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| Seven circle sisters basking in the joy and beauty of the ocean, each other, and all that we share. May 5th, 2018. |
Imagine a World That Is Peaceful, Just, and Kind.
Just Imagine.
And every year in the spring Bess, Mary Frances, Concetta, Gail, Olivia, and Sandy and I do our annual pilgrimage to the Oregon coast to savor a whole weekend together. Wow.
We are all aware that we share something very special together.
I imagine a time when we humans will increasingly find and experience the profound gifts of intimacy and belonging, community and connection, honesty and openness, trust and vulnerability, witnessing and acceptance, healing and growth, and safe space to share from our hearts. Our families and communities, schools and workplaces, religious and spiritual centers, cultural stories and belief systems, governments and nations, and life as we know it on Earth will change and evolve as we open to the courage and support we need to evolve within ourselves. And as we support each other in this process. Peace begins within.
Many years ago I heard a quote that has resonated and stuck with me ever since: "We will only go as deep as the support we perceive is available to us." Without this safe space and support we can grow to trust, we humans are vulnerable to living our lives wearing masks we do not even know we've put on. We can carry hurts in our hearts that last years or decades or lifetimes that we are estranged from and often don't know exist which keep triggering suffering and symptoms - emotional, physical, mental, spiritual - that seem mysterious or like it is all someone else's fault. It is hard to be intimate with others when we hide so much from ourselves. It's hard to not project our suffering onto others, even those we love, when we neglect our own hearts and the deepest needs of our souls. I know. I've been there.
And I was scared to death of opening to the love that I had been starved and aching for since birth. Being born into a family system that carried a lot of generational and cultural pain, and to parents who did not know how to meet my needs because they chronically neglected their own, I had become disassociated, distracted, addicted, fearful, and shame and grief avoidant. I had no idea what I neglected in my heart, carrying on the neglect of my heart's deepest needs that had begun with my parents.... and their parents... and on back for generations. And even for those who grow up in families who are more connected and open and less shame based, there is this problem of the culture we live in. Just turn on the TV and watch the commercials for all the stuff and pills and fixes that we Americans are told we need to be happy.
Yet, striving to be happy, happy, happy can sideline us from our wholeness and the experience of peace that we find when we gradually determine to put down what we cling to that keeps us strangers to ourselves and one another. It is also very difficult to thaw out and come to know what we do not know as long as we are caught up in pretenses and perfectionism and image management and false selves and addictions which give the illusion of shielding us from pain. This is truly only an illusion. We cannot shut out pain without also shutting out joy... and belonging and intimacy and authenticity and the truth of who we really are. And the truth, I believe, is that of beauty. We are all stardust. All woven with the Sacred, with the Divine. That we are ugly or unlovable and that we don't belong and have to pretend to be someone we are not. That is the lie.
It is so indescribably freeing to gradually learn how to drop our masks! The amazing paradox is that what I had unconsciously thought would kill me has actually given me the life I came here to live. The doorway of my tears and trauma, my voice and vulnerability, my sobriety and breaking the rules of shutting down, shutting up, and shutting out has given me a life I could not have dreamed of before. Simply unimaginable... what I have today was simply unimaginable in my life before. The life I had before had been steeped in the loneliness of disconnection and denial, dishonesty with myself and others, and disowned fear and shame and grief.
Something profound happens when we befriend ourselves.
And we cannot do this alone. We cannot heal and awaken to what we have shut out and rejected within ourselves for so long without support. And this kind of support ― which refrains from fixing, judging, and simplistic answers ― gives us the true nourishment we need to heal whatever brokenness and betrayals we have experienced and to grow up and become who we truly are.
Many of us wonder why the world is so crazy and destructive and hateful and violent. My experience is that it is pretty darn hard to be sane and helpful and loving when I deny myself the peace and wisdom and compassion that our world so aches for ― and which always begins within our own hearts, minds, spirits, and souls. To remain strangers to ourselves is a form of violence that keeps us separate. And when we feel separate from rather than a part of, we are in a lot of pain, whether we know it or not. And that pain has to go somewhere.
