PEACE OF MIND AMIDST THE CHAOS

Outer changes are the result of inner work

When I was a child my sister and I had Russian dolls. They were the kind where small wooden dolls were inside larger wooden dolls were inside larger wooden dolls were inside larger wooden dolls were inside larger wooden dolls were inside larger wooden dolls.

That’s a bit how life works. Your emotional life is inside your psychological state is inside your physical health is inside your family is inside your friendships is inside your work is inside your community is inside your country’s politics is inside the global climate is inside the state of world events.

Much easier to handle all that when it’s just dolls; with dolls, they’re wooden and none of them are falling apart. In real life, if enough of the pieces are weakened then the whole system begins to break down.

Of course bad things happen, and they always did. But if you have a good relationship you can better handle sorrow, if you have good mental health you can better handle sickness, if you have a good government you can better handle a community crisis, if you have a good overall climate you can better handle individual storms.

What we’re experiencing now is an all-systems breakdown, and it requires an all systems response. None of the areas are going to fundamentally improve unless all of the areas begin to improve. If a fourteen year old shoots and kills his teachers and fellow students at school, you can’t separate it from the father who gave him the gun, but also you can’t separate it from a lack of mental health treatment, you can’t separate it from the economic and social systems the father himself grew out of, you can’t separate it from the corruption in Washington that allows the NRA to have so much power, you can’t separate it from violence in the media, you can’t separate it from the emotional and psychological violence on social media, and on and on and on.

The rot these days is deep inside the wood. And no one but ourselves can dig it out.

I’m reminded of a quote by the Dalai Lama. He said that “in order to save the world we must have a plan.”

“But no plan will work,” he said, “unless we meditate.”

Why is that? Because often we lack the internal fortitude required to rise to the challenges of this moment. The problem is not just what’s happening in our lives. The problem is how we’re showing up for what’s happening, and how we showed up for life to begin with is what created what’s happening! Sick thinking has created a sick world, and only with healed thinking will we begin to repair it. Einstein said we wouldn’t solve the problems of the world from the level of thinking we were at when we created them. In order to change the world, we have to change our minds.

That means we’re going to have to take an inside-outside approach, thinking not only in terms of what we need to do but also in terms of who we need to be. There is an intimate connection between the two; everything we do is infused with the consciousness with which we do it. All the chaos in the world today scares us, and in our fearful state we create more chaos. Until we find our inner peace in the midst of chaos, the chaos will continue because we’ve failed to become instruments of its dissolution.

If we want the world to change, we ourselves are going to have to change. And admittedly, that’s made much more difficult given the state of things right now. Yet there is no substitute for a shift in consciousness. You can’t change a movie’s plot by trying to manipulate the screen; the screen is simply a projection of images. The world is simply a projection of our thoughts.

The more chaos there is in the world, the more deeply we need to do our inner work. Every act of atonement, every moment of forgiveness, every embrace of love, every making of amends, every determination to be more generous, every effort at being more positive, every commitment to responsible thought and action, every act of integrity, every decision to use a kinder word, all of it - all of it matters. And none of it can be left out; it’s the only formula that can heal our lives. Only as we heal our own lives can we become powerful healers of the world around us.

Pure love is the only way, whether we like it or not. Love creates miracles, and anything that stands in front of that love deflects them. Bitterness, frustration, anger, grievances, judgements, victimization - all are like shadows in front of the light of who we truly are. Only our decision to shine that light can make the shadows vanish. It won’t be enough to analyze the shadows; the point now is to cast them out.

Five minutes spent with the Spirit of divine quiet in the morning, regardless of your specific practice, will change the trajectory of your thought forms - and thus your experiences - throughout the day. It will make you available not only to your own possibilities for happiness, but to the larger work of transforming the world.

In the meantime, yes, in certain ways life sucks right now. It’s okay to admit that. It’s true not just for you, but for almost everyone. Anyone with their eyes truly open is concerned about everything from the state of our democracy to the state of our climate to the state of our children to the state of world affairs. There is an epidemic of anxiety, yes. But I’ll tell you what else is true: people everywhere are picking up intimations of a better way. People are having conversations like we’re having right now, in their own way, working through their own issues, and trying just like we are to find inner peace, to find wisdom, to find love, and to pay it forward. Yes, some things are falling apart around us. But a better world is still struggling to be born.

Sometimes we could afford to ask a little less about what wound someone is dealing with today, and a little more about what great thing they’re doing and how we can help. We must support each other now, not by coddling each others’ wounds but by fortifying and celebrating each other’s strengths. We have a world to save and we were born to do it. In our fullness, we are not victims of the world. We are the ones in whose presence it will heal.