It's Time To Stop Avoiding 'What Is'

On the necessary interweaving of focus between our internal experience and our external world.

Someone sent me a recent piece by Charles Eisenstein that caught my eye. The reader had watched my recent podcast episode about near-death experiences, and thought I’d be interested in Charles’ article.

In his piece, Charles shared a video of a man named Drew telling his incredible story of his near-death experience.

The man’s story is inspiring, profound, consciousness expanding, and intriguing. But it was something else that caught my attention in this piece.

I was inspired to express it in raw fashion here.

Charles wrote:

“I need stories like this in order to stay sane. I am working on an essay about peace right now, groping for what is mine to say, and what is someone else’s to say. The powers of the war machine are colossal. I would lose my sanity and succumb to despair, were it not for the incursion of data points such as the ones Drew brings. We have to stop running around blind—blind to the fullness of what is. What is, includes the power of the military-industrial complex and the horror it continues to visit upon earth. And it also includes the information that Drew brought, with heroic determination, from the other side.”

I read this and felt inspired. But I also felt some past hurt rise up again. Let me break this down a bit.

I love Charles and what he does. We had a great chat a couple of years ago on my podcast.

I’m inspired by his words here because he seems much more willing to talk about the true nature of our systems now than he was in the past. This will help bring his audience deeper into the space of acknowledging the totality of what is.

But I’m somewhat reminded of the pain that I’ve felt over the last 15 years. Before COVID, it often felt very lonely in my work talking about the totality of what is, as opposed to just the nicer sounding and poetic stuff.

I’ve always existed in both worlds, that of a more ‘spiritual community’ and that of a ‘news and truth-seeking community.’

Being willing to explore all of what is was something I committed to 15 years ago when I created Collective Evolution. I took this path because it made sense to me. Why choose to avoid some of our human story, even when there are important lessons in it? It’s what we’re here to do.

It’s common for people and leaders in the ‘conscious community’ to want to turn a blind eye to the things that are happening in this world because they are trying to stay ‘spiritual,’ ‘positive’ or remain ‘accepted by the conscious community.’

To me, I get the need to find balance, but this can also be spiritual bypassing.

Many times I have been told that talking about the results of our current system is ‘negative.’ I was stunned by this as never was my content produced to create drama, fear, or shock. It’s crafted carefully and with love.

Yet in simply talking about what I did, I was apparently “creating more negativity by being negative.“ Gosh is this utter bullshit.

When I started sharing more about the state of the world back in 2011, how it reflected our state of consciousness, and what we could do to create change in our society, I stopped hearing from many people, brands, leaders, and contacts I’d built. These people only accepted me for my writings on consciousness and well-being, ‘news’ was taboo.

So I stopped being invited to events, and people stopped sharing what I had created.

When Charles began addressing the obvious questions with COVID publicly in 2021, I watched him go through this ostracizing too. As if some of the ‘conscious community’ was now trying to keep him in line… or else.

I wonder if he feels/felt the same pain I have at times.

I’m thankful the events of COVID encouraged so many to take a step back and see what was going on. Embracing the courage to see what is and talk about it. To hold true that we can’t simply turn a blind eye to the destructive power of the systems around us, and how quickly we let ‘leaders’ decide our fate while we accept being powerless and that ‘good vibes’ alone will fix everything.

Oh the paradox. “We’re all powerful beings of light” is what many say when in the spiritual frame, yet in the ‘real world’ “we can’t talk about the oppressive aspects of our existing system because it’s negative and will wreck our vibe.”

This just doesn’t make sense.

To me spirituality is not just about yoga, meditation, and simply seeking ‘good vibes’ - it’s about how we act, relate, and create in this world. It’s about embracing all that is.

I agree with what Charles said in that Drew’s story is good medicine. Stories like his are the medicine needed as we interweave between understanding the nature of our current systems while staying in tune with the nature of who we are.

I feel we must allow our expansion of consciousness to inform what we create and how we create, but it’s no use to lose sight of the nature of our existing culture in an attempt to avoid the truth.

I’ve watched people die who denied their cancer diagnosis and pretended it wasn’t there. Similarly, for 15 years I’ve watched many people avoid the true nature of what is in our world, the cancers, in an attempt to stay positive - and it doesn’t appear to have truly worked out.

That said, we are here - now. No use reminiscing on what could have been. Let’s take a new approach moving forward. Let’s build our capacity to stay connected with ourselves as we face the challenges of our current moment.

It doesn’t need to be one or the other. We don’t have to lose sight of our internal world nor our external. In fact, I feel the way forward embraces and holds both as necessary. It fears neither.

Funny enough, as I reel to pick a direction for my work here in 2023, I realize it can sometimes be a curse to have a big picture lens of consciousness, human condition, and how both create the current events of today.

It’s a comprehensive-ist viewpoint I’ve had since I was a young boy. As an adult, I am learning that making a business out of such a BIG vision is hard. Simplifying things down into more specific messages ‘fits better’ into our current culture.

That said, I find it hard to not talk about how current events act as an evolutionary pressure on our consciousness, and that with the right awareness and intention, our consciousness acts as an evolutionary pressure on our current events.

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