A Brief Break in Blog Posts to Finish My Book

Dear Reader,

Thank you for your support of my blog. I am very excited to bring you much more content.

I have wonderful news.   I have just signed a contract with Red Wheel/Weiser/Conari to publish my book about Enough.  I have just one month to complete my manuscript submission to get on a spring, 2016 release schedule.

Therefore, I will be taking a brief (month or so) break in making social media posts.

In other news, I have two spots left in my free six week telecircle about the transformative power of Enough.  If you are interested in learning more about this opportunity, please contact me at theenoughmessage@gmail.com.

Thank you for reading and I will be back on board in May.

Thanks so much,
Laurie McCammon

Laurie McCammon is a planetary change agent, blogger, facilitator and author of Enough!How to Liberate Yourself and Remake the World with Just One Word, published  by Conari Press, out  April 1, 2016.  You can contact Laurie with comments at lauriemccammon@gmail.com, Like LaurieMcCammon on Facebook or follow her on Twitter at @EnoughMessage

Why I No Longer Root for Heroes (and Don't Want My Son to Be One)

The screen flashes with explosions, the music builds to a crescendo and out of the rubble leaps the hero who has managed to save the innocent and conquer evil against all odds. The crowd is applauding with approval and delight.

How many times have we seen this scenario play out in movies, television, video games and books? Why is it we seem to never get enough of this predictable story line?

As a mother of a teenage boy, my fight  to protect the innocent is very different.  My battle has been against the constant intrusion of the hero story into his and our lives. I know, I know, many of you will be shocked by this statement.  But I think I have something important to say.  How do you tell your son that such a hero scenario rarely or never exists in real life - that the reality actually looks much more like this:   the gun wielding hero returns from battle with PTSD, the ex-sports star ends up divorced and addicted to alcohol or sex,  the young man without job prospects and education joins a gang or a Jihadist group because it promises him the opportunity to feel like a hero.  A real life hero may never receive parades, medals or public adulation and is not likely to perceive himself as a hero at all.   Do I dare tell my son the more insidious and more common truth - that the urge to be a hero is so strong for most men that at some time or other it will drive them to do destructive things that harm their own and their family's well-being?

Let me give you some examples. I imagine these may sound familiar to you. This week, I happen to have been in the right time and place to hear the stories of several different couples who have had or are having marital problems - big problems.  The scenario goes something like this:  The marriage started off great.  There were many exciting things to achieve early in the marriage - homes, children, career advancement.   Life made sense and it was easy to feel like a  hero while achieving early benchmarks of adult life, especially because what you did directly provided security and pleasure for those who matter most to you.    But somewhere in the 40's, the basic milestones having been achieved, the marriage settles into a kind of lull.  Gains in status or condition come much more incrementally, not at all, or there are major economic setbacks.

The 2008 US economic crash caused many males of my generation to experience an unexpected drying up of prospects at a time they were supposed to be at the top of their game.  The effects of a slow economic recovery meant many were getting more and more under water each year, and like the quintessential frog in a pot of boiling water, not realizing it until it was too late. Coming to terms with the loss of their "hero-ability" was messy and complicated.  Ashamed and scared, and probably clinging to the hope that there would be a major economic upswing that would take care of their situation (one that has never come), some sort of gratifying reprieve was sought, whether it was an affair, gambling, alcohol or impulse buying on credit.  I see these behaviors now all as manifestations of the insatiable drive to be seen by others as a hero. When it is denied by day to day realities, there is a tendency to create a space in your life where you can at least pretend to be a hero.

I believe that so much of the political and economic unrest in the world today is caused by the gap between the hero fantasy and the reality in which there is very little opportunity to live out the hero story in legitimate ways.    I wonder what all the boys raised on "Call of Duty" video games will do when they confront this gap as young men.  Will they become like the angry young men in Greece and Spain rioting because there are no jobs, the young men in the Middle East lured by extremist groups to the promise of hero status in a "holy" bloody Jihad? Will more young men enlist to be soldiers, to be used as throwaway pawns in philosophical and economic wars? We must look under the hood and see how the hero myth feeds both sides of any armed conflict and prevents us from ever manifesting peace.

What I have found is that the hero always requires an enemy or a victim - someone to fight or someone to save.  So the hero stands alone and apart, playing a role that objectifies himself and everyone else and denies our depths.  In this scenario, the only "good" role, the only one that satisfies the ego, is that of the hero.  Meanwhile, the enemy earns our scorn and the victim our pity.  But we fail to see the price that even the hero pays for taking on his supposedly desirable role.    Clark Kent was a sensitive, intelligent guy, a lover, but he had to literally change into different clothing to be seen and valued.   This is a schism that sadly reflects reality for many men. The only difference is that instead of a cape and leotards, the costume of choice is a lab coat, work boots, business suit or hard hat.  Instead of a gun, the weapon of choice may be a credit card, some antidepressants and a bottle of Viagra.  The hero story as we have told it is the story of a loner, and does not support the inner conditions for partnership, vulnerability, intimacy, understanding, love or community. Humans are social animals.  We can not thrive without these basic pillars of well-being.

Listening to the stories of regular middle age couples, the fallout from the hero myth is everywhere.  Many fine and caring husbands and fathers, when faced with the cold reality that they cannot be an economic hero to their families, shut down, escape into fantasy side lives,  becoming addicted to gambling, alcohol, sex, video games or drugs.  The effects are devastating:  affairs, bankruptcy, shattered trust, financial betrayal, loneliness, divorce.  Invariably, the choices that were initially hidden are found out by the family, and then the real suffering begins.  Home becomes the last place you are considered a hero. It becomes the very place you are reminded of your shame, your failures, your unmet goals.  One man coped by creating a life of the party alter ego at the bars, another became the compassionate go-to confidante to his female work colleagues but found it hard to ever discuss his own feelings with his wife.  One man could not bear silence, and would zone out on TV or radio on all day and all night, another was treated like a king at the casino where all the dealers and cocktail waitresses knew him by name, the chips on the table paid for by a second mortgage on his home.  What all these stories have in common is that they are stories of separation and disassociation: disassociation from our true needs and feelings, separation from the family support system we need so desperately, separation from the truth of our value as unique and precious beings.

