Dancing in the Eye of the Storm by Michael Lindfield | Living the New Story at the Turning of the Year

Those who study the heavens and understand the ebb and flow of the great cosmic cycles, know we are leaving behind one era and entering a brand-new evolutionary period and that 2020 was destined to be a pivotal year in this Great Turning.

The world has been turned upside down these past ten months and much of what we took for granted and looked to for security and reassurance has crumbled in front of our eyes.

We find ourselves standing at a critical juncture in human history, facing a stark choice to either go further down the rabbit hole of self-centredness and greed that leads to a divided world or to walk together the clear path of loving kindness that will bring about a planetary community of caring and sharing.

The question is, “Will we elect to have the soul govern and guide us or will the drives of our lower nature continue to rule and keep us imprisoned and addicted by placing the needs of the personal self above the wellbeing of the whole?”

Looking back, I would say that 2020 was the year of the global quake – a SoulQuake of great magnitude: caused by Gaia initiating a necessary spiritual ‘systems upgrade’. She sounded a new compelling note of purpose from the depth of Her being – inviting all the various aspects of Her multi-dimensional ecosystem to raise their frequencies. This, of course, included us humans who, unfortunately, tend to forget we are integral parts of the one planetary Life.

We have been shaken to our core and those of us living in earthquake country know only too well, that at any moment the earth can move and buckle beneath our feet, causing enormous upheaval in our communities. It constitutes a known yet unpredictable threat to our physical safety and psychological stability and we have prepared as much as is possible for these geological events. However, in all honesty, were you and I prepared for what we have lived through in 2020?

The events of this past year continue to cause great upheaval and change. At the deepest level, a SoulQuake occurs when we say YES to the call of Life. The desire of the Soul to express itself in response to a higher calling, exerts an irresistible and unrelenting pressure on the personality. If this compelling inner force encounters a mental, emotional and physical body that is not sufficiently integrated and able to gracefully and skilfully respond to its call, then an uncomfortable and unnerving build-up of pressure ensues until it reaches an inevitable breaking point.

Any time the Soul is invoked and meets with resistance, or encounters aspects of the personality that are not in alignment with its deep purpose, it will shake us until we conform to the new requirements. All the unnecessary and outworn parts of our lives will be reconfigured or refined and, in dire circumstances, may even be reduced to rubble.

A SoulQuake is a time of great perturbation that clears a space for the new Soul-directed life to begin – one that is more in alignment with our essential nature and spiritual purpose.

So how do we prepare for and live through a SoulQuake as a prelude to a new beginning?

Here are three tips:

1. In a SoulQuake, we don’t run for cover – we stand in the unshakeable stillness and security of the Soul and the deep silent purpose of Gaia.
2. In a SoulQuake we don’t hoard or hold on to things – we let go of all baggage, belongings and beliefs that no longer serve.
3. In a SoulQuake, we don’t practice survival – we enter the fiery crucible of a transformative process that leads to total renewal.

The gift of a collective SoulQuake is that it can break open hearts that may be encrusted with bitterness or frozen with fear and liberate minds that might be clouded by separative thoughts in order to allow the beauty and splendour of the indwelling life to reveal more of its true nature. After a SoulQuake, nothing is ever the same as before.

To stir the cosmic pot even more, we recently experienced the conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn in 0 degrees Aquarius at the time of the Solstice on December 21st. This event ushered us through a cosmic Portal into a whole new cycle of possibilities – heralding a major psychic and psychological shift in human consciousness. Saturn tends to shake things up and have us face the karmic consequences of how we have been behaving as a species, while Jupiter brings a spirit of fiery hope and joyful new possibilities. This is the churning and dynamic dancing of the elements we are witnessing inside and outside of ourselves as we prepare to enter 2021.

What is the nature of this new era many believe we are now entering? To put things into perspective, let us contemplate the broad sweep of human history.

