The Song "Awaken," came to me in a similar method as other songs that have come along in my past. Songs that come along, are unlike those that are derived of intent or an understood design. There is little if any conscious effort to shape a song that comes in to me, it seems more like they are just out in the universe and the song intersects with my life upon an occasion when I am receptive to sensing it. I consider it my good fortune to find them, along with having an ability to fetch them up as we pass through this universe. Living presence itself this way from time to time, when events unfold seemingly without a deliberately intended or otherwise known purpose.
I recall that the lyric of this song was sparked while watching Democracy Now, on March 04, 2015. The previous day the United States Congress had allowed Benjamin Netanyahu to address a joint session. Beside that, the story of a Justice Department probe into the unrest following the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson MO. was released. It's finding stated, that the police and city courts had engaged in a pattern and practice of discrimination against its African-American residents. The programming reflected these events and others with the latter taking precedence in the days program. All combined the topics of the day were centered around injustice, a typical pattern that current day main stream media fails to remark upon for the most part. None the less my consciousness keeps an awareness that these conditions are ever present within the human condition.
There remains another piece in the human condition which continuously exacerbates the injustices that abound. It is the teaching behavior of passing on a sense of heritage, a sense of judgment as to ethnic patterns, by parents, to children. This is the condition of ethnicity. When we as humans speak with labeling terms we are actually creating a stereotype. That segregation in a semantic usage, defining an ethnic group, in a singular manner, as being equal and inclusive to all of its members, and or exclusive of all others, connoting all others as outsiders to their ethnic groups, creates a division often used for judgment. This behavior allows for and effectively promotes the space in society where hatred begins. The words we choose in defining the subjects of our everyday conversations, plays a pivotal roll in the outcomes of the global conversation surrounding these unique ethnicities. By referencing a distinction, a separation of ethnic groups in our conversations, we are allowing a space for conflict. It supplies an abrasion or a place for conflict to enter the conversation through an alert or icon if you will. This act represents through a inferred admission, that all the individuals within that group, are the same. This behavior is the root source and instigator of our stereotyping, of our profiling groups of people, as all being the same, one to the other. I have been aware of this notion for years. Yet every person alive on this planet having their own distinct background has origins in at least one ethnicity. This implies that a group bound by an ethnicity holds a specific uniqueness and that they are unlike other unique groups. As humans we'd all be served better to focus on the commonalities in the human condition for the purpose of enrichment of all through these mutual threads. The threads that we all have a commonality with. This could be done without exclusion, being all inclusive.
The other critically noticeable situation in the human condition is our failure to review and learn from past historical events and gain, by turning those struggles into lessons learned. Repeating situations that have historically resulted in bad outcomes is seemingly the result of improperly educating our offspring. A failure in education is a direct result of our lack of focus on the better good for everyone. It is in our best interest to provide accessibility to high quality educational opportunity for every person on the planet.
There remains a need for humanity to continue its evolution into a society oriented around its wellbeing, inclusive for the better good of all. One which can remove the motivations derived in competition between those who have, and those who have not. Were we to center the focus of society upon the better good of all, rather than toward; personal gain, conflict and malice, we would soon find our inner kindness available to the world, for all to appreciate. This song seems to reflect the notion that all humans, if they were to choose doing so, together, could build a harmonious methodology in living, in supporting one another, through the hardships that living has and shall most certainly always present. If we choose to, we can understand that we are all in our basic form, the same, equal in the ways that are important.
I have leaned strongly upon imageryin this song. Some of it seems to me quite evident, although I am unsure what others interpret it as. Thus I wish to clarify some of it, allowing the audience an understanding of this point of view.
"Wake up," is a call to society to note that the lives we live, away from the natural condition, separated from this planet and its splendor for the want of artificial (human made stuff, built of natural resources) can be something other than what it is. We as a collective could strive to achieve the better good were we to focus our collective consciousness to that purpose. So wake up and "Take it," take this awareness to heart. In recent years, I have studied vocal communication, learning that the speech each of us use in conversation, how we frame our thoughts, based in our personal social conditioning expresses our limited way of thinking. The words we choose, "I should," rather than, "I could," for example places an artificial demand that we follow more out of habit than out of consciously choosing. This is but one of hundreds of manners of speech which limit both our thoughts and thus our actions. So if we can change the thought that x, y, or z, "must" happen to they "can" happen if they are chosen, can change our reality. "Truly," our history is evident to anyone who seeks to know and understand the past, furthermore it is important, unless the thought of smashing ones finger with a hammer is something that we aspire to doing again regularly. And we need to be "Turning," some of the things that history reveals into a history that is not repeated. We need to learn from past mistakes to build a brighter future for us all. Because if we all "stand together," for the common cause of the better good of all, we can change. We can bring the evolution of society away from a society that is killing the planet and its diversity of life. We can bring up the status of the oppressed, bringing freedom and justice to all. One last image to define is the "display." I use the word display as though the artificial world, the cities, the roads, the unnatural conditions that most live with are a seen condition that can change through our actions. We can turn it into something that is sustainable for the long term, through hard work and looking at what history has shown to be failures of understanding, ie. building a consumption based throw it away economy, rather than building and using systems with built in longevity.
It is my hope and desire to see the turning of our display.
Wake up, we can awaken today.
Take it, make it part of your way.
Know it, know these things that we say.
Change it, change the thought in your day.
Truly, as what's known has been seen.
Turning, what was seen to what's been.
Standing, stand together we'll see.
Hoping, hope that all will be free.
We've turned to ourselves in our turning away.
Alone by ourselves the display shall stay.
Take the first step today, turn the display.
Together we take to our changing the days, this way.
Look through the colors, see past the skin.
Look in those people and what life has been.
See to the kindness, we hold deep within.
Imagine together a place where we all will win.
On the day of this song's creation I also wrote a blogspot.com post about writing this song.