ASK ABDI: IS EVERYTHING GOING TO SHIT?

QUESTION: I can not tell you how your words and insights have been an enormous help to me in the past year, and your meditation recording has been a game changer. I love how your answers/thoughts are speaking to me, rather than at me, like some spiritual teachers/advisers.

People believe that everything is going to shit. I feel we are in a place right now where like-minded people need to get together and realize the world is not going to shit, as the media portrays it, but that we are all waking up. I realize that all of us are “coming out” of something (addiction, shame, divorce, job loss, weight gain, etc.) and “coming into” ourselves by "remembering who we really are" and waking up.

ANSWER: It makes me very happy to hear that you find the work beneficial. 

If someone speaks at someone else instead of to them that is merely a sign of the speaker not having been humbled enough by life. I am a deeply flawed human being who does his best to live in truth as it is revealed moment to moment. It is no other thing than that. We are all travelers on the same boat, how else would one speak to a fellow traveler? We all have enough love within to humble a thousand angels and enough hurt and fear to fuel a thousand demons. It is a moment to moment choice of which side we act from.

Correct you are. Not only is the world not going to shit but actually the gates of constipation have been opened and we are shitting in the open. All this crap has to come out in order for the healing to occur. I have seen more awakening in the last several years than in three decades of work. To your point, that is why there is so much rupture as you've described. We are waking up in the middle of situations that are suffocating, and have to shake loose. We have to be moored internally. If not, we are at the mercy of internal unconscious forces that get projected externally. This is the ugly group unconscious psychosis that is in full view.

The fear piece is an important part of this. This is why it is so crucial to constantly ground, and know that despite what it seems on the outside - there is much “coming out”. All the misaligned ancient pieces, no matter how small, are being revealed. A note on the media: fear is a deliberate form of control. It is good to keep abreast of the news, as long as one does not lose one’s center. Read, watch, and listen, but as soon as we are pulled out of our center, we are at the mercy of external forces. The heart HAS to stay open, that piece is non-negotiable.

The shame piece is huge for all of us. We need to examine our imperfections. Do our best to heal and not repeat patterns that are harmful. To sit with the shame of our behaviors and actions that have harmed ourselves/others is not easy. This is a hard one, as we either are blind to it or then see it and want to kick every tooth out of our head for our imperfection. We need to make amends for the harm we have done (internally and/or externally), and then pick ourselves up and do our best. Having a trusted other to share and reveal hidden aspects of self is powerful medicine. 

Here is to “coming into ourselves by remembering who we really are and waking up”.