Aware Anxiety

This anxiety, this heart racing, this body jittering; it is the power of the unknown, brewing inside of you, twirling, pulsing, beating your heart awake. It is the unnerving feeling of uncertainty, and in uncertainty comes possibility, and possibility is miraculous. it is the sensation which you must totally surrender to, lift your hands to the big open sky and let go of fear and doubt, or if you cannot let go, go deeper into the fear and doubt, let it completely consume you until you realize letting go and going within are one in the same. let your anxiety grow, let it surround you like a cloud of black, and see just how comfortable that darkness can be, wrapping you like a starry blanket, embracing you and expanding with you in all directions. Is it anxiety at all? 

A Greater Capacity for Anger

Ignorance has kept me from feeling too much, from having to deal with information that my body couldn't handle, and from having to take appropriate action to make change in the world. I have been afraid to know something, and in turn not know what to do about it. I have been afraid to open my eyes to truths that hurt so much I feel I don't deserve to live with ease and comfort and privilege. 

I've had it pretty easy. I have not experienced loss like many others have. I have not experienced pain, fear, and suffering like many others have. I will not say that it is wrong of me to have had this kind of life - for I didn't know any better - but with information now so easily accessible comes more personal responsibility. There is no hiding from truth anymore. There is no going back, no way to un-know. Now, I'm aware that it would be ignorant not to get involved in the suffering of this world and take it as my own wound.

A greater capacity to hold anger will allow a greater capacity to hold love.

My ability to process anger - firstly to recognize that this is the emotion I am experiencing - has dramatically changed and improved in this third decade of life. I am grateful for the catalysts: difficult relationships, family troubles, religious conflict, and sexual abuse as a child. Until now, I thought it was best to suck it up. To stay quiet. To hold from blame or pointing fingers because no one is ever wrong, because I am the creator of my suffering. I no longer believe this to be true. Seeing the world burn has made me realize that it burns because of my non-action, of my silence, and of my naive belief that if I stay quiet the world will heal. Thing is, there is a peaceful and loving way to say no. A peaceful and loving way to protest and to point out the wrong doings of those who are seriously hurting and causing hurt in return.

I have been afraid of true empathy. To live holding someone else's burdens and sorrows and angers. My own simple, small issues have been heavy, and to imagine holding the world's has been too scary. But as I work on my ability to hold and express anger, I find more honesty in taking on collective pain and releasing it in a harmless way. I am the world, and we are all beings joined by the same breath. We are all one. Therefore, I am more myself, more whole, while holding the collective suffering. How can I help ease the suffering of my brothers and sisters? Of my global community? of my roommate? of my family member? of the earth? How can I use my skills, my wealth, my knowledge, and general privilege, to lift others who do not have these tools to back them? How can I learn to listen and hold space for what I will never understand or experience?

The state of the world is a reflection of the inflammation we have in each of our bodies. None of us will ever truly be healthy without understanding that we are all actually, literally in this together. To heal, we have to go for the global heart-center's wound, not just the individual. By helping myself I am helping others, but I must balance this with the fact that by helping others, I help myself. I cannot wait to have healed myself fully before trying to heal another. One can remain a student and become a teacher.  Covid has left us raw and afraid of our own vulnerability, which hopefully will help us empathize with every human being on this planet, no matter their race, gender or social status. Hopefully, a pandemic has taught us that we are all equally fragile, and we all deserve to breathe, to feel safe from harm ... to live.

I can't say what my solution is to the world's problems right this moment, but I do want to say that I'm willing to look at societal wounds, to acknowledge discomfort, and to process these difficult emotions of grander scale from this moment forward.

How to relate

This might only be about them.  About helping them transition to their new selves in every moment through your awareness, your attention. It’s no time to make it about you. Living as an inspiration, not perfection. Stop enforcing ways and just allow them to find their way. Turn the microphone over to them. Listen. Learn. Validate.

Gottme

4 Steps to Practising Empathy, from the Gottman Institute:

1. Listen without judgment

2. Look for feelings

3. Sit in the feeling with them

4. Summarize and validate

Except that I do believe in telling them my thoughts and feelings regarding their summary once I've gone through this process. Otherwise, what are other humans there for but to share new ways of experiencing the world?

Quiet

When you find a rare moment of stillness, of quiet,
Resist the urge of rushing in with business, with noise.

Wait Without Hope

I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope

For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love,
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.
Whisper of running streams, and winter lightning.
The wild thyme unseen and the wild strawberry,
The laughter in the garden, echoed ecstasy
Not lost, but requiring, pointing to the agony
Of death and birth.


T. S. Eliot, East Coker

LIBERATION

Completely
let it go
surrender
give it up
throw it out
make space
get rid of it
expel it
sink deep
deep clean
breathe out
exhale
to the bottom
the very
very


bottom.

There you'll find yourself again, build yourself anew.