I feel a sense of floundering going on in the collective. It’s as if we’re in this white-capped sea of humanity and so many are out there just treading water, wondering how long they can stay above water.

The question rolls through my head:  is this the truth or just my perspective of the truth? I feel like I’m sitting on the shore and gathering life rafts to throw out to the masses. I run to the beach house for more to make sure everybody who needs one has one. I sense this on many levels from individuals to communities to countries to the world.

Some say it’s the post-Harmonic Convergence of 1987 roll out plan for higher evolution as we move into a less violent and more peaceful energy shift. Hmmmm. If the media has anything to say about that, I think they’d disagree. But then, if it bleeds it leads. Can we trust a media driven by rating necessity to give an accurate read? My interaction with public relations and marketing during my law firm days says, “No way.”

What we can agree on, though, is that so many people are hurting. Stress, depression, anxiety, and general discontent run rampant. An eavesdropper from way back, I often listen to conversations of strangers (mainly for dialogue, but also for a collective consciousness read).  Such a high percentage of the time the words are heavy and wreak of suffering.

In my own informal survey of asking people how happy they are in this final quarter of 2015 on a scale of 1 – 10 (10 being perfect, 1 being shit), the highest score I found was a 7. Either I surround myself with unhappy people or, if this is reflective of the population at large, we have an epidemic of general dissatisfaction with this whole life thing on our hands.

Astrologically, we are in a time of looking at our shadows. I believe there are sects of teachers who choose to only see light or only shadow. Both perspectives are dangerous. The truth is that both exist and we are being forced to admit that. I don’t see this as duality. I see both sides as part of one whole. If we ignore part of that whole, we experience fragmentation and confusion of purpose.

But who really wants to look at their shadow? It’s uncomfortable. It’s also not easy to do without letting it impact the self-esteem and confidence that drives our psyche. However, when we don’t, bad things happen. We get sick. We play out dysfunction. We keep ourselves so freaking busy, we don’t have to think about what really matters. Worse still, we don’t evolve towards our life purpose the way we should be evolving. I’m often told by hospice workers that NOBODY wishes they worked harder or worried more during their lifetimes.

They wish they’d had more fun.

Each of us is responsible for looking at our own lives with brutal honesty. What works? What doesn’t? What is driving us closer to 10? What is sucking us towards 1? What are our core values? Have we taken the time to really define what drives us? Are we really living out the purpose which is uniquely ours or are we spending our time making all kinds of excuses why we don’t have time right now?

When we focus on getting ourselves to 10, we affect everyone around us. We walk in a room and light it up. The more people that do this, the more our world lightens. Not only is it our personal responsibility to work through our heavy individual suffering and make it right for our own happiness’ sake, it also reaches way further into the world than we can imagine.

P.S. After I wrote this, we went to see “Heart of the Sea,” Ron Howard’s retelling of how Moby Dick came to be. The imagery was right in line with the energetic storms I talk about how. Synchronici-SEA!