Some Thoughts On Healing What Divides Us

Out Beyond Ideas of Wrongdoing and Right Doing

There Is a Field. I'll Meet You There. 

― Rumi

Countless human beings have spoken about love and matters of the heart throughout time. So many voices come to mind. Among them is Steven Levine who is quoted as saying, "The more we love, the more real we become." And Rumi who affirms that "our greatest strength lies in the gentleness and tenderness of our heart." Thích Nhất Hạnh shares that what we most need to do to save our world "is to hear within us the sounds of the Earth crying." Pema Chödrön goes on to say that "we don’t set out to save the world; we set out to wonder how other people are doing and to reflect on how our actions affect other people’s hearts." 

Among my greatest teachers about love and compassion has been my mother. Many who know just glimpses of my story may find this an astounding thing to say given the extreme violence and brutality of my mother throughout my childhood and through most of my adult life. Yes, there was the physical violence ranging from blaming me for making her nearly suffocate me to death with a pillow when I was a one years old who would not stop crying, to slugging my head into a wall, spitting in my face, throwing silverware and chairs, and more as my brother and I grew older. 

Most of the violence, however, was verbal and psychological. Our mother's severe mental illness also compelled her to work to suck the life force out of all who were around her, and to demonize, torment, attack, and reject anyone who did not affirm her reality and meet her narcissistic needs. The last time I spoke with my twin before his suicide, John told me that he "was going to hold out and be himself (no more pretending for her to be someone else) until our mother finally loved him. Two months later my brother checked into a motel and ended his life with an overdose of Valium and vodka. John believed that the only way to be free of his tortured life and the unbearable torment of not feeling loved was to end it. And so he did. Our mother was not capable of love and compassion. And the impact of that loss was profound for my brother, our father, and myself.

The period of greatest gain in knowledge and experience 

is the most difficult period of one's life.

― The Dalai Lama

I have learned a lot about wounds and walls and shutting down, shutting up, shutting out. I had absorbed the rules of don't talk, don't trust, don't be. Intimacy, love, and compassion were all experiences that were largely foreign to me because I hadn't cultivated the capacity to be able to be intimate, loving, and compassionate with myself. And because I didn't have the safety and support I needed to experience what I carried in my own heart, it certainly wasn't going to be possible for me to listen and look deeply into yours.

And meeting in some field beyond wrongdoing and right doing would have seemed very strange and ridiculous to me. Who the hell does that? I also certainly had no awareness that the vast majority of how any of us functions and the belief systems that we hold spring from our unconsciousness. And I was deeply unconscious. How could I be anything else? I hadn't had support and nourishment to be myself, to look deeply, to heal, and to cultivate growing into my greater wholeness. Without the wise, compassionate, and loving environment I had needed to truly flourish, I had become instinct injured and cut off from knowing what I know, seeing what I see, feeling what I feel, and needing what I needed. I was also in a world of hurt without even knowing it.

 Everyone gets wounded in this world and everyone has within 

them some golden qualities that can serve to heal the wounds 

of time and the traumatic effects of human tragedy.

― Michael Meade

My story may seem extreme to many. The truth is that it is far more common than not, and I know this not just through my 30 years of work professionally with children and families, but also through the countless friends and others I have met along my own path of healing and awakening. I also witness the impact of our human struggle with consciousness as I look upon the great divides within American culture and around the planet. We humans are often a warring people ― with each other and within ourselves, and often without even knowing it. The concepts of bridging divides and bringing greater compassion and kindness to ourselves and the way we live our lives can be outside of what is normal and familiar to us. 

It can be very hard work for most of us to transform our wounds and our lack of conscious awareness about ourselves and others into new and evolving belief systems and ways of inhabiting our world and our own bodies. At least it certainly has been difficult for me ― a long and winding road with huge obstacles, unanticipated changes and losses and trauma, and profound miracles, gifts, and blessings that I could not have imagined all those years ago when I first embarked on this journey of making the unconscious conscious... of waking up.

