Patricia Pearce

Helping You Be the Change

The Reality of Oneness

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You are the eyes through which the Universal Mind sees Itself.

A friend emailed me recently asking if I could clarify what I mean when I use the term “oneness.” It’s a term she finds quite distasteful because to her it smacks of an amorphous, undifferentiated blob.

Although in my writing I often use terms like inter-existence, inter-beingness, interdependence or interconnectedness rather than oneness, I thought I would take some time to describe in more detail what I mean by all of it.

To do that, though, I need to give some autobiographical context, because when I speak of this it isn’t an abstract concept for me. It comes from a very formative experience I had years ago.

Almost two decades ago, a very close friend of mine died, and her death prompted me to resolve to open to deeper dimensions of my existence that I sensed were there but had never known.

Some while later I began to experience an onslaught of synchronicities too numerous and implausible for my worldview to accommodate. It felt like my reality was cracking apart.Continue Reading

Joy Lessons from Philly

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Joy opens a portal for a new possibility to come forth.

It’s been an interesting time here in Philadelphia in recent days as the whole world watched and waited to see if Philly would deliver the needed votes to tip the outcome of the election. Given that this is the place where our democratic form of government was conceived, I don’t think the significance has been lost on anyone that this is the place where its future seemed to be hanging in the balance.

I moved here in 1997, and as a native of Denver it was a big adjustment for me to come here to the densely populated East Coast, far from the open spaces and Rocky Mountains that I love. It was also devastating to see the extent of the poverty in Philadelphia, the poorest of the major cities in the US, which was once a thriving hub of the Industrial Revolution. But when the factories closed to relocate, they left behind working class neighborhoods that became vast wastelands of unemployment and despair.

And yet, when I moved here I fell in love with Philly. I loved the racial diversity, and how this city is such a microcosm of the world. I loved the expansive parks here that have been set aside as a protected watershed, including the Wissahickon woods where the soil sparkles with with traces of mica.

I loved the art and culture, and that I could go hear the Philadelphia Orchestra in their concert hall a mere 15 minutes from my house, an orchestra I used to listen to recordings of when I was a music major in college.

I was also captivated by Philadelphia’s history, by the cobblestone streets of Old City where redbrick colonial houses still stand, by William Penn’s vision that this place be a Holy Experiment where people of all faiths could live in harmony, by Independence Hall where a new vision of government was conceived that dethroned the idea of monarchy.

Funny, Tough, and Joyful

In recent weeks, during this election season, I’ve found myself falling in love with Philly all over again, but in new ways. I have loved the playfulness and humor that is endemic to this place, and how people took President Trump’s comment that “bad things happen in Philadelphia” and ran with it.

And speaking of running, I love that they just organized a benefit run to raise money for Philabundance, our local hunger relief organization, which they are calling the Fraud Street Run (a word play on our long-standing annual tradition of the Broad Street Run).

The Fraud Street Run will start at the now famous Four Seasons Total Landscaping and end at the Four Seasons Hotel in Center City. (If you’ve been appreciating Philly lately too, you might consider donating here.)

In recent weeks I’ve even fallen in love with Philly’s gritty toughness, which I never fully appreciated until now. Here people don’t engage in the gratuitous niceties that I was accustomed to, having grown up in the West. Here people call things the way they see them, and they aren’t easily intimidated or bullied. Lately I have come to understand that when the stakes are high, you want a good dose of that don’t-mess-with-me energy that is core to Philly’s culture.

But I think the thing that has inspired me the most about my adopted city in this whole election drama has been the Joy that has been set loose here—people dancing while waiting in line to vote; people of all colors, shapes, gender orientations and religions dancing outside the Convention Center in what became a block party to protect the vote count.

This eruption of Joy was intentional. The organizers here who have been preparing for this moment understand the power of Joy to de-escalate tensions and shift the narrative of confrontation, and they made sure the d.j. booth was ready so the party could begin.

Joy is a very high-frequency energy. In its presence fear, hate, and anger melt away. Joy dethrones the idea of division, overthrows the idea of oppression. It opens a portal for a new possibility to come forth and take hold.

