...and I'll need extra foam for this one!

[In this delightful  but powerful missive by Joanna Gabriel, she mixes humor with unabashed truth-telling to demonstrate why we must ask ourselves the tough questions that collapse is demanding of us.--CB]

If the headlines are all about Spitzer's call girl and what Hillary said about Obama now and Heath Ledger's will and Britney Spears' latest day in court and who's left on American Idol...this keeps me from having to look at and deal with climate change and the polar bears eating their young and the banks collapsing and how it costs $60 to fill up my tank...because I have no answers and it is too painful and scary to think about it in order to try to find the answers.

The fix is obviously going to require me to change, and I don't want to change...I'm afraid of change...what does it ask of me...what does it take from me...nope...look--the experts on TV say in between the bad news that all I have to do is Live Claritin Clear so I can breathe freely and drink Promise activTM SuperShotsTMand the evil cholesterol falls off of me and I drive off in my Prius with my iPhone and life is good. 

We've had problems before...the oil embargo of the 70's...Vietnam...how about WWII  and the Great Depression??  We've had El Nino for years. We've gotten through it then, we'll get through it now...besides...I have to get my entry in to win $75,000 for a healthy new me on the Food Network...bye-bye.

People are not stupid...just programmed...hours and hours every day of watching TV/computer programming...ironic, isn't it?  

And indeed, I feel the energy of the focus on the election and whatever scandal is up at the moment...anything but what is really going on.  I find that my eyes glaze over it all now.  And it feels lonely.  The deception was far more entertaining.  

So now the dire predictions are fulfilling themselves.  Where to go to best ride it out and with whom? Food sources...safety...where is the climate going to be the least assaulting?  

In the midst of researching the answers, I am reminded of one of my favorite authors, Pema Chodron's words:  "Real safety is your willingness to not run away from yourself."

Yes, I feel the truth in that....a statement of the bigger picture.

So often in life's crises, we find ways to curb or minimize our pain and confusion...so we don't have to feel them.  If the crisis is a relationship falling apart, some people's answer is to get right back into another one...falling in love anew is such a lovely balm for a broken heart...and there's no having to clean up the past...just redecorate.  Eating cheese and chocolate (not together!), or shopping...yes, sweet, momentary comfort when one feels displaced, unloved, alone.  Vivian Leigh as Scarlett O'Hara..."I'm not going to think about that now...I'll think about that tomorrow...after all, tomorrow is another day..." (Orchestra wells up)...The End.  

But if we want something different for ourselves, growth and evolution require that we look straight at the pain and confusion...the grief and the loss.  Who am I now...who do I want to be?  What have I learned...what can I release in me now to have more of me available for becoming what I desire to become?  What have I realized so that I will draw something, or someone different to me the next time when I feel ready for that?  Since I came in and will go out alone, does it not make sense to get to know and become friends with myself?  And if my choices have not worked out well for me, wouldn't it make sense to look at them in order to create a more useful approach?  If the bridge collapses, wouldn't I want to look at where it failed, so I would not make the same mistake again when I rebuild it?

And the big question...what does all that have to do with this impending doom...that the visionaries have been predicting for some time now...and here it is...just like they said...and from all directions...just like they said.  

It seems to me that the "just keep plugging the holes" stance is how we got into this mess in the first place...the holes created by fear, loss, grief, doubt, pain.  Get right back on the horse...live Claritin clear....  For God's sake, whatever you do, don't look at what's causing the holes.  I may have to change something that I'm doing...no, mask the symptoms...if I can mask the symptoms, I don't have to deal with what's causing them...a winning formula...ask the multi-billion dollar pharmaceutical industry.  

Truth To Power's advice to store food, find community and hunker down for the collapse is vital as I see it.  And what do I learn from all of this?  Who is this person I am hunkering down to?  

Community as we've created it in the modern world has not worked well.  Maybe we hunker down and figure it out when we get there...meanwhile, we'll need something to do while we deal with our withdrawal from processed food and Starbucks.  

