"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
It is my belief that we live in times which ask of us to embody ever evolving and deepening levels of kindness. And this may be more difficult than some of us realize. I say this with the humility of knowing that this has certainly been true for me.
And yet most of us may think of ourselves as kind people. And many of us truly and consistently are. Increasingly we come to experience our interrelatedness with all beings and our circles of caring then naturally expand and evolve to exclude no one.
For myself, however, this had not been my reality. The truth is that my circle of caring was very small. While for years I had thought of myself as a kind person, it is also true that I had no depth of conscious awareness of the judgments, the lack of understanding and empathy and connection, and the implicit and explicit biases that I had learned, absorbed, and carried that had been passed on to me by both my ancestors and our culture at large.
Unknowingly, I was often acting out of my blind spots, my ignorance, my indoctrination into belief systems rooted in separation. And this disconnect from the greater depths of wisdom within myself impaired my capacity to experience kindness, tenderness, compassion, and abiding love and caring towards myself and all others.
The truth is that for many years my inner critic, my lack of depth of connectedness, my places of fear and shame and unaddressed pain and trauma were often what ran the show — rather than the Sacred consciousness that I believe today is at the core of who we all are. There had been many barriers that I had unknowingly built within myself against love. And I was oblivious to so much of the pain in our world. And of course this was true. I had lived with circumstances and conditions which had caused me to blindly build so many barriers around my own heart.
I say this with the deepest compassion.
* * * * *
"Men often hate each other because they fear each other; they fear each other because they don't know each other; they don't know each other because they can not communicate; they can not communicate because they are separated."
— Martin Luther King, Jr.
These are times of great change.
What I believe we are witnessing, on the one hand, is humanity's attempt to evolve. I see us as human beings growing our capacity for caring and kindness, for embracing diversity and inclusivity, for extending generosity and standing up for justice, for expressing courage and valuing truth, and for opening to the felt experience of how it is that we are interrelated with all of life.
How can I harm you if I see you as my sister or brother, as one of my relations, as someone whose joy and whose suffering is also mine?
At the same time, I witness a great deal of push back, fear, anger, opposition, and clinging to old paradigms rooted in patriarchal, capitalist, imperialist, misogynist, and racist belief systems — belief systems that give rise to the dehumanization, separation, delusions, and violence which have plagued our species stretching back through time.
So there is this great struggle upon humankind today between the forces of fear, ignorance, and separation and that of consciousness, connection, and love. On the one hand we see groups of people dehumanized and victimized — immigrants and refugees and asylum seekers, people of color and those of diverse ethnicities and religions, the trans and LBGTQ+ communities, Palestinians and those speaking out against the genocide in Gaza, and the list goes on and on.
What has been personally helpful to me, and humbling, is the awareness that we humans all fall somewhere on a continuum with ignorance and separation on the one end and consciousness, connection, and love on the other. The spiritual journey, for me, has taken me again and again into looking deeply as to where I am on this continuum. How awake or asleep am I? Who is included and who is excluded from my circle of caring? What are my efforts to come to know those who are of different races, religions, ethnicities, gender orientations, backgrounds and beliefs from myself? Am I growing to embody the greater truths embodied in Love? Where do I see myself on this continuum? Am I tending to my own heart?
It is my experience that we can only come to embody our deeper capacity for love as we come to truly see and understand ourselves and each other. And this cannot happen as long as we feel separate from rather than interconnected and interrelated with one another. The greater truths are always, I believe, rooted in Love.
What I have repeatedly witnessed over time, both personally and collectively, is how so much fear, pain, suffering, and blind cruelty arises out of separation, polarization, and all of the ways that our society feeds division. We are divided within ourselves, our families and communities, our nation and other nations. Our sense of relatedness is deeply impaired and sometimes severed.
All this said, I also see the antidote to this and how deeply we humans need to come to know, to truly know and understand, ourselves and each other. We need to communicate. And listen. And care. And heal our individual and collective hearts.
There are increasing walls of separation and dehumanization being built today. And this does not need to continue. We can choose to engage in heart-work within ourselves. And together we can come to more clearly recognize the internal and external barriers that we have built — and then we can actively seek, in an ongoing way, to turn those walls sideways so that they may become bridges.
* * * * *
"Spiritual practice involves, on the one hand, acting out of concern for others' well-being. On the other, it entails transforming ourselves so that we become more readily disposed to do so."
— Dalai Lama
My paternal grandfather was someone who I grew to feel very close with following the death of my grandmother and over the last two decades of his life. He had so many strengths, a great deal of wisdom, and had led an amazing life. I deeply loved my grandfather. And my grandfather was 97 years old the last time he visited us in Oregon from his home in Michigan. On May 16th, 1986 we buried Super, which is what we grandchildren called him, on his 99th birthday at West Point.
Like all of us, my grandfather also had his own biases, blind spots, and carried pain which he had absorbed from both our ancestors and our culture. I learned about one when he spoke to me about something he could not condone, understand, or accept — homosexuality. It wasn't until sometime after his death that I came out of my own denial that my grandfather's youngest son, my father, was a man who lived the whole of his adult life as a closest gay man.
So much can be staring us right in the face that we are completely oblivious to. And out of our blindness, we are vulnerable to causing harm ... and even to those we most love.
At the same time, it is also true that any new awareness can be a breakthrough, a doorway, an opportunity to come to better know and understand, befriend and hold with compassion, and unburden and transform our many hidden parts. We can heal, we can awaken from our illusions and mistaken beliefs in an ongoing way. This is what life offers us. A turn in the road off the familiar one onto uncharted territory that shakes us into greater awareness. And a greater capacity to love.
