These are troubled times. We're still reeling from a global pandemic the scope of which most have never experienced. As this act played out on the world stage, at home we felt the wedge driven ever deeper into American society, furthering the decline of relationships already strained between co-workers, neighbors, even family members. Now, the shock waves continue, driving up the price of non-negotiable purchases: housing, food. And just in case there's not enough doom in your backyard, there is a war happening. I don't often pass a day without hearing "World War III." Yes, these are troubled times, indeed.
It is interesting to consider that, if you were to look back in history, you would rarely (if ever) find times that could not be described as such. Trouble seems to accompany mankind like the ever-present cloud of dust that swirls around the Peanuts character, Pig-Pen. Strife twists and whirls around humans in a way that suggests we are inseparable; it stays pinned to our heels like a shadow in the mid-day sun. Our eternal companion, trouble.
In spite of this seeming reality, I'd like to offer you the idea that everything is fundamentally OK. I'm not suggesting that all of this strife isn't happening, nor even that humans aren't followed by a troubled shadow. What I am suggesting is the literal interpretation of my words, that OK is the fundamental state of the universe. I'm suggesting that everything is always OK, even when it seems to be quite the opposite.
Before you label me an optimist of the detached and delusional variety and refuse to read any further, give me a few minutes. Try these words on, see if they might be a fit for you. Perhaps you'll conclude that I am a hopeless hippy living in entirely the wrong time, and everything is most certainly not OK. In which case, you won't have lost anything.
But perhaps you will find comfort here. That's my hope, that you, too, will come to see the world and the trouble-hounded humans that crowd it as fundamentally OK. Not a finished project, mind, nor always a pleasure to behold. We are messy and ignorant and stubborn; we are ingenious and courageous and learning. And, at the heart of it all, I hope you'll agree, we are well and truly OK.
At the heart of this OKness lie two truths. The first is the dual nature of our universe. Look near and far and notice, nothing exists outside of duality. Summer is balanced by winter, male is complemented by female, darkness exists in contrast to light, fear provides the counterpoint to love. Nothing exists in singularity, every single thing in our universe exists in a dual system. This inherent balance is so ubiquitous that author and psychologist Dr. Shefali Tsabary actually refers to it as non-duality. As in, it's not light or dark, two different things. It's light and dark--one in the same. The term non-duality neatly expresses the absolute intertwining of these balanced states throughout the universe. These contrasting terms are not two opposing energies or entities, existing on polar ends of a scale. They are two words we have chosen to describe various states of the same thing.
This natural balance cannot be unseated, and here you'll find the first reason to rest assured that everything is OK. Within the wars, the pandemics, the genocide, the famine, within every single human tragedy, there is an equal measure of OKness, a perfectly balanced dose of peace and health, of unity and abundance. It cannot possibly be another way. War and peace are partners in non-duality, two expressions of the very same energy. Sickness and health exist in the same universal space, they are two states of one energy.
Earth and her humans are a hot mess right this moment! AND, everything is OK. Understand that the fundamental presence of OKness doesn't condone genocide. It doesn't suggest that war is acceptable, or even unavoidable. It simply means that the troubled shadow following humans exists in tandem with the light. No light, no shadow. They are dual expressions of the same thing.
They are dual expressions of the same thing...and there is only one THING. Everything is the one thing. Some of us call that thing God, others Source or Spirit. My friend April Lynn calls it magic exploding star stuff. Call it love or fairy dust, or if you've a more scientific bend call it energy or matter. It doesn't matter what you call it. Everything is made of it. Everything. And whatever it is, it's inherently good. Everything is made of stuff that is, in and of itself, intrinsically OK.
