What Holds Us Together
At yesterday's singing circle with Wind Cloud we offered songs and prayers to the suffering people of New Orleans. One person was offended by what he felt was an excessive focus on this American disaster when there is ongoing widespread suffering across the world that gets no media attention. After a bit of conversation and the expression of hurt feelings on both sides of the argument, finally we came to a meeting place.
We were able to acknowledge his sense of the importance of thinking beyond our nation's borders and he was able to acknowledge the very human need for people to relate to the problem of global suffering (which can be quite abstract due to its enormity) through the crises that fall closer to home. Whatever opens our hearts and reminds us to feel and express concern for others in need is a good opportunity to do so, and the failure of many people to be able to do that in persistent situations is no reason to be unwilling to do so in crisis situations. Each is an invitation to love more, not less.
Beyond that, I was able to connect his concerns about the persistent global state of suffering with the group's concerns about the situation in New Orleans right now. My comment, which turned into a group prayer, which turned into a series of songs, began something like this:
Whether we are looking at the failure of able bodied young people to help the police assist the injured and the aged in New Orleans instead of shooting at them or looking at the failure of the wealthy and overfed to help the starving throughout the globe instead of working to more efficiently shift monies from the working poor to the wealthy, we are looking at two basic root failures: 1) a lack of a sense of community connectedness and the compassion that comes with that connection; and 2) a lack of a sense of inner connectedness to one's true nature and the peacefulness that comes with that connection.
Global corporations exert tremendous violence in the lives of millions of people because they are led by people who do not feel any connection to the people they are affecting. That violence is not held back by a sense of responsibility to or concern for others. But where does the violence come from in the first place? Their violent nature results from a life long teaching in "survival of the fittest" and "everyman for himself" and the absence of genuine direct experience of their inherently peaceful true nature. Without access to the teachings that come from one's soul, they are victims of the teachings of a sociopathic social system. If they did not have the money or influence to enact their violence through their corporations they would effectively be kept down, but that would not make them peaceful.
Similarly, we can look at the people shooting at the police and taking advantage of the chaos to loot, rape, and defy all social rules governing our collective lives as the same life teachings being acted out by those newly given the power to do so without consequence. They have received the same teachings, but their power comes from guns not corporate attorneys. So they steal at gunpoint rather than getting laws passed that give them the right to take what they want. In New Orleans, those who lack a sense of inner or outer connectedness shoot for themselves, whereas in Iraq those in the upper echelons of power enlist national armies to shoot for them, but someone still winds up dead.
I could go on at length about the similarities between these two forms of violence -- small scale, direct physical aggression and the large scale institutionalized forms -- but I think you get the point. Both are suffering from the same root causes and both are therefore causing suffering for others. Both are in need of our prayers and understanding, as well as our knowledgable corrective action to prevent their further violence.
So here is a prayer -- May anyone anywhere on the Earth who feels alone right now become aware of being held within a web of community. May those who feel they must fight for their survival instead experience a sense of safety and peace. May those who believe that in order to have what they need to survive they must take as much as they can, even if it means the failure of others to survive, may they learn instead to experience abundance and to see the world as an abundant place. May the norms of sharing and compassion replace the teachings on selfishness. And may we who already know these things not lose our ability to love those who do not. May we not give up our belief in their ability to learn and to grow and to, having been healed themselves, become world healers. May we never give up our faith in their intrinsic value and goodness.
And this we sang:
"May the warriors find peace within and the wars of the nations end.
May the warriors find peace within so the healing of the world can begin. ...
Your eyes open my heart.
And your heart opens my eyes."
Lastly, I would like you to use this opportunity to not only open your heart to the suffering of all these people everyday and especially in this crisis situation, but to look directly at your own suffering. I want you to examine your life right now and ask yourself what you would be drawing upon if you were in a similar disaster. What would your refuge be?
Do you have a sense of inner peace that does not require anything external to ensure you behave with non-violence at all times? What are you like when you are driving and someone cuts you off or even when they just persist in trying to get you to let them merge into traffic in front of you? How do you react? No one but you knows your answer so it is worth your truthfully acknowledging the answer for yourself. What are you like in conversation when someone disagrees with an idea you hold sacred? Does anger well up within you? Do you respond with cutting comments not only designed to show them that they are wrong and you are right, but to go beyond that and belittle their intelligence or goodness? Do you attack them personally with insults? How non-violent are you when you think you can get away with using violence to get what you want?
When you are under extreme stress, perhaps facing the diagnosis of a serious illness or perhaps in a more shared experience of threat to survival, do you feel supported by a closely knit group of friends or family? How connected are you to your next door neighbors? If a natural disaster happened, would you expect to pool resources with them, seeing who has more bottled water, who has more blankets, and how food stuffs could be combined to best feed everyone? Again, the answers are only for you, so be honest. Who would you rely upon and who could reasonably rely upon you?
