Transforming from Fear to Love

     The underlying crisis in the world today is an unspoken feeling of being afraid, alone & powerless in a messed-up, meaninglessness world. Individually & culturally, we're naturally averse to complicated unpleasant emotions; reject anything deeply meaningful as if it were taboo; are seriously addicted to distractions; and have very low attention spans. So most of us "keep busy" which somewhat distracts us from this corrosive feeling in our gut. "FOMO" (fear of missing out) is actually a legitimate fear, but most of us MISINTERPRET this as missing out on owning 10,000 square foot mansions, $150,000 cars, trips of a lifetime, etc, etc. These are just bigger, shinier distractions. Only the rich can directly experience the fact that these don't work any better than playing video games, getting drunk or being a workaholic.
     HOWEVER, as in many other serious challenges, the only way to get past our aching dys-ease, is to go through it. And it requires courage, patience & perseverance - stepping up, waking up & growing up.

         “If this world is to be healed through human efforts,
          I am convinced it will be by ordinary people
          whose love for life is even greater than their fear.”                 Joanna Macy

     “... grief, if you are afraid of it and pave it over, clamp down, you shut down. And the kind of apathy and closed down denial or difficulty in looking at what we’re doing to our world stems not from callous indifference or ignorance so much as it stems from fear of pain. ….
     That became perhaps the most pivotal point in the landscape of my life: that dance with despair. To see how we are called to not run from the discomfort, and not run from the grief or the feelings of outrage or even fear. If we can be fearless to be with our pain, it turns. It doesn’t stay. It only doesn’t change if we refuse to look at it.
     When we look at it, when we take it in our hands, when we can just be with it, when we keep breathing, then it turns. It turns to reveal its other face. And the other face of our pain for the world is our love for the world. Our absolutely inseparable connectedness with all life.”
     Joanna Macy, interview by Krista Tippett, On Being podcast:
https://onbeing.org/programs/joanna-macy-a-wild-love-for-the-world

 

Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, 2020

Power of Non-separation

     For many reasons, we as a society have lost our connection to, or perhaps only forgotten, our own depth, and therefore feel little or no deep connection to our own life, others' lives, and the life of the universe. We've forgotten the essence of vitality, wonder, mystery. We're scrounging for crumbs under our own table on which a mighty feast is spread.

"One of our people in the Native community said
the difference between white people and Indians is
that Indian people know they are oppressed but don't feel powerless.
White people don't feel oppressed, but feel powerless.
Deconstruct that disempowerment.
Part of the mythology that they've been teaching you is that you have no power.
Power is not brute force and money; power is in your spirit. Power is in your soul.
It is what your ancestors, your old people gave you.
Power is in the earth; it is in your relationship to the earth."             Winona LaDuke

We were born before the wind
Also younger than the sun
Ere the bonnie boat was won
As we sailed into the mystic

Letting Go of Being Judgmental

Question : 
     I've been going through phases of being content and happy, but you can see that's not where I'm speaking from at the moment. I drop into phases of depression and anxiety and believing that I'm a separate self. I know that I get it, and sit in awareness, or feel that I'm that a decent amount, but how can I still end up constantly believing I'm a separate self, and how do I get out of it?

Francis Lucille :
     But you see, your question already makes the assumption that you are a separate self, believing to be a separate self.

Question : 
     How do I not believe it? When I'm in those moments, I feel so contracted and limited and judgmental that it's hard to end up in a place of inquiry.

