Illustration: GAUCHE

“One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.” – Carl Jung

APOCALYPTICISM is an actual word. According to Wikipedia, it is “the religious belief that there will be an apocalypse, a term which originally referred to a revelation of God’s will, but now usually refers to belief that the world will come to an end time very soon, even within one’s own lifetime.”

The idea that “the world will end” is not limited to fire and brimstone. Various New Agers believe that 2012 will result in an alignment of the galactic something or other, fulfilling the Hopi prophecy of the Blue Kachina and the reversal of the Earth’s magnetic poles…and stuff…then we will enter a golden age. Sound familiar?

Darin Drda, author of The Four Global Truths, writes:

Although they speak different languages, both tell the same story: the fate of life on Earth will be determined by forces beyond humanity’s control. This idea strikes me as a very dangerous one, certain to accelerate our collective journey down the road to ruin. What’s more, it doesn’t jive with the powerful and paradigm-shifting insight of 20th century physics that reality is participatory.

In 2011, TIME magazine dubbed “The Protestor” Person of the Year, their cover emblazoned with a shrouded figure peering out from behind a kerchief. I believe the more accurate label would have been “The Participant” – to reflect the global awakening that is gaining steam around the globe. From the streets of Cairo, to the towers of Wall St, as Charles Eisenstein intoned “We the people are awakening and we will not go back to sleep.”

The true definition of ‘apocalypse’ is more akin to ‘the lifting of the veil.’ What has long been hidden shall be revealed. Is it possible to understand this potential, and how to apply it, without falling victim to the aforementioned ‘isms of divine destruction, collapse, or extraterrestrial saviours?

Daniel Pinchbeck points the way in his book 2012: The Return of Queztalcoatl. He suggests we are being called to participate in a shift in human consciousness, catalyzed by the crises that appear to be culminating in this age.

“Right now, we are being forced to witness the shadow of the psyche projected into material form through systemic misuse of technology, biospheric destruction, and corrupt geopolitics based on entrenched egotism and greed. [...]

Like the coiled arms of the galaxy, the development of consciousness appears to follow a spiral, sidereal motion, represented by the archetypal symbol of the mandala, which is universal in sacred art.

Whether found in dreams or wheat fields, mandalas symbolize stages in a psychic process – the helical approach of the psyche toward integration of the ego and the self or higher self, through the difficult work of illuminating the dark matter within the unconscious.”

The dark matter of our unconscious has created the human world we inhabit, including the crises that we appear unable to solve. Our old story of the Self, that we are “isolated beings in an indifferent universe” (and all it’s variations), is breaking down, because in fact, it was never objectively real in the first place. It was constructed by our level of consciousness.

The new consciousness struggles to be born.

The Occupy Movement seemingly embodied this desire to participate one again, erupting onto the collective stage late last year. And yet, even as creative direct-actions continue, many camps are struggling with the old patterns of Separation – the idea that to change the world we must apply Force. If only we could exert enough pressure on the “bad” elements of our society, we can keep humanity’s innate greed and destruction at bay.

But that’s not enough.

Spiritual teacher Thomas Hübl, in a fascinating interview from early on in the Occupations, said “Most of the people want to change fully, but they don’t want to engage fully, because it confronts your life and the depths of who you are,” says . “When people are confronted to make a shift in their consciousness, they stay with the [old patterns].”

This is why the current Occupations are embroiled in conflict. The repressed trauma and old wounds of Separation have now found an outlet, and any attempts to stifle them, even in the name of achieving organizational unity, will meet more resistance.

Thomas continues:

It cannot be a movement that is against something. Most movements that are against something are stuck being against. And they are not for something better. And you need to have more people that are for something better. For the light, not against the structure.

Around awake people, more awakening will happen. Awakening is spiral. If you spend time with someone who is more awake than you, then chances are your consciousness will be elevated. And if through your practice, you manage to stabilize your consciousness at this level it will become your reality as well.