I would like to urge you to spend the next week shoring up your refuges. I would like to invite you to spend some time in meditation, building up your sense of inner peace. And I would like to invite you to reach out a little more than usual to those people with whom you would like to share community. Give some time to this now while crisis is not upon you so that when the levy inevitably breaks there will still be something there to hold you together.
We were able to acknowledge his sense of the importance of thinking beyond our nation's borders and he was able to acknowledge the very human need for people to relate to the problem of global suffering (which can be quite abstract due to its enormity) through the crises that fall closer to home. Whatever opens our hearts and reminds us to feel and express concern for others in need is a good opportunity to do so, and the failure of many people to be able to do that in persistent situations is no reason to be unwilling to do so in crisis situations. Each is an invitation to love more, not less.
Beyond that, I was able to connect his concerns about the persistent global state of suffering with the group's concerns about the situation in New Orleans right now. My comment, which turned into a group prayer, which turned into a series of songs, began something like this:
Whether we are looking at the failure of able bodied young people to help the police assist the injured and the aged in New Orleans instead of shooting at them or looking at the failure of the wealthy and overfed to help the starving throughout the globe instead of working to more efficiently shift monies from the working poor to the wealthy, we are looking at two basic root failures: 1) a lack of a sense of community connectedness and the compassion that comes with that connection; and 2) a lack of a sense of inner connectedness to one's true nature and the peacefulness that comes with that connection.
Global corporations exert tremendous violence in the lives of millions of people because they are led by people who do not feel any connection to the people they are affecting. That violence is not held back by a sense of responsibility to or concern for others. But where does the violence come from in the first place? Their violent nature results from a life long teaching in "survival of the fittest" and "everyman for himself" and the absence of genuine direct experience of their inherently peaceful true nature. Without access to the teachings that come from one's soul, they are victims of the teachings of a sociopathic social system. If they did not have the money or influence to enact their violence through their corporations they would effectively be kept down, but that would not make them peaceful.
Similarly, we can look at the people shooting at the police and taking advantage of the chaos to loot, rape, and defy all social rules governing our collective lives as the same life teachings being acted out by those newly given the power to do so without consequence. They have received the same teachings, but their power comes from guns not corporate attorneys. So they steal at gunpoint rather than getting laws passed that give them the right to take what they want. In New Orleans, those who lack a sense of inner or outer connectedness shoot for themselves, whereas in Iraq those in the upper echelons of power enlist national armies to shoot for them, but someone still winds up dead.
I could go on at length about the similarities between these two forms of violence -- small scale, direct physical aggression and the large scale institutionalized forms -- but I think you get the point. Both are suffering from the same root causes and both are therefore causing suffering for others. Both are in need of our prayers and understanding, as well as our knowledgable corrective action to prevent their further violence.
So here is a prayer -- May anyone anywhere on the Earth who feels alone right now become aware of being held within a web of community. May those who feel they must fight for their survival instead experience a sense of safety and peace. May those who believe that in order to have what they need to survive they must take as much as they can, even if it means the failure of others to survive, may they learn instead to experience abundance and to see the world as an abundant place. May the norms of sharing and compassion replace the teachings on selfishness. And may we who already know these things not lose our ability to love those who do not. May we not give up our belief in their ability to learn and to grow and to, having been healed themselves, become world healers. May we never give up our faith in their intrinsic value and goodness.
And this we sang:
"May the warriors find peace within and the wars of the nations end.
May the warriors find peace within so the healing of the world can begin. ...
Your eyes open my heart.
And your heart opens my eyes."
Lastly, I would like you to use this opportunity to not only open your heart to the suffering of all these people everyday and especially in this crisis situation, but to look directly at your own suffering. I want you to examine your life right now and ask yourself what you would be drawing upon if you were in a similar disaster. What would your refuge be?
Do you have a sense of inner peace that does not require anything external to ensure you behave with non-violence at all times? What are you like when you are driving and someone cuts you off or even when they just persist in trying to get you to let them merge into traffic in front of you? How do you react? No one but you knows your answer so it is worth your truthfully acknowledging the answer for yourself. What are you like in conversation when someone disagrees with an idea you hold sacred? Does anger well up within you? Do you respond with cutting comments not only designed to show them that they are wrong and you are right, but to go beyond that and belittle their intelligence or goodness? Do you attack them personally with insults? How non-violent are you when you think you can get away with using violence to get what you want?
When you are under extreme stress, perhaps facing the diagnosis of a serious illness or perhaps in a more shared experience of threat to survival, do you feel supported by a closely knit group of friends or family? How connected are you to your next door neighbors? If a natural disaster happened, would you expect to pool resources with them, seeing who has more bottled water, who has more blankets, and how food stuffs could be combined to best feed everyone? Again, the answers are only for you, so be honest. Who would you rely upon and who could reasonably rely upon you?
I would like to urge you to spend the next week shoring up your refuges. I would like to invite you to spend some time in meditation, building up your sense of inner peace. And I would like to invite you to reach out a little more than usual to those people with whom you would like to share community. Give some time to this now while crisis is not upon you so that when the levy inevitably breaks there will still be something there to hold you together.
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