Mark David Gerson's Page

Monday, July 7 ~ Albuquerque, New Mexico

A version of this article first appeared in the July 4, 2006 issue of my inspirational newsletter.

You're not going crazy.

I know it feels that way sometimes. It certainly does to me.

One moment you feel fine, on top of the world. The next, something pushes you into a depression or despair it's difficult to pull out of. Or you feel yourself sinking into a morass of apparent meaninglessness and purposelessness.

Old patterns -- addictions, even -- poke and prod at you, demanding to be satisfied.

Intense fatigue or other strange physical symptoms kick in, for no conventionally explainable reason.

You feel as though you're going crazy.

You're not.

Then what the @#$&%!?# is going on?

It's what I call R-evolution, short for Radical Evolution.

Our humanoid ancestors had the luxury of millennia to evolve from cave to condo, from simplicity to sophistication. Even for our grandparents, evolution was a subtle process, barely discernible within a generation, let alone a lifetime.

All that has changed.

We are experiencing, in this lifetime, a revolutionary overhaul that is unprecedented in human history.

We are morphing into a new species.

You could call it the New Human, although that's not truly accurate, because where we're going transcends much of we have come to know as human.

In effect, we are stepping into our Divine Selves, into the Gods we have always been, but only as a potential.

That potential is now being realized. Not for everyone, perhaps. But for those who have made that choice, however unconsciously, that's what's going on.

Exciting? Yes.

Miraculous? Absolutely.

Fear-provokingly uncomfortable? Without a doubt.

We stand in a place of transition.

Increasingly, our old ways of living, coping and feeling secure are not working. Even many of the New Age paradigms we have grown into in recent years seem out of place, dysfunctional, wrong-minded.

We are, as Gregg Braden put it a decade ago, walking between the worlds.

Who we were is outmoded. Yet who we are becoming is not yet ready.

Remember that awkward period in early adolescence? You were no longer a child, yet seemingly far from adulthood. On top of that, your physical and emotional bodies were doing all kinds of weird and wacky things.

Welcome back to puberty. Cosmic puberty.

You're experiencing peculiar symptoms and your emotions are volatile. You're beginning to think and act in ways that are foreign to you and others. Your likes and dislikes are shifting, as are your passions and priorities.

Even the face staring back at you from the mirror seems disconcertingly unfamiliar.

In this twilight zone we now occupy between our human and divine selves, cognitive disconnect is the norm.

Our human minds struggle to control our lives in ways that our divine intelligence considers unnecessary.

Our human mind has expectations. Our divine intelligence has none.

Our human mind tries to figure out and understand, functions our divine intelligence regards as irrelevant.

Radical Evolution, or "ascension" as some would term it, is not about moving into deeper understanding. It's about moving away from understanding. It's about abandoning any need to understand and moving into a place of permanent mystery...divine mystery.

Yet we're still wired to function in human ways. Or, rather, our divine electrician has begun the rewiring, but it's a massive job. And the transition is as weird and wacky as was puberty.

That's not reassuring to the human self, which feels as though everything familiar is breaking apart.

It is. One glance at the headlines is all it take to see that. Plummeting real estate prices. Soaring gas prices. Crises in the credit world. Floods, fires and financial failure.

Our minds and bodies are doing their own version of that same dance. Sometimes, the dance isn't graceful or pretty. Sometimes, it looks more like struggle.

Think of the biblical Jacob wrestling with the angel.

That's the essence of what's going on for us: our human wrestling with our divine. The human seeks to hold onto the perceived control of knowingness. The angel, on the other hand, represents all that is free, and therefore free of control.

All that is free is the mystery. For, along with its other implications, freedom frees us from having to know, to understand, to place in context.

As we move to this next level -- a step that is gargantuan in its steepness and implications -- we are leaving behind more than we can begin to imagine. Not in the physical sense. Not even in the emotional sense. In the human sense.

Much that has defined you as human is being squeezed out of you -- in that spin cycle I wrote about some time back or, perhaps better put, in an old-fashioned wringer-washer. And as each new space is freed up, more of the divine that you already are is entering in to fill that newly created emptiness.

Put another way, it's like the child (Peter Pan) who resists growing up, leaving childish (but not childlike) things behind to make way for the adult. In this case, it's not the human adult but the divine adult that is coming through...sometimes, or so it feels, like a steamroller.

No wonder you're in emotional crisis at times. No wonder you feel as though you are dying. No wonder signs and apparent synchronicities refuse to be interpreted.

Nothing is the way it was or ever will be again. Nothing can be understood in the old ways. Nothing can be fixed in the old ways. Nothing can be controlled. Period.

There is only one magic pill, and it can be a tough one to swallow.

It's called surrender.

Yet it's the only way.

All we can do is move through our cosmic puberty with as much grace as we can muster.

All we can do is surrender...to the mystery, to the freedom, to the divine that is taking over our lives, our will and our beingness and launching us into an era we cannot predict, anticipate or understand.

See yourself as a baby bird pushing through its shell. The shell is your human construct. You are breaking through that now. It is breaking down now. The bird is emerging, regardless. And it will fly. You will fly. And life on the other side of that shell is nothing you have ever known before.

You are stressed by all this. This is natural. Your human self is in panic. This is natural.

Know that you are neither dying nor going crazy, though that is what it feels like. Rather, you are experiencing radical evolution. You are becoming the divine.

Stop wrestling the angel and, instead, step into the angel. Become the angel. Become the god, your god, the god that you are.

~ For tips on how to use writing to help you move through these r-evolutionary times, visit my other blog, The Voice of Your Muse or check out The Voice of the Muse: Answering the Call to Write and/or The Voice of the Muse Companion: Guided Meditations for Writers.

