By Wes Annac, Culture of Awareness

A thought recently came to me that I’d like to share with those of you who also want to expose and bring down oppression, whether in government, big corporations or anything else.

What if the darkness we witness in the world mirrors the darkness that lives within?

Maybe we reinforce mental and spiritual slavery by refusing to address and heal the issues that keep us from knowing ourselves, and if we could set ourselves free, we could make it easier for the world to be free too.

I don’t mean to say that one person’s liberation will automatically free the world, but I do think our inner and outer realities are one and this oneness is important when it comes to personal and societal change.

What we feed within will manifest in the world, and if we can set ourselves free, we can make it easier for others to be free too. It’ll be easier to share our love and good vibes with everyone unconditionally when we liberate ourselves, and we can make an undeniable impact on the world if we dedicate ourselves to giving good vibes freely.

We’ll realize along the way that the people in power want to control our freedom and social/spiritual awareness. Then, we can raise awareness by sharing our knowledge with a world that’s slowly opening up to what we have to say.

From a freshly liberated space, we can shine our light on everything good and everything that needs to change. In doing so, we can encourage people to liberate themselves from their own oppression while engaging in the fight for humanity’s rights, and we’ll make abundant progress in the areas of personal and societal change.

We can help people realize we live in a conditioned world where we’re force-fed opinions about society and spirituality concocted by the one percent, and we can encourage them to spread the word and reach even more open minds.

It’s often said that inner change leads to outer, and whether or not you think this is true, most of us can agree that inner change is important.

At the very least, it can inspire us to contribute to the changes the world needs, because we’ll feel better and clearer when we’ve dealt with our inner resistance.

We’ll be more inspired to address the world’s most pressing issues, and we’ll work with others to devise solutions in a way that takes everyone’s opinion into account. This will require us to hear people out even if their opinion is drastically different from ours, and again, inner change will make this easier.

It’ll be difficult to deal with people who think differently if we haven’t addressed our issues and we’re prone to anger or outbursts. If we have addressed them, however, we can calmly listen to everyone’s perspective and agree to disagree if necessary, with respect for the value of each person’s opinion.

I don’t think this vision is naïve. In fact, I think it’s inevitable if we want to make a sustainable change but impossible if we can’t heal our own darkness.

We can bring an end to government and corporate corruption, but none of it will last if we don’t resolve the tendencies that have caused it. The greed and corruption responsible for the world’s condition will live on, because we’ll have done nothing to correct the underlying cause.

We’ll have exposed and brought down the people who gave into greed, corruption, hatred, etc., but we’ll fail to confront the qualities themselves, which live in nearly everyone on some level.

Until we confront them, in ourselves and in society, none of the changes we manage to make will last because people will continue to fall prey to these pervasive influences. The more people who feed them, the more influential they become, but they lose their power the moment we stop feeding them.

The problem is that we all have to do it to change the world, and it’s only a problem because most people are still unwilling to address anything dysfunctional about themselves or the world.

Some people are quick to condemn the world’s problems but fail to address their own issues, and while it feels great to fight for a noble cause, it can come with an underlying sadness and sense of loss if we use it to avert our issues.

The same can happen with spirituality. While spirituality is mostly intended to be a form of healing and a means to reconnect with oneself, it too can be used to avert our issues and block our connection with ourselves.

It’s a positive way to live for a lot of people, but for some, it can be another reason to fixate their attention on the external world. It’s easy to focus on an array of spiritual concepts, but it’s a little harder to reconnect with ourselves on a deep level.

Some don’t prefer the silence and stillness that are required for meditation and choose to feed their mind spiritual information instead, which is helpful but not nearly as powerful or insightful as meditation.

The point I want to make is that the unwillingness to address our dysfunctional condition and the condition of the planet is making things worse at a rapid rate, and we’ll eventually work together to keep civilization moving.

Some people think society will sputter out of control and things will be chaotic before anything positive emerges, but I don’t think it’ll be so bad.

Any drastic societal change would cause an initial shock, but once the dust settles, we can create something positive if we work together. This, in my view, is why inner change is crucial if we want any hope of working together.

World events are mirroring the condition of the collective consciousness, and we can change this by getting to the heart of our personal issues and facilitating personal and planetary healing.

It also helps to try to make the world better, and when it comes to the effect we have on others, a heart-centered attitude goes a long way. We can brighten the day of everyone we come across if we live from the heart, and in my opinion, this too is one small step to changing the world.

We need more respect for the value of each person, regardless of their race, class, sexual preference, etc., and when we can cultivate it together, we can start to live in a world that honors everyone’s rights.