While this horrifying drama is playing out on the world stage, I’m finding it useful to notice how this translates in my own privileged life. For it to get this crazy on the outer stage of our consciousness, there must be some seriously unexamined shadow~ and not only out there, in them~ but in here, inside us, inside me.
Very recently, in perfect coinciding with all this political turmoil and devastating polarization of the human people, I experienced a painful and uncommon personal rupture inside a cherished part of my own life~ where my professional work as a healing facilitator overlapped with a beloved friendship~ in co-creative collaboration.
For this rupture to occur in such a painful way broke my heart and brought up so much for me to look at. Of course with retrospect I can see the dangerous vulnerability inherent in such a personal/professional overlap~ the ways in which our personal attachments can keep us from embodying a certain quality of vigilance and impeccability we might otherwise take for granted; the way personal entanglements allow us at times to sneakily sabotage our own integrity.
But hindsight is always only somewhat helpful, especially when the heart is broken. And so I’ve been processing the raw emotions of this, forced to humbly examine my own blindspots and shadow that allowed such an oversight to occur. The deeper I go in my own inquiry, the more I'm guided towards a realization of compassion and forgiveness that is startlingly wide and inclusive. I'm drawn to deep contemplation on the notion of innocence~ where true innocence is to be found, beyond proving, inside us all?
There’s so much rampant rage and blame and fault-finding happening in our world right now, alongside dangerous denial and complacency and attached sleepiness; so many outrageous transgressions on human souls, which then inflame and encourage a volatile response from other human souls.
Man against woman and woman against man, liberals against conservatives and vice versa. Leaders, leading from sociopathic delusion~ marginalizing, excluding, projecting onto that which they are afraid of and seek to control. The righteous, hateful, venomous blame this naturally invokes in return.
And there is so much true need for voicing and taking a stand for what’s right and just and true in these times. As well as a need for prayer and powerful self-examination. Our world is our mirror. So what is our part in this? And what can we do~ in our daily lives, aside from align and realign with what our lives stand for?
I don’t know about you, but I’m praying~ deeply, seriously, fiercely. Praying as I write, as I mother my children, as I cook, as I drive, as I meet with people, as I attend to all that begs attending in this full life I lead.
And I’m examining myself~ my whole self, every side of myself~ not just that which is beautifully clear-eyed, courageously leading from healing intent for our world, but this within me that has been hiding in subtle forms of self-betrayal~ masked as attachment, or denial, or postponement, or spiritual pride.
I’m examining that within me which appears to deny all responsibility like a fool, pointing my finger out there; as well as that which tends to assume all responsibility like a martyr; overwhelmed and collapsed in guilt. I’m looking at my part of the drama and mess, and the fear and distrust and shame that has sourced it.
I remember about a year after I got divorced from my children’s father, there was a pivotal point of healing for me around a toxic dynamic in which we both were suffering. I had to finally see a painful way in which I was actually attached to him being wrong, attached to judging him as the one to blame, attached to him appearing as the “lesser parent.” A way that I had projected my own dark masculine onto him, for him to carry~ which in many ways he continuously embodied and confirmed, justifying the projection in my mind. This projection secured my own identification with righteous innocence, light and goodness.
When I finally saw what was happening, what my part was in this dynamic that was harming my precious family, I had to take it all back, meet and claim the projection inside myself. All the ways I subtly and at times blatantly judged him and blamed him; the darkness, the laziness, the brokenness, his refusal to heal, his resistance to love. I had to find all those same qualities and tendencies in myself. What a relief for him, when I finally took that back. I could immediately see and feel a freedom come over him, and our co-parenting relationship lightened in the absence of this toxic load of my blame and projection.
If we can really look at the darkest parts that we have projected outside ourselves, asking others in our life, or public figures to hold on our behalf; if we can turn and meet inside our very own hearts the ego of fierce self-defense, the heartbroken lost one, the wounded longing that sources terror and greed, then maybe the dichotomization that is being so dangerously enacted out in our world won’t need to manifest so powerfully. Can I find that darkness inside my own self, and bring it deeper home to love? I’m looking at my own innocence, at the heart of it all, at the heart of every single human being of our world~ the innocence that is unblemished~ holy and whole.
Deeper than all the splits I have embodied~ the good and bad, awake and sleeping, the sacred and profane, the blamer and the blamed~ I’m humbled by the simple heart of my own true love.I’m discovering a deeper place of humility and human compassion and the living prayer that blossoms from the core of this. True compassion~ what a healing wonder this is~ how it rectifies all the splits that source the wars~ within us and without.
I'm seeing that life's invitation to us at this time is to wake up deeper, to stay present, to be still in the face of our own tendencies to react or collapse, while daring us to take a stand for truth and right action however we are called ~ be that in the deepest meditation, or in raising our children to be compassionately engaged self-loving citizens of Planet Earth, or by making calls, donating money, writing letters, and marching the streets with our signs voicing our hearts.
I'm looking at how my spiritual identification with being "free of drama" has actually just been a subtle avoidance of being awake inside the drama that life IS, that human relationship IS.
I'm seeing that being fully alive is not about rising above the drama that's here, in some kind of inflated spiritual posture of untouchable invulnerability, but rather about staying awake and clear and present, at the heart of all the drama that continuously swirls around us, touching us deeply and impacting our tenderly alive hearts.
I take refuge in a Truth that is large enough to include every side of what I have wanted to deny within myself, and what we as a culture have wanted to shamefully shove under the rug of our own human consciousness~ yours and mine and theirs. A truth that is wide enough to include the ugliest, scariest, most shameful dramas of our world, and the ways these perfectly mirror the hidden wars happening inside us and our tender human lives. A truth that celebrates a oneness of humanity, that annihilates all false division. A truth that includes and reveals an exquisite purity of silence which none of this ever touches.
Do we dare come to peace, to compassionate action, right here, right now, inside our own little life? Do we dare to actively mend the gaps in our own heart~ between our love and what we deem unloveable?
I take refuge in the simple heart of my own true love; an innocence that is deeper than any dichotomy of blame and defense; a trust that doesn’t require life or other people or our world to be trustworthy, a forgiveness that includes the unforgiveable; a compassion for the innocent wound at the heart of every sin.
I take refuge in you, in your earnest self-inquiry, in your tender vulnerability, in your courageous honesty and bold commitment to love.
Thank you. I love you. xo Jesua