As the Summer of the Victim Turns to Autumn of the Tyrant, Choose Love by Leslie Temple-Thurston
Congress voted ‘yes’ on the new administration’s energy bill recently. This means we are closer to drilling for oil and gas in Alaska’s pristine wildlife refuge and other rare, unspoiled wilderness areas. This, they say, is in the interests of being ‘self sufficient’. It is another way of saying we must isolate.
Why do we need to become ‘self sufficient’ and isolationist when we are part of the big wide world where resources, particularly renewable resources like wind and sun, are plentiful?
It looks as though we are not willing to maintain friendship with this big wide world. Are we afraid we might find an enemy ‘out there’? And if we are afraid that we will, it might just happen. Our fear might just create one, in fact.
There is a fascinating kind of consciousness at work here. It plays out in the fear of being a ‘victim’, and then projects the opposite, a ‘tyrant’, onto the ‘outside’—where one will obligingly manifest. Such a consciousness then switches, becoming a tyrant to defend itself against its own projected threat, and making ‘the other’ the victim.
Better to be the tyrant than the victim. Better to win than lose.
Guided by this consciousness, we are building a missile defense system now—just in case this phantom enemy, our projected tyrant, is lurking in some unknown corner of the world.
It’s a classic case of “If we build it, they will come”.
Meanwhile, the media distracts ‘WeThePeople’ with endless stories of the democratic-congressman-and-the-missing-intern-breaking-news-is-it-another-sex scandal-or-what? And our Congress goes about its lucrative business of reinstating war consciousness, and almost no one says anything.
We are preparing for a war that is nowhere in sight. In the end we will create that war by the very nature of our fear. Out of this fear, our Navy has developed a new technology that sends stronger, more powerful sonar signals into the ocean—not just our immediate ocean, but such strong sonar signals that they are heard throughout all the oceans of the world. We are doing this to protect ourselves? From what? The sonar signals become a weapon that destroys the eardrums of whales and dolphins, disorienting and killing them. Are whales and dolphins the enemy we fear?
The people of this country are facing a huge drama right now. It is particularly visible in the arena of ecological issues, because it is about resources, and who controls them. Once again, that old consciousness takes over.
The inner process is our shadow, the feeling of being resource-less—literally disconnected from Source. This is an inner state, but we project it onto the outside world. What we then see outside is that the only remaining resources to be had are in the few remaining physical wilderness areas.
A wilderness area is, by definition, a place that has not been robbed of its resources. Once an area has been dominated and raped of its resources, it is no longer a wilderness.
The Big Picture What we are facing is the old paradigm versus the new paradigm. The old paradigm is a tyrant/victim, scarcity/abundance, win/lose, patriarchal, let’s-rape-mother-earth-again paradigm. It is our old animal instinct of the survival of the fittest, might-makes-right and winner-take-all-because-there-isn’t-enough-to-go-around paradigm. Many of us have seen through this to some degree or other by now. Many of us even realize, as we let in the deeper knowledge that the earth is actually round, and that what goes around comes around, that “win-lose” really adds up to “lose-lose”.
Basically the old paradigm is fear-based, and we were all conditioned into it as children. It lives inside our awareness, and is therefore projected outside us, in the world around us—until we dissolve it. Many of us have been working hard to dissolve it, and still are, which is good. Good for us, good for the environment and good for the growth of the new paradigm in the world.
The new paradigm is a win-win paradigm. It is love-based, connected to truth, and it lifts awareness beyond the old fear projections syndrome.
But right now, because of prevailing astrological energies, we have entered another round of even deeper clearing of the psyche’s shadow, that old tyrant-victim paradigm. And do we ever have a blatant mirror of it in the new government!
Depression As we enter this dark passage, those of us dedicated to our soul’s evolution are being called to remain aware and conscious while we experience this egoic downward spiral. These are experiences that we would normally avoid because they are aspects of our deeply hidden suffering self, the victim, and are characterized by states of fear—fear of death, hopelessness, meaninglessness, desolation and destitution. Most people cannot handle such states of consciousness as they are regarded by the mainstream as symptoms of a serious depression that renders an individual dysfunctional.
