Patricia Pearce

Helping You Be the Change

Our Make-Believe World

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We built a whole world on one wildly imaginative idea.

The other day I was out for a walk in our neighborhood, enjoying the extroverted exuberance of the daffodils and pausing now and then to breathe in the mind-altering fragrance of a grape hyacinth. Along the way, I passed by a man and his young daughter who were headed in the opposite direction. As we passed one another, I heard the little girl telling her father about the things that were falling from the sky of Middle Earth.

My immediate response was delight at the imaginative capacity of children. They can create whole worlds in their minds, and their spirits haven’t yet been straightjacketed by the realities we adults have to manage.

But in the next instant I almost burst out laughing as I recognized that we adults dwell in our own fantasy world, one that we take so seriously that we have brought it forth in the dimension of form—and perhaps ours is the greater imagination, because we are utterly convinced that our fantasy is the “real world.”Continue Reading

Co-Authoring a New Story

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Through our willingness, we are co-authoring a new narrative world

I’m a sucker for a good novel. I love being transported into another world, into the lives, hearts and minds of characters who, like me, are finding their way in the world.

Recently, when I finished reading a very long and dense novel, I realized that when I enter into the narrative world of an author I am giving myself over to them in trust. I am reading the product of their imagination. It feels like a sacred act, a solemn trust.

As a reader I am picky. I want the author to take me somewhere meaningful, somewhere transcendent. I don’t want to spend my time reading a story that leaves me on the same vibrational plane that I experience in consensual reality. I want to enter into a narrative world that transports me into the New. This is why I have no time for dystopias. They are unimaginative. They merely play out a catastrophic trajectory to an epic dead end.

The Fiction We Live In

Why does any of this matter? Because fiction isn’t limited to the books we read or the movies we watch. We are living in a fiction everyday—the fiction in our own minds as well as the fiction in the collective mind. You could say that this whole world is a novel, but unlike the books we store on our shelves, we are both the characters and the authors of this novel we call the world.

And we have a choice, each of us. We can either continue spinning the same narrative thread of the past, remaining loyal to the premises of its plot, or we can be bold enough to invite a surprising narrative twist that opens up a whole new horizon for ourselves and for planet Earth.

And we all know it’s high time for a surprising narrative twist to take place on planet Earth.

Willingness Opens the Way

How do we invite that? All it really requires of us is that we be willing to relinquish our loyalty to the narrative that has been passed down to us, defect from its ground rules and its demands for enemies, divisions, struggle, winners and losers, fear.

Notice that I said it requires us only to be willing. That’s an important point, because one of the core themes of the current story humans have been authoring is based on the belief that we have to make things happen, and that even this planetary transformation and this global awakening is on us to carry out.

But it isn’t, and the first narrative twist happens when we accept that there are spiritual Beings who are in this with us, cheering us on, eager to partner with us to help bring forth what wants to happen in our lives and on this planet.

Since the spirit realm respects our free will, it will not intervene if we want to try to go it alone. This means we can decimate the ecosystems on the planet to the point of collapse if that is what we choose. And the shocking truth is that even if we do, Love would not reject us.

A New Story

So I encourage you to be picky about the stories you indulge, beginning with the stories in your own mind, because a New Story is ready to emerge on this planet. It isn’t based on the fallacy of separateness and division and judgment, but expresses the Reality of Love and the truth of our inter-existence.

This New Story is a partnership between the spirit realm and we embodied ones who are willing to release our allegiance to the narrative world of the past and become co-authors of  what is to come.

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Outgrowing Our Myths

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In the many, the One.

Several months ago, on my birthday in fact, I had a dream unlike any I’ve ever had: a dream telling me how to interpret another dream I had 15 years prior.

The original dream was quite short. Here it is.

I’m returning from some sort of sojourn or quest, possibly returning from my time on Earth, and a Voice asks me, “Did you see minotaurs?”

I reply, “No. I saw crystal, and a star on the rainbow of life.”

The Minotaur, as you may recall, was that creature from Greek mythology that had the torso of a man and the head and tail of a bull. It was a ferocious creature that eventually had to be imprisoned in a labyrinth on Crete, and every year it would be fed with human sacrifices.

As I worked on the dream, I wondered, “What does it mean to see minotaurs?” I sensed that it symbolized journeying through life seeing only terrifying forces looking to devour you, living beholden to a myth of fear.

But I was baffled by my response to the question that had been posed to me. Seeing “crystal and a star on the rainbow of life” sounded very poetic, but I had no idea what it meant.

That’s where the dream I had last fall stepped in. It told me that crystal symbolizes the way in which light solidifies into form. The rainbow, the dream explained, symbolizes the diversity of expression that light takes on, just as in a rainbow light refracts into many colors. To see a star on the rainbow of life is to be able to see that all diversity arises from a single Source.

I was in awe, and very grateful, to receive this clarification of a dream that seemed important but had always stumped me.

This shift, from the mythology of fear into a realization of the intrinsic oneness underlying All That Is, is part of the global awakening that is underway. We are living in an era in which humans are becoming increasingly aware of the wholeness at the heart of all matter and of the unified Source that expresses in astounding diversity in this world and cosmos.

This recognition of diversity as an expression of singularity and form as solidified light is a long way from the mythologies of our ancestors that have guided our understanding for millennia.

Mythologies, like all stories, are ideas in the mind that have taken on narrative form. They are symbolic rather than real, and they can either be true or false, expressing either the truth of interbeingness and Love, or depicting the illusion of separateness, enemies, and fear.

Personally, I am someone who loves stories, but lately I have become unwilling to indulge in stories that aren’t true, whether they show up in the media or in my own mind. I guess you could say I’m done with minotaurs.

