“Will we stay focused on love? The whole world is inviting us to — and our collective heart cries out for it.”
Yes, Hillary, it’s true: "Our nation is more deeply divided than we thought."
What’s important to recognize is that this division runs deeper than we might have been willing to admit. Now is the time to face it. Now is the time to lovingly and wholeheartedly lean in.
We are deeply conditioned to divide. We are taught to see things dualistically. Us versus them. Black versus white. Right versus wrong. While one candidate might reflect the outermost trappings of seeing life through this lens, this is our opportunity to face the depth of our collective tendency to divide. Most importantly, it is time to face that the root of our division is in the initial faulty perception that we are separate from life. It is time to recognize that the subject/object relationship we perceive is an illusion. When building on an illusory foundation, no structures can solidly stand.
Those of us on a true path of peace are required to stay focused on the way in which there is no 'other than.' There is no 'outside' beyond our collective shared being. The diversity of our experience is happening within the same oneness. We can’t, no matter how tempting it is, fall prey to this ideology that says I’m now going to fight the hatred with more hatred. We are only hurting ourselves.
Rupert Spira speaks of the way in which "Love is the recognition of our shared being." This shared being is our primary state. It’s what’s fundamental. It’s easy for us, in this world in which these apparent divisions are being made, to further the divide by only focusing on the content rather than the process of what’s creating the divide. The content is this particular issue or that particular issue. The process is that of believing that it’s possible to be separate from each other. The process is that of believing that we’re not modulations of the same consciousness. That kind of believing is the process in which these divisions are created. It is the ground from which they spring.
Because we are all made of the same consciousness, because we are one, does not equate to a nothing matters, Pollyanna, “we’re all light", approach. This is not the time to fall prey to another story. Now — this time in which so many are experiencing grief and fear — is the perfect time for us to recognize the breaches in our shared being. Now is the time to act from that recognition.
Again, this is not action that simply plays out the other side of a duality — "they are wrong but I am right" — but rather this is the time to be vocal and loving advocates for the recognition of our oneness. We must have faith in the direct experience of our connectedness — not a faith rooted in further storytelling, but in our actual experience of unity.
It is through digging to the roots of the mind that divides, it is through the direct experience of our unity, that we have the opportunity to name, and act on, the breaches in the recognition of our shared being.
It’s a breach, for example, to harm others. And rather than simply fight those who are harming others, we have the opportunity to see through the ignorance that we are 'other than.' That we are separate. We can allow the clarity of our experience of unity to affect and influence how we move through the world. We can act on behalf of our clear understanding and of our love rather than our anger and our fear.
What better time than now? We can’t go to sleep with the notion that our president will do this for us. We can’t hit snooze and hope that someone else will take care of this. We must respond to this wakeup call. We have to be the ones willing to commit to living the recognition of our shared being. We have to be the ones to live the direct experience of knowing that we are one.
Again, all of these manifestations of the external divisiveness that we’re seeing in the world are just the limbs and the branches of something much deeper under the ground. We’ve moved into a time in which we’re being asked to address what’s at the root. We are only heading to greater divisiveness if we don’t.
How does this manifest as a practice in our daily lives? Every moment is an opportunity to live out the direct experience of our oneness.
As you move through your day, how might you see the ways in which you fall prey to ignorance—to the ignoring of the reality of our interconnection? As those processes are recognized, can you loving turn your attention back to the truth of our unity? Can you refocus?
Rather than giving all our attention, solely, to the next political movement in the world, can we give attention, also, to freeing ourselves from the ignorance — again, the ignoring of — the truth of our interconnection?
From the recognition of our shared being, can we hear the voices of those who are suffering? Can we allow room for our pain? Can we open our hearts to the ways in which some feel that we’ve found the answer and that their prayers of having an easier life ahead have been answered? The suffering, the pain, and the hope are all arising in the same, vast, open field of awareness. Awareness has room for all of it.
It’s time for us to love. It’s time for us not only to recognize our connection, but to live from it. If we feed the conditioned mind’s habit to divide, we will never experience peace. We can’t _ and won’t — experience peace through fighting divisiveness. We can only experience peace by seeing through the ignoring of the reality of our interconnection. And we will only create peace in the apparent externals of our world by living and acting on behalf of that interconnection.
No one can take away the reality of our oneness. No one can touch that, no matter how powerful their position might be. No person can take away one’s direct experience of connection and love. No one can tarnish the nature of your authentic being. The question is, will we remain focused on that which can’t be taken away? Will we stand for the recognition of our shared being? Will we stay focused on love? The whole world is inviting us to — and our collective heart cries out for it.