A Pathway Of Hope, Healing, and No Harm
Some of us have a clear path that we regularly traverse from our left brain to our right. Some of us are able to experience a strong heart-mind connection and are able to see with the eyes of our hearts. We are able to live more and more out of our wholeness rather than our fragmented selves. For others it is not so easy.
I know what it is like to live from both my fragmented split off parts of myself as reality, and what it is to live increasingly from the wholeness of who I truly am.
It was 1984 when I was first told by an early counselor that I was going to need to learn to make the long journey from my head to my heart. He reflected to me that I was living in a protected state that kept me largely disconnected from much of myself and the truth of my experiences. He would also often share with me at the start of our sessions how he would need to begin with "rounding up all of Molly's chickens that had scattered out to the pasture" - all of my split off parts that were anything but integrated and were running off in every direction in fear and resistance to facing what I did not know, had long neglected, and did not understand.
This was how I had learned to survive my childhood experiences of not feeling safe with or loved by my own mother and neglected and not protected by my father. I learned to shut down, shut out, shut up. It was too painful and frightening to see what I saw, know what I knew, feel what I felt, need what I needed. So this other reality formed as I cultivated a false self while hiding away that scared and hurting little girl within. This was certainly not the fertile ground of cultivating empathy or compassion or the capacity to see and understand my suffering or that of anyone else.
Many of us learn as tiny children from our families and/or our culture that we need to turn away from ourselves. And thus begins the process of closing down our hearts to both ourselves and others. This happens when we have the consistent experience of our primary caretakers - one or both of our parents - or our society turning away from meeting our basic needs for understanding, empathy, compassion, kindness, and love. Rather than finding the critical messages that we need which mirror with loving awareness our emotions and needs, our preciousness and beauty, how we are safe and protected, and how much we are loved, we receive messages which cause harm to our development as whole and healthy human beings. These messages, covert or overt, tell us that there is something wrong with us, that we are flawed, that we cannot trust adults to keep us physically and/or emotionally safe, and that we are not understood, seen, affirmed, respected, and cherished.
Often those who give these early harmful and negating messages to children, ours and others, are in denial that this is what we are doing. I certainly was. And there is no fault or blame in this. It simply is what it is. We are all human and none of us can give to someone else, even our own children, that which we have been denied and continue to deny to ourselves. If we, as tiny children, have unlearned how to bring a deep sense of compassionate loving awareness, understanding, acceptance, and tenderness to ourselves, we simply will not be capable of bringing this loving and empathic presence to anyone else.
It is also true that we can change and transform even the most deeply rooted injuries.
*****
Many years ago I embarked on a journey to heal myself and my children. Today, everything has come to evolve and expand beyond my wildest imaging. Cultivating understanding and compassion for what had been transmitted to me, to my mother and father, and to others through the generations in my family and in our American culture has gifted me with the profound treasure of the wisdom, humility, tenderness, kindness, compassion, and love that I am capable of today. The legacy of tormented hearts and souls that had been blindly handed to me, as it was to my parents before me and on and on, has not needed to continue. The trajectory of our family is now on a completely new path, one emerging from so much darkness into the light of growing awareness and understanding.
I always weep when I reflect on the enormity of it all, as I am in this moment. Yes, and while it is true that nothing is perfect and that the point of the journey has nothing to do with perfection, the greater truth is that there are possibilities and potentials and lived experiences right now for myself and my three sons and our grandchildren that once I could not have imagined. None of us can imagine something we've never experienced. And there was certainly a time when I had no idea what it was to live from a place of authenticity and truth, empathy and compassion, mindfulness and accountability, meaning and purpose, courage and kindness, connection and belonging, and wisdom and love and fierce caring for all of life. None. That is no longer my reality. Miracles are possible and so many of us are living proof of that.
And every day presents me and all of us with new opportunities to see yet more clearly and expand the vistas of our understanding and consciousness. What a profound blessing. This is especially profound for me because I know what it is to be asleep and to cause harm to others, even to my own precious children, and often without having any awareness of what I was doing. I know what it is to live with unattended injuries to my heart and mind, with unhealthy belief systems and relationships, with fear and shame and dishonesty, with projections and judgments and distortions. My blind spots had me in a fog of acting out and causing harm. And I couldn't see it. Not until I became willing to get the help I needed to wake up out of all this darkness and embark in a process that would help me to remember so much of what I had forgotten and lost.
We do not need to remain lost. We do not need to be part of that which causes harm. Just setting the intention of Doing No Harm is so powerful! And life changing...
There is a great deal of harm that is being done today, much of it justified due to injured instincts and disconnections from the wisdom and compassion from our hearts. When we speak only from our heads, much suffering can follow without conscious awareness of what we have done. Instead we are acting out of this place of separation, this belief system that does not recognize that we are all equal, all family. I say this with humility. I've been there.