Francis Lucille :
     Yes, because you are judging yourself for being judgmental. So you are piling up judgment upon judgment. Why judge yourself for being judgmental? Judgment happens. Just like rain happens and wind happens, judgment happens. It's a cosmic event when it happens. 
     There is nobody to judge for being judgmental. Judgmentalness happens like the flu. You don't blame yourself for getting the flu. The flu happens during flu season. And judgmentalness or judgmentality happens during judgment season.
     If we try to do something about it, it's because there is someone wanting to get rid of it and the one who wants to get rid of it is one judging himself or herself for being judgmental. Allow for it to flourish. It's like a poisonous plant in nature - it's beautiful. Look at the datura plant - beautiful, beautiful white flowers! So there is beauty also in it. Not beauty of judgment, but beauty of the whole game. 
     Also, understand that in the moment when you are being caught by being judgmental, to try to do something about it always comes from the wrong place: judging yourself for being judgmental. So that's already the beginning of freedom, because you see it - so you stop trying to do anything - it's very important.
     Do you understand, as a separate person, our powerlessness? To fully accept our powerlessness as a
separate person - there is humility in it. We have to start from this humility, this recognition of our powerlessness as a separate person. 
     It is not that attempt to get rid of the judgment that is going to take you in the right direction. It comes from hatred - hatred for yourself, hatred for being judgmental. And hate always takes us in the wrong direction. 
     Only love, love for the truth, interest. To be interested in what we truly are. But in these moments when we are judgmental, these are not the good moments. It's like when it is storm season, hurricane season, you just board your windows, and you go somewhere else. 
     To 'board your windows' means don't listen to your fear, to your desire to judge yourself, to do whatever against it. 
     To 'go somewhere else' would mean to leave the body-mind house. You are not in it. The body-mind house is in you. To leave the body-mind house means first to investigate, if you can, in this moment.
     But a true investigation is an open-ended investigation. It is an investigation that has no personal agenda in it. That's a big difference. As long as there is a personal agenda, such as in this case: 'I don't want to be judgmental any longer.' Forget about it! It is better to do nothing, than to do the stupid things this agenda will make you do.
     Open-mindedness in an investigation means I let the investigation take me where it's going to take me. I don't know ahead of time what the outcome is going to be. 

Question : 
     But how do you end up in an open-ended question from a place of fear and contraction, wanting it to be different?

Francis Lucille :
     You first have to renounce what this frustration is telling you to do. What makes you renounce it, and board the windows and the doors in this house? It is the understanding of your powerlessness, and that whatever you are going to do is only going to make things worse. That's why I started answering your question from this vantage point. Understand that the desire to get rid of judgment, comes from judging yourself for being judgmental. Which is more judgment. So you have to stop this layer of judgment. That's the first thing to do.
     Now the second thing to do is to understand that the reason for being judgmental is that you believe yourself to be a separate person. Because it is both the separate person who is being judged for being judgmental, and it is the separate person that judges, saying, 'It is not convenient for me to be judgmental.'
     So when you see this entire process, there is an intelligence that comes into play. So that you just stop. Whatever is going to happen next, you don't know, but at least you've let go of the process, even for one millisecond. That's a moment of intelligence there because you have been somehow out of the process. But, you are not involved in this judgmental or whatever ignorant behaviour all the time. 
     We all have moments of availability, moments of interest when we think about the truth. The thought about the truth comes spontaneously to us. In these moments, we have the desire to investigate, not because we have a personal agenda, but for the sake of truth alone. And it is only in these moments that we should investigate. We shouldn't investigate with a personal result in mind. Then it's better to watch a movie, to do something stupid. We should reserve meditation investigation for these moments when we truly are interested, because then it becomes effective. And it is these moments, when we are truly interested, when we want to know without projecting what the outcome of this investigation is going to be. 
     It is these moments that in fact liberate us from being a person. Because they lead to an understanding, they lead to meditation, and they lead to moments of freedom when we experience our freedom. And later on, this freedom is experienced as peace, and then as joy. And that's how the cure takes place.
     It is not bad to recognize, to be aware of these moments when we are judgmental. What is bad is to judge ourself for being judgmental. What would be much better, would be to say, 'WOW, I just noticed that I was judgmental! I congratulate myself.' Because in this moment, when I saw it, I was out of it. I was in my true nature. Even for a split second, I was out of it. So you should congratulate yourself for having distanced yourself, even for a very short moment, having seen it. Because most people, unlike you in these moments, they are not aware of it. They are judgmental all the time, all the time. That's their modus operandi.

This youtube video is the source of the above transcript.