It's A Damn Shame... But We're The Solution

An update about what's going on right now & an invitation into somatic listening through music.

Set Your Pulse: Take a breath. Turn your attention to your body and release any tension. Breathe slowly into the area of your heart for 60 seconds, focusing on feeling a sense of ease. Stay connected to your body as you read. Click here to learn why we suggest this.

---

This piece is a bit out of the norm for us here but I’m writing today to provide an update about what’s going on and to share a timely song you might like.

At the moment some of our team is taking some much needed time off, while at the same time I am working on finishing my upcoming course on nervous system health to improve wellbeing and sensemaking. This is why our writing has slowed down.

This course plays as a foundation to my larger mission of expanding individual transformation into larger social change. True to the motto of Collective Evolution: Change Starts Within. If we want to see a change in our world, we must look at ourselves and what is driving our world to be the way it is.

Simply put, at the very foundation, our story of the world and how we make decisions depends on the health and state of our nervous system. It informs our consciousness in many ways. This affects anything from our relationships and passions to our politics and societal design. The quality of awareness we bring to ourselves and our embodied state is directly connected to our perception of the world.

If we’re stuck in our heads, thinking, stewing, scrolling social media, numb to the world or emotionally reacting as if we’re on auto-pilot, our quality of life and health will drop, and our ability to respond to a changing world will be hindered.

Polarization and fragmentation are the result of a world lived in this state.

Many of us can sense that the path we’re on is not a good one, and won’t produce thriving humans. The challenge is so many of us are simply blaming someone else, one political side or another, or one ideology or another for why things are this way. But it’s more complex than that.

To truly understand how to make a change in our world we have to begin to connect with what is driving our individual and collective behavior.

The good news is, this isn’t hard to do once we take a moment to slow down.

The goal of the course is to bring the knowledge and practice of how to build a sense of embodied wellbeing - a synchronization of mind, body, and spirit.

It will arm you with the capacity and resilience to show up to our fast paced and changing world, and live a life of purpose and connection. This means navigating stress in a healthy way and being an active player in creating social change if that’s of interest to you.

Over the last 15 years, I’ve studied the interplay between:

• Our individual and collective consciousness

and

• How we live and design our society

Culture is a big part of all of this. Culture is formed by worldview, and our worldview is formed by the nature of our consciousness and the state of our nervous system.

Even if we find that the nature of our societal structures is corrupt, we must still look at the state of the individuals running it, and the state of the individuals (general society) maintaining the dynamic. There we find answers on how to move forward.

Individual transformation and wellness are the foundation for creating a shift in collective consciousness that can bring about a shift in how we live in society.

The challenge is, knowing that and doing that are two different things, and spiritual bypassing (to blame something else) is a big part of our current culture.

My course will focus on the foundational step of connecting to our body, regulating our nervous system, and generating a sense of wellness to show up to the world with mental, emotional and physical regulation.

Everything else, communication, sensemaking, intuition, activism, work, creativity etc. is built (and most efficient) on top of this foundation.

Coming back to the title of this piece, the song below is by Oliver Anthony, it’s called Rich Men North Of Richmond. It has gone viral in the last week so you may have heard it already.

One of the main lyrics is “It's a damn shame what the world's gotten to…” but in the spirit of this discussion around the concepts in my course, I believe we are the solution to the current state of the world. But we need to ignite the energy, capacity and resilience to show up and be part of changing it.

Enjoy the song.

How do these lyrics resonate with your thoughts?

How do they resonate with your emotions?

What feelings do they ignite in your body?

Lyrics

I've been sellin' my soul, workin' all day / Overtime hours for bullshit pay / So I can sit out here and waste my life away / Drag back home and drown my troubles away.

Pre-Chorus:
It's a damn shame what the world's gotten to / For people like me and people like you / Wish I could just wake up and it not be true / But it is, oh, it is.

Chorus:
Livin' in the new world / With an old soul / These rich men north of Richmond / Lord knows they all just wanna have total control / Wanna know what you think, wanna know what you do / And they don't think you know, but I know that you do / 'Cause your dollar ain't shit and it's taxed to no end / 'Cause of rich men north of Richmond.

I wish politicians would look out for miners / And not just minors on an island somewhere / Lord, we got folks in the street, ain't got nothin' to eat / And the obese milkin' welfare.

Well, God, if you're 5-foot-3 and you're 300 pounds / Taxes ought not to pay for your bags of fudge rounds / Young men are puttin' themselves six feet in the ground / 'Cause all this damn country does is keep on kickin' them down.

Repeat Pre-Chorus

Repeat Chorus

I've been sellin' my soul, workin' all day / Overtime hours for bullshit pay.