Tucson Chat with Shepherd Hoodwin
Experimenting with Cooperation
(11/05/2008)
http://www.michaelteachings.com/shep...operation.html
Transcribed by Gloria Constantin
Audio edited by Dave Gregg
<Shepherd>Feel yourself merging into a larger sense of self. The you who feels connected with nature, with beauty, with all the stars in the sky, and those that cannot be seen with the eye; with the universal forces of truth, with love, and with beauty. Feel your physical body uniting with your soul as you awaken to the awareness that everything is connected. When you feel ready to do so, you may open your eyes.
<Shepherd/Michael> Good evening to you all. You are, collectively, at the beginning of a new cycle. Of course, this has to do with your election, but it is not so much that the election is the cause as much as it is a reflection of something that is happening at a deeper level. There has been a lengthy cycle in human experience that has, you might say, been an experiment in the use of force over others. You might compare it to a phase that children often go through. Babies are helpless; they cannot do too much to change their environment. They cry and hope that those who do have the power to do something will understand, and will act. As children are able to walk and have some basic manual dexterity, they are likely to experiment with using force over others. Of course, some children do this more than others. But it is not subtle; it is, in part, a reaction to the previous feeling of helplessness. At some point, most children gain new skills in which they can cooperate more.
Humanity as a whole has been weaving in and out of the experiment about using force over others to the experiment of using cooperation more. You might say that World War II was the apex of the idea of using force over others, and then there have been various aftershocks since then. People, thinking of World War II, can identify the good guys and the bad guys. But beyond that, both sides were experimenting with using force over others - one was more on the offense, and one was more on the defense.
The current presidential administration that is now concluding has been banging that drum loudly, branding it as good vs evil. Nothing happens in a vacuum. This government represented many people who were not yet done with the experiment of power over others, and so what has been going on has been the collective of humanity trying to wring the last drops of experience out of that paradigm. The idea of cooperation had been gaining adherents, but there were still sizeable numbers of people who were not done exploring the previous paradigm. There are still a number of people who believe more strongly in power over others than in cooperation. And there also still are people who are back to feeling helpless, like infants. But the underlying change is that enough people have decided that they are done with the experiment of power over others that your society as a whole feels ready to begin to leave that behind.
This will take a long time. There will be, no doubt, a number of moments in which some are ready to backtrack, saying this cooperation thing doesn't work. But many more can look back on recent history, particularly since World War II, and realize that power over others has not been working out very well for anyone. When more people agreed on the experiment of power over others, wars were more straightforward matters. One army fought another, and if one side won and the other gave up, that was all agreed upon. That really hasn't been happening very much in recent years. Instead, there have been eruptions; it has been far more localized, and it is becoming clear what has in fact has always been the case: that not very much is accomplished. Wars have really been about individual or nationalistic egos getting out of control, pitting self against others.
The early stages of the experiment in cooperation tend to be confusing. It takes a while to build up trust in the process. We suspect that each of you will be more overtly confronting the challenges of cooperation in the coming months and years.
We think you will particularly see this in the legal realm. It has been valuable, where there is a strong rule of law, that people have been able to experiment with force over others through a legal system rather than with a lethal weapon. But it has still largely been about wielding power over others. Lawsuits are mostly about power over others, whether your side is more selfish and destructive, or whether it's more positive. It's not really about that at all; it's really about the whole approach that is being used. So we think that you will see more and more people trying to work things out more cooperatively. We think you will also see a desire for the laws themselves to be more sensitive to the needs of individuals, less heavy-handed, and less about imposing one's will or belief over the other.
Let's do a little meditation. If you would, close your eyes. Ask your inner self to help you think of one situation in your life where there has been a paradigm of power over others - whether you've been on the giving or receiving end of that. And now ask your inner self to just bring the spirit of trust, openness, compassion, and understanding into your heart around this situation. And now think about the other side of this conflict, and ask that that also be bathed in these qualities. Gently surround this other side with qualities that feel good to you. And you're not imposing them if the other side does not want to experience these - they won't. Because you are not using any sort of power over them - you are simply using your heart to create a more loving environment.
