting wrong perceptions, providing a Bigger Picture, context, insights, etc. etc. through writing my books and essays.
This world fixing has gone hand-in-hand with a focus on fixing myself as well. But here’s the thing: I’ve finally realized you can’t fix an illusion.And seeing myself and everyone else as broken is, indeed, an illusion. A spell cast upon us that we have accepted and perpetuated—a spell that has resulted in the creation a broken world that needs to be fixed.
As long as we keep playing in that sandbox, we extend the reality of the sandbox.
Creating a TV channel and show felt like playing in the old sandbox of trying to fix the world. How does that differ from writing these essays on Substack? Well, writing still warms my heart and gets me excited enough to get out of bed at 5 am in the morning to do it. So, I keep doing it. And will until it doesn’t.
All I know is that letting my deepest, most authentic (often uncomfortable!) feelings guide me is my ticket out of the box. Granted—this sometimes feels like switching horses in the middle of a fast-flowing river. A difficult maneuver at best. But a necessary one if I’m to get someplace different.
Another thing that guides me is something a channeled teacher by the name of Ramtha once said around 30 years ago. I will have to paraphrase because I don’t recall the exact words, but it was something like: “If you can imagine something, it comes from the past. If you can imagine something, you’ve already experienced it. If you really want out of the box, ask for a creation that you can’t even imagine.”
I’ve got a pretty doggone good imagination. And I can imagine the existence of a world where everyone lives freely and where life and nature are honored, respected and accepted as our truest and only guide. But how a world like that can “arrive.” How we actually get there from here, and then how such a world actually functions? How it’s organized? I haven’t a clue. I’ve never experienced a global level transformation before.
I know how my life has been reorganized and how I’ve gradually transformed and been set free.
One frequently painful step at a time.
Looking back, I realize I couldn’t have planned those steps and organized where they took me in a million years. Life itself did all of it. I just had the dream of freedom and kept showing up.
Which is what you and I and millions of others are doing—aligning ourselves with freedom and life-honoring existence and thus aligning ourselves with life itself. And because the intelligence of life is unbounded and infinite … because nature knows exactly how to accomplish what’s needed to self-organize and bring this dream into fruition, all we need to do is keep dreaming and do the seriously hard work of showing up in the face of whatever life delivers … no matter what.
As for what we all create after that … I can’t even imagine.
Much love and aloha ~
“Switching Horses.” To see more of her work:
https://www.deborahmaebroad.com