I believe the drive to feel like a hero is so deeply programmed (notice I didn't say inherent), that it lures many men into ever more risky and destructive behaviors, never realizing the price they are paying for clinging to the hero myth until it is too late. I have heard of good men who have in moments of quiet desperation cashed out their wives' 401K's and used the money to gamble instead of to pay back taxes on the house.  I have heard of socially prominent men who are nearly bankrupt and constantly hounded by bill collectors but would never dream of giving  up their golf club membership.  I have heard of men who send their kids to private schools, but who cannot afford to keep the heat in their homes above 55 degrees in the winter.  And I have heard of men - far too many of them - who sadly have taken their own lives because the rift between reality and the hero fantasy was just too overwhelmingly huge to endure.  As I struggle to make sense of these counter-intuitive choices, the hardest to accept is the testimony of many suicide survivors that at the moment of taking action to end their lives, they felt utterly worthless. In fact, what I see is that the dynamic that placed them in that corner existed long before each of these good men were born.  It is unfortunately the consequences of the overall Never Enough Paradigm that has been dominant in human culture for the past 5,000 years, the paradigm I explore in my book, Enough: Beyond the Myth of Lack.


How many more men need to die and how many families must be destroyed before we look to this common cause - the hero myth itself? When will we link arms as mothers, wives, sisters, aunts, friends and daughters to confront the common enemy which rips the men we love from us and from their own hearts?  Little boys are just as sweet, sensitive, intuitive  and emotionally open as little girls. When will we see how seemingly innocuous entertainment  and social conditioning changes the psychology of boys forever, creating a slew of minefields as they seek to define the true meaning of manhood?

I believe the work begins in our homes by engaging our husbands and sons in heart-centered dialogue. It is hard work, but well worth the effort.   Although our marriage was not one of those in distress, my husband and I recently found a way  to a deeper level of connection after 25 years, and I can see that for us it has everything to do with acknowledging how the hero story has kept us from fully experiencing emotional intimacy.

I have come to understand through him  how pervasive and invasive the hero story is, how it makes men afraid to take emotional risks or to appear weak or uncertain to those they rely on for love. To allow a woman to hear tales from one's underbelly is to allow an intrusion into the exclusive world in which a man is taught to be self-sufficient and to value his autonomy and dignity above all else. The last person a man wants in there is a woman who feels sorry for him.

The self-imposed isolation and depravity of this feels so unnecessary to me.  So I have learned to begin by simply listening to my husband's stories.  Gently, softly, I offer comments that simply say I hear him and I appreciate what he has had to go through to be my hero.  I reinforce everything about his essence that I love - his sense of humor, his way of looking at the world, his values.  My job, I realize, is to remind him he is not a role, but the most important person in my life. I reinforce that I didn't sign up for a hero when I married him, I signed up for a partnership.  I admit how I had bought into the hero myth through the feminine half of the hero fantasy - the story of the princess who is swept off her feet by a knight in shining armor.  I apologized for how easy it was to pretend he was not suffering at times under the burden of this impossibly huge hero role.

As I grow older, I am learning more and more to relate to others with empathy instead of  sympathy, and I think this is a key element to breaking the hold of the hero story.    Empathy says, "I hear you.  I see you. This is your journey, but I am solidly with you."     Sympathy says "I feel sorry for you. I will try to fix or save you."   When the hero receives  sympathy, he feels shame and builds bigger walls to isolate himself because a hero isn't supposed to need to be saved.  I am and have always been my husband's biggest fan, and it was shocking to know that most of the time he did not experience my love as approval, but as  the risk of disapproval.  Old tapes of judgement from childhood, society or from our earlier years of marriage when I was less patient and less mature were still very much running the show in his head. If we are to repair the significant damage done by the hero story, we need to begin with our boys and our men by simply saying, " I hear you now.  I see you now.  I love you unconditionally."

The conspiracy theorist in me sees how cleverly the hero story keeps all of us separate and in a state of self-blame, never-enoughness and disempowerment.   This is quite convenient for those who require a ready crop of heroes to do their bidding for them.  I am convinced that the insidious nature of the hero story affects each and every one of us without exception.  

My work on the Enough Message has taught me that our greatest fulcrum for change always rests at the level of cultural story, in realizing that we have not only the right but the responsibility to choose our cultural story consciously.    The Hero Story has been nothing more than an "attractive" delivery system for the old Never Enough Story.  That bigger Never Enough Story is crumbling, and so, too, will the old hero stories.  We are outgrowing them.  But I think we can make it happen more quickly when we participate in the shift. So I am on a campaign to blow the cover on the hero paradigm, to call its bluff and to encourage the formation of a better story. If we are lucky, another generation will not have to live with its spirit-numbing consequences and will come to know that the true call for humanity is to live according to the wisdom of our hearts.

In my next blog, "The Real Hero Within Us:  The Drive to Pay it Forward and Pay it Back" I will explore the inherent, benevolent drive in all of us to serve the greater good, how this has been distorted and co-opted by the hero story,  and how we can attune to our authentic drive to serve a "higher calling that does no harm."

Laurie McCammon, MS, is the author of Enough: Beyond the Myth of Lack.  Her website, www.weareenough.com has free articles, videos, quizzes and more to support those making the shift from Never Enough to Enough.

