A Shift in Survival Systems

By Jane Ilene Cohen
Copyright © 10/31/04

A lot of people are feeling a sense of dread at the idea that Bush might win the election. They perceive what he has done in the past four years, and probably will do in the future if given the chance, has and will continue to, put this country and the larger world situation, in an increasingly dangerous position that could escalate into something hugely catastrophic.  

I think this is a crossroads time, just as it was when 9-11 occurred. It is again an opportunity to shift our concept of where the source of power and safety comes from.

9-11 burst the bubble, at least for the moment, of where actual safety comes from. Before then those of us in the United States lived under the belief that those in charge of our intelligence and various government services could protect us from the kind of major danger much of the rest of the world experiences. When 9-11 occurred that belief was shattered, for a period of time.  

Many people in the spiritual community believe, at least in theory, that our source of power and safety comes from the Divine. But we daily live our lives really believing that it is the human authorities, outside of ourselves, who actually have the power and are in control of our lives. And so we are upholding that paradigm.  

Many of us are understanding more and more clearly how we are manifesting our experience of reality, creating empowering or disempowering circumstances in our lives. But we are not seeing the actual ground we are standing on, which of course is always difficult to do. Some of us are thinking in terms of manifesting by focusing in prayer or meditation on Kerry being in office, or something along those lines. This is helpful in that it is much better to focus on what we do want, rather than what we don't. But if it's done in the framework of an authority figure having the power to determine our personal or global well-being, we are giving our power away.

What leads is internal change, not external change. External circumstances follow internal change. Our relationship with the larger picture depends totally and only upon ourselves. Perceived authorities get their power by others leaning on them to define reality. Very few people directly define their experience of reality for themselves. Throughout history it has been one authority source or another. We live in a conceptual world, as defined from outside ourselves, rather than one of direct personal experience. We have built our forms for survival and well-being based on exterior definitions of how it is done, which holds in place certain static forms of behavior. This keeps people from rocking the common boat of perceived experience.  
The world as we know it is changing. The energies appear to be polarizing. We can allow these energies to pull us into a black spiral, down into our worst fears, or allow them to catapult us into a new, more evolved paradigm of reality, and with it, a new survival system. It is like a baby bird being pushed out of its nest in order to realize it can actually fly.

You could say the choice is, who are we going to give the control to. Is it going to be a human, fallible, limited source outside of ourselves, or is it going to be a larger Divine source, accessed from within ourselves? Apparently most of humanity feels much more out of control if the Divine source is in charge, than we do if it's a human source outside of ourselves, which we somehow become accustomed to or tolerate. Or if we can't, perhaps we leave the country. Or if the human authorities are in enough alignment with ourselves, we tread water in that reality for a time until some catastrophe occurs. Giving over the control to the Divine seems to be humanity's last resort when a catastrophe becomes large enough.  

Life is meant to work; and it does work within here-and-now reality, which is where the Divine is in charge. But unconscious "limiting decisions" (unhealed issues), made early in life, block access to present moment experience in the areas of those decisions. Until they are healed, these disempowering and dysfunctional decisions (such as we're powerless, stupid, abandoned, unlovable, etc.) distort our interpretation of reality, making it very difficult to function in life.

And so we develop constructs of our selves that feel more powerful, that allow us to function while being removed from present moment experience. And then we pressure each other to perceive reality in a way that upholds these constructs. This is true on a personal relationship level, all of the way up to how we influence, or are influenced, on a global level, affecting global perception.

Coming into present moment awareness exposes these constructs as unreal. Therefore really coming into the present moment is a very radial act. It is not contained by any external structure. It is what it is, outside of human control. The full empowerment of our God-selves is accessed in the here-and-now.  It is like going through the proverbial "eye of the needle."  No one who is functioning from that place can be controlled by another. It is the place where one's higher guidance is accessed, guiding each step we take.

Learning to come into the present moment oneself is very important. But learning to come into the present moment in relationship with other people, in a small aligned group, is even more powerful. And doing that in a way that taps into living Divine energy is the most powerful, as it guides our transformation and evolution into a new and continuously evolving paradigm, beyond the influence of dysfunctional consciousness. And so what this is about is a radical change of survival systems, which is what my work is about.

It is difficult to uphold a whole new paradigm of reality by oneself, or to even conceive of what it is, without the support of an aligned group. We need to start coming together to uphold a new reality.

I am looking for aligned peers to come together with me in a group, to do this work.  In addition, as a part of my counseling practice, I am expanding my group work to include groups along these lines. This next stage of my work is to facilitate people into coming into and evolving this new paradigm in the context of here-and-now interaction with the living material and dynamics happening between participants.

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(760) 753-0733 - JC@janecohen.net - Encinitas, CA

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