What is needed at this time is those who can hold a global awareness. People who are grounded, that are literally coming from the future. They look the same, but they are motivated from a different place. If you are coming from the future, and you embody this, then the future will manifest around you.

This future ‘global awareness’ unfolds from the consciousness of the Connected Self.

Darin Drda explains:

We are not, as the old guard preaches, feeble and passive observers of a fixed, objective order or cogs in a giant, lifeless machine. Nor are we, as the new guard intones, the all-powerful masters of our own destiny, capable of instantly conjuring anything we want out of pixie dust and wishful thinking. We are co-creative participants in a great cosmic adventure, the outcome of which must always remain unknown.

In summary: consciousness creates our world. Our current story is now breaking down, an inevitable conclusion to the unconscious shadows we have collectively repressed. The Apocalypse is about uncovering/reintegrating our projections, essentially forcing us: not to evolve, but to make a CHOICE to evolve.

This choice is crucial. Without choice, we are merely pawns of fate, adrift in an indifferent cosmos.

Instead, we are called to embody this new consciousness, not as an opinion, but as a lived relationship with ourselves and the Other. While we can only do this on an individual level, we need other “awakened beings” to hold us at this higher note until we can stabilize – and then help others do the same.

This is the true meaning of the apt quoted maxim “Be the change you want to see in the world.” We must literally BE from the future – retrieving a higher order of self that does not recreate the past. We must resist the death throes of our old institutions, even while we flow towards our new ones. We must bow humbly to our ancestors and their echoes of pain, include the injustice of the present, and embrace the uncertainty of our Great Transition.

If this sounds ambitious, consider the words of Arundhati Roy:

“Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.”

During the fast, I was finally able to write a poem that had been rattling around my head for at least a year. (The sketch is a mask that is hanging on the wall of the room).

To read the poem, you start at the left side of the lips, and continue in a circular pattern, wrapping around the head.

Photo: foxtongue

“Tell me will I dream?
And tell me will it be serene?
Or tell me will I stay
With my feet in exactly the same place?”
- Matthew Good, Empty’s Theme Park

I held off commenting directly on the Vancouver riots for some time, as I needed to formulate my thoughts. I didn’t want to succumb to the obvious sense of disgust and hatred towards these destructive hooligans, without reflecting on the type of society that pushes these acts to occur.

After all, we don’t live in a vacuum. Drunk, malicious hockey fans don’t wander out of the forest, before disappearing into the night. While many of them did not live directly in the city of Vancouver, they certainly came from the same culture.

An editorial in the Georgia Strait sums it up perfectly:

We can’t just blame a few “bad apples.” This riot didn’t happen on its own. Society as a whole ensured that it was the only outcome, starting with the assumption that our over-amped if not war-like passion for something as inconsequential as a hockey game is appropriate to begin with, let alone officially sanctioned. But hey, it’s a fucking goldmine for advertisers and a hell of a vacuum to suck in a growing population of bored, distracted, disassociated, and quietly despairing Lower Mainlanders marinated in the hegemony of cheap sensation, and governed by institutions hostile to art, truth, and beauty. It’s a problem that, as always, starts at the very top.

Reading this piece I was struck by how it reminded me of Tyler Durden’s devastating critique of consumerist society, in the film Fight Club:

“We’re the middle children of history…. no purpose or place. We have no Great War, no Great Depression. Our great war is a spiritual war. Our great depression is our lives.” – Tyler Durden, Fight Club

The day after the riots, a photo comparing the various “reasons for rioting” began circulating the web. It compared the social unrest in Egypt, fueled by a populace fed up with dictatorship, against the senseless violence of largely suburban kids, protesting…what? The loss of the Stanely Cup? A trigger but not the reason.

The reality is a truth nobody wants to answer. That’s because we have yet to face up to the inherent emptiness of our consumerist society. And that makes us stricken with a hole a younger generation struggles to fill.

