Saturday, October 24, 2020

Reflections On Cracking Through Our Illusions and Embodying Truth, Compassion, Courage, Justice, and Love

 
 Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it. 
  Rumi

How do we honor truth, compassion, justice, and love through the ways that we live our daily lives? What diminishes or increases our capacity for compassion, wisdom, kindness, generosity, and love?

In my own personal life, these are some of the obstacles that I have discovered over the course of many years of self-reflection which have impaired my growth and my capacity to love and to be authentically aligned with my most cherished values:

  • Fear. 
  • Frozen grief. 
  • Shame.
  • Dishonesty.
  • Isolation.
  • Adherence to the rules of Don't Talk, Don't Trust, Don't Feel, Don't Be.
  • Addictions, both substance and non-substance. 
  • Obliviousness of my blind spots.
  • Unaddressed childhood and cultural wounds.
  • Unseen biases.
  • Not owning, understanding, or intervening on my triggers.
  • Placing personalities before principles.
  • Prioritizing the politics and propaganda of polarization over deeper truths.
  • Judgments, projections, and dehumanization. 
  • A constricted circle of caring.
  • Being aligned with an identity connected with a particular political party.
  • Ignorance related to how to follow the money funding politicians, policies, and resources of information.
  • Attachment to harmful, unhealthy, and limiting belief systems and resources of information. 
  • Injured instincts and a compromised capacity for discernment. 
  • Attachment to political figures, media personalities, healers and teachers I did not recognize as being compromised in their depth of integrity, commitment to truth, and capacity for love, compassion, and wisdom. 
  • Resistance to the pain of going deeper into unfamiliar territory and disillusioning facts which threatened my entrenched belief systems.
  • Clinging to the world as I knew it to be rather than allowing the death of the old so that the new could be born. 
  • Pushing away and resisting new information and deeper truths which would break my heart open. 

It has been my experience that it takes a great deal to gradually dismantle the walls that we humans unknowingly build against vulnerability, truth, and love. Those qualities, values, and experiences which can help empower us to unstuck ourselves, to see our blind spots and recognize our illusions, and evolve into greater wholeness often include grace, resilience, courage, a passion for truth, the support of wise and compassionate teachers, an enduring commitment our spiritual growth and evolution, and the intention to contribute to that which lessens rather than adds to our own suffering and that of others.

It is my experience that, to one degree or another, we all have these walls. We humans all fall somewhere along the continuum with ignorance on the one end and consciousness on the other. And this is largely determined by our awareness of the obstacles that we have built against love, truth, and consciousness and what, if anything, that we choose to do about it.

* * * * *

War and peace start in the human heart and whether that heart is open or whether that heart closes has global implications.  
Pema Chödrön

For the first 30+ years of my life, and unknown to me, my heart was often more closed than open. I had unknowingly built a protective shield around my heart to survive childhood trauma and loss, and to also cope with unhealthy cultural belief systems and norms that I had been indoctrinated into absorbing. Over the course of my young life, I'd become swept up in addictions, shame and fear and trauma that I'd long buried, and a false sense of who I was that was disconnected from the truth of my wholeness and the essence of my sacred self.

I did not begin to understand how impenetrable the depths of my heart were until I began therapy in 1984 and, just before entering sobriety, an early counselor told me that I was going to need to do something called "shadow work" and "make the long journey from your head to your heart." I had no idea what he was talking about. I just knew that his words scared me to death....

There is something within in me that has been inspired and nurtured by so many others. Over many years, I have adopted a diversity of teachers, truth-tellers, wisdom-keepers, activists and artists and poets, authors and visionaries who in some way have supported me from near and afar in shedding my illusions and opening to the deeper wisdom of my heart and soul. This list, among others, includes

