A few years ago I wrote and published an essay titled "The POWER of Your Intense Fragility: What Culture Hasn't Told You About Being Sensitive AND Strong" (available on Amazon.)
A kind reviewer described it as "less self-help for your inadequacies and more of a call to action for your special gifts." And another said it "illuminates the power of your nature in such a way that you can begin to envision yourself as having a significant role in creating a kinder and more sustainable world." I'm grateful to those readers for getting my message, and I'd like to share a little of it with you here. This is section 11: ________________________________________________________________________ We are facing more crises now than have been faced in the last 5,000 years of recorded history. We have to think differently and act quickly. We have to return to good sense and sanity, rather than normalizing the absurd. Indifference is possibly the most harmful threat we face. Ecocide. Attachment to privilege, comfort and convenience at any cost. Disregard for the health of this planet, and the life-forms on it. It is time to live the wisdom that indwells each of us. Mothers' breast milk should be pure and powerful... instead it is loaded with dioxin and many other toxic contaminants. Forests -- literally, the lungs of our planet -- should be large and thick... instead North America has less than 4% left, and we are quickly slicing through everyone else's trees, too. Oceans, topsoil, air, 100+ endangered species a day, as well as our overall sense of well-being and contentment are all vanishing under the deadening weight of chronic materialism. Please consider the following words (which I have shared many times elsewhere), written in 1955 by marketing consultant Victor Lebow, and carried out every minute by most industrialized people: "Our enormously productive economy demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfaction, our ego satisfaction, in consumptionÉ We need things consumed, burned up, replaced and discarded at an ever-accelerating rate." Lebow's mandate disconnects us from ourselves, each other and the ecosystems that make Life possible. We should be angry that these tender webs of life are being carelessly swiped away. Alarm! Outrage! These are appropriate responses. Empathic writers have long sent letters to editors, senators and representatives to voice their concerns. That's good, but this revolt demands more of us. Seeds of sanity -- freedom from mental derangement -- must be embedded more deeply and more broadly throughout culture. Consumerism is not a viable way of life. Opposition to that murderous death-style has got to turn way up if it's ever going to be properly challenged and changed. Many of the doctors in the Nazi death camps tried to help the imprisoned Jews by giving them, from time to time, an aspirin to lick. Can you see the littleness of that gesture, however well intended? Socialized craziness requires radical revolt and resistance. Aspirin-licking won't relieve this planetary migraine. We *have* to come together and shut the sick show down. United in sanity. Bonded in our knowing of Life. Committed to act, and to cause acts. The redeeming kind. The saving, correcting, game-changing kind. We are homo sapiens, not homo consumericus. Start with your Burn, your holy indignation, and craft from there: songs, movies, books, articles, public service announcements, plays, TV shows, business plans, small farms, urban homesteads, community gardens, workplace outings, birthday celebrations. Allow sanity -- sound, healthy thought -- to pervade all that you create. Embrace the pain or burden that gnaws at you. It entrusted itself to you. Your particular area of care is just that. YOUR area of care. Own it. Then assert your creative, sensitive influence into that space. Accept this match made in heaven, and express it here on earth. Let your ink flow into the very dry parts, and create, author. Citizen. Lovely, lively human. Cultural conventions that cause cancerous, disastrous consequences have been masquerading as normal. When do we stop pretending that bagged and boxed crap will make us happy? Will we mindlessly shop 'til everything drops? Remember how thrilling it was to play outside? To make discoveries in the natural world. To watch the flight-pattern of a bumblebee or red-breasted robin. To get splashed by fresh water from a lake, or salt water from an ocean. To eat berries and pears straight from a tree. To get breathless from a mountain hike. To get romanced by the silver light of a full moon, or energized by the golden light of the sun. To get quiet and still from the closeness of a deer. To get drunk from the scent of honeysuckle. To feel your skin extend to the green land around you. To remember when you preferred a monarch butterfly to a manic mall. Start there. From the place of your deepest care. And write as if your life depended on the blossoming of your words, because it does. Our sensitivity is tied to our highest calling. I believe we are neurologically-wired to lead the way in personal and planetary upgrades. Our special nervous system uniquely equips us for the global tasks and issues that require unprecedented delicacy in all of the realms that affect every living creature -- social, political, economic and environmental. Heightened perception is both a privilege and a responsibility. Societal power structures are drastically shifting, and more and more empowered Sensitives will be needed to come forth to serve as humanitarian and visionary leaders. "You are not here merely to make a living. You are here to enable the world to live more amply, with greater vision, and with a finer spirit of hope and achievement. You are here to enrich the world. You impoverish yourself if you forget this errand." (Woodrow Wilson)
* Get the full essay HERE. *
Stay tuned for "Sativa Yoga: Two Steps to Sanity" which is about freeing yourself, and being yourself. We'll talk candidly about the blessedness of cannabis, and how incredibly effective it is at exposing and healing lack and sickness in our bodies, minds, ecosystem and social systems. The cannabis "industry" talks about what we DO with it. That's cool. I'm just more interested in who we can BECOME with it. What are its transformational effects? Let's have some real talk, friends.
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