Giving Up Utopia: The Double Down

Last issue I wrote about letting go of your personal Utopia. I got some flack about that statement, being accused of dashing any hope for living, and dealing an existential blow to dreams and goals.

Well, maybe that's a good thing. The whole idea of living the quantum life is to live in possibility. Yes, Utopias are a single possibility. The thing is, there are infinitely more possibilities than that. What looks like Utopia today, is not what it's going to look like five years from now. In fact, it is almost guaranteed it will never happen, ever, because there is a judgement about how life is not living up to this projected Utopia and a huge conclusion that happiness is only possible within that Utopia.

The Universe responds first to conclusions and judgements. "I can't be happy until these conditions are met." The Universe hears, "I have unhappiness with these conditions," and so continues to deliver that. This is because how you respond to not having certain Utopian conditions is the energy the Universe is referencing in its response.

A much more effective quantum living approach is "These are the current conditions of my life. Now... How does it get better? What else is possible?" Live in those questions for a while without bemoaning anything about those conditions. Instead, be curious about how things are changing for the better--meaning changing toward more and more possibility that in turn offers more and more choice, and therefore, more and more awareness. After a few days or weeks of this, things will start showing up you had no idea were possible--and, they're wonderful. You enlisted the quantum-ness of the Universe and it reflected back to you the energy of "how does it get better".

A couple of years after the passing of my partner and founder of this company, Shay Arave, I started entertaining thoughts about being in a new long-term relationship. Nowadays, it's logical to jump on the various dating sites and see what pops up. One of my preferences is that the person be spiritually oriented, and preferably well versed in metaphysical matters.

This narrowed things down considerably, and I ended up on Spiritual Singles dot com. After six "dates", I started realizing I had concluded (as well as my dates) that the only "real" relationship was a long-term one, yet, how could I know what would be "long-term" without being with someone long term? It started feeling like a disengenuous paradox somehow. All these people looking for a "long term relationship", without realizing how judgemental that is.

What exactly is going to convince them this or that person is long-term material? This person is cool because they're a vegetarian, interested in astrology, blonde, attractive, has kids, but they're grown and out of the house, has a dog, doesn't like cats. Perfect. Well, what happens when these things change? What happens when they decide to start eating meat again? Decide they don't like astrology, lose their hair, gain 50 pounds and decide to get a cat? The point is, we have no idea at all what a long-term relationship looks like until we have a relationahip that has gone long term. All three of the ones I've had (one for 17 years) ended disastrously. I had to admit I had no clue.

The quantum living approach? "This is my relationship life. How does it get better than that?" As I embraced living in this question, new possibilities almost immediately came to me--and some very intriguing ones I hadn't even considered. The choices began to mount, and my awareness increased, especially about my judgements, conclusions and preferences. I realized I didn't really want a "long-term" anything. I just wanted to share my life with someone who respects me and what I do and allows me complete freedom in the creation of my life. I'd be happy if that was for just 20 minutes or 20 years. I'd successfully deconstructed the "long term relationship" myth for myself.

So, by remaining in the question when you want to change something, feeling that energy of How does it get better? without judging or concluding anything, it just might bring you everything you've actually ever wanted and most likely beyond.

Trudging Toward Utopia

I'm not long for this world. Not to say I'm leaving a world, but to say this current externalized world is not where I'm headed. Call it a "parallel universe", "alternate timeline", or "dimension"--it's the journey I've come here to undertake.

What I wasn't prepared for (and I guess very few are) is the sheer density of resistance, judgement, stacks upon stacks of conclusions and decisions against this journey I would face for the 65 years I've been on this dusty road. There are rewards. Stuff like blowing through fixed ideas, envisioning new possibilities, and spotting and evaporating hundreds of identities--usually formed from other people's expectations.

It seems, as I look back from whence I've come, that I sort of fell into this experience without really doing any due diligence--a sort of jump into the abyss without first bothering to find out what the hell is at the bottom of it. It seems somehow irresponsible, and certainly unthinking, if not downright dumb. And yet, I took the plunge and for 65 years have struggled in a seeming unending stream of disappointments, failures, stupidities, pains and sufferings, that, had I known about these in advance, I most certainly would never have come here.

But I did. So the big, flashing neon question looming before me is,"WHY?". Not that all this has been one big helping of sour grapes, as I've worked through all those regrets...mostly. In fact, self-forgiveness is essential for disempowering regrets, and this can only happen after you forgive "everyone else" you believed were the cause of all your suffering and discomfort in life.

I mean, my needs and wants are simple, really: and unencumbered life, free of economic restraints, creative blocks, and the freedom to experience whatever I please. Wait. What. Is that all? I'm smiling at myself for writing that, yet that IS the Utopia I've been trudging toward. It seems simple, yet after 65 years of going in what I've thought was that direction, it's difficult to not feel resisted against by life.

