Some Thoughts On Truth and a Path of Heart

There are many paths that we humans walk...

I understand and hold compassion for the different thinking of many. I understand what many resources communicate and how the information that many Americans have heard, regarding this election cycle, is that Bernie Sanders and our movements advocating great change are to blame for polarization and even for Trump, and that these challenges to the DNC are something deeply negative. I understand that many look upon exposing the truth, whatever that is, about candidates is akin to “bashing” that presidential candidate and bringing us another 4 years of Trump.

The sad irony is that this line of thought has been applied to all presidential candidates with one exception — Bernie Sanders. Senator Sanders has been relentlessly silenced, dismissed, demonized, and dehumanized by the American corporate media, by the DNC and corporate establishment democrats and republicans, and by other corporate interests and oligarchs and those who do their bidding. 

This article is certainly among countless others that are found in independent non-corporate funded media resources: https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/03/12/how-bernie-bros-were-invented-then-smeared-as-sexist-racist-and-unamerican-as-borscht/.

And yet this is nothing new. Throughout time, it has been the ones who are demanding the radical changes necessary for there to be a just and caring society and world who are vilified, demonized, and dehumanized. This has been true of Martin Luther King, Jr., Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Bernie Sanders, and countless others. The tragedy is when the larger populace buys what the elites are selling and enables this condemnation of those who in reality embody our most cherished values and the essence of who are we as human beings.

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So we all have different experiences and different perspectives and different truths. This is mine...

I cannot alter what I give voice to and fight for because to do so would be to betray my deepest spiritual values. My values are rooted in a profound commitment to truth, in doing no harm, in working to alleviate the suffering in the world, and in living my life as a prayer.

To get to this place where I’m at in my life today has involved a decades long rigorous process of truth-seeking, personal and collective shadow work, and the lifting of the countless veils of my indoctrination, ignorance, and illusions. This journey has been empowering me to increase my capacity for discernment and to see and understand the roots of the suffering within myself, others, our nation, and all inhabitants of Earth.

With this ever growing understanding, I’ve come to the place of recognizing how I’ve been unknowingly contributing to the suffering within myself, my family, our nation, and the world.

And with this has come this responsibility that I’ve assumed to work to no longer be complicit with belief systems, actions, corruption, policies, people, and cultural values that cause harm. I recognize that so often great suffering and harm occurs when good people do nothing and are silent.

So I’m compelled to share the truth and the wisdom that I’ve been absorbing for a long time now from some of our nations and world’s great teachers who are alive today and who are our ancestors over the history of time.

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One part of this sharing and what I come here to do in this lifetime is to engage in storytelling through photography and writing. My blog will reach 400,000 views within the next few days. There are several recent pieces that I’ve posted that I experience as relevant to this conversation —

1. Max’s Story: http://mollystrongheart.blogspot.com/.../maxs-story....
2. Revolutionary Love: http://mollystrongheart.blogspot.com/.../rabbi-michael....
3. A piece by award winning investigative journalist and author Chris Hedges: http://mollystrongheart.blogspot.com/.../chris-hedges....

4. How thinking that benefits the few has gained the acceptance of the many: https://mollystrongheart.blogspot.com/2019/12/herbert-schiller-how-did-thinking-that.html

5. How NPR/PBS (and other corporate funded media) misinforms us about the critical issues of our times: https://mollystrongheart.blogspot.com/2019/07/my-letter-to-npr-and-pbs-why-i-cannot.html

6. What is Neoliberalism?: https://mollystrongheart.blogspot.com/2018/12/we-live-in-world-that-has-been.html

7. Reflections on Makling the Impossible Possible: https://mollystrongheart.blogspot.com/2019/11/reflections-on-making-impossible.html

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What I know today is that we’re on a trajectory that is heading us towards civilization collapse and extinction by as soon as the end of the century if we don’t dismantle the systems of greed, destruction, suffering, and death now. We have not come to this place of national and planetary peril overnight. This has been a long time coming, and both major political parties have contributed to this great harming and suffering — and certainly this has been exponentially increased over the past 40 years of the Neoliberal Era.

I am also conscious of the fact that what we’re experiencing now with the coronavirus pales when compared to the climate crisis which will result in an largely uninhabitable planet within the lifetimes of my children and grandchildren without radical changes now. There will be no vaccine to stop the catastrophic climate disruption that will occur as we cross over the line into irreversible planetary warming within the next decade if we don’t radically change NOW.

There are those who say that it is already too late, that the heat is baked in and that all that is left to do at best is to mitigate the climate crisis we are in. That said, there is a chance that it is not too late to stop our trajectory into planetary suicide. While it is true that we’ve squandered decades on inaction, ignorance, poisonous polarizing propaganda, and greed — and, again, with both major political parties playing significant roles in bringing us this horrifying reality — it may not be too late to come together in greater numbers than we ever have before to enact the deep changes that are needed to save ourselves and sustain a habitable planet for our children and all of Earth's inhabitants.

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So the truth that I give voice to, again and again and again, I do as a mother and grandmother fighting for all of the children of all of the species on Earth. The old patriarchal neoliberal predatory capitalist system and its ideology of domination will be dismantled or our species will perish and we will take all other species down with us.
 
Truth matters. For how can we act out of protection of life if the information we have absorbed causes us to be complicit with the very forces that are destroying life?

What I do matters. Walking a path of heart, a path of consciousness and fierce protection of life matters.

What we all do matters and matters deeply. 

It is my personal belief that these times ask of us all to be deeply committed to truth-seeking, to sharing what we are learning, and to acting out of our highest wisdom. To not share our wisdom and our deep love for the Earth and all her beings is a betrayal of our deepest values and our essence as human beings. This choice to deepen in our capacity to act out of love is, I believe, what we come here to learn and to do in our lifetimes as souls having a human experience.

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Regarding this election, the choice between a malignant narcissistic sociopath and yet again another dangerous neoliberal is clear for me. Although it will be an extremely painful choice, I will cast a vote for Biden if my state of Washington is at risk of going to Trump. If it’s not at risk, I’ll write in Bernie.

That said, this is what I am called to do. I'm aware that some of my friends who have been deeply informed for far longer than I have will choose to not vote for a president if these are our only choices. I cannot judge their choices as wrong.

I am also aware of the millions of Americans who have felt so screwed over by the American government for so long that they are likely to either sit this election out or cast another vote for Trump. I hold them with compassion for their suffering.
 
And meanwhile, and regardless of who will be sitting in the White House, the struggle for truth, for love, and for economic, racial, social, and environmental justice goes on.

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Among my deep prayers is that our numbers will grow of those among us who are courageously waking up, healing our wounds and transforming our ignorance and disconnect into wisdom and love, and demanding the changes essential to the well-being of us all. 

I say this with the humility of someone who was once unknowingly complicit with the belief systems, the cultural stories, the toxic economic and political systems, and the people of power who have long — to one degree or another — been the wielders of great harm and suffering, violence and death, greed and disregard for the sanctity of life. At that time I was deeply asleep, unaware, uninformed, and disconnected from the truth and any deep consciousness of what it would be to walk a path of heart. I simply had no idea how my ignorance was rippling outward causing harm, even to those I most love. There is no blame here. It just is what it is.

So we cannot blame each other, which is never helpful. We can instead choose to hold one another with the compassionate wisdom of knowing that we are all doing the best that we can. And, at the same time, we can be asking of ourselves and inviting others to join us in learning to increasingly act on behalf of ourselves, our loved ones, and those we don't know. We're all related, all family, all in this together.

Bless us all, no exceptions ...

Molly