As I’m sure many of you can relate, I’ve been outraged, disgusted and heartbroken at all that is happening at the Mexican/American border right now. Walls being built, families being torn apart, terrified people seeking refuge and being punished for coming here. It’s all too much to bear. And I'm only watching and hearing about it; I can’t imagine how painful it is to go through that, and how absolutely traumatizing on the nervous system. There will be decades of fall out from this as we work to repair the damage.
The thing that strikes me more than anything else is the metaphor in all of it:
The walls we build at the border are the walls we build within our own hearts.
We shut people out; experiences out. We label: good/bad, right/wrong, safe/dangerous — all to keep ourselves from feeling what is real: our own feelings. The US’ response to this issue is an example of a grave inability to be with our own feelings of fear, jealousy, judgement, racism, the unknown, and the list goes on. But when we do this, we are rejecting those parts of ourselves as well. We’re saying I can’t handle that feeling so I’m going cut it off and make the other wrong. But the energy still remains — it eats away at us making us bitter, resentful, hateful and suspicious. It makes us guard what is presumably “ours” so the “other” won’t take it away.
But more specifically, it cuts us off from love.
When you judge another person, you limit the possibility of flow; of knowledge shared between two people that expands your understanding, and therefore tolerance, of one another, and ultimately your ability to love them in the presence of your own uncomfortable feelings.
We must own our feelings, fell them all the way through, and be curious about what they are here to teach us in order to make the shift they are calling us towards. For the sheer humanity of it, we must realize that we are all created equal regardless of race, religion, nationality, gender, etc. No one has more domain on the earth than anyone else. No one deserves it more than another person. We must be stewards of the earth, ourselves and our fellow humans. As the indigenous saying goes: we don’t own the land, the land owns us.
And to think that many of the people being affected are children. Children are the way-showers! They teach us about joy, love, wild abandon, play, irreverence, and truly embodying the light. As adults and parents we have a responsibility to learn from them and teach them how to hold on to that light through adulthood; how to own and be responsible for their own feelings. It’s a dual relationship. We are both teachers and students at any given moment. But many of us didn’t learn this, so we must relearn, reparent ourselves, and dig deep to let go of our own prejudice — for ourselves, our children, and our future.
My hunch is that the children going through this will end up teaching us all a better way, but I certainly hope we can turn it around before then. We must see this as a macrocosm of what we do in our own lives so we can work to heal this paradigm and let in the love that is so desperately needed. This really is a battle between dark and light, fear and love. And although we can absolutely work to change the external situation, and we must, we can also contribute by caring for our own inner landscape and letting the love shine through us, one individual at a time. When we see the other as ourselves, that alone can begin to shift the dynamic.
Who do you struggle with? How can you work with your own feelings around them in order to take care for your side of the street? What are your feelings telling you about YOU, not them? It’s like that old saying: when one finger points at them, three fingers are pointing back at you. But as I’ve said before, the good news is that healing is an inside job, and you don’t even need the other person to do the work. Take inventory of the situation to find out how you are showing up. Join me in the meditation this month as we offer a special healing to the families seeking refuge, and we'll even include the politicians because it's all part of the same story. We have to include them in the healing, just as we we have to include the painful parts of ourselves that we don't want to witness.
Care for your hearts, care for others, and do what you can to be responsible for YOU. Your neighbors will thank you. ;)
Keep on keeping on —
All my love, Heidi
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