Every month the Year of Inquiry group starts in on a new topic.
Yesterday…we began to look at where we create stories, assumptions, warnings, or angry reaction to whole groups of people.
You know, THOSE kinds of people.
We had an awesome collection to kick off our investigation. Inquirers had stressful thoughts about social climbers, fundamentalists, drivers who text, luxury hotel owners, men in power, and violent gamers.
So many images, scenes and frightening groups. For some reason, I always think of Nazi’s or white supremacists as a very frightening group. The people who made Maria and the VonTrapp family walk over the alps on foot and leave everything behind.
Those violent people.
Horrible.
It’s true they should never be like that, it’s true they are frightening, it’s true they are dangerous and creepy.
How do you react when you believe they are so dangerous?
Running. Hiding. Angry. Careful. Anxious. Sleepless.
When they are close, I think about them all the time. When they are far away, I forget, then remember. I try to keep myself safe. I protect this body. I hide.
Even if something happened on TV or in the movies, even if something happened long ago in my own life….I feel anxious in the present moment as I remember the violence. I want to push it away, get it out of my head.
But who would you be without the belief that no one should ever be violent?
It doesn’t mean you suddenly are saying you love violence. No one usually does.
Only without the belief it shouldn’t happen?
I notice without that belief, I can turn a little more towards studying violence. Remembering a traumatic moment. Opening to the memory. Aware that it’s just a picture in my mind, it’s not happening right now.
Nothing is happening right now.
Without the belief that violence should never, ever happen, I can stop calling the energy “violence”. I notice a fountain of fire come forth, and then recede. I watch my own anger roar out, then dissolve away.
I feel compassion suddenly, for those who feel so violent, so trapped and blocked and stuck that they would feel violence is their only way.
Isn’t that how I have also operated in the past? Berating myself, cutting myself down, flogging myself mentally with insults and criticism? Saying mean things internally to the people I love the most, too? Cussing, spitting, pushing people away? Assuming the worst?
“Can I stop raping myself and others with abusive thinking? If not, I’m continuing in myself the very thing that I want to end in you. Sanity doesn’t suffer, ever. Can you eliminate war everywhere on earth? Through inquiry, you can begin to eliminate it for one human being: you.” ~ Byron Katie
Today, after inquiry with the sweet YOI group this morning, I felt a deep compassion to those fighter people with guns, weapons, hatred, anger.
My love went through the atmosphere saying “peace is here, peace is here.”
I could see a ball of light surrounding Hitler, other dictators, terrible war happening right now in the world, violence.
Notice how you feel when you believe in power and love all mixed together….not passivity….not ignorance….
….but real unconditional silent love and how it holds everything.
You feel somehow all is well, no matter what.
Something bigger than “you”.
“Among the great things which are to be found among us, the Being of Nothingness is the greatest.” ~ Leonardo da Vinci
Much love, Grace