And there it is. Resisted by life. The Big Lie. The only thing resisting me is me. What I call "life" is simply the sensory experience of this particular mirroring consensus frequency, where it's automatic to be shown "evidence" of external resistance. These quantum entanglements of what looks like resistance are in reality my own evaluations and juried indictments of my own value.

The longer I trudge toward my personal Utopia, the more often I look at the mileage, and it goes up every time I look at the sign: 500 miles to Utopia, becomes 5,000 miles to Utopia. It is daunting, demeaning, and fully a reflection of my own internalized value and willingness to accept as valid my needs and wants. It's the feeling I'd get as a kid on a long family car trip: "How many more miles, Dad?" He should have then said, "As many as you feel are necessary, son."

What is this unknown and seemingly unknowable quota of miles? How much of this trudging and gazing at the mirrored increasing mileage signs must I perform? It feels like the story of Sisyphus, who was punished for his self-aggrandizing craftiness and deceitfulness against the gods by being forced to roll an immense boulder up a hill, only for it to roll down when he neared the top, doomed to repeating this action for eternity.

Punished for craftiness? Deceitfulness? Perhaps punished for a crime he really didn't commit, but was convinced of it by the gods? The crime of being himself? The crime of having desires? The crime of needing freedom? Granted, Sisyphus was a trouble-maker in the eyes of the gods--so much so that the gods could not forgive him, and instead sentenced him to an eternity of unrelenting labor and failure.

Of course, the metaphor for "the gods" is the Higher Self--that overseeing consciousness beyond space and time, and yet also a participant in life with the temporal self. And here we have the crux of the matter. The temporal self can look out upon the world and see a reflection of past decisions, past and present states of being, and externalized intentions. The Higher Self looks upon the entire life--past, present and future--and like the Biblical Creator on the 7th Day declares "All is good."

I'm coming to believe that assuming the Higher Self's viewpoint of "All is good" is the bridge between the endless trudging journey and the Utopian life. Perhaps it is all really the same thing--the exaltation of Utopia made all the more exquisite by the journey. After all, we do live in a dualistic world, where we can slingshot from one end of the spectrum to the other, sometimes instantly.

Like David and Goliath, I see myself releasing the slingshot of a lifetime of pain and suffering, aimed directly at the Goliath of my own resistance, slaying the monster that said my life has no value, and that I must endure endless frustration and failure. Goliath falls with a great thunder, and I am free.

Giving Up Utopia

Ah, Utopia... that magical and seemingly impossible paradise where everything is perfect and we all live happily ever after. Not to seem like a curmudgeon or anything, but, please. Get a grip.

The concept of an unattainable Utopia has been around for a long time, officially since the year 1516, when a Sir Thomas More wrote a book by that title. In it, he muses freely about the perfections of human imagination in a decidedly non-existent place. He uses this mystical Neverland as a vehicle to contrast with the "way things really are" in the world.

We all have our personal Utopias, where we can wistfully while away the minutes or hours longing for this personal paradise. The thing is, it's a trap. And a great one, too. Most of the great religions of the world promise some sort of paradise in the afterlife, or a code of conduct that if "everyone just followed this" the world would become perfected. So, it's a pretty transparent control mechanism.

The problem with Utopia is that it begins with a judgement, and ends with a conclusion. The judgement that my current circumstances are bad or untenable and if some magical thing would just happen, my life would be perfect. Well, perfection is a judgement in and of itself, too. Perfect in what way? Once perfection is attained, then what? That's the conclusion--the big conclusion that stops everything from becoming something else, something much greater.

The judgement and conclusion of perfection completely denies how creation actually works, because if your goal is the attainment of Utopian perfection, you're going to be working on that for eternity. Why? Because the Utopia you envision now is not the Utopia you'll envision later. Everything changes, including your idea of Utopia, your judgments about it, your conclusions about your own life, so it's completely an exercise in smoke and mirrors with nothing concrete that would ever show up, except for perhaps unhappiness and frustration.

In the existing quantum world, once something is observed, it changes. Thus, the artificial construct of Utopia, once viewed and desired, begins immediately to change. It does this, in fact, to the point where most of us give up on attaining our Utopia after childhood. We settle for what is easy and obvious, and what is comfortable, or what we're comfortable doing, or even what doesn't hurt.

We are infinitely powerful beings. We have the ability to create whatever life we want to create, and the way to do that is requesting of the universe (our creation) an awareness of our greater potentials, and of what else is possible. As infinite beings, we have a need to play big, make waves, make a big sound. What's the biggest game we can play, the biggest sound we can make? We don't know, so that's when we ask the question: What else is possible here? How does it get better, bigger, grander? The awarenesses revealed from those questions is what the universe is already set to deliver you. All you need do is follow the yellow brick road.

So stop dreaming of, or even working on that elusive and unreachable Utopia. Instead ask the Universe what amazing greatness it already has available to you right now!