Now ask your inner self to suggest one thing that you might do or say that might shift this conflict to a more cooperative approach. Perhaps it is simply indicating to the other side that you are listening, or that you are respectful. That you're open to ideas, and willing to talk. And now ask that all of the old feelings of helplessness that led to the polarization into power over others be healed in you. Just the fact of your having considered some options might make you feel more internally powerful and less helpless in the situation.
Ask yourself if you are ready to end your personal experiment in power over others, and to experiment more with the power of cooperation. If you are not ready to make that change, that is OK. Just see what is true for you.
And now notice in general how you feel. When you are ready, you can open your eyes again. Would anyone like to share what you experienced? How are you feeling in general? Where has this journey this evening so far taken you?
Attendee: I would love to share where I've been, but I have no idea. But I do feel good. I do feel very good. I just kind of drifted off somewhere. Wherever I go, it's a nice place.
Thank you. Anyone else?
Attendee: When we did the meditation, what came to mind was the bad relations between me and my familyą..I feel that I can let go of this. In my case it's about fear, lack of trustąthe need to protect myselfąthere's a lot of work to be doneą (Much of the comment was inaudible.)
That's very beautiful; thank you.
Michael: What this is finally about is your own healing. With infants, they are helpless, and so it's a fact. It's not a victimhood; it's just a fact that an infant is helpless and relies on others and others donĘt always do their best by the helpless ones. However, as you naturally mature, and you have more fully developed capabilities, you are no longer in fact helpless, but you may not have updated your software about that and still feel that you are helpless and so you then maintain defenses. It is widely understood that bullies are very insecure people. They have found a coarse way of having power over others because they don't feel that they have other tools to use. As you heal, you take stock of the tools that are at your disposal, and you get better at using them, and therefore you don't need the coarser tools which don't feel as good to you as using the more sophisticated tools.
Marjorie was saying that her healing around her family did not necessarily imply that she would choose to have relationships with them. That is a choice that she will now be better able to make, based on a realistic appraisal of the facts and intuition as to what's really possible there. But she can now be freer of the energy drain of keeping them away. Instead, there can just be a peace, and then a choice.
Considering the fact that there are still a lot of bullies in the world who are not able to be reached through more cooperative means, there still is a need for some occasional military show of strength against those who would violate others, and yet, we think that as there is more maturity, this will be used increasingly sparingly, only when it is absolutely necessary, and this could also be said to be true in your own lives. We're not saying here that you should never sue anyone, but as you increasingly feel your own toolbox being activated and you don't have to prove anything - where you can let go when that is hour highest good - then you have a lot more options.
The greatest fear in letting go of an excessive attachment to using power over others is the fear that others will use power over you. This is most obviously represented in the political consciousness today of fear over terrorists. It's similar to the days of the fear of communism in this country, where there was concern that there was a red under every bed and anyone could be a communist, and so you had all sorts of accusations flying, mostly unfairly. And even in your recent political campaign you had frightened, insecure people accusing the other side of being terrorists. This is what it is like to be a very vulnerable and young child who does not have a safe environment. Maybe you can think back to your earliest days in this lifetime in which you had nightmares and a light had to be left on. You saw shadows, and thought maybe they were the boogeyman.
Sometimes there are, in fact, prowlers in the house - but not very often. That is the point. When you start to feel more secure, you can evaluate what the real situation is. And then you start to feel better. You're not on red alert all the time; just when you need to be.
We're not, tonight, suggesting being na“ve to real dangers. Pretending that everything is always wonderful is often just the flip side of the fear that everything is terrible; it is based on fear of not wanting to confront dangers. You do have a survival instinct for a good reason. But those who are still heavily experimenting in power over others figured out a long time ago that they could have power over others by pushing the buttons of people's fears when they are not warranted.
When he was leaving office, President Eisenhower warned about the encroaching military-industrial complex. It has long been the case that there are people who profit from war and its other similar kinds of manifestations, and have a vested interest in increasing fear. That can be a self-fulfilling prophecy, because when two sides are polarized in fear it's probably just a matter of time before one of them does something that makes the other side feel justified in fighting back. At the same time, a cooperative approach can also be a self-fulfilling prophecy. Putting out to others kindness and openness makes it more possible that they will do the same. At Christmas every year people say, "Peace on Earth; Good Will to Men," but there have been many who really don't want peace on earth because they stand to profit from conflict, in one way or another.
