What to do when you're between lightening and the thunderclap....

How do you stay the course?

This past week I've had many interesting conversations with people all over the globe. In a call with a practitioner friend today, she admitted to me that she regularly wakes up in the night with anxiety and a racing mind. She told me about a term I wasn't familiar with before, but I certainly recognised: Accelerationism.

There is conflict. Constriction. A practice of power over. Dissension is dealt with harshly. It is the intensification of change and transformation aimed at destablising systems and creating radical social transformation. 

Of course this begs the question: Whose storyline are we following?

She said she feels like we've seen the lightening, and we are waiting now -- with all the stress and despair that entails -- for the thunderclap. These ripples are being felt around the world by all of us.

Our greatest visible storyteller -- Nature -- rarely works in this fashion. She is slow, patient, organic. She tries a plethora of forms and the richest ecological systems are the most diverse. They often happens at the fringes between two different ecologies.

When she does take the speedy path -- the fire starts, the winds whip up, the blaze engulfs a section of forest -- the result is a clearing of the way for the new. The tall trees, the old growth, is recycled to form nutrients for the new. Light comes to the forest floor and small things get the encouragement to grow large.

In the meantime, Grandmother Trees send out their nourishment to all the little seedlings, whether they are part of their species or not. The next generation is nourished so they have a chance to survive. So they thrive.

This cycle repeats itself again and again, over and over. As one thing dies, another comes to life. As a human being, we each had a beginning and we will all have an end. This part of the story is unchanging. The most we can hope for is that we learned something valuable and generative to pass onto the next generation so the human species survives. So that we all thrive.

So why do those with more want even more? Why is power and not love at the heart of our societies? Why are we so afraid of difference -- however we choose to perceive it?

The truth is very simple... 

You become what you practice.

If we don't like who we are becoming, the first thing we can practice is slowing down. Slowing down, taking a breath, recalibrating a moment to what we most want instead of what we don't want. Centering and focusing on what is ours to do.

One reason those who are making such dramatic changes are rushing is to overwhelm, confuse and frighten. When you are off balance, not only do you get triggered into reaction, but you also miss what is also happening behind the smoke screen.

The best way to meet these times is to stay in practice. Even better -- stay in practice together. Consciousness is a shield against believing you are powerless. In fact, it is the doorway to finding your power and for us finding our collective power.