We know we’re not out of the woods yet. We can see how the old order does not go quietly into the night. But when the people start dancing, the new world is already well on its way.

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Election Day 2020

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What will we do with what we have learned?

On this Election Day I’ve been contemplating how far we have come over the last four years. I know it is easy to look at these last four years and bemoan all that has happened—all the cruelties and crudities that have been unleashed, all the suffering.

And yet I am well aware that everything that we encounter in life, all the adversities and challenges, can either be seen as a curse or as a teacher. I choose to look at things as the latter.

It’s easy enough to vilify Donald Trump as someone who has hijacked and corrupted our institutions of government, glorified bullying and greed, given the green light to racism and sexism. It’s easy enough to blame him and those who support him for destroying all semblance of decency.

That’s an easy road to take, and I would argue one that leads us nowhere.

If we want to go deeper, we can see that Trump is a reflection of an inner state we would rather not look at, and has brought to the surface things that were there all along but had been lurking in the shadows, repressed by our collective cultural denial.

Consider all that has happened over these four years. We have seen the MeToo movement and the Black Lives Matter movement. We have become increasingly aware of the obscene inequity of wealth in our country and how the political establishment exists now to serve that inequity. We have seen how readily we latch onto the idea of enemy and how gleefully we embrace and disseminate any “information” that comes our way that supports our preconceptions about “those people.”

Over these past four years, Donald Trump has forced us to face our shadow. Now the question is, what will we do with this information?

Will we refuse to be satisfied with simply removing public monuments to white supremacy and continue do the challenging and essential work of eradicating the insidious and absurd ideas of racism, sexism, and classism from our minds and institutions?

Will we revitalize a democracy that was already perilously close to dying?

Will we unequivocally claim for ourselves a future that excludes and oppresses no one—a future that unleashes the creativity of the human spirit and allows the Earth and all of her beings to thrive?

Or will we try to sweep it all under the rug again? Reboot our comfortable denial? Indulge ourselves with a belief in our “powerlessness”?

If so, the lesson that these past four years came to teach us will need to come again, and again, and again.

On this Election Day, as I look at the US I see a nation that has matured at light speed these last four years. So many of us understand now that it isn’t up to our “leaders” to save us. So many of us understand that the United States isn’t a collection of governmental institutions, but We the People. So many of us are firmly committed not to be bystanders in this crucial moment of our precious planet’s history.

My prayer on this day and the days to come, as we await the election results, is that the outcome be in the highest good of this country and our world, and that these past four years will not have been wasted, that we will have seen what we needed to see, and learned what we needed to learn in order to create the more perfect Union that is ours to create.

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Remembering Our Oneness

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All of us have come to the planet to either remember or to forget.

A few weeks ago I had a dream that seemed quite significant for me personally, but I wanted to share the ending of the dream because I think it has universal meaning.

At the very end of the dream I am with a couple other women who begin to sing a song. One of the women, to help me sing along, holds up the lyrics. But actually what she holds up is an empty frame.

The song they are singing says, “We are one. We are one. Some choose to remember. Some choose to forget.” It isn’t conveying any judgment about this choice. The song is simply stating a fact: some choose to remember; some choose to forget.

All of us have come to this planet to experience one of those two things, and in a sense Earth is a vast playground for us to explore and live out our choice. Here we can experience what it is to live as embodied beings in awareness of our oneness, or we can experience the impossible—separateness—which requires that we forget the truth of oneness. And this is a choice we each make for ourselves, a soul choice that we cannot force on anyone else.

We see both of these choices playing out in our world today. It is almost as if two different, parallel worlds are arising, one which continues to play out the illusion of separateness and one which is exploring ways in which to bring forth into full expression and manifestation the truth of our oneness.

As for myself, I am quite clear that I have chosen to discover what it is to live in embodied form fully aware of my oneness with All, fully aware that I exist only in relationship.

