Finding Ground In Charlottesville

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As we witness the tragedies around the events in Charlottesville many of us feel we are watching the world seemingly spinning out of control. It feels like we are living in a real life version of a disaster film that just keeps escalating. Along with deep pain, there is also a quality of mass hysteria mercilessly hyped by the endless news cycles and social media threads.

To find my ground in these times I’m always drawn back to a few core questions: Why this? Why now? What is my part in this situation? What must I learn from it? How must I respond and act to meet this situation with the full force of my heart and being?

The inner flame that keeps me passionately engaged in life is a burning curiosity to better understand how our inner lives and consciousness shape our life experience. I’ve become convinced that everything about our lives is a flawless expression of our internal landscape and achieving anything of value in the world depends primarily on inner, not outer change.

From this perspective it is not so much what happens to us, but what we learn from and become through our experiences that matters most.  Only through the calm deliverance of the mind can we understand what needs to change and begin to make the internal shifts required to access the equilibrium needed to bring our best self to the situation at hand.

This process starts by realizing that nothing comes into our lives by accident. We are here at this time on earth, in these circumstances for a very specific reason. To get more clear on this we must understand what about our consciousness has drawn this experience to us at this point in time? What must we change in order to move through this experience and be of maximum service to others? As we get clear on these questions we can begin to respond to the request to learn and grow through fully engaging.

We must be vigilant, not so much with others, but more around our own consciousness. No matter what we say or what we do it is where our hearts and attention are that shapes the emotional energy that we show up with in any given moment. It is the energetic quality of our actions that have the greatest impact on shaping how people experience us in any situation.

Everywhere we look today on all sides of the issues we are grappling with, we see people whose emotions are inflamed and over the top. People are upset, angry, enraged, incensed. They are launching blistering public attacks of outraged condemnation at each other and fiercely denouncing their opponents for perceived or suspected opinions, beliefs, loyalties or behaviors they see as counter to their own opinions or beliefs.

Whenever emotions are inflamed at this level it is because as humans we are reacting to situations that have triggered some level of unresolved trauma on our psyche. This trauma may be personal, social, or even generational, but at some level of our individual or collective consciousness, there is an unresolved wound that is so painful that whenever anything touches it we launch directly into full fight or flight mode. If we are triggered by someone’s actions or behavior we must ask what aspect of our own being is being reflected by the observed behavior? What trauma or wound within me has still not been surfaced, healed and resolved?

Breaking the cycle of abuse and victimization which comes from unconsciously acting from unresolved trauma requires facing and healing the wounds which are still held in our unconscious being. This is true for a human or society at large. The only way to heal our personal trauma is to allow it to surface in our consciousness so that we can finally begin to breathe through the feelings. We actually have to learn that it is possible to feel these traumatic feelings and not die. Only then can we bring our loving energy to these wounded parts of our self as part of our mindful practices and gradually heal these wounds. Until we have done this healing work with our self, trauma will inexorably control our ability to respond and unerringly shape the quality of our actions. On some level, this principle applies equally to social and collective healing. We must face our collective trauma and heal it together. 

Another deep benefit of doing this internal healing work is the growth of true compassion. As we come to know how much pain we have labored under, we can begin to understand what others who are acting in anger must also be holding and reacting to. We gain a visceral understanding of the truth that on some fundamental level we are all the same. We gradually grow the ability to separate the behavior from the person. We learn that we can simultaneously passionately disavow a person’s wrong behavior while still compassionately loving a fellow human being.

We are all learning by being in this unprecedented situation every day. We must learn to be gentle with ourselves and with each other and to accept our failures as essential steps in our attempts to learn as we experiment with new ways of being.

There is strength in numbers and in the power of community. While doing this healing work we need to reach out to our brothers and sisters. We must connect with kindred spirits in order to deepen our collective understanding and find support for our views and grow the courage to stand together against the insanity and mass hysteria we are witnessing every day.

We will never realize the enlightened state of the world we seek unless our efforts to change it are completely grounded in and intrinsically driven by the power and wisdom of our higher consciousness. True change and growth is a perfect synergy of internal and external dynamics, and I’m ever more excited about the endless possibilities ahead for our global family as we grow in the skills and understanding around this cosmic interplay.