Take Back Your Life!

Hey rebels,

I spent all of my twenties and much of my thirties sleepwalking through my life. Obediently placing my shoes in the impressions of the shoes that preceded me. Never questioning where the hell I was going.

Didn’t realize I was on autopilot until a new colleague assumed the desk behind me at my then research job. At one point after professing my boredom, she said, “read The Women Who Run With The Wolves.”

Her prose slapped me into an awakened state. The first one I’d been in since a child, when I constantly roamed my world with senses open and engaged.

“Wait a minute,” I thought. “There’s another way through life? Yes, there are many, many ways through life.”

It annoyed me that I’d been herded like cattle into one direction, that I’d bought into the “if you just do a, b and c, you’ll be happy, fulfilled and successful.” I felt betrayed by the system. (Subsequently, on a trip to Austria, which is automated to the hilt, the municipal parking gate had jammed open and we escaped through it without paying. I kept yelling, “We beat the system. We beat the system.”)

And the sleepwalking isn’t limited to individuals, entire governments sleepwalk to the detriment of all. It can be extremely difficult to try and wake up a public official — take fluoride for example. People are buying and dumping this stuff in their drinking water. It’s collected in the pollution scrubbers at superphosphate fertilizer plants in Florida. It would need to go to a hazardous waste site if it didn’t go in the drinking water. It ate through its concrete holding tank in New Orleans and spilled into the Mississippi. Boats were not allowed to motor through it because they cordoned off the area due to the hazardous conditions. It’s changing the structure of children’s teeth (and bones most likely) to the point that up to 40% of kids have visible dental fluorosis (chalky white patches, sometimes crumbling). Yet, officials have only slightly backed off from dumping it in the water, by lowering the recommended amounts. (Are they afraid of lawsuits?)

Fluoride is just one example of sleepwalking. If you want a good read on the subject, check out, “The Fluoride deception.” Or visit the Fluoride Action Network.

People who are completely sleepwalking won’t be reading this because they won’t be trying to get off the path headed toward the cliff. They won’t even realize they’re on a path or a cliff exists. The folks who return to read my words (thank you!) are either coming awake or awake. They want to awaken further or stay awake.

Here are three tips to stop sleepwalking.

1) Question why you spend most of the day doing forgettable things and little of the day doing memorable things.

2) If you find yourself saying, “But I don’t have a choice.” Take a closer look at your situation. Do you really only have one choice or have you been taught to block out the other, better options because it benefits the system?

3) Pick something in your local community you want to change and do something about it, starting today. Write a letter to the editor, pick up the phone, organize a meeting. Go from the grassroots up.

If you try even one of these “Stop Sleepwalking” suggestions today, you’ll slap yourself into an awakened state. Once you wake up you won’t want to fall back to sleep. The world will feel alive and you’ll be bursting with energy!

Have you fallen victim to sleepwalking? What helped you snap out of it?

Muse thx, G.