Awesome Stephanie’s Burning Question: “I was wondering if you could do a blog post on the current worldwide state of affairs. With the threat of ISIS and Ebola looming so largely over our heads, the collective vibration must be one of utmost fear. What the hell is going on? Why are we all feeling so threatened? I know for me this reflects on my current feelings of instability. In the past 7 months I’ve lost my cousin, my grandmother, and now my job. The crazy in the world only amplifies my negative emotions. What can we do to fix this mess? Thanks.”

Dear Awesome Stephanie,

We never seem to have a shortage of crises in our world, do we? As soon as we stamp out one threat, another one just seems to pop up. ISIS and the Ebola virus as just the most recent representations of a much larger pattern of energy. They are both mass manifestations of our fear and powerlessness, just like all wars, terrorist groups or epidemics before them. The key to shifting your perspective on such events and finding peace and alignment within them lies in first recognizing that they are, in fact, part of this larger pattern.

Your personal experience

Mass manifestations are no different than personal manifestations. Actually, they are personal manifestations, to the degree that you experience them. Hearing about Ebola and being peripherally afraid of it is different from actually being infected by the virus. Being aware of ISIS is a vastly different experience than getting your head chopped off by one of its members. How you experience any event is entirely YOUR manifestation and really has nothing to do with anyone else. The fact that many other individuals are using the same large manifestation in their own way to mirror their vibration back to them doesn’t change that.

When another driver on the road cuts you off and then adds insult to “injury” by flipping you off, you can blame him for making you angry. If he hadn’t been such an asshole, you wouldn’t have gotten mad, right? Well, that’s one way to look at it, but it’s a very powerless perspective. After all, you can’t control all the assholes in the world. You can try, but you won’t get very far. You can honk at that driver all you want, it’s not going to make him stop the car, get out and apologize to you. It won’t make him see the error of his ways and become a more courteous driver. All it will do is make you more frustrated by proving to you that your belief, that other people have power over how you feel, is true. In this belief system, his actions caused you pain, and since there’s nothing you can do about his actions, there’s nothing you can do about the pain.

Now, you can find other people who have experienced erratic and rude drivers on the road, people who have shared in this kind of manifestation. You can commiserate with each other and attempt to get your power back by passing laws that make it illegal to cut people off in traffic and flip them off. You can then give fines or even prison sentences to those who engage in this kind of behavior. But you know what? You’ll never be able to put all the assholes in jail. As soon as you get rid of one, another one will pop up. This isn’t because the world is filled with horrible drivers or because humanity is, at its core, one giant asshole. Your reality is a mirror of your vibration, plain and simple. And as long as your energy is a match to this kind of experience, there will be no shortage of helpful angels out there, willing to be inspired to reflect that energy back to you. If you feel powerless, there will be those who will seemingly take away your power. The other driver is not the problem. The other driver was simply showing you, via your reaction to his behavior, that you have a belief that isn’t serving you.

It’s your reaction to the other driver that you want to pay attention to. Why does someone cutting you off make you so angry? What does that represent to you? It’s this representation that is your actual manifestation, and it’s always a profoundly personal one.

Mass manifestations – events that a large number of people are aware of, are no different. Even if a billion people see a shooting star dart across the sky, each one of those individuals will experience that shooting star differently. It will be a personal manifestation for each one of them, even though it was seemingly shared. The shooting star will represent something different to every one of those billion people; even if the difference between two people’s experiences is microscopic, it’s still a difference.

Why do we have so many crises?

So, while a larger manifestation that involves millions or even billions of people may be a shared manifestation that mirrors back a similar (to a large or small degree) vibration amongst the populace, it is always first and foremost a personal experience. But, the question remains, why do we need crisis after crisis? Why do these big, volatile, nasty manifestations keep showing up and getting our attention? Because, as a society, we are still very much operating on beliefs of powerlessness. We still think, and our reactions to these events show this very clearly, that we have to control others in order to gain power. We still haven’t figured out, after so many failed attempts, that real power comes from within. And as long as we try to beat the world into compliance, we will continue to manifest those who won’t comply in bigger and bigger ways.

ISIS and other terrorist groups are the perfect representation of this type of energy. You can’t rationally argue with or persuade or compromise with an extremist, no matter what religion they ascribe to. That’s the very definition of extremism – they hold beliefs so far out there, on the very limits of what we can acceptably allow ourselves to believe, and they hold them with total conviction. They will not and cannot be “controlled”. In this way, they mirror back the ultimate powerlessness to us – not only are they stubborn in their beliefs, we can’t even really understand or identify with those beliefs. I’ve never met anyone who thought it was even somewhat acceptable to picket a soldier’s or child’s funeral, for example (Westboro Baptist Church, I’m looking at you…). But these groups don’t just mirror back our own perceived powerlessness, they also give us an opportunity to figure out who we want to be. We look at them and see their behavior, and we declare: “This is not who we are!” But if we are not that, then who are we? To me “not that!” is not a good enough answer. We can do better than that. We have to, we’re being challenged to, and what’s more, we want to.