But give me a story that captures the essence of Light taking on form, or a story that transports me to the star on the rainbow of life, and I’m all-in.

I also know, though, that to live my entire life immersed in story, even if it is true, would be to live my life missing out on the unspeakable amazement of this present Moment. The mind, when it is engaged with story, is in a trance state. Only when it steps away from story to be fully present to What Is can it have a direct experience of Reality. Only then can it behold the beauty of Light dancing Its infinite diversity into form.

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Grief as a Portal for Our Awakening

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Humanity’s only future is that of the awakened mind and open heart.
Yesterday the front page of the New York Times listed the names of 1000 people who have died of COVID-19 and one sentence about each of them. They were only one percent of the 100,000 lives lost so far in the US, and there are no doubt tens of thousands more who have died as a result of this pandemic but who were never diagnosed.

Clara Louise Bennett, 91, Albany, GA, sang her grandchildren a song on the first day of school each year.

Valentina Blackhorse, 28, Kayenta, AZ, aspiring leader in the Navajo Nation.

Merrick Dowson, 67, San Francisco Bay Area, nothing delighted him more than picking up the bill.

Arthur Winthrop Barstow, 93, Hadley, MA, there is not a Louie L’Amour Western he had not read three times.

Ruth Skapinock, 85, Roseville, CA, backyard birds were known to eat from her hand.

I doubt it was coincidental that also yesterday morning, during my journaling time, I found myself weeping profusely. There is nothing happening in my own immediate life that would warrant such intense grief, and I don’t personally know anyone who has died from this pandemic. But the tears were nonetheless streaming down my cheeks, issuing forth from this reservoir of collective sorrow.Continue Reading

Walking Through the Invisible Fence

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Are you ready to take off the collar?

I like to go for hikes in the woods along the creek of the Wissahickon that flows through the northwestern part of Philadelphia. The place where I often enter the park has a large home surrounded by a lot of land where a couple of large dogs roam. Every now and then the dogs get excited when someone walks by and they race toward the road barking ferociously, but because there is an invisible fence around the yard they never go any further.

The way invisible fences work, in case you’re unfamiliar with them, is a wire is buried along the edge of the yard that emits a warning signal and then a shock which is picked up by a small receiver on the dog’s collar. Both of those elements need to be in place for the fence to operate: the wire hooked up to a source of electricity, and the collar on the dog.

In last week’s blog I wrote about limiting beliefs and how we can become more conscious of them so that we can begin to move beyond them. Sometimes that movement will happen naturally. As we become aware of them, the limiting beliefs will just fall away and we will experience freedom.

Sometimes, though, they don’t. Sometimes, even when we know they’re there, our limiting beliefs continue to confine us, like a dog that’s held captive by an invisible fence.Continue Reading

Release All Concept of Enemy

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What would it be like to release all concept of “enemy”?

Several years ago, while on retreat, I was meditating as I walked an outdoor labyrinth. Suddenly, the words came to me: “Release all concept of enemy.”

I was startled. I hadn’t been thinking at all about enemies. In fact, having been on retreat for several days, I hadn’t even had a disagreeable encounter all week.

More surprising than that, though, was what the message was telling me: enemy is nothing more than a concept—just an idea in the mind.

Thanks to that labyrinth revelation, I have become more aware of how often the concept of enemy is invoked. There are the obvious examples, of course—people of other nationalities, ethnicities, religions, socio-economic classes or worldviews are often seen as enemies—and the concept of enemy fuels much of our current politics.

But it doesn’t stop with people. We can see all kinds of things as enemy: the weeds in the garden, the stain on the shirt, the morning commute, the cold virus that’s paying a visit.

People sometimes look to the natural world for evidence that having enemies is, well, natural. Isn’t the lion an enemy to the gazelle, the hawk an enemy to the rabbit? Well, no. They are participating in the food chain that we’re all part of—life sustaining itself on itself. Enemy has nothing to do with the food chain. It’s a category we use to justify malevolent actions towards another.

To release the concept of enemy we first have to notice it. We have to be aware of when we are caught in the concept ourselves, and also notice when it is being used to manipulate us. How many times have you received a phone call from a fundraiser invoking the concept of enemy in order to raise money for a candidate or cause? Can you imagine if we all rejected the whole concept and politely asked them to come up with a different strategy for making their case?

Of course there will be people with whom you disagree. There may even be people whose actions you feel you must oppose. But the only way they become an enemy is if you make them one in your own mind.

One of the most famous sayings of Jesus is, “Love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you.” By saying this, Jesus was actually negating the concept of enemy. It’s not possible to love someone and at the same time place them in a category called enemy.

Maybe one reason we cling so tenaciously to this concept of enemy is that it enables us to project all the traits we don’t like in ourselves onto other, avoiding the hard work of healing ourselves. But as the Tao te Ching so wisely states:

A great nation is like a great man:

. . .He considers those who point out his faults

as his most benevolent teachers.

He thinks of his enemy

as the shadow that he himself casts.

(translation by Stephen Mitchell)

Who falls in your category of enemy? CEOs? ISIS? Wall Street bankers? Right-to-Lifers? Immigrants? Marines? Fox News Anchors? Democrats? Your neighbor? Your boss? Humanity?

Yourself?

Can you imagine for just a moment how profoundly your life—and the whole world—would instantly change if this concept of enemy simply vanished from our minds?

Beyond Story

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Are your stories maps or traps?
Are your stories maps or traps?

If you’re like me, you loved stories when you were a child. I still love them. I love entering into an imaginative world where characters come to life. I love wondering how the story will unfold and where will the characters be by the end. How will they have changed? How will their problems have resolved themselves, or gotten worse?

Stories can be helpful. They can serve as maps that guide us through confusion, reassuring us that others have struggled with the same things we do. Continue Reading