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Expansion-The OrionWisdom Newsletter
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Spring 2013
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Greetings from Elisabeth
After snows in March, Spring is truly welcome. Forsythia and daffodils have come and gone, but tulips are up, the maples are in full leaf and pots of bright yellow pansies are at the front and back door and on the deck.
This newsletter includes two interesting pieces from Orion, Orion on the World Is More Complex and on Fluidity. As ever, these are excerpted and edited from personal sessions, with permission. I've also included Orion's commentary on the Boston Marathon tragedy which was posted on Facebook and our website. By the way, I don't have an OrionWisdom page per se on Facebook. If you like, you can friend me at Elisabeth Fitzhugh.
Although I haven't been doing public events, the Orion work continues in its personal way, with one on one sessions available by phone or audio Skype and in-person in Virginia.
As ever, wishing you all the best. Elisabeth
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Orion on The World IS More Complex
Client: There is so much we cannot control in the world and I can feel overwhelmed.
Orion: In many ways the world has become much more complex and along with it, which is different than at an earlier time, people are more and more required to manage the complexity in their own lives. Not so long ago, one went to the bank and the bank handled things. There was one telephone company and you just paid the telephone bill. You didn’t have to think, 'What kind of telephone do I want? How many do I want?' You didn't need to do your banking on-line or on your phone and consider who has the best deal and least fees. One just went to the doctor. You didn’t have to know, 'Is this doctor qualified for my treatment?' There was simply the doctor, who might send you to another doctor, but very few people had any actual choice in that. Data about life came to your from the professionals – the bank, the doctor, the insurance company, the store where your purchased things, etc etc.
There is a challenge to today's life because there is an illusion that one should and can have all the data you need to manage the complexity and variety of today's many options and choices. Yet, the truth is, you always are sort of managing and coping and deciding without fully knowing. You pick one phone but there may be a better one. You don’t really know what those tiny little words in your credit card agreement mean, on and on. So in a way, everyone is a little bit like the child who is having to do something at the edge of their true capacity, and people are walking around waiting for it to blow up.
'Oops! I’ve pushed the button and now I’ve purchased a ticket and I didn’t want it. Uh-oh…' and so forth. All the vigilence required in modern life is having an effect on the cultural consciousness. People feeling overwhelmed by modern life is accurate. It is even more stressful and frustrating because 'full knowledge' simply does not exist. It is an illusion we don't acknowledge. Experts don’t have 'full' knowledge. No one does because there is so much knowledge and it continues to evolve. Knowledge is in movement.
Yet, people readily internalize the cultural 'judge' that you should know or in the very least, know how to get the knowledge – Google it, Wiki it, etc. To us, the only way to find balance is not to try to get all the knowledge but instead, to let go of the overarching model that you should have all the knowledge. You may hold, 'I should be highly accurate at all times, and I should know everything about what I’m doing.' But that is an actuality that cannot exist. We may get more or some information, we may find a 'work-around' but acknowledging we cannot know all, can lead us to the liberating idea of accepting what acutally occurs and then moving on from that very place. 'Well, that happened, now what can I do?'
Actions will have consequences and not knowing may create its own problem, but on the whole, we feel the stress of holding this illusory model of competency is more problematic. Such competency is actually an outdated model. Once cannot be as competent as one might have been twenty years ago because the knowledge-base is much vaster. Yet, the cultural continues to hold individuals personally responsible. And individuals rightly say, 'How could I have known to do that?' The illusion of control and power hides the truth from ourselves, all the while, adding to the stress and anxiety of daily living.
There is a joke going around that tax code has so many pages in it that actually no one in Congress who have to vote on it, has ever read it. No one has ever read it completely, and no one can understand it completely. Of course, it wasn’t written by a person, it was written by many, many people writing on different aspects of it and at different times. So probably there is not one individual who could full comprehend every aspect of it. We can see that someone probably cannot recite the entire encyclopedia, but still we expect ourselves to have encyclopedic knowledge of every sort.
Again, the way to have more ease in this complex world is an acknowledgment of the truth of it. This world is very complex. We might make a mistake, and there may be no way you could have avoided the mistake, so simply, what do we do now?
In the past, life had a more narrow focus of detail and with it, a narrowed individual responsibility. You went to the bank, and you only went from certain hours and you could only do certain things, with less options and less available to the individual. No individual could apply for a loan by themselves at their computer. You’d fill out the papers, you would take them to a bank, and someone would look it over. You see, you wouldn’t be responsible for, 'Uh-oh, I pushed the wrong number in the wrong line.' You wouldn't be the person deciding on your own about a mortgage or a car loan, etc. etc. You were given that responsibility in the way you may now.
