We are living through such turbulent waters.  It’s not just Covid, or climate change, or inflation, or the war in Ukraine.  There is something deeper that has been stirred up in the collective experience.  It’s the theme of uncertainty, the story in front of us changing as we blink our eyes, it’s the stirring up of sediment that has comfortably been settled on the bottom of the river for decades, maybe for centuries.

 The sediment that is being stirred up is giving us the opportunity to heal ourselves and the world more thoroughly.  With the sediment, comes confusion, questioning and chaos.  The sediment brings people to their edge.  Have you noticed lately how people are getting triggered and worked up by seemingly benign circumstances?  Personal interactions are much more heated and defensive.  While the sediment is activated, staying calm and steady is especially important.

If we effortfully try to see through the sediment, we will only be left frustrated and discouraged.  So, how do we find clarity during times of turbulence, when the waters are full of sediment and we can’t even see our feet underneath us?   

The first thing that we need to do is to stop moving, stop seeking, stop “pushing through”, and start giving ourselves time to just be.  The irony is that if we are “pushing” to find clarity, we keep stirring up the sediment and making the path to clarity much harder to actually reach.  As we quiet our minds and find stillness, spaciousness will arrive. Clarity comes with inner stillness.

But it is also important to also acknowledge the sediment.  What is this cloud that we are being engulfed by?  With clarity we can now see beyond the sediment, but it’s important to look right at it.  The sediment that has been stirred up is centuries of unprocessed shadow, unacknowledged pain, the residue of life that was lived unconsciously.  This sediment has been collecting for a long time and we are now experiencing it as a way to heal it and liberate the planet from this dense collection.  We can heal this collective shadow by acknowledging it.  As we see it, it loses its force, it dissolves into the finest particles of rock and dirt that it actually is. Know that some of the layers of what we are processing at this time are not ours, and for us not to get distracted by taking them personally.  We are meant to be witnesses, compassionately showing up, taking care of ourselves and each other, and staying connected to clarity.  Clarity is going to carry us through this turbulent time.