An Alternative to Violence and Chaos
Dear Friends, During those days near the full moon, our ability to respond to external events is largely guided by our emotions – particularly those emotions that we are exposed to from the world around us. Whether or not you are aware of events trumpeted by the media, our interconnectedness via our shared human unconscious brings the broad emotional content into your psyche.
The gift of the full moon is the magnified presence of the Divine Feminine. How we use this is up to us. Certainly we can be aware of a magnified emotional response to what we see in the external world. We can also be aware that this emotional response is coming from the awakening of personal issues that lie inside us.
As we approach this weekend’s full moon, we are being called to meet chaos with compassion, both in the external world as well as within ourselves. External chaos is easy to see. Our inner chaos is much more subtle. Incessant busy-ness, poor nutritional choices, guilt, anger, lack of self-care…all of these are being exposed by the world’s violent uproars. Now is the time to value ourselves by first finding kindness, gentleness, and compassion for our own selves within our hearts. Our ability to be expansive, to respond to external violence with internal gentleness, both for ourselves and for others in the world, is made more possible within these days bathed by the full moon.
Whether we maintain the violence inside ourselves or find a sense of self-compassion is up to us. Either way, the way we meet our own inner turmoil directly impacts our response to the chaos around us. Our breadth of self-compassion, bringing gentleness and kindness to our own perceived faults, is an indicator of our ability to allow external events to unfold without judgment. Knowing compassion for ourselves allows us to witness, but not engage with, the fear and the anger, the sorrow and the heartbreak that others are experiencing. Only when we can sit within that feeling of gentle kindness for ourselves, can we bring true compassion and true kindness into our shared world.
Looking upon someone trapped in the pain of deep fear with compassion in your heart allows the possibility of kindness and gentleness to be reawakened in their hearts as well.
When I design and schedule a concert, I am aware that it is always swaddled within the context of earthly world events. This Sunday’s concert (in Ann Arbor) reflects the chaos that results from our very human prejudices and judgments. How can we respond to violence without engaging in additional violence, whether it is obvious external violence or the inner violence of self-criticism and self-loathing?
Here, within our heart’s compassion, there is a way to participate as the creative cycle of this external chaos finds its resolution.