Find and like us on Facebook at Enough: Beyond the Myth of Lack
or on Twitter at TheEnoughMessage
You can email Laurie directly at theenoughmessage@gmail.com

Laurie McCammon is a planetary change agent, blogger, facilitator and author of Enough!How to Liberate Yourself and Remake the World with Just One Word, published  by Conari Press, out  April 1, 2016.  You can contact Laurie with comments at lauriemccammon@gmail.com, Like LaurieMcCammon on Facebook or follow her on Twitter at @EnoughMessage

Is the Big Breakdown-Breakthrough Moment Almost Here?

I'm sure most of the people who would read my blog have heard of Charles Eisenstein, who is very hot on the circuit these days. I have been following his posts with interest, particularly because I feel his work on "the new story" is in alignment with Enough. But I've noticed something else. He is yet another prominent person who is admitting he does not have a clear vision of the way forward.  In a 3 post series he shares the story and aftermath of a near mutiny at his retreat in Bali.   He is supposed to be the expert, people are coming to him for answers he does not have. They are angry and frustrated. They want him to take charge of the group.  Through his posts, he is trying to come to terms with not knowing how to fix it and how to find the silver lining, the breakdown-breakthrough.  I witnessed a similar near-mutiny at the New Story Summit at Findhorn in late 2014 during which "mutineers" in the middle of the night had littered the stage with post-it notes spelling out "We don't know."  I use the term mutineers lightly because I believe they were divinely inspired truth-tellers, people who were courageous enough to face their uncertainty, discomfort and pain and to name it.  

Last winter, Margaret Wheatley was having what seemed like an existential crisis of her own, so went on extended retreat at Pema Chodron's convent up in my neck of the woods.  She wrote that she was losing faith in humanity as not much had changed since she first wrote Leadership and the New Science.  I predicted the fall of the expert paradigm when I wrote the  "Expert to Essence" section of my book three years ago. But it seems to be happening now with increasing public regularity.   These are tough times to be an expert, particularly in the higher consciousness community for which the expert paradigm is quickly losing relevance.

I know by all outer measures, the world seems pretty grim right now, and change seems to be happening far too slowly to meet the enormity of the challenges we face.  But I see every reason for us to feel optimistic about the future because I am looking in different places, the places that I believe birth the future and offer the kinds of solutions we cannot even imagine yet.   I see that much has changed in the subtle (causal) realm and feel the pulse of the spiritual women's movement quickening significantly just beneath the surface. I witness profound inner and outer breakthroughs every day in those who are dedicated to their spiritual growth. I see thriving social movements and green businesses finding firmer footing and more fans.  I see people moving out of jobs and relationships that no longer fit. I see people being less materialistic and more introspective. I see technology making it cheaper and easier for people with similar visions of the world to come together and to collaborate. But perhaps the greatest breakthrough is in our increasing ability to directly access what Rumi called "the field" and Rupert Sheldrake called "the morphogenetic field."  Ideas that come from this place are fully, instantaneously formed. They come from outside the box of our current Never Enough mindset, instead drawing from the well of abundant enoughness and connectivity.   One small example of this:  it is from this place that the Enough Message © came to me.

Despite acknowledging that the Enough Message was accessed from this divine field of awareness,  I still cannot assess the Enough Work without obvious bias. I have been its scribe and guinea pig for three solid years, so have a personal relationship with it that disqualifies me from possessing true objective perspective.    But I've never felt a more opportune moment for the simplicity and optimism of the Enough Message. From what I understand about the Enough Message, it is not complicated what we need to do to flip the paradigm.  All we lack at the moment is a simple common focal point for action, a shorthand if you will, a way to feel we are all in this together. The 60's had the peace sign. We need the equivalent of a peace sign for our present time.   I get a strong feeling that Enough could be that symbol because it is not a prescription but an inner, personal assessment of ourselves and the world.  Your enough is not my enough, so defining Enough invites participation, relationship and co-creativity.    At a time when even the experts are doubting themselves and some of the most popular TED speeches are about shame and vulnerability, I think we may very well have reached the breakdown-breakthrough  - the "enough is enough" - moment where "I'm not enough" is so intensely painful and so in our collective experience, that we are ready to do something radically different to shed it for good. 

In his post below, Charles searches for an answer to the question, "What should we do?" I love his description of how we cannot seem to find peace with whatever we try to do, and why, no matter how hard we try, we feel that we are failing.  I would add to his vivid map of the "I am not enough and am not doing enough" landscape, that the game is rigged by the Old Never Enough Story itself.  I would suggest that  believing "I am not enough and am not doing enough" is the cause of our ineffectiveness and not merely a symptom. Our embeddedness in the Never Enough belief system is like finding ourselves in a pool of molten tar. From within it, we cannot move far or quickly. But who is to say how quickly and effectively we would be able to take action from outside of it?  For most of us, the "not enough" limiting mental model of ourselves takes root long before we even reach kindergarten and certainly long before we have the capacity to challenge its validity. And so we ingest its poison without even knowing it, limiting our potency and effectiveness as change agents despite all our efforts, insights and good intentions.

Enough as a new sign of unity could express a refusal to internalize "never enough" disempowerment, victimhood and disenchantment ever again.  Enough could be a statement of conscious divestiture from old structures and old systems that abide by an exploitative, destructive  "Never Enough" ethic. But the most powerful potential for Enough as a symbol of unity is when we use it to claim and define the beautiful vision that we do want - enough for ourselves, enough for our communities AND enough for our planet. If we claimed this more complete, whole enough as a group, and held governments, companies and institutions to OUR standard, the world would have to meet us where we are - in a place of expanded consciousness where we only choose to be in relationship with people and institutions that pay it back and pay it forward.