    • Pema Chödrön, Riane Eisler, Joanna Macy, Jane Goodall, Naomi Klein, Amy Goodman, Arundhati Roy, Vandana Shiva, Alice Walker, Maya Angelou, Angela Davis, Roxane Dunbar-Ortiz, Angeles Arrien, the 13 Indigenous Grandmothers, Rachel Carson, Dorothy Day, Rosa Parks, Harriet Tubman, Michelle Alexander, Jane Mayer, Frances Moore Lappé, Terry Tempest Williams, Margaret Mead, Christiana Figueres, Sir David Attenborough, Howard Zinn, Martin Luther King, Jr., James Baldwin, Malcolm X, Desmond Tutu, Nelson Mandela, Cornel West, Bernie Sanders, Rabbi Michael Lerner, Noam Chomsky, Chris Hedges, Henry Giroux, Jeremy Scahill, David Sirota, Daniel Ellsberg, Michael Parenti, Chalmers Johnson, Timothy Snyder, Bill Moyers, Bill McKibben, Dahr Jamail, David Korten, Bryan Stevenson, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Ibram X. Kendi, Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II, Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Michael Meade, Carl Jung, Frank Ostaseski, Francis Weller, Thích Nhất Hạnh, the Dalai Lama, Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Judith Duerk, Rachel Naomi Remen, Brené Brown, Charlotte Kasl, Mary Oliver, John O'Donohue, Rumi, Wendell Berry, Joy Harjo, Jack Kornfield, Matthew Fox, Robert Beatty, Doug Pullin, my three sons, my loving husband Ron Matela, many beloved and wise friends, the Earth, and the list goes on and on... 

I envision a time when more often than not we humans will be encouraged, informed, expanded, and inspired by our connections with those wise ones who support us in moving through our resistance to remembering what we have forgotten and into ever evolving and deepening levels of truth, consciousness, and love. It has certainly been my experience that it takes a lot of support to open our hearts, and especially when we are surrounded with distractions, disinformation, and that which divides us from within and with each other. Yet, it is possible to again and again allow the world as we know it to collapse out from under us. This is the journey that brings with it many deaths and many rebirths. It is the ongoing journey of opening our hearts, minds, and souls. 

To me, this journey of awakening from our illusions is a profound form of Grace — a Grace that compels us to know, to seek truth, to understand that there is always another vista beyond what we are able to see today where more will be revealed. This is God/Goddess/Spirit working through us, this is the encouragement of our ancestors from the other side, and this is the mysterious and powerful workings of the forces of Love and Grace.

Before beginning this sacred journey of awakening from the illusions of my fragmented self, I was largely blind to any harm that I was complicit with and perpetuating upon myself, those I loved and cared about, and of the ripples that I sent out into the wider world. While the tenderness, strength, and beauty of my heart was not always obscured, my consistent and deep capacity for love and for intimacy and honesty, empathy and compassion, joy and generosity, truth and wisdom, and for service work and dedication to a greater purpose was largely stunted, weakened, and impaired.

There have been many, many layers within myself and within those around and beyond me that I was out of touch with. These past nearly 38 years have asked of me to let go of so much that I had held to be true, but which had in some way contributed to my heart staying closed off to the depths of my potential as a fully embodied and deeply loving human being.

* * * * * 

I would not give a fig for the simplicity this side of complexity, but I would give my life for the simplicity on the other side of complexity.  
Oliver Wendell Holmes 

My oldest son, Brian Murray, first told me this quote by Oliver Wendell Holmes approximately 20 years ago. Today I can deeply relate with its wisdom. 

The truth that I have learned from my own journey is that there is no way to go from Point A to Point Z in our lifetimes without going through the messy middle. It is not possible to evolve or teleport into wisdom and clear seeing without turning towards, rather than away from, that which interrupts and challenges what we believe to be true. And going through the disruptions, the disillusionment, the humility and fear, the falling away of what we think of as "reality" in order to enter the birth canal of our greater awakening is no small feat. It truly does take a lot of courage to give up our attachment to the simplicity on this side of complexity. At least this has certainly been true for me.

