Reflections On Looking at Ourselves, Listening With Our Hearts and Souls, and Deepening Our Capacity to Love

 The heart is like a garden: 

it can grow compassion or fear, resentment or love.

We must look at ourselves over and over again in order 

to learn love, to discover what has kept our hearts closed, 

and what it means to allow our hearts to open.

Healing comes from our innate capacity for deep listening. 

This deep listening or seeing is not through our ears or eyes, 

but with our heart and soul.

―Jack Kornfield

*****

How loving are we? It seems that, no matter who we are, this is an essential question to be asking ourselves. I do not believe that this can be answered with one word or in a black/white manner. Instead, if we look and look deeply, it is my experience that we humans all fall on a continuum of being more or less loving. It may be easy to see that someone like Hitler may fall on the one end of the continuum and that great spiritual teachers such as Jesus or Buddha may be on the other. So, if we have the capacity for honesty and self-reflection and self-compassion, we can likely agree that the rest of us fall somewhere in-between. 

Where? Where do you fall?

My heart is broken right now. This is what I feel in this moment, this deep, deep sadness. First, and close to home, I have a sick family member who I am grieving for. Secondly, and in the larger picture, there is great suffering all around us. So my heart is broken wide open. This wasn't always the case. Many years ago, my heart was closed down and walled up much of the time, which back then I was unaware of. But no longer. I can feel this suffering and pain all around me and within me. And, gratefully, much of the time today my heart is also open to joy and love and abundance. Of course, they both go together, this joy and this sorrow, this gratitude and grief. We cannot know one without the other.

Just today on Facebook and other places I am hearing a range of voices, as many of us do every day. There are those condemning those "fucking dems" and "radical liberals" and saying they are "communists" who want to "insight riots," etc. And there are those on the other side of the polarity who want to punch, obliterate, crush those white nationalists, those fucking racists, Republican idiots, Trump voters, etc. And on and on. From both sides, there is a justification of some form of subtle or overt violence and demonization toward an "Other."

And then there are all those whose voices soothe and feed my heart and soul with their wisdom, integrity, truth, compassion, depth, and profound love and caring for life. These are the courageous teachers and healers, visionaries and intellectuals, journalists and authors, truth-tellers and warriors for peace and justice. They are the ones who help keep me sane and who I turn to again and again because they inspire what is best and most loving and wise in me. They help me to continue to wake up and to stay awake. 

So clear to me today is that their courage and fierce compassion can be deeply contagious. And is so needed. It is absolutely true that it is hard to be conscious in today's world. Really hard. Painful. Scary. AND there are those who have had their eyes and hearts and minds and souls open day after day, year after year, decade after decade bringing us something that matters, that deeply matters. As Amy Goodman says, "What can be more noble than dedicating your life to making the world a better place?" This is what Amy and my other teachers embody. And this is what I aspire to embody.

Amy Goodman is among those beautiful souls who "go to where the silence is." Just yesterday on Democracy Now! I heard her interviewing Christian Picciolini, who is co-founder of Life After Hate, and who had been a leading neo-Nazi skinhead gang member and far-right extremist in the ’80s and ’90s. Christian spoke from his heart and the wisdom of knowing both sides of what it is to be blinded by hate and what it is to wake up. He told part of his story of being recruited in 1987 at age 14 and how he had been vulnerable to being pulled in by these dark forces. 

His story became a human one, which illuminates the great need to create new cultural stories, norms, and values in which objectifying others is transformed into humanizing other human beings.

Christian Picciolini also went on to say that those who get mired in hate and belief systems which justify and condone and engage in violence have something "broken" in them. He said this with no blame or judgment, just compassion, understanding, and wisdom. Christian states that he firmly believes that "ideology isn’t what radicalizes people. I think it’s the search for identity, community and a sense of purpose. And if there’s some sort of brokenness, a void underneath that in your life—and it could be trauma or addiction or mental health issues, anything that would hold you back or deviate your path from the intended one that you were on—you tend to look for acceptance in negative pathways." (Please go here for the full interview: https://www.democracynow.org/2017/8/18/life_after_hate_full_intv_with.)

I love Amy Goodman because again and again, year after year, she goes to where the silence is. She gives voice and brings forth the stories of those who have been silenced, oppressed, marginalized, demonized, denigrated, disrespected, victimized, and violently crushed. We will not be able to see, heal, and transform the harmful and oppressive individual and collective cultural stories we live with and that have been normalized for so long unless these exact voices are illuminated and we listen. And care. And act. 

