It is
easy to feel that with so much going on today, both on the world
stage and in the realm of the 'personal', that it is hard to know
where to put our attention. Deeply held values of a spiritual kind
influence this choice and define our involvement with the fate of
people everywhere. Yet, for many of us, despite our caring and
despite our desire for a broader outlook, we live our lives within a
small sphere of perception, often trying to minimize the influence
of dramatic world events upon our everyday consciousness, just so
that we can get by.
Nevertheless, we can ask if it
is really possible at this time to have a 'personal' life - one that
is not influenced by the 'global'? Perhaps for some, though
America's state of 'war' and the threat of imminent terrorist
activity makes this unlikely for most. We can
try to redirect
our focus away from world events so that we
feel separate.
But are we really separate, or just choosing to be unaware of the
looming difficulties that are writ large on the world scene?
To consider the question of
what is 'personal' and what is 'global', what is 'in here' and what
is 'out there', is to reflect on the subject of
identity - to
scrutinize who we perceive ourselves to be and what we hold to be
most important to us in terms of values. In doing this, it may be
useful to ask ourselves: What, among the many things that we are
aware of during a given day, do we feel is
most important for
us to pay attention to? The answer to this forms the shape of our
identity, not our deepest identity which is of the soul and spirit,
but our conscious experience of ourselves.
Our sense of identity changes
and matures through time and history, changing the view we have
regarding our 'self'. As part of this movement, spiritual
identification with the common lot of mankind naturally develops,
creating an understanding of the oneness of life and the unity of
souls. Such perception, over time, comes to be held less as idea or
belief, than as experienced reality, not needing to be proven, but
given. Today, we are each somewhere along the path of growth and
learning regarding the relationship between self and others. Yet
fear can cloud our willingness to identify with others, especially
with their suffering - fear of being overwhelmed by too much
feeling, fear of helplessness in relation to all that needs to be
done to help - fear that there isn't enough of us (meaning, enough
of love) to be shared with so large a group as the 'human
family'.
Despite our fear and
in the presence of it, we are called, today, to become larger, not
only in our thinking, but in our feeling. Not only in our caring,
but in our capacity to hold suffering and pain as well. Indeed, we
each have the capacity to 'become larger' because it is part of who
we are as souls - we are each 'larger' than we believe ourselves to
be. If we have become disillusioned with the world and have sought
to separate from it, it is time, now, for us to reexamine the
premises for hope - premises that our soul holds for us as part of
our own inner nature. We do this, knowing that we cannot help
anyone, including ourselves, if we do not have hope. We do it also
because our hearts tell us that hope is needed if the world is to
heal.
Helplessness and
hopelessness are not the same thing. Helplessness is a state of
frozen action or feeling. It is related to an inability to directly
alter a situation that we would wish to alter, whether personal or
global. Hopelessness, by contrast, involves a belief that the
situation can
never be altered. It links to our own
helplessness, God's presumed helplessness or absence, and affirms
that things will not get better, they will only get
worse.
In order to maintain
hope, we need to distinguish between the perception of helplessness
and the perception of hopelessness and to examine them with care.
Though corrective physical action may not be possible for us right
now in many of the troubling world situations we hear about daily,
spiritual action in the way of prayer and alignment with light is
always possible. It is always possible through heart, mind,
and alignment with God, to link our consciousness with others and in
this way to convey hope. For the rest, for the situation to change
on the outer level as well, we must learn to wait in
trust.
If we perceive obstacles
within ourselves to the striving for unity with others anywhere,
everywhere - including those whom we dislike who may be our
immediate peers and neighbors - we can choose to make of this a
spiritual practice so that greater unity becomes possible. This
spiritual practice focuses attention and energy in the direction of
our heart's caring and in the direction of our desire for healing.
In practice, we ask that Divine light and love move through us on
all levels so that the world may be helped and healed by our being
here. To engage with this kind of practice requires an absence of
exclusion, for all exclusiveness limits the ability of the heart to
grow in love. It also requires that we look reality full in the face
- that we see what's happening 'out there' and question what the
relationship is between 'out there' and what is within
us.
Greater consciousness will
not make us weaker, it will make us stronger. It will not interfere
with 'our' life more than the fearful prospect of hidden things that
we don't want to face. For denial does not prevent our consciousness
from being aware of something. It only prevents our consciousness
from being aware of the
content of something. The underlying
sense of needing to avoid it, the fear involved, remains, often more
potently than what would arise if we were to face what we would
rather not face.
At this time
of great human distress and fear in so many places - Israel,
Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, Sudan, Russia and also within the
United States, let us bear witness to the suffering of humanity
wherever and however it touches our hearts. For 'they' are 'us', and
'their' pain has a direct effect on the life of the
world.
* * * * *
The
World:Czechen rebel claims Beslan siege. (Sept. 17,
2004)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/3664864.stm"Iraq:
Signs of Desperation." (Sept. 14, 2004)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/3655622.stm"Bloodshed
in U.S. raids in Falluja." (Sept. 17, 2004)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/3664730.stm"Iraqi
carbomb kills 23 in Kirkuk." (Sept. 18, 2004)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/3668098.stm"Israel
raids kill 10 Palestinians." (Sept. 15, 2004)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/3657652.stm"U.N.:
Up to 10,000 dying a month in Darfur camps." (Sept. 13, 2004)
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=6222564"Ivan
whips US with tornadoes." (Sept. 17, 2004)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/3664436.stmTo
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