The best way that you personally can contribute to peace on earth is to realize that you no longer feel much of a payoff from it, and to realize that there are other means of resolving issues. So this is where you are now, collectively. There is a slight, subtle, but meaningful shift in your society that says, in effect, "OK, we don't really understand this cooperation thing very well, and we're not sure how to do it, but we're kind of sick and tired of the way that we've been trying to solve things for quite some time. So, OK, we will grudgingly stick our toe in the water of approaching others in a more respectful and open-hearted way when we find ourselves on opposite sides of an issue."
We do not know how long it will take to get from this grudging acceptance to the point where a lot of people are saying, "Hey this is really great; I like this a lot better. Let's just really get rid of this war business and all of its cousins - this extreme litigiousness, and all of the us-vs-them framing of events. But it could move from here to there pretty quickly. The reason we think that it could is that you've really been lingering in the old experiment for a very long time. It really need not have gone on so long, or have been so destructive. And so you might say there is a pent-up demand for peace. With the current financial situation, a lot of people might wake up to the fact that war is very expensive, so that could be a silver lining to what is happening in that regard. There is a beautiful energy in this group tonight here, in this room. You are saying in your hearts that you would like to support this new experiment, and that can help foster more widespread adoption. What you do in your own heart can be contagious, and as you validate this, you try it out and you see that you are having a positive impact on others, you start to feel more powerful and less helpless even when bad things are happening. And the more powerful you feel, the less need there is to try to control others. That's another way this new experiment can pick up speed.
Would anyone like to make any comments or ask any questions on this subject that we've been speaking about so far tonight?
Attendee: I can't think of a word that I want to use, but it's so clear to me how you mention that this fear, so many people are reacting out of fear, and there's so many angry things and mean things and fighting and who's right and it really is all about fear. It's just helped me to understand and grasp that a little bit better. I have more understanding for the people that are saying mean things. Thank you.
Michael: Thank you. What is inside people has to come out, one way or another. Although, from one point of view, what has been going on politically over the last years has been a regression. From another point of view it has been useful, because it has allowed some old fears to take center stage where everyone could get a good hard look at them. Now there's an opportunity, politically, in this country, to reach out to those who are worried that everything that they hold dear is threatened, and perhaps reassure them that things are OK. Because that is what people really want to know; they want to know that things are OK.
You have a question, a comment?
Attendee: A few times a year I draw the parallel or make the connection between what is happening in my individual personal life and what's happening in the consciousness of humanity. And it's like I stop, and I see that connection very clearly: where I'm afraid, where I have greed and selfishness, where I have fearsąit's the same as what's happening with other people. And so this conversation is speaking to that, validating that, and it's reminding me of where I do have control, where I do have power, and where the change needs to really happen.
Michael: Beautiful; thank you very much.
Making the connection between what you see and what you are is very useful.
Attendee: You know, I think I kind of remember where I went in that meditation and it has to do with just a little bit ofąyou had said early on to think about a situation where someone had power over you and of course I thought of a person who tried to force their way in my house, many years ago now, and that created a fear of the safety of my family for a very long time. Then you mentioned going on their side and then, that's kind of where I'm at, and I realize now that I've forgiven them over the years, and so I have this relief. But I still know that there are a small group of angry people out there that we have to be aware of. But yet, I guess I don't fear that, so maybe that's part of the healing process.
Michael: There's nothing wrong with taking sensible cautions, good locks, an alarm system if you feel it's warranted where you live, that sort of thing, and you don't necessarily act out of fear to do that; it could just be common sense. On the other hand, sometimes things happening to you are an outpicturing of your psychic drama inside. So someone breaking into your house may or may not represent some fear that you have. And sometimes you have to have that experience and then survive it in order to flush it out from your own consciousness. But it's always worth looking at, to see if maybe that is the case. Sometimes it is just chance or bad luck, too, so you don't want to over-generalize in that regard. But the very fact that you are sensible enough to take responsible precautions is part of your toolkit so that you don't have to be in fear. You know that you are taking care of yourself the best that you can.
