Patricia Pearce

Helping You Be the Change

Chrysalis Wisdom in a Time of Polarization

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Metamorphosis happens.

In this moment of global transition it seems as if we are witnessing the divergence of two realities. One expresses the idea of separateness, which gives rise to all manner of exploitation, fear and domination, and the other embraces interconnection and interdependence, which prepares the way for a world based in mutuality and reciprocity.

Watching these realities diverge into increasing polarization can be disheartening. And yet I am always reminded of what occurs in the chrysalis as the caterpillar undergoes its metamorphosis into a butterfly.

As you probably know, in the chrysalis stage, the structure of the caterpillar completely dissolves, and then, from the soup of its former self, its previously latent DNA, which carries the encoding to bring forth a butterfly, becomes activated.

Once activated, this DNA causes imaginal, or organizer, cells to arise, and these imaginal cells begin to find each other, coalescing into what are called imaginal buds, the nascent organs of the butterfly.

But an interesting thing happens as these cells begin to emerge and imaginal buds begin to form. Enough of the caterpillar’s old immune system is still intact to be able to respond to this emergence, and, determining that these new cells and buds are alien intruders, it seeks to destroy them.Continue Reading

Love’s Idiots

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May you be who you are here to be.

It’s been a fascinating experience for me these past four years as I have occasionally ventured into the whirlwind of our political controversies. I’m not the sort of person who relishes conflict, so I wasn’t eager to do it, yet I felt drawn to share my own take on things.

When I wrote about Donald Trump as someone who portrays the ego mind and who is here to help us recognize and release those patterns in ourselves, I found myself in an interesting borderland. Since I haven’t seen him as evil incarnate, nor as a savior figure—both of which I believe are just egoic projections—I have stood outside the polarized perspectives about him that gained such currency in the culture.

Some people were irked that I wasn’t getting on board with the Trump-the-Savior/Trump-the-Demon dualism. One person went so far as to tell me I was an idiot for not seeing him as a lightworker.

His choice of words got me thinking, and I realized he was right. I am an idiot.

The word idiot comes from the Greek, and it originally referred to someone who goes their own way. Those of us who are supporting this global awakening are going our own way. We are walking away from the norms of an ego-oriented world, which is based in judgment, division, and attack, and we are choosing to live into something New, something more revolutionary than the planet has ever seen.

We are the idiots who we have the audacity to stand in the very real possibility of a world that depicts the truth of Love, the truth of our inherent interconnectedness, a world founded upon mutual respect and reciprocity and which celebrates our oneness with all of Life.

Why? Because we feel that world within us, and we simply can’t ignore it. We sense it stirring in our cells and claiming our imagination, even though we may not be able to see it clearly yet.

Of course we have our days when the ways of the old draw us in and we get caught up in the hoopla. But at some level of our being we have made a choice to support this planetary awakening, attuning ourselves to the frequency and the vision of a transformed world and allowing it to gain a foothold in our consciousness, in our cells, in our lives, in our world.

Crystallizing Love

Recently I was sitting in our glassed in porch watching a beautiful snowfall, big clumps of flakes floating silently from the sky. I sat there for hours, mesmerized.

Snow always blows my mind when I consider that every snowflake is unique, even though every snowflake is the same thing: water. Just as we are each unique, even though we are each the same thing: Love. And I believe this is what we are here to do: to crystallize Love in a way that is uniquely our own.

The other thing that amazes me about snow is that each snowflake, by itself, is quite unsubstantial. And yet, as I watched from our porch that morning I could see what was happening. Each unique snowflake was joined by countless other unique snowflakes, and together they blanketed the landscape with beauty and brought a hushed peace to the city.

So my wish for you is that you allow your essential Love nature to crystallize and express itself in your life in a way that is uniquely your own.

And always remember that you are not alone. There is a Love blizzard underway that you are part of. So keep the faith and be who you are here to be, no matter how strange it may seem to others.

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When the People Lead

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It’s time to direct our energy and attention toward The New.

I feel like I should write something about Donald Trump’s impeachment hearing this week, but the truth is, I’m tired of Donald Trump. I’m tired of the drama. I’m tired of the vitriol, the division, the delusions.

I’m just plain tired. This political drama isn’t where I want to focus my energies anymore. It’s like an energy vampire that feeds on the very thing it seems to demand of us: our attention.

I know that what is ready to arise on this planet isn’t going to come from you or me or any of us focusing on how screwed up the existing system is. That’s obvious. We get it. We don’t need to obsess about it.

