Bankruptcy and Becoming the Force Field for the Invitation Home

I received an email from a treasured friend today with a link to a New York times article entitled: Too Little, too late: Bankruptcy Booms Among Older Americans.

My friend knows that I declared bankruptcy 10 years ago at age 62. She also knows that I am writing a book about my experience of that and about what I now know differently to be an authentic and more expanding truth, inside, where I live.

I know this is an important conversation. No matter hold you are when it is declared - whether you are a senior citizen, a younger adult, or a child catapulted into the deep and heavy spray of it, it is devastating. Huge shame and feelings of stupidity, insufficiency and insecurity come with it. A lot or fault and blame and a lot of rationalizing it all, so that we can, at the very least... and maybe at most... attempt to feel good about ourselves.

The paradox is that all of these feelings have lived, out of conscious awareness, out of conscious mind, as the vibratory force field to either support the truth or the untruth of what we have become entrained to believe is our intrinsic worth and value OR not that. If my sense of internal safety as a child is dependent on paradoxically betraying the security of my authentic and internal knowing of whom and what I AM to the prevailing winds of parental dogma - so that I feel valued - I have already stepped into the prevailing yet unacknowledged landmine of bankruptcy. The process of re-entrainment has already begun. That entrainment is the re-enactment and fortification of aeons of intergenerational modelling. It may take generations to catch up... and catch up, it does. Like it or not, modelling is our greatest teacher.

Already, I am seeing the declaration of bankruptcy fast becoming the experience of so many at an older age. This is not an American phenomenon; it is happening the world over.

Bankruptcy. Sadly, it is becoming a big reality for seniors who, historically entrained to an outdated collective meme about safety-nets, security and retirement - are discovering that these old buckets of belief, intended to carry the waters of historically expected outcomes, are now in severe erosion… and have been for a very long time. Not only has the water leaked out, re-filling said buckets - while willfully denying blindness to the obvious erosion and its holes - only ensures further leaking, erosion and holes.

I think that is what we do not or are unwilling to get, deep in the DNA of our cells: leaks propel erosion…. and erosion propels leaks. Holes are inevitable. To continue to fill eroded buckets with water will only get us more of the same: thirst unquenched; thirst parched; bodies and systems in collapse.

Bailing out Wall Street to water the status quo is a significant example of this. It happened in 2008. It will happen again. It can’t not. It is the metaphor of continuing to fill a rusty, eroding bucket. The bottom is in collapse; the bottom is on its way out. Yet, still we choose to not see.

Think of change as the outcome that manifests within the combined action of crucible and spear… in chemistry, think mortar and pestle. A crucible without a spear to move and to ignite a change in construct becomes a vessel of non-movement, resulting, long-term, in stagnation. The reverse also is true: a pestle that cannot touch the walls/bottom of a crucible carries no power to ignite change. Again, an opportunity denied.

Our global denial of climate change is another such significant metaphor for bankruptcy. As a species, we have taken way too much from Gaia and have contributed virtually nothing to(ward) her well being. I’ll save my thoughts about the absence of any reciprocity here for another post. We are in serious overdraft (denial) of our own intrinsic vibration that I have come to know as ‘RIG' (Respect, Integrity and Generosity of Spirit)... an expression that can propel us into our welcomed, future selves well beyond the current, global platitudes for the four-letter word we call ‘Love’ .

Think about it! ‘Love’ has, so often, inauthentically served to saturate the airwaves of our histories with lies adapted and accepted as truths. At a much higher order of thinking, RIG, as the context for all meaning, brings life into the ONE intention of both crucible and spear, mortar and pestle… which is to collaborate, for the sheer joy of creating. RIG, as the living call to what is potently possible, evokes a remembering of our intrinsic value, our intrinsic worth as quantum biological human beings. Consciousness drives it all. Intention, meaning, choice, gratitude, compassion, forgiveness (claiming the internal peace that transcends all understanding, within), and good will are both its stepping stones and its outcomes.

So the question becomes, then: How AM I choosing, in this moment... and the next… and the next... to live as the godForce that I AM in the process of being and becoming, while in the midst of global bankruptcy of all that is presenting? Am I willing to own all of the pre-suppositions that are bedrock to this question? Will I choose to remember that what is presenting is never, ever what my life is really all about?

Breathing is good. We can’t take the next inhale of our evolution without exhaling the last… and, present to that, allowing ourselves to really feel and hear the depth and intensity of our exhalations. No more hiding, no more denial. Owning that any resistance is futile. Integrating it all.

People will have their opinions about that. It matters not. What does matter IS that you and I honour our unique and intrinsic rights to choose - at all levels of thinking - what is deeply meaningful to each of us in the process of becoming the ever-expanding, joyful vibration of Self that IS the invitation to others longing to find their way home.