Change & Responsibility

(Taken from a letter written to a friend …)

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. 

To Be Peace

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 … )

Hate Cannot Drive Out Hate

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.

Energy Flows Where Attention Goes

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. 

Mystics & Prophets

“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

Responsibility: complicity to truth

The ideals that our country has professed since the ratification of the Constitution have never really been owned up to and met. Any Hispanic, Asian, black, or American Indian will attest to this. Most women could attest. Yet the myth persists that we’re the good guys.

Our government has invaded, undermined, destroyed, strong-armed, blackmailed, and manipulated many, many individuals and countries purely to forward our own interests, most often to the detriment of the individual or other country. Our lawmakers are too often bent by big money corporate and political lobbies that represent narrow interests, often – consciously and indifferently – to the detriment of the whole of society. The aid our representatives send to assist is too often hijacked by the people who need it least, and used to increase their power and bank over those who are weak or starving. 

Our judicial system has never been fair and impartial. As blatant as its corruption has become through the ultra-conservatives having stacked the courts, it has always bent the spirit of the law against the marginal, underprivileged, and under served.

Power corrupts, and we become immune to our own complicity in the corruption. We continue to agree to the way things are, never actually having to admit to picking up the stone that was thrown at the Nicaraguan farmer, the Eritrean mother, the orphaned child in Indonesia. But make no mistake, the stones that were and continue to be thrown are as much our responsibility as they are the responsibility of our leaders. We keep agreeing to the way things are. We were not rioting in the streets to stop lobbyists buying our congresspeople, and we were not losing our minds over injustices done daily in the courts. We were not standing in front of tanks or jets in the Middle East or blocking construction of oil facilities in the Congo or building shelter for our own homeless and mentally ill. Well, it’s just how the world works. I’m busy with my own life – I can’t monitor all those politicians. 

Most of us are not directly complicit, and so we abdicate responsibility. But I believe that abdicating that responsibility will keep us from creating something better. I don’t advocate beating ourselves up over this passive agreement to what is or was. I do entertain the possibility of seeing it clearly and with brutal honesty, forgiving ourselves and each other, then from that point being able to create something that actually lives up to the ideals that we as a country have professed to be possible.

Now everything that has been present in the background is presented in exaggerated form, exposed for anyone with the presence and mind to admit it. Lies, racism, misogyny, manipulation, kidnapping, bullying, et cetera, et cetera. These have always been present. Now they are exaggerated and growing, to everyone’s shame. And we are quick to point a finger at the ultra-conservatives who are dismantling what we know and are accustomed to. We fear the chaos, and are confused watching the fast-moving destruction of the over-arching organizations that we assumed to be stable.

There are other, more peaceful and sane ways that we could have met the consequences of our own blindnesses, mistakes, and overlooked choices, but this is the one we’ve ended up within. We can point fingers and hate the more obvious architects of chaos, but I think we also have an opportunity here to face our own complicity in and agreement to a governmental history that has trampled on many, many lives. 

I do think every stand to stop the current chaos is valid action. Protest in the streets, call congresspeople daily, donate to organizations taking legal action. Sheild vulnerable immigrants, join forces with others who know how to help. People are being hurt, kidnapped, lied to, and people will die due to the choices being made by people who base their power in lies, deception, exclusion, racism, misogyny, and greed. Stand up – speak and act strongly and in whatever way you know to be yours. I will only encourage two additions to meeting these people. Firstly, before, during, or after that protest, phone call, or donation made to counter injustice, fear, greed, or illegality, close your eyes for a moment and shower those people with love. Imagine you can see the tiny light of divinity within these broken people and brighten that light. And secondly, take a moment to ask forgiveness from our human and earth families for any and all detrimental consequences that have resulted from our own passive agreement and acceptance of the way things were and may be again. 

We are all in this together. Everyone is connected. “What you damn, damns you back,” as Paul Selig’s guides say over and over. A problem can’t be solved from within the problem – when you damn, you place yourself within the problem, perpetuating it. When you damn yourself, you do the same. Healing anyone who is cut off from their essence is an act that will heal everyone. See their light. See your own light.