The time has come, instead, for us to turn away from the ego’s addictive drama—whether that drama is playing out on the political stage or in the recesses of our own mind—and be willing to turn in a new direction, toward the truth of Love and its embodiment in the world.

Before Trump arrived on the scene, I wrote very little about the political landscape. I was much more interested in the inner landscape, because that’s where true transformation happens.

But when Trump erupted on our national political stage I felt drawn to speak to the phenomenon we were witnessing, because it was so obvious to me that there was much more to it than most people were recognizing on the face of things.

From the outset I saw Trump as someone who is exemplifying the egoic consciousness of separateness that humans must now leave behind, if for no other reason than that the wellbeing of the ecosystem we are part of requires it of us.

I saw that Trump was serving an important purpose, quite unintentionally I might add, by helping us see so clearly how the ego mind operates and the kind of world it fashions so that we could choose differently.

That’s really what the impeachment is all about: giving those in Congress the chance to choose differently. Whether or not they do, though, won’t have any effect on the bigger picture. Unitive consciousness is emerging, even more quickly now because of the excesses of ego that we have seen of late. (As the Tao te Ching says, “If you want to shrink something, you must first allow it to expand.”)

Here’s something for us to remember: it is often the “leaders” who are the last to get on board with big change, and the current shift in consciousness is perhaps the biggest change this planet has ever experienced.

I’m reminded of the story of Jonah, the prophet in the Hebrew Scriptures, who was commanded by God to go to Nineveh and tell them they needed to repent because otherwise they were headed for catastrophe.

Jonah didn’t want to go. He probably had no interested in saving the Ninevites, who were, from his vantage point, the enemies. In fact, he so didn’t want to go that he tried to flee his calling, ended up (long story) getting swallowed up by a big fish and then vomited out on dry land, at which point he finally went to Nineveh to fulfill his function, albeit reluctantly.

Much to his consternation, upon hearing his message the Ninevites repented and their catastrophic fate was averted, which made Jonah exceedingly unhappy.

But the thing that has always intrigued me the most about that story is how the Ninevites ended up repenting. As Jonah walked across the city preaching his message of doom and gloom, it was the people who proclaimed a fast and put on sackcloth. It was the people who turned toward a new way (which is what repent actually means).

It wasn’t until the king got word of what was going on that he too put on sackcloth, sat himself down in ashes, and decreed a time of national repentance, making what the people were already doing a “public policy.”

We get all worked up when the leaders don’t lead, when they don’t have the vision or the guts to forge a new society, or prepare the way for a new world. But the thing is, transformation is never going to come from the Oval Office or the halls of Congress. It is going to come from us, from We the People.

And true transformation, the transformation that will give rise to a world that reflects the Reality of Love, originates within each of us. It is a shift in consciousness that, as I have said before, is an inside job.

It is toward The New, not the old, that I want to direct my attention and energy now. As Buckminster Fuller famously said, “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”

I don’t expect the Senate to convict Donald Trump in these proceedings. They might surprise me, but I think there is way too much fear in that body to defect from the ego and its ways. The “leaders” are scared, which means we are the ones who will need to be bold enough to repent, audacious enough to choose differently, radical enough to align ourselves inwardly and outwardly with the truth of Love. And when we do, you can be assured the “leaders” will follow.

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Inauguration of a Future

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“It’s the past we step into and how we repair it.”

Watching the inauguration last week, I felt I was witnessing a mythic event, something so deeply symbolic that my rational mind couldn’t begin to fathom it all.

A ceremony taking place in front of a Capitol building so recently stormed by insurrectionists under the spell of conspiracy theories, clinging to the obsolete ideology of white supremacy, and seeking to overturn a democratic election.

Lady Gaga, larger than life, donning an enormous dove pin, proclaiming with the full power of her voice as the sun broke through the clouds that the stars and stripes had endured the perilous night.

The prophetic words of a young Black poetess downloading into us a vision of what we as a nation can be, and will be if we have the courage to be it.

A woman—a multi-racial daughter of immigrants at that—sworn into national office for the first time.

A compassionate man, unafraid to show his vulnerabilities and shed his tears, taking his place at the helm of a battered, traumatized and grieving nation.

And for me, an odd sense of gratitude for Donald Trump who had somehow managed to reinvigorate our democracy by trying to destroy it.

What was being evoked in me last Wednesday was more than patriotism, which seems much too provincial for this moment of global crisis. What was being evoked was a future that is asking to become a lived reality in our midst. And the essence of that future seemed to be the many that are one.

