Changing the World

The following is part of a private exchange, which I’m posting with the person’s permission. I needed to post it because of how meaningful it is, as I believe this to be one of the crucial themes in the path of awakening. The person’s name and details will be kept private, as they should.

The person’s input:

Hi Nuno,

I’m not even sure what kind of help I want or need, but I could use kind of input, or at least someone who could understand at!

My reply:

Hi [name],

The truth is, albeit impossibly difficult, this a very common experience. It’s one many went through already, and many more will. While it may seem you’re all alone and there’s no light at the end of the tunnel, believe if or not this is more common than what you might think. One of the reasons it’s common and natural to feel like this, alone and isolated, is because the person going through this will feel isolated in their inner feelings and perspectives, particularly within their close family, friends, etc, who will typically not have any reference of what this feels like, and so won’t be able to understand it no matter how much you try. But you really aren’t alone in feeling this – even though in practice it might really feel that way.

If you’re fearful of being ‘shot down’ by me i.e. that I say you’re crazy or delusional, don’t, because I’m not going to. To me you’ve come across as lucid and articulate; you’re not daydreaming, you’re not making up some escapist theory. Instead, what I read are the words of someone who’s very keenly (and painfully) aware of how their awareness, their perspectives, and their sensitivities, are different from, and are in stark contrast with, everyone else’s. But despite this being one of the more difficult things of the Earth experience, you still managed to hold on to your core, to how you felt, without giving up on it along the way. So while you may feel meek and frail, you were actually strong and brave in not letting go. So well done.

Changing the world is only megalomaniac, unrealistic, a messianic complex, if you think you’re supposed to it all on your own, by yourself. But those who come in to actually play their part in changing the world, will feel that’s what they’re supposed to be doing when they’re down here – and will feel miserable if they’re not walking towards their purpose. It doesn’t mean they’re meant to do it all alone; it just means they want to change the world, meaning, play a part in that process by their individual personal life choices. That’s it. Nothing wrong about that. When you feel you’re meant to change the world, chances are your spiritual purpose is designed to “fit” in the overall spiritual process that’s taking place on Earth right now.

Now, ‘changing the world’, in practice, means doing things differently than how they’re currently done. Differently than how everyone believes the world is supposed to work. This includes, for example, those beliefs and priorities you’ve seen and described: making choices based on a safe job and salary, or living life strictly in function of money obligations, bills, etc. Step number one is to not lose touch with your own way of seeing and feeling things – which you’ve achieved, and why I congratulated you. Step number two means to take those same views, and actually start living life on your own terms as much as possible, rather than complying with how things already work. That’s what spiritual people mean when they sometimes say something like ‘be the change you want to see in the world’. It means, you have to act tangibly by what you believe and how you actually feel. Change itself can’t happen unless someone actually starts doing things differently. That’s what changing the world means.

You may not believe this, but many more others have gone, are going, and will go through, the very same thing you’re going through: feeling isolated, frustrated, fighting for their very sensitivity and inner selves. Without seeing around them anything or anyone who can validate how they feel. Under siege by society, maybe parents who don’t believe in them, and who will actively commit their efforts to not just correct, but break them into behaving how they think you will adjust best to the world.

Now I’ll tell you: adjusting to the world isn’t a bad principle. Your parents, I believe, are actually trying to help you by conveying this to you. Because they’d want to see you succeed and do well in the world – in turn, because they know how the world can be cruel and unfair. It’s just that this principle of adjustment shouldn’t contemplate you losing yourself in the process, which would instantly make your life meaningless. But this adjusting is exactly what many human beings have done and have endured in the past. And that resulted in many lives becoming meaningless, adjusted to working for the next master, the next saving, the next salary.

The relevance of adjusting should only involve the flexibility to tackle challenges as they appear, and the cunning and flexibility to adapt. But it should not mean abdicating of yourself; giving up on your own inner vision, or ‘your dreams’ as they say; and spending your life fighting for the next paycheck until its end. This is also something that’s involved in changing the world, by the way. I imagine you’d agree. So for those who are now coming in, and who will be feeling the same things as you give or take, this is how they can show the world how things can be done differently: when they start doing so themselves. When they start trying out different choices. When they start prioritizing the heart, holding on to the impossibility of choosing in misalignment with it.

Picture in your mind each of those who are feeling different, just as you are. Picture each of them feeling alone and isolated, each on a little island on their own, with their own inner visions and insights, and afraid the tidal waves of the ocean come in and sweep them – meaning, their families, their siblings, their friends, and society at large. Each afraid this big wave at any point can come over, and finally washes them away for good – meaning, their true selves, as if holding on by a thread.

Now imagine that on each of the islands, some of them start making their lives of their own. Some of them start making their own choices, and taking life into their own own hands. They start operating according to their own sense of meaning, combining a degree of adjustment and adaptability, with a strong-minded willingness to not act and choose unless it is according to who they are, and how they feel, and how they think things should be.

In short order, they will start to build up the roots of a tower on each of the islands; and the towers will be able to see each other, maybe communicate, maybe even connect with each other. As they do so, they’ll start building the foundations of new systems, those that are built operating by their own principles, rather than by the usual ways things work. This is how change can become effective: when many start doing this, operating on their own.

Now, going against the current also has a factor of risk and danger to it. Because one will be doing things others might see as ‘not what you’re not supposed to do’. So you may lose a lot of support; you lose a lot of that perception of ‘safety in numbers’. There’s suffering in not following one’s essence, but then there’s also a particular type of suffering in trying to push past (or against) what everyone else things is right and normal. There’s suffering in breaking through the mold. When you do it, your fears are going to be brought to the fore more intensely than ever. And you’re going to be tested.

What I can promise is that, if and when you start to walk your own path, there will always be a way. Even if there’s also uncertainty. Even if you don’t know everything about the path lying ahead as you walk it. Even as you’re figuring out the next steps, or how to make it past the each turn.

It’s possible you’ll eventually venture to try to break the mold, not because doing so is devoid of risks and scares, and not because you’ve somehow been offered guarantees. But because, eventually, the suffering of not being true to be yourself became insurmountable. It became impossible to endure. So at some point, you’ll no longer be able to fathom doing anything that doesn’t match your Soul. And that is how change starts in your life.

Hope you found this helpful.