Anger without action is disempowering. It is fear barking at the darkness, a little dog backed into a corner. Anger without action turns in on you and eats away at you. It hurts your heart too.
Anger with some action is empowering. In this year's film The Darkest Hour, Winston Churchill raged at Hitler and then called his people to fight. Instead of letting fear dominate the British, he inspired them to resist and fight. [P.S. I realize Churchill had a lot of problematic traits, including I later learned after writing this post, he was racist. So I am only speaking of this example of how he handled this one moment in history depicted in the film.]
So the anger was followed by empowerment to act, a belief that they would never surrender. Meanwhile there were those in his government who wanted to surrender to Hitler in hopes of making a deal. The rest is history.
There can be no justice without action. Action is our creative voice of change. Good leaders empower others into action.
I love this remarkable set of conversations. I remember reading Marianne Williamsons earlier book
"A return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of A Course in Miracles" and its belief that we have two primary emotions love and fear. Not love and hate, for hatred is created by our fear of others, fear for survival, fear in all ways. That extension would include guilt and all other things brought up here. It is such a big change in the way we think and helps change, in many respects, how we look at all dark emotions.
That era was my introduction into accepting new thoughts in the new thought movement and set me on my course of looking at how I saw my own shadow self, the deep emotions I carried that I did not see much less admit.
The Parkland students are huge to me. May their movement be the first of many to move us to critical mass and a major shift.
I felt such shift potential in many events now from the royal wedding where the groundswell of love filled and lifted my heart to the recent celebrity suicides of Kate Spade and Chef Anthony Bourdain.
The darkness is creating great anxiety in an already anxiety ridden world and historical time.
What is the answer? To me the answer is very much like a Buddhist koan.
continue into next post....
Continued from my preceding post:
This poem:
“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”
Rainer Marie Rilke
Rainer Marie Rilke
Perhaps just more questions but the conversation and dialogue is the teaching and the learning. I treasure this thread in its entirety. We are all on our right paths just approaching the center in so many ways from so many directions. Our crosses to bear and to walk with perhaps..The endless cycle and all its meanings.
I want to click my ruby slippers in so many ways on so many days.
Michele, thank you for such beautiful words!
I read Williamson's book long ago and found that so many things she said, (which by the way, have to give credit to the Course of Miracles that she studied), I knew were true.
I remember especially what she said about how karma works. She said that even if what you have done does not literally come back to you, you will believe it is coming back on you. So in that way, you will experience the karma of your actions. When we lament that the Koch family, the Trump family, the Mercers, and Putin are not getting their just deserts, we forget about the fear that these people live with. They know what they've done and they are constantly afraid.
As an example of how karma works via the mind -- Harvard University did a study of the ultra wealthy, i.e., people with over $50 million. They found that they felt financially insecure, that they felt insecure in spite of having more money than they would need in their lifetimes. On average, these folks believed they would require 25% more money to feel safe. So even if karma does not appear to be working in a person's life, it is working in the person's mind. I'm not judging people for their wealth, just pointing out that it doesn't automatically provide security if there is karma associated with it.
I love the idea that there is only love and the lack of love, or light and the lack of light. Fear comes from our blindness to the light. Hate is just a defense that we have when we are afraid. Donald Trump is a dark vortex of fear. The behavior of his party's leaders is a dark hole of fear. It is no accident that they accuse people of the things they do. Lock her up is the epitaph that arises from their own criminal actions. They see in others the darkness in themselves.
I love your Maria Rilke poem. Be patient towards all that is unsolved in your heart. When I find myself hating the likes of Devin Nunes, Putin, DT, I stop and ask myself what am I afraid of?
Hatred is toxic energy, a sign of blindness, lack of faith, and a sign that I have work to do with myself. Is it my lack of faith that we will be okay? I have a knowing in my heart that we will be okay. I have seen in visions that it will turn out well. But it is easy to forget. Remembering and seeing all the light is the moment of change from lower vibration to a higher wiser heart warrior vibration. This is my chance to rise. It's hard work. It takes a lot of self care to see through the darkness.
Thank you, Jeanne, for this wonderfully connecting and meaningful dialogue. It connects so many spaces in the areas that are the most challenging to understand and brought me into much deeper understandings.
I treasure the growth of so many and how one spark can illuminate vast darkness in the strike of a single match stick. Thank you for creating a safe and often very sacred space here.
Michele, loved your Buddhist poem! Great reminder to be kind and patient with our own hearts. Jeanne, love this topic and all the beautiful bright people. It is a highlight to read the many different topics, but in particular this one.
I want to address anxiety and loneliness, in light of the recent celebrity suicides. I am not sure if a understand it. I feel its different for everyone, but it does come from fear. I believe its cellular. For me it feels like a darkness that comes over me. It has definitely been prominent in my life, and more so the last 12 years. At first I thought it was menopause. It felt like the myelin sheaths around all my nerves were frayed, exposed, and my coping mechanisms were all but gone. Then, I thought, maybe its just work! I worked in emergency medicine and was a firefighter. When i couldn't go to one more fire, I retired. Now my life is calm, quiet, somewhat peaceful! I am blessed beyond belief. Yet, I still have anxiety, and at times feel lonely. I think its the time we are living in. I work on breathing through it and it passes. Last night I arrived at my ranch to quiet solitude. I looked out my window and a beautiful deer was frolicking on my lawn and kindly munching on my half eaten apricots that had fallen on the ground after the bluejays and quail had their feast. As I stood there watching, the deer came right up to my window. I had music playing and this song came on. Needless to say i was overwhelmed with gratitude. Hmm, maybe gratitude is the answer.
I'm with you
I'm lonely too
Can't be sung
By two?
A broken heart
Isolated and afraid
Open up this is a raid
I wanna get it through to you
You're not alone
Every night
I stand in your place
On every face
Tastes the same
A broken heart
Isolated and afraid
Open up this is a raid
I wanna get it through to you
You're not alone
An open heart
There's no need to be afraid
Open up this is a raid
I wanna get it through to you
You're not alone
I wanna get it through to you
You're not alone
I'm gonna get it through to you
You're not alone
THIS is why we are going to be okay. These are the people that are going to save us. I am also posting this on the front page in World Predictions to make sure everyone sees this so they can hold onto these images when they are afraid or start to lose hope.
Two different videos
1. he didn't know he was being filmed
https://abcnews.go.com/US/adorable-boy-helps-elderly-woman-flight-stairs/story?id=55543071
With so many hurting, so many feeling loss, or lost or hopeless, I was reminded this morning of a prose poem and this quote by Clarissa Pinkola Estes, American poet, post-trauma specialist and Jungian psychoanalyst and author of "Women Who Run With the Wolves."
"Ours is not the task of fixing the entire world all at once, but of stretching out to mend the part of the world that is within our reach. Any small, calm thing that one soul can do to help another soul, to assist some portion of this poor suffering world, will help immensely. It is not given to us to know which acts or by whom, will cause the critical mass to tip toward an enduring good."
I was drawn to write about an experience I had several years ago, and addition prose by the same poet in a post on my personal blog. The post is titled "We Were Made for These Times" taken from her poem.
https://www.with-heart-and-hands.com/2018/06/we-were-made-for-these-times.html