Finding what is Sacred requires facing our Pain
What kind of action is required as we witness the amoral actions of our political leaders each and every day in this country? What kind of action will it take as human beings to shift our moral compass, to heal our undigested trauma, to end our “othering?” If we are ever going to gain the momentum we need to heal our climate and our Earth, to save what is our very precious life-giving planet and all the living plants and animals we depend upon for our life here; we must join together and work together towards this goal.
Never in my lifetime have we faced such complex challenges, need I say, maybe in all generations heretofore?
No wonder we are all frozen, unable to take meaningful action! It’s an onslaught of hate, greed, evil, suffering, rage and disbelief every day.
But, I believe, like Joanna Macy, that we stand on an auspicious precipice. I say “auspicious” because I see the possibilities of this moment. Only when we are in the greatest pain, so we learn to grow, shift, do something different. Life has taught me that out of deep darkness, comes new life and new potential for deep human growth and healing—rebirth. We need to heal our hearts and our trauma so that we can evolve into the human beings that can regenerate this Earth.
In Active Hope, Joanna Macy teaches us that there is a deep appreciation or gratitude generated when we deeply connect to nature and all living beings. This gratitude is always here for us. When we go through the four stages of the SPIRAL (a group process done in workshop or retreat) : 1)Coming to Gratitude, 2) Honoring our Pain for the World, 3) Seeing with New Eyes, 4) Going Forth; we can re-imagine ourselves as part of the cycle of death and rebirth as all living systems. Through this process, Joanna Macy reveals that we can re-awaken our humanity in a way that allows us to find our way out of this climate chaos. She says the way to start is to feel the Gratitude that comes freely from nature to us when are experiencing it. Gratitude lifts us up and engenders a sense of common humanity or connectedness with all beings. From this vantage point, we are no longer separate but a part of everything that is living around us. We are the trees, the plants, the animals — they are a part of us—we are all connected.
This sense of common humanity is a deep sense of belonging and connection. When we feel connected, we can have compassion and love for other living beings because we are open and responsive to our bodies and our feelings. Joanna Macy is a systems thinker also, and she teaches about the challenge of a “blocked response” or systems (human and otherwise) that are blocked because their hearts are closed over. The importance of facing our pain and learning to move through it, to express it and digest it, is the only way to unblock our systems. If you think of applying this to the world, that’s Joanna’s powerful message: We must unblock our human systems so that we can re-connect with each other and the natural world as one interconnected whole system. The solutions for coming back to life reside in our “seeing with new eyes” which happens after we have expressed, named and processed our pain.
In a 2010 interview for the American Public Media radio program “On Being,” Ms. Macy said that a “dance with despair” was the central experience of her life — but that by not running away from grief, she had learned that the feeling could be transformed. “When we take it in our hands,” she said of grief, “when we can just be with it and keep breathing, then it turns. It turns to reveal its other face, and the other face of our pain for the world is our love for the world, our absolutely inseparable connectedness with all life.”
Evolving our Human Heart
Another powerful contemporary spiritual teacher, Tara Brach, put it this way, (What is Love asking of Us: Gaza and the Bodhisattva Path) “Evolving our human heart and spirit requires that we realize our intrinsic belonging to one another…..Enlarged belonging —what does this feel like?” She quotes a Palestine mother watching starving children in Gaza who says, “May I keep choosing love, even when the forces of hatred are so great.”
The sacredness of life is in our shared presence —in moments like this —where we feel the love and tenderness of our hearts open wide. This is where grief and love meet inside of you.
Tara continues, “Choosing love has the power to free us from suffering. Love can change your habits from “othering” others to offering compassion. And bell hooks, the humanitarian says, “The moment we choose to love, we begin to move towards freedom, to act in ways that liberate ourselves and others”~.Choosing the Bodhisattva path, a path dedicated to awakening hearts and bringing healing to all beings, is one way to cultivate this compassionate habit.” As a mindfulness teacher, Tara Brach states that when we cultivate Compassion through Mindfulness as taught by the Buddha, we can bring healing and freedom to all beings. This is the opposite of dehumanizing others through hate and “othering”.
What seems to be needed is a moral path that we can all universally accept as truth. But, no matter what religion or spiritual path you follow, all teachings offer ways to explore our deepest capacity for caring and loving each other—for how to tap into what is sacred to being a human being. In many cases, it’s the practice of being with our bodies to feel this sacredness in ourselves and others—- that is missing, that is not taught, or carried out in our daily lives. The practice of listening deeply within, opening our compassion capacity, and taking responsibility for our own pain and suffering and healing.
So what is keeping us frozen? Joanna offers powerful answers from Systems Theory as stated above. Trauma theory gives us many answers here also. When we are threatened or harmed, this causes trauma or distress inside us and it hangs out in our nervous system. Unresolved, untreated trauma causes us to lose our capacity for empathy—it shuts down our heart. Demeaning and threatening others is a response from a traumatized person who isn’t aware of his/her own trauma. It eats out her heart and her empathy. Humans who cause suffering to others are themselves wounded and suffering.
Cultivating compassionate action requires that we settle our own nervous systems, release our hearts, and listen deeply.
The important action for human beings right now and maybe Americans especially, is to drop more deeply into listening inside instead of taking action first. I have learned through deep listening to my body and heart that I am aching for connection, longing for a sense of care and belonging with my neighbors, friends and family. But, what is sustaining my heart right now is sharing presence and connection with my sangha and loved ones, deep listening in nature and being still. Being still calms my nervous system, releases my heart to feel my emotions more deeply, and allows me to breathe in love and receive love and compassion from myself and others. Starting with myself, I can move into each day noting what I need to stay open and not frozen—to find pathways to my own tenderness.
We cannot step out into our world with an open and compassionate heart when we are suffering, overwhelmed, reactive or frozen. We have to start with ourselves and address our own trauma healing. This is the first step of meaningful action and the next step would be sharing our tenderness and belonging with each other and the Earth. Then I can say “no” to this, or “yes” to that in a balanced and measured way that joins with others in an embodied solidarity that moves mountains.
