The Curse
“May you live in interesting times.”
-Unknown, Ancient Chinese Curse
This curse makes me smile every time, perhaps because it so beautifully addresses the ‘trip’ that I always feel like I am caught in. I understand the quote to mean that for our fragile minds, easily distracted by ‘worldy concerns’, reaching realization is made more difficult by an atmosphere of turbulence rather than one of tranquility; In other words, our attachment to what is going on outside is interfering with what goes on inside. If this doesn’t quite make sense, try moving your seat to somewhere more (or less) chaotic, and notice how your focus changes. From technological innovations to global dilemmas, there is no question of the relevance of this curse, on a large scale, today.
Positive Insignificance Himalayas, Nepal
I believe that this “curse” is actually a great fortune, should we choose it to be. We are not cursed for inheriting such an interesting time; we are the beneficiaries of lifetimes of progress toward awakening. We wake up each morning to a world unfathomable by previous generations. We wake up each morning to new triumphs and terrors, as part of a collective human effort to navigate uncharted territory. Perhaps, the most interesting time in the history of our species!
Now, undoing this curse is an active effort. We are still widely basking in the yuppie paradise model that ‘more is better,’ and our actions reflect this. Our interests are in self-preservation and self-promotion, and thus, the paradigm revolves around more power, more money, and more efficiency. This is a very contracted way to live. We have yet to notice that a far more interesting facet of this ‘time’ is what is going on among the collective global society. We are on the verge of mass collapse and simultaneously ripe for mass awakening. If this facet of our ‘interesting times’ is not mind-blowingly interesting to you, you are mind-blowingly interesting to me!
The Fool On the Hill Mont Blanc, France
This is where the shift in consciousness can and will occur. When we begin to acknowledge the vast spectrum of inter-connectedness that our predicament represents, we will naturally take interest in it. Transmuting our paradigm of self-absorbed contraction to one of inter-connected expansion will happen naturally. And this is where we exorcise the curse. This is where we begin to awaken, where life becomes so grand and vastly interesting that going back to sleep is just not an option. This is our foundation for deep extra- and intra-personal work.