Epidemics offer the same kind of mirror to us. Our society has been living in greater and greater fear. A virus cannot be argued with, can’t be reasoned with. It will (seemingly) get you no matter who you are. Of course, energetically this isn’t true. You have to be a vibrational match to the illness in order to manifest it. This does not mean that you “asked for it”, or that the illness is some kind of punishment. This is never the case. It always comes down to what the experience represents to the individual and again, this is a profoundly personal thing.

But are we experiencing more and more fear because there are more and more epidemics? That’s what the current thinking would have you believe. Only, that’s ass backwards. We are experiencing more and more epidemics because we are holding on to more and more fear. Again, we are being challenged to face those fears instead of letting them run amok, and being given many opportunities to ask, “Who are we?”, and “Who do we want to be in this situation?”. The Ebola virus, for example, has brought up questions of economic inequality, as well as racial and cultural issues. Why is the response to one American patient so much more pronounced than when hundreds of Africans get sick? Why do we value the life of one more than the other? I’m not judging anyone here or pointing fingers; I’m simply demonstrating the massive and complex questions that are arising out of this issue.

It’s up to you, but just for you

When your nation goes to war, you can’t help but ask yourself if you agree with the war. You can ignore that question, of course, and outsource your opinion to someone else, like the media, your parents or the government. But the questions arise. If you’re willing to dig further, you may find yourself questioning the whole premise of war, if and when it’s ever appropriate, and what solutions you’d like to see instead.

When I read a report about ISIS, I don’t see them as the problem. I see them as a representation of an energy that’s pervasive in this world. I look at the underlying belief systems, both of the terrorists and those they are terrorizing. And then I focus on the world I’d like to see instead, a healed world, a secure world. ISIS is a symptom, not the disease. But as long as we treat it as such, we remain powerless. Is that who and what we want to be?

I’m not proposing specific solutions here. In fact, I can’t. I can’t offer an answer that will fit everyone’s vibration; I can’t manifest your solution for you. I’m not going to say that war is wrong. It’s unfortunate, and I put my focus on a world where it will be obsolete, but I also realize that we still have to shift to that world. I’m not going to say that we shouldn’t protect against the Ebola virus or just ignore it. That response wouldn’t feel good to most people. What I’m proposing is that we put our focus, each and every one of us, on the outcome we want to see rather than on what we’re afraid of, and then let our actions be inspired from there. Right now, all of our societal actions are inspired by fear, which just breeds more fear. Action inspired by solutions may very well still include some military action, for example. But it will be done with a different motivation and it will be far more effective, especially in the long run.

The good news is that you don’t have to get anyone to join you in this focus. You don’t have to wait until all of society “gets it” in order to see your world change. You only have to embody the energy you want to see in your reality for yourself. You only have to be who you really want to be. If you are afraid, your reality will mirror back fear to you. You will become a match to those mass manifestations in whatever way best mirrors back that fear. You will be aware of a lot of the unfairness in the world, the threats, the epidemics. If you are secure, your reality will mirror back security to you. You will match up with solutions, be inspired to take effective action which actually makes a difference instead of just perpetuating the same patterns. You may still be aware of these mass manifestations, but in a very different way. They will no longer make you feel powerless, because you won’t be emanating powerlessness to begin with.

A new perspective

I’m still aware that there’s war in this world. I’m still aware of the injustice, the inequality. But I see the events that are happening now not as a worsening of those issues, or as something new, but as symptoms of progress. We are waking up, and that process requires that we purge our old, outdated beliefs from our systems. We do this as individuals as well as on a larger level. These issues have always been there, we’re just becoming more aware of them than we’ve ever been before. We’re no longer able to ignore them. We’re realizing how fruitless and ineffective much of our effort to eradicate these issues has been up to now. We keep fighting and it just keeps getting worse. Like the woman who can’t seem to find any good men, there comes a time when we have to ask ourselves: “Maybe it’s not them. Maybe it’s me…”

If you want peace in the world, embody peace. If you want a kind world, embody kindness. If you want a secure world, let go of your fear. And if you find it hard to do so, dig down and figure out what beliefs you’re holding on to that make it seem like pain and suffering are the preferable alternative. Start with you. Create your reality on a micro level and it will then change on a macro level. Don’t ask the world to change so you can finally feel better. Feel better and the world will change.

Solutions are available. More are being born every day. But there is no one big solution that will work for everyone. We each need to find our own. We each need to manifest our answers into our own, personal realities. We each need to create peace and health and serenity and equality and fairness and balance and empowerment for ourselves. And when we do, the light we’ve ignited in our own hearts will radiate out and illuminate the world around us. That’s when our mass manifestations will look very, very different. That’s when the world will mirror back to us Who We Really Are.