Attendee: And I suppose we can have an affect on the anger and the fear that other people are having by just what you said - and that's feeling love and kindness towards each other. It's contagious. I don't know if it's just me, but it seems to me that there are more metaphysical and enlightened people around now than there were ten years ago. Maybe it's just because I'm just noticing them. Is that it - or are there more?
Michael: We think that there are more.
Attendee: So it's growth for our time.
Michael: Everyone is growing slowly or quickly, even those who appear to be backtracking; they are collecting experiences that will ultimately contribute to their growth. But people do have far more access to knowledge than ever before. Of course, the internet is good for that, television and so forthąthere's a lot of bad information being put out, but there's a lot of good stuff, too. So people are starting to be attracted to the idea that growth does not have to be so tedious, that there are ways to become more conscious with less wear and tear.
Attendee: Could this be seen as moving to a new planetary soul age - would you categorize it that way? And if so, do individual soul ages work on that particular issue in their cycle, or am I relating too many things together?
Michael: We would agree with what you're saying here. We teach about five soul ages that are commonly experienced by humans and other ensouled species on the physical plane. To give you a little background, you start out as what you are - an eternal soul who comes to a particular planet to inhabit a particular species, in your case obviously the human species, in a series of lifetimes in order to evolve, to expand your horizons. And your progress over many lifetimes is roughly equivalent to what you experience as an individual within each lifetime. That is, you start out as an infant, where your experiences are quite simple. Then you move to the baby or toddler stage where you are establishing a basic structure; it's the way that toddlers learn about "yes" and "no." And then a young phase - a youngster phase - where you are gaining a lot of energy relative to acting in the world. And that is where humanity has been on average - the young soul cycle. And the United States has been focused at the late end of the young soul cycle.
So there's a lot of energy there, but on the negative side, there can be bullying; there can be fascination with things like building a big military because it's something that is easy to understand at that stage in development. Just like a lot of kids will play with action figures - it's a comparable stage. And then next comes the mature soul cycle, which is equivalent in human development to the adolescent phase. Adolescents have a lot of confusing new impulses wanting to relate to other people in a deeper way, wanting to get to know themselves and their own feelings more. And this is what humanity is just at the beginning of moving into.
So, although this is a bit of an oversimplification, we would say that the Bush administration was, for the United States, the last hurrah of the young soul cycle, with maybe a negative twist to it. It's (the young cycle) not always negative; it can be quite wonderful in many ways, quite exhilarating. The Obama election represents a turn for the mature cycle, which is more of a valuing of emotions and connecting with others in a more intimate manner. Now, young souls have relationships too, so it's not like suddenly there are relationships where there were none. But there is a different emphasis; there is less of taking relationships for granted and more of a desire to explore them, to see what they are all about.
Cooperation is much more a hallmark of the mature cycle than the young cycle, although certainly, young souls can cooperate and can see that as a positive way of experiencing their vitality in the world. And mature souls can use power over others and be manipulative, sometimes more psychologically, but there can still be an experiment in power over others in the mature cycle. There's a parallel in that there's also a specific decision being made, regardless of the soul age parallels - that people have experimented enough with more negative approaches to resolving issues with others.
The transition is not just in terms of maturing consciousness going through the stages of evolution. There's also a decision being made that maybe we don't have to do this so destructively; maybe we don't have to do this so much the hard way. We can find more positive ways of figuring this out together, so that even people who are currently at the infant soul or the baby soul cycle can have an experience that is more cooperative.
Anyone else?
Attendee: I think Obama brings a lot of characteristics that we are currently lacking. When you said that there's an increasing desire for the laws to be more sensitive and less heavy-handed, I feel dismay about some of the laws that were passed in the last election that seemed to take us a step backward in being able to bring all people togetherąthere were some laws that were passed that were very discriminatory. Do you have any comments on that?
