I struggled with how to best turn those in my sphere of influence onto the ideas and goals of The Zeitgeist Movement. First, I dedicated my online musings to exposing all the "wrong" in the world: governments taking advantage of their peoples, the world standing by to let it happen, wasteful personal habits, and the rampant willful ignorance of our youth to name a few. All this tactic managed to do was work me into a bleeding-heart-frenzy just in time for my exhausted husband to get home from work....you can guess how well that worked.
Then I thought, I'll just lead by example (harrumph), I'd write about the things I was doing to live as outside of our broken system as possible. Those of you that have gone through similar life style changes know, it's tough as hell to make even the smallest changes, let alone write about them. Also, I just felt like I was being judgmental, inadvertent though it was.
So I pulled back and decided I needed to figure those emotions out so I could move on and feel productive again! I began meditating to the Major Arcana of my tarot deck, reading my Toa Te Ching again and I caught the episode of My Name Is Earl in which Christian Slater lives on a commune, Earl learns about global warming and freaks out about all the people who don't know until Christian Slater explains that we can't hold ourselves responsible for those people. We can only do what we can do and that's enough. (sage words from a wise man....)
Or as Jacob Needleman puts it (in the back of my copy of the Toa Te Ching) "...concepts of virtue, ideals of wisdom and morality, and all precepts that are intended to lead us toward the good all to easily make us forget the main thing, which is to open within ourselves to that radiant energy..." By getting caught up in what I thought everyone needed to be doing to save the world, I became unable to be any kind of help myself. I was spiritually and mentally paralyzed by all the information I felt I must get out to the masses or we would surely all perish in a blaze of ignorance!!!
It's ok, you wouldn't be the first person to call me dramatic. But I've realized that: 1) I am not the first and only person to figure out what's really going on. 2) I won't be the last and 3) I have my hands full fulfilling my own path, I can't make it my job to help everybody else along their own. I can only keep informing myself and striving to make one more step forward than I do back each day.
So from now on, no more scary news updates. I'm sure you're all well aware of whats going on and if not there are some great news source links on the right hand side of the blog. I can allow myself to care enough to change my own habits, but not so much that I worry about the actions of the masses. Who knows what you'll find here instead (That's why the title is Some Sort of New Direction) but you won't find news on politics, natural disasters or the latest sex scandal.
You will find empowering and uplifting information presented with the goal of recharging your emotional and mental stores so you can keep fighting the good fight, whatever that may be! You'll also see some design changes in the next few days as well.
I'll close with a passage from the Toa Te Ching that has helped me greatly in the past few weeks:
As translated by Gia-Fu Feng & Jane English
Nineteen
Give up sainthood, renounce wisdom,
And it will be a hundred times better for everyone
Give up kindness, renounce morality,
And men will discover filial piety and love
Give up ingenuity, renounce profit,
And bandits and thieves will disappear
These are outward forms alone; they are not sufficient in themselves.
It is more important
To see the simplicity,
To realize one's true nature,
To cast of selfishness,
And temper desire
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