Higher Self Perspective: The Walking Dead

The zombie apocalypse has me wondering what spirit is trying to show me.  You’ll have to pardon my frequent The Walking Dead references, but I have been enjoying the show immensely.  There are many things that I love about it, but primarily I enjoy watching the fight to define authority. (You can read more about authority and The Walking Dead in my blog titled Take Me To Your Leader:  Mercury Retrograde, Part I.) In the show, the world has been struck by disease and a zombie plague has broken out.  The show focuses on a band of people who have come together to survive.  They are a small group that mostly began as strangers, but who have come to bond through the mutual struggle for survival.  I think it’s a well-written show because I like the commitment to their values of unity and the elements of conflict that have real world (safe world applicability.)  There’s the conflict over killing zombies and the conflict over killing the living.  New rules are made and new ethics are being established in the name of protection, defense, safety and the long haul.  Without going into too much detail about plot, I want to jump to a few lessons that I’ve learned from bingeing on The Walking Dead.

First of all, the dangers of binge watching anything at all, is that images of the thing are stuck in your head.  It’s one thing to binge watch Being Erica, which is full of beautiful people living in a beautiful city working together in a mostly friendly and loving environment.  It’s another to binge on a landscape of terror, violence, attack and mistrust.  When you go to bed at night, your mind will replay images of what it has consumed.  In the first example, it has consumed Erica’s beauty and light-hearted struggle with the backdrop of a beautiful apartment, a beautiful office, a beautiful coffee shop.  In The Walking Dead, it’s gore, guts, blood, grime, slime, inhumanity, and the constant threat of danger.  The lesson here is:  Feed yourself what is healthy, light and beautiful for a good night’s sleep.

Alright, so last night, I dreamt that I was alone and the zombies were on my trail.  I felt fear of the zombies, but fear because of the lack of control.  I couldn’t get a handle on anything.  Everything was moving so fast.  There were other people that eventually came and we were working together, but I couldn’t get into my body and I couldn’t find a sense of connection with them.  I mean, I had a birds-eye perspective, but the me who was down on the ground fighting was so busy being fearful and trying to protect herself, that she was keeping my higher perspective out.  WOW!  Ha!  Now that’s a lesson!  So let me bring this down to practical terms.  I had a birds-eye perspective— I was up above the danger, seeing openings, finding passageways and even the ability to endow the me on the ground with super strength.  The me on the ground fighting the zombies was so focused on the danger around her that she could not let in the vision that I was offering.  This is Higher Self and Ego 101.  In my life, my ego is constantly telling its stories of the world from its perspective.  Some of these stories are pleasing to it but with the ego, every pleasing story has a contradiction.  For example, “I am so blessed by the world around me— the friends I have, my home, my lifestyle… BUT I am going to have to move soon.  How will I maintain my friendships?  I will miss the closeness.  I will have to start over.  What if I’m making a mistake?”  The ego is always gonna build its dreams on shaky ground because its whole being is shaky.  It is a lie building lies in a collective consciousness of lies.

The Higher Self, however, is not a lie and the Higher Self has NO contradictions.  The Higher Self is ALWAYS unconditional creativity, extension, peace and love.  It is not ‘romantic’ love which is conditional.  It is unconditional love that begins at Source.  But that is a different story.  The Higher Self is the energetic truth that is beyond the temporal, beyond the corporal. It is without contradiction because it is one thing: Love.  If it ain’t love, then it ain’t the Higher Self.  If it ain’t a peaceful, trusting, surrendered feeling of ease, then it ain’t the Higher Self. (By the way, I wrote another article about the Higher Self’s perspective last week.  You might enjoy reading it.)

In The Walking Dead, there is a character named Michonne.  She is GORGEOUS.  Ebony skin and a voice like honey.  She uses a samurai sword to carry out her work.  When she fights, she is always in the zone.  She doesn’t struggle.  She slows down, she comes into her self, her feet take on their stance of stability and you can see the focus come into her third eye.  She is not afraid because she is safe in her focus.  The Force is strong in her and she’s who I want to be when I grow up. Look, if something ever shakes Michonne’s focus then she’s up shit creek because she forges ahead with the goals and aims and can find herself completely surrounded by things that want to take her life.  However, she realizes that a zombie is just a zombie.  It is without guile.  It’s just there to serve the purpose of feeding mindlessly.  It only needs to have its cerebellum severed and then it’s no longer a threat.  She doesn’t confuse her identity with that of the zombies.  She knows who she is.

So here we find two more lessons from The Walking Dead. The first one is that we are not the the ego, which has a narrow perspective.  There is always a part of us that sees the bigger picture and has a way out of danger and a pathway to peace, love, creativity, prosperity and above all the safety that comes from knowing that what is Almighty is actually within.  The second lesson is that even when there is a real threat of danger, running around like a chicken with your head cut off is rarely the answer.  You’re gonna be much more powerful when you tune into your place of power.  Be like Michonne— remember who you are, get in your stance, draw your sword and let go of the fear, get into the Real.

There’s a final lesson that I want to share with you and that is about vigilance.  In The Walking Dead, the leader of the group, Rick Grimes (how’s that for a name!) trains his community to stay vigilant.  This is really important to recognize.  In my journey, I remember thinking and hoping that once I got enlightened things would be a lot easier.  Hahahahaha!  I remember thinking— yeah, Enlightenment is like a city at the top of a hill… once you get up it, then you’re living in paradise and life becomes easy.  Ha!  No.  You gotta fight for your Higher Self every single day. Every day you have to get up to your position on top of the hill and stay there. The ego is like a whole herd of zombies coming at you all the time.  They are constantly chomping at you— taking your attention, grabbing at your ankles, pulling on your hair… just trying to take you down and consume you.  Just because you spent yesterday in an open and expansive state, does not mean that you will be there tomorrow.  In my very own personal The Walking Dead marathon, I have witnessed that constant vigil is necessary.  I do not believe that it has to be a fearful vigilance, though– not for working with my ego as the zombie predator.  By season six, the main characters under Rick’s care are so at ease with their hard-earned skills of zombie obliteration that they all go into their confrontations with a sense of ease and patience.  This is something that I am taking on for myself in dealing with my own fears and anxieties. I mean, I know this probably sounds crazy, but I have to say that I have been experiencing zero anxiety, fear, worry and concern since I started watching this show primarily because I am taking on the ease of characters like Michonne.  Fuck!  If she can stand calm in the face of 15 zombies, I can stand calm in the face of chocolate cake.  Saturn is retrograde, too, and that helps a LOT.  But that is a different story.

Are you tired of reading about zombies?  I’m tired of writing about them… for now.  I still have two seasons left.  Let’s see what comes up next.  In the meantime, I wish you a blessed day of following your heart and enjoying the lessons that come up for you along the way.