Do I get lost sometimes in the machinations of the mind, caught up in the stories and illusions of separateness and division? Sure I do. But I am able to see them now for what they are and I am able to disengage from them because I no longer believe in them. They have simply lost their credibility for me.

I have written many times that at the core of the illusion of separateness is judgment, and that without judgment the egoic thought structure collapses. That is why the most significant message for me of the song in the dream wasn’t that we are one, which isn’t news to me, nor that some remember and some forget, which is pretty obvious if you look around. The essential teaching was that there is no judgment about the choice that we make.

The woman in the dream offered me a frame, and this is the gift we are all given, isn’t it? We are given the power to frame how we see our lives, how we see this time we are in, how we see this soul choice we and others have made. Will we place all things within the frame of the absolute nature of Love?

For those of us who have come here to remember our oneness, I see this time on the planet as our initiation. Can we be in the midst of this drama of division that is playing out on the world stage and remember that it isn’t Real? Can we recognize division as the illusion that it is? Can we opt out of the temptation to rail against it, which only gives the illusion credence in our minds, and instead dispel it with the Light of Love?

And are we willing to make space for those who want to be on this planet experiencing separateness? Can we hold them and their choice in Love? Not joining them in their illusion, certainly, but honoring that this is their choice to make? And are we willing to steadfastly hold our awareness in the truth of our union with the All even when some may reject and attack that understanding?

And are we willing to join together to bring forth the world that reflects the truth of oneness, that reflects the truth of Love, and not allow ourselves to be dissuaded or hindered by those who have chosen differently?

We who have come to remember, who have chosen to realize our divine nature and awaken to the Christ consciousness that we are, have also chosen this initiation for ourselves. We have chosen to be present on the planet at this precise moment because we are ready and willing to leave all forgetfulness behind. We are ready and willing to be Heaven on Earth.

And it just may be that as we do so, some of our kindred souls may remember that they, too, chose to remember.

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The Inner Election

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The most significant vote you will ever cast is the one within yourself.

I’ve written before that in this time of global awakening Donald Trump is a figure who is helping us see clearly what the ego mind looks like, how it thinks, what it values and how it behaves so that we can choose whether we want it sitting in the Oval Office of our own executive function.

What is transpiring inside the mind as we make this epic movement from one consciousness—the egoic consciousness of separateness—to the unitive consciousness of oneness is being reflected right now on the political stage during this election season. And because the events in the “external” world are depicting what is taking place on the inner plane, they can be very instructive for you in your own awakening process if you are willing to be open to what they have to teach you. So let’s take a look, shall we?

First of all, you can see how the ego mind keeps alive the idea of separateness by creating doubt and confusion in the mind, encouraging the mind to see the world through the divisive lens of us/them, gaslighting the mind to convince it that what is false is true and what is true is false, promoting the idea of enemy, spreading fear. You can also see the drama of the ego mind and how it constantly churns out fictitious narratives to distract you from the present Moment where you would inevitably encounter the Reality of Love and realize that the ego is a meaningless illusion, a story in the mind.

On the political stage it is also significant that during this election season there is such a frantic scramble to fill the vacant seat on the Supreme Court. This is, if you’ll excuse the pun, supremely symbolic because judgment is the very thing that keeps ego in control of the mind. It is judgment that creates the perception of separateness, and without it the whole egoic illusion would collapse in an instant. It makes perfect sense then, that, in this moment of decision, ego would turn to the institution that represents judgment to provide its last line of defense.

Now this is where you can begin to see the seemingly paradoxical nature of your transition out of egoic consciousness: it is the ego mind’s nature to judge and fight, so if you choose to judge and fight ego you have actually aligned yourself with it. You have, de facto, voted in favor of it.

Ego is not the enemy. (In fact, there are no enemies except in the egoic worldview.) Ego is simply a glitch in the matrix of the mind, an erroneous anomaly, a pseudo-self playing out the illusion of separateness that the mind mistook to be real.

Just so, Trump is not the enemy. He is simply exhibiting what this error of the mind looks like. If you see him as the enemy you are actually viewing him from the ego mind itself and are reinforcing the egoic patterns in your own mind.

