Have you ever wondered if some wounds should never heal? Where are you with what happened in Charleston SC’s Mother Emmanuel Church?
Last week many here in my beloved Charleston, and elsewhere around the nation, were rocked by 9 people being killed, while praying in a place of worship. There was the coming together of a community, a bridge of unity and a cry for change. There has been outrage and debate over a flag that flies, outrage at the degree of hate that exists and shock from a manifesto that was uncovered.
Where does this leave us and what does it mean? What do we do with it and why did it show up? Is it meaningful or meaningless? I believe we are all visionaries and mystics… but most identify as personalities and mind. We stay in stories and the past. We rally for the moment, but do not always truly discern the ’cause’.
What happened last week was tragic, heartbreaking and inhumane… and yet was it trying to show us something about ourselves? If this was a ‘Conversation With The Universe’…
Where is ‘tragic’ in you? Where is ‘heartbreak’ in you? Where is the ‘inhumanity’ in you?… Where is the ‘hate’ in you? Where have you been ‘brainwashed, manipulated, deadened and persuaded’ into believing things that are not the reality?
What’s the easy path here?
It is easy to rally, be sympathetic and become outraged. Please understand, when we do those things, they are being done for purely selfish reasons. They are being done so you feel good about you… So you feel significant in that moment amidst the story that is playing out. Can you get outside yourself? It is an…. oh so subtle way… to make it about you. I realize what I am saying may upset a few… but this is a very manipulative way the deceptive intelligence keeps us from doing our own inner work.
Now… what’s not so easy?
Can you take what happened ‘inside of you’? Can you let yourself go into the heartbreak and the pain, the places where you feel divided or things are too ‘black and white’ on anything. Can you step into the heart and mind of the boy as well as each victim. What an example of someone completely living from his head and the chaos and destruction that creates. Chaos occurs because someone gets caught inside their own head and puts it out into the world. Can you discern if you believe in ‘good’ or ‘evil’? Because, what you believe plays a part in every thing that occurs on this planet. We are a co-creative collective mind. We all have energetic influence and physical presence.
Being Present…
On the Rebel Road, I visited the Sikh Temple in Wisconsin which had a similar incident killing 7 in August 2012. The Sikh faith believes in compassion and forgiveness. I saw how an entire community came together in the same way Charleston did. I also see that it has faded into the background as people moved on with their lives, even though the families of those 7 will never fully move on in life the same way. Nor will a temple whose doors were always open feel the same, because now they have a security system, a lock and scanner for people to pass through when entering.
I hope the wound of Charleston does not heal… Why? Because that means we have let it scab over and harden…we no longer feel… we think that we can just go on because it has been covered over. We must remember… we must be willing to be ever present with the heartbreak that lives inside each one of us. We must remember so that we take part in life in a way that we are conscious to those around us and are present to be a village that rears children… all children more consciously. This event helped trigger people to ‘feel’ ‘human’ again. It helped to bring about ‘compassion’ and ‘forgiveness’. This event assisted in people seeing an elephant in the room. There are many elephants in this room still waiting to be seen.
Most live their day to day lives ‘moving on with life’ or ‘moving through life’, but not really feeling alive. Aliveness comes from being open to feel ALL of our feelings.
The Problem…
It is easy to say that a misguided, hateful, young, uneducated person committed a hate crime. That is a copout. That’s just finding a way to blame so that we can now be judge and jury. But isn’t that how we got here in the first place, by someone deciding they were judge and jury? It is not just a mother and a father that rear a child… or one that goes down the wrong track, Why do these things happen? It is the village. It takes a village to raise a child… WE are that village. WE… collectively… played some part in what happened. WE are allowing children to go on in life unseen, unheard, unacknowledged, unwatched, unattended to, unguided. WE have to look inside to see how and where we did any of these things.
Indifference is the silent killer…
Too often, we turn our heads… silence our voices… rally for a fight rather than communicate. Too often, we decide that it’s ‘none of our business’ or ‘we do not want to be involved’. Too often, it is ‘not about us’. If we are truly ONE… ONE FAMILY… ONE PEOPLE, then we are being hypocritical.
It takes a village to raise a child. That same village can also destroy one. And when it does, it opens the doors to destroying itself.
I leave with this for you to contemplate…
I am not my Mother or My Father’s keeper, I am my Mother and My Father. I am not my son or daughter’s keeper, I am my son and my daughter. I am not my brother or sister’s keeper, I am my brother and my sister.
As ONE, we are the pieces and parts of all of this. Do not convince yourself that we each do not have a responsibility each and every day to do our part to feel, to see, to hear and to acknowledge. If you are not taking the time to look within to find these places of darkness, you are part of the problem. If it shows up in front of you, it is inside of you. It is time that we all become the solution. When we clean ourselves up, we will clean up this world.
SIMRAN is a catalyst and mentor that supports individuals in recognizing their own personal language with the Universe so that their steps are taken in a more conscious, empowered, loving and enlightened way for self discovery and Divine realization.
Books, Cds, & Catalyst Mentoring Sessions at: www.iamsimran.com