E pluribus unum.

On the evening of Inauguration Day, a term came to me quite spontaneously to depict what the past four years have been for us as a nation: The Great Wreckoning.

We have witnessed so much wreckage of our democratic norms and of our social fabric that we have been catapulted into a great reckoning. We have been forced to see all the ways in which racism and injustices of all kinds have gone unheeded and unaddressed, how the injuries of the past have been allowed to continue.

And now we know that our future as a nation—and as a human family—depends upon each of us doing the work that is ours to do. Grieving work. Restorative work. Healing work. Visionary work.

Our elected leaders will not and cannot create this future for us because it will be spawned within each of us, and from the depths of our own beingness will take on form in our behaviors, relationships, structures and institutions. There is no trickle down here. The new world that wants to arise is an inside job.

We know that not everyone is ready to welcome this future, that many, in fact, are afraid of it. Be that as it may, it is coming, and we can hasten it by revisiting time and time again the vision that Amanda Gorman set before us. To revisit it until it has seeped into our very cells—until it has become us, and we have become it.

The Hill We Climb

When day comes we ask ourselves

Where can we find light in this never-ending shade?

The loss we carry,

A sea we must wade.

We braved the belly of the beast;

We’ve learned that quiet isn’t always peace.

And the norms and notions of what just is

Isn’t always justice.

And yet the dawn is ours before we knew it.

Somehow we do it;

Somehow we’ve weathered and witnessed

A nation that isn’t broken but simply unfinished.

We, the successors of a country and a time

Where a skinny black girl descended from slaves

And raised by a single mother can dream of becoming president,

Only to find herself reciting for one.

And yes we are far from polished, far from pristine,

But that doesn’t mean we aren’t striving to form a union that is perfect.

We are striving to forge a union with purpose,

To compose a country committed to all cultures, colors, characters and conditions of man.

And so we lift our gaze not to what stands between us,

But what stands before us.

We close the divide, because we know to put our future first,

We must first put our differences aside.

We lay down our arms

So we can reach out our arms to one another.

We seek harm to none and harmony for all.

Let the globe, if nothing else, say this is true:

That even as we grieved, we grew,

That even as we hurt, we hoped,

That even as we tired, we tried,

That we’ll forever be tied together, victorious—

Not because we will never again know defeat

But because we will never again sow division.

Scripture tells us to envision

That everyone shall sit under their own vine and fig tree,

And no one shall make them afraid.

If we’re to live up to our own time,

then victory won’t lie in the blade but in all the bridges we’ve made.

That is the promised glade,

The hill we climb if only we dare it.

Because being American is more than a pride we inherit,

It’s the past we step into and how we repair it.

We’ve seen a force that would shatter our nation rather than share it,

Would destroy our country if it meant delaying democracy.

And this effort very nearly succeeded,

But while democracy can be periodically delayed

It can never be permanently defeated.

In this truth, in this faith we trust,

For while we have our eyes on the future, history has its eyes on us.

This is the era of just redemption.

We feared at its inception.

We did not feel prepared to be the heirs of such a terrifying hour,

But within it we found the power

To author a new chapter,

To offer hope and laughter,

To ourselves sow. While once we asked:

How could we possibly prevail over catastrophe?

Now we assert: How could catastrophe possibly prevail over us?

We will not march back to what was,

But move to what shall be,

A country that is bruised but whole,

Benevolent but bold,

Fierce and free.

We will not be turned around or interrupted by intimidation

Because we know our inaction and inertia will be the inheritance of the next generation.

Our blunders become their burdens

But one thing is certain:

If we merge mercy with might and might with right,

Then love becomes our legacy

And change our children’s birthright.

So let us leave behind a country better than the one we were left.

With every breath of my bronze pounded chest,

We will raise this wounded world into a wondrous one.

We will rise from the golden hills of the West.

We will rise from the windswept Northeast where our forefathers first realized revolution.

We will rise from the lakeland cities of the Midwestern states.

We will rise from the sunbaked South.

We will rebuild, reconcile and recover

In every known nook of our nation,

In every corner called our country,

Our people, diverse and beautiful,

Will emerge battered and beautiful.

When day comes we step out of the shade,

Aflame and unafraid.

The new dawn blooms as we free it.

For there is always light if only we’re brave enough to see it,

If only we’re brave enough to be it.

~Amanda Gorman

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White Supremacy and the Identified Patient

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I would like some wisdom on what we are seeing in our country right now, especially with the violent displays of white supremacy we have witnessed in the storming of the Capitol. I ask the Heart and greater Wisdom to guide my reflections and grant me insight.

