Focus, people, FOCUS

I was talking to a colleague in California yesterday who told me she’d just paid over $4/gal to fill up her car. 

Wow.

She then began relating a story to me that she’d read that people are beginning to sell possessions in order to buy gas and groceries for their families.

Wow.

I’ve never been interested in politics because one of my core values is AUTHENTICITY.   At least in our country, you can’t be authentic and be a successful politician.

But the drama of the last 8 years unfolded as my spiritual walk took a major detour.  I’ve challenged everything I thought to be true about myself and the world, left my job, lost material “security” and several “friends,” to find myself in a space that is more loving, more kind, more AUTHENTIC than I ever imagined. 

Trust me, all of those “losses” could have stopped me dead in my tracks.   And many times, they did.   But I never lost sight of the dream that I could love myself unconditionally, NO MATTER WHAT.

I’m not 100% there and maybe that’s too much to ask for 1 lifetime.  I won’t dare declare, “Mission: Accomplished.”

Which leads me back to the current state of affairs in the US.  

This isn’t a freakin’ election about abortion, gay marriage, Jeremiah Wright, black, white or whatever. 

It’s about our future.  It’s about our children.  It’s about taking steps towards actualizing the potential in ALL of us.

And yes, that means facing up to the fact that even in “the land of the free and the home of the brave, ” EQUAL access to opportunities does not exist. 

It’s about accepting the brutality our country has inflicted on our own citizens as well as people around the world along with shining our brilliance more brightly.

We’ve done a lot of things that have lifted up humanity.  And many things that haven’t.

It’s time to stop wrapping ourselves up in the flag and hiding behind beliefs that someone else handed you (and you readily accept) and be of SERVICE.   It’s time to stop judging and condemning and claiming superiority.  It’s time to realize that we have a responsibility to EACH OTHER.  

And the only way I know how to do that, is to start with YOU.  When you stop making yourself “wrong”, when you stop condemning yourself for all the things you did or didn’t do, when you stop believing that when you lose weight, or have a better job, or get bigger boobs or less wrinkles, or more money or whatever it is you use to make yourself feel less than, THEN we can move toward healing our country and our world.

This isn’t about Jeremiah Wright, or the war on terror or whose God is bigger and badder.

It’s about YOU deciding to become your own source of light and love.  And when you do that, the compassion that you have for yourself, will fill you up and overflow and naturally make the world a better place.  Because you’ll be choosing from LOVE, not fear.

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.

Choosing from fear will continue this cycle in ways I’m too afraid to imagine.

Don’t let yourself become distracted. 

The world needs you.