Down The Rabbit Hole

They say you can fall down a rabbit hole if you go searching or wondering about certain things in life, but what do you do if it feels like your entire reality is you constantly falling deeper down one?

I’ve always been wildly curious, probably since I learned to talk, and like many of you know, I am constantly asking questions. Whether it’s with others, myself, or the universe. So when I first really “found” spirituality; you can only imagine all the questions I had based off the insane and complex topics that come with the territory.

I’ve also once written of feeling my talking of my spirituality too often would feel it’s being pushed on others even though that is not my goal, specifically for the fact that nowadays most see spirituality = to religion. Now don’t get me wrong, there are ABSOLUTELY people out there who claim to be spiritual, who heavily try to push that belief, or reality, onto others. To me that is just ego, or some sort of spiritual/faith psychosis; but when encountering certain individuals like this, there is definitely truth in some of what they speak of, but the delivery is wrong. It’s too intense or harsh at times, and not everyone learns that way.

So with all of that, having experienced beings, both in person and over the internet, who are a bit extreme in getting their belief(s) or message(s) across, it has caused someone like myself a LOT of confusion.

No matter what anyone believes in, or I choose to believe in (currently), the biggest thing I have always felt to be true, is to just not do harm to others. Now I know that seems like a pretty obvious thing we all want, or should do, but many of us can tell that society in the modern age is so divided, that it’s scary. Peoples moral compasses have been heavily swayed because of the need to survive. Whether it’s for food, shelter, or money; nowadays a good portion of beings would do a number of questionable, even unfathomable acts, in order to still get what they need or want. And even that aside, we see how politics has heavily divided us to care about race, gender, age, etc.

But there’s a quote I saw when I was fifteen, and it’s stuck with me ever since. “When your opinion invalidates the existence of another human being, THAT’S when it becomes an issue.”

That is what I do my best to live by; but there have been, and will be days where that doesn’t always happen.

Regardless if I am spiritual or not, or used to be Liberal on a political scale, many people within “good” faced communities or groups, can still uphold ill views and habits towards others. I mean look at the political aspect of it as a perfect example; I’ve seen/met just as many nasty and harmful speaking/acting Liberals as I have Conservatives. And for years I’ve noticed that, and wondered why many on the “left” felt it was justified? Many would say it’s because the “right side” threatens the existence of many minority groups, and that is true. But how can you treat a group of people who are violent to black, latino, queer, etc. people with MORE violence?

Seems a bit counterproductive if you ask me, even with their magnitude of violence we have seen displayed.

We just end up perpetuating this idea that violence is the only way to handle anything.

Now, back to my actual point.

Any “side” or group, still does things, even if its unconsciously, that harms or invalidates the existence of another’s, because we all have subconscious bias programmed into us from the surroundings we were immersed in as children. So when I found division and harsh methods being displayed as a means to “teach” right and wrong, within the spiritual community, I was even more baffled. There is so much information in the world that it’s become muddled and humans have decided to pick and choose what information fits THEIR narrative of life. And for me, always trying to simply be a good person for myself and others, it felt like the pressure was on to learn the actual truth.

“On” in terms of trying to figure out what was “right” and what was “wrong” morally, in how I behave in society with the rest of my peers from a spiritual point of living. Because the more I became spiritual, the more I heard people talk about not engaging in change and speaking of the injustices of the world. How all of it is a distraction to keep us “stuck”. Part of me does believe this, I have seen it and what it does and how it further keeps certain groups trapped more than they need to be, but it doesn’t take away the reality that many are affected by choices of the systems our society has set in place to hinder them. And the more I tried to find the answers, I actually found myself confused and more stressed out by a community who was supposed to do nothing but show compassion, or at the very least open-mindedness and understanding for others perspectives of life.

So while spending the last few years just trying to learn the natural workings/practices/teachings of different spiritual perspectives, and heal old wounds of myself, it just made it harder feeling I was so divided from those who first showed me a true light at the end of the tunnel. What was right for me to do? What ways was I treating others wrong? What ways was I doing things correctly? Was I healing right? Did I need to give up meat to truly be spiritual? Did I HAVE to be nice to EVERYONE, no matter how they treated me? Was I supposed to stop going to protests and signing petitions for change? Does all this suffering have a rhyme or reason, or did it not?

For a long time, it felt like I was spiraling in some way. Nothing was starting to make sense, and even in places I thought I could go for complete understanding and comfort of my soul, I learned some of those things were tainted too.

And then recently I had some major breakthroughs.

(Technically, I call them downloads, or messages. But they’re always from the universe. I can’t explain to most how I know it isn’t ME thinking or realizing these things, but if you have any belief in anything bigger than ourselves, then all I can tell you is that it comes from that. That universal energy of something bigger and more unexplainable than we can truly begin to understand. Also note that I sometimes receive my messages through “coincidences” in music, books, or other various physical things.)

And what I received gave me the peace of mind I never knew I would need.

The universe told me that no matter what any of us does, whatever path we follow, whatever answers we think we found; means nothing AND everything at the same time.

-I- can believe there is an energy out there that influences us, makes us all connected, that a “heaven” of some sort exists, and that magic exists. Another can believe it’s all dictated by a man in a white robe. Other’s can believe it’s all bullshit and that heaven and hell and otherworldly phenomenon don’t exist. And it’s all true and not true at the same time.

Life itself IS the paradox.

We don’t know how we got here, or why we’re still here. We don’t know how anything came to be. Many of us don’t understand the cruel injustices of the modern world.

