Love > Fear

This morning I dreamed that the phrase Love > Fear was tattooed on the back of my neck. It was tattooed over my heart. It was tattooed on many of us, in different places on our bodies. It was set there as a reminder.

I want to remember. I want us to remember.

People are so afraid: How will I pay the rent? Will our daughter make it home from war? How will we get through this next crisis? Will the planet hold up under these climate shifts? Will my son make it home from school today? What if I die alone and unloved? What if the Gods aren’t real?

Love is greater than our fears. All of them. Even the very real fears. Even the imagined fears. Love is greater.

Love is the expander, the enfolder, the comforter, and the enlivener. Love helps us to stand up for the struggle. Love helps us to ask for what we need. Love opens us to compassion.

We can feel with one another.

We will make it through. We will sit with the trees and walk for the water. We will paint our buildings and our bodies. We will dance to music wild and sublime. We will laugh. We will weep. We will be.

We have the capacity to love.

Breathe in. Breathe out. Expand.

#fear #Love

Who Am I?

.

We all reflect the world and are reflected back.

The more we seek this reflection from outside, the more distorted our own mirror becomes. If we ourselves are not clear, every angle reflected back upon us becomes distorted – distorted not only by the events, people, and surfaces we are bouncing off from, but distorted from the outset by the fact that what we are putting out is not steady, not contiguous, not clear.

By getting in touch with our core – through meditation, silence, and prayer – what we put out toward the world slowly starts to come into focus. The inside begins to match the outside. This is a process. Some days will have more clarity than others. This is neither good nor bad. It just is.

The longer we put off knowing our inner selves, the more we avoid looking in the mirror of practice, the more we will continue to try to know ourselves by seeking out reflections in the world. The overculture is happy to tell us how we should look, act, buy, and be. Our friends and family will come forth with their agendas. Whom do we believe?

We can learn to trust ourselves.

We can learn to become our own best mirror. In cultivating internal clarity, we see what is reflected back at us more clearly. We also reflect others in the clearest light we can.

#mirrors #selfreflection #SpiritualPractice

What Will Make us Free?

“Any upheaval in the universe is terrifying because it so profoundly attacks one’s sense of one’s own reality.” – James Baldwin

What will make us free?

Not these drones. This endless war. Not gunfights, and bombings, or cabins blazing in the Southern California woods. Not racial profiling. Stop and frisk. Not longer skirts. Or brightly lighted streets. Not keeping children home. Not taking off our shoes in airports.

What will make us free is a different way of looking at each other.

Occupy by @Muschelschloss

What will make us free is knowing our own power, from within.

What will make us free is recalling our connection.

What will make us free is feeding one another well.

Laughter. Sharing tears. Telling our stories.

What will make us free is recognizing we are not alone.

We are together: every hip hop teen on every corner; each parent holding a child up to the sun; every redwood tree in canopy and root; each lick of fog; every beetle crawling on the forest floor; each wave carrying sand onto the beaches; every star exploding in its death so far; each grandparent; every teacher; each firefighter; every cop; each CEO; every artist; each person who is hurting; every person who feels joy. We are together.

Only compassion will make us free. Only compassion will make us free. Only compassion will make us free. Never our fear.

Let’s turn this situation upside down.

______________________

I wrote this in response to many things: indefinite detention; kill lists; drones; racism; misogyny; the state of the Oakland Police Department; the LAPD; Christopher Dorner; security theater; and this essay by Ta-Nehisi Coates that asks many poignant questions about our state of endless war. Mostly, I wrote it about the way we treat each other, and ourselves.

#Compassion #Love #Politics