What a year. I've been hammered with emails about my opinion on everything that's been going on in this country. Worse, I'm getting shame finger wags for staying so quiet--especially as what's unfolding pertains so directly to the almost decades-old RightSIZE UP message. There, it was predicted (only based on facts and history, not personal opinion) that we were about to experience a huge seismic shift in our culture. Don't say I didn't warn yah! LOL.
Okay, let me try to put "it" in perspective with a personal story. I'll make it long enough to bore the hell out of those looking for something less substantive and more divisive. Yawn bye-bye now.
Let me start by saying that with "it" all, sadly, we've become increasingly numb to the craziness that swirls around us. It's the downside of our human's naturally resilient, adaptive nature. When the s**t hits the fan, we put our heads down and just get through it...Lalalalal! "Oh, only bread and water for the next year? OK?" That's of course, how bad things start happening to good people.
In terms of the current administration... do we really HAVE TO? Do we even have one any more? Administration eludes to "a responsible team we have actually elected and have utter faith in". Nothing I see remotely resembles that and to be sure, to this 60-something man, it bares little resemblence to any political party affiliations that I remember.
In truth, its so much bigger than a red or blue thing. It has to be. Unfortunately it's the only way over half the population gets woken up all at the same time. That's the seismic shift in a nutshell. In short we need the crazy as the catalyst to force lasting collective change. Currently just happens to come in the form of narrow divisive choices were supposedly asked to make right now.
"Quick, which is it? Capitalism or compassion?"
Those are our choices? Seriously?
"Tick-Tic....Hate or humanitarianism?"
That's the line in the sand? ....Really?
Um, nice try but sorry folks, Integrity and honesty are in fact, finite concepts. You're either honest or your not and no amount of blurry rack-focus, slight-of-hand changes that. But perhaps there in "lies" the rub.
Liars are solely responsible for their own untruths. We can only do our best to come to our own individual truths and live our lives accordingly as the antidote. Trouble is, time goes by so fast in these days of perpetual information overload. With all our life experiences to supposedly draw on, we often don't. If we do, it's often the old truth to which we default because we've waited far to long to update those files.
I mean, when was the last time you asked yourself, "What do I REALLY believe NOW?
That was the question I needed to unpack when I decided to leave the world of show business in 2010. Yep that was a long time ago. Yet, the moment is as fresh in my mind as though it was yesterday.
With La-La land dissapearing in the dust, and New Mexico up ahead, I remember saying to my rear view mirror, "Well okay. so that happened." My self-conversation started with the honest acknowledgment that I'd done the best I could to tell all the truth I knew for quite a long time, to millions of daily viewers.
As I snaked through the mountian passes, I also confessed to myself that the "light" which I'd received had run out about a year ago. It had almost gotten derailed by preoccupation and exhaustion: Part 1 of the downward spiral. If you think today's political environment is totally cary-cray, try a few decades on daily, national television, playing a heightened version of yourself in the white-hot glare of the public.eye --off the charts.
I was so blessed that, thank God, the moment I'd realized that I'd simply stayed about a year longer than my truth reservoir (which was almost depleted) there was still just enough time to close shop and get the hell out of dodge. I'd survived with most of my integrity intact. Probably because I'd always seen fame only as a necessary evil but a huge hassle that got in the way and complicated the teaching process. As a result, I really didn't fit with those who actually needed fame and power. I did however, get a front row seat to observe how fame and politics are, at their highest level, fraught with inherrent corruption.
As the expansive vistas and dwarfing skies of New Mexico unfurled before me, it suddenly dawned on me that the first part of a new truth was beginning to emerge for me. "Of course fame and mega influence is inherrently corruptive! Dah!....because the nature and root of beast is POWER."
As I almost missed the turn towards Santa Fe, my life flashed before my eyes like a little movie. I could clearly see that even in my own true desire to teach the profound transformative power of personal creativity, the same fame needed to reach more people brought with it, the pawn brokers; Those in constant search for those with significant commodity potential who could be pivotal centers of influence.
