How to Summon Optimism in this World

Follow me on a winding journey:

1. Authenticity:

People like to argue over what is authentic and what is not. In shamanism, in all religion, in art, in science. In my world of Western-urban-neo-shamanic practice, it’s always “how the indigenous masters do it or did it” is authentic. I don’t discount that, and it’s why I’ve spent nine years dedicating myself to contact with indigenous lineages. But there is something else that’s more important to attend to.

A slight digression to illustrate: Jesus was not an authentic Jew. Buddha was not an authentic Vedic Hindu. Marcel Duchamp was not an authentic artist when he placed a urinal into a fancy art exhibit in 1917. Max Planck was told by his professor in the 1880’s not to pursue physics because everything had already been figured out. He wasn’t an authentic physicist when he opened the door to quantum theory. None of these seekers were worried about authenticity. Their focus was on how our understanding of truth evolves, and their attention was on opening the door to the next level of truth.

Strictly speaking, authentic, ancient, original shamanism does not necessarily involve love or compassion. Its concern is purely about power and how to use it. Shamans had/have access to a power beyond ordinary consciousness (what we can call the spirits) and they learned to wield it. They could wield it with or without love or compassion. That is as true today as it has always been, and this is the basic difference between what we now commonly call a shaman and a sorcerer.

So, a better and more effective ongoing concern for anyone practicing shamanism is to place your concern on whether you are operating with love and compassion rather than whether you are operating by authentic ancient rules.

2. The Safety of Naiveté

I used to think that we would invent warp drive and everyone, including the oil barons, would shout hooray. It didn’t occur to me that the oil barons would resist the invention of warp drive because it would put them out of business. It didn’t occur to me that change would always involve the reality that most people aren’t interested in a better world; they are interested in maintaining their current pleasure.

I fell with ecstasy and optimism into the feminism and civil rights of the 1970’s, which spurred the deconstruction of the “God-As-Giant-White-Man” archetype. I didn’t realize that calling those transforming energies forward would, of course, call up resistance – the backlash toward feminism and civil rights that we see now.

The difference between naivety and optimism is the awareness of the price to be paid for positive evolution.

Our world is in a massive transformation. It is naïve to think the resistance wouldn’t be massive, deep, dangerous, and deadly. We spend much of our time and energy wrestling with that resistance – we spend a massive amount of energy raging on social media, or giggling to the videos in our bubble where our side owns and ridicules the other side. It is important to allow the anger because anger is the natural response to waking up our compassion for the suffering of the world.

But anger is only the door to compassion. If we don’t continue through it, into actual compassion, it hardens into the concrete of hate, and that is the story of our time. For “both sides” of the political strata, hate has concretized, and concrete can only be moved by physical smashing. This is where we are.

3. The Practice of Compassion

You cannot summon true optimism without summoning compassion. Optimism without compassion is just hiring a different general for the same army. Compassion is not a state of mind, nor a gift that some good people have, and others don’t. Like everything else with being a human, it is a practice. If you are someone who believes in multiple lifetimes, and that we come here to learn, there is really only one thing that we are ultimately here for, and that is love: to learn to love ourselves, and find a way to love others.

We mistake love when we believe it is a human feeling, an emotion. It is not. It is an energy field. Of all the energies (powers) that we have available to us to work with on this physical plane, love is the energy that we feel when we are in full awareness of the Creator, Source, God/Dess, Spirit. Contact with Spirit manifests in the human body as the feeling we call love.

This is where shamanic training enters. We practice working with the trees and plants, with our guides, with the elements, with the medicine wheel. Love-compassion is a power that we must practice, or we don’t get better at it. We cannot enter into optimism without practicing love.

Pablo Casals was the finest cellist of his generation, world famous, wealthy, a master. In 1957, at the age of 80, Casals was asked why he continues to practice five hours a day. He answered: “Because I think I am making progress.”

Professional athletes practice the fundamentals every day. Throw the ball, catch the ball, run with the ball. Everything about making a difference in the world – individually or for the whole – involves rigorous, non-ceasing practice.

But somehow, we want to believe that compassion is something you have or don’t.

4. Powerlessness

I struggle with a sense of powerlessness in the face of such immense challenges we face. Besides organizing, voting, working to get more voters like you to the polls, and protesting, there is very little I can do. I often worry that prayer and meditation and inner work are my way of escaping reality – some kind of real-world-bypassing. And that can be true.

But I always come back to this: if I see love as an energy field, it changes the perspective. The quantum physicist Max Planck, said, “When we change the way we see things, the things we see change.” This is the way of the quantum world, and it is the way of compassion as well. Victor Frankl, the famous author and Holocaust survivor, said, “Everything can be taken from [us] but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”

We have ample, direct evidence of the reality of energy fields changing the world. In the last few years, hatred and derisiveness – energy fields – have been called into the world in massive amounts, and it has changed our world.

So, the most practical, and only truly effective way to change our world is to fill your life and the immediate world around you with more love and compassion, with kindness on every level – as energy fields being called in. There are places I want to say, “Yes, – except for that person, or that situation.” And that is exactly where I need to focus my practice. Is this easy? Of course not. But did you think changing the world would be easy? Did you think being a human being would be easy? Being a vapor being living in the rings of Saturn is easy. You’re a human in a body – you’re in spiritual grad school here.

If you have a compassion practice already, then this article is hopefully just a helpful reminder and a booster. If this article helps you realize you don’t have a compassion practice, here is simple way to start:

When you are watching your in-the-bubble videos where that horrendously horrible idiot is spouting their stuff, and the host is “taking them down,” and it’s funny and awful, take a moment to realize all the suffering going on at that moment:

Your suffering that you are hoping will be assuaged by making fun of the enemy, or by feeling superior to them.

The host of the video’s suffering, that their skills, intelligence and wit need to be focused on this kind of work rather than on creating beauty in the world.

The suffering of the horrendous person, who is so filled with fear of loving and being loved that their true radiant being has become twisted.

Call in the energy field of love – the presence of Source, the forgiveness of the Christ, or Mother Mary, the radiance of White Tara or Guadalupe or Brigid, the fearless awareness of the Buddha, the motherly love of Earth Mother and Sky Father – whatever form it may take for you – call it in for all three of you, to wash out fear.

You can find 1000 more formal ways to practice compassion by Googling “how to practice compassion.”

In Closing:

Compassion is not weakness.

Compassion is medicine for the sick.

Compassion is not denial.

Compassion is healing for the world.

Compassion is not fantasy.

Like magnetism, gravity, and light, compassion is an energy field that can be used.

Compassion is not pity.

Compassion is strength sent to help.

Compassion is not pacifism.

Compassion is engaging with the world on the level that the world needs most for long-term positive change.

Compassion is not a nice periphery action.

It is your medicine for optimism.

If you like this piece, please feel free to share it.