First we must roll up our sleeves, dig deep for courage (and deeper and deeper), and continue to do the hard work of recognizing violence and lowering our tolerance for that violence, including that which we carry in our own hearts, minds, and souls. This way we can move ourselves along on the continuum that reflects hate, ignorance, separation, and fear on the one end and love, compassion, connection, and wisdom on the other. We can cultivate mindfulness and learn to increasingly recognize and intervene on ourselves when we are triggered and tempted to turn away from, or add to, that which causes harm rather than than stand up and embody that which helps and heals. We cannot be reflections of the peace our world, nation, community, family and friends, and our own hearts and souls all hunger and yearn for without first rooting out the violence in our own hearts.

You may say that this doesn't apply to you, that you don't have hatred or racism or prejudice or other forms of covert and overt biases and violent belief systems or actions in you. Or maybe you own that you do, but it's justified because of those idiot ______ (fill in the blank). If so, I challenge you to the question: Is this true? Is what I believe true? How do you know? Who are your teachers? What is the integrity, authenticity, and commitment to truth of the resources you turn to? What do you feed yourself that nourishes and encourages you to be your best self and grows your heart bigger and your wisdom deeper? How well do you love? Truly, how well do you love? Who matters to you? And who does not? Aren't we truly all on this continuum that spans between hate and love? Where are you?

Today I can fully own that over many years I have come to see so many fragmented parts of myself that I had no idea were within me. This is not easy work! In learning about narcissism over many years, I came to recognize the narcissistic traits that were showing up in my own behaviors and belief systems. I came to see the overt and hidden biases and prejudices and delusions that permeated many of the stories I had believed were true and which I used to justify my judging, harsh, pissed off, blaming and shaming projections that I landed on and directed at others. Today I recognize with deep compassion that this was an unskilled coping strategy that I had developed as a form of avoiding my own deeper pain. I had a lot of brokenness within me.

My brokenness rose out of trauma, harmful generational and cultural stories, ignorance and shame, fear and loss. There were many roots to my wounds, including the impact of growing up in a wealthy white suburb of Detroit, Michigan where anyone of color was NOT WELCOME. That early unspoken teaching in prejudice, fear, and being better than those Others permeated my cells, although I would have told you that certainly I didn't hold any racist beliefs. But bullshit. I did. Going to diversity trainings and counseling and 12 Step programs, getting sober and doing trauma work, and having other experiences over the years brought me increasingly face to face with myself and this awareness that I was not who I thought I was. And it scared me! And filled me with shame. I then came to believe that I had to get rid of these unwelcome parts of myself. Wrong.

The Guest House

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice.
meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.

Be grateful for whatever comes.
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

― Rumi

Over time I gradually began to put down the bats that I would use to metaphorically beat myself or someone else up. Yes, my inner critic had held a position of power for a long time and it was quite an amazing and difficult journey simply learning to make friends with myself. And as this occurred, I became better capable of engaging in authentic and enduring friendships with others. Truly, I could not have opened to the work of understanding and befriending my family and friends and loved ones ― much less those who are of different races, ethnicities, religions, who were Mexican or Muslim or LBGTQ, who were male or female, who were old or young, and on and on ― without first coming to understand both what had kept my heart closed and what it meant to allow my heart to open.

As my thawing out and gradual awakening progressed, I became aware that the shame and fear and distorted belief systems which had previously and unknowingly haunted me for so long began to lessen. And in their place, I was growing in curiosity and mindfulness, connection and compassion, courage and kindness, humility and acceptance, and love. And then I also became curious about you and you and you. What is it like to be you? I wondered this more and more. And that question is such a profound and transformative gift.

Because now I don't have to be in the dark all the time when things happen either within myself or outside of myself with another person or other being. Increasingly, I understand. Today, I can recognize my triggers and respond with greater skillfulness and awareness. And, so miraculously, I increasingly experience this wondrous and sacred connection ― and which is especially profound for me after the many years in which I had experienced inner isolation. I may have appeared happy and smiling, but my laughter did not come from my belly, and in the midst of a crowd of friends the truth was that I felt alone. There were walls around my heart. Now, and with each year as I grow older, I can see more clearly. Because more and more I am seeing with my heart and soul.

We all have this capacity. This is our birth right, our essence, this Sacred thread which is woven through all of life.

Consequently, today, I can understand why Trump acts as he does. My own mother had been a mini Trump before her miraculous successful treatment for mental illness, which taught me some of the most excruciating but essential lessons of my life. So I can understand this broken human being who now sits in a position of such great power. I can understand the brokenness in others because I understand the brokenness in myself. I also understand the courage and deep caring in other human beings because I have tapped into that inner well, too. So I understand why the Confederate statues are coming down, and why they need to come down. I get it. And I get why there is resistance. For anyone who does not understand, or who condemns or criticizes these actions and changes, or who thinks we should just get over it, talk to African Americans. Please, talk with them. Listen to them. Hear their stories. Try to listen with your heart and soul. Then you may realize that you are actually coming to care about what their experience is. Because you are no longer blind to their suffering. 