It's a sneaky thing. Suddenly and subtly, the passionate people around you somehow get replaced with more so called "experts" whose soul job is to broker that fame and mastermind the politics of influence to as wide an audience as po$$ible. In doing so, one is asked to alter the message. Only slightly first, mind you. "You know, open it up a bit? Maybe loose that particular part of it because it could, you know... offend and alienate a lot of ticket buyers? ---Maybe add a few words about these folks paying for the venue and if you like the water your drinking, say something about it? Oh, and don't talk directly to your audience anymore...too hard to manage. Damage control is a bitch and really expensive. We'll do that for you!"
Pretty soon it's hard to find real people with no agenda who are centered enough to tell the truth, let alone be authentic. Wait, what? Damn it didn't start out that way...honestly!
As the adobe village of Santa Fe came into view, I could see the past faces of many people who'd began their climb to influence because they really DID feel they had something important to say.
So then they said it.
Listeners went crazy, happy, gaga to hear it.
They wanted more.
Soon the (now) publicly proclaimed "Guru", whose once-pure and heartfelt prose were profound, is now hooked on the power to influence rather than the message itself.
It's intoxicating to have throngs of people hang on your every word. It's even more addicting when what you preach, as it were, really does fire a lot of people up.
This is when you realize (often too late) that you should have had an exit plan. You should have simply stated your peace, had the courage to tell your truth, then the humility to just get off the stage.
I was lucky--I had an exit plan that came through constant prayer. Yet it would take great soul searching--away from the madness, to finally realize that even the God I thought I knew (explained to me mostly by man...cuz who's got the time...) was not the God I'd later rediscover when I finally simply dialed direct. I would discover a much cooler God who said, "it's not about sin stupid, I knew you'd do that, and you'll continue to...you're human, and why I already forgave you, you idiot. What I was trying to warn you about in that book I wrote? ---was the something worse--the thirst for POWER."
So when I see the 'crazy,' around me, knowing full well how it happened, I can't do the shame, blame thing. All I can do is ask myself "What do I really believe NOW." Because I finally did the required studying, I know that this madness is a precursor to what will eventually became a movement toward greater humanitarianism. We're waking up, finding our voices and trying to create a forum where they can finally be heard. Sure, it's gonna be a train wreck for awhile but watch closely. It's not about what you think it is. Let God use the clearly marked buffoons to restart a new kind of conversation.
Meanwhile, just start asking yourself, "What do I believe NOW?"
It's a lot of work to re-find one's truth. To retrace one's steps and pinpoint the origin of the what we so high and mighty still defend, is exhausting and not for the faint-hearted.
At the end of a two year period I discovered that my belief system had been lazy. ---Built more on the hearsay mishmosh of others versus actual fact. And that's when I began using the RightSIZE UP book as vehicle to focus the material in a way they made sense to me---much like someone might create a vision board to decipher their inner thoughts.
In so doing, I realized that what I thought I'd believed were fragments, bits and pieces that I'd cobbled together into a rather fragmented belief system that ultimately had become antiquated and most likely based on man's concepts (and fears) at and of the time.
So what do I think? Have faith. A black gay woman just got elected as a mayor of the third largest city in America. Laws are in the works to finally define appropriate social sexual behavior towards women. We've finally admitted that there's definitely something to this "climate change" thing.
That's what happens with more people than ever before all wake up at the same time. So keep you're eye on the real balls, the real truths and the real things that sound like steps in the right directions.
We're slow, we're clumsy and we'll probably continue to kill the geese that lay the golden eggs...but there are more out there waking up everyday. We'll get there eventually. We'll realized that taking care of people is far more worthwhile than individual wealth accumulation especially of we're all taking care of each other .
We'll Get there.
We'll RightSIZE UP!.
Love to all,
Christopher