Remember YOU are the Government! Where are you shut down?

One of my most influential trainers is Harv Eker of Peak Potentials out of Vancouver, British Columbia. He constantly reminded my fellow students and me that “Your inner world creates your outer world.”  OK. Thoughts and emotions lead to actions. The unconscious mind really drives the conscious mind to leverage the body to create and implement, or to regress and shut down.

Harv, dressed in black and highly animated up on stage, was dynamic. “Now stand up and say it out loud,” he urged. “Together!” We stood up from our chairs and all said together “My inner world creates my outer world.” It is as true for communities and organizations of human beings as well as for individuals. Harv went on to remind us with loud enthusiasm “How you do ANYTHING is how you do EVERYTHING!”

I live in the United States of America. A native of Virginia, I’ve lived almost two decades in the City of Seattle which overlays King County in the western part of Washington State. It is April 2011. Recently, close to midnight last Friday, April 8th, the American Federal Government narrowly averted a total shutdown. A partial shutdown was underway. The Republicans and Democrats, the two major parties that currently dominate U.S. politics, are more interested in bloodless civil war than in peaceful cooperation and bipartisanship. As large groups, they approach the art and craft of politics, including compromise, as schoolyard bullies with regressive, reactive emotional intelligence. Yes, individuals stand out for collaborative policy making, but they are run over by tsunamis of angry and divisive people more intent on destruction and ideological purity rather than creation and pragmatic innovation.

In my own state of Washington the financial warfare 3,000 miles back east has infected our state and local government. The state government is paralyzed with decisions regarding budgets, taxes, and services. The city and county governments where I live are engaged in unrelenting, neverending battles over mass transit issues and other services costing more than what is available to spend. Other governments in other areas of the world seem really shut down or in a state of warfare, from Afghanistan to Libya to Ivory Coast and elsewhere. The European Union is lurching from one financial crisis to another. The United Nations is bereft of power and agreement.

Back home Americans rail against the Government shutdown. Some even call for it, bring it on, they say; let it force us over the brink to see what happens, clean house, etc. etc. Others scramble to prevent it from happening and to maintain a status quo. Neither approach is healthy and neither is sustainable. The underlying issues, fundamentally who and what controls the Money Power, is barely recognized and not even addressed. And yet, we the people are at choice here.

We are the government, are we not? Have we abdicated responsibility to those with the money and the power and the media skills? Have we forgotten government is of the people, by the people, for the people? That the institutions of government from the global to the local are composed of fellow human beings? That “all these governments” are our governments? That the government is us?

Where in our lives are we shut down? Where are you shut down in your life? Where am I shut down in mine? Look at it. Consider it. After all, our inner world creates our outer world. How we do anything is how we do everything. Be present to what is happening now. Are you reacting? Or responding? Making decisions? Or  choices? Devising criticisms and wrong-making, or generating solutions? Blaming and shaming? Or accepting things the way they are and moving forward from a stand? Are you out for revenge and to “teach ‘em a lesson,” or are you free to forgive and exercise compassion? Where are you open? Vulnerable? Are you busy talking, or do you listen? Are you trying to be fair and just, or are you implementing transformative change?

For me I feel shut down most from fear of things that exist in my mind. Fear of being ridiculed as “deaf, dumb, and stupid.” Fear of failing, fear of letting down my wife and family and even myself, fear of my own triggers from old traumas still running my life, fear of wasting money and time to pursue my dreams, fear  of losing everything I love, and on and on…and on. I react to fight, flee, or freeze. My practice is become present and self-aware faster and faster to defuse these triggers, make healthier choices with intention, and move through and beyond my imaginary fears. I can set aside my right- and wrong-making, my judgements, and work with people from different backgrounds and beliefs to focus on solutions to generate results. And to be with failure so I can learn from failure. My intention is to graduate from the reactive phase to higher, more creative and possibly integrated levels. I can go there temporarily while experiencing creative, integrated, even unitary states of consciousness, but I’m far too reactive to currently maintain these temporary states as long-term levels.

What is happening from Washington, D.C. to Madison, Wisconsin to Olympia and Seattle, Washington, and indeed around the world is the outward manifestation of our inner world. We are at choice to change all of that. To be effective such change has to first arise from our relationships with one another. To go deeper into cause, for all change to have effect out in the world we must first change our inner world. For how everything shows up stems from how we chose to do anything.

William Dudley Bass
11 April 2011
Revised 23 November 2011
Seattle, Washington

NOTE: Originally published prior to revision in At the Brink as “Where are you, the Government, shut down?” at: http://atthebrinkwithwilliamdudleybass.blogspot.com/2011/04/where-are-you-government-shut-down.html, then revised for republication here. Thank you.

 

Copyright © 2011, 2016 by William Dudley Bass. All Rights Reserved until we Humans establish Wise Stewardship of and for our Earth and Solarian Commons. Thank you.

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One thought on “Remember YOU are the Government! Where are you shut down?

  1. Pingback: Articles Posted Elsewhere for Novemberama | Tuesdays with Deborah

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