By Cathy Eck

Hurricane as a Metaphor

In the ancient world, everything had meaning.  Every event had a lesson.  Every person and every experience was a mirror into our inner world, our thoughts and our beliefs.  The ancient ones understood that nothing could happen to us unless we had a belief that allowed it into our experience.

This was a very powerful way to live.  It isn’t easy to take responsibility for the problems that come into our life, especially when they are as big as a hurricane.  I’ve known this for years and still struggle with it every day.  But it is how we were born to live;  if we have the responsibility, then we have the power.

The trick to life in the ancient world was to stay in the eye of the hurricane where everything was calm.  Since our beliefs created our reality, our job was to make sure that we didn’t accept beliefs into our mind that allowed problems to enter our life experience.

Our True Self has no beliefs.  The True Self doesn’t know of problems.  Very few people live from the True Self.  Often it takes a crisis for people to drop their beliefs and live from the truth.  People who have been polarized by the 2012 election will help another out in a crisis regardless of party if their lives or homes are in danger.  It is sad, but often reality.

Our True Self Lives in the Eye of the Hurricane

Our True Self doesn’t know of problems.  The True Self is always calm, always clear, always empowered.  While the rest of the world is flying around in the winds of their false self, the True Self sits calmly and quietly in the eye of the hurricane.

While many people live through an event like a hurricane, each person has a unique experience.  According to the ancients, each gets their own personal message.  Each one gets the challenge that they need the most.  The reason for the challenge is only to push them to let go, to move to the eye of the hurricane, to stop fighting life by rigidly holding on to beliefs that just aren’t true (especially the beliefs they have about their fellow human beings).

The Eye of the Hurricane is simply a symbol.  But every challenge that comes us has an eye.  It is that place in our minds where we can see the beliefs that allowed the experience to unfold for us as it did.  The more we let go, the easier it is to stay in the eye.

The ancients taught us that nothing bad could happen if we didn’t have a belief that let it in.  So bad events and people expose the beliefs we hold in mind.  Sadly that information was lost, and losing that secret stripped us of our power.  We won’t let go of beliefs if we don’t know they are false or don’t know we can let them go.

Authority Moved to the Center

Kings don’t have slaves if people are empowered.  Religion isn’t necessary if people recognize their power.  You don’t need prophets or oracles to talk to God for you if you can do it yourself.  So early religious and political leaders made God responsible and humans powerless.  Kings and priests could talk to God, and God said what the kings and priests decided they would say.  Humans became mortal and flawed.  The Goddess was silenced; and the link between the normal human being and God was cut.  People no longer understood why bad things happened to them when they tried so damn hard to be good.

When the leaders are sitting in the eye of the hurricane, and we are flying around in the wind, it does no good to take personal responsibility because we’ve given them our power.  We have to recognize that leaders are not our authorities, we are.  We have to let go of the beliefs that keep us inferior to our leaders.  We have to take back our power.  We have to know that we control our destiny.  We have to know that our own thoughts and beliefs affect the quality of our life.

Taking Back Our Power

It is time that we all take back our power.  We need to look at our beliefs and if they don’t increase our personal power, help to keep us safe and secure, or reconnect us to God, then we need to let them go.  We were meant to live in a diverse and crazy world from the eye of the hurricane.  We were meant to live from certainty and clarity.  We were meant to be able to discriminate between truth and falsehood.  We were meant to be responsible for our life, and that is very good news.

People can play a leader role in religion and in politics if they can inspire us and make win-win decisions that support our personal power.  They can help us to stand in the eye of the hurricane along side of them.  They don’t get to tell us what to think or who we are.  They don’t get to stand in the way of our safety or our connection to God.  They don’t get to tell us how to live.  They don’t get to control our destiny.  And if they do throw us out in the wind, we have the right to ignore them because they are false.  We have the right to live in the center, in the eye of the hurricane.

Staying in the eye of the hurricane requires eliminating level confusion.