And if you choose to not care or work to understand those who are different from yourself, who threaten the world as you know it, then own that. Own that the roots of the experience of this suffering is not something you are interested in knowing. Because you are right, once we open that doorway and step through, the one that teaches us about suffering and about love, everything changes. Everything. And going back becomes not possible. We are forever changed. If change is not something you have befriended, then the great changes upon us today will be strange and misunderstood and judged as something horribly bad and wrong.

Wherever we are at, and whoever we are, the ongoing invitation is to take a deep breath and return to reflect again and again on where on the continuum of loving we are. The follow up to our self-assessment ― which hopefully will be done with compassion ― is to inquire into what can we do to move ourselves along on that continuum? These are big life questions to ponder. I have found that on the other side of fear are profound gifts.

At the end of our lifetimes, I believe it is true that many of us will be faced with three essential questions ― How well have we lived? How well have we loved? And how well have we let go (of all that does not serve our highest good and the highest good of others)?

We have yet to own the dark shadow of our nation's violent history, whose colonization was rooted in slavery and genocide of Indigenous Peoples. We have yet to face and own and heal this past. Consequently, the painful legacy of those times has been passed on through the generations and tragically lives on today. This is a very painful history to explore and integrate, but one which will offer up new questions that have long begged to be addressed. Questions like ― What is it like to be Native American? What is it like to be Black? How has our violent American history continued to manifest today? It takes courage and a strong heart to ask these questions. I have found that it also takes a soulful and passionate need to know the truth about what we don't know. I think of these questions as lifting the veils of my ignorance and illusions. There are always more veils to lift. What a blessing and gift it is to know that.

However, if we shy away from taking a peek, and a deeper and deeper peek, into our own personal shadows (our wounds, blind spots and biases, ignorance and illusions), it is not likely that we will be drawn to explore the shadow work left to be done by us collectively as a nation. And that neglected individual and collective work will leave us at risk of projecting our confusion, anger, apathy, ignorance and fear outward onto those who threaten to stir things up inside of us and the world as we know it. 

So we'll instead be at risk of being silent. Or changing the subject. Or wondering what in the hell the big fuss is about. Or we'll feel called to overtly defend the status quo and lash out at those damn commie liberals and radical leftists and fucking Black Lives Matter idiots and other freaking haters of America. Go move to Canada, or better yet, Russia!, you might say.

And there is another choice. By embracing my own shadow, I am not afraid to embrace yours or that of our nation and beyond. Because I know that this is exactly what sets us free. "One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious." ―Carl Jung

Today I witnessed a Facebook friend condemning my own willingness to put my body on the line in standing up to hate. What he did not understand was why I would join anyone who is stepping up to do their part, whatever that is, to stand firmly for justice for all. There was no understanding of my commitment as a mother and grandmother, as an Elder woman, as a human being of privilege to stand up for those who are vulnerable, who have been marginalized and oppressed, for those children and adults and other beings who suffer and are victimized and brutalized by the forces of ignorance and hate. I've been standing in protection of children in particular, and both personally and professionally, for most of my adult life. And now, because I understand what is at stake, yes, putting our bodies on the line is something that I believe is often called for. Because if not now, when? Yet for many, and with differing perspectives, this is a radical thing to do. 

And, YES!, I am a Radical! Because, as the Dalai Lama says, "Compassion is the radicalism of our time." I agree! This is one of the bumper stickers I have on my car and on our Casita (R-pod camping trailer), along with the bumper sticker that reads NON JUDGMENT DAY IS NEAR. And when I went to the rally in Portland to stand up against hate and for peace and justice for all, I carried my radical home made sign which read OUR GREATEST STRENGTH LIES IN THE GENTLENESS AND TENDERNESS OF OUR HEART ―Rumi

Compassion is truly the radicalism of our time. And to the degree that we are empathically impaired is the degree that we humans, individually and collectively, are cut off from our power to be forces for love and healing in our own lives and families, and in our nation and the world. We are all connected. Waking up brings this fact to our conscious awareness. And once we experience our sacred connection with one another, we experience that your suffering and joy is also my suffering and joy. And we likely find ourselves stepping up with greater commitment to doing what we can do to add to the healing and wholeness of our world.

We cannot root out the hate that is directed toward any "Other" without doing the hard work of first coming to understand the roots of violence within ourselves. Each of us can embrace, expand, and evolve in our capacity to clear away the obstacles to our loving, peel back layer after layer of our illusions, recognize and dismantle harmful belief systems, own and heal the trauma and addictions that keep us separate and asleep and stuck in our wounds. If we are alive and breathing, there is more work to be done. More work to be done to uncover what is the core essence that remains once all else has been cleared away ― Love. 

The world needs each of us to grow our hearts, to grow in our capacity for empathy and compassion and wisdom, and to engage with everything we have in becoming Love Warriors. Another world is possible. Tag, we are all it!

With love and blessings ― Molly