Yet with courage, understanding, a big heart and a strong witness, we can clear and release more and more of our individual and collective shadow by being willing to face these states and know the truth about them, that they are part of the illusion, Maya. Not who we really are at all.
Overall, while it is difficult and uncomfortable, this is important work for each of us to do, since it means that we are dissolving ego, releasing our own shadow and moving toward manifesting the clarity of awakening in ourselves. We are also relieving the collective shadow of many others who remain stuck in the old paradigm.
Prozac I heard the other day that there are millions of people who are taking the anti-depressant drug Prozac. While there are undoubtedly some who need the Prozac clinically, the truth is that Prozac delays that part of life’s journey that involves clearing shadow. Yet this clearing work is necessary to awakening. Prozac closes the window of opportunity that a descent into negative ego presents. Consumers of Prozac either do not have conscious commitments to their soul’s evolution, or they do not have the tools they need to be able to face the negative ego consciously, without a pharmaceutical crutch.
Prozac and other pharmaceutical anti-depressants have become an important collective issue for us in America right now. I have my own personal story to tell in regards to this. During the 1970’s, when I was in my twenties, I took an anti-depressant for a period of time. I did this because I knew of no other way to cope with the intense level of shadow coming up for me at that time in the form of depression. I was not on a rigorous spiritual path then, but ironically, wanting to get off the anti-depressants certainly helped guide me to be on one.
Until I learned that depression is the descent of consciousness into the negative unconscious side of the ego, and that this could be processed and cleared, I was often dysfunctional and had to use anti-depressants to get through the day. What I know now is that the shadow was cutting off the flow of life force, and I had no energy. And though I really wanted to, it was difficult for me to get off the anti-depressants because the delayed buildup of un-dealt-with shadow came crashing in on me when I tried.
Fortunately, for someone on a path who has knowledge and tools, Prozac may not be necessary. Developing an understanding of how to make the journey into the darkness consciously and how to clear the darkness is much more beneficial in the long run.
Healing the Duality Our psyche is the battleground for the old paradigm versus the new. We were all conditioned into the old paradigm, but we are being moved inexorably into the new. Mostly this is by our own choice but sometimes it seems we are dragged along reluctantly in the slipstream by the energies of the changing world.
One of the dualities we must heal and unify for ourselves before we wake up fully is that of the inside of our mind and the outside world around us. Nowadays, with the outside mirroring the inside shadow so clearly, we must see the connectedness of the two—the inner and the outer—and respond to both. It is appropriate that the work we do to clear and unify duality inwardly be reflected by some form of corresponding action on the outside. We must make our insights about truth, unity and the new paradigm known—by speaking out, by writing, by teaching. We must act in the physical, diligently and impeccably, to uphold what we know to be truth.
Politically we must object, in all sorts of creative ways, to the backward steps being taken by those who are more blind than we are. WeThePeople must speak out now—write our senators, congressmen and congresswomen. If we don’t so act, we can’t manifest into form the heart doorway. It will not even manifest in our personal physical life, let alone the larger landscape of the collective physical plane. And there is a danger that we may even, in the end, lose our freedom of speech.
To bring inner and outer together, in and through the physical, is an act of love. We must choose love now above all else. We must contribute something from the heart—especially during times of perceived adversity, when we least feel like it. That is the test.
How? You don’t have to know how. Just say to Spirit that you do, and you will soon know.
Leslie Temple-Thurston is the author of The Marriage of Spirit – Enlightened Living in Today’s World. She was born in South Africa and emigrated to the United States in the mid-1970s. There, after many years of practicing meditation and self-inquiry, she experienced a dissolution of her old identity and a profound spiritual awakening. Currently, Leslie shares a transmission of grace, unconditional love and healing energy at her events and assists spiritual seekers worldwide in becoming conscious of the luminous core of enlightenment that is within each one of us.
Leslie will offer a public event in Portland on October 20, 2:30-5:30pm, by donation, and an intensive, “Opening the Creative Flow”, October 21-23. All at the Unity Church of Portland.
For more information or a free brochure, contact CoreLight: www.corelight.org, or toll-free 888-989-3552.