Some examples from my own life:

  • Believing (because of shame, denial, ignorance, and fear) that I did not know anyone who was alcoholic — until an intervention in my life pushed me to learn about addiction and ultimately come to understand that both my parents, my brother, most of my friends at that time, my former husband, and ultimately Me were all alcoholic.
  • Believing that I had done all the healing work needed to be a healthy parent and break the cycle of trauma — until that reality was crushed when at young ages my own children developed symptoms of depression, shame, secrecy, anxiety, and/or addiction.
  • Believing that my marriage to my sons' father was fine, thank you very much until after 31 years I had gradually come to a place of realizing that I could no longer stay in the marriage and live an authentic life. The two were not compatible.
  • Believing that I knew how to have healthy, stable relationships until most of those relationships prior to recovery, and in the early years of sobriety, fell apart.
  • Believing that voting democrat was all that I needed to do as my civic American duty until 9-11 happened, which then led me down a long path of discovering the shadow side of our nation, including the deep corruption within both major political parties and our government.
  • Believing that all liberal (but corporate funded) media told the truth and all the facts of what I needed to know until I began to listen to independent media and other resources of information which cut right through the veils of the fog of my ignorance and indoctrination.
  • Believing in the wisdom of certain therapists, spiritual leaders, and other teachers until the time came when I recognized that I had been misled, misinformed, and/or further traumatized by what I had been led to be true.
  • Believing myself to not be racist — until I attended my first diversity training and have pursued a deeper understanding ever since of how to be antiracist.
These have been just a few of the examples from my own life where I hit a fork in the road. I needed to make a choice: (1) stick with the familiarity of the unexplored and unquestioned "known", or (2) listen and respond to the still, but powerful voice of God, Grace, and my wiser Self which beckoned me to enter a painful unfamiliar space that frightened me, but which also made possible the shedding of more layers of ignorance and illusion for greater consciousness.

This is a human journey which has touched every aspect of my life. Again and again life has given me experiences, often painful ones, which offered me opportunities dreaded, but life-changing "growth spurts " to move from my underdeveloped simplistic surface levels of understanding, through the scary middle of dashed realities and limiting perceptions, and ultimately emerging into the greater simplicity of what most matters. What matters most? Truth, compassionate action, generosity, kindness, justice for all beings, and Love.
 
I would not trade this simplicity on the other side of complexity for anything. Despite all the original devastation of recognizing layers of illusion and attachments that I needed to let go of, of needing to grieve that which I'd once held to be true, these deaths and rebirths are priceless. With each new movement into the greater simplicity of truth and love
  • My heart is strengthened.
  • My circle of caring is expanded. 
  • My tolerance for the many faces of violence is lessened.
  • My experience of being a part of rather than a part from is more clear.
  • My injured instincts are replaced with increased discernment.
  • My limiting identify as  ______ (fill in the blank with an alcoholic, an adult child of alcoholics, a trauma survivor, a New Ager, a democrat, a lover and unquestioning believer in corporate funded media, etc., etc.) is shifted and deepened into the greater wholeness of who I am and the evolving wisdom of grace-filled loving consciousness.
  • My capacity to recognize lies and know truth is increased.
  • My capacity to listen with the ears of my heart is expanded. 
  • My skills to intervene on myself and others and not buy into or contribute to that which harms grows.
  • My ability to follow the money and not be unknowingly complicit with harmful policies, systems, ideologies, and beliefs which are at the root of suffering is strengthened.
  • My consciousness of systemic racism and awareness of how to be antiracist is nurtured and deepened in an ongoing way.
  • My capacity to love, to grieve, to experience gratitude and joy, and to be in the world with my eyes and hearts open is expanded.
  • My capacity to recognize suffering within myself, those close to me, and within other people and beings AND to act to alleviate that suffering is strengthened.
Some say that it takes more work to wake up than to stay asleep. I don't believe that is true. The cost of living within the confines of our smaller selves with all of our illusions is a very painful way to live, and whether we know it or not. At least this has certainly been my experience. 
 
What I also have witnessed again and again, and both personally and professionally, is that as we grow older, we are all moving in one of two directions: we are increasingly growing more contracted, fearful, separate, and bitter OR we are growing more expansive, inclusive, generous, loving, kind, compassionate, and wise. I don't believe that we just come to a place in our lives and sit there. No. We're moving in one direction or another. One brings us and the world around us more suffering, and one acts to alleviate that suffering within ourselves, those we love and care about, and beyond. 
 
Consequently, and no matter what it takes, the truth is that there is no greater joy and blessing that I have ever come close to experiencing than the gift of growing our capacity to be Love.