“People increasingly see themselves as brands,” says a post-riot discussion in the National Post.

“They see themselves not as having inherent value (or values) but as a provisional entity the value of which is determined in the same ecology of popularity and renown that brands themselves exist. They see themselves, in other words, as having value in the same unstable and purely representational way as a sneaker or a handbag.

The Strait piece continues:

Why are there so many hungry souls out there, ready and willing to bring chaos down on the so-called most livable city on the planet? In reality, matters have only gotten much worse politically and economically since 1994, and Generation Y has been delivered into a beyond-callous world facing a perfect storm of crises. They know it.

What does the future look like for the average 20 year old? It’s a depressing, empty place where they can’t get decent-paying (let alone secure) jobs or ever have a hope of owning property. Can you imagine how much more fearful and angry they would be if they fully comprehended the seriousness of peak oil?

The anger that motivates an Egyptian youth to hurl a brick at an approaching tank is the same that guides the hand of the teenager smashing a window of the Hudson’s Bay.

“The anger of the teenager is the indignation of the dispossessed,” writes author Charles Eisenstein in The Great Robbery.

“The Great Robbery is first and foremost the pillage of their childhood. Childhood is supposed to be a realm of exploration in which we discover our passions, our selves, our life purpose. What we get instead is enslavement to schedules and obligations. Bereft of the chance to explore our inner world, we grow up not truly knowing what we love or what we want to make of our lives.

While this does not excuse the post-game offenders, it does explain how “privileged children” living in a hyper-abundant consumerist society can seize the first excuse to flip a car and dance among the flames. They have almost no other outlets of release in an ailing society.

As Eisenstein believes, this youthful intuition, often channelled into misguided means, is no less true:

“The world is not supposed to be like this. Your intuitions of something more beautiful are valid. You are meant for an amazing, divine purpose. You are brilliant, possessed of unique gifts just waiting to be discovered. And—very important—anyone who tells you otherwise is lying. Worse than lying, they are stealing from you.”

The Straight article agrees, but offers little solace:

Unfortunately, there’s no simple band-aid solution that will fix a sick society. The symptoms are clearly manifesting but, without facing up to the fact that there is an overarching problem, there is absolutely no chance for us to heal. But perhaps the first step towards solving this systemic problem is to acknowledge the fact that there is actually something wrong with us.

While I agree with the complexity of the challenges, I do not agree with the diagnosis: that there is something inherently wrong with us. Self-reflection can often lead to self-hatred – if you don’t go deep enough. But it will eventually lead to the clarity that lies beyond, and the courage to step into both beauty and pain, a necessary quality as we move into an uncertain future.

Because our generation’s great war is already calling us.

Look for Part II next week.

So without further ado:

January – I don’t actually remember much of what happened. I barely have any photos either, except for the One Week Job promo shoot we did with Nordica Photography.

In a twist of post-modern-ism-ism, I reverse recorded them as they photographed us.

February – Sean, Danna, Karen and I attended our first ever circus school. I had a bit of a hard time with the silks, but you can see Karen quickly adapted. (View Flicker set)

February was also the massive gong-show known as the Olympics. I was fairly conflicted on the event. The price tag alone was staggering, and the true benefit to the city questionable. (View Flicker set)

It wasn’t until the gold medal hockey game between Canada and the US, (which was also my 29th birthday) when the tension gave away to excitement and global high-fives. (View Flicker set)

Sean and I also managed a quick work jaunt down to San Francisco, and John Muir park just outside the city. (View Flicker set)

March – Pretty quiet month, though Karen and I did manage to attend the season opening weekend for the Salt Spring Yoga Center.

April – What do you do when it’s one of your best friend’s stag parties? You dress him in a Nacho Libre costume and take him to Tofino.

April was also the month I was introduced to the work of Charles Eisenstein, at a moment when I began questioning the credibility of the mainstream “green” movement.

