Moving Forward

A fair number of clients and Facebook followers are expressing grief, confusion, shock at the results of the election, as well as anxiety about other things going on in the world. If you are not one of them, I invite you to gracefully pass on this post. It is intended for those who are feeling the need for perspective, hope, and community.

Here’s what my people have given me:

“There’s a place beyond right and wrong where everyone is recognized as of One, and that’s the place of peace. As long as you hold your mind in duality, you will participate in it, perpetuating competition.

“What happens will happen, still each individual has agency. What will come is still shaped by action and response, even action and response to that which feels larger than each individual – and the power of action and response most cleanly arises from a base of Love. You are all responsible to that which you agree to, and the world as it is is the world you have agreed to. What will come will hold difficulty, but also holds the potential for new ways of being, new agreements that move humanity beyond what is known – beyond the basis of fear.”

I’d personally prefer this happen in a gentler way, and a saner way, but I guess we don’t get that option. We’re here now – and from my experience I know that we’ve each chosen to be here, to participate in great change.

And I believe the change will require us, in one way or another, to answer for our actions and beliefs – communally and individually – in real ways.

Every person who voted for the lawmakers down south who have made all sorts of abortion to miscarriage illegal, each of those individual voters (not to mention the doctors) are complicit in the deaths of the women who have died in the last months because of doctors who refused them care. This is our new stoning of women. Each person who voted threw a stone, but they can deny that to themselves because they don’t have to feel that stone in their hand or watch a woman die. We ask, how do they live with themselves? How will they forgive themselves?

Everyone who cast a vote for Trump’s aggression, hate, anger, and irrationality has picked up a stone. Many will suffer, and so we look at all those people who stand with stones in their hands and say, “how can they do this? I could never do it …”

And yet, where do I thrown stones that I’m not owning – maybe not even aware of. What am I not being responsible to, maybe beginning with peace and love. Because many times today I hated the people who think Trump is okay – hated them as sick and violent. I held my stone, feeding the hate, feeding the fear. That is not peace. That is not effective response — effective response can only come from a base of love. Anything less is fueling the divisive aggression, hate, anger, and irrationality – all forms of fear. Fear can only create more fear. Hate can only create hate. Hate doesn’t heal hate: only love does that.

Moving from love doesn’t negate action — moving from love empowers action. So the work becomes this: how do I move from my very soul, trust my very soul, and in so doing, recognize the soul even in those whose actions and words I refuse? Because from that place, any action I take to stop their actions and words will somehow feed love, rather than perpetuating the hate and fear.

We’re really in it now – this is what we came for, this time of change. What makes us think change is supposed to be tidy and well behaved?

We’ve all held the stones. We are all complicit. Everything we’re encountering has been here with us all along — all the hate, insecurity, meanness, danger, aggression, fear — none of it is new. It’s just wholly visible now. It has been brought into view. Good: what is hidden can’t be cleaned up. If a mess is going to be cleaned up, it has to be seen. Now we can see it clearly for what it is.

Think of it this way: we’ve been stuffing things in a closet for a few hundred years while we tell ourselves that we’re good, kind, clean Americans. Meanwhile, racism is rampant and misogyny is intrinsic and fellow citizens starve and children live in sewers and boxes and our government wars and assassinates and strong arms and threatens to extend and maintain power. We are all complicit in these truths. We have all agreed to that closet, passively or actively.

Well, what happens when it’s time to open the closet — the first thing that happens when cleaning out a closet is that you make a huge f’ing mess by pulling everything out of that closet. That’s the only way you’re going to be able to sort through it all – make it visible. In order to get rid of what is rotten or broken or useless, you have to get it out of the closet. Then you can get rid of the rotten and clean up what is useful and good, clean out the closet itself. Now you have things you can use in a closet that is clean.

I think we’re playing the long game now. Many things in life don’t get solved in four years or six or a decade. The whole shape of this reality is shifting and changing — I’m shown that humanity as a whole has agreed to end the exploration of separation (belief that we are separate from source, each other, the stones and trees and wind …) which is a belief that seats us in fear. As we remember who and what we really are — infinite, aspects of the One, souls — the potentials for experience in form must shift, the shape of this reality must shift, everything has to change to come back into alignment, coherence, our natural harmonic with each other.

I suspect this takes decades, maybe generations. I don’t know what it looks like on the ground beyond the present. But I suspect that the most useful question to ask ourselves from within this journey is not why why why, but rather, how do I best handle this? How do I embody love, even here and now? How do I find compassion for those who know not what they do, even now? How do I maintain truth? How do I embody the peace and essence of being, even here and now? That’s the work — to embody the highest self within, no matter what is encountered.

There’s an applicable story: Palden Gyatsu was imprisoned and tortured in China for 33 years. After he was released, he said, ‘It is not that I was without hatred. Especially when I was being tortured by my guards, I had immense hatred against them because I was being hurt. But, as a religious person, after the event I could reflect on what had happened, and I could see that those who inflicted torture did so out of their own ignorance.’ Compassion, a movement from the acknowledgment of each being’s humanity and in fact holy essence, is necessary and an expression of truth.

Be kind. Be peaceful. Be the presence of love, even now, even as you stand strongly for justice, truth, inclusion, and tolerance in whatever way and place you’re given. If you don’t know what that looks like, ask the soul – ask All That Is, God, Goddess, the One, Wakan Tanka, Allah, YWH, the Force, your own essence – ask and then be willing to wait for an answer.

I wonder what will happen, is a useful phrase that can help put some space between expectations and reality – often a highly charged space, as we become very attached to expectations. Ask for what you want, set goals, acknowledge expectations, then say, I wonder what will happen? Allow this opening for something even better than you have imagined.

None of this precludes grieving what is lost, and allowing fear to be felt … acknowledge these emotions, let them circulate then fall away, rise and fall. They can be very strong, but they don’t need to make the decisions — they shouldn’t be driving the car. Put them in the back seat after they’ve had their cry. 

How do I best handle this?

I wonder what will happen? 

May we each be the light we crave.

I’m holding everyone in peace — including myself — as we adjust to something that feels unimaginable.

*For those who would like to act and are not sure how, this group provides a weekly email with action items that are easy to accomplish, and good news to remind us that all is not madness: https://americansofconscience.com/checklist/