 ***** 
 
  What do we most need to do to save our world? What we most need to do is to hear within us the sounds of the Earth crying.  
Thích Nhất Hạnh
 
Over the course of recent years, I have been unfriended by those identifying as both democrat and republican. And over the time of my many years of shedding my ignorance and illusions for greater consciousness, it's also true that there are those who have moved towards me and those who have distanced themselves from me.

It's hard to want to move towards those who are going places where we don't want to go because it somehow threatens the world as we know it. We often don't truly want to feel what we feel, see what we see, know what we know, or need what we need because it's scary, sad, painful, and not safe. And so we reject those who invite us to go deeper. This has certainly been true for me, and many, many times. This is part of what it is to be human to turn away from these new doorways that beckon us to enter. And, yet, what I have also learned is that is is not necessary to stay in this place of resistance to our own human growth and evolution.
 
And so here it is again these forks in the road. We all come to them. Some say that all we need to do is pray and listen to God. And yet God/Goddess/Spirit works through people. This has repeatedly been my experience. Michael Meade wisely tells us through his masterful storytelling to "go towards the roar" go towards that which frightens us. Pema Chödrön tells us, “If we learn to open our hearts, anyone, including the people who drive us crazy, can be our teacher.” This has certainly also been true with my own mother, my "first mother" who was deeply and tragically stuck in the toxicity of her severe mental illness until the last seven years of her life. And yet my mom also ended up being one of my greatest teachers.
 
Rumi is also among those who invite us to welcome what we may have rejected within ourselves — and therefore also in others in order to claim our greater wholeness:

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’re 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 whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.
  Jalaluddin Rumi
This is the ongoing "shadow work" that I've been engaged in for many, many years now. Ultimately it is a process of befriending myself, dismantling the obstacles I've built around my heart, opening to compassion and love, and experiencing this sacred thread woven through myself and all of life. 
 
The Buddha said, "All beings tremble before violence. All fear death. All love life. See yourself in others. Then whom can you hurt? What harm can you do?"
 
What I have learned along the way is that to the degree that I have been unconsious empathically impaired, seeing the world through a black-white lens, living in my smaller identities and the limitations of harmful belief systems, justifying the dehumization of others, oblivious to the suffering of humans and nonhumans and the Earth, and cut off from the greater wholeness and the wisdom of my heart and soul — is the degree that I will inevitably cause harm to myself and others. 
 
This isn't about judgment, blame, or shame. This is simply the truth. If I am disconnected within, I will also be disconnected in my outer world and life. And that is where we get in trouble. We humans may believe that we care so deeply about doing the right thing. Yet, if we can't hear the sacred wisdom of our own hearts and souls, we will be injured in our capacity to hear and absorb that wisdom anywhere else.

And we won't be able to see the actions that we need to take to save our world. We won't be able to hear the sounds of the Earth crying.

* * * * *

Of particular importance are new stories about human nature. We need new narratives that give us a more complete and accurate picture of who we are and who we can be stories that show that our enormous capacities for consciousness, creativity and caring are integral to human evolution, that these capacities are what make us distinctively human.
 Riane Eisler
 
Riane Eisler has been among my great teachers. She has taught me how to take a step back, again and again and again, so that I could see with new eyes a more expansive view. This has empowered me with skills which lessen my vulnerability to being pulled into the propaganda of polarization democrats vs republicans, liberals vs conservatives, left vs right, good vs bad. Instead I am better empowered to recognize how these black/white narratives too often serve to dehumanize, shut down and limit our capacity to experience deeper truths, and all while distracting us from the consciousness needed to understand the roots of what has brought us to where we are today.

