“Justice, most of us believe, is when we send bad guys to jail. We imagine that we can point out the few who get caught and that then we can think of ourselves as a fair society. But we don’t dare convict the whole system of massive injustice and deceit. Maybe we are refusing to carry both guilt and responsibility? Taking responsibility for the common good is the more important moral mandate. And that is exactly where the [mystics] began. When the common good is the focus, preaching is not about imposing guilt and shame on individuals, but about giving vision and encouragement to society.”
~ Richard Rohr
When things break down, spaces are created behind the wrecking ball. Notice the spaces. Create something, build something, seed something based on Love in those spaces. Give vision and encouragement.
That need not be something big or public or visible. Talk to the trees, treat your animal friend respectfully, fill yourself with light before walking into the grocery store. Energy is real. Seed the world with a seed of peace, of Love, with a seed of awareness that we are all more than our physical bodies. One small seed grows into a plant that can feed many people.
When hope feels thin and once again we wake to headlines written in smoke, we ask the same old question in a newer, louder voice.
War.
What is it good for?
When the sky glows red in places we have never been, and yet somehow it is our own horizon burning, how do we handle it? How do we keep our hearts from hardening like clay left too long in the sun?
How do we love when fear knocks louder than kindness? How do we live without becoming the frog in the slow boil, adjusting to the heat until we forget we are burning?
War.
I despise it. Not in theory, not in textbooks, but in the quiet rooms where mothers sit staring at doors that will not open again. In the folded flags. In the boots that will not be worn.
War means tears in thousands of eyes. It means a name carved into stone where laughter should have been. It means the young go first while the old speak of strategy.
It’s always the old who lead us into wars. It’s always the young who fall.
Look at what we have won with saber and gun. Look closely. Is it worth the cost of a single child’s breath?
In the fields, the bodies burning. The machine keeps turning. Metal and money grind louder than prayer. Hatred spreads like smoke through open windows. It poisons minds until we forget that the face across the border is a mirror.
Have we come so far from knowing that the foe we strike is us?
When have the war drums sounded and lilies bloomed behind them? When has blood fed the soil and grown anything but grief?
Has there ever been a time for war? A true time? A sacred hour when destroying the spiral of humanity made it whole again?
When is it acceptable to lay down love and pick up power?
When is it right to wound the soul for a moment’s relief from fear?
Do we lay down arms? Do we bare our naked breast to the saber and the saw? Or do we learn a different courage, one that stands unarmed and still refuses to hate?
What if I became such a warrior of love that when you came to burn down my being you found only a mirror and forgiveness?
Not weakness. Not surrender. But a refusal to let your fire become my flame.
Until basic human rights are guaranteed to all, without regard to race, without regard to border, without regard to who prays which way, this is a war.
A war against hunger. A war against injustice. A war against the lie that some lives are worth more than others.
But this war is fought with open hands. With policy and protest. With bread and books. With listening. With love that does not flinch.
Suffering may be constant. That does not mean we must build monuments to it.
When will love be the language of war? When will we strike a soft blow that breaks chains instead of bones?
When will we leave the sword for the soul?
Maybe peace does not begin in treaties signed under chandeliers. Maybe it begins when one heart refuses to boil.
When one voice says, no more.
When one person chooses to see a brother where they were told to see a threat.
War.
What is it good for?
If history is honest, almost nothing.
But love, stubborn and inconvenient, is good for everything.
So we keep our hearts. We keep them open. We guard them not with walls but with courage.
And even in the smoke, even in the noise, we choose to live as if peace is still possible.
“In the 1980s, during the peak of the Lebanon War, an incredible study was conducted.
“It was hypothesised, based on many previous smaller experiments, that if enough people were connected in meditation, stimulating a ‘powerful field of peace’ within – that there would be a radiated influence of peace without, ie. one that affected the behaviour of people in the outer world. Directed toward an area of conflict, in the words of John Hagelin, people would wake up and think ‘Hey, I’m not going to kill anyone today.’
“About a thousand people came together for this experiment in Jerusalem; meditating together with an aim of peace in neighbouring Lebanon. Scientists charted, at the same time, ‘progress towards peace’. This translated to reduced war deaths, reduced injuries and numbers of bombs dropped, in the location where the meditation focused.
