The Hidden Truth about Community

What if there are no battles for us to fight? 

What if we don’t really need to be warriors? 

What if we no longer needed to win at all costs?

What if coming together in community is our most significant opportunities right now?

Please let these questions sink in as we plant seeds and grow our garden, together.

As a child of war, I understand survival and have experienced the deep divisions that have been created to keep us safe. But our attachment to beliefs and people that no longer serves us are making us sick. We’ve been conditioned to believe that material safety will keep us safe but we’re discovering that it’s actually making us ill. 

Our choices matter

Much of our entertainment industry, which we created and continue to feed, keeps us locked in fear of our very safety. Turn on any device and you will be able to select thousands of films and television series on crime, violence, war and hunting killers, murderers and psychopaths. We’ve become experts in how to solve crimes and hunt serial killers from forensic science to detective skills. And let’s not even jump into the plethora of video games where we kill the enemy and get rewarded for it, even angry pigs.

We must love these shows and games as we keep consuming them as they come to market. Every season, new ones are released or we can binge on them on streaming services. Do you ever stop and notice how many there are and why we actually consume them with a deep hunger? What part of us is this darkness feeding? Why do we choose to sit in front of a box consuming this darkness, too often alone? What would happen if no one watched and spread the news anymore? 

What if we report acts of kindness instead of acts against our humanity? Can we imagine making different choices right now of what we consume? What if we found our power source to make decisions that matter instead of waiting for some body outside ourselves dictating how the world should be for us? Maybe isolating ourselves to truly have time to think and ask ourselves questions is one of the biggest opportunities we face, while we take impeccable care of our elders, our children, our community and ourselves?

Our opportunity is to let go

The inability to let go of what doesn’t serve us, is what is making us ill. Life and death are a natural cycle that can easily be observed in Nature. Every winter, many trees lose their leaves and Spring births new buds that bloom and flower. Death is a process of purification and an opportunity for something healthy to emerge.

When we resist or fight and remain warring and protecting, we simply miss opportunities. We invest our energy in protecting and hanging on to fight or flight paradigms or competitive practices that may seem safe but in reality, no longer serve us in life and in business. It’s like carrying a 100-pound suitcase with us every where we go. It weighs us down and doesn’t release us to step into the energy of possibilities, and what we can create in the world, especially during challenging times.

When was the last time you had an honest conversation with yourself?

To begin our transformation, we can release the unhealthy fear and limiting beliefs and lighten our cases. 

We watch mysteries and it’s ok for someone else to entertain us on our screens by stepping into the underworld to face their fears. But what happens when we pick up the lantern in our own mystery and lighten our paths by uncovering our own inner fears, curiosity, wisdom and courage?

This world is crumbling and rotting, and we’re seeing the old paradigms die right in front of us. We can keep them on life support by staying attached and fearful. But there is a part of us that wants to let them die and not fear what might emerge. The opportunity is to take back our power and create.

The old paradigm is dying, and it’s our time to ask ourselves deep questions and trek into the unknown instead of innovating within sick structures and systems. We no longer need to compete and win at all costs and crush someone else. That is the beauty of where some of us are heading with no manual or best practices to keep us stuck. 

Changing the story

Just like becoming aware of what we consume, we have an opportunity to become aware of what and who we celebrate. It’s kind of funny when we stop and think about it. Many of us learned to be valued by being the best student, best employee, best employer and best company to work for. 

It’s the story of the hero who sets out on the competitive battlefield to win at all costs. And when we win, there is a euphoria but it never truly lasts. We learn to be the best, and we need to make it to the top and stay there. This is the story that is slowly dying in our world as we become aware that it’s time to shift. The emerging world asks us to be the best we can be, without taking anyone down. There’s no need to win at someone else’s expense when we have a healthy mindset on our journey.

In our Western society, our current health care systems are mainly focused on our physical bodies and whether they’re ill or healthy. Much of the medical community addresses PTSD, depression, burnout and other mental health issues with chemicals or psychiatric solutions. But physicists like Albert Einstein and Max Planck introduced us to a quantum world, which we cannot physically see. We accept, on faith, a whole world that is invisible through phones. microwaves, radio and television waves, and now, the Internet. What if we started accepting what is in our hearts and let our intuition serve as our internal navigation system?

So what about community?

This is where community comes in when we learn to trust Nature and our own intuition and be as loving and supportive of ourselves, and to each other. 

We no longer have to be the warriors or live in a hero society. We are the creators and pioneers constructing healthy lives for the vast majority of humanity. And where we’re headed is community. Not as we know it today but going back to indigenous practices of sitting around a fire and connecting deeply, with meaning and purpose.

There will always be some of us who are hanging on to the dying paradigm as our navigation system is telling us to survive. Yet, survival is based on the limiting belief that there is such a thing as separation from the whole. That, of course, is impossible. There is no separation from the whole. We are all in this world on this planet together. 

Are we being tested now?