See Charles' most recent post below.  (red accent added by me):  

Previous posts in his series: 

http://www.thenewandancientstory.net/home/breakdown-chaos-and-emergence

http://www.thenewandancientstory.net/home/the-space-between-stories

Wasting Time I'd like to comment on one of the responses to my piece about the breakdown followed by the powerful emergence at the retreat in Bali. The commenter said: I haven't read the full story but my thought is this. Why are they wasting time moaning about the cutting down of the forests, and use that 4 days reflective time to stop it fucking happening? And use the money that they have spent getting there to buy some of it? I quote this, because it is a question I ask myself every time I lead a retreat, or even speak at a two-hour evening event. It is also a question many of the participants are wrestling with. They are not, by and large, New Age spirituality addicts seeking an easy escape from engaging with the problems of the world. Quite the contrary: many of them are seasoned activists in environmental and social justice issues, sometimes (like the rainforest ecologist) with decades of experience. They come to this inquiry for much the same reason I do: dissatisfied with the methods and the failures of their movement, they sense a far greater potency is possible. With few exceptions, anyone who has grown up in the dominant civilization is deeply programmed with the same story of self, theory of change, and habits of perception that are also responsible for ecocide and social injustice. That is why simply trying harder, putting more effort into doing what we have been doing, is unlikely to produce different results. After doing that for a while, we burn out. That is when the deeper inquiry begins; that is when invisible programming comes visible and is available to be changed. At risk of being presumptuous, I hazard to guess that the comment above comes from a place of frustration and helplessness with which I am much familiar. We want to do something about the unfolding horror, but what? The jaded activist has an easy rebuttal to any suggested course of action. Sign a petition? A submissive act that reinforces and validates existing power relationships; a useless exercise in self-righteousness that picks a single fashionable issue from among a million, which, even when the petition succeeds, leaves the system unchanged while lulling us into thinking we're actually "doing" something. Donate to an NGO? What, and contribute to the infamous NGO-industrial complex that depends for its very survival on the continuation of the problems it supposedly seeks to solve? And which has grown too cozy with its ostensible opponents in the corporate and political sector? Join a protest march? Do you mean the permitted kind, which feeds the mainstream media discourse about how wonderful our society is for allowing free speech? Or the spontaneous kind, which is usually crushed before it even begins? Engage in direct action and civil disobedience? Sure, now you're going to feed the narrative of a few disgruntled extremists - then go to jail and congratulate yourself on being a martyr for the cause (if only anyone were paying attention.) Start an organization? Yet another one, you mean, competing for funding, members, and mailing lists with a hundred thousand other organizations? Buy up threatened rainforests? If only it would be more than a drop in the bucket. If only the government there would allow foreigners to own land. If only illegal loggers cared who owns it. If only something as flimsy as property rights couldn't be swept away by eminent domain should the government, at the behest of "investors," decide to develop its "natural resources." OK, enough of that. My point in quoting the jaded, burnt-out activist is not to disparage any of the above tactics, all of which, I believe, have their utility. My point is that there are usually no easy answers. Accordingly, it is hard to know whether "doing something about it" is actually doing something about it, or if it merely satisfies an emotional need to believe that one is doing something about it. Sometimes, whether in our personal lives or in our work as change agents, we come to a point of "I don't know what to do." At such a time, to continue going through the motions of previous doing is usually counterproductive. Why? Because the "I don't know" comes from a realization that whatever I've been doing isn't working, or isn't working well enough. That is the moment to sit back and ask why. Part of the process of uncovering why is a phase of hopelessness and despair. It seems that the world will never change, that the powers-that-be are just too powerful, that our efforts will never be enough. After all, look how hard we tried. We gave everything, and still it wasn't enough. So we fall into helplessness, victimhood, and blame. Maybe it is those other people, those myopic self-interested greedy idiots who just don't care. But then, the conscientious person begins to wonder, Is my blame and victim story obscuring something in myself I have been unwilling to see? How have I been sabotaging and limiting myself? What beliefs about change are a product of my indoctrination in this culture and not the truth? How have I been perpetrating by my actions the same things I seek to overthrow? Why is my organization a microcosm of the same dysfunctional system that rules the planet? How is the world mirroring back at me my own inner ecocide and inner oppression? What can change in me, that would allow me to be as effective as those inspiring individuals I so admire? It is questions like these that launch people on a journey of inner and interpersonal development. (They are not abandoning the cause or indulging in New Age narcissism.) That journey can be scary, for most of us harbor an inner cynic who, echoing the words of my commenter, demand that we do something about it - now! Don't waste time in moaning or self-reflection. There is no time to waste! Do you know how many trees were cut down while you were reading this essay? Perhaps you recognize that inner monologue, as well as the hortative tactics it mirrors, as an example of a failed approach to change-making, as a subtle echo of the domineering relationship to the Other that has brought society and the planet near to ruin. I hope, my dear reader, that it is clear that I am not saying, "Don't take action." If I am saying anything beyond "I don't know what to do," it is to warn against reflexively acting from an urgent need to seem to be doing something. And also, to invite us all to trust the impulse to look inward, to do work on oneself, to accept that by healing the inner dimension of oppression and ecocide, we can become more effective at healing the outer as well. And perhaps sometimes, yes, to moan about the destruction, to let in the grief and the anguish, and especially to be witnessed in it in community. All of this, surely, can proceed alongside continuing action, but often we require an empty space, a retreat, a time of non-doing in order to deprogram ourselves from old habits. We can trust ourselves to know when that moment has come in life, and also to know when that moment has ended, bringing a shift in perception, a new experience of self, and an expanded awareness of what is possible.