Client: What’s going to happen to poor old mankind in this complex world? We could grow into it…but…
We are growing into it, and the models will evolve change. Not only do we have to recognize the true complexity, we have to see how we have internalized the cultural judge of being wrong. It is wrong to make a mistake, wrong to feel stressed, wrong to need help - all of which are personal failures. And we feel this personalized guilt and responsibility is not just an internal, psychological dynamic but is being supported, if not created, by the external world as well
Today, business, organizations, government do not want to be held responsible to others or for their own actions. We call this a 'consciousness of disconnection' and it leads to ideas such as individual mortgage people being the major responsibility for the financial crisis, for people without jobs that are not available being held personally responsible for not having job and so forth. Realizing how the outer world impacts the inner world, can help you to 'unhook' yourself from accepting and following the model of uber-self-responsibility. And by at least questioning the model, you may not be not only less stressed etc, you add to the growing gestalt of the rejection of that very model. And hopefully, from that, a more accurate model can emerge.
As of now, a new model has not emerged because the old model of holding individuals responsible, continues to benefit many levels of society. Business, government, courts resist being held responsible and the law continues to leave and create loopholes to allow that. The culture has returned, in many ways, to an earlier time – one of buyer beware, PT Barnum and the like. Some of this is itself a reflection of the growing complexity that affects all. For instance, previously one would not issue a new product, say software, without extensive testing. But the company's 1000 people might not find every little glitch, but if 100,000 people are using your software, they’ll start giving you reports, and that’s how you’ll find your glitch that your 1000 people couldn’t. So the standard of a company needing to be 100% before a product is released begins to change and ideas of responsibility change as well.
Another way of holding individuals responsible is to ignore or deny the many variations in a model, such as the fact that an IQ test is written for a certain kind of cultural background and may not reflect the truth of someone not from that specific model.
In the end, though, your question shows recognition of the great flows of growth and development. The old phrase of one step forward, one step backward and perhaps a spin-around. All of which is to remind you that life is at times confusing, overwhelming, despairing, and difficulty as well as positive, emerging, evolving and so on. Allow the model that some things are bigger than you.
Before you take on personal responsibility for a challenge or judge your own inadequacy, ask 'Is that the whole truth?' Wonder if perhaps things just are more challenging. Again, considering that life is at a different pace and is more challenging, relieves stress and from that less stressful place you may find it easier to cope with things, carry less judgment and find it easier and just practical to ask for help or someone else's expertise, without guilt or a sense of lack.
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Orion on Fluidity
Client: As people have distanced themselves, one friend has actually moved away, I am able to see people in a clearer light…and my thinking has changed. I'm not moved to go out and save somebody to make myself feel better, I just need to stay steady.
Orion: Earlier we explored the message from your mother that your actions and choices that she did not agree with would eventually lead to your 'come-uppance' from the world at large. Another message was embedded in the first, which is that you will also be punished for these actions by loss and further, that you will not know how to cope with loss or be capable with change
This was message was totally untrue, but a very important message to your mother herself, because she did not want an independent you. To keep your close, she seeded the doubt of 'without me, or without my thoughts or my learning or my way, you will flounder.' Therefore, for her lifetime, she would be essential to you. It is the opposite of sending a child off into their life. She wanted you to be the center in her life as much as possible and she the center of yours.
It is important for you to keep in your awareness that you were repeatedly given the message, both as a child and as a woman that says, 'You'll see, you cannot be without the essential person. You cannot cope with loss. You cannot cope with change'. That is a lie. It is incorrect. In fact, you have coped with changed. But the early message still lies in the background.
We know that there are people close to you who are older and are naturally moving toward leaving you through their passing. We see there is a possibility that some friendships may change and may or may not rebalance. And although a part of you, resonating with the early message, is fearful and says, 'I won't know how to be without these key people in my life,' we remind you that you do and will know how to be.
You know how to 'be' and you are knowing more and more of yourself as a fully active, capable, woman, person, being in the world. This person loves people. She wants people in her life. She will miss people. But even with loss, she will not dissolve. She will not be incapable. She will find the 'next' you. And 'next you always includes all of the 'you' that has gone before. How she related, who she related with, where she has been.
What is delightful about awareness of our inner growth, is that we can see the fullness of ourselves. We can see how we use that knowledge in a different way; how something else emerges from the unique and special 'clay' we are made of' and our 'clay' continues to mix throughout life. At times our clay is freshened and reforms into a vessel and then at another time the vessel is embellished and at still another time, it is reformed still again. We are art. We are creative in a pliable medium. We do not need to become rigid and hard and fragile.
The gift of awareness is this gift of pliability - plasticity – a moveable, fluid thing that reforms, always including all it has been, but moving and reintegrating with time and life and the experience of living. You are not solidified, you are not rigid, you are not 'fired'. You will not break. The clay of life is alive and in motion.
