You can’t grow deep roots in shallow pools. We’re plagued with shallow pools: shiny objects, quick fixes, culturally appropriated tokens, traditions, symbols, ceremony. Capitalist ‘spirituality.’ The sacred hacked up, commodified and served with a side of overpriced, environment-destroying, water-poisoning, climate change accelerating, sweat-shop made stretchy pants we label ‘yoga’ like Yoga has anything to do with it.

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Washed ashore
on the other side
of surrender
the Beloved
Is everywhere

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Rape is a four letter word. It happened to me. Based on statistics, it’s highly likely it happened to you or someone you know.  It happens to us.  Rape is a four letter word. It represents hate, violence, oppression, entitlement, victimisation.  I have a hard time saying this four letter word. Do you? It’s only four letters but it weighs so much. But I won’t let it suffocate me, crush me, or define me. Neither should you.  Silencing survivors is a deliberate – subconscious or conscious is irrelevant – knee-jerk reaction to maintaining status quo. It makes survivors victims. It makes us carry the burden.  Talk about it, if you want. Don’t talk about it, if you want. Either way it’s never your shame or burden to carry. Rape is a four letter word. It happened to me. It maybe happened to you. It is not my identity and it’s not yours..

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Love isn’t convincing someone of your worth or proving yourself. It isn’t about compliance or obligation; doing what other people want especially if it isn’t to your highest good.

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Patriarchy tells us men throughout history ‘didn’t know any better’. Their misogyny was just ‘of the time.’  What will people say of today’s male chauvinism, misogyny and male violence against women decades or centuries from now?  They just didn’t know any better?  Because we know the truth – they most certainly do.  And that being the case, maybe – probably – they knew better back then too.  Throughout the ages, men have been praised for their innovation, wisdom, genius, talent, leadership, morality, ethic. Why, then, are they absolved from the oppression of women then and now?

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You are not your selfie.

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Look, step, reach, grab.  This was the exercise. In acting school, two decades ago, the teacher set the metronome to a slow 4/4 time in the classroom.  He had us line up against the wall on one side of the room.  On the steady tick-tick beat we were instructed to first look at some imaginary thing, then take one step, then reach our hand out for this imaginary thing, grab it, then start again: look, step, reach, grab all the way to the other side of the room. It was slow. It was surprisingly difficult. We giggled nervously and blushed at our mistakes. But then focus set in. Determination set in. It was now a serious silent meditative exercise in self-mastery. Once I got good, I thought, “yes, I got it. I’ve mastered this.” But then the metronome was sped up a little bit. Then a little bit more. Each new speed had us back to zero, or near zero. No more mastery. Until there was. And then no more again, and so on. Look, step, reach, grab. It was an exercise in beginner’s mind.  An exercise in mindfulness, intention, focus, imagination, and visualisation. We could all use a little look, step, reach, grab.

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These are facts as I’ve come to know them: Ego lives in navel-gazing. The Divine lives in contemplation. Ego lives in exclusion. The Divine lives in interconnectedness. Ego thrives in lack, othering, cynicism, violence, and bullying. The Divine resonates in loving-kindness, in justice, equality and empathy.

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Be scared and do it anyway.

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The way of non-violence requires discipline.  It’s hard in a culture that normalises and even glorifies violence in all forms from the more obvious physical acts of violence down to the verbal attacks and abuses we hurl at one another.  It’s all violence because it all has the intention of doing harm.  If you’re automatic response is to match violent speech with violent speech, you need discipline.  Train yourself.  You are capable.  If you’re angry, be angry.  I understand. But be disciplined.  If you’re outraged, that’s okay.  If you’re sad, frustrated, hurt – it’s okay to feel those things.  You are human. But be disciplined.  We are at a critical juncture.  We cannot afford to lose our cool when it counts the most.  Non-violence demands your maturity emotionally, spiritually and mentally. It demands your willingness to open your heart, throw out snark and cynicism, and strive to live a life committed to peace and love for all your brothers and sisters. Not the just the ones easy to love.

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Every little action you take is a piece of you, it represents who you choose to be.  Not necessarily who you really are – your spirit, your soul – but who you choose to be.

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Create art. Go a little nuts.
Go wild, go wild. Just go wild.
Wild woman.

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Culture is a human-made idea, often a man-made idea. And it’s just that: an idea. An imaginary construct enough people have chosen to believe to make it real.  It can change at any time and it should. Culture is the external companion of our collective psychological, emotional, and spiritual evolutionary process.  Acts of violence, cruelty, and barbarism held with indifference or as sacred and reverent in the name of ‘culture’ are external symptoms of a willfully ignorant ego.

