By Dr. Connie Hernandez, ND
Prologue
For as long as humans have inhabited the planet, we’ve been forced to deal with physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual dysfunctions generated by challenging circumstances seemingly beyond our control.
Oppression and mayhem have occurred in every age. Their perpetual, historical, ongoing source is the Seven Deadly Sins of pride, envy, anger, sloth, greed, gluttony, and lust.
If the present state of affairs seems more intense than usual, it’s because the relentless development of increasingly powerful weapons has contributed the very real possibility of human extinction.
The question before us now is, how can we maintain our mental, emotional, and spiritual health in a world where madness and delusion prevail?
It won’t be easy.
These days, Dr. Marcel and I find ourselves helping increasing numbers of patients who are suffering from anxiety, panic attacks, and insomnia.
Surprisingly often, they tell us that they’ve lived very happy lives, that they have good relationships, fulfilling work, and enough money to do what they need – yet they have become unsettled and fearful, and they are seeking solace.
Their unease reflects the general inner malaise affecting our planet. Our world is obviously in crisis – and troubling times reflect the collective consciousness.
Today, we find the discordance deepening. Ancient prophecies foretold that at this time the global consciousness would be propelled from an age of matter-awareness, in which our worldview seemed fixed, solid, and our institutions appeared firmly anchored, immovable, and destined to endure.
Now, however, we have entered an age of energy-awareness that began at roughly the time when Albert Einstein declared that the substrate of this physical cosmos is not matter, as was formerly believed, but a boundless ocean of energy in constant, ever-changing flow.
All of the major inventions of the past century have been based on the new awareness of energy and its practical applications – from radio to rockets to smartphones.
The present frightening sense of uncontrollable chaos is a symptom of the clash between these two ages.
Having renounced our faith in solid things, rigid beliefs, and immovable institutions, we are desperately seeking to regain a reassuring sense of balance, meaning, purpose, and hope.
Reflecting the new consciousness, we want our sense of reality to be based on individual, repeatable experience, no longer on dogmas and blind beliefs.
“When worlds collide” truly defines what we are experiencing today, as the older world of rigid forms is resisting, often violently, the new, more flowing, individually based search for meaning.
The result is that the very ground seems to be shifting beneath our feet. Older beliefs and understandings are being questioned and widely discarded, and long-held social, cultural, and political values are falling by the wayside.
As the previously unthinkable becomes the new norm, people are struggling to avoid becoming lost in anxiety, despair, hopelessness, and anger.
Where will the crisis take us? Who will show us the way? Who will pierce the clouds of confusion and help us anchor our lives in a renewed, abiding perception of Truth?
Is our only recourse truly to keep flailing against the reality we are presently facing, or can we greet this dangerous historical moment with poise and grace, as, in fact, rich in opportunities?
I am inspired by our patients who have found the courage to live with serious chronic diseases such as cancer and neurodegenerative disorders.
Just as the world we live in is demanding a calm, considered response, instead of dangerous emotional reactivity, so also do these diseases demand that their suffers overhaul their outlook and their lives
Although none of us would consciously pray to be afflicted with cancer, our cancer patients often tell us that the disease has been a blessing, because it has given them an opportunity to rethink and reimagine their existence.
These patients are among the growing numbers of citizens of our world who are realizing that not only our individual health, but the health of our planet must be deliberately cultivated by reshaping our inner world individually.
Our individual thoughts pattern the health of our physical bodies, just as the mass consciousness will determine Earth’s fate.
And, though the healing movement is growing from tender roots, we must realize that, as beings who are composed of boundless energy borrowed from the greater cosmos, our thoughts can powerfully affect our world.
Faith in a benevolent higher power enables us to accept what is, with an inner assurance that our circumstances are always offered to us as lessons that, when learned, carry a blessing.
The blessings that come by learning our lessons include a deeper understanding of how we can grow happier and escape from suffering.
Faith today must be based on solid personal experience, no longer of blind belief. If we would heal ourselves and the world, we must find a deep sense of personal meaning and positive engagement.
World transformation begins with each of us. I remember the “Free University (Free U)” student protests of the 1970s. Not all of us went along – some among us refused to join the protesting crowds, feeling that the world would be better served by our meditation.
Others, of course, felt that our choice was a cop-out.
Today we find ourselves in a similar situation. Many are feeling that a meaningful new order can only be shaped by force. Many more of us than fifty years ago understand that unless we transform ourselves and change our energy and our thoughts, the world will never truly change. The pieces may be shifted on the chessboard, but it will still be the same old game.
Meditation and prayer take us to higher realms of reality where peace, calmness, wisdom, love, and joy are experienced as a very real power that can radiate from us to change the world. As we attune our consciousness to these qualities, we find ourselves and our world transformed.
I’ve often spoken about an inspiring study in Chicago where the researchers measured the serotonin levels of people for blocks around an apartment building where the residents all meditated daily. They found that the serotonin levels of the non-meditating neighbors actually rose as well!
Higher vibrations trump lower vibrations always, while reacting to our external circumstances with chaotic emotions merely reinforces the lower vibrations that we are hoping to resolve.
If you’re curious about how meditation can elevate the collective consciousness, I can recommend this statistical analysis which reported a reduction of violent crime in Washington DC that the authors attributed to the effects of group meditation.
Each of us can become a positive force in effecting real world change. It only requires that we make a consistent, insistent, committed effort to, gradually, increasingly, dwell in and respond from a stable point of peace, love, and joy within – starting exactly where and how we are.
Our personal steps may seem small, but as our actions become less reactive and more wisely responsive, they will become more effective. Thus we will find our lives flowing with and sustained by great currents of positive transformation, rather than promoting chaos.
As difficult as it may seem in these contentious times to respond with forgiveness, compassion, and solution-consciousness, this is truly the only response that can ultimately help lift us and our world.
Where to find answers? They will surely come as you follow these proven guidelines:
- Attune yourself to higher truths.
- Act from your true Self.
- Stay in the present moment.
- Be curious.
- Be serviceful.
- Be creative.
- Be optimistic.
Sooner than you imagined, you will find the Light overshadowing the darkness – first in yourself, then in your immediate world, and finally as a spreading radiance from your consciousness to the many.
Drs. Connie and Marcel Hernandez
DrConnie@DrsHernandez.com
DrMarcel@DrsHernandez.com