This is the second truth that I'll offer in proof of my theory. I can't give you any peer-reviewed research to substantiate my claim that everything is made of love (or energy...or magic exploding star stuff). All I can offer you is the way that babies smell, how the entire sky sometimes lights with a sunset, 360 degrees of color so spectacular that it takes your breath away. All I have to prove that everything is made of OKness is how honeybees function, the way elephants mourn their dead, dolphins blowing air rings purely for pleasure. Whale song, non-profit organizations, orchestral music, belly dance, ethnic cuisine, tattooing, hugs, flowers, Mayan architecture...all I can give you here is the world in which you live. Look around. OKness is everywhere.
Now I've got my fellow flower children on board. Everything is OK, they're saying with a smile. Let's have a hug and a great day. But I know my cynics are holding out. But, they say, war is still here. Famine, hatred, violence--what are flowers and dolphin games in the face of that? How can everything be OK as long as those things exist?! And if everything is made of the same beautiful stuff, why is there so much ugliness in the world?
And to that I can only offer that we, humans, are young. On the evolutionary scale, we are still lying flat on our backs, staring fixedly at our own toes, giggling through a spit bubble as a thin stream of drool makes its way inexorably towards one ear. The image we hold of ourselves is no more accurate than what the infant "sees" as he tries time and again to grasp what seems to be floating mysteriously above him, but is, in fact, a piece of his very own person.
We perceive ourselves to be powerful and righteous and superior, but this very belief shows how truly inexperienced we are. We are made of magic exploding star stuff...but we don't know it yet. We're all caught up in the human experience, starting at nothing but our own feet, unable to focus our still-forming eyes on the world around us, as of yet powerless to recognize that everything is non-dual. The connection between 'me' and those toes isn't quite complete. We're just waking up to our true nature.
And that, perhaps more than anything, tells me that everything is now, and will always be, OK. We are messy now, like babies are wont to be. We shit where we sleep, we scream out loud when we can't get our point across, we have so much to learn and only experience as a teacher. But we are magic, we are love, we are God. Everything is. And we're piling up experience as fast as our infantile minds can learn from it (perhaps a bit faster, in some cases).
And we will learn. It's why we're here. Our eyes will develop, we'll learn to roll over, eventually to sit up on our own and begin to observe the world around us. We will pass out of infancy and develop as a species, just as each human develops as an individual. The time frame is extended, but the process is the same.
As we grow and develop, the organic OKness will blossom. We will begin to experience a new form of non-duality, one in which a more balanced expression of traits and energies can be expressed. Natural rhythms of light and dark, death and birth, will continue on the physical plane, but our human expression of this universal law will become more stable. We'll get better at acting like pieces of magic exploding star stuff in a system of the same. And everything will be even more OK.
It's coming. It's the natural progression of events, even if that might be hard to see right now. We'll continue to make messes and show off our command of the not-so-OK expression of things for now. But we're learning. And you can help speed the process by living these truths in your own life.
Believe in your divinity, and in the shared sacred nature of all things. Learn to recognize joy and follow it any- and everywhere it asks to lead you. Trust that balance exists in all things, that the light and the shadow are one and that is as it should be. Heal yourself: physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, energetically. Believe that you and the world around you are fundamentally OK. Remember, everything around you is made of the same magical stuff; when you raise your frequency, the rest of the world cannot but rise up with you. The more OK you believe it is, the more OK it gets.
That's my story, and I'm sticking to it. I don't have one iota of science to prove it, yet I know beyond a doubt that it's true. My bones ring with this fact: everything is going to be OK.
Have I convinced you?
You don't have to believe me. But why wouldn't you? For the moment, you can be fully assured that everything is going to continue to be OK and not OK, to be the same flavor of truth that it's always been. You could choose to continue looking at the bits that aren't OK...but why would you?
Ponder how you feel when you make that choice: anxious, threatened, frightened, angry. The parts that are OK and the parts that aren't are part of the same system, the same experience--the human experience. If you choose to look at the OK bits, it needn't be a denial of the fact that less-than-OK bits exist. Of course they do. But when you choose to spend more time acknowledging the inherent OKness around you, you'll feel better: calm, safe, supported, hopeful. You don't have to choose that...
But why wouldn't you?