What would Love have me do?

Not everything that is faced can be changed but nothing can be changed until it is faced.
James Baldwin (Writer and American civil rights activist)

Yep! Stole another quote and this one comes at an appropriate time from a video that "showed up" for me to watch. (Jack Kornfield/see below) .  It really does feel as if things are just "showing up" exactly when I need them or at least when I am "thinking" about them. I must revisit Andersen's  theory  of how the mind controls our outward experiences.

Darkness All Around?

Anyway, last evening I went to bed in a dark mood. I had the accumulated and compounded experience yesterday of witnessing and absorbing the suffering of three of my children and my step son ...and each of  their individual experience's of  suffering could be classified as real and deep.  I witnessed (and absorbed)  their pain and their mental and behavioural choices.  That was like witnessing them being pierced in the same tender spots with a  second arrow that they are holding in their own hands.  I ask them to at least remove the second arrow and to stop adding to their own pain but they don't. They say they can't. Habit mind has taken over.  Watching them walk around with these painful bloody arrows in them is so difficult. 

" What do I do?"  Keeps nagging at me as I watch and absorb this yucky, yucky pain.

Wanting to Flea ('flee' lol...I don't want fleas in my house) 

I want to close my eyes and walk away.  Say..."You know...I did all I could...they are adults now...this is their journey." It would be so easy to walk away from their suffering...all the suffering I see.  Images of the Beirut explosion, the violence and prejudice minority groups and those who society has deemed as "different" are experiencing , the desperate plight of our youth who seem to be plagued with depression and anxiety like I never witnessed before in my five decades of living, the slow destruction of this amazing planet and what COVID seems to be doing to so many out there... I just want to close my eyes, put my hands over my ears and sing "La!la!la!la!" to myself so I don't hear the cries needing to be heard.

"How Have I failed You?"

Because really...what can "I do" ? What can I, in this little form, do to "fix" all this pain?  I feel so helpless. Sometimes I even feel responsible for it...especially for  my children's  suffering and even for all others "in the village" that I may  have somehow failed.  I find myself also asking, "How have I failed you? What have I done that I shouldn't have done?  What didn't I do that I should have? Was I so absorbed in my own personal sense of suffering, my "me-ness" that I wasn't there enough for you?" Then the guilt and shame adds to the pain of helplessly  witnessing and absorbing others' pain. It  gets dark fast.

"Is This Some Hellish Karma?"

I find myself looking at others, at humanity at large and it seems that what I see is dark and sad.  I also got news that some of the  poetry I bravely submitted , which I was starting to hope was a new purpose  for me, a way to teach or do something , add something to the world that helps, was rejected. It felt like my writing as a whole was being rejected. I looked about at where I was with my finances, no career ( looked like writing wasn't go to save me lol), my new  anticipated source of income failing me because of circumstances, my body acting up and I was overwhelmed.   I actually found myself ,for a moment last night, wondering if I was living in  some hellish  version of karma.  I actually thought that!

Hell to me is not so much my own puny suffering but watching suffering in others and not being able to do anything about it...worse...somehow being responsible for it. Have I done something so terrible in another life that this is my karma...to watch those I love, those I know, those I don't "know' in the conceptual sense  but who I know in a deeper sense  are as much a part of me as the nose on my face...suffer?

Well that was how I went to bed last night...pretty defeated, pretty dark.  But I found myself asking...before I closed my eyes... "God, what would you have me do with all this?"  Then when I get up after a pretty restless sleep  and go to listen to my morning video...the first one that shows up is Jack Kornfield's The Peaceful Heart.  The ending question asked in that beautiful little teaching was What would Love have me do?

We Are Loving Awareness

In this video we are asked to remember one very important thing: We are Loving Awareness.  We  do not  just express it or act it out...we are it! The very consciousness which is everything has been born into these seemingly separate forms we inhabit and walk around in.  This consciousness is Loving awareness.  So as Loving Awareness we observe suffering in loving awareness.  We know the first noble truth that, yes suffering exists and the second, there is a cause for it.  But we also know the third and forth.  There is also peace and happiness and a way through this suffering to that peace and happiness...to remembering who we really are.

Facing and Changing What I Can

I do not know how to "fix" what my children and the rest of  humanity is suffering from.  But I know that change starts with me...finding the peace of acceptance of what is within myself. Then I can  look out at the suffering around me with a big and open heart, not one that is closed. When I breathe that suffering in as Loving Awareness, it doesn't have to clog me up and make me dark and small like it did last night. I have the option of breathing it out into something much, much greater than me.  I am as Tara Brach teaches, just a filter for Love to breathe  in and out of. Hmmm! God, I will do the  work of being deeply present but you carry this...that will be my new mantra.

There is another quote I am going to steal that fits perfectly with my own puny experience:

Warriors of the human spirit are awake human beings who have chosen not to flea.  They abide. They serve as beacons of an ancient story that tells of the goodness and generosity and creativity  of humanity. You can identify them by their cheerfulness.  You will know them by their compassion. When asked how they do it, they will tell you about discipline, dedication and the necessity of community.
-Margaret Wheatley (https://margaretwheatley.com/2019-warriors-for-the-human-spirit-training/)

I don't know about you but I want to be a warrior of the human spirit.  I have a lot of training to do but I will get there.  I will do my best not to flea when I see suffering in myself and others...and instead I will ask: What would Love have me do?

Hmmm! All is well.

Tara Brach ( July 30, 2020)Your Awake Heart is Calling You [Redux] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGE68zj_690

Jack Kornfield (July 31, 2020 ) The Peaceful Heart . https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNZyW7_bLLU