We are dealing with two dimensions of reality. Life is Eternal, while its myriad forms of expression are temporal. The perpetual and cyclical motion of the One Life causes civilisations to rise and fall over the span of countless eons.

The creative impulse behind the appearance of any culture or civilisational wave is its mythos – the seed-impulse containing the story and promise for that particular epoch in the continuous pageant of human evolution. The glorious expression and achievement of the seed-promise, when revealed through The Arts, Science, Philosophy, Ethics and Governance, marks the Golden Age of any civilisation.

However, before each new cultural wave breaks on the shore of human consciousness, there is great confusion and chaos as time-honoured social and philosophical models that no longer serve begin to crumble and lose their integrity. This is the seasonal nature of temporal existence.

Chaos always precedes the coming into being of a new order. Therefore, death and dissolution of outworn forms, together with an ensuing temporary chaos, is a perfectly natural and healthy state out of which are fashioned the right conditions for an emergence of the new. Dissolution releases the elements back into a primordial soup of matter where they remain until called forth again to be reconfigured at a ‘higher order’ in response to the magnetic beckoning of a ‘higher purpose’. So, in this instance, chaos is a positive process and a beneficent regenerative force of Mother Nature.

However, there appears to be a sinister and unnatural chaos now operating in the world caused by the wilful and deliberate destruction of forms that still usefully serve the needs of humanity. Highly self-centred forces (which are ‘greedy’ by virtue of their inherent nature) are at work in the world – seeking to thwart the progress of life and oppose the thrust of evolution on its upward spiral path. These are the organised retrogressive forces with their misguided servants who conspire to keep the human spirit captive inside walls of fear, separation and hatred.

What we see all around is a mixture of both forms of chaos – the natural breaking down of that which has served its purpose, together with the cynical dismantling of the ‘benevolent’ that humanity has so diligently constructed out of the goodness of its heart.

If it is our collective task to give birth to the light of a new day and to shape a more soul-inspired society, we cannot succumb to pernicious bullying or permit the note of our Soul to be drowned out by a cacophony of hatred and the shrill voice of separation. For light to be born inside the human heart we must open ourselves to compassion and cultivate unconditional love and respect for each other and for all creation. A society designed to benefit all can only be born out of an open hearted and barrier-free approach to life.

Crafting this New Story together is the great artistic adventure of our lifetime. The New Story is our sensed and desired dream of the future that calls to us in the present moment. It is inviting us to engage our imagination, passion and daily daring to skilfully manifest its promise.

We shape the needed ‘thought-forms’ of a new world waiting to be born out of the stuff of dreams that live within the Heart and Mind of the Planetary Life.

This is our destiny as artisans – to shape and reveal the promise of a brighter future by actively participating in the ritual of continuous renewal. This is the hallmark of our never-ending story of creation.

With the current state of global turbulence caused by the dissolution of the familiar, the most positive contribution we can make during this period of disillusionment is to begin building the new world of collective dreaming founded on the shared qualities of the soul. Rainer Maria Rilke encourages us with these evocative words:

You must give birth to your images.
They are the future waiting to be born…
Fear not the strangeness you feel.
The future must enter you
long before it happens.
Just wait for the birth,
for the hour of new clarity.

Deep and lasting change occurs when we address the causal level of problems and create a new spiritual architecture with a different set of values and outcomes. We need, of course, to have compassion for the pain and suffering in the world but instead of solely spending our energy bandaging the broken bones of a failing society, we are also being called to mobilise the resources of our indwelling spiritual power and passion to shape a future more in keeping with the highest ideals and aspirations of the human spirit.

There is a growing realisation of the direct link between the present global crisis and the way in which we each choose to live. We are members of one human family living together on this sacred sphere of Earth – sharing a common destiny.