Laurie McCammon is a planetary change agent, blogger, facilitator and author of Enough!How to Liberate Yourself and Remake the World with Just One Word, published  by Conari Press, out  April 1, 2016.  You can contact Laurie with comments at lauriemccammon@gmail.com, Like LaurieMcCammon on Facebook or follow her on Twitter at @EnoughMessage

Enough for Ourselves, Enough for Our Communities and Enough for the World

Just a few days ago, I was working on designing a website to introduce my upcoming book, Enough: Beyond the Myth of Lack. I was searching for a concise way to describe what it is I do - my mission, and my book's mission.

Suddenly, it was clear to me: My mission is to help people to remember they are enough so that we can work together to create a New Story in which there is

enough for ourselves, 

enough for our communities 

and enough for the planet.  

Just after getting that clarity about my mission, I stumbled across a viral video on YouTube entitled, "How Wolves Change Rivers." Obviously, you don't get over 14 million views by presenting a pleasant nature documentary on the lives of wolves.  The video must have been saying something more profound.  I was interested.  I watched the video and it took my breath away.  The wolves were demonstrating how nature creates enough.  It also demonstrates how our inability to sense the subtle ways nature does this almost had disastrous results.  

Humans play an unfortunate role in the story of the wolves presented in the video below.  Thinking we knew what was best, we removed wolves from Yellowstone National Park. Happily, the wolves were later reintroduced and the story has a happy (if not surprise) ending.  I believe that the Enough dynamic is all around us, in all the interwoven relationships in the cosmos and in our inner heart-knowing which is also rooted in relationship and in the subtle. We are getting better at seeing, better at sensing the subtle, better at trusting the quiet voice within that simply knows what is needed and what is right.

I was deeply touched by the story of the wolves, and I think it is because it tells a fundamental truth: we all are connected. We all are precious and irreplaceable, often in ways that are difficult to sense.   All species were meant to have enough, but also to give enough back to the systems that sustain them - pay it back and pay it forward.  Somehow many humans have lost this very basic principle which is essential to all naturally-occurring ecosystems:

To have enough, we must give enough.

Laurie McCammon is a planetary change agent, blogger, facilitator and author of Enough!How to Liberate Yourself and Remake the World with Just One Word, published  by Conari Press, out  April 1, 2016.  You can contact Laurie with comments at lauriemccammon@gmail.com, Like LaurieMcCammon on Facebook or follow her on Twitter at @EnoughMessage

Could Humanity Be the Last to Know That Lack is a Myth?

In her new book, Enough: Beyond the Myth of Lack Laurie McCammon, MS makes an intriguing claim: lack is not real. How could this be when we see evidence everywhere of dwindling natural resources, species extinction and global warming?

“I am not saying there are no limits,” she says, “What I am saying is that most of the lack we see around us is the result of human choices and that such conditions do not exist naturally. Because the lack we see is a result of man-made choices, we shouldn’t accept it as ‘just the way things are.’ We should challenge the premise that keeps lack perpetually in place. Homo sapiens appears to be the only species on earth who lives according to this “Never Enough” myth. Wouldn’t you think we’d pay attention to how the other 8.7 million species successfully create healthy, sustainable ecosystems that work for everyone without depleting the systems upon which everyone relies?”

McCammon points out that if you examine human biology, you will find a nervous system designed to cope with short bursts of stress, but not one built to sustain a perpetual state of heightened alert. “And yet, isn’t this exactly what is perpetrated by politicians, mainstream media and advertising who would have us believe we don’t have enough and aren’t enough, or that if we are one of the fortunate ones to have enough, we should be afraid of losing it any minute?” Whole industries, she points out, such as luxury goods, insurance, and cosmetics are built upon this idea that we aren’t enough as we are. “We never seem to look back over our decisions to buy more stuff and ask if those decisions ever brought us the feelings of adequacy, belonging and accomplishment we expected them to. “ She believes that this insatiable longing to feel enough results in all kinds of hoarding and over-consumption, which greatly adds to the material burden humans place on the planet. She puts it this way: “When we lose our sense of belonging, we tend to fill our lives up with belongings.”

“What we tend to forget is that what one person needs to be happy is actually very different than what another person needs to be happy. In other words, my enough is not your enough. But when we get caught up in a consumerist society, we are apt to believe we must check off  the same list of standardized boxes in order to prove we are enough. This list becomes a story that rules our lives, creating achievement anxiety, shame and guilt. In truth, we could do without a great deal and never experience it as a sense of lack.  And conversely, when we have too much, there is a palpable stress burden placed upon us. In essence, we've traded a portion of our freedom for the material objects we possess, whether it is labor we’ve invested to buy the item in the first place, or labor and time required to maintain what we’ve bought. Then there is the emotional burden of worrying about our things – are they safe, in good working order, might someone damage or steal them from us, is there a better, updated version we should have instead?”  McCammon believes that the stress burden of things greatly complicates our lives and distracts us further from cultivating the real source of happiness - an inner sense of enoughness. "Enoughness comes from a felt sense of our own beingness, a sense of belonging to a universe which could not possibly be enough without us. Many things in the material world may leave us craving and wanting more, but most of us are absolutely starving for meaning - to know that we really do matter. What I've found is that the universe is absolutely barraging us with subtle messages that we do matter, each and every one of us."  

To understand how, when and why we forgot our "enough" roots, McCammon turns to anthropology, mythology and systems theory. According to McCammon, the “Never Enough Paradigm” began more than 5,000 years ago when humanity entered the Agrarian Era. This monumental shift in perspective involved moving away from total dependence on nature to take on the mantel of “masters of the material realm.” The progression of the “Never Enough Paradigm” accelerated in the industrial and digital ages, representing the height of intellectual prowess and physical efficiency, but crowded out the heart and acknowledgement of the spiritual and the sacred. Everything, including humans and the earth became objects in the drive to have more. We no longer oriented towards our depths. All that mattered was at the surface, in what we do or have. 

