We are in such a time of confusion, with fear and hatred rising to the surface and being demonstrated in such shocking and sad ways. And it can be easy to just shake our heads and perhaps shut down and pretend that it’s not happening or just move on to the next sensational, distracting thing that might appear on our Facebook or Twitter feed.
I’m Canadian and throughout my life I have witnessed us being able to fall into complacency quite easily, thinking “everything’s ok here, we’ve got it figured out”. But let us remember that a young, Trump-supporting Canadian man killed six people who were in prayer at a mosque in Quebec City (directly after the election- somehow the timing matched up too eerily to ignore), and that bigoted, racist, xenophobic, homophobic, mysoginist attitudes are alive and kicking here, whether we want to admit it or not.
For those of us who deeply know that the uncovering of love and kindness and compassion in our own beings is what will truly bring peace to this world, the time has surely come to step into this truth and to live from this place more boldly than ever before.
A present day Gandhi or Martin Luther King hasn’t seemed to emerge yet, so it is each one of us that is being called to embody what these peaceful leaders knew to be true: that it is peace in our own hearts that brings change and that standing by silently while others suffer at the hands of those who live with fear and hate as the motivating factors for their actions and words, we are also condoning and promoting these very things.
We might not know exactly what it is that we can do. Maybe everything feels overwhelming right now. But…perhaps we can begin by BEING the very thing that we know creates change: a loving, compassionate person who shares this world with so many other beings who ultimately, despite hugely disparate ways of searching for it, all want the same thing: happiness. Let’s start by listening to our hearts, living from the love that lives there and sharing it with other beings. And listening for the answers as they arise from the truth within about what actions to take.
And, perhaps this is a time to really notice the places in ourselves where fear still rules our lives, our choices and our actions. We are ALL in this together and we are reflections for each other. Let’s continue delving even more deeply into our hearts to really see what is true.
“No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.” Nelson Mandela