I know in my heart we are each doing our best to live lightly on the Earth by reducing our carbon footprint, supporting local food producers and protesting injustice wherever it rears its ugly head. And yet, there is a deeper dimension of activism being called for that I invite us to reflect on through two of the critical issues facing society today: namely, violence and pollution

No longer can I sit back and demand that nations disarm and rid themselves of all weapons of mass destruction or that violence in the streets ends immediately without a corresponding action on my part that addresses the personal roots of violence. I must first be willing to recognise and dismantle my own psychological patterns of aggression and defence.

Fear and ignorance are the real enemies and as long as there are aspects of my own psyche cowering in fear and feeling the need to be defended, I continue to invest in a need to maintain defences and justify aggressiveness: which, when aggregated with similar patterns in others, reflects and keeps in place all of our national defence systems.

As ‘stewards of the environment’ and ‘green peace makers’, we need to examine our own conduct to locate where the real roots of pollution lie. There are, of course, obvious culprits in our society who shamelessly exploit the wealth of the planet. However, the blame for eroding the delicate ecological balance upon our planet cannot only be placed upon the shoulders of these infamous toxic waste-producing enterprises. There is a source of pollution and ecological damage that is much closer to home.

We abhor the noxious waste that poisons our atmosphere, oceans and land but seldom stop to think of the individual acts of pollution that take place daily. Each derogatory thought or negative emotion we send out is a poisonous release into the ethers and has the same destructive effect as any harmful chemical would have in the dense physical world.

Whenever our hearts and minds are filled with hate, we spew out harmful particulates and adversely affect the psychological climate of our planet. If we were to scan the mental horizons of the collective consciousness, the dark thought-forms and emotionally-charged particles clouding the inner skies would be clearly perceived. This psychic acid rain-cloud is a powerful corrosive force eating away at the social and moral fabric of our world. We demand limits to emissions from automobiles and factories and yet fail to understand that the factory of the human mind is churning out pollutants into the atmosphere each time we think in separatist and prejudicial ways about each other or act violently towards the many creatures of the sea, land and air with whom we share this fair earth.

In 2021, we are in dire need of a viable ecology of peace – a way of living together that is inspirational and practical and that will result in this planet becoming a garden of plenty for all. Our personal investment in peace and prosperity is a priceless gift to coming generations: while its absence marks a most costly oversight on our part that bankrupts the future.

“We reap what we sow”. And, so it is the height of futility and self-delusion to believe that a different and better crop can be harvested if we continue to sow the same seed-thoughts of negativity in the impoverished soil of the human psyche season after season. There is so much goodness in our souls that has never had a chance to grow because current conditions are so inhospitable. We have a chance here and now to create those right conditions.

We know in our heart of hearts that these are precipitous and pivotal times and, intuitively, we also know that we have the necessary power to make a positive difference in the world. The true and lasting change we all seek starts from the deep places within our souls and moves out, like rays of the sun, to warm and illumine the cold dark places of our common humanity.

May we make each moment truly count for something. May all our thoughts and actions inspire and carry compassion. May acts of caring and kindness bring healing and unity instead of further darkness and separation to our world.

This is the time for spirit to be seen in action as we dance together in the eye of the storm.

Michael Lindfield is a former Trustee and Education Director of the Findhorn Foundation and long-time Fellow. He is President of Meditation Mount in Ojai, California. Michael is a highly regarded consultant and coach with over 45 years of international experience in unleashing the creativity of the human spirit to meet the needs of our times and the call of the future. He is the author of The Dance of Change: an Eco-Spiritual Approach to Transformation plus numerous articles featured in psychology, education and business journals. He is co-founder of The Science of Group Work Initiative and a member of the Community of Living Ethics in Umbria, Italy.

This reflection forms part of our ‘Living the New Story at the Turning of the Year’ Blog Series. We are deeply grateful to Michael for sharing his wisdom and insights with our Findhorn New Story Community. Be sure to read our other contributions in the Series generously offered by respected proponents of a new story for humanity at this uncertain and changing time in our evolution.

Featured Photo by NASA on Unsplash