Radiant Ones,
At MAPS this summer, founder Rick Doblin held out a vision of a world with net zero trauma- such an audacious, beautiful idea to imagine. He proposed psychedelics and psychoactives which can reduce fear (such as MDMA) as allies in doing the deep work to minimize trauma carry-forward. Maybe with the help of these molecules we can heal, can break our cycles of violence.
On that note, I have reposted this article on Being Peace- any healing work on ourselves is part of a planetary gridding process.
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There is a stunning lavender sunrise with a fat full moon hovering over the city. In the morning quiet, there is no confusion. With a soft jaw, I can state that violence and expansionism, directly or indirectly (through the export of arms and the funding of war) are never right or justified, as they are actions against life, actions of uttter ingratitude.
Yes, people are often tribal, separatist and violent, acculturated into belief systems of hating the other, or raised up with ideas of external gods that take sides. Out of love for our own, we justify killing another. Sometimes there is a worldview or cosmology informed by a battling god, with satan or demons or some other archetypal projection – these allow the disowning of our own ancient violence- deities as devices allow us to put the authority outside of ourselves for our choices to harm.
The movement in each of us is to a worldview where we are all earthlings, where we stand in our own power and peace, in deep respect for life, capable of cooperating with others to create a world that works for all. We have an awareness of our connection across space and time, and know that together we are making the world and the future with our daily choices. That we can’t do harm without it being amplified and returned, that hurting others is a boomerang.
To stand in and as peace, we have to be able to hold more of what arises in our fields. Trauma scholarship says that to be peace, we go to the places where the culture lives in us: if I own my pain, my grief, my sorrow, my fear, then new injury doesn’t land in these unfelt places and get amplified.
Yet, many people don’t have the emotional skills to hold new injury, given what has happened to them. We can benefit collectively from more spaces (and people) who can help hold and help develop those skills.
We have traumatized people in leadership around the world, who haven’t done their own inner work, for whatever reason, acting from past imprints and pain, now with the full resources of nations at their disposal.
The healing movement is to build the capacity to include more and more, to feel the pain without being taken down by it, so that action emerges naturally and appropriately.
One such action is to commit your life to life. In this movement, we know ourself as the emanation of the unified life force, we become peace. I become aware of my constant connection, that the energy that is moving all of life is moving me. I walk in the world in reverence and awe and gratitude that it exists at all. I train mind and heart to become peace, to live peace, to not be baited into othering and separation.
As I become peace, then the transmission of fear, as well as the dance between being victim, persecutor, rescuer…. these oscillations stop in me.
I may still donate to humanitarian causes or politically activate, or serve meals or whatever it is I do as right response to the suffering, but it will come from a clarity of values, from a deep well of love, not from vibrations of blame or fear or unhealed projections. It will also come without inherited stories of “belonging/separation” which are two sides of tribalism (ironically, belonging to a group is a movement to separation).
If we’re alive and feeling, our own heart may be breaking for the unnecessary pain of so many. For our deep violences to each other and the planet. And we will also hold the beauty of good fellowship and trees and a perfect kiss and warm water to soak in.
I am simultaneously with the full moon in the pinking sky and this grief. The kettle, the cushion, the breath. Feeling my feet, my hands, writing these words. Maybe I am dancing in the morning. Coming to the mat or running in the woods or getting on the water.
I commit my life to life.
To gridding the planet with the capacity to be peace,