Mar 21 2011
“Pronoia – The Suspicion the Universe is a Conspiracy on Your Behalf” – #69
This is one freakin’ scary, exciting, dramatic, shaking, shift-inducing ride we are all on together on planet earth! In light of the recent disaster in Japan, and the continuing possible peril from a nuclear meltdown, it brings up the question: Is the universe friendly or is it fiendish? I vote for friendly, because while many of us when faced with our vulnerability on this precarious planet are scared to death, many more are scared to life! We are shakened and awakened and motivated to turn to the only thing that has permanence – the ultimate safety of an eternal, all-loving, omnipotent higher power.
That has been my experience with my own inner earthquake/bodyquake called cancer. It’s caused me to feel, as writer John Perry Barlow wrote, “Pronoia – the suspicion that the Universe is a conspiracy on your behalf.” I have come to believe that ALL of life is benevolently designed to wake us up to love, to our true self and our higher purpose. Rob Brezsny writes in his book Pronoia is the Antidote for Paranoia, “No matter how upside down it all may appear, we will have no fear, because we know this big secret: All of creation is conspiring to shower us with blessings. Life is crazily in love with us – brazenly and innocently in love with us. The universe always gives us exactly what we need, exactly when we need it.”
Be it earthquakes or cancer or any of the innumerable catastrophes that can befall vulnerable humans, when shit happens it spurs shift to happen and turns it into gold. The entire planet literally shifted on its axis from this powerful 9.0 quake…and many people have shifted as a result into more love, compassion, empathy, generosity, purposefulness, presence and the awareness that we are all connected.
Some of the exquisite beauty that has arisen from this terrible tragedy is evidenced in many of the heart-warming, soul-stirring stories being reported. For example:
A news crew shot footage of two muddy, disheveled dogs in the middle of scattered rubble. One dog was anxiously hovering over the other dog who was lying beside him, immobile. The anxious dog moved towards the camera crew and then back to his stricken buddy. He sat close beside him, putting his paw on his pals head, as if to say, “Please help my friend.” Both dogs were rescued and are doing well.
There’s an amazing story about an 83-year-old woman outrunning the tsunami on her bicycle! And there’s the miracle of a four-month-old baby girl who was found buried in rubble for three days after having been swept from her parents arms when the terrible wave hit their home. She was reunited with her overjoyed parents unharmed. No one knows how it was she didn’t drown.
More gold from this tragedy is the outpouring of love and compassion from all over the world. Even China, a long-time adversary of Japan, has reached out with rescue teams and millions of dollars in aid. Studies have found that such acts of compassion benefit the receiver AND the giver – for all involved it creates feel-good oxytocin, stimulates the immune system, and enhances feelings of serenity and fellowship. Compassion raises our vibration to a higher part of ourselves.
Another inspiring story is of the workers who are staying behind at the nuclear plant to try and avert a meltdown. They are true heroes, putting the good of others ahead of themselves. And it’s possible that on the soul level the courageous people of Japan who lost loved ones or their own lives may have volunteered for this great mission, a mega heroes journey, helping to catalyze immense compassion in the world, reminding us all of the fragility and impermanence of earth and body and the all-embracing permanence of spirit, as well as reminding us to cherish our life and those we love.
When I first learned that my cancer had returned and my chances of survival were slim and that most probably great pain and suffering was ahead, there were times when I just wanted to check out of Hotel Earth. “Get me out of here!” I hoped that a bolt of lightening or a heart attack would strike and spare me from the ordeal ahead. I wanted to bypass the terrible fear, pain and suffering. But instead I turned towards spirit and asked for help and guidance and it came. Fear became faith, paranoia became pronoia, and I was led to finding precious gold amidst the rubble.
In times of crisis our frightened ego may feel like the sky is falling, yet our awakened spirit remembers, “I am the sky.” When it seems that life has turned on us, it has instead turned us ON, turning up the volume of spirit, light, love, and aliveness. Life can seem like a terrible trial, but if you move the ‘I’ forward in the word trial it becomes ‘trail’, a trail that leads us Home, to love, to Spirit – all part of the divine plan of a friendly universe that wants only to awaken us.
How about you? Is your universe friendly or fiendish, pronoiac or paranoiac? Do you have any personal disasters shaking your world right now? From my perspective it’s just the universe shaking and waking you to your magnificent Big Soul Self. “All of creation is conspiring to shower you with blessings” no matter how it may appear.
In Love,
Jan Jacobsen
Jan Jacobsen has been on a 35-year learning journey. She has completed a 2-year training in Hakomi, a mind/body approach which advocates that healing happens when we bring loving presence to what is. She has also apprenticed for two years with Gay and Kathlyn Hendricks (authors of Conscious Loving), learning skills to make love real and fun. Her thriving relationship with her husband Tom is a testament to the effectiveness and value of those skills.