So many people have been running away from being still and feeding ourselves with busyness in a world where efficiency and productivity were our measures. And now, we are facing different challenges as we are being asked to stop. This is very teal as it also makes us face ourselves on every level of reality from our economics to healthcare. For some, it’s scary to think about how we’ll pay the bills, make sure we’re healthy, and for others, it’s scary to have everyone at home and spend all this time in the same space. 

We can go online and read about people facing a changing world, one that we have not had to deal with before. And some trust the news media and others don’t. Some see the material scarcity and some see the opportunity to come together in community and support each other. 

Regardless of our situation, we are being tested to the core. We can panic, and we can also stay calm and look after ourselves so we can help others. We can see the evil in people right now or we can find our own inner light and stop to assess our situation and ask for help. This is an opportunity to take our mask off and not be the hero. Everyone on this planet is going through something right now and we can either pretend or we can genuinely connect with compassion and a willingness to help ourselves and each other. Kindness is all around us but first we must learn how to be kind to ourselves, and then others. And it’s an opportunity to stop being robotic. 

Let’s start really caring about how we are, and let others know whether we’re scared and ask for help, and if we are not, let’s offer support for someone who is needing our help in new ways. If we have learning anything during our lifetime is that everyone is going through something, no one is immune. 

And this is not new as we’re reminded of the story of architect, inventor, and philosopher Buckminster (Bucky) Fuller, whose story I share in my upcoming books. With a newborn daughter and a wife, Bucky found himself broke, unemployed and undeserving of credit. Feeling hopeless about being able to provide for his family, he decided to commit suicide so his wife could live off his life insurance policy. While standing on a cliff above Lake Michigan ready to jump to his death, he had a realization that changed the course of his life and the lives of many others: “in committing suicide, I seemingly would never again have to feel the pain and mortification of my failures and errors, but the only-by-experience-winnable inventory of knowledge that I had accrued would also be forever lost — an inventory of information that, if I did not commit suicide, might prove to be of critical advantage to others, possibly to all others, possibly to Universe.”

He decided to steer his ship into uncharted waters by discovering his own path: “If I take oath never again to work for my own advantage and to work only for all others for whom my experience-gained knowledge may be of benefit, I may be justified in not throwing myself away. This will, of course, mean that I will not be able to escape the pain and mortification of being an absolute failure in playing the game of life as it has been taught to me.”

On thriving

When we’re more caring to ourselves, we can begin to thrive. When we’re more caring to our neighbors our elders and our children, our community can thrive, and when we’re more compassionate toward those who we see as our enemies, healthier paradigms will emerge. 

Are you very important to the well-being of your family, your community, and the world? If so, can you let go and not put yourself on hold? Are you pursing your dreams and following your passions? When you don’t, you deprive your family, community, and the world the opportunity of experiencing who you truly are and the gifts you bring. What will it take for you to ignite your passions and live the life you dream in community?

The world is changing very quickly despite old structures fighting to remain relevant and maintain their power. As we break the cycles and let whatever needs to die, 

When will the darkness end? It will end when we no longer allow toxic structures to maintain their power. It is when we remember that we are powerful creators. We don’t know for sure who created the Sun or the Earth but we do know who created the stock market, taxation, healthcare, advertising, and our other decaying structures and systems. 

For now, we can shine our light. Refrain from drama. Keep ourselves from living in despair by asking for help and support. Connect to ourselves and each other. We don’t have to judge, blame or point fingers when we can start understanding the source of our fear so we can start making healthy choices by understanding whether the fear is rational or irrational. Understand what and who is healthy or toxic for us when it comes to the food we consume, the people we let into our heart and the beliefs we let into our mind. You are the navigator of your own ship. 

This is a great time to build and connections and community. When we have a device, broadband and electric power, we can jump on a video call and have meaningful conversations with people anywhere in the world. We don’t have to wait for anyone. We can simply begin to forge alliances that feel meaningful and see this as an adventure. 

This is an opportunity for new beginnings with friendships, partnerships, communities, and organizations. What’s your dream of making a difference in your life, and how can you tap into community, or take a step toward making a hope or dream come true? Take a stand and let go of something you feel is detrimental, or become involved with something or someone you’re passionate about. It’s our time to transform community from a word to a way of life.

The greatest power we possess is our ability to claim our internal passion by reclaiming authority from those who would power over us and instead discern, imagine and build healthy communities that serve the collective with unity, not conformity.

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My team and I launched the first online community at Cisco in 1999 and it failed miserably because people were not ready for it but boy, did we learn a ton. And now, we’re ready to come together like never before. This is our time to be architects of our own human life so we can build healthy structures for the vast majority of humanity. My first in a series of three books will be published on September 15, 2020 expanding on many of these topics as medicine for our soul. One early reader shared that experiencing the book was like having “binoculars for her soul” and my dream is that it opens hearts and minds so we can have healthy lives and constrict healthy communities. We are more powerful than we ever imagined and so much is possible!

Please reach out if you want to connect.