What you are seeing now in the eruption of white supremacist groups has been long in the making, and while you might be alarmed to see the momentum, virulence, and violence of this movement, please understand that it is simply bringing to the surface what has long needed to be acknowledged, faced and healed.

We have spoken before of covid meaning “to see together,” and this is something that you are seeing together. Something that has sorely needed to be seen.

You understand that in family systems theory there is something called the identified patient. The identified patient in a family is that person who is outwardly manifesting a dysfunction that exists in the entire family system. Please do not be tempted to see white supremacists as the problem, but to see white supremacy as the dysfunction in the entire system that they are acting out, the dysfunction that needs to be corrected. As the system is healed, the identified patient is restored to health.

The awareness is growing in your country that racism has been a long and destructive influence in the establishment of your systems and that it needs to be eradicated for the new world and new society to arise.

Just as Donald Trump has allowed you to see in vivid display what ego-mind looks like, the insurrectionists are bringing to your full awareness this endemic pattern of racism that is at the core of so much suffering and injustice in your culture.

What is needed now is a massive truth and reconciliation movement in your country to heal this disease. You know that in a medical crisis the symptoms of a disease must be addressed, but that for true health to manifest, the entire body needs to come into its wholeness. Without this, the illness will continue to express itself.

This is an illness that has been growing unchecked and unacknowledged for a very long time, since the inception of this county. And now you are seeing the urgency with which it needs to be faced and healed with grace.

This is not to say that those who have carried out this act of violence are not to be held accountable for their actions. Indeed it is important that they be, but not out of anger or vilification, but out of Love and a commitment to heal the whole. What they are portraying, the belief system and ideology they are enacting, is a fallacy, and the body as a whole must acknowledge that.

It is then the task of all people, especially white people in this country, to address the roots of this assumed supremacy, roots which exist in the mind.

Do you recall how, when you have done meditations envisioning an awakened Philadelphia, how easily you have been able to envision many ethnic groups giving expression to their unique cultural heritage in a beautiful tapestry of multi-culturalism, but when it came to the white people of the city you could not see it clearly?

This is because white culture does not exist as any true expression of identity. Instead, white culture has rested on the idea of dominating those of other ethnicities and cultures. White culture in itself, apart from this role of domination, seems to be a void. A non-thing.

This in part is what is occurring in the uprising of white supremacy. As the nation becomes increasingly multi-cultural, there is no sense of identity, no sense of selfhood for white people apart from that of the dominator. It it this restoration of a true and life-affirming identity that is needed now.

Who are you as a “white” person? You are immigrants of many cultures, lands in which the skin color of the people happened to be fair. Can you see the absolute absence of meaning in this? How fragile an identity it is that relies upon skin color?

Revisit your ancestral roots. Who were you before you became “white”? Before you became “white” you were many things. You were the speakers of Gaelic and had a sacred relationship with the land, which you understood to be inhabited by entities not visible to the human eye. You were dancers around the bonfire at the winter solstice. You were creators of sublime music that touched the soul. You were tellers of stories that spoke of the transcendence of the human spirit.

Shed this empty identity of being “white” and go deeper into your being. Celebrate who you are in your core, not in the color of your skin.

You received a phrase recently in a dream: systemic gracism. This is where your society is headed if you will it to be so, toward the establishment of systems that reflect goodwill toward one another and which support all in their mutual thriving. A society that exemplifies and manifests grace.

What you are witnessing at this turbulent moment in your country is that which must be seen and acknowledged in order for it to be healed, released and transcended. It is opening the way for gracism to take root.

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Love’s Insurrection

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We are here to participate in Love’s long-awaited insurrection.

Dear One,

I know you are feeling anxious and disturbed about all that you see happening in the country right now, how it seems that ominous forces have burst out of the shadows and are threatening the fabric of the social order. Your fear is amplified by your awareness of how other countries have descended into chaos in conditions such as these, when people have been led astray by falsehoods and mobilized to violently impose their way upon the world.

Your fear is understandable. The old ways are dying, causing tremendous anxiety and tumult, and you sense that this could be a moment that breaks the spell of division, or a moment when falsehood, hatred, and violence gain momentum.

Let me begin by reminding you that violence is a stance of weakness. It is what people resort to when they sense that their cause is lost. And indeed there is a lost cause in all of this, a cause that has been lost from the beginning of time because it could never truly exist. This attempt to secede from Reality, secede from the truth of Union, of Love, has been a lost cause from the moment it dawned in the human mind.

