Being alive is about allowing life to flow through us. That flow of life can take many forms: energy, power, life-force, creativity, emotion — they are all the same thing, life flowing, and they all want expression.
In this culture we are discouraged from being expressive, because it’s considered childish; ever remember being told, “Now, don’t get carried away!” by your parents? Besides wanting to appear adult, there are other reasons to keep ourselves under wraps.
Sometimes energy wants to be expressed as exuberance, exhilaration, rage, passion — and unfortunately such uncensored expression can be quite alarming to onlookers. People who are concerned about being kind and gentle don’t want to alarm others. So they censor themselves. That could be called depressing oneself, and it certainly results in chronic depression when it is an ongoing habit.
How sad it is that we suppress our natural expressions of happiness in order to keep others happy. And this is undoubtedly the cause of the recent epidemic of depression in America, as more and more people want to behave kindly.
We need to find healthy avenues for our energy flows, whether it’s art, sports, building, dancing, singing, playing with and teaching children, or anything else — and the possibilities are endless. We also need to allow others to express themselves in whatever way they need without taking responsibility for them. (Just because I perceive someone as angry or sad does not mean it has anything to do with me!) Sex is a wonderful outlet — until it gets out of hand, and someone becomes a sex offender. Such people obviously need to find other ways of expressing the energy that wants to move through them. I foresee a time when children will be taught about ways of expressing their life-force so that they don’t get stuck in one avenue to their detriment.
But we also can look at this issue from a broader perspective. Humanity is going through a great surge of evolution. The world has changed hugely, as technology — and particularly the Internet — becomes available to the masses. A new paradigm is upon us. We, the ordinary people, are no longer operating in survival mode as we were in the past. We have the “luxury” of acknowledging our emotions and desires, looking at what we really want out of this human existence, and deploring what we don’t want.
Many of us no longer want any part in the cruel behavior that was, until recently, quite acceptable on this planet. Take childhood molestation, for example. It occurred frequently throughout history without ever being addressed. Now there are resources for survivors to heal and great efforts made to make sure it stops happening. That’s wonderful — but the problem is we can no longer pretend it isn’t happening. The same is true for many things. We are constantly bombarded with information about the cruelty that is occurring on this planet. It’s in our faces; we cannot escape it. No wonder so many of us take drugs (legal and illegal) to make being in human form tolerable.
This is the dying throes of an old way of being. The darkness that has fostered cruelty and violence for so many centuries is nearly done. It’s rearing its ugly head for one last time, because it knows it will soon pass; the light is here. Our job is to open our eyes, turn our backs on the darkness and embrace the light, falling on our knees in joy and relief, or leaping with delight, singing at the tops of our voices, releasing our love for all to hear and join in the celebrations!
Make your personal commitment right now to welcome in the light, and let it flow through you so that others can also see it. Initially, this may seem impossible but if you are reading this article, you can choose to do this, even if it starts with just one minute a day. That is life moving through us, in the form of love, and that is what changes the world.
