December 3, 2015 Paradise Within
 |
| Photo by Donna Sherman |
Everything is indeed connected, all actions begin with thoughts often born from
emotion.
All of these aspects originate within us, many times in response to what is outside of us.
In this sense; this is about Hypnosis because Hypnosis is about the power of
suggestion, after all.
Our
vast technology has changed the landscape of our interior worlds
profoundly. It has given us a knowledge of events and opinions far
greater than in any time in human history. And, like all knowledge,
once known, it can not then be UN-known.
I’ve written before about the sense of bombardment.
Things coming at us from everywhere…
The news, the arguing, the imagery, the advertising…
There
is a subworld online and outward that we’ve created and like the
proverbial Frankenstein’s monster, it reaches out from our
screens when our defenses are down (and even when they are not) and
grabs us in a choke-hold. Leaves us breathless, thoughts racing.
Mass
murders most every day. Child abuse, Animal abuse, Road rage, Car
accidents, Illness, stupid yet horrific crimes, list goes
on…. Tragedies beyond comprehension. Name calling, opinions, anger,
interspersed with photos of people’s pets or children, their lattes or
casseroles, funny cartoons, videos of the
perfection of nature…..animals being cute, things for sale...etc..….the
constant chatter of Life in the 21st Century.
It can feel like DIS-EASE to be here now. The sense of not being at ease.
So
much anxiety and stress. Feels like being squeezed some days. So many
options...what to think, what to do, how to be, what to
want, what to not want.
People
haven’t changed fundamentally really in all these years spent walking
upright. You can read a play by
Shakespeare and find the same basic conflicts confounding us in the 16th
century. You can even discern in the Bible, written thousands of years
earlier, the same essential emotions driving
people.
But
what has changed is our access to so much more of it than ever before.
Like a magnificent and terrible telepathy that if we choose
to take a visit to the cyber world, just check our email, or make a
phone call, we are opening ourselves up to EVERYTHING that others are
thinking and doing and buying and shooting and praying
for and not praying for.
Without
me unveiling any of my own personal religious/spiritual beliefs (which
are irrelevant here as much as anything can be) Let me
just say that as a mythological and metaphorical story, Adam and Eve
sharing the apple of Knowledge and getting booted out of Paradise is
somehow more blindingly accurate today than perhaps in
any other time.
Is there any internal Eden left for us at all?
I think there only is when we choose to focus on it and re-create it. In any way
possible.
And this very well might just be the single most best thing we can possibly do for ourselves or each
other.
Create a Paradise in the midst of a screaming battle…
Carry it within.
Pull it out in the maelstrom.
Be a non-neon sign along Life’s highway.
Like the moon maybe.
Even
as I write this; I know that in the writing and posting of it I am, in
effect, lighting this road sign to neon….yet it is still worth
doing. And everyone must still seek it in their own way. Both things are true.
But if through my work I can help others find that place within themselves where all the
chattering cacophony stops, revealing just one low voiced sound of truth and peace, then the necessary evil of yet another neon sign can be
transformed into assistance to change the world for the better.
One mind at a time.
It is all I can do for myself and all I can do for you.