I know this may not be the time to try to offer you reassurances that the turmoil you are seeing isn’t ultimately real, that it is a projection of the mind. I know that in this moment, as you look at the news, it seems frighteningly real.

It has always seemed real to the aspect of mind that generates and participates in this human drama of good versus evil, of enemies and battles that has played itself out in so many ways over so many centuries. Surely these last months have shown you how capable the mind is of fully believing something that isn’t true.

There is little point in trying to talk this aspect of mind out of its fear, because for it, the story is true, just as a nightmare is real to the mind that is dreaming it. Simply hold it, along with its fear, in absolute compassion. Cradle it in kindness.

Neither try to try to persuade those who remain loyal to the ways of ego that Love is the only Truth. Attempting to convince them will only be a distraction to you now. Simply hold them in compassion, and do not tether yourself to their disbelief.

What is needed now is for you, and all who are willing, to turn your awareness to the Self within that knows that, despite what you see playing out on the world stage, there is only one Reality, and it is Love. In Reality, you are safe and always have been. In Reality, there are no enemies, and never could be. This is the greatest service you can offer in this time of transformation into the New.

Even though you may feel unprepared for this moment, you are not. You have been preparing for eons. Join now with the Truth that is within you. Allow it to inhabit every fiber of your being. Allow the Joy and Gladness of Reality to resonate in your own being and radiate from your own Heart. Do not be timid about experiencing this Joy, for It is what you are.

I know that many will believe that it is naïve in such a moment as this to abide in Love. But what is truly naïve, and indeed absurd, is the the idea that anything but Love could exist, or that division could ever be real except for in the very fertile human imagination.

Place that imagination in the service of Love now. Imagine the world that you know wants to come forth. Imagine what it looks like when humans have been restored to their right minds, knowing themselves to be Love incarnate, a world in which each knows that they are a precious and unique expression of the Infinite Life here to give expression to the Love that is the Source of All That Is.

Imagine such a world in which these countless incarnations of Love are celebrating one another, thriving together, bringing forth the essence of their beautiful Beingness, rejoicing in the web of Life that is this magnificent planet.

Then allow yourself to feel that world in your body. Allow it to come alive in your cells. Be that world, because the new world that is arising does not come forth by battling with the old, but by joining with the New.

This is the only true insurrection—a word which means “to rise up.” As you transcend (trance end) the ways of ego, forgoing all judgment and all concept of enemy, and as you align yourself only with Love you help this new world to arise. You become a participant in Love’s long-awaited insurrection.

Eternally,
Your True Self

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The Ego’s Last Stand

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Are we willing to walk off the battlefield of the mind?

As I look out over our political landscape this week, I see what is happening from two levels. One is the literal level of a democracy under siege, in which a minority faction is attempting to overturn the will of the majority and commandeer the mechanisms of power.

The other level is the symbolic, the mythic, the story of our journey toward awakening. On that level I see an epic drama playing out in which the mind is coming face to face with the ego of its own making and wrestling with the choice before it: to continue to live in allegiance to the ego and adhere to its ways or to claim its freedom and step into the Reality of Love, into the unitive consciousness that is its true nature.

In this unfolding drama the mind is beginning to recognize the ego for what it is—a “separate self” that is itself an illusion—and is seeing how ego operates behind the scenes, relentlessly asserting its own “reality” and sustaining that “reality” through blame, attack, coercion, division, intimidation, threats.

Shocking though it may be, this is an important step in the mind’s awakening, because it must first see the illusion it has believed in in order to leave it behind.Continue Reading

Yielding: The Way of the Christ-Bearer

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By yielding to the Reality of Love, Mary births Its expression in form.

Ever since Donald Trump appeared on the political scene I have seen him as symbolizing the ego patterns that we must now leave behind if we are to survive as a species on this planet. By depicting in such an overt manner how the ego mind operates, what it believes, and how it plays out in the world, Trump has precipitated a jump into warp speed of our awakening process.

Recently, there have been reports that his mental health is deteriorating due to the loss of the election and his waning ability to bend circumstances to conform to his will—something that in the past he has always seemed to manage.

Symbolically, this is showing us the ultimate impotence of ego. Other than within the confines of its own fabricated alternative world, it has never been able to alter Reality, which is Love. The attempt to do so—to fracture Reality, to overturn Love—has been the great egoic escapade humanity undertook, and we have failed. Not for lack of effort, but simply because it can’t be done. Continue Reading