“The data from this experiment was astounding. The correlation of ‘progress toward peace’ was near lock step in alignment with the periods of meditation. Radiating this influence of inner peace, into outer peace in a conflict zone nearby.
“When put through mathematical analysis, the likelihood that theses results were due to some fluke or chance were less than one part in ten thousand. To be able to assert something like this with such certainty, that group meditation prevented war, was an incredible finding.
“When the results of this study were published in the Yale University Journal of Conflict Resolution, it ignited a firestorm in the scientific community. First of all, it took two years to publish the paper; the editors reviewed it and reviewed it, over and over, unable to believe the accuracy of these findings. Finally however, they came to the conclusion that the paper was ‘unassailable.’ The study was performed at a standard of scientific rigour far beyond that required for publication, in any journal. But, when they did publish it, they did so with a letter – the letter saying the results of this experiment were so unexpected, ie. that a thousand people could influence the behaviour of a million, that they urged other scientists to go out and repeat the study.
“And that is exactly what happened. Over the next two and a quarter years, seven other scientific collaborations went out and repeated the study, training and assembling groups of meditators, to see its effect on war. And in every one of these experiments during this two and a quarter year period, there was a marked reduction in war and violence. ie. An eighty percent drop in war deaths and war related injuries in comparison to all the other days during this period where there were no mediating groups. In every single experiment there was a highly statistical significance toward ‘progress toward peace’ connected to focused intent toward it.
“When put together, the results were amazing. The likelihood that this result of reduction of war was simply due to chance, was less than one part in ten million, million, million (ie. 0.0000001). There was far more evidence that group meditation can turn off war like a light-switch, than there was that aspirin reduces headache pain. It is a scientific fact.”
~ Dr John Hagelin
Lebanese peace project research reference: Journal of Social Behavior and Personality 17(1): 285338, 2005
“If we just worry about the big picture, we are powerless. So my secret is to start right away doing whatever little work I can do. I try to give joy to one person in the morning, and remove the suffering of one person in the afternoon. If you and your friends do not despise the small work, a million people will remove a lot of suffering.” ~ Sister Chan Khong, Vietnamese nun and peace activist
I understand the cyclic movement of change requires the dissolution of what is in order to make room for the new. Gardening, history, archaeology, and geology, among other studies, require this awareness of movement. Archaeology in particular is a good lesson in the ebb and flow of civilizations and communities.
I also understand that the dissolution is theoretical to most Americans if they haven’t experienced its effects through living in a precarious country or a war zone. The vast majority of Americans haven’t had those experiences, and they’re not affected by anything going on here yet. Nothing. Prices are still affordable, everything desired is still available in stores, the electrical grid is functioning, no masked men are beating your neighbor or busting down your door. Most Americans can’t really imagine, I’m betting, that they could wake one day to no working power grid, empty shelves and long lines for any sort of food in stores, armed men roaming the streets, stopping whomever they want, holding guns to heads, beating people up or taking money or raping a child or shooting a grandfather with no repercussions, courts impotent.
Some of us have known any or all of that and understand how thin the veneer of civilized cooperation can be, and how many lies that veneer masks: war vets, deep travelers, blacks and Asians and Latinos and American Indian tribal members, they may well know our familiar veneer of ideals covers repeated atrocities, and perceive true dangers sitting beneath what looks innocuous or safe.
I don’t have a problem with the breakdown of what was, because what’s breaking down is essentially the organization of a culture that was – at best – willing to turn a blind eye to its institutionalized racism, misogyny, injustice, arrogance, greed, etc. It has to be broken down, possibly – hopefully? – all the way to the ground in order for something better to be created.
What’s difficult for me is what feels like the blind stupidity of much of humanity that leads us to doing it in this way that generates more fear and violence, almost entirely still aimed at the most vulnerable. That’s my conceit: that I’m smarter than that and had no part in the vicious lies we’ve lived within. And it is a conceit.