And this is a glimpse of where we are today
  • We are in the midst of a global pandemic with the United States experiencing more coronavirus cases and deaths than anywhere in the world.
  • Unlike the rest of the developed world, our national healthcare system does not ensure healthcare as a human right and is instead rooted in profit and greed. It is justified and perpetuated despite the unfathomable suffering, bankruptcies, and deaths that it causes every year and are now compounded by the coronavirus.
  • The violence, oppression, and inequity of systemic racism has continued for 400 years in our nation.
  • Funding endless wars and worldwide militarism takes precedence over funding and ensuring the basic needs of our citizenry, our infrastructure, our educational systems, social services, and more..
  • Corporations are declared to have the same rights as people and over the last 40 years corporate power has infiltrated all aspects of our government, our major political parties and policies, our media and educational systems, our prisons and criminal injustice systems, economic and environmental policies and laws, and on and on.
  • Nealy half of Americans live at or below the poverty line while the wealth of the .1% has continued to grow exponentially. 
  • A high percentage of Americans believe that any economic system other than capitalism is dangerous and bad.
  • The demonetization of the "radical left" ― which seeks to ensure healthcare as a human right, address the climate crisis through dramatic systemic changes and transitioning onto renewables, transforming our economic system to one which is equitable for all, this and more ― is normalized.
  • In our nation and worldwide, and year after year, there are record breaking wildfires, floods and droughts, hurricanes and tornadoes and typhoons, deadly heatwaves and devastating winter storms, rising seas and melting glaciers, species die offs and crop failures, starvation and millions of climate refugees, and on and on.
  • Despite the well documented dire warnings from 97% of the world's climate scientists, the dark money connected to the fossil fuel industry and Wall Street continues to propagate "debate" about the human caused climate emergency.
  • Most American have no idea how to follow the money or how to discern the level of integrity related to the resources from which they receive their information.
  • We are a dangerously polarized, propagandized, and misinformed populace.
The overarching roots of that which has brought us this suffering and violence, peril and poverty, and devastation and death can most easily be understood through contrasting systems grounded in domination with those rooted in partnership. The depth of research, brilliance, wisdom, and great heart of Riane Eisler has taught me so much. For a glimpe into the international impact that this work of illuminating cultures which are rooted in domination ― which has always been true of the United States from the earliest days of colonialism, slavery, and the genocide of the First Peoples with those cultures more closely embodying the qualities and values of partnership, please go here: https://rianeeisler.com/the-chalice-the-blade-highlights-of-international-impact/.
 
It is these teachings and many others which hold the potential to help break us free from the convines of seeing The Problem as simply being democrats vs republicans. This illusion is among those which act to so dangerously and tragically polarize, divide, and disempower us. 
 
We can break free from our limiting perspectives and, in an ongoing way, trade in our illusions for greater consciousness. Our world will shift as more and more of us choose to pursue with courage and commitment the greater truths which connect rather than divide us and which are, in their essence, essential to the well-being of us all.

As we do so, we have the opportunity to recognize that what threatens us is much bigger than Donald J. Trump alone or the Bushs, Obama, the Clintons, and Reagan, etc, etc. Again, whether or not we are shedding harmful and limiting beliefs and actions and moving forward together so often comes down to where we each fall on the scale with ignorance on the one end and consciousness on the other. We are not going to be able to create the new stories and narratives, cultural values and belief systems, and visions and evolving capacity to act out of wisdom and love as long as we are not looking deeper and deeper.

A depth of exploration reveals all the systems of domination which have long controlled and limited us, and to the enormous detriment of us all. The belief systems rooted in domination can be seen in so much that we may deny, but which have long been the dark underbelly of our nation and beyond ―
  • Imperialism 
  • Colonialism
  • Neoliberalism
  • Capitalism
  • Racism
  • Fascism
  • Nationalism
  • Militarism
  • Misogyny
  • Patriarchy
  • White Supremacy
These are the systems which have our country in the clutches of a death spiral. These are the truths of our unconscious and conscious choices as a nation to prioritize and normalize systems of domination. And none of this began with Donald Trump or simply at the behest of the Republican Party. The truth is that, unless we are Black or Indigenous or another long marginalized and oppressed group, we've all been complicit, to one degree or another, with the cultural norms and belief systems which have been in existence for hundreds of years and more and which are now bringing us to the brink.

Can we own this? Will we go there and bravely seek the truth? Will we choose to take a different path, individually and collectively ― one which is grounded in the values of partnership rather than domination? Will we seek in an ongoing way to crack through our illusions and embody our ever deepening capacity for truth, compassion, courage, justice, and love?

I believe these to be the essential questions of our times and all time. May we choose wisely. May we choose beauty, kindness, truth, and love. This is my deepest prayer.

Bless us all,

Molly

 

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