And all of my burning questions of “why” towards everything in life, just… dissipated with this message. Nothing matters, yet for that EXACT reason, it’s like we were given the option to make things matter. For them to have a purpose.

And maybe that’s human nature. To give meaning to something because if it doesn’t have meaning or purpose, it’s deemed unworthy.

So for me, I realized that my spirituality didn’t matter. My sexuality doesn’t matter. My race and background. My childhood, and all of these other things DON’T matter, and yet they do. Politics don’t (or shouldn’t) matter. Human rights shouldn’t be a topic of debate. Where we end up when we die shouldn’t influence the way we live. And yet? It does.

All of it.

The things that never should have separated us, have. And now whether it was ever supposed to matter or not, it NEEDS to. It demands it.

There needs to be BALANCE at the very least of all things, even if we as a species know we can never create the perfect reality each of us wishes we could be in.

And while I believe none of us will ever really know the truth of anything, there is more truth in admitting THAT, than in telling others I “know” the truth. Because the truth is still relative. Every single humans perception of life, every day that they awake from their slumber, is different and relative.

It’s like this; we all know racism and killing and rape is morally wrong, but you still have people out there who justify these ideologies. As sick as it may be to us, it’s what is truth, or “right” to their world. And for individuals like myself, my heart and soul has cried not understanding why there are beings out there who find ways to excuse and justify such disturbing and cruel actions. But…I’ll never know.

And on the other hand, chaos and destruction and suffering and all of these horrid things we don’t wish to happen, have always happened. We have seen it in literature mostly. Even in Greek “mythology” they speak of male Gods who raped female Gods. We have heard of other countries where men have child brides. We have heard how the Aztecs and Mayans had sacrificial rituals they preformed for their gods. Some involved animals, others involved humans. And even if you don’t believe in God (from the Christian aspect) God himself fought a WAR against one of his own children who tried to rebel against him.

So to me it would seem that as unfair, unjust, and twisted as these things are to many of us, they have existed for millennia. And by me saying that, I am not implying that it should be accepted as normal, but to a degree it is. Suffering is the other side of that never ending balance of life. If you know what having a good life is, or it’s something you are currently yearning for, then you either had to, or are going through sufferings of your own to want to be free of said suffering.

Again, please understand I am not saying women or children have to be tortured or raped in order to “make it out” on some other side. No. People shouldn’t have to suffer in these ways, but even as much as many like me wish to make the world filled with rainbows and sunshine and everyone hold hands, the world is not so black and white. No it is not. And for me, my “truth”, or perspective, is that at some point we have to let go of the idea that the world will ever be this 100% perfect place. Perfect does’t exist, and if it does, things are “perfect” because they are always IMperfect. That is the balance.

I know some people might not agree with this, and that’s okay. I am not saying we are all supposed to give up and let these horrors take over and plague our world, but what I am saying that you can only control so much. So because of that, you should make change where you can truly create it, and too many of us in society want to start at such big places to create change, when I believe everything is a ripple effect and sometimes we can create more change in “smaller” places. In our communities, and letting it trickle like a game of telephone for others to keep planting seeds of our word onto others.

And then again, it all comes back full circle. Some would say “Well I am going to teach my children that immigrants are lazy and mooch off the government” because in THEIR community and surroundings, that is truth to them.

Do you see how it’s all a conundrum? It all matters what we say and do because all of our minds are ever impressionable, and yet, all the people on the planet could think the same way except for one, and if that one persons speaking is strong enough, it could sway others and create people to question what they stand for.

It doesn’t matter and yet it does.

So it would seem that as I became aware I was falling down a rabbit hole just like Alice did, we are all actually endlessly falling down this rabbit hole together.

We’re all trapped in some way, yet way more free than any of us realize. I can’t explain that any further, it just either makes sense or it doesn’t. And one way or another, we’re all looking for a way out of this hole, a way to awaken from this dream of the realities others push onto our personal world.

Maybe one day my current thoughts and feelings may change on some of this, who knows. But right now I feel this to be more true than anything else I have ever come to learn or know. All I do know from that, is that it allowed me to take a huge weight of wanting to do EVERYTHING to save the ENTIRE world off my shoulders because I now understand as much as I could ever want to, I’ll never be able to stop all the bad in the world, but I CAN find ways to impact the people and communities -I- am closest to in (hopefully) positive ways.

So maybe what I am getting at, is that you don’t have to carry the weight and the burdens of all the pain in the world with you either. Your existence is impact enough to light up others around you, and if your every breath of life itself, keeps even one other person alive here too, then you’ve already created more change than you first thought. Change looks different for us all. Some of us can and will create change in such large ways because we know it to be our life calling, but we need change in all the cracks and small and dark places too that not everyone wants to go. I just hope anyone and everyone knows that no matter what they do, as long as they do their best and give it their all, it will always be what’s most important. Trying at all, even if we fail, is better than never trying and never knowing. Just remember to release the idea that you can do it all when you can’t, because you’ll end up creating your own suffering in the process of trying to help others. Which suffering is the exact thing many of us are trying to free from in this rabbit hole in the first place.

Nothing in the world really makes sense, but we all have been trying to find a way to make some sense of it. I hope you find a way to make peace with it and find good in even the dark places and never lose your hope. Hope is what keeps us going. Hope is the belief that something better can happen, and having hope in a world that seems so cruel to many, is beautiful. It also means the fight to restore the world back to a bit more balanced state is possible. So find the thing you’d die for, and then live for it. Whatever it is, no matter how big or small it seems, because as much as none of it should matter because we’ll all be dead one day, it matters in every moment we are still breathing and while there is still future life here after us.

All my love, -A