In the darkness, fear and anger deepen their grip on me. Bumping up against ideals, opinions, and stories that I have formed, with urgency I am compelled to avenge imbalances and inequities. I dash in to sweep up the broken pieces of what I perceive as attacks against me and struggle surrounding me. I am driven to defend principles that through my ego’s eye define me.
This posture that I take implies superiority and gives way to judgment. In my rush to right the wrongs, I become the being I so justly argue against. Resentment bubbles up and my ego says, “they are not worthy…they should be punished…they do not belong…silence them…shun them.”
And then my heart whispers, “wait…they too are suffering.” Those opinions I defend and just as importantly those I oppose are here to guide, test, and inform me.
To release my struggle, my fear, my anger, and my suffering, others do not need to pay a conjured debt for who they are.
Compassion, patience, and trust become my weapons against the injustices, inequities, and imbalances that swirl around me.
Allowing it all to exist and maintaining harmony, care, and peace…that is the true work of an activist.
Compassion, peace, and calm cannot be forced. One cannot demand that someone be compassionate. One cannot command peace and calm. Rather, one must model it, live it, and know that the path to peace in ourselves and others is a steady process of balancing ego and replacing envy and judgment with love and inspiration. And that is the hard work that we must individually choose to do.
When I am truly present, I feel each experience within my body. I receive it with my breath. I prod it with my thoughts and explore it with my feelings. Then, as I peel away these aspects of experience, these many layers of me, my inner wisdom welcomes that experience, absorbing it like a sponge, until that experience becomes me.
When the layers dissolve, all that I experience is me.
How quick I am to judge, to impose my needs and perspective on others.
I see what I label as short-comings, inadequacies, and things I want to change in them.
Oh, life is such a magnificent mirror.
When I look to change others, I am seeing in that mirror all that I wish to change in me.
But I forget that what I see is simply a reflection.
Perhaps instead of looking at what needs to change, I can see all the beauty that lies within them and in me, all the gifts, all the talents, all the goodness, just as they are.
If all I see in that mirror is the goodness, then that is all that there will be.