See your own responsibility – your “ability to respond.” Own the past with brutal honesty so we don’t – individually and collectively, consciously or unconsciously – build that same thing again in what may be the ashes of what we have known. Of course do what is yours to stop injustice, hate, greed, fear, and chaos – please do. And while we’re at it, let’s own what has been our passive agreement to its presence so that we will not claim it again in the future.

We are one. Realize the divine in all that exists. 

Ability to Respond: Responsibility

Any fool can wreck things. It takes insight, care, patience, and wise attention to create things. It’s much harder to do, which may be why foolish people end up avoiding it. Creation is always interesting, so much richer than the brief thrill of destruction. 

In times of destruction, note the spaces between, the overlooked blank areas that are left after the wrecking ball passes. These spaces are opportunities. These are the spaces to use in beginning to build something new, something even better than what was destroyed.

If the institutions that we used to count on to support others on our behalf disappear, we’ll just have to do the work individually, as we’re able. If the leaders we counted on to guide the manifestation of our ideals and hopes are broken people who foment separation in all its forms, we’ll have to look amongst ourselves for the leaders. We’ll just have to take on the responsibility for manifesting actions that express our ideals and fulfill our hopes for humanity as One.

Strategy & Strength

Attributed to Hopi Tribal leader White Eagle (confirm if you know):


“This moment that mankind is experiencing now can be seen as either a door or a hole. The decision to fall into the hole or go through the door is yours. If you absorb information 24 hours a day, with negative energy, constantly nervous, and pessimistic, you will fall into this hole.


But if you take the opportunity to look at yourself, use the time to rethink life and death, to care for yourself and others, you are walking through the portal.


Keep your home, keep your body safe. Connect with your spiritual home. When you take care of yourself, you take care of everyone else.
Don’t underestimate the spiritual dimension of this crisis. Take the perspective of an eagle that sees everything from above with a broader perspective. There is a social issue in this crisis but also a spiritual issue. They both go hand in hand.


Without the social dimension we fall into bigotry. Without the spiritual dimension, we perish in pessimism and meaninglessness.
you ready to pass this crisis. Pack your toolbox and use all the tools at your disposal.


Learn the resistance from the example of the Indian and African people: We are and still are being threatened, extinct. But we never stopped singing, dancing, building bonfires and having joy.


Don’t feel guilty for feeling happy in these difficult times. It doesn’t help at all to be sad or angry. Resistance is resistance through joy!
You have every right to be strong and positive. And there’s no other way to do this than by adopting a beautiful, cheerful and empathetic attitude.


This has nothing to do with alienation (ignorance of the world). It’s a resistance strategy.


When we enter the door, we are given a new worldview because we have faced our fears and overcome adversity. That’s all you can do now:

  • Seek solace in the storm
  • Keep calm, pray daily
  • Make it a habit to meet the Holy everywhere, everyday.
    Show resistance through art, joy, trust and love.

Creation in Chaos

Resistance has intended effect when it applies pressure that acts rather than reacts.

Reactive resistance gives the thing being resisted something to push against, keeping it present. Notice what happens when you go under, around or through. 

Notice what happens when action is taken, rather than reaction being in charge.

As things fall apart, spaces are created for new things to be shaped. Find the spaces and use them.

The work doesn’t change: be truthful, be just, be kind. Be responsible to and for each other. Create for all beings. All my relatives: we are one.

19 January 2025

Close your eyes and imagine sending big love to people that you love.

Then close your eyes and imagine send big love to the people that you disagree with, despise, and fear.

 It is not necessary to be angry in order to stand up to what is wrong. It is not necessary to hate or vilify an individual in order to stand up to the words or actions of that person. It is not necessary to feel self righteous when confronting what is not true or right. 

Imagine that the ones you hate and fear need healing to remember who and what they really are. 

“Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.” ~ Martin Luther King

None of this implies passivity. Stand. Speak. Act. But when action moves from an inner basis of Love rather than hate or anger (fear), that action has infinitely more power, because its power is the very basis of all existence. 

If you want to change the world, start by changing your inner world. If you want peace, be peaceful. If you want right action based in Love, base yourself in Love.

In essence, our work remains the same. Be Love in creative motion.