Do We Need a Revolution Before We have an Evolution?

We either make ourselves miserable or make ourselves strong. The amount of work is the same.

Carlos Castañeda. 

Life is of course all about choices, and the choices we make govern our everyday reality and thus the passage of our lives. And when we make changes, or new choices, then sometimes it can be the natural human way of thinking to have a revolution or revolt in some way against what was the previous way of being. Perhaps there is a need to prove to ourselves that we are making a better choice now and thus in some way need to discredit our old choice so that we can feel we have made the right choice. And in doing so, we may need to attempt to devalue or discredit old belief systems or organisations or even people.

Many reformed non-smokers are often the strongest advocates against smoking very shortly after they stop. I am, or rather was for a while, one of those reformers when I stopped smoking many years ago. With the advantage of 20/20 hindsight, I can acknowledge that I loved smoking for many years and in fact realise that smoking actually brought me to hypnotherapy and regression and so helped me to discover my passion. It was actually really the ignition of my passion for hypnosis that helped to understand smoking and the important role that it played in my journey.

Sometimes it takes a while to get to a place of understanding, where we realise that there is a bigger picture perspective sooner or later and that everything does in fact serve a purpose, even if we don’t like that purpose.

I recently witnessed a debate on Facebook between two extremely smart people arguing about inoculations/immunisations for young children. Both were passionate about their own differing perspectives and both presented excellent arguments for those perspectives. Strangely though, both seemed unable to grasp the obvious reality that they could be both be right; and that some families would benefit from the pro-immunisation route, and others taking a different route.

These days, people seem to be increasingly coming up with similar perspectives about major subjects in our life like our health and financial services. For example some insist that healing modalities are superior alternatives to existing allopathic medicines, and thus should replace and be implemented instead of existing practices. The truth is that both can co-exist and be extremely beneficial for people in a co-operating system, and thus the more appropriate name is in fact complementary rather than alternative medicine. Likewise, the financial system has served us well for the past x 100 years, and whilst it may well have considerable room for improvements, any widespread revolution against it would inevitably result in some of financial anarchy, which is unlikely to be of any benefit to the average person.

I know a fellow who sits in a very senior position with a major financial organisation. He’s also a very talented healer, speaker, and general encourager of human evolution. He is often encouraged by friends to break out from the system and start his own practice, or his own spiritual revolution, so to speak. However, he is very convinced of his own role and place about the changes that are taking place within society, and wants to stay exactly where he is so that can quietly and positively initiate change in a organisation that really needs it.

And that little anecdote is very symptomatic of what happens on a grander scale within all of us. When we make changes or intend to make changes, then the only revolution that really needs to take place is in the inner world. Once that revolution has taken place with complete integrity, then the only change that needs to take place is the evolution. Any attempts to discredit or argue against what we are leaving behind – whether that is relationships, organisations, ways of being or anything really – simply show that we have unresolved issues from our own inner revolution within us that we need to deal with before we can move on, otherwise we are not moving forward with full integrity.

The obvious example of that is relationships and break-ups. Some people can have good break-ups where they simply realise things are not meant to be, and some people have much more painful break-ups where unresolved issues within them hold them back from achieving full closure. I am of course generalising a very complicated subject for the sake of proving a point, but I think the underlying principle of what I mean rings true.

As per the Castaneda quote at the start of this piece, it takes the same amount of energy to be miserable or to be strong, or to revolt or to evolve. So, it comes down to choice and simple effective energy management in so much as we have a choice of where we put our energy.

Many well-meaning conspiracy theorists often go down this route by focusing their attention and energy on the problem and the injustice, rather than focusing on the solution. Awareness of the problem and inherent injustice is fine, but focusing too much attention in that direction means a lack of acceptance of what has been and what is, and that is simply a distraction or mis-management of where our energy focus should be i.e. on the solutions and the evolution.

There is a time and place for everything within our individual histories and within our collective histories and whilst some of that everything may not be nice, right, fair or whatever else it does nonetheless need to be accepted.

Acceptance is the first step to healing and needs to be in place for truly effective change to take place. It only happens effectively when we can acknowledge from our entire being that everything that has passed in life has value and is important, though we may not always understand why.

Acceptance also sits side by side with forgiveness, and forgiveness is key for true evolution to take place. Forgiveness means we are ready to let go of the past, it doesn’t mean we have to like what passed.

So, the simple trick when we want to make changes, whether on a personal, group or global scale is to do the revolution internally, and then allow the evolution to take place externally. Take responsibility for the inner word, and the outer world changes.

To paraphrase the words of John Lennon. “You say you want a revolution. Well you better free your mind instead.

Love & more Love

xDx