Michael: Individuals and collectives do not evolve at the same pace in every department. We would say that people have more fear around sex than just about anything else. And we don't mean just what is classified as sex, but everything that would come under that overall classification, which is the power of your energy to impact and explode with others who are creating with you. That's truly what sex is. Even if you are not having physical sexual relations, you still have this potentially explosive energy in interacting with others, and with the cosmos as a whole. While people are afraid of being powerless, they are also afraid of being powerful because there is not a lot of experience at harnessing that. And so a lot of this baggage is dumped onto the idea of sex, and any form of it that is a little foreign reminds people of their generalized fear of the power within them actually manifesting in their lives. So, yes, some regressive steps were taken in some state elections; although those who are winning these restrictions are doing so by smaller margins, so that is a positive sign.
So much in evolution is two steps forward and one step back. You can rest in confidence that things will eventually get there. There are always those of you who are out in front of everyone else trying to get everyone else to catch up. Many people are not as eager to move forward because that means facing more things within themselves. It is not easy to grow. Both presidential candidates were talking about change - itĘs a vague enough term that you can safely do that, but all change suggests overcoming a certain resistance in yourself because it's for certain that change is going to bring up things in yourself that are going to be uncomfortable.
Sometimes people will not actually accept change until staying where they are becomes more uncomfortable than what they're going to have to face in the change. And a lot of human beings are so stubbornly resistant to change that the only way that the societies they're in will change will be for them to die. And then they reincarnate into a new set of assumptions that pushes them a little bit beyond where they were holding onto before.
The pace of change today is much faster in than in most historical time periods, and having a longer life span helps with that, except for those who are stuck. They feel more pressure, and they don't like it because they're living longer, and things are changing underneath them.
You really don't want things to change too fast because you become disoriented; but if they are too slow, you feel less alive. So there is a sweet spot to go for there.
Attendee: For me personally, last night, I felt a tremendous shift in energy regarding the issue of race in our country. And I know that we can only speak in probabilities, but we're talking about cooperation, and a shift away from exerting power over other people. And I think of race when I hear about exerting power over other people - and also cooperation. Can you talk about what is probable of what is to come, and if maybe we are going to experience rapid progress in that area because of the power of having the symbol of a black president now.
Michael: We think it's going to take a while before people are widely completely neutral about race. There's been, obviously, a lot of progress, and like we were speaking of earlier, some people will hold onto their racism to the grave. Society just has to wait for a certain part of the population to die off for this to change. But we think that younger people are impressively free of a lot of prejudices that their elders have, and a lot of that has to do with the media, with the movies, and television, and sex, which is not always, obviously, a positive influence, but when you grow up seeing stars that you identify with that are of different races, you will tend to not take on so much of your parents' or grandparents' racism. So what is happening is positive, but we don't think you're going to get rid of all blatant prejudice over the next 50 years. It will gradually become less and less accepted.
Attendee: I have mixed feelings about asking this question, but I have to ask it, anyway. I've been feeling very joyfully hopeful about Obama and the possibility that he'll be a very good president, and yet, history has shown that when we have a more progressive president it is more likely that some fear-based, stuck person is going to come out of the woodwork and try to assassinate them. Could Michael speak about the probability of Obama finishing his term in health and well-being?
Michael: All right. One of the positives about the fact that many people have brought this up, particularly over the last year or so, is that collectively humanity, particularly in the United States, has had a chance to mull this over. So a lot of people on an unconscious level have been pondering, "Is this how we want to go? Do we need to have a beloved president be martyred in order to progress, or could we keep him around and have progress without people needing to be heartbroken?" And you know there's a lot of growth through being heartbroken, because many will not grow unless something gets broken first. It's just too easy not to grow.
Now that this election has occurred, the issue comes more squarely to be faced, and our sense is that the collective leaning is towards: "We've had enough drama. Maybe we could just see what this guy might do for us." We would not say that it is a firm collective decision, but as long as there's a strong leaning that way, there's a likelihood of safety, and of course we do think that the security is very strong around him, and needs to be, anyway.
The way to approach this is to reaffirm your own ability to grow through joy in your own life, affirming every day that you are flexible and fluid, that you are willing to solve problems creatively, and that you donĘt have to be broken to grow, and seeing the collective being able to do that also.
