Aware and Absorb

It was a grey, cold morning today. Temperature was at 38 degrees fahrenheit and it felt truly like a shift in season. Today is Monday. Have not been able to write, think, or find the light - it has been very dark for two weeks.

The conversations are all focused on peace. The news is all focused on conflict, violence. The tension between being aware of what is happening in our world; and being able to minimize having to absorb it all is real. A new survival skill when it comes to news: be aware, don't absorb. What comes to mind are all the people who are friends, suffering because of an absence of the capacity to sit in quiet, allow the great silence to reveal truth. There is only one truth - and it is not the partial truths we hear.

Such intensity of pain and harm naturally brings a desire to engage in action, more explanation, more grasping for information with the intent of becoming informed - more aware than what is already present. There may be something about being so aware that it shifts one's capacity to reach back to deep understanding about all that is happening.

The deep understanding can only happen when one is not caught up in all the frenetics both in virtual space and in communities that want to mobilize and "send a message". Those who are at ground zero are the most effective sources of information, and most are simply asking for help, for seeing the humanity that is being destroyed, and for peace. The only way back to affirming life is first - to get to peace.

The calls for peace are everywhere – and this may be one reason why those who are in a position to bring this about, refuse. The refusal is not because there is a lack of understanding on their part for what is needed. Rather, it is in politics as it has (de)volved. It is in a desire to hold and cultivate more power, more "self" determination, and more personal security.

In the meantime, those who are identified as being of one people or another - are feeling what is easily imagined: desperate, fearful, and even isolated as individuals who are asking for more understanding, more kindness toward the "other", and more acceptance of our inextricable interconnectedness. This is not a new message. It is that same message that great teachers have shared throughout all of time. The stories are the same; the players have changed. And it seems the new generation has only inherited the strategies that rely on distrust, division. This is sadness, manifest.

Looking to nature this day, seeing the trees in the forest going yellow, red, orange, and the next will be bare branches and a lot of dead foliage, everywhere. This is how things move through time/space. The cycles are well known to all.

Perhaps the lesson is that things die; then a new season is possible. This is the notion that comes forth on this day.