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Women are the extended hand of the Universe

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It’s like someone who is so mentally ill they don’t even realize they’re sick. That’s what patriarchy is to me. That’s what misogyny is to me.
That’s what racism is to me.  That’s what white supremacy is to me.
That’s what colonialism, homophobia, bigotry are to me.
That’s what the mass consciousness of the current cultural construct is to me.

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It’s important to have perspective but that should never be used as a form of cruelty against yourself. It shouldn’t be a weapon to suppress your own challenges and deny yourself of compassion and self-care. Everything about you is important.

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Insanity of man looks down on compassion, love and peace.
Insanity of man is obsessed with dominance, false power.
Insanity of man doesn’t understand the only way forward is through the heart.
He is afraid of what he doesn’t know.

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The audacity to assume peace can be negotiated without half the world’s population present.

There are a great many leaders – religious leaders, non-profit leaders, political leaders, community leaders – that have the audacity to assume they can negotiate peace without half the world’s population present.  Not a special guest speaker, a witness, an assistant or consultant but present, equally, at the table. Represented and heard and believed – not tolerated, not placated, not entertained for the sake of appearances or quotas – but heard, accepted and understood equally and with merit and respect.

Then comes action.  The action is the proof as to whether you really heard us after all.
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An interesting thing to do is practice self-awareness when it comes to your hierarchy of value for sentient life. Does the cow mean as much as your pet dog? That mouse? That crow? Your child? You? The homeless person on the park bench? That worm on the sidewalk?  It’s interesting to observe and then ask ‘why’ you have decided different beings hold different value.  Soon you’ll realize this value hierarchy is just a human construct.
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I think love is only hard because we get in the way.  Love, in of itself, is easy.  It’s what we add around it – all the obstacles, shame, projections, ego – that are painful.  We are afraid to surrender to it.

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Never be ashamed to create healthy boundaries and stick with them.  Never be ashamed, full stop.

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The problem is not having too much empathy rather that we live in a cultural consciousness that is very ill equipped to handle empathy in levels beyond the absolute minimum; because we live in a world that dictates the complete opposite as a way of living not just emotionally but physically, mentally and spiritually. If we lived in a cultural construct that encouraged healthy empathy from the moment we come into this physical form, we would be much better off. We wouldn’t get burned out, we wouldn’t get so overwhelmed with the sorrow and pain of other sentient beings that we completely shut down. In a mass consciousness that normalises empathy, we would have cultivated the appropriate tools – again emotionally, spiritually, mentally – to process empathy into constructive action, problem-solving, and into other useful skills such as compassion. We would have the tools to process rage, loss, helplessness, conflict. We would take good care of each other and, in seeing that loving kindness and tenderness mirrored back to us, we would take good care of ourselves.
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Change with humans takes a really long time.  In my opinion one reason is because we think we’re far more clever than we are.  We have been gifted with tremendous faculties and go about using them haphazardly and abhorrently.

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People try to destroy what they’re afraid of.  Men have been trying to destroy, strangle, suffocate, squash women for centuries.  What does that say about men?  They fear us.  What does that say about women? We are powerful.
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We live in a world that constantly tells women and girls that their only value, their only worthy stock is youthful beauty. Not just any beauty. Not timeless beauty, not aging-gracefully beauty, and not natural beauty. Rather youthful beauty dictated by very limited standards. As a woman ages her stock loses value. She has been conditioned since birth to understand that she is more disposable, she is less desirable. Less worthy of loyalty, devotion, monogamy, celebration, adoration, sexual pleasure, and genuine love. In this construct, she can’t compete with her former youthful self nor can she compete with the millions of young women around her. So what does she do? She lets doctors inject her, cut her, stretch her and pull her like a badly made canvas, a shitty plastic doll.  And then culture mocks her. Magazines and neighbors will speculate with pointed finger over what she’s had done and how horrible she looks.  The joke’s on the woman. She can’t fool anyone for she is a woman and she has no value.

Do not believe this lie.
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don’t turn away, be inspired. Inspired. From the latin enspiren which means to fill the heart, the mind, the being with grace as well as to inflame with an idea or purpose. In other words, when presented with the impossible, the tragic, the overwhelming, the suffering – first centre yourself and then take action for the highest good of all.

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Reveal all you know, confess everything you feel, show how much you care, give all you have.
Always walk with an open heart.
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The healing is found in surrender; a sacred space found between the ego that loves the pain of denial and the ego that loves the pain of drowning in the story.  It’s like a little crevice that is easy to miss if you are not looking for it.  You pass from denial to drowning without even seeing it. You don’t understand there is a space between, a crack. And if you are willing to fall down that wee crevice, there you will find surrender.  But first you must be willing to fall.  I know this from experience.
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