Some wonder why and how I can bring compassion to so many today. The answer is found in bringing a fierce awareness of myself and owning and making peace with the whole of what has unfolded within me in my lifetime. It is not all pretty. Much is very dark. It is only through opening to holding myself with love and compassion that I am able to bring these qualities to others.
I believe that cultivating this understanding, mindfulness, and compassion for ourselves and others is critically needed in these times where polarizing projections and dehumanization and other forms of violence have become the norm in American culture. There is another way.
*****
Years ago I was attending a training on brain development when the presenter spoke of the variety of experiences that we humans can have. He spoke specially of our right-left brain connectedness. He related that some of us have the equivalent of a major eight lane freeway joining the two, and those are the ones who are very integrated in this connectivity in their brains. Others, he said, have had things get very grown over between the left and the right hemispheres. And for them it is like traversing a 4-wheel drive back road where every few yards you have to get out with a chainsaw and chop down fallen trees and tall overgrowth. It is very laborious, painful, challenging, and takes forever.
A question: where do each of us fall on this continuum?
The answer determines how well we are capable of hearing ourselves and others from a place of empathy and compassion rather than the rigidity, judgments, and limitations of our brains when we do not experience a strong left-right brain connection. The strength of the heart-mind relationship we have within ourselves determines the strength of the heart-mind relationships we are able to have with everyone else.
These times, I believe, ask of us to cultivate, nourish, strengthen, and regularly feed all that empowers us to increasingly act out of the fiercely loving strength and wisdom and compassion of our whole selves. We are asked to act and to act from a place which reflects being the calm in the storm. Without cultivating this mindfulness of ourselves, it is just too hard to not be reactive and call names and hurl insults and demonize those Others. I get it how this is done because we care so much and are so scared and traumatized and scared with everything that is happening day by day. I get it.
And we still need to remember the children and what the children need of us right now. Just look at these brave teenagers who are standing up to the forces which have long been killing them, both their hearts and their bodies. AND they are doing it with integrity, with courage, with fierce caring and unrelenting commitment to a higher good for us all. We adults and elders need to stand with the children, all the children. Now. And we, too, need to model being the peace our world hungers so deeply for.
This is not passive peace, no just sending hearts and prayers peace. The kids who survived this most recent horrific school shooting, and other survivors and their families all over the country, know that this alone is bullshit and will not stand for it. Nor should we. No! Instead this is standing with all the strength and courage, commitment and resolve, and fierce compassionate action we possess individually and collectively to doing our part, whatever that is, in working together to create a just, caring, and peaceful world.
*****
Along with the question, where do you fall on this continuum? Let us all reflect on where each of us is in our journey of becoming kind and whole and loving. If we are alive and breathing, there is more we can do to grow into the truth and strength and beauty of who we truly are.
I also come back again and again to something so powerful and wise that I heard while in Kauai: We are all family. There is a great need for us to remember our interconnectedness, something Thích Nhất Hạnh refers to as our Interbeing. As we absorb this truth, our fears gradually are transformed into a greater and greater capacity for kindness, wisdom, compassion, and love.
Three Kinds of People
by Michael Meade
An old idea suggests there are but three kinds of people in this world. The first kind of person tends to be preoccupied with self-interest as everything refers back to “I, me and mine.” At this basic level the world can be divided into winners and losers as self-assertion rules the day and excesses of aggression and rule-breaking can seem justified. Often, the only restraints on self-aggrandizement become the fear of public shaming or the threat of condemnation and punishment by law.
Although some level of self-assertion is necessary for protecting and sustaining life, unenlightened self-interest inevitably becomes the source of arrogance, greed and injustice on the part of both individuals and social groups. As the lowest common denominator of humanity, this first level of survival and narrow self-interest can be manipulated politically, usually under the guise of patriotic passions. “We are Number One” and “America First” are campaigns aimed to appeal to the first level of life and the basic drive to dominate others.
The second kind of person learns to operate at a higher level of life that includes an increased awareness of both the needs and the value of others, even those who seem quite other than oneself. At this level people develop greater self-discipline while also learning to temper self-interest in favor of an appreciation of the “greater good.” Instead of the narrowness of “I’m going to get mine,” there can be a felt sense of being connected to all of humanity, as people aspire to qualities of nobility, tolerance and true generosity. Along with a growing awareness of the inherent humanity of all people regardless of gender, or race, ethnicity, capacity or religion, there develops an increasing willingness to serve something beyond simple self-interest and self-involvement.
At the second level people develop the ability to seek solutions that work for all parties, as collaboration and genuine compromise help forge “win-win” agreements. Negotiations become more conscious and there is a true effort to protect the health and well-being of the human community. Charity organizations and “non-profit” projects form alongside basic profit-driven businesses. Rather than indulge in blind greed and self-importance, people undertake noble experiments that seek greater peace, more equality and “justice for all.”
