Grief & Gratitude, April 21, 2024

I’ve been holding my grief and gratitude a little tighter lately. While I have complete faith in our ability to overcome what we’ve done to ourselves- faith and trust, if they are true, are based in reality. Clarity. Awareness.

I’m holding my grief and gratitude close because so many people get really upset when I express my belief we could actually be doing so much more for each other. I am incredibly attuned to assessing people’s capacity for change. I know we are not stretching enough and there are reasons for that, we need to address those. That’s how change works. And, my faith in us that we could actually do it, actually create a more peaceful world, makes a lot of people really frustrated. Even people who really want a more peaceful world. And, I love us so fiercely, I just keep trying. And goodness, it hurts. But, I won’t let go. I promise.

I grieve how many people want to talk about boundaries as in “no, I won’t do that for you” instead of “yes, I will refuse to harm them or us or me.” I grieve that we think boundaries are something me make and they can keep us safe. That we have decided to spend all our time there, protecting ourselves instead attending to where we cross someone else’s boundaries. Boundaries are organic. Crossing them severs the connections between us.

I’m grieving that we aren’t doing better. We aren’t trying harder, let’s be honest. And it makes people mad when I say this. But look, look around. Some of us are giving everything and some of us are just not.  What risks have you taken towards collective liberation today?

Some of us are really not trying very hard but feel like we should be and don’t know where to start so instead retreat. That’s not going to help us. Yelling at those retreating isn’t going to help us either.

I don’t say this to be punishing or mean. If I did, I’d probably get a better reaction, more people would probably relate to my fury if it was a punishing fury. But few people know what to do with requests for accountability except deflect them. Requests for accountability, they are bids for connection. We are all trying so hard to connect, to show each other what is needed.

We need more people building their capacity to give rather than caving to the conditioning. The cultural paradigms that got us here will not get us out. “What do you want us to do?” I want us to learn how to be together when we feel uncomfortable and I want us to feel uncomfortable about a lot more things. I want us to lean into learning a new way of doing almost everything.

We need more people capable of sacrificing. Learning how to do that in a way that is nourishing instead of depleting. I am so grieved by how little we will risk for what would amount to absolutely everything. I am so very grieved that so many of us would really like a more peaceful world and more leaders who care and more functional society- so long as it comes about without the loss of any comfort or security. Well. That, is just not how it works. I grieve that too, because it could have worked more that way if we had gotten started sooner. Courage is an essential element of compassion. We need to cultivate greater courage.

I’m grateful I did get started long ago. I’m grateful to have wisdom about the world, about what I know and what I don’t and where to look for new information. And about people. About how to do things subversively, often so subversively it goes unnoticed, bypassing systems of harm. I’m grateful I get to share it. Grateful there are people with who I am holding hands and standing heart to heart.

I’m grieving there are not more of us, yet. And grateful, that the only way forward is together. No one can be left behind. We will have to find a way forward together. There is no other way to get where we want to go. And because my faith is based in truth and clarity, I can trust that faith when it informs me that eventually, we will figure it out.

How compassion is protective . . .

To love a child, to parent them, is to walk around with the terror of loss just beneath your skin. Most of us manage it well, letting them climb trees and go on air planes and drive in cars.

But, be careful not to manage it so well that you cannot find it in an instant. Let the risk of being alive, and loving, be something you can access with each breath.

I don’t want us to have to see our child in another in order to feel for them. I don’t want us to have to imagine our own excruciating scream to be motivated to act. We do not need to put ourselves in someone else’s shoes. Our love, our terror, our intimacy with the risk- that should be enough. We should recognize it in the hand that cradles, in eyes of shock, and soft curve of a jaw line passed through generations and tended in growth of all stages. We shouldn’t need to feel our own world destroyed to be moved. We do not need to do that. That is not empathy. Empathy is to feel ANOTHER’s feelings in your body as you feel your own. To feel the emotion in OUR collective body. This feeling your own feelings about someone else’s situation is something different than empathy. It has a place, an important place in your process. But it’s essential to separate the two. Because if we are not careful, entangling our own experience about someone else’s emotions can lead to the codependent empathy cycle rather than the compassion circuit.

The codependent empathy cycle leads to more separation, exhaustion, overwhelm and fear.

The compassion circuit nourishes us with energy for action, mends separation, offers clarity and courage.

Cultivating the capacity of our individual compassion circuits is protective.  The more bonded we are to each other, the less harm we will allow. The more solutions we will find. The more potent we can be.

We can barely imagine what would be possible, we have to go there to find out. We must cultivate those hearts to know their wisdom. To know that future.

Compassion or Codependence?

Compassion is a circuit within us. When we fulfill the compassion circuit, we have energy. In a state of compassion we can think with clarity and focus and have capacity for relevant action. It’s not just for extreme situations, this circuit is for every day living.

Empathy is the sensation that initiates the circuit ( empathy is feeling for another this means joy, anger, confusion - not only pain). Empathy has two pathways, it can move along the compassion circuit or along a codependency circuit. The codependency circuit runs more like a treadmill. It requires energy, depleting our reserves and impeding our ability to think and feel clearly. From this place our actions rarely address authentic needs but instead aim to control various situations and scenarios (usually, not joyfully).