“The brain is very fond of breaking things into parts for analysis and manipulation, but it isn’t as good at perceiving subtle relationships and nuances, cause and effect at a distance, or whole systems dynamics," says McCammon.  The human capacity to perceive interrelationships and holism, she claims, is essential to survival of our species, and yet it has been greatly devalued in our society.  "It is not optional. Intuition and subtle reception aren't fluff.  They are cutting-edge. Both capacities are absolutely essential to keeping up with today’s science and technology which are huddled right now in the realms of the subtle, interconnected and intangible, such as quantum physics, scalar waves, wireless networks, and cloud-based technologies.” McCammon suggests that all we need to do is look at our cutting edge technologies and ask how they reflect the corresponding frontier of human consciousness. "It is always a mirror and a metaphor for the inner work we need to do to move forward. A greater awareness of subtle interrelatedness is where we are going. This means beingness. This means spirit. This means essence. It is unstoppable and inevitable.” To attune to the subtle, Laurie suggests that we explore something referred to as heart intelligence, which has been proven by science to be real and measurable. Heart intelligence is inherent and has always been evidenced in indigenous and feminine ways of perceiving. “The idea is that we are becoming more whole again in our ability to perceive. This means mind and heart. Yin and yang. Material and spirit. We’ve done our work on testing the intellect for 5,000 years. Now it is time to focus on the heart.“

McCammon shows how the last 5,000 years correspond to humanity’s adolescent stage of growth. “This means that we aren’t, as we have assumed, at the pinnacle or adulthood of our species. We have yet to enter adulthood as a species, which is characterized by taking responsibility for our actions and fulfilling our desire to widen our affiliation from ‘me’ (humans) to ‘we’(all beings on earth). We have been exploring tribal mentality so far in quite an adolescent way. Although the tribe has expanded over time from smaller to bigger – from family to village, to religious or political affiliation, to country - it doesn’t become truly mature until it reflects an ability to think globally and universally.” The motivation and action to fuel global change arise naturally from an expansion in what McCammon calls affiliative consciousness. Affiliative consciousness is incorporating more “other” as “we,” a departure from separation consciousness. “This is why it is pretty useless to try to convince someone whose primary consciousness is himself, his job or his family’s economic well-being that he should care about what his employer is doing to contribute to global warming. He is not a bad person. He just can’t see beyond his own affiliative bubble right now.” says McCammon. “But what this also tells us is if you are someone who deeply cares about the earth or other species or regions of the globe, you are already embodying the expanded consciousness. You are the proof of the ripening maturity of our species. You are proof that humanity’s capacity for solving the earth’s most threatening and complex problems is amid a great transformation and expansion. And the good news is as this circle of affiliation expands, so does humanity's own felt sense of security, joy, empowerment, purpose and fulfillment - automatically.”

What does this have to do with the book’s primary focus, “enough”? “If we look at all the forms of suffering in the world today, we find a common cause, the belief in lack or “Never Enough.” McCammon says, “The imperative to get more is so reinforced from an early age that we are blind to how it distorts everything from our self-esteem to our relationships to our consumer and career choices, leading to the waste, exploitation and hoarding so prevalent on our planet today. We have mistakenly believed that 'survival of the fittest' was our primary orientation as human beings, and this false idea with no basis in science unfortunately has lingered on, taking on benign or overly-positive names such as competition, achievement, winning, success and growth. Self-preservation and individualism became the name of the game, driven by the belief that we were not born enough, so must prove it over and over again through what we do or own. All this keeps us from being available to participate in the bigger game, which is participating in our planetary ecosystem in a way that sustains enough for ourselves, our communities and our planet.”

To illustrate how ingrained the idea of “Never Enough” is in our thinking, McCammon poses a question to her readers, “If I were to ask if you are enough, what would you say? Most people would conclude, ‘ No, I am not enough yet. I haven’t achieved all I want to yet. I have goals I haven’t reached, so no, I’m not enough.’ But here’s the trick. I didn’t ask if you have enough or if you have done enough. I asked you if you are enough.  Do you see how quickly we skip over beingness? A newborn baby hasn’t achieved or owned anything, but would you say he is enough? Does a newborn need to do anything to be deserving of his family’s or society’s love and care? Of course not. We need to cultivate a sense of our own beingness, deservedness, worthiness and preciousness, a sense that we are enough because we are here. Then we find we do not need our achievements and our possessions to do the heavy lifting for us. We can relax and focus on doing what we really love to do. Really, the stories we carry about not being enough cause us so much deep suffering, so much 'stuckness' and disempowerment.  All this suffering is optional, not mandatory.  Do we really love our 'I'm not enough' story so much that we won't let go of it? Nature builds in an aversion or pain response for a reason - to guide us to safety, health and well-being."     

Enough: Beyond the Myth of Lack is a book whose optimistic tone is a refreshing departure from the bleak, urgent arguments posed by so many that it is almost too late to correct the damage humans have done, an assumption she states is only true if we remain in the adolescent “Never Enough” consciousness. “And this is not going to happen. We are part of a much larger evolutionary flow, a design which is the based on the dynamic of enough, and we are waking up to it, realizing we have outgrown the Never Enough Story. Exponentially more intelligence, creativity and courage becomes available to us when we embrace that we, too, are part of the universe’s big Enough design. We are enough to address every man-made problem, and to do it quickly and efficiently together.” The latter chapters of Enough are devoted to highlighting the global explosion of independent social movements and green businesses that McCammon says are proof that the Enough awakening is already happening in earnest.  All of this is to say that she wholeheartedly believes that  "An Enough future is inevitable. The shift is happening now. And each and every one of us are enough to be part of it."

