The past week has been a wake- up call for us. Our country is facing massive challenges and many of my friends, family and teachers have addressed this in their internet posts. These individual messages all converge into one powerful cry for solidarity and compassion.
I am sharing some of these with you today as I encourage each of us to engage in compassionate self- reflection.
Let’s go within and honor our own experience with full acceptance. This is the first step in healing ourselves so that we can come together in unity.
“…You need to feel this hurting and no one should tell you to ‘get over it.’ Quite the contrary, open yourselves up even more to the vulnerability, and when the pain is almost unbearable, embrace it and share it with the world. This is the essence of our humanity.” Daniel Bryan
“We have finally hit the tipping point. We have lost faith in the old structures of what we thought was true and secure. We don’t yet know what’s next. But the blessing inherent in this time of uncertainty is that the story of separation is shattering.” Lissa Rankin, M.D.
“My job today is to feel all the parts of me that are like the darkest parts of my profoundly divided country, my profoundly divided species. It is to listen to them, to understand them until my own fear, anger, and sorrow dissolve into the light of compassion.
I can only do this inside myself — but that will be enough. It will be enough because one healed person broadcasts an energy that can pull dozens, hundreds, millions of people out of their own darkness.” Martha Beck
“…You’re here to light the path forward. And if, instead, you choose to fill your head with angry disavowal and rejection, you will miss the goldmine of opportunity….
We need to open our hearts and minds wider to each other. …There is pain all around this country in need of healing right now. This upheaval can only be a horrible mistake if we are too stubborn not to use it as a springboard for achieving the very unity we want…the unity our nation is named for.” Tierney Sadler
“…let’s start with empathy. Politically, empathy is akin to solidarity, born of the understanding that we are all in this together. In what together? For starters, we are in the uncertainty together.
…We as a society are entering a space between stories, in which everything that had seemed so real, true, right, and permanent comes into doubt.
…and (as) we enter a period of true unknowing, an authentic next story will emerge. What would it take for it to embody love, compassion, and interbeing? … What is it like to be you? It is time now to bring this question and the empathy it arouses into our political discourse as a new animating force.” Charles Eisenstein
Remember that we each hold the key that unlocks the power of our own truth and the opportunity it holds for us as we move forward.
Elaine