At this level the coherence of society, the sustainability of natural resources and the preservation of cultural values are at stake. Thus, those who awaken to a greater sense of nobility and genuine care for others have often been supported by the principles and practices of religious groups as well as by democratic institutions. However, when times get hard and people feel the pressure of enduring threats and persistent hardships, the greater sense of fairness and justice becomes more difficult to sustain. In the face of uncertainty and fear, the second kind of person can lose touch with the core values of humanism and regress back to aggressive attitudes and the simple modes of self-interest found on the first level.
Unfortunately, when times become dark and troubling religious groups as well as political parties can also lose their commitments to genuine ideals and meaningful principles. History is marred and stained with the collapse of principles as well as the loss of integrity found amongst groups and institutions touting noble intentions and lofty goals. Out of confusion and fear or anger and resentment, institutions of all kinds have found themselves caught in their own shadows and even mired in the blood of innocents.
It turns out that the great troubles and fears of this world can only be met with a level of enduring visions that do not collapse under the pressure of fear and uncertainty. The visions found at this third level arise from a depth of understanding and compassion that transcends both the compulsion for personal gain and the pressure of raw emotions.
The third kind of person is found at the deepest level of life where integrity is grounded in vision and in values found only after losing the innocence of superficial hopes and dreams.
The third kind of person survives some life-changing defeat or loss and suffers a descent in life that makes them aware of the agonies and tragedies experienced by so many throughout the world. Such a descent can be quite private, as in the case of a debilitating illness or the loss of a loved one. It can also occur as part of a collective tragedy, as in the case of war, a terrorist act or a natural disaster that alters the lives of many people at once. Either way, the stricken person finds themselves in a dark night of the soul, alone with the remnants of broken dreams, lost in a darkness that erases all sense of hope.
To despair means to have lost all hope, to feel both hopeless and helpless in the face of overwhelming forces of violence, betrayal or tragic loss. Yet, if we are willing to face the darkness, a deeper level of understanding can be felt and a deeper dream of life can be found.
Because of this deeper knowledge, those who survive loss know who they are at their core; they also know the core values and ideals upon which humanity depends. They cannot be manipulated by fear or greed, cannot be shaken by threats or be pressured to act against either their own integrity or the interests of the greater good. We look to them to preserve the highest sense of human value and the deepest sense of human connectedness. In this way the third level of awareness produces the truly inspired leaders, the wounded healers, and the wise counselors who know that the ideals of humanity must be upheld precisely when the darkness and confusion around us grows.
America is a young nation that has clung to its innocence and claimed an exceptional sense of promise and hope for the future. Yet, it has become painfully evident in these times of extreme climate change, religious terrorism, political extremism and increasing bigotry that the light can turn to darkness at any moment. The dread clouds of loss and tragedy have become an undeniable fact and a recurring nightmare as America now faces its own dark night of the soul.
The current election can be seen to offer a choice between the first kind of person and the second. The third thing is usually charm, but at this time it is not simply a third party that is needed. Thus the issue is not simply the notion that both candidates are flawed or that party loyalty must be preserved. The issue is not the correctness of a certain ideology or the necessity to believe in a single economic theory. The issue now is the threat to the soul of the country and the risk of abandoning the higher ideals of humanity for the lower instincts for scapegoating and tribalism.
The robber barons and self-appointed demagogues always want to rule the land and always claim the power and ability to fix everything. The would-be strong men always seek to exploit the raw emotions of fear, anger and resentment that rise to the surface during the dark times. Yet, in troubled times the only thing capable of withstanding the pressures of collective fear and resentment are the unique visions that can form at the deepest levels of the individual human soul.
It is our civic duty to vote for the higher level of humanity; but history must be made in the depths of the human soul. The secret hope of this world is the kind of imagination that arises from the underlying spirit of life and the hidden resiliency of the human heart. When all hope is lost and all seems headed for disaster, it is genuine imagination that is missing and needs to be found again. The deepest level of hope is based in creative imagination which tends to appear when people are willing to stay in the tension of opposing issues long enough that a surprising vision dawns and a way forward appears.
Faced with tragedy or loss a person or a society either grows a greater vision or becomes diminished at the level of the soul. In tragic times we either become wiser and more compassionate or else become bitter and more rejecting of life. In these troubled times we need more of the third level of understanding that brings a deeper commitment to a future that is more genuinely humane, more fully inclusive, more dedicated to justice than to greed, and more able to find ways to balance the needs of both nature and culture.
*****
May more and more of us live increasingly in the light of who we most truly are. May we "bring
a deeper commitment to a future that is more genuinely humane, more
fully inclusive, more dedicated to justice than to greed, and more able
to find ways to balance the needs of both nature and culture."
Bless us all - Molly
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