by Astara
What does full participation living have to do with anything amidst a pandemic and our world is on fire? All of the issues we face as a culture come down to how we participate with life. The fear, feeling separate, and scarcity consciousness (greed) generate environmental degradation, which leads to pandemics and climate change, civil rights offenses, fake news, social media addiction, and political manipulation. Our participation is strained, tight, narrow, and conditional.
How do we relate to ourselves, nature, the universe, and each other? What is the quality of our participation?
In a world that is filled to the brim with outward signs and symptoms of dissonance, it is easy to think that participation is not such a good idea, and that you are better off doing [insert whatever you are doing here] on your own. And that can pretty much sum up how we have been participating with each other and life for a while now. Even with a hundred zoom calls, we can live in a non-participatory way.
We are Hardwired to Participate
We are hardwired to belong. We are hardwired to inter-be. That is because the universe is designed collaboratively and in full participation. Anything you have created in this world that you love, you did with full participation. A painting. A baby. A song. A new home. And many heads are always better than one for solving problems. Trees know this. The stars know this. As a global human collective, we are slowly learning this. Years ago in my green building world, a mechanical engineer colleague had a complex engineering problem he had worked on for months and couldn’t solve, so he got a room full of over one hundred engineers, architects, and other builders together at a facilitated green building conference session and they solved the issue in ten minutes. Ten minutes! Crowd sourcing came into our world via technology, the internet, and social media and showed us all what was possible when you put people together to solve a common goal.
We are at an interesting evolutionary intersection, because we have created all sorts of incredible technology to connect more of us and faster across the globe, but it is rare to have the emotional intelligence or wisdom to navigate the nasty issues the advent of such technology has given us. (Watch the movie Social Dilemma) We are more connected, and busier than ever, but participating a lot less with each other. And unfortunately, greed (fear and scarcity) is the main motivator for almost everything, and has been for a long while. Much longer even than our deeply disturbing 400-year-old reckoning to slavery and it’s system impacts in our world.
Cultivate Presence
What is full participation? It is trust, presence, breath, slowing down, noticing. It is a willingness to bring all of you to all of life — no matter what. It is staying with yourself when the going gets tough, so you can do the same for others. It is collaboration. It is love. It is a willingness to be vulnerable.
And how do we do this? An essential ingredient is taking one eye (our pineal gland) and turning it to the inside as often as we can. And in all my online courses within Inner Space Academy, I teach you how to live with one eye on the inside. A great place to start is the free Welcome course of the Project Awakening collection.
When we live with one eye on the inside, we become energetically intelligent and emotionally responsible and we get to know ourselves. Then, and only then, do we become available to our own shadow work and prioritize inner bonding. Oddly enough, although we depend on full participation living, we are afraid of and often avoid such self-intimacy. That is because we are suddenly vulnerable in a world that doesn’t value vulnerability…as of yet.
Although we must do the internally focused work to be emotionally responsible for our lives, we live in a world that is externally focused and filled with blaming and shaming. Before we beat ourselves up for any of this, remember we are raised that way; we are conditioned to do so. We are taught that peace and happiness is something we have to fight for, earn, or gain externally. I will be free, happy, joyful, loved, safe when they act differently or they change their policy, behavior, and rules. When we turn one eye to the inside, we are less focused externally, and listening to the cues within.
What if we taught the upcoming generation to value vulnerability and self-reflection? We can choose to teach emotional intelligence skills in school. We must create a new cultural agreement valuing empathy, emotional responsibility, and intimacy, and change the ways families raise their young. Until then, in our holographic universe, the good news is when you start with yourself, the rest of the world benefits.
The world is inside you, as you are in the world. You live in a holographic universe — you contain all that you see, all that you judge, all that you admire in others.
There is a very important piece of the puzzle that can free us in this moment: The world is inside you, as you are in the world. You live in a holographic universe — you contain all that you see, all that you judge, all that you admire in others. So any changes you want to see happen? Start with you. When you reclaim all the shadows you have hidden, disowned and denied as well as all your gifts. When you love all of you — the parts you don’t like and the parts you do — you become love in the room.
What we are seeking is not something obtained outside of us, yet to participate means to be in relationship with everything. Life is a dance of paradox. And when we are willing to hold the paradox lightly in our hearts, we can participate even more.
A Choice Away
Right now, slow your breath down, get quiet, listen to the sensations of your body, put your hand on your heart to feel its rhythm, and think of something that brings you joy. The simple act of slowing down, breathing, connecting to your body, and feeling joy out of nowhere and for no reason, creates coherence between your mind, heart and gut; it allows you to drop into the wisdom that lies inside you. When you become more coherent, you have begun to participate fully.
Say out loud, “I am here. I am here. I am here.” This is your Soulful Self (True Self or Divine Self) saying those words. When you say them, you begin to align to the truth that is always there. When we align to the Soulful Self, we realize our truth, power, belonging, and worthiness has been inside us all along. When you arrive here, in the eternal now, you begin to participate with all of life.
Participate in your breath, participate in the colors of fall leaves; participate in the sun on your skin, participate in the night leaving; participate in the stars flicker through the atmosphere, participate in the bird song at dawn; participate in the clouds, participate in the smell of the world after rain, participate in the seasons shift. Make participation your lifestyle and the whole of existence responds.
The future is relational. The future is collaborative. So, participate fully in life starting now — right now. The Earth needs you.
All Astara’s online courses within Inner Space Academy teach you how to live with one eye on the inside. A great place to start is the free Welcome course of the Project Awakening collection.
