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January/February 2009 Featured Stories
A Healing Compass for the Moment

by Caroline Myss

Nothing can heal in that same deep inner way than thoughts that take you where ordinary thinking cannot go.

Everyone is being affected by the economic tsunami hitting the American markets. One of the many truths that will show itself in force in the midst of this crisis is that, "What is in one is in the whole." The world moves as one system now and when one major force suffers an eruption as grand as the one underway in the United States, the entire world feels the impact in some way.

Just watching that reality unfold within the markets is breathtaking, but it brings home the fact that we have become an interconnected global system of life. We are long past the days when any significant nation can get hit with a massive economic nightmare and hide its sins of greed and neglect.

Symbolically, we are experiencing the crumbling of the great myth of entitlement that has kept America going for decades now, a myth that says we are entitled to a certain way of life - the great life with all the trimmings. The truth is we are not entitled to that. No one is. The Founding Fathers and Mothers never said we were entitled to everything we wanted and then some.

Their original vision was of spiritual entitlement, not material entitlement. Their motivation was based on their deep belief in the natural law, which maintained that human beings are born with certain inherent rights of the spirit that must be protected and honored by the government itself: freedom of expression, the right to worship in any way you choose, the right to bear arms to protect your personal property, the right to own personal property, and the right to dissent and civil disobedience.

The rights they spoke of reflected their awareness that human beings need freedom for creative expression in order to find happiness, and they also need to pursue the path of knowledge and wisdom.

We are witnessing one of the most historic turning point events in the history of the U.S. Where do you fit into this? If you think for one moment that your role - whether as an American or as a reader in any other country - is outside a sphere of influence, think again within the cosmic law, "What is in one is in the whole."

Your actions at the level of energy - and if you think in terms of prayer, then it is at the level of grace - make more difference than you can calculate. We have entered a dance with chaos and we are spinning amid fragments of reality now, with leaders trying to hold together the bits and pieces of the economy. The curious paradox about chaos is that while it gives the impression of all things being out of control, never are there greater opportunities for creative input.

Like working with clay that has been beaten soft, this is a perfect time to reshape the system, to shed what is toxic and to take advantage of minds gone humble for the moment. What is happening around us right now, from a spiritual perspective, is necessary in order that the false myth of entitlement can fall like the Phoenix and burn into ashes so that the founding vision can rise again.

We are privileged to be a part of the masterful changing events of history, because now is when we can be our most powerful self, for what have we been in training for all these years if not to make a difference now?

Think about yourself and all the work you've done on yourself and where you are in your life, and ask yourself these questions:

• How have the experiences of your life prepared you to see social change through a spiritual lens?
• Do you feel your senses being heightened in any way in this present time, as if all things have come into greater significance?
• Do you feel frightened or more empowered? If fear is present, what scares you? If you say the unknown, then realize you are only witnessing what has always been true - which is that there has never been anything such as a guarantee of what tomorrow would look like in anyone's world. Change, as Buddha taught long ago, is the only constant in this universe.

But of all the many questions we should ask ourselves in this time of momentous change, the most telling are:

• Would you want to be doing anything other than what you are doing right now?
• Would you want to be anywhere other than where you are right now?
  
  

The answers to those two questions reveal to you, more than anything else, your alignment with your inner compass. If you enter into that deep, rich inner silence, like in your interior castle, and reflect on where you are in life and who you are attached to, with any luck you will realize that you are exactly where you are supposed to be, surrounded by the people you need to be with. That, in itself, is an expression of God in the details of your life, as Teresa of Avila would say.

Never look for order to come from those who created the madness. It must come from your response to the chaos - from within you and your capacity to respond with wisdom to the ever-increasing winds of change as they now pick up their speed around the globe.

I have long said that we no longer have the luxury of mourning our past wounds. It's time now to become the healthiest person we can be on all fronts. Even if we are in the midst of healing some part of ourselves, we can still maintain the commitment to leave the past alone now. Everyone needs the best of what we have to give and part of that best is to appreciate the gift of each other, of hope, of the extraordinary movement of life itself.

Even this chaos ultimately has divinity written all over it. The story of the history of humanity is one in which human beings cycle through war and peace and chaos and calm, through feast and famine, through birth and death. This is life. And life has an inherent wisdom, one far more cosmic than our individual minds can grasp.

Look for the arrows in the chaos, because they are everywhere. Look for the arrows pointing where we should go next and how we should move forward, because they are hidden in the most bold and daring solutions, the ones that serve the whole and not the old guard.

What is the emerging destiny of America as we now approach the solar age of this nation? How shall this country respond to the challenge of entering into the age of energy? Its destiny has always been one of creative leadership. That is where we thrive and shine and find a way to become economically healthy once again.

Caroline Myss is the best-selling author of Anatomy of the Spirit and founder of CMED Institute. Visit www.myss.com. Myss presents the workshop "Beyond Reason: Simple Truths that Can Heal Your Life" on Jan. 23 in Seattle as part of The Extraordinary People Series. For tickets, visit www.brownpapertickets.com.