Image: "Wrestling the Light" by Ivan Chan

Sunday, July 6 ~ Albuquerque, New Mexico

What would happen if one million people experienced and expressed happiness on the same day? You'll have a really good chance of finding out on July 10, which has been designated International Happiness Day.

Initiated by Barcelona's Liberto Pereda Romera, International Happiness Day is a day in which people from all over the world are asked to intentionally choose to be happy while inspiring the happiness of others through simple acts of kindness, expressions of joy, gratitude, optimism, and forgiveness.

"We know that intention creates outcome," says Eva Gregory, who is one of the two US Ambassadors for International Happiness Day, with Jeanna Gabellini. So, if a million people from all over the planet celebrated happiness on the same day, we’re convinced that it would have a powerful, positive impact on the world."

To participate July 10 in International Happiness Day, says Gregory, all you need to do is set the intention to choose happiness on that day.

For more information, visit the International Happiness Day web site, watch the International Happiness Day video or join the International Happiness Day Group on Facebook.

Thursday, July 3 ~ Albuquerque, New Mexico

"I passionately believe that we are called to love, honor and respect all aspects of our beingness, not just the ones that behave in right/light ways."
~ Mark David Gerson

Tune into the audio archive of "Loving Your Ego While Surrendering to Your Highest Self," an engaging conversation on a wide range of spiritual/personal growth topics, including how to love your ego and my 10 Rules for Living, with Powerfull Living Radio host Lorraine Cohen.

A version of this article first appeared in the June 3, 2007 issue of my inspirational newsletter.

Wednesday, June 18 ~ Albuquerque, New Mexico

Back in October 2006 when I was visiting Toronto, a friend treated me to a ticket to Barbra Streisand's first-ever concert performance in that city. Although we were sitting high in the rafters in a hockey arena that was anything but intimate, I was startled by how fully and personally her energy filled every corner of that venue.

"She's larger than life," I remember gushing to my friend at intermission.

I recalled that experience the first time I listened to the CD recording of the concert tour, some months after my return from Toronto. "That's what I want," I heard myself say at the time and was so startled by what seemed such a profoundly ego-driven thought that I was almost embarrassed.

But it wasn't until some months later that I fully understood both the Streisand experience and my inner voice. What I realized was that "larger than life" isn't about being famous. It simply means living larger than the restrictions and limitations we all carry so willingly through life. I also realized that access to that energy is not limited to the Barbra Streisands of the world, unless we choose for that to be so.

Even as our souls yearn for us to "play big," to discover our passion and live it to the fullest, our fearful self continues to seek out ways to hide and play small.

"Our deepest fear," writes Marianne Williamson in A Return to Love, "is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure."

Perhaps even deeper than the fear she describes is the fear of experiencing and expressing our power out in the world, of being larger than life, of living beyond the self-imposed walls and barriers we create in the mistaken belief they will keep us safe.

They can't and they won't.

Our only safety resides in living our largest life to its fullest potential, in living our truth...in living our passion. In walking through life as though we are safe...as though nothing can stop, limit or restrict us.

As I write this, an old Cole Porter lyric keeps running through my head:

Oh, give me land, lots of land under starry skies above,
Don't fence me in

At a literal level, the song is sung by a cowboy who longs for the endless space of the open range.

Yet it's also the song of every soul deprived of its fullest expression by the fences of a fearful mind, a soul that seeks only the limitlessness of its natural state.

Whatever you think of Barbra Streisand's talent or personality, when you are in her energy field, you touch that limitlessness and your soul cries out, "Me too! That's who I am, too!!"

Here in the Western world, where we have been taught to play small, we transfer all of our natural desire for the fenceless world of a life lived large to our movie stars and sports heroes.

If we can't play out our own passion and power, we play it out through a celebrity cult that's no healthier than any other cult, one we also find in countries with charismatic leaders/dictators, in religions with unapproachable gods and in all situations where we abdicate the expression of our infinite nature to someone or something outside of ourselves.

In my novel, The MoonQuest, very much a metaphor for all our journeys, the main character is destined for a greatness he continues to resist. Yet destiny, as he is constantly reminded, is not cast in stone. There is always a choice.

"Every choice you have ever made, has led to this moment. Your moment. Still, the power to make a different choice remains yours."

The power to choose is always ours. In every moment and through every situation, we're offered the opportunity to choose our greatness, our passion, our light.

It's what we do with each moment and situation that governs our destiny, that decides whether we live in our greatness or in the shadow of someone else's, that determines whether we build fences or tear them down.

In this moment, what do you choose?

A version of this article first appeared in the June 3, 2007 issue of my inspirational newsletter. To subscribe to the newsletter (which also gets you e-mail versions of these blog posts), visit my web site or use the subscription blank in the sidebar.

Tuesday, June 17 ~ Albuquerque, New Mexico

Back on May 19, I introduced you to my then-new blog of tools, tips and inspiration for writers: The Voice of Your Muse.


Since then, the new blog has expanded to nearly three dozen posts, and I've expanded posting frequency to four or more posts per week.

Many of you have responded by adding your comments and asking how to receive those posts by e-mail -- the same way some of you receive posts from this blog.

At the time, I said that I wouldn't be including The Voice of Your Muse as part of any existing subscriptions to my e-mail list to avoid overloading your inbox. Now, I have a way to make it possible for those of you who want to subscribe to the new blog to get it.

Either use this link or the subscription blank in the sidebar at The Voice of Your Muse (immediately underneath my profile on The Voice of Your Muse blog, not this one). Once you sign up and respond to the confirmation e-mail, you'll receive the newest additions to The Voice of Your Muse blog within 24 hours of their appearance on the web site.

Whether you subscribe or not, please visit the blog and add your comments.

I'm looking forward to helping you hear the voice of your muse!