What if we create our community with a working food supply, clean water and good friends and then roving bands of starving, inner city escapees, armed and off their AmbienCR  show up and take it away?  A likely circumstance.  Does our community intend to protect itself?  How?  Well, with weapons, of course.  Tough times call for tough measures.  Or another answer is...we'll give it to them...whoa.  I don't know the answer, but sure feel the question.  

For me, it always comes right back to: "Real safety is your willingness to not run away from yourself."    

It's like there is a fork in the road and I have to decide which way I'm going to go, and I can prepare myself to deal with food, fuel, and fascism, which looks to me like...plugging those holes ain't going to work anymore...the dam is breaking, folks...wake up.  So the symptoms are becoming too huge to mask or medicate...bail out. 

What surfaces for me is that while I'm choosing the turn toward preparedness and community, it would be wise to be also looking within and seeing who this person is whose making this choice and why, because I'm taking this person (me) with me, and her fears and foibles are coming along too...and without access to my masking and medicating supply cupboard.  Yikes!  This may be worse than any roving band of armed and hungry, sleep-deprived and caffeine-less crazies from the inner city!  

We will be faced with the one in the mirror as never before, so becoming aware of and accepting/befriending this person is as essential as food and water, in my estimation.  This may sound simple and Pollyannaish, however, many of us, have spent a whole lifetime avoiding it.  Society has been built and sold on this avoidance (see above). 

If we looked into those eyes in the mirror every day, without judgment, condemnation and fear, and checked in with who is really there, would we make the same choices we make, have made for ourselves and our world?  Here is the real struggle, my friend.   We can think it is about politics and power-mongering, but that is just more masking and medicating to avoid our own fears and feelings of inadequacy and pain.  The wounds live right here, and we have built lives over the top of them.  If we think those wounds will not show up as these lifestyles collapse...we are kidding ourselves.

I have often said that we are painting ourselves into a corner, forcing us to create the lives we always wanted anyway.  I believe this, and the life I always really wanted anyway is one where I am aware of and accept myself and live in peace and harmony within myself, thus, giving me the ability to live in peace and harmony with you/others. When I am authentically at peace and harmony within myself, I make choices that reflect this and support the peace and harmony around me. 

If I am not at peace and harmony within myself, I can't authentically be that with anyone else...so I either live in disharmony (war/power-mongering) with others (my family, my work, my world), because that is what I feel inside toward myself, or I mask it all with a smile and my medication of choice.  My choices will be either from disharmony, or out of a medicated, cloudy awareness, not really clear on what's going on...and not really interested either.

There really are no mysteries here when we look at the root of what is happening.  This view is obviously greatly simplified, and complicating it has been a useful form of masking/medicating for a long time.  It just can't be that simple...ask religious dogma.  But the funny thing is...if you look at the teachings of all the master teachers that have walked this planet...really look at their teachings and not the interpretations...they all say the same thing....the kingdom of God is within you...it's about you and who you are. 

We look everywhere else because we can't stand to look in here...please tell me...it can't be this...anything but this. 

What if we start looking within and find that there is no monster there...wounds, yes...fears from the wounds, yes...but no monster...whoa...  

What if there is someone worth getting to know and accept?  Sounds risky, but look at the rickety bus we're traveling in already!  Can it be any riskier than this? 

Truth To Power is asking the tough questions, but I believe the questions I'm asking here are the bigger picture questions and that the answers to them will assist us in having some clarity and wits about us when and after we find the courage to stand up and walk away from life as we've known it.  

It is said that change occurs when the pain, or fear of staying the same gets bigger than the pain or fear of facing the unknown of the change itself.  Are we there yet?  

Joanna Gabriel has extensive experience as a writer, group facilitator, speaker and life coach. While serving as the Director of Education for the Conversations with God Foundation, Joanna has worked with students of consciousness from around the world.  During these days and times, she has traveled to 23 cities around the U.S. presenting seminars on waking up to the approaching transition and offers perspective on the potential for self-empowerment that exists in tandem with the wisdom of focused preparation.She lives in rural Oregon.