So is it any coincidence that loneliness is epidemic in American culture? Is it so strange that racism and dehumanization, fear and guns, depression and anxiety, child abuse and neglect, sexual assault and domestic violence, endless war and grinding poverty, addiction and crime, greed and corporate power, cancer and environmental destruction, global warming and species extinction, the politics of heartlessness and hatred, and on and on has become so prolific in our nation and beyond? Our rugged individualism is killing us. We humans are wired to connect, to belong, to care and be cared for, and to love.
Yes, yes, yes, there is this dark side to being human. And YES, YES, YES we can evolve! We truly do need a revolution of caring!
Some may say that this sounds all well and good, but you're a woman and women connect. I would respond, yes, and so do men. My husband has been in his men's group of six strong-tender men for 20 years doing what we seven women do in our women's circle. It is a lie that men are not by nature supportive, sensitive, tender, nurturing, and compassionate. We humans ― men and women alike ― are all wired to connect, to belong, to nurture and need one another.
And we live in a culture that tells us to have a beer, drop a pill, turn on the TV, shop till we drop, stay within the confines of the familiar, don't risk, don't ask, don't look, don't tell, be a man!, don't cry!, be thin!, don't age!, everything has got to be someone's fault, and on and on. We live in a culture which not only supports, but encourages whatever it is that we use to distract ourselves from seeing what we see, knowing what we know, feeling what we feel, needing what we need, and being who we truly are...
I believe that these are times which ask of us to do the best we can to expand beyond our comfort zones and ultimately cultivate the capacity to stay with discomfort. Because it IS risky and scary and uncomfortable to be vulnerable. AND we can grow in our familiarity with discomfort. We can strengthen our hearts. We can recognize and not fall prey to the fact that we live in a vulnerability phobic culture. Don't feel, don't trust, don't talk, don't be are the rules that many of us grow up with in our families and/or our culture. We need to understand this. We need a process of truth and reconciliation of sorts within ourselves and which can then spread, creating ripples of new awareness and skills and kindness. Truly, my religion is kindness.
Just imagine a world where the root and authentic practices of all religions and spiritual traditions was kindness! Just imagine!
And that kindness begins with ourselves. As we befriend ourselves, we become empowered to befriend others within our families, our communities, our nation, and the world. We awaken to the amazing recognition that we are all family! Wow!!
So, and as Thích Nhất Hạnh wisely reflects, "We are here to awaken from the illusion of our separateness." Among my deepest prayers is that more and more of us will seek, find, and create something akin to what I have today ― an amazing circle of sisters, my beloved husband, connections with friends and family far and wide, and a trajectory for my sons and their children which has completely shifted direction from one rooted in fear and separation to one of increasing love and belonging. May we each increasingly connect with exactly that which is in our highest good.
And surely this is the love and beauty and belonging that we all deserve and that is our birth right.
Deep bow of gratitude for this past weekend with my beautiful sisters, which has inspired me to do this post. And deep bow of gratitude for the loving and great Mystery which has propelled me over the past 35 years to walk through the tears and fears which I had avoided for so long and which have now brought me to this other side... to this amazing and wondrous beautiful gift of life which, today, I know how to appreciate and embrace. We are not alone. We are all family. We do belong. We are beautiful. With each passing year, this becomes more and more the truth of my experience. May it also be yours.
With love and blessings,
Molly
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One afterthought: When I recently asked my youngest son, who's now 31 and on his own powerful path of awakening, if there was one book he would recommend, Matt did not hesitate to say Brené Brown's Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead. I agree that this is among many deeply helpful books. It just comes to me to share this resource in case you may not already be aware ― https://www.amazon.com/Daring-Greatly-Courage-Vulnerable-Transforms/dp/1592408419. We truly do have the capacity to evolve and embrace love, beauty, and belonging ever more deeply. And that's something to celebrate!
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