Perhaps what we often see that is less common are human beings who recognize that much of how we operate is not conscious ― and who are then motivated and inspired to reach out, seek, and receive in an ongoing way whatever supports are needed to find our own unique ways to make more and more of the unconscious conscious. I believe that this is a great struggle for most of us individually and collectively. Because opening to self-reflection and looking inside, digging deeper and deeper to illuminate our blind spots and where it is that we have been hurt, requires vulnerability, humility, courage, commitment, and support. And there is also a deep need to connect with those who have gone before us and who can serve as midwifes to our healing and the birth of our greater Selves.

To know that we know what we know, and that we do not know 

what we do not know, that is true knowledge.  

― Confucius

Before we can begin to heal the divides we see in the world, in our nation, and in our communities and families and friendships, we need to heal the divides within our own selves. This means taking a deep look within and not turning away from each opportunity that God/Goddess/Spirit/Being (or whatever name we may have for the One) offers us to deepen in our capacity to embody compassion and love. I'm speaking here of opening to loving with no asterisk after it ― no saying, okay I'm loving, but_____*. And then there are all those who we leave off our loving list or excluded from, as I've often called it, our circle of caring. 

Depending on where we are on the continuum of conscious awareness and opening ― or not opening ― our hearts, minds, and souls, this list of who we care about and feel connection with can be small and shrinking, or large and expanding. My observation is that, and especially as we grow older, we are likely either contracting or growing more expansive, day by day, year by year, in relationship with life. The critical relationship that reflects the honest truth of where we are with cultivating love is where we are with cultivating love and self-compassion within ourselves. 

All that is neglected in our hearts has to go somewhere. Without awareness of our triggers, without consciousness of our wounds, we can end up projecting our own unattended hurt and fears and biases and judgments onto others in insensitive, harsh, hurtful, and sometimes violent ways. We do this regardless of what religion or spiritual tradition we practice, our race or ethnicity, our age or gender or sexual orientation, our poverty or wealth, our Ph.D. or never making it past the 9th grade. And often we don't even see what we are doing. Until we look deeply.

The old idea is that when tragedy strikes or when an obstacle blocks us, there are only two possibilities. We either become a smaller person or we become a bigger person. If it's a real life change you cannot come out the same. So therefore, you're either going to come out smaller or you're going to rise up and ultimately come out of it a bigger person.

― Michael Meade

It is not so much what happens to us in our lives as what we do with it. In returning to my mother and myself, there is an archetypal quality to our story that is much bigger than the two of us.  There is a great teaching here about love and compassion that arose from a human being who was so wounded that she was not able to bring these essential life giving qualities to her own children. Because of her very early trauma and losses, my mother had never learned love, empathy, or compassion. She learned fear, abandonment, anger, shame, anxiety, addiction, depression, image management, pretense, projection, and disconnection. And this is what my mother brought to how she parented my brother and myself, and also to all her relationships. While my twin did not survive, ultimately, and with great support over many years, I was able to use the wounds, obstacles, tragedies I had experienced to cultivate the skills of the alchemist ― finding the blessings and profound gifts hidden in great loss.

I believe that these times ask of us individually and collectively to cultivate the skills of the alchemist. There are many crises that humankind and all beings are faced with at this time. These are indeed dangerous times and these are times of great opportunity. My mother was a profound force in my life pointing to what direction not to go. I have found that our teachers can embody both - teaching what way not to go and what path is in the highest good. The ground of our lives provides fertile ground for teachers to come to each of us bearing their gifts. Some may look foreboding and even evil, as my mother had once looked to me, and others can readily inspire the best in us.

Until, modern times when it became mostly a civic task, education was considered a sacred work. It was sacred because it involved the indwelling spirit in the student and because it required an awakened spirit in the teachers. Spirit to spirit, genius to genius, soul to soul go the true lessons that help young people become themselves. Ultimately, each person holds the key to the story trying to be lived from within, but first someone else must help unlock the mystery of one’s life.