May – The official release of the One Week Job book and film was a family and friends affair, in our hometown of Port Moody.

After the screening, I felt compelled to share a few words on what the film meant to me:

Later in the month I was privileged to attend Media That Matters, a yearly gathering of creative media makers who want to change the world for the better.

Photo: Tav Rayne

Finally, the month ended with a trip down to Mexico for Ben’s wedding. (View Flickr set)

While the event was a memorable experience with friends and family, I couldn’t help but sink into a bit of a depression while reading Eisenstein’s ‘The Ascent of Humanity.’ The emotion culminated in A Lament for Childhood. As I look back, I realize how important this was for my ability to look into society’s shadow (and my own) and still push forward.

June – Another wedding, another Latin American country. I spent the first week before the wedding traveling Cuba alone. (View Flickr set)

Almost immediately after the wedding, I set out for two weeks in Costa Rica and Panama, directing a pilot for the web series “Breaking Free” following American expats living abroad. Robin (left) and myself took freedom to new levels.

July – For my wife’s 33 birthday, I took her to the Pan Pacific in downtown Vancouver. It was a night of luxury, wine, and sunsets at English Bay. My follow up post on the Pan’s blog 6 Ways To Be a Tourist (Even If You’re A Vancouver Local)

August – One Week Job Program participant Amanda Lowe arrived in Vancouver and helped put together a “pop-up” event on One Week Job.

Also, after a few months of Skype tag, I came onboard with filmmaker Velcrow Ripper, helping out on his new film “Evolve Love: Love In A Time of Climate Crisis”.

Our first field shoot was the tar sands in Alberta. We followed an indigenous peace walk around the refineries. (View Flickr set). The sheer scope of the project, and the environmental destruction was staggering.

In late August, prior to Burning Man, I stayed at a friend’s cabin in Echo Lake, (near Lake Tahoe). Christine (former editor of Brave New Traveler) is captured here on our hike into the stunning Desolation Sound.

Sept – Next stop, Burning Man, the 50,000+ art and community festival in the desert of Nevada. (View Flickr set) I attempted to distill my second visit with Burning Man: The Prophecy of Shambhala.

In late Sept, One Week Job had its first festival premiere at HatchFest in Bozeman, Montana. (View Flickr set)

October – After a relatively quiet month, I ended with the raucous Work Less Party Party for Halloween. You can see my costume choice was … “enlightened.”

November – As part of an experiment I’d wanted to try for a while, my wife and I decided to decline booze for 30 days, calling it “No Booze November.” We also kicked off a month long yoga intensive studying the yoga sutras of Patañjali with Clara Roberts.

Late month, Sean and I took a detour down to LA for some One Week Job meetings, where we also met up with red paperclip trader Kyle MacDonald. We shot some great footage for a new pilot based on Kyle’s project “Who Are These Guys?“

Lastly, we shot another pilot for the series “Wingmen” with Devon and Jordan. Their company Social Fluency teaches “the art of attraction.”

December – I flew back to Mexico to cover the Climate Summit (COP16) for Velcrow’s film Evolve Love. My beat was “La Via Campesina” – the peasant’s camp, who marched to show their support for food sovereignty and real solutions to climate change. (View Flickr set)

350.org staged a climate action during the conference, holding a mock press conference while the waves continue to rise. I shot and editing this quick piece that afternoon:

Finally, the holidays. Another year, another cute photo of our dog Tobi.

Looking forward now to 2011…

I was recently passed an article espousing an new American revolution, drawing a firm line between us versus them. People versus corporations. A future of Ecotopia versus Mad Max. Passive sheep versus violent overthrow.

I’ve been down this territory before.

My response to these bleak apocalyptic scenarios is the third option: non-violent resistance. Rooted in the belief that the only true revolution is the deep understanding of inter-connectedness.

I am the corporations. I am the oil spills. Just as I am the sunny days, and the joy of being.

