Creating Coherence in Destabilized Times
Don’t ask what the world needs; ask what makes you come alive, and go and do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive. -Howard Thurman
Coherence: the quality of holding together
How are you holding together?
It has been my experience that there has always been a deep and silent voice guiding me toward my purpose- what I am to do in life. At the same time, I know that hearing the voice and overcoming all the messages that run crosswise to it in order to follow it has been one of the most difficult tasks I’ve encountered.
As long as we are in a body we will have time and opportunity to find and follow the voice of our dream. There is never a better day than today to begin. By waiting until the upheaval, destabilization and attacks on truth that are currently rampant in mass society have passed in order to feel more secure, we risk remaining loyal to the familiar inertia and illusion of safety that holds in place what we already have. It may be that there is no safety, but there is treasure in following your unique inner guardian spirit- also known as your genius, or the gifts that only you can bring to life.
In these perilous times of incoherence that feature disinformation, institutionalized deceit, demands for blind loyalty, cultivation of distrust, and ongoing attacks on structures that were built to create stability, we find ourselves longing for truth and coherence. Openings to find clarity and fulfillment will appear, not in the chaos of turbulence but much further out at the edges. Dropping regularly into stillness and solitude, through meditation and other practices, to open to the soul level for meaning is a revolutionary act that can bring us to the truth of who we are and what unique purpose we have carried into life. As each person pursues their truth in this way they create a node of coherence that affects the web of mutuality in which we all resonate with one another. And as each person takes an incremental step toward offering their gifts to the world, they stabilize their surroundings by dropping down and grounding in what’s been missing: the deeper level of the soul.
The words of Howard Thurman, who was a theologian, scholar, author and advisor to Martin Luther King Jr. have carried me well for more than 30 years. They are offered here as a potential path to your own coherence.