 ― Michael Meade

 

Whoever our teachers, let them teach us the value of beginner's mind. We become teachable when we know that there is more to learn, when we are able and willing to look at things with new eyes. And we know that there is more to learn when we get it that we all are some combination of wisdom and ignorance. I know that it can be disturbing to have situations arise where we are challenged to look at how we may be ignorant, uninformed, and uneducated. Another way to look at it is that to one degree or another, we are not yet fully awakened. We all have blind spots and biases. There are simply more veils to lift to reveal what we haven't yet been able to see. If we are alive and breathing, there is more to open to, more we can use to lessen our distortions and triggers, more to let in that will serve to expand and deepen our hearts, minds, and souls.

And, truly, if we look honestly, aren't we all, to some degree, ignorant, uninformed, and uneducated? This is not an insult or attack or harsh judgment as much as a simple but profound truth. Because maybe we have a Ph.D. in one area, but what about all the others? Maybe we watch Fox News or MSNBC and think it's all those Others out there who are being suckered into believing "fake news." Yet, without discerning carefully who our resources are and who funds them, without truly knowing the integrity and authenticity of who our teachers are, we remain vulnerable to letting into our hearts that which divides us. And anything that seeks to divide us is "fake news."

It is my experience that we open to authenticity and that which connects rather than divides when we attend to and seek out that which feeds our hearts and souls. This is the great antidote to our ignorance, to our explicit and implicit biases, to our blind spots and any stuckness we may experience on our paths in life  ― seeking that which nourishes our greater wholeness, wisdom, love, and compassion. To do that, there is a deep, deep need to chose our teachers carefully. The teachers in my life today embody a profound commitment to truth, unwavering integrity, and a deep lifelong dedication to making the world a better place. 

If we do not look more deeply, heal our injured instincts, and hone our capacity for discernment, we may be swept up in false beliefs that set us against one another. We can hear things - like that there are those such as myself who are backed by George Soros and wanting to turn our nation into a place where communism can flourish - and believe them, even though this story is simply and completely not true. And without looking deeply into the eyes and listening with our hearts to the stories of those who are different than ourselves, we may be blinded to the trauma and greater needs and realities of others who are Black, Indigenous, poor, LBGTQ, Muslim, Mexican, Syrian, or live next door or in our own families.

War and peace start in the human heart

and whether that heart is open or whether that 

heart closes has global implications.  

― Pema Chödrön

I keep coming back to the great need for each of us to cultivate curiosity and beginner's mind and courage so we can ask the questions that yearn to be asked and nourish in our hearts and minds that which connects rather than divides. Every day I do this. I begin with gratitude and I seek to uncover yet another layer of my not knowing. Because I know that I am still ignorant about so much. The more I learn, the more I realize I have not known. This profound commitment to truth, to love, and to being a compassionate presence in the world is also embodied in the roots of my commitment to living my life as a prayer, to doing no harm, and to alleviating the suffering in the world. To the extent that any of us are willing and open to going deeper, to truly exploring the matters of the heart, of all of our hearts, that is when miracles become possible. 

Such as the miracle that has evolved with my mom and me. Since her breakdown followed by the miraculous successful treatment for her mental illness, and coupled with the immersion in the love of family, four years ago my mama began the journey of opening her heart. Today she is free of much that had imprisoned her and kept her totally separate from life and love. And if my brave now 91 year old mom can begin this enormous process of allowing to die away what harms and open to what heals, then anything is possible for all of us. 

We can heal that which divides us. We can ask of others, especially those we think we know but have never truly engaged in conversation with, "What is it like to be you?" Let us care that much and be that brave. Let us seek out those resources which connect us with others and the truth of their lives rather than divide us. Walls turned sideways are bridges. And lifelong learning can become our passion. 

Our Earth Mother and all the children everywhere and all beings need us to do the work of building bridges of understanding, conscious awareness, connection, caring, compassion, and love.

And once we become that courageous where we increasingly choose to face our own suffering and that of others with equal concern and compassion, everything will change. Not only will we know greater love, compassion, joy, and tenderness. It is also true that then it is only kindness that will make sense any more. 

Kindness

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and
    purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
it is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you every where
like a shadow or a friend.

― Naomi Shihab Nye

 ****

With love and blessings,

Molly 

My mama and me