"Everybody’s talking about bagism, shagism, dragism, madism, ragism, tagism, this-ism, that-ism…ism, ism, ism…all we are saying is give peace a chance." – John Lennon "Give Peace a Chance"
Peace. The final frontier. It is what every human being desires, and yet, it is something very few of us ever realize completely in our lives. Whether that is because all of us come with a self-defeating ego installed or because we don’t put a priority on teaching every young child how to deal with emotions, it’s hard to say. The truth is, peace is as hard to hold onto as a drop of water.
The key, some wise ones remind us, is to remain in the now moment. Don’t linger in the past or worry about the future. Just be. The problem is that habits are hard to break. We get in our own way by following the endless stream of thoughts that fill our minds to the extent that we cannot find our way back home again. Leaving bread crumbs along the path doesn’t work. It’s like surfing the web for hours and then trying to remember where you started.
Just this past week, I have been trying to remember my start here in Minnesota when I joined The Edge as editor, a dozen years ago. Tracing my path back from now to then is impossible. I have interviewed hundreds of people and have written scores of articles and columns in that time, and yet, if pressed to name one of them that represented the pinnacle of my experience with this publication, I couldn’t do it.
Yes, I’ve spent time with the Redfields, the Walschs, the Millmans, the Dyers and the Bradens, and I’ve been in homes across the Twin Cities talking to the Bodines and the Harwigs, on many occasions with each of them. Some of the people I have interviewed have shared ideas that totally shook the foundation of how we viewed life. Some tapped into their inner guidance, some used intuition and others gleaned information from what they described as other spiritual realms or dimensions. Still others shared insight on life and how to live it after having graduated from the school of hard knocks.
But in the end, I do not view any of these authors and speakers and filmmakers and spiritual gurus any differently than I think of you. Yes, they have something to share, but so do you. We all do. And we all share our gifts in our own way-even if we don’t think we are doing anything at all.
In the end, if I had to share how serving as editor of The Edge has transformed me, I would say this: I am even more convinced than ever that what we call life is actually a quantum experience-a multidimensional process in which all of the emotions, intellects, physical bodies and souls of every human on the planet are interconnected. I feel that our evolutionary journey is one of remembering who we are as one. As individuals, we add our uniqueness to the whole not unlike the importance of every solitary pixel on a television screen. When one pixel is blank, we sense its absence even if we cannot definitively explain why we think something is missing.
That is why each of us is important, and why each of us uplifts the whole when we are able to transcend mediocrity and truly shine our light. When one of us rises, we feel it. And when one of us falls-or thirteen as in the tragedy on the 35W bridge collapse-we feel it.
Our challenge in the moment is to feel that connection, own that connection and live that connection.
Every so often, one of us taps into that connection and makes a bold reminder to the rest of us. Marianne Williamson told us: "Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure." We are reminded every day of our lives. When your best friend tells you the truth, and energy moves through your body, you say it must be true because you feel the goose bumps. That’s the reminder. That’s the connection.
I sense that this is only the beginning of our understanding of who we are.
A single cell becomes two, and then it splits and becomes four. Miraculously, by the time we are adults, we actually are trillions of interconnected cells. But in the deepest part of who we are, we think of ourselves as one being. In the same way, the 6 billion people on the planet may appear to be disconnected, but who’s to say that we aren’t just as interconnected as all of the cells in our body and that there is only one being? Who’s to say that quantum theories are not correct, speculating that we exist in a super Star Trek Holodeck, believing that there are other people and trees and rivers and things, but actually, when the lights are turned out, all that exists is the one mind that believed everything into reality?
When I was twentysomething, I re-read the Edgar Cayce and UFO books that I had first inhaled as a pre-teen. I pondered the nature of reality while paging my way through the Seth channelings. My first acrylic painting was an early circular crop circle with satellites. As the years passed by, I wondered about lucid dreaming and spirit guides and animal totems. And then I explored remote viewing and mediumship and past-life regression and life between lives and meditation and untold other forms of spirituality and psychic phenomena.
Remember Forrest Gump when he began running across the country "for no particular reason?" He attracted followers who ran with him, each of them anticipating that somewhere along the way Forrest would utter some incredibly deep message about why he was running. In the end, Forrest said he stopped running because he got tired.
Something changed in me during the twelve years that I have been editor of The Edge. I have stopped getting so excited about any particular book, despite a popularity that seems to spread like wildfire. I’m not so convinced when new products promise spiritual enlightenment. Like Forrest, I just stopped. For no particular reason. I see so many things as distractions that keep me from being in the present moment and listening to the truth within my own being. That’s just me. Now.
As human beings, I think we have a long way to go before we figure it all out. There are many mysteries that we will never understand. But what I do know is that the journey to know myself, and to better know my connection with all that is, remains incredibly exciting-and I am grateful that you continue to share your personal stories, and insights and experiences with the community at large, through this vehicle we call The Edge.
