Under the Panic: Mind The Gap!

This week has been filled with panic. Every week is panic nowadays. The election. Democracy. The Cataclysm.

I think about the signs in the London subway: Mind the Gap. They remind you to pay attention to the space between the train platform and the train’s car. Some of the gaps are big enough to fall into. Years ago, in Inverness Scotland, an old man fell into the gap, and the train I was on ran over him.

This takes me to the famous phrase (attributed to everyone from Plato to Victor Frankl to Mark Twain): “Between stimulus and response there is space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” To stay in our power and access our freedom, we need to mind the gap. This world is designed to deliver panic to me. It’s my choice to mind that gap between that “stimulus” and my response.

The acerbic comic, Bill Maher, said recently that panicked people ask him, “My god! What if Trump is re-elected?! His answer: “We go on living.” Under the unending forms of panic that this world will deliver to me, my basic question remains unchanged:  What kind of person do I want to be?  Panic always wants me to Blind the Gap - the recipe for falling under the train.   

Does it help me to have big spiritual explanations for why the evil doers seem to be winning in the world today?

• Does it help me to know that it’s not just here in the USA - that authoritarianism is attracting people all over the world? Worldwide, people are experiencing the evaporation of “existential safety.” All the norms that have crumbled leave us feeling like there's no solid ground to stand on. Authoritarians promise one thing: to restore safety. That's the attraction, and it's why their actual policies and character don't matter to frightened people. All decent spiritual work is about addressing existential safety head on.

• Does it help me to know that humanity – and perhaps the earth itself – is in a spiritual initiation, something that has happened many times before? For the first time, we are all, across the globe, truly in this together. Every initiation involves a grueling process of releasing the current identity before you have any real clue as to what the next identity will look like. The immensity of this global work cannot be overstated. Fluffy theology likes to pretend that initiation is some kind of pleasant light of new wisdom that gently opens your mind. That has never been true.  No birth happens without pain.

• Does it help me to know that channeled entities from the mid-causal plane have made it clear that our collective human soul age is evolving out of the young soul stage and into the mature soul stage? The younger soul's universe is more black and white, good versus evil, all about "me."  We are evolving toward more nuance, more interdependence. In a fairly short time, many of the killing fights we are having right now won’t be on the table anymore. (By the way, if you are reading this, you’re likely not a young soul. And by the way, being an older soul in no way means you are better, calmer, happier, smarter or wiser than a young soul. It just means that certain things that matter to young souls matter less to you, because you’ve already explored them in previous lifetimes.)

• Does it help me to understand the idea of extinction burst: a sudden and dramatic increase in behavior when reinforcement for that behavior is removed. A toddler whose bedtime screaming has always resulted in his parents running in to soothe him will scream louder and longer when the parents decide to stop running in. A person who has had unquestioned authority will become more brutal when it's clear that their reign is over.
  

• Does it help me to know that nearly every tribe’s functional myth – the myth that describes how God wants “us” to act – been shattered by the new reality of global interdependence? The clarity of the tribe is gone, and the authority of the old tribal god is up for question. We’re all wondering what “God” wants from us when "God" is no longer local and tribal. 

• Does it help me to know that ancient predictions from the Mayans, the Aztecs, the Toltecs and others have pinpointed our time period as “the new sun emerging?” A completely new foundational life energy is pouring in, never before seen, and while no one knows what life will look like, the new sun will help us – and compel us – to reinvent life as we know it. It will be difficult, but life will be far better for all.  

Yes, all of these things help me.

These ideas pour some spiritual support and a kind of bigger optimism into the gap between the panic and my response to the panic. They help me understand that I cannot control any of the energies listed above. They are too big. Moment to moment, all I can do is mind the gap between panic an my response to panic; mind the gap between the ground I'm standing on and the train that is leaving the station. Minding the gap means asking myself the same question again and again: “What kind of person do I want to be?” This question doesn’t change, no matter what kind of whirlwind is spinning around me, no matter where the train is heading.

Is this easy, is it a magical fix? Heck no. But calling in support from Spirit helps. Ask Spirit to pour power and support into the gap with you so that can make the best decisions about who you want to be at each moment, in your own power and freedom.