Transcending Illusion

(What to do after the Sky has Fallen)

by
Cynthia Adler

The stories are all there. Sometimes interchangeable. The loss of a home, a substantial fortune, a small fortune, a meager savings, a life’s work, a job that was counted on, a loss of face and faith and possibly a future…

The stories…they bubble up in the ether that was once the rarified air of America, the seemingly solid ground of patriotism and entitlement in a nation that took nothing less than the number one slot in the world’s billboard chart.

Until now. Now, we have been thrown into some kind of spinning Disney ride, and blown around until our molecules are no longer anchored in our spirit, and we find ourselves suddenly, in some strange alternate universe.

But here we are. Dust settling, hornets nests popping out all over, from a cracked and bizarre Government, to ponzi madness, to big banking bonuses and other emerging Corporate rip-offs and we wonder, who are we, and where have we landed, and most importantly…what are we to do?

The Buddhists say that when all around you is in chaos…just stop. Stop in your tracks and do nothing. Nothing. But we are Americans…we cannot do nothing! Nothing is not in our genetic make-up. We need a fix-it plan. We need to go into action immediately and shore up the dam, marshal the troops, and make it all go away.

But it’s not going away. Not right now. And maybe the Buddhists have something there…because when you stop, you can really see the landscape, what’s been going on all around you, and finally, just how long this has been coming on. And that realization, may possibly floor us.

For it hasn’t only been these past eight years that have gotten us to where we are today. It has been decades of drowning eco-systems and mass unconsciousness and elective passivity, with a Corporate system that has masterminded the running of this country for eons and a population that has chewed on false promises while choking itself on mindless hours of television, techno toys, and excess in everything from food, to things we never even wear or ever use.

So what do we do?

No one really knows the answer to that. But the best plan may be to look at this broken mountain as some cosmic opportunity to shift, to turn away from the fixed images of our lives and re-vision. To examine loss, and what that means to us on an individual basis and as a whole nation. And to take action. Not in the marches, not in the posters, but real action. Ah…and how do we do that?

Well…that is the real question now, isn’t it.

Wonder what the Buddhists would say about that one…