“Imagine all the people living life in peace.”
- John Lennon
Your imagination is one of the most powerful parts of you.
Everyone now alive on this earth, and for generations before us, has lived during a time of war. We are programmed from the start to imagine war, and to believe that we have no power over its inevitability.
Throughout your life and mine, wars have always existed somewhere, and even if we personally felt detached or removed, due to our fortune at being in another part of the planet, we are all affected by that vibration. We have all had lifetimes of war, playing different roles in each one. Many people living in the U.S. and other countries experience daily wars in their lives, in the form of institutionalized racism and white supremacy. Misogyny itself is a war against women’s right to choose their own autonomy, religions have declared war on the human rights of anyone they deem sinners. Not to mention the great numbers of people who cannot afford to eat, live, and have healthcare, in one of the wealthiest countries on earth. War.
As I write this, a horrific war is happening in Ukraine, and everyone is aware of this one, and affected by it on some level. The way that war comes about is not an accident, it is an event planned for and created by one agenda or another. The people in the warring country, in this case, are having to wake up to some hard truths, as are we all. One of the hardest of these is that all are affected by war, there is no ‘over there’. Nobody wins, not even those who are, as ever, cashing in on this opportunity.
Unconsciousness is a state of not being aware, not knowing something, whether through innocence, ignorance, or refusing to look. Wars and other tragic events we cannot control (pandemics for example) have a way of opening our eyes to what is true, and what is not. Unconsciousness has a way of shutting down one’s ability to imagine something different.
Becoming conscious makes it easier to allow ourselves and others the freedom to be as we are.
Consciousness is a state of waking up, becoming aware. When we do this, when we choose to look, to see, and then to do the emotional and spiritual work required to forgive, let go, and heal ourselves, we are doing our work. It gets messy often! It may not seem like a whole lot to you when you think about doing your own personal work, because it’s your work, and nobody can do it for you. However, you have a huge effect on the energy of others, and therefore on the energy of the planet, when you decide to wake up and do your work.
Sometimes it’s scary, hard, painful, and you’re angry. Sometimes others get angry because you unmatched from an old agreement you were in. Think of all those wars much closer to home, where people stop talking to each other because they will not forgive. Or within, when we don’t forgive ourselves for a mistake or unfortunate set of choices.
This is different from consciously deciding to be done with old energy and stepping away from it.
Speaking for myself, I know the difference because of how I feel. Am I clear about stepping away or ending old agreements? If I feel like it’s not done, and the karma is still pretty thick, I know I cannot get away without completing this for myself. I do not want to carry that battle within me, so I get as honest with myself as I can. What do I want here? Am I holding onto people, old circumstances, an old identity, that I would best be served by letting go?
“I can’t believe that!” said Alice.
“Can’t you?” the Queen said in a pitying tone. “Try again: draw a long breath, and shut your eyes.”
Alice laughed. “There’s no use trying,” she said: “one can’t believe impossible things.”
“I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”
-Lewis Carroll, ‘Through the Looking Glass
Imagine a conscious peace
While it has become very easy to imagine war, it’s a more difficult exercise to imagine what real conscious peace looks like. A conscious peace does not happen accidentally. We have to work at it, and one of the ways that we do this is to become conscious about the wars we run through ourselves.
The peace you create simply by being conscious of your own spirit has a great effect. When you do the hard work of going within and healing yourself, you are giving to every other living being. You are able to bring the healing you have become to the rest of us, simply by showing up. By finding the peace within yourself, you become peace itself walking in the world. None of us has to do this perfectly every day, but it helps to remember that we can.
I believe it would help enormously if we allowed ourselves a daily check in with our imaginations. What am you allowed to imagine? What if we all imagined peaceful healing beautiful fun things, as a daily practice? A different way to live? The trick is not to get caught on how this will come about, the key is imagination. You are far more powerful than you might imagine.