Non-violent resistance has many forms beyond the sign-waving mass protest. You might write a song. Or stop eating meat. Or follow your passion. Or confront your fears. Or rediscover love.

Nobody has claim to the one true perspective. Like the diagram above, (shared) reality is manifested by our multiple perspectives. Our ideas about reality are never as grand as actual reality – the perfect unfolding of life in all its forms. And yet our actions certainly have an effect on reality (also known as karma).

As we enter into further times of chaos, we must remember to live gracefully, no matter the challenges, and explore multiple visions of the future.

The most telling scene in The Social Network was between Eduardo Saverin (Zuckerberg’s best friend and CFO) and his unhinged girlfriend. She confronts him after his return from a business trip, and demands why his Facebook status still lists him as “single.”

He confesses that he actually doesn’t know how to update his relationship status. His girlfriend believes it must be a lie… after all, as how could the CFO of Facebook not know how to update his status?

Rather than acknowledge the reality of being in a relationship, she resides in the “image” of reality. Rather than have an actual relationship with Eduardo, it’s not real until the image shows others it’s real.

For me, this is the true zeitgeist of our times.

Social networking has given us the ability to live our entire lives through the projections we show to the world. The sheer volume of “friends” that most people connect with online is far greater than the authentic connections we could hope to sustain face-to-face. Some of these friends we will meet occasionally, while most, never at all.

In effect, “you” ceases to exist. In your place is the “image of you” – constructed by status updates, photos, quiz results, movie clips, quotes, and of course, your friends.

This phenomenon is not new. We do the same thing with language, science, and religion. A Zen parable warns against becoming lost in the abstract: it’s like eating the menu instead of the food.

Similarly, Alan Watts argues in The Book, that this abstraction is not a problem in itself. After all, we have no other way of apprehending reality, other than through our interpretations:

There is no alternative to the use of conceptions and images, and no harm in it so long as we realize what we are doing. Idolatry is not the use of images, but confusing them with what they represent, and in this respect mental images and lofty abstractions can be more insidious than bronze idols.

Another example. The opening scene of The Social Network reveals Mark Zuckerberg and his soon-to-be ex girlfriend at the pub. After a rapid-fire argument, she tells him, “Even though you’ll likely be a success someday, you’ll think people will hate you because you’re a nerd. But in fact, they’ll hate you because you’re an asshole.”

Zuckerberg proceeds to become obsessed not with examining his own misperceptions about himself and others – but instead, about altering the perception that others have of him. Likewise, he flips the exclusion he faced from the top fraternity’s at Harvard by creating the most popular network in the world. Suddenly, everyone wants to be his friend – or more accurately, be “seen” as his friend.

The irony is Zuckerberg (at least as portrayed in the film) becomes so lost in the trappings of abstract relationships, that he failed to cultivate the one real friend he had – Eduardo Saverin. Their bond ends in bitter litigation and settlement.

Alan Watts continues:

“It is difficult not to feel the force of the image, because images sway our emotions more deeply than conceptions. When we realize that this form of identity is no more than a social institution, and one which has ceased to be a workable life-game, the sharp division between oneself and the ultimate reality is no longer relevant.”

The final scenes of the film return Zuckerberg to his ex-girlfriend scorned. Rather than resolve to mend their relationship in person, he reaches out the only way he knows how: he adds her on Facebook.

And refreshes the page…continuously…awaiting her response.

Someone asked me recently “what do you do?” I replied “I’m a storyteller.”

In the moment, I was referring to my work in documentary film. I tell stories (or more accurately) the stories of other people through the medium of film. My personal worldview is revealed through the types of stories I share.

Later on, it struck me: what other ways do I tell stories?

Certainly on my blog, the topics I write about. But also the articles and quotes I post to Facebook and Twitter. The comments I leave on other people’s walls. The status updates (some witty, some not).

In the world of social media, you are what you share.