The same goes for yourself. In what ways do you see yourself as the enemy? In what ways do you judge and try to fight against some aspect of yourself? How willing are you to relinquish such self-attack and to accept that you are and always have been one with Love?

So while the movement beyond ego is not about fighting, it is very much about choosing, and the key question is: Are you willing?

Are you willing to allow the egoic patterns in your own mind to dissolve?

Are you willing to release the concept of enemy?

Are you willing to yield to the Reality of Love?

The ego would have you believe you have to make all of this happen. But that simply isn’t true. In the Reality of Love, of inter-beingness, there are countless entities and energies available to help, and all they need from you is the go-ahead.

Yes, this is a confusing and turbulent time. How could it not be? The ground we’re standing on is shifting beneath our feet as one reality gives way to another, or more accurately, a false understanding of reality gives way to Reality itself.

And yet I am very hopeful, because, turbulent though these times may be, they are giving us exactly what we need in this moment of choice. More and more of us are seeing what is at stake, realizing we can’t go on like this, recognizing that the changes we wish to see in the world begin within us. And when a critical mass of us have cast our inner ballot to opt out of the ego mind and its version of reality, the world will change profoundly, and far more quickly than we ever could have imagined.

So please, vote. Vote in the national election, of course. But also remember that the most significant vote you will ever cast is the one within yourself.

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The Quiet Coup

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The coup that will change the world is already well underway.

For as long as I can remember, the ritual in our national political theater that has always moved me to tears is the moment after a presidential inauguration when the outgoing president boards the helicopter and flies away. It is an enactment of what is perhaps the most extraordinary characteristic of democracy: the peaceful transition of power.

It brings me to tears because I am aware of how precious it is, how novel it is, in a world that has for so long been governed by egoic drives for power and control, and it exemplifies the fundamental break with the past that the founders of our country made when they decided the United States would not be a monarchy.

Knowing that Donald Trump is completely beholden to the ego-mind, I have always had a hard time envisioning him peaceably getting on that helicopter and flying away, honoring the will of the people and the democratic process. This is not a condemnation of him. It is simply an observation of him. It is not in his constitution to yield power and control.Continue Reading

Our Collective Exhaustion

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It requires an enormous amount of energy to deny the undeniable

When I got up this morning and saw the news bulletin on my phone that Trump announced last night that he and Melania have tested positive for COVID-19, my immediate and instinctual response was concern for them both. Empathy, I suppose. Even though I disagree with Trump’s positions on, well, just about everything, I do not wish him ill. In fact, I wish him wholeness.

But along with the empathy, this morning I feel exhaustion. I think many of us do. This has been grueling. The body-blows that the daily news delivers are almost more than we can handle.  Day. After day. After day. After day. It has been relentless.

What I’m noticing, though, is that the exhaustion I feel doesn’t seem like it belongs to “me.” It feels like a collective exhaustion that is in the collective energy field.

It’s as if we’re trying to hold back a tsunami—frantically trying to plug the cracks that keep opening up in the dikes—to keep the world we’ve known from being inundated by a force that seems so much bigger than we are.Continue Reading

The Media and the Egoic Need for Enemies

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The media delivers what the ego wants.

I read a very interesting article recently by Matt Taibbi that summarized his book Hate Inc.: Why Today’s Media Makes Us Despise One Another. In it, Taibbi, a journalist, talks about the evolution of the media in recent decades, and how it has become financially dependent upon peddling the idea of enemy.

Taibbi explains how, before the advent of the internet and the proliferation of news outlets, the media’s strategy was to reach the widest possible audience, because the wider their audience, the more advertising revenue they received. As a result, the news media presented information that was acceptable to the largest segment of the population and avoided extremist angles or ideologies.

But with the introduction of 24 hour news channels and the Internet, which led to a proliferation of news sources and the decimation of classified ad revenue, the media’s strategy changed. Now the objective became to identify a niche demographic and give them what they wanted.

One thing they discovered is that most people want news that confirms their biases about people they don’t like.Continue Reading