On Asking Questions and Positive Change

So much has already happened to start 2011; so many opportunities and reasons, so many catalysts to encourage us to take a fresh look at life with both un-jaundiced eyes and mind. We’re receiving wake-up calls that prompt us to ask the long stifled question, “where do we go from here? Can we do better? Can we live better? Can we heal and be well?”

The word “shocking” has become the unexpected intruder in the unfolding history of this young year. Unexpected perhaps, but the events are all catalysts for each of us to ask probing questions.

With birds falling from the sky and fish die offs in the U.S. and around the world…

We search for causes, offering everything from fireworks and cold weather to HAARP emissions and the loop current as the answer…

But the mystery lingers…

Mystery, i.e., our inability to make sense out of a phenomenon, experience, or concept with understandings presently thought to be true, serves as reminders that we don’t know everything yet, and catalysts to stay open and keep asking questions.

We must ask questions if we are to change our attitudes, to change our behavior, and hence, our experience.

We don’t question human behavior nearly enough. In fact, we oftentimes tell ourselves that we (or they) can’t change. However, there’s a big difference between “can’t” and won’t. The only way to know the difference, is accepting that positive change is possible. The alternative, is to go dumb, or numb.

Then, just when we become comfortable in our numbness to bad news, another event happens close to home that we just can’t ignore, making us ask questions again.

My heart goes out to those who were involved in, and affected by the shooting of U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords in Tucson (1/8/2011), which is just down the road from me.

As much as we wish her a speedy and full recovery, who among us is ready to send healing wishes to the man who pulled the trigger? Is he not, and was he not already in dis-ease?

Is he not “one of our own” too?

Are we ready to celebrate the heroes and disown the villains, locking them up and throwing away the key, or putting them to death?

How’s that working for us?

Would it be better to punish him? Or would it be better to help him heal his heart so that we know that the “red zone enmity” that he sunk to won’t happen again from him?

If we can help him heal, then can we help other “red zone cases” that currently fill our prisons?

If we heal just one such man or woman, then a blessing can emerge from this chaotic mess.

(Hint, it won’t happen via prescription medication or surgery.)

If we seek to punish alone, we’ll get more of the same.

Every moment, every event, and every experience that is not to our liking is a catalyst to ask the question; “is there another way of seeing and responding, that I might realize a new quality of change? Can healing come from this?” These are personal questions that can affect humanity as a whole.

Even the most tragic moments have within them the seeds of the greatest blessings and beginnings. They will grow based on the environment that we create around them. If we create an environment that nurtures greatness and actually heals dis-ease of all involved, then the fruits of our choices will eventually nourish us.

Asking the right questions and making inspired choices are the first steps that each of us can take.

I reach out to the people of Australia’s heartlands, who are experiencing Mother Nature’s power first hand. This is not vengeance, but her need to “adjust” her settings. Brace yourselves for something wonderful; the new lives that you can create in your new world.

I reach out to the people of Haiti. You were suffering from life before the events of January 12, 2010, only to see a bad situation turn worse in the ensuing year. My heart goes out to you.

Will you search within your own heart and allow heaven to emerge from your hell?

Money only brings palliative relief, and even that will be for a few. Only love can cure what ails you.

To my fellow U.S. citizens on the Gulf Coast who still endure the effects of the chemical desecration that was the Gulf Oil Spill treatment chosen by BP and the U.S. Government. A corporate decision made a bad situation worse, and efforts are still being made to cover it up.

Even as you cope with the tell-tale and obvious signs of disease, please know that you can heal yourselves, your children, and communities. If you do, you can show others the way.

To those around the world whose countries are torn asunder by war, whether cultural, civil and political, please know that peace is at hand; and that it begins with and through you. Will you make your desire to break the cycle of tragedy your reason to treat others the way you want to be treated, instead of reason to prey on innocents?

To those who are in poverty. If you don’t see a wonderful bounty that is available just for you at the expense of no one else, then imagine it into being. Imagine yourself joyfully being part of its growth.

To those who populate our jails, please forgive us for shunning and fearing you. We have made you our problem. Let those who are ready to treat others as human, even in an inhumane place, raise their thoughts and set a new course of intention. You are where you are for a reason. Only by owning the choices that you made to get there, will you gain the power to liberate yourself, even while behind bars. What is the true warden, but fear?

We complain about the darnedest things. We see our troubles as the worst there could ever be. Yet, we don’t know jack about troubles. Someone, somewhere always is experiencing something that would immediately make us feel grateful for the troubles that we have, and maybe even consider that we can fix them.

The world that we live in is one of our creation. Limited resources and availability, haves and have-nots, poor and rich, heroic and villainous, healthy and diseased, are all states of one humanity, and we are all capable of experiencing any or all of these expressions. We are also able to change any, if we ask heart-felt questions, and are willing to see new ways.

Take a look at the image… how do you see it? Is the sun rising? or is it setting?

The answer depends on your point of view, which only you can change.

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