But storytelling is also offline. How you spend your dollars, your time, your moments. How you sit in traffic, or ride your bike, or play with your dog, or hold the door open for someone else. The food you eat, the smiles you offer, the calmness or anxiety you project. The words you speak, the steps you take, the breaths you exhale.

All of these are passages of a story you’re writing – the story about yourself and your relation to the world.

What story are you telling?

On the side of a bus, the new poster for Inception says “The dream is real.”

Tantalizing movie tag-lines aside, I decided to pose the exact opposite.

The real is a dream.

And then I played with a thought experiment:

You sitting in morning traffic is a dream.

You are a dream.

Only love is real.

On one hand, I can count the number of times I’ve cried as adult.

Does that seem odd? We are surrounded by a constant bombardment of misery, suffering, and pain, and yet I’ve only been moved to tears a handful of times.

I wonder – does it speak to my inability to feel emotion? Or the success of the unreality…the banality…of the violence around me?

In 2005, after completing a 10 day Vipassana retreat, I arrived home. After 10 days without external stimuli, without even speaking, I was suddenly thrust back into the world, and coincidentally, Hurricane Katrina.

I watched as stories poured in of the destruction; homes flooded, bodies buried, families torn apart. Yet it wasn’t until I saw a rescue worker interviewed on CNN telling the news anchor about an elderly woman left in her hospital bed as the waters rose. She couldn’t escape the facility herself, but had access to a phone. The rescue worker, visibly shaken, related how he kept in contact with her over the phone. “Someone is coming,” he told her. “We will save you.”

As the rescue worker broke down, the news anchor shifted uncomfortably. “No one came to save her…” said the worker, now in tears. “The water came and she was alone. No one came to save her…”

The anchor abruptly ended the interview – unable to give acknowledgment to the pain of tragedy. No…far better to move on to the next story. The next tragedy.

I wept in his place.

Today I cried again. Today, I realized another great tragedy, what Charles Eisenstein calls The Great Robbery:

The anger of the teenager is the indignation of the dispossessed. The Great Robbery is first and foremost the pillage of their childhood. Childhood is supposed to be a realm of exploration in which we discover our passions, our selves, our life purpose. What we get instead is enslavement to schedules and obligations.

Childhood is supposed to be a time of play. And what is play? Play is something far different from what we, in a degenerate age, call fun—the consumption of entertainment. Play is supposed to be nothing less than practice in creating the world. Its highest expression is “deep play”, the kind which unfolds over days and weeks.

In deep play, children create entire worlds of the imagination, in which toys are but props. In so doing, they prepare themselves for an adulthood empowered in the divine function of world-creation.

He continues:

An equally grave loss is the loss of our passion and purpose. Bereft of the chance to explore our inner world, we grow up not truly knowing what we love or what we want to make of our lives. In the absence of a passion, we easily accept the range of available substitutes. I might as well be an engineer. Maybe I’ll major in finance. That might be okay. I’ll get a good job at least. Ask someone thus dispossessed what they really love, what makes their heart sing, and they won’t even know.

If you accept that the purpose of life is indeed merely to get by, to survive, to get a secure job with benefits, get married, have kids, retire securely, grow old and die, then perhaps this result isn’t so tragic. But if the adolescent intuition is true, that we are indeed here on earth for a magnificent purpose, then the cutoff from our passion is a terrible crime.

What does your heart tell you?

I cried because my heart tells me this is the truth. I see it in the pervasive mechanisms all around me – friends without purpose, surrendering their spark for an insidious lie.

Here is the right message—and it applies equally to the suicidal teenager as well as to the commonly resentful. The message is that what you have always secretly suspected is true.

The world is not supposed to be like this. Your intuitions of something more beautiful are valid. You are meant for an amazing, divine purpose. You are brilliant, possessed of unique gifts just waiting to be discovered. And—very important—anyone who tells you otherwise is lying. Worse than lying, they are stealing from you.