Maybe because my conceit is visible to myself, I’m not willing to overlook the pain and fear that’s being created (or unleashed, or out pictured, or however it gets described) because the end will be good for humanity (it will). It’s my understanding that ignoring or overlooking that aspect is just one more example of the arrogant ignorance we as Americans have been basking in for 300 years. “Well, I can sit back and watch the show – I don’t have a dog in the race.” I think that through this process we’re all going to find out that we each do have a dog in this race, and that’s the point: we are all one, all related, and responsible to and for each other. “That which you do to the least of my brethren, you do unto me.” (Matt 25:40 – no, I’m not Christian but grew up in it. Quote me from your tradition in comments, pls)
Having friends involved in what’s going on in Minnesota does make these affairs feel different to me, but it shouldn’t.
I’m not intending to say, “if you don’t do things the way I think you should or want you to, you’re wrong and a problem” — I think we’re all going to meet what we need to meet, and we’ll each show up in the way we intend. I personally have to acknowledge the injustice, pain, and fear within the process of cyclic change or I feel that I’m lying to myself in ways that this country has lied to itself from the start, and I think I could be in danger of propagating the belief that those injustices and fears have nothing to do with me. That is never true; we are truly all one.
We all lift, or no one does.
If I were deeply true to my knowing, I don’t think I would live in this house. I wouldn’t have a savings account or investments, because it should be unthinkable to accumulate excess when there are people in need. I ponder this, worrying it, that the choices I make are less than true to what I know. So I can say all of the above and still know that as long as I don’t share my excess, I am part of the problem. There are many ways we won’t change without things being burnt to the ground around us, and if that’s what it takes, so be it. That conceit that I am smart enough to do it differently is exposed.
I gather humanity at night, holding us in pure love, the people who are in the way of the bulldozer of others’ fears, but also including the people with so much hate and pain and fear in their hearts that all they can do is hurt other people with it. I include those who have had the privilege of looking the other way, believing the injustices and pain are someone else’s business. And I include those who feel the pain and injustices as if they were their own, many of them shunning humanity for its unimaginable cruelty, unable to process the level of shared pain and sorrow that they feel.
I’ve often found this culture to be difficult, ridiculous, and inhumane, so this is just one small rant … and a reminder to do my part as I see it, and to check my conceits.
I believe that we will all come to realize that we are responsible to and for each other, and that which is unimaginable now will come to be. In the meantime, I think it’s critical to be kind. I think it’s critical to care for and protect each other if at all possible, because – again – we are all related and responsible to and for each other.
Please send thoughts and imaginings and prayers only of love and compassion to everyone right now. Hold in love those who are grieving, frightened, heartbroken, abused in any way, protecting the vulnerable … and also love for those who are angry, aggressive, broken inside, so alienated from their own innate holiness that they wield their own pain as a weapon, hurting all of us.
We are one, of one fabric, one note, one movement, one mystery of creation, related and in relation. Fear in us will create more fear. Hate in us creates more hate. Love is the only way to end the long, long cycle of fear that creates violence, aggression, hate, envy, greed, arrogance, etc.
It can be hard to send love or feel compassion for those whose actions and words come from a basis of hate, aggression, and other expressions of fear. If it feels impossible, try beginning by sending a neutral energy that holds an intention that they get what they need for their own highest healing, their own return to knowing themselves as nonphysical beings of and in and with the fabric of Love, having an experience through the personality and physical body. If we can’t separate the soul of that person or group from the broken personality expressions they’re putting out into the world, we do them and ourselves an injustice. We are one. When we condemn another, we condemn ourselves. Be willing to see their souls. Be willing to see the light within them that they cannot see themselves.
Please close your eyes for just a few minutes if you can, to imagine filling your heart, body, or energy field with the feeling of love, or the vision of light, or the sensation of many beautiful golden suns. Emanate that warmth and beauty, that security and serenity and belonging out into the world with a peaceful and generous heart. Send it to people you love and sympathize with, then send it to the people whose actions and words are not in alignment with all of our intrinsically beautiful souls. They need healing too.