Laurie McCammon is a planetary change agent, blogger, facilitator and author of Enough!How to Liberate Yourself and Remake the World with Just One Word, published  by Conari Press, out  April 1, 2016.  You can contact Laurie with comments at lauriemccammon@gmail.com, Like LaurieMcCammon on Facebook or follow her on Twitter at @EnoughMessage

The Lego Movie...So Much More than Meets the Eye

What may seem to most moviegoers as an entertaining flick with an unexpected and heart-warming ending is so very much more than meets the eye.  Notwithstanding the father and son dynamic that many would consider the understory, what I saw was a third layer,  a deeper and more universal theme about consciousness, revolution and evolution here on earth.

Through clever use of humor, the beginning of the film, set in Lego City, turns out to be a commentary on how media and advertising controls our habits and behaviors. We learn, for example, that the main character, Emmet, is willing to pay over $30 for a cup of coffee.  The villain, named cleverly, “President Business,” is an amalgam of “the powers that be” that control the world behind the scenes and without the awareness of the pleasantly ignorant public.  That government and business are linked in the name of this one character is probably closer to the truth of the matter than we’d like to admit.  Is there really a separation between these two bastions of power in our world?  Unlikely.    

In one of the most astonishing scenes, we see that in plain site, city blocks are blown up in order to be reconstructed all over again exactly as they were, and all seemingly with no alarm from the public whatsoever. Such scenes cause one to take on a birds-eye view of our own society and the ways that behaviors, buying habits, fashions, entertainment and fads take up much of our conscious lives, robbing us of original thought and more importantly, of the ability to think critically and perceive honestly.  It could be said that the hero’s journey is his journey to regain the use of his creative and original mind, and to trust his intuition.   We, like those in Lego Land, seem oblivious to repetitive meta patterns such as war and the economic system which repeatedly cause the problems they then rush in to solve, all keeping humanity on a hamster wheel of problem, solution, problem, solution.  Meanwhile, we make no progress in really addressing root cause of our most dire and rampant problems – environmental devastation, starvation, violence and the like. Can we see that the powers that be are distracting us from concentrating on these real problems?  

But if the movie were to stop there, it would be quite depressing.  Thankfully, it instead presents a blueprint for getting out of the current malaise and brain drain imposed on the people.  There are some very simple, but essential elements I will break down.  But first, how is it I noticed the story behind the story and why am I so convinced that there is one?  Just a month ago I completed the a draft for a book about the topic of enough. What I saw unfolding on-screen gave me the chills.  It was practically a chapter by chapter demonstration of what I had laid out in the manuscript,  only mine is to be a serious book about the imminent shift of consciousness in our world. Those watching the movie will wonder how it could be about the rise of the feminine as the main character wasn’t a woman at all, but a man.  However, the qualities Emmett  drew upon to complete the hero’s journey were not the usual masculinized ones  of  cleverness, brawn or bravery.  Quite the opposite.  It was instead his humility, his willingness to listen to spiritual or intuitive messages, and his ability to see connections between vastly different things that propel him on his way.  So, not to get hung up on masculine and feminine, hopefully we can agree that this is no ordinary screen hero.

What we realize is that Emmet, if anything, is positive.  When he learns about President Business’s evil plot, he does not go negative, cower or run away.   For a very brief time, he considers the traditional hero’s path, believing the prophecy that he is special because he found the Special Piece.  But quite quickly, he is discouraged from taking the egoic path of the lone wolf, and admits his insecurities to an assembly hall of Master Builders (experts.)  It is this moment which actually propels him to a level of worthiness of a leader, on a path more like that of Mahatma Ghandi, Martin Luther King, or Nelson Mandela. His authenticity and humility become  the powerful magnet for bringing together those who have until then operated as independent egos.  He gives an inspiring speech to these experts about what it is they are missing, essentially saying, “If we would bring together your creativity and genius with my ability to work as a team, we’ve got what we need to change the world.“ Only when we acknowledge and appreciate our unique enoughness can we give up the competitive game and trust that together we are stronger and wiser than we are apart.  We essentially find how our piece fits with that of others to create a bigger whole.  Humanity’s evolutionary step is to marry the heart and the brain, so we can remember how to share leadership that benefits the greater good. Before Emmett came along, the Master Builders were hanging out in a cloud land, being creative independently, but missing how relevant they could be as a united and more cohesive force.
  

Much like the main character in the Lego Movie, I was unprepared to stumble upon “the special piece” and had to figure it out after the fact.  For me “the special piece”  was a simple word, ENOUGH.  And the more I examined it, we realized that our society had only examined half of the enough story, the NEVER ENOUGH half.  Never Enough has been the underlying “instruction book”  which keeps recreating the same old problems over and over again for the past 5000 years. Daring to build beyond the instruction book is the daring step Emmet and his allies take.  For humanity, this means moving from the tight adherence to Never Enough thinking and perceiving to explore Enough thinking and perceiving.  Without giving away the ending of the Lego movie, I will at least say that another thing “the special piece” and Enough have in common is that they both invite heartfelt connectedness to replace ego-driven, fear-based rigidity. It is about feminine qualities such as nurturing and acknowledging another’s value.  It is about flexibility and creativity, collaboration and the thrill of transformative discoveries embarked upon as a community. It is what we are seeing blossoming all around us as “the sharing economy.”

I hope as many people as possible see the Lego Movie, and I hope that for every one it plants the seeds of what is truly and realistically possible.  And I hope that for more than just a few, it becomes much more than that, an invitation to become the bringer of the New Story here on earth right now.   

More at www.weareenough.com

Laurie McCammon is a planetary change agent, blogger, facilitator and author of Enough!How to Liberate Yourself and Remake the World with Just One Word, published  by Conari Press, out  April 1, 2016.  You can contact Laurie with comments at lauriemccammon@gmail.com, Like LaurieMcCammon on Facebook or follow her on Twitter at @EnoughMessage

United Nations Meditation a Success!