Much has been stolen already, but there is one thing no one can ever steal (though you might put it aside, temporarily) and that is your soul knowledge of the message I have just related. What’s more, it is possible to recover all that has been lost. It might take time, but no one is a helpless victim.

All we need is to reconnect with the power we already have.

It is the power, first and foremost, to say no. You have been exercising that power all along, in fact, but when you begin to see the source of the betrayal, when you begin to see through the lies that construct the lesser life and lesser world that most of us have grudgingly accepted, then that power is multiplied a thousandfold. You have the power to withdraw, not through the unconscious mechanisms of laziness, depression or suicide, but consciously, mindfully.

And then, in the empty space that you create for yourself, begin to play. Begin to do what you enjoy, without having to justify it to anyone. From this starting point you will discover meaning, passion, and life, and you will become indominable.

In 2004, I learned our society was in serious trouble. I’d wandered onto Life After the Oil Crash, which aptly opens with the line:

Civilization as we know it is coming to an end soon.

The site chronicles peak oil and the ensuing economic downfall that will have us all in mud huts, throwing rocks at each other before we know it.

My first reaction was disbelief. I was in shock…how could the world I know suddenly end? It wasn’t possible. As I read deeper into the site, the possibility became less far-fetched. My second reaction was despair, with a healthy dose of denial. I wanted to keep my lifestyle. I didn’t want to change.

Eventually, I became angry. How could humanity be so stupid? Which is another way of saying, why am I the only intelligent being on this planet?

I wanted other people to know how stupid they were. I wanted to shake people on the streets, send them damning articles of their gross consumption, and try to wake these sheep up from their slumber.

But a funny thing happened.

A few people listened. Others reacted angrily, and told me in no uncertain terms that they didn’t have to change. They were entitled to their lifestyles and no one could say differently. Most of all, people ignored me and went on with their lives.

It wasn’t long before my anger turned into depression. We’re all doomed. I figured I might as well give up and grab a front row seat for the apocalypse.

And so I waited…and waited….and waited some more.

Outside my own personal prison, the sun kept shining. Dogs kept playing in the park. Friends enjoyed moments together. The ocean kept on lapping at the shore. Basically, life went on.

It was around that time I remembered a book from my childhood. I can’t recall the actual title, but the story should be familiar to most people.

Here’s a good retelling of the parable:

A story is told about the North Wind and the Sun. It seems that each claimed to have the greater power over mortals and a dispute arose.

“I am much stronger, ” said the North Wind. “I blow and blow and can even cause great oak trees to tumble to the ground. Surely I have a greater power over man.”

“Indeed not,” said the Sun, “for without my warmth, a man would surely die! Consider the oak tree. Without me it would not grow to be so tall.”

And so it was that the two decided to try their powers upon an unknowing traveler, deciding to see which of them could soonest strip him of his cloak. The North wind furiously blew down upon the man, and caught up his cloak, believing he could wrestle it from him in one single gust.

But is was soon apparent that the harder he blew, the more closely the man wrapped himself up in the garment.

The Sun then said, “I shall try my hand at this venture.” So he looked down upon the traveler and beamed his light ever so gently upon him.

Eventually, the man unclasped his coat as it draped over his shoulders. The sun then shone down with his full strength, and before he had gone much further down the road, the man took off his cloak so he could complete his journey.

You can interpret this is many different ways, but for me, the message was clear:

If you want to change the world, inspiration is more effective than force.

I decided it was time to leave my angry mental prison; which had really become an extension of my ego. I wouldn’t have admitted it at the time, but judging others gave me a perverse sense of identity.

Instead, I did some further pondering and came to the conclusion that you can’t change others directly. You can only deal with yourself. You can only deal with your own impact on the world, and work to your essence, regardless of what others think.

As the Buddha said, you must “live in you heart.” And that’s the most effective inspiration there is.