“Behold, I make all things new.” ~ The Guides through Paul Selig
🙏🏽
(If you think peace assumes or requires passivity, I would disagree and invite you to read the other posts here … )
A few people have told me about spiritual teachers or personalities who have said that Trump is a light being, doing light being work, and what do I think about that … so here’s what I think about that. (Maybe don’t get hung up on an idea before reading all the way through.)
Everyone is a “light being.” This isn’t my language, but the idea is that every person is an expression of the One, the All. This is the very essence of what we are so we cannot be otherwise, no matter what we believe, say, or do. Someone can tell you all your life that you’re a pink sheep, and eventually you may come to believe and therefore act like a pink sheep, but you will never BE a pink sheep. We’re told all our lives in subtle and obvious ways that we are not intrinsically holy, and we believe it. We’ve been told all our lives that we have to earn worth, prove we mean something, improve to be saved. We’re told we’re not holy so many times, we believe it – but it’s not true and never will be. The very fabric of all being is one fabric. Oak tree, lamp, tiger, tyrant, holy woman, the essence of one is the essence of all. We are all of the same fabric, and that fabric is light, love, God, Spirit, All, One, Allah, Tunkasila, whatever name you care to use.
Most of us don’t know how to think clearly about people who do or say bad things; we believe bad people are wholly bad, with no lovely qualities at all, and they certainly cannot be “light beings.” Hitler cannot be admitted to be either good in any way, or understood to have an essence that is infinite and holy. We want to believe in black and white good and evil. It’s easier. And our enculturation will not comfortably allow a paradox of the horrific and the tender held within one person, and our philosophies and spiritual beliefs rarely carry the maturity to comprehend the true implications of creating our own reality, being responsible to and for it, and what it means if everything – everything – that exists is of the same fabric.
Whether we can wrap our minds around it or not, Hitler was of the same fabric of being that each of us are made of because we are all One. And Trump is too. That does not mean that what Hitler said and did was an expression of that essence of light. It very obviously was not. And Trump being recognized as a light being does not imply that all he says and does is an expression of that light. It obviously is not. Light doesn’t insult, threaten, attack, kidnap, lie, kill, condemn, or incite others to violence and hate. These are never expressions of light. A person cut off from their own light does these things. Someone who needs healing does these things.
We have free will in this reality’s experience of cause and effect. If we want to explore the idea that we’re separate from the One, the All, we can – and have been – having that experience. The belief creates the experience. And the primary and foundational way of functioning created by a belief that we’re separate is fear. Anger, competition, jealousy, envy, greed, obsessions, aggression all come from a basis of fear – fear that there’s not enough for all, that others mean you harm, that you can be harmed, that you have to earn a place or prove yourself to be included.
If we’re honest, we can all recognize these expressions in ourselves and our everyday lives, these symptoms of a base fear, microcosmically. The symptoms are also present in cultures, in countries, macrocosmically. No matter what we state as ideals, we in the United States, for instance, are not a country whose basis of value is fully that of kindness, generosity, and caring for those who are unable to care for themselves. Our base value is monetary, upheld by might makes right. (Everything is stated valuable in terms of monetary worth, from forests to insults and compensation for deaths.) We espouse ideals in our self-image, and in our State of the Union and Constitution, then cherry pick what we want from that and ignore the ways we trespass on our own ideals, whether through innocent ignorance, willful denial, or aggressive rationalization.
Trump can be understood to be the embodiment of all the worst aspects of our culture: the adolescent arrogance, the unchecked and admired greed, the systemic and deeply historical racism, the aggressive misogyny, the lying to ourselves and others, the willingness to use might to strong arm those who don’t give us what we want, the belief that bad things don’t happen to good people, the need to be special and subsequent belief in manifest destiny, the claiming of victimhood and use of that in competition to claim validation (I’m the biggest victim, so I’m more valid than you are). All of these things deserve a careful ponder, because they’re certainly all present in our culture, and probably present in some form in our individual personalities (and once seen, can be dismantled).
This is important: what can be seen can be healed. It’s been easy for many people to be ignorant of the ongoing experiences of Amerindians, blacks, Hispanics, LGBTQ, and other marginalized communities … it’s easy to say this is just how the world is and always has been: there are always some people who get a bad deal, a rough time of it, and it’s not my problem. But it is and always has been the way it is only because we have believed it and allowed it. Many people in these groups are not shocked by what’s going on now in this country – it’s been going on in their lives for a long time. It is simply now blatantly visible, to the world, if not yet to all of us. We have to see it. We have to see it to be able to stop choosing it.