Reporting Back from the 57^th United Nations Commission on the Status of Women 

by Laurie McCammon

I begin my three part report from the 57^th United Nations Commission on the Status of Women with a hearty thank you to those who participated remotely in the grassroots effort to bring light and love to the center of the United Nations on March 5th.  I am so happy to report that together we were hugely successful!  Other of my colleagues reached out to their constituencies and hundreds of thousands of people were invited to join us in spirit for the synchronized meditation within the belly of the United Nations.

I was present in the cavernous hall which was high on the 21^st floor of the Nigerian Mission, a multi-story space with three walls of windows looking up to the skies, one of the few quiet and peaceful spaces I encountered during my entire week at the United Nations.  How appropriate, instead of at the belly, we were positioned high, at the heart chakra level of the United Nations sprawling complex of buildings. Three candles were lit, set atop multicolored scarves with special meaning from across the world.  Three nested circles of chairs surrounded this central altar of the otherwise empty room where approximately 50 people (mostly women) sat silently with eyes closed in communion with one another for over an hour.    

I have asked for others present to send me their stories, but for now I can only share mine.  From approximately 4:05 to 4:10, I felt an influx of energy that was so strong I had to breathe deeply in order to ensure it kept flowing through my body and into the ground.   I could absolutely feel the prayers of people from around the world who had chosen to join us at that time from wherever they were.  The energy was deeply, deeply loving and intentional, and brought me to tears it was so beautiful and powerful.  No one spoke for the hour.  At the end, we were invited to speak aloud the names of those we wanted to bring into the circle.  Many named loved ones, and others named world leaders, Gaia, all living beings, even perpetrators of violence that they be healed of their desire to harm. 

Steve Beckow, Founder of the Golden Age of Gaia blog site recently wrote of a powerful dream in which he attended a conference but then realized that the “real” conference was something else entirely.  I want to thank you, Steve, because  I believe your vision arose at a time to help us to notice that this is exactly what was occurring at the United Nations this year (and I would suggest at conferences all over the planet right now.)   We were attending a conference within a conference.  Quietly, those with eyes to see realized that the “official” conference had gradually been reduced to a formality.  In speaking to veteran attendees of the conference, there has been an ever so gradual erosion of effectiveness and welcome.  Spaces for informal gathering have been systematically removed, venues have gradually spread out over as much as 50 blocks (a real challenge for women wandering in the biting winds in sandals and saris and with very little English language skills), food and water were no longer provided at all-day sessions, programs were given out not at registration, but at one single event which less than a quarter of attendees could attend.  Workshops which challenged the status quo were cancelled or moved at the last minute with no vehicle for communicating the change.  Caucuses which were designed to gather input from grassroots women instead have become tightly controlled report-to-the-people sessions.  This is the old system in decline trying hard to slow the progress of the new story.

Why am I not discouraged?  Because the “real” conference happened anyway.  We do not need to fight for a platform or demand that we be heard.  We are engaged in something far more powerful, lasting, and practical than those embedded in the old structure can possibly imagine.  This is heart-connected activism, and it is heart-centered activism that is alive and well and growing by leaps and bounds in ways and places too numerous to count or control.  One cannot look to the headlines to know what is really arising in the global women’s movement.  It will only report the paltry results of the “official” conference or try to fan the flame of the old “mommy wars”(as is happening with the launch of Sandra Sandberg’s book, Lean-In.)     The stories that guide our better future are passed heart to heart, person to person, and move well beyond the gridlock of the service-to-self paradigm.  In these moments of connection, our hearts melt and our stories begin to merge.  All busy work and positioning subside and we enter a timeless realm where truth shines through and where basic human values become the sustenance that feeds us.

My sense in being at the United Nations last week is that the old machinery is gradually grinding to a standstill.  All the “oil” and “grease” which facilitates freedom of movement is not available in the old brittle structures any longer.  Many refer to it as the collapse of the old grid. It is palpable.   All the light, excitement and flow had moved to heart-connected activism, and to what connects us as whole human beings cross class, culture, age, and gender.   It is not of the mind or of the ego or in the old patriarchy.  Fear and political correctness cannot contain it.  It is motivated by love and authentic connection between people who come in a spirit of service-to-others and service to future generations and the earth.  It is deeply dedicated to solutions, and to moving beyond the victim-perpetrator-hero trap and into mutual empowerment and shared leadership as fully present solutionaries for our world.   It hears of suffering and responds without hesitation or delay.

We came to the United Nations  to speak our urgent desire for a global women’s conference (the first in 17 years), but we found ourselves modeling a new reality together which made the old paradigm of lobbying and influencing feel very old and slow and surprisingly irrelevant.   “Speaking truth to power” is only important if you believe the power to change the world is in the hands of the “other.”  When we combine our own inner truths with our own inner power, we reclaim the ability to begin living the new story now.  Not tomorrow, not when the structures change, not when we are given permission or resources by someone else, but now.   We don’t need permission to do this from anyone, least of all the “powers that be.”  If anything,  the “powers that be” are already the “powers that once were.”  They become exceedingly irrelevant when you reclaim your own power and heart-connectedness with other people.  Perhaps this was the true gift of going to the United Nations.  We need not look beyond ourselves to live as united nations with our sisters and brothers from around the world right now.  Waiting for the old structure to change has kept us in a state of confusion, separation, and disempowerment for far too long.    It is not necessary to feel help back any longer.  Our hearts are ready to lead the way to connection and healing right now.  The new conference is here. You’ve already been living it.

In part II I will introduce Ambassador Chowdury,  an angel of the New Story at the United Nations and a proven  heart-led champion for women, and Dr. Jean Shinoda Bolen, who has been encouraging us towards a grassroots tipping point of heart-connected activism known as “the millionth circle. “  

You can watch videos of his VERY IMPORTANT speech at

   

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