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Orion on the Boston Marathon Tragedy 4-15-13
The movements of life crash in, impact our direction, change everything. The truth is, this will happen. In joy and so sadly, in tragedy. But as one, indivdually or group, stands in that very impacted space, you will look up and find the way to the next moment, the next direction. In this now, look at all the movement of people to help, to care for, to extend to all those directly affected in Boston. Look at the reaching out and sharing. See the diligence and attention being extended. Strength does emerge from chaos. Interconnection does re-emerge from disconnection. Unity does arise through chaos, a truth that those who chose to sow chaos seem to never comprehend, but we hope you do remember.
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Unity & Empathy
Jane Batt has been an Orion 'compatriot' since the first public Orion work in 1985. We actually met in '83 or '84 in my Synchronicity Bookshop. Jane is my 'reporter at large' on sightings & citings on Empathy Energy and Unity in the mainstream media and books, as in this recent item she emailed me – 'On the PBS News Hour they are featuring a school program in emotional literacy that started in Toronto that teaches empathy from Kindergarten to 8th grade. They bring an infant into a class of 5 yr olds and encourage the kids to sympathize and develop nurturing attitudes, rather than bullying patterns. We've lived to see the day! '
And this one from Malcolm X- 'We need more light about each other. Light brings understanding. Understanding brings love. Love brings patience, and patience brings unity." Jane often talks on the Unity principle and did so in a recent sermon at the Takoma Park Chapel, an interfaith community and sent me this wonderful Unity collage. She did the collage as an Aquarian prayer for Unity consciousness in the Senate.
Takoma Park Chapel
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Karly Randolph Pitman – Heal Overeating: Untangled
Karly and I have been emaill correspondents for several years now since she wrote to me after reading Dancers Between Realms and resonated with Empath Energy principles. I was impressed with her new program - Healing Overeating: Untangled - in which she shares her ideas on 'how to create a loving relationship with yourself' so you can 'compassionately untangle from emotional eating and gently lose weight.'
I feel her approach is congruent with Orion's principles of working with alignment and allowing and permitting. At her website, Karly generously offers a free excerpt from her workbook, audio files and a free weekly encouragement newsletter. Check out her other books as well.
HealOvereating.com
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Drunk Tank Pink by Adam Alter
Drunk Tank Pink: And Other Unexpected Forces that Shape How We Think, Feel, and Behave offers a detailed exploration of how our environment shapes what we think, how we feel, and the ways we behave. The title comes from the discovery that the color pink calms people and the decision to pain drunk tanks pink to do so.
It may be uncomfortable for us to really consider the extent that our world can impact us unconsciously, but so useful to do so. Yet, in exploring these ideas, beautiful things emerge as well.
I was moved by Alter's explanation of how nature is so restorative. The business of everyday life is depleting, always asking for our attention to specific tasks, and compelling requirements. 'Forests, steams rivers, lakes and oceans demand very little of us, though they are still engaging, ever changing and attention-grabbing…While man-made landscapes bombard us with stimulation, their natural counterparts give us the chance to think as much or little as we'd like and the opportunity to replenish exhausted mental resources.'
Drunk Tank Pink @ Amazon.com
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Life Is A Gift - The Zen of Bennett
If you want a pause to appreciate life, a little lift of optimism, you might want to delve into this memoir/musing by Tony Bennett. Now 85 and demonstrating his ever-fresh approach to life by currently recording a new album with Lady Gaga, he muses on life, music and art, as well sharing some stories of great musicians and artists and how they inspired him.
'Singing provides the ability to dig deep from my own psyche..The human voice is more flexible than any other instrument in existence…It gives me the ability to tap right into the innermost feelings deep in my soul and communicate them in ways that are not possible otherwise. It keeps me in touch with my own true nature, which in fact is a reflection of the nature that surrounds us all.'
Life Is A Gift @ Amazon.com
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Like Stars on Earth.
This is an amazing film. You will laugh. You will definitely cry - sad and happy tears. If you've ever been labeled different or know someone that has, this will deeply touch you. All this and wonderful 'bollywood' musical sequences too! Available at Netflix and various places on the web.
View the trailer at the IMDB-Independent Movie Data Base
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New at Deb Booth's Different Light Studio
All the art images in this newsletter are from Deb Booth, who has generous contributed her art work for several years now. I call her our artistic star in the Orion nebula. The current images reflect her newer work in a Kaleidoscope style. Also, check her new video with lovely harp by Virginia Bethune.
Your World In A Different Light video
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We look forward to hearing from you....
Reach us at orionwisdom@gmail.com
Visit www.orionwisdom.org for archive Orion material, the OrionWisdom bookshop, links and other news.
See the About Us... page for information on arranging personal sessions with Orion.
Elisabeth Y Fitzhugh
OrionWisdom.org
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