The ugly things that Trump acts out on a world stage are those ugly aspects of our culture that have always been present. He is a light being, yes – and he is not acting in accord with his own light. He is an out-picturing of our own ugliest aspects. The racism, hate, misogyny, aggression, greed, and arrogance have always been present, but many of us were able to ignore it, or deny it as our problem. But we live in a country that perpetrates and perpetuates these beliefs, which creates misery for our fellow light beings. We are complicit in this way. We are responsible to and with what we participate in whether we consciously create it or condone it or not. If we see it, we are able to respond and the lies that we live with are now being exposed in ways that won’t be ignored. They have to be seen and acknowledged, because that’s the way they can be ended. They can’t be ended if they can’t be seen.
It’s my understanding that this shift of healing could have been done in a gentler way, but we get what we create, the effects of our communal beliefs and choices and momentum and community, and this is what we have. So how do we best handle it, is the functional question.
I believe Trump’s actions and words are those of a person cut off from their light. He – like this country – needs healing. Standing up to his and anyone’s destructive actions and words has true power when the essence of the individual is first recognized as intrinsically of the divine, beyond or deep behind the person’s actions and words. Hate of the individual as a soul individual is hate feeding hate. No one is more special than another, no matter the valuations we make up within the physical world. And no one exists outside of the All, because the very fabric of being makes all things beingness. And no one gets left behind: either we all lift, or none of does. When we are able to say hello to the intrinsic divine within someone, before we stand up to their actions or words, we have energetically shown them their own divinity, and invited them to live up to it. If you think this has no power, you are mistaken. Everything is energy before it is anything else – energy and intention are creation.
It’s my belief that we must stand up and speak up against harmful words and actions in every way that we know is right for us. We must do what we can to interrupt words and actions that hurt or diminish others. And it’s necessary to recognize that our own fear in the form of rage, arrogance, hate, or violence feeds what we fear, microcosmically and macrocosmically. When we know ourselves and every other being, first and truthfully, as infinite essence, as a constant and unassailable aspect of the fabric of being, our own words and actions will originate in love, and as Martin Luther King truthfully said, hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
Interrupt worry, gently and persistently. Interrupt your imagination’s pictures of futures that don’t exist yet and may never. Introduce a memory of beauty, a possibility of laughter, rest, or fellowship. Imagine every soul lifting into itself in relief, realigning our collective potential toward a so far unimaginable collective peace.
We are creators. Energy flows where attention goes. This is as real as the wind’s movement. If our fears themselves are creating or maintaining an experience of destructive potential, of divisiveness, discrimination, injustice, hate, and/or lies, we have the power to redirect our energies, realign our desires and expectations.
We can, in every moment, engage hope, and imagine a deeply peaceful and gorgeous outcome without needing to know how that could possibly come about. We can engage this creativity in the presence of what is before us – there is no need to bypass what’s present. See what is present, of course respond to it if that’s what’s required … just don’t assume that what is present in this moment dictates only a feared future’s outcome. Use your creative powers to meet the present, and shape the future toward the coherent peace and belonging that we can all embody.
“The key to living as a prophet-mystic is showing up for what is, no matter how heartbreaking or laborious, how fraught with seemingly intractable conflict and how tempting it might be to meditate or pray our way out of the pain. Contemplative practices train us to befriend reality, to become intimate with all things by offering them our complete attention. In this way, the prophet and the mystic occupy the same broken-open space. The nexus is grief. The mystic has tasted the grace of direct experience of the sacred and then seemingly lost the connection. She feels the pain of separation from the divine and longs for union. The prophet has perceived the brokenness of the world and is incapable of unseeing it. He feels the pain of injustice and cannot help but protest. But the mystic cannot jump to union without spending time in the emptiness of longing. The prophet must sit in helplessness before stepping up and speaking out. “ ~ Mirabai Starr