In a state of compassion it’s hard to separate us from each other, in a state of codependence it’s rather easy. In a state of compassion we have access to our fullness and the full experience of life, aware of the inherent risks. In a state of codependency we are always seeking a sense of complete safety that does not exist.

When we experience sensations of codependent empathetic activation, we might feel a prompting to hurry towards a solution or to “finish” a feeling. We may be distracted and feel a lack of presence. Maybe we become overly focused on a problem or we bypass the problem entirely. Whatever the case there is a sense of anxiety beneath our actions.

One simple way to disrupt this process and rejoin the compassion circuit is to take a moment between tasks. A literal breath, maybe place your hand on your heart. Take a breath and say clearly to yourself what task you are setting down and which you are picking up. This little moment allows your breath, body, and mind an opportunity to realign. The more our breath, body, and mind remain interwoven, the greater our ability to stay on the compassion circuit. This circuit organically supports our individual and collective wellbeing.

What risks are we willing to accept?

The Grail Maiden is a card I pull often. “ The Grail Maiden guides all who go in search of the vessel, offering them to drink.” That sounds simple enough. Lovely, right? How helpful and kind. But, let me draw your attention to the little word after guides, “all.” The Grail Maiden guides ALL who go in search of the well, offering them to drink. She does not only guide those she chooses, or those who are nice to her, or those who understand. She does not only guide those who respect boundaries. And so, often, she risks having her boundaries crossed. In the legends, the grail maidens are raped and otherwise mistreated by King Amangons and his men.

It’s interesting that in our cultural context, someone is considered strong in their compassion until someone else hurts them. Or they “allow” someone else to hurt them. And, then, sometimes we admire the fortitude and ability of those who can keep their hearts tender and loving while in distress, however, we don’t seem inspired to place any cultural priority on developing this skill.

Did you think the Maiden’s kindness was misplaced when you heard it put her in a vulnerable position? Think back, what was your inner dialog and internal response when you realized harm came to her through her open-heart?

When we talk about boundaries there is a lot of confusion, as if having “good boundaries” means you will not be mistreated. This isn’t the case. Having good boundaries means you will be more respectful of the organic boundaries that exist in the world. These boundaries don’t “belong” to anyone, they grow organically around needs. They are disrespected when we neglect elemental needs like life and the components of life, including loving-ness. They are neglected when we choose convenience over the Earth, when we choose our own comfort over another’s access, when bombs drop on families. Every war that has ever waged, every displacement of people, every employer who took more while their employees had less. Every system concerned more with bottom lines than wellbeing. Every bomb that drops on families. These things are all connected by so many tightly woven fibers, and through all of them runs a thread of disrespected boundaries. It is not the responsibility of an individual to protect themselves from harm, it is the responsibility of an individual to try not to harm. The entity with poor respect for boundaries is the one causing harm, not the one being harmed.

When we work with learning to be more respectful of boundaries, we are not working to control others so they will not harm us. This is impossible. We are working to understand, to feel out, where the needs are and how to attend to them in the context available. The Grail Maiden is a beautiful example of this in action. She was not protected from physical harm, however, she also did not forsake her spirit to protect her body.

Now, remember, not to slip into binary thinking here. I am not advocating that we not try avoid being physical harmed. I’m asking us to consider what we are willing to do, what actions are available to us, and to place priority on protecting our spirit. If the actions I must take to protect my body sever me from myself, they were not valuable. They are disrespectful to my own innate boundaries that grow around the need to be true and whole and connected to myself. If I must become a tool of oppression in order to protect my personal body, but not my spirit or the body of humanity, what is the point? Have I not already lost all I sought to protect?

Non-violence and compassionate action are about fidelity to our spirit so that it can maintain its connection with the whole. When we activate from a place of compassion we are engaging a promise to remain connected to our spirit while facing risk or danger.

The faith claim that joins me in serving individuals and communities is that connection and attachment are protective. We, humans, are tethered by these attachments to self, others, Earth, and Divinity so that they provide the optimal environment for us. When we maintain connection and attachment, we can navigate barriers or issues from a place of optimal well- being. These attachments do not resolve or prevent all problems, however, they make the risk of being alive easier to accept and navigate without falling into the trap of disconnection, disassociation, severance. I hear the call of this severing, it is like a searing scream, and I answer that call from individuals and the collective because Us collectively living without a deep sense of connections and attachment to self, each other, Earth, and Divinity feels (physically in my body) like an unraveling of all that holds everything in the universe together. It feels urgent that we attend to those disconnections as we would attend to someone who was not breathing.

If we really want a more compassionate world, we need to figure out how to be as concerned about the spirit of a person being unable to “breath” as we are about physical harm. We need to develop the capacity to take physical risks for the protection of our spirits. For generations we have been taught that we can protect our bodies at the cost of our spirits. And this simply isn’t true.