Consciousness disguised

Apparently, even cleaning my home has a purpose in the larger universe.  Having put off cleaning since I got home, I was dusting to the news on 90.7 when a show I had heard rave reviews about from a deeply respected and intellectual friend.  The Aware show is a program discussing issues of consciousness and awareness in our personal lives and in our world. 

 

Today's topic hit close to home as the teacher union prepares to vote for a strike next.  The Conscious Life Expo is being held at the LAX Hilton where union workers are protesting Hilton's unfair treatment and inadequate wages.  Don't you think organizers of a Conscious Life Expo would be conscious enough to avoid facilities that had blatantly unconscious practices? This is not a new conflict in Los Angeles; about two years ago LAUSD stopped using such hotels for conferences and trainings in support of the workers.  

 

That is LAUSD, an organization in its own battle with a union.  Yet the Conscious Life Expo would not relocate. (Note: I fully support the idea of a Conscious Life Expo, could even enjoy it.)

 

The host of the show and two of her guests are scheduled to participate in a panel at the conference.   None of them advocated changing the local of the Expo as the union requested.  (I will note that the host remained neutral, so any perceptions here cannot be assumed to be her opinion).  The guests from the Expo, I felt, were defensive and focused primarily on reaching the enlightened, compassionate attendees of the conference rather than supporting living wages for the workers who would allow them the luxury to sit in comfort while being waited upon to share ideas of consciousness.  They seemed neglect that these workers are conscious (or potentially conscious) beings simply trying to live their lives as anyone else.

 

As solutions, there was talk of a letter writing campaign and tip jars for the workers.   Yet, the question remains, what about after the Expo leaves?   Hilton has their money from the conference and all the attendees.   The workers go back to making minimum or below minimum wages.  

 

Eddie, a worker at the LAX Hilton, was included as a guest.  He answered one question to tell us how it is to work for Hilton:  unfair and underpaid.

 

The conversation continued, with the Expo participants lauding their own compassion, yet talking about the workers as if they are lesser beings, as if the uneducated and the working class cannot be 'conscious' yet and, therefore, do not deserve the same privileges and obligation of conscious behavior as the conference attendees.  There was a bit of pitying for these workers who could not go out and get an education to better themselves. 

 

Perhaps if these representatives of consciousness looked beyond their own agenda, they could have found some real solutions to really transform the dialogue as well as the lives of the union workers.  If you don't move the conference, why not invite the boycotters into the expo for free?  Rather than having them wait on you and giving them some tips, take over the hotel, sit on the floor, clean your own room, bring your own lunch and really talk about how consciousness could change these workers lives and change the assumptions about work and economics in this country. 

 

It cannot be assumed that because someone is living paycheck to paycheck he/she is not a conscious being or on the path to consciousness and awareness.   All the people who are most alive spiritually and who have touched my life most deeply are ones are not validated by degrees or prestige. Yet, they live honestly and creatively and vitality.  

 

In researching more about the law of attraction and vibrational theory, I came across an interesting perspective on the relationship between positive thinking gurus and promises for material gain from Grant Bellows:

 

Since MOST people are totally absorbed by the acquisition of material wealth and prosperity and are afraid or unreceptive to topics like spirituality, do you tell them to write a book explaining that our creative abilities are way more important than money, or ask them make a movie that will surely alienate and confuse the majority of the population? No! If you do that, then you’ve failed to reach the most people.

 

Instead, you approach the creative “Law of Attraction” teachings from a point of view that most people can understand and accept: how to get a big house…how to get a luxury car…how to become the next American Idol…all of this by using the Law of Attraction.   (http://grantbellows.com/2007/01/20/law-of-attraction-vibration-theory/)

 

Though he does go on to say that this eventually leads to spiritual awakening, I am troubled by the end-justifying-the-means mentality. First, such selling of positive thinking encourages people to continue to pursue something other than what their heart tells them to pursue, what Coehlo called one's personal legend, perpetuating attachment to the material world.   It also absolves us of the responsibility to truly believe in our potential to transform and for others to be transformed.  Finally, if the mansion or the fame is not achieved, we are in danger of blaming the victim, closing the collective consciousness rather than liberating us from desires and attachments, feeding fear and closing off love.

 

For example, a friend tried to convince me why I should be attracted to one person over another.   I remain confident in what my heart tells me.  Yet, she found it hard to believe I would not enjoy spending weekends in luxury resorts. As we all doubt at times, I went online to investigate a resort name she dropped that I knew little about.  It is soulless and sterile.   I don't want my world wrapped in illusions.   I want to celebrate the joy of the real beauty of the world.   The ideal aspect of a getaway (or not needing to getaway is even better) lies in the harmonious unspoken vibration between a partner and I, someone with whom I share a mutual understanding of compassion and support in our journeys to awareness. Perhaps part of that journey would be resting at the end of a day of rigorous hiking in a tent.  It might be a massage from the rainforest village masseur. This is the intention I hope to manifest in my life.  If I remained attached to the idea that success is the exclusive resort, that if I truly think positively this is where I will end up, I would miss the truth of my heart and the adventure of my life as it should be.

 

Perhaps the next step in the positive thinking and consciousness movement needs to be a redefinition of success.  In my own experience, I rejected traditional ideas of success early on, though at times, it would gnaw at me, mitigating much potential happiness.   My yoga practice allowed me to deepen my understanding of my own definitions of success.  This, in turn, has opened me to great abundance in my life, particularly in meeting friends whom I would have closed off if I had limited my ideas of what is valuable and wise to superficial societal definitions, but prove to be valuable treasures in my life.  Some have high education, some have none.  Some are wealthy and some are poor, but they all bring wisdom, joy, compassion and, most importantly, love into my life.

 

For now, I intend for my awareness to never become my new ego, blocking my awareness, closing me off from seeing the consciousness of those around me, often disguised in the most unlikely forms.