This week on The Soul Expansion Soundboard, we talked about what to do when the sh!t hits the fan. We’re living in difficult times right now. There’s a lot of division between people and extreme viewpoints. There’s also a movement to control women’s bodies, strip LGBTQ+ people of their rights, and disempower BIPOC. Add into this mix the high inflation that’s pinching many of your budgets and the constant drumbeat of recession in the media. No wonder people are stressed out. We truly are living in difficult times.
So how can spiritually minded people find some peace during all this? How can we be a powerful force for change and good in the world. Here are some of the key points that came out of our hour-long discussion. Missed it? The replay on YouTube is embedded below. If you subscribe to my YouTube channel, you’ll also see when the next live is happening.
It’s still important to vote when living in difficult times
One of issues we talked about was around voting. People get obsessed with perfect instead of just good. During our chat, I shared a post I’d seen on social media in which someone said they don’t vote because “it’s choosing the lesser of the two evils”. But that’s exactly what we need to do. We need to choose the lesser of the two evils. When we don’t vote, the likelihood that the greater of the two evils will make things much worse goes up.
Don’t wait for someone else to save you
In this discussion about the importance of voting, especially while living in difficult times, I also mentioned that politicians aren’t going to save us. Politicians have strong interest in catering to those who donate the most to their campaigns. They have an interest in not rocking the boat or making radical change. If we want to live in a better world we’re going to need to change it ourselves.
We can change the world through the work we do locally. When we embody the best and highest vibration we can, we inspire others to do the same. As more and more people become kinder and more loving, it ripples outward. Before long, it’s creating change.
I’ve talked about spirituality and politics on my podcast in episode 18.
Dark times are necessary in order for us to see the light
Sometimes, we need to experience the dark side of things in order for us to see the light. What I mean by this is that living in difficult times gives us a way to recognize when times are really good as well. That’s the nature of being physically embodied beings. Duality allows the divine part of us to learn and understand. We cannot know what light is, if we don’t have dark to compare it.
We need to find balance when living in difficult times
In spirituality, there’s a strong tendency to focus solely on the light. Sometimes this can be taken to an unhealthy extreme. When we suppress our negative emotions, it isn’t psychologically healthy for us. More importantly, we don’t need to in order to embody a high frequency. Papering over strong feelings like fear, anger, or sadness is a form of spiritual bypassing. In fact, ignoring emotions like this can short circuit our ability to manifest what we desire, a topic I discussed in detail on my podcast in episode 21.
The truth is, we need to seek a balance. Energy seeks equilibrium. That’s why if you put hot water and cold water into a container, you get warm water. The hot water warms the cold water. This is what we need to seek in our own spiritual lives. We need to allow ourselves to feel things like anger and fear and move through them. This makes us balanced. As Jordii noted, shadow work can be a powerful tool for integrating our own “dark” to find this balance.
What role does fragility in our current situation?
Roz asked what role fragility plays in making division worse. When we’re living in difficult times, stress and fear can cause people to adopt very polarized thoughts and beliefs. When these ideas and beliefs are challenged, they can lash out.
Human design teaches that people with a defined ajna center are very consistent with their thinking. They are consistent in how they process information and form concepts and beliefs based upon it. While consistency can be a great, sometimes those with a defined ajna center can be close minded. Lately it feels like we, as a collective, are operating from a defined ajna center.
When we feel triggered by something that challenges a strongly held belief, it can be very triggered. However, we really need to pause when we feel triggered. Why are we so triggered? Is there some truth to the thing that we’re finding triggering? Usually being triggered is a sign of an area in which we need to evolve our understanding.
Sometimes the situation requires radical action
Sometimes there are things that happen in the world or beliefs held by others that really need to be challenged. People need to be shocked out of their complacency. Act Up is an example of taking radical action to shock people out of their complacency.
During the AIDS epidemic, the US government did very little to help the many gay men who were dying from HIV. To add insult to injury, many churches were speaking out against safe sex. Act Up took radical action by staging “die ins” and interrupting church services to shock people into action.
There are some ideas that are so repugnant that we simply cannot stand by and let them go unchallenged. White supremacy is a great example. Not too long ago, espousing racist ideals in public would make someone an outcast. Against the background of living in difficult times, people have gotten more tolerate of racism. We need to take radical action when faced with racism. It’s important to understand that part of holding a high frequency as a spiritual change catalyst is that sometimes we have to stand up against the dark.
The importance of allyship when living in difficult times
This leads me to allyship. Allyship is how we show up to protect and help those who have less privilege or aren’t able to stand up for themselves. Allyship takes many forms. It can be straight people or women standing up for LGBTQ+ rights. Personally, I’m honored to have many such women allies in my life including my two co-hosts. Allyship is also white people holding space for BIPOC to speak and be heard. Basically, allyship is any time someone with privilege uses their privilege to help a less privileged group be seen and heard.
I want to make an important distinction though. Allyship isn’t speaking up for others. It’s making and holding a safe space for less privileged people to speak for themselves.
Dealing with fear when living in difficult times
Fear is natural when living in difficult times. It’s scary right now. In the US, we read and hear about mass shootings, job layoffs, a recession, and all of it is against a backdrop of a bitter midterm election. Of course, people are going to be afraid.
There are a lot of tools for conquering fear. One tool I like to talk about is human design. The reason I think human design works in this case is because so much of the fear is being used to manipulate and exploit people. Political parties use fear as part of their election messaging. Marketers use fear to sell products.
In human design we talk about conditioning. Conditioning is anything that pulls us away from our authentic core being. Fear is a powerful conditioning element. When we understand our human design and how to feel our design in our body, we can overcome this conditioning. We can ask ourselves, “Is this fear mine or someone else’s?” and then feel into the body to find the answer.
Prayer is a powerful tool
Another powerful tool for overcoming fear and living in difficult times is prayer. When we connect to our higher power through prayer we find new strengths to resist fear and despair. We can also use prayer to stand in the gap for someone else who is struggling. If you are having a hard time manifesting what you want in life or struggling with doubt and fear, someone else can hold the frequency for you through prayer.
The sh!t is definitely hitting the fan in the world right now. We have a lot of spiritual tools to not only weather it, but to change it for the better.
Watch the full discussion below and don’t forget to subscribe.