By Judith Gayle | Political Waves

I listened to one of my favorite songs the other day, "God Bless the Child" by Billie Holiday. It was written when Ms. Holiday was in a financial battle with family, so her lyric, "God bless the child that's got her own," has to do with substance; but it has a higher meaning to me. God Bless the Child is about the ability to stand in our own authentic essence and power, knowing that our spark of divinity is both timeless and secure in the most profound of ways. When we are struggling with survival issues, it is easy to forget that circumstance comes and goes, but it is neither here nor there to the authenticity that remains at our center -- we ourselves are our most important resource.

Every moment of every day, we have a choice of what to think, feel, do and how to respond to stimulus; these are the causes that will manifest as effect in our lives. We may face challenges that are larger than we are, but what we bring to the mix will define our experience of them. The more our personal energy constricts, the fewer options we will have. With my prayer lists, for instance, I always ask for highest and best outcome in any situation; can we step away to be so objective that we can say what is best in the larger scheme of things? We must trust, and tap, that larger awareness of which we're capable, that informed intelligence that is just an acknowledgement away.

If we short-change our definition of what and who we are, we end up without the entire spectrum of possibility that can lead us to our passion and our purpose; that is eager to help us meet our needs. We must broaden our definition of ourselves and others. Consider: when we meet a new person, one of our first questions is, "What do you do?" Think about how that conversation might ignite if you asked, instead, "What do you love?" We have so much to discover about one another; about ourselves.

When we are pushing toward a goal, that is the the only thing we have on our minds; everything falls back to that endeavor and, even in times of non-emergency, we often become tunnel-visioned and obsessive. The danger, be it project or relationship or life-style that absorbs us, is that we identify with our situation so closely, we get lost in it.

Then our circumstance comes to define us, and wrongly; this is when many of us retreat into competition or ruthlessness -- or self-pity, self-esteem issue or sob story. We have forgotten that we are not a collection of our activity, our accomplishments or even our failures; it's the lock-box of our hearts that holds our brilliance and our creativity.

Inside every one of our dull-eyed, frowning, preoccupied neighbors and co-workers is a cosmic child full of wonder and passion; behind that face that looks back at you from the mirror each morning, as well. Reality, such as it is, does not encourage that child to soar and evolve; while we're changing things, lets change that, shall we? It's a quandary to me that when times get tough, we speak of reality as if it's suddenly harsh and unyielding; when isn't it? When people start speaking of what the facts support, dreams rush out the door. Needlessly, I might add.

Given the last eight years, I'm not here to bash reality; our new sense of it has been sorely missing for too long. The Bush years of unyielding, unexamined policy and deluded optimism speak more to the consciousness of the man, himself, and those who shared it with him than any reality on the ground. The insular quality of Bush's presidential bubble got a lot of press, but I think its pretty clear that his own thought process was the actual bubble we had to deal with; we took a long ride through Bush's brain in the same way that unwary rubes got shanghaied by merchant ships as late as the 20th century. Hopefully we've come home from that unexpected adventure sadder, but infinitely wiser.

Our latest look at reality appears to be pretty grim, at this point, but there is a neutral point in every situation where we can examine facts, observe and project without allowing our energy to restrict and congeal into a tiny, quivering self-protecting blob; we can detach from personalization, knowing we have hidden resources. Realism is more complex than it appears, and we've got more going for us, in our humanness, than just circling the wagons and hunkering down until the storm passes. We have abilities to draw upon that we don't even know about; it's time to get in touch with those cosmic gifts.

Back in the mid-90s, an interesting book emerged called The Celestine Prophecy; it was a game-changer. I say that because shortly after it caused a word-of-mouth rumble among the spiritually inclined, it showed up in the book section of then, Price Club (now, Costco). It became a national best seller and coffee table tome.

I viewed it with mixed emotions; I didn't think it was a particularly interesting or well-written book -- but it laid out a series of critical insights that brought the nation up to speed on the invisible energies that surround us. My feeling at the time was that until we realized how large we actually were, individually, we could not move ahead collectively; so Mr. Redfield's book took prominence on my coffee table, and in my conversation.

I've kept tabs on Redfield's writing in the decade since, and learned that he was going to try to make a movie of the book; he succeedeGrisd, and I recently borrowed the DVD from the library. It was surprisingly good, given its limited financing and awkward special effects -- and the truth of the subject matter was as encouraging today as it was years ago. We have, within our auric field, everything we need to connect with our intuition, safety and purpose; and when we combine together, we create a morphic field that is considerably more powerful to deliver our good to us than we can imagine.

There are those who do not respond to the great mysteries of life; who think that what you see is what you get. They're missing out on the best part of it, seems to me -- but it takes trust and imagination to begin feeling as though the mysterious is part of you, not part of some improbable story line. It requires a suspension of learned-belief to investigate our feelings, as opposed to emotions which come upon us like a storm in Spring or a tiger stalking the jungle of our mind. Feelings are gentle inner promptings, leading us forward into opportunity and exploration; emotions are too often star-spangled or star-crossed, urging us along on a path we might be wiser to avoid. Knowing the difference is critical.

When I think of Celestine, which became a series of books, and its celebration of the unseen energies that surround us, I think of individual empowerment -- and I hum Billie Holiday's little God Bless song. God/dess does bless its own, constantly; it is up to us to use more of our brain to receive the information coming in, to open our hearts to experiences that surprise and grow us, and to find that center in which we are constantly informed and supported by the unseen.

As we consider how to go forward, in these tough economic times, there are many practical, commonsense truisms that will serve us: mundane wisdom. If you need to reacquaint yourself with them, go to any Greenie site, like GRIST or AlterNet. They have archived articles on how to make adjustments, save money and downsize our consumer habits. These kinds of suggestions are useful to our current reality, so long as we don't buy into the concept of lack and emergency and define ourselves by our fears and anxieties.

Yet more important even than these useful reminders is our growing ability to align with one another, connect synchronistically, find our commonality and share our resources. This requires our ability to suspend our notion that we have all the information we need, and begin to experience a larger reality; we can't do that if we're afraid of the future or feeling sorry for ourselves. This has to come from our own authentic power center; this is where we begin to receive, not from the sweat of our brow but by the grace of a universe determined to bless those who will notice what is being given, in accordance with our own creative instinct.

I was going to mention Hopi prophecy and the purification it predicts in this time-frame, when I got an alert from Lynn Hayes who had just written on the topic. This is an example of synchronicity; and an affirmation that many of us are on this wave length. What we must purge from our consciousness is the shallowness and density of our thought system; the fear and narrow-mindedness that gives us patriarchy and arrogance and tribalism. That is the very thinking that makes the 2012 materials frightening for so many, who believe that there is punishment awaiting them. Our world, our species, is not going anywhere -- humankind is here for the duration, not because we're the biggest, baddest predator but because we're poised on finding all the OTHER things we are, and coming into a new understanding of them.

We are, in a real sense, beginning anew this week, as Obama takes office. I've found any number of people voicing my own thoughts when his image comes on television, slim-shouldered and straight: God bless him. God/dess bless his willingness to step into this amazing mess and tangle of failed governance and international strife. I'm stunned that anyone would want the job, at this point.

We've seen, up close and personal, all the things we no longer want to be in this new century; we've discovered the cost of our disconnected hearts and tribal mentality. We're moving along, now. No matter how you voted, or who you supported politically in the last year, do not fail to send out your personal energy in love and compassion for this new president and our nations future, as well as the planets; think of it as a personal influsion of goodwill and consciousness, from you to him. In this remarkable time of change, what we bring to the table -- each of us, seen and unseen -- will make all the difference.