For myself, it wasn't until I connected the dots about my father, and realized that my closest friend was lesbian, that I was faced with the legacy wounds that I carried which kept me separate from truly knowing and seeing and loving even those I was closest with. This included that I had absorbed many biases and judgments about so much, including those who are gay.
It is my experience that freedom and peace have grown stronger within myself as I have recognized the ancestral and cultural pain that I have carried, taken responsibility for what I am discovering within myself, and taken steps in an ongoing way to heal and transform the impacts of patriarchy, misogyny, homophobia, racism, and the many ways that we have learned to dehumanize and feel separation from one another and within ourselves.
This has been the path that I have discovered which has empowered me to become increasingly able to truly act out of my concern for others rather than my old painful patterns which were rooted in ignorance and illusions and which had long caused harm to myself and others ... even those I most love.
* * * * *
"The more we love, the more real we become."
— Stephen Levine
Fred Rogers was the embodiment of love, of kindness, of compassion. His message to children to love themselves, and to understand that they have worth just exactly as they are, has been a priceless gift over decades to countless people young and old alike. This is his legacy.
That said, it is also true that many of us as human beings struggle to love ourselves and to hold ourselves and each other with kindness, compassion, understanding, and acceptance. As mine once were, our circles of caring can be limited and wrapped around those we are closest to while excluding countless others.
Today even the word "woke" is denigrated. But what is it to be woke other than to love, to experience compassion and empathy, to advocate for kindness and justice, and to work to alleviate the suffering of other beings?
Awakening is always grounded in Love.
It is an illuminating journey to look deeply into who is included and who is excluded from our circle of caring. This has certainly been true for me. How "real" have I been and am I today? How authentically am I embodying the values I profess? In this age where empathy is denigrated, I believe that these are essential questions to be asking ourselves.
There is deep wisdom in this: The more we love, the more real we become.
* * * * *
"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."
— Pema Chödrön
I have been inspired to write this post, in part, after viewing something shared by someone I have known for nearly my whole life. This friend shared a video of Mr. Rogers saying that girls are born girls and boys are born boys and you will always be a girl or a boy.
Sadness poured into my heart as I realized that Fred Rogers was being used to send a message to transgender children that they are not acceptable for who they are. And there was sacred anger knowing that these kinds of messages are behind trans kids and adults feeling like there is no safe and welcoming place for them —something that leads to violence, suicides, depression, and despair for trans children and adults alike. (This is also personal for me given that my twin brother committed suicide, although for different reasons. And trauma is trauma.)
And this is where the invitation to reflect on how other people are doing and how our actions might impact their hearts is so deeply important. My friend who shared the video of Mister Rogers, and who is certainly very similar to how I once was, has likely not known any transgender children or adults or listened to their stories. It is hard to understand and care about someone if we can't see or know them for who they are.
Regarding the video that I now understand is being circulated by right wing resources, there is also the greater context that was ignored of the era in which Fred Rogers lived in. He died in 2003 and transgender awareness and visibility did not even begin to emerge until the late 20th century. At that time, which certainly again includes myself, the vast majority of us were unaware that transgender and non-binary people exist and have existed for as long as human history. I had had no idea.
And just look at how long it took for equality to begin to take root for gays and lesbians. My own closeted gay father never even felt like it was safe to be himself, which was yet one more factor which contributed to his compromised immune system and death at the age of 60. And, tragically, it is the whole of the LGBTQ+ community which continues to this very day to remain targets of ignorance, bigotry, discrimination, dehumanization, and many other forms of violence.
Transphobia has also been on the rise as the visibility of trans and non-binary people has risen and their demands for equal rights, respect, understanding, acceptance, safety and justice have grown. Ignorance and dehumanization is pervasive. And yet this remains true even as it is estimated that there are more than two million transgender and non-binary people living today in the United States. They are parents, siblings, kids. They are co-workers, neighbors, friends. They are 7 year old children and 70 year old grandparents. And they represent all racial and ethnic backgrounds, as well as all faith traditions. (https://www.hrc.org/resources/transgender)
Does anyone truly believe that Mr. Rogers would have excluded trans kids today from those who are worthy of being accepted just as they are? Would Fred Rogers have declined to wonder how these children are doing and how his actions would affect their hearts? Would he have tried to tell them that there are only two sexes, the ones you are born with, and that no child is legitimately transgender? This would have gone against the lifetime advocacy, compassion and empathy, and love Fred Rogers extended to all children for the whole of his life. He would have evolved.
As we all are being asked to grow and evolve.
* * * * *
"Our greatest strength lies in the gentleness
and tenderness of our heart."
— Rumi
Now I am moved to return to how these times are asking a great deal of us. We are asked, I believe, to do our best to refrain from judgment of other human beings until we have walked a mile in their shoes. And we are asked to care. Deeply. And especially for the children. The trans children, the children in Gaza and other war zones, the immigrant and refugee children everywhere, the children whose families are living on the edge because of deeply unjust economic systems. And all children who seek refuge from the trauma they experience in their daily lives near and far.
Among my deepest prayers is that more and more of us will increasingly connect with the heart of who we are, I mean who we truly and most wholly are. And that will ask of us...
- to engage in dismantling the barriers we have built against love
- to transform our experiences of separation into ones of connection
- to transform ourselves so that we become more readily disposed to act out of the consciousness of other's well-being
- to grow more real and authentic by deepening our capacity to embody love
- to truly wonder how other people are doing and to reflect on how our actions affect other people's hearts
- to cultivate in an ongoing way our greatest strength — which lies in the gentleness and tenderness of our hearts
May we bring the kindness embodied in Fred Rogers and within each of us to ourselves, to other humans, and to all of life. May we blossom into our greater capacity for wholeness and wisdom, courage and compassion, caring and generosity, kindness and Love.
Bless us all, no exceptions...
💗
Molly