Attendee: Could Michael speak a little bit about the cooperation between planet's ecology and humanity in the next couple of decades, including the possibilities for technological and consciousness improvements in that arena?
Michael: We think the potential is very good, and this is a great example of this change because so much of humanity's raping of the environment has been a perfect example of the power-over-others paradigm, and there are many people who are recognizing that it is not working. So, similar to the thing about war, there is more widespread desire to figure out a way to cooperate with nature.
But there are still a lot of people who are of the belief that it's a luxury, not a necessity. That needs to change, but also, as the technologies become better and less expensive, that also will become less of an issue, we think. It's a really tricky thing because people are afraid that they will lose their conveniences, and yet, they may lose them anyway. So it behooves people to adopt changes by choice.
We have said, not that long ago, that because of the destruction of the environment, we had no certainty that humanity would survive what it has done to the earth. We thought it was, roughly, in the 50 - 50 range. We would say it's looking better now. It is not certain, but it is looking better. We would think that the best way to promote wider acceptance of ecological sensitivity is to demonstrate in graphic ways how it can actually save people money. Because right up there with sex, one of the big fear areas for people is money. So you've got to show them how it is to their advantage financially.
We'll take one more question.
Attendee: As we change here, in this country, it's pretty obvious from the solar plants here in Arizona that a lot of us are embracing these changes - I'm looking forward to that - that it will affect other parts of the world. Maybe it almost forces changes on them, for instance, if we do become very efficient with our solar farms and our wind farms, and use much less fossil fuel, then the money that we're sending to the OPECS of the world we won't be sending them. And if other countries also grow as we are, and we don't send them that money, how will they deal with the change that is happening to them?
Michael: The big picture here is that the industrialization of the world has been rapid and not very elegant - not very efficient. So there's been a great deal of waste. And you see this in individuals who, when they have money, waste it on things that they need, and then suddenly they don't have enough money for the things that they do need. You have this collectively, very much. The production of energy has not been very efficient, and it really hasn't needed to be, but now it does need to be. So even in a country that has a relatively high amount of oil, they are finding that they need to be efficient also, that they need to use their oil for things that they don't have substitutes for. We donĘt think it is so much that the improvements in the United States will force improvements elsewhere, but this is something emerging out of necessity for everyone.
We'll take a few questions.
Attendee: ...About the election in America, and the impact on the rest of the worldąI would say that in many ways you could say that, "America, welcome to the rest of the world." Because in the rest of the world you have societies that are higher developed than over here, and then you have societies that are lower developed, so it's just become part of the whole thing. So, America, welcome to the rest of the world. My question is about the wildlife. I'm very concerned about species dying out, and since we're all interconnected, then for every species, (including insects) that die out, a part of us also dies. So I'm thinking about the importance of saving the lives of animals. I hear others say that they're not that important, because they will go on and incarnate on other planets. I'd like to hear Michael's opinion about the animals.
Michael: All right. Of course, there has already been a substantial loss of plant and animal species on earth, and they are dying out by the day. This is not optimal, but we think that in about 50 years that will stabilize, and some of the diversity will actually start to come back. There are some species that may have appeared to die out but didn't, and given the right circumstances, will re-emerge. We think that things will be OK in that regard, but it is not ideal. It is better to have more diversity. Does that answer your question? [Yes.]
We'd like to close with a meditation. Clear your minds.
Feel the goodness emerging from your heart. Notice all the resources that you already have. Feel all fear releasing from you. Feel the beauty of the collective energy in this room.
Notice the power of self. It is independent of the choices that others make.
When you are ready, you can open your eyes.
Being human will always be somewhat challenging. But reminding yourselves of the increased tools that you have as you awaken spiritually for dealing with the world, it becomes easier. And that is really why you take the spiritual path. It is in your enlightened self-interest to get better at playing this game so that it isn't quite so difficult. Human relationships will always offer challenges, and that is not a bad thing because they show you where you have opportunities to grow, but approaching them with the idea that you could experiment with cooperation will make your own way easier. So it is a worthwhile experiment.
Love and blessings to you all. Good night.