You Can Make a Difference

It can be scary to see the proliferation of terror attacks, hate crimes and school shootings showing up all over the world. If you watch the news, everyday there is at least one, if not more of these horrendous happenings. What can we do?

The first step is to look at this from a broader perspective.  In stepping back, you can see the Earth is an evolving process. For heaven’s sake, it was once just gas and dust. In every shift that the Earth has gone through, as an old way is dying to make way for the new, there is always chaos. We are now in the chaos of an old way that is dying – the old way of divisiveness, judgment, comparison, and domination. This has shown up over the eons between countries, religions, men and women, and politics.

If an alien landed on our planet and saw that we not only try to dominate people who seem different than us, but we also judge them by the color of their skin, or their gender, or their religious beliefs or their sexual orientation, and this judgment oftentimes leads to great heartache, they would probably be truly befuddled by how these kinds of ideas make sense to anybody! And they would probably feel a great ache that our hearts are not open to one another.

But there is also something that is arising in this shift and that is the phenomenal healing power of the human heart. You may feel helpless in the face of the kind of mind that separates and divides until you begin to see that also, all over social media and the news, is an upsurge of stories about the heart of humanity. Along with reports of hatred and fear, accounts of kindness, gratitude and forgiveness have become more prevalent.

It is the human heart which understands that not only are we all in this together, floating on a tiny blue green jewel of a planet through vast oceans of space, but also, we are all family! Not only have all human beings evolved from a common ancestor; everything in the universe has originated from and is animated by one common energy! There is so much more that unites us than divides us!

The quality of our hearts that can make a huge difference in this time of great shifts is kindness. When you look beyond somebody’s gender or skin color or political beliefs or religion, or emotional state, you will see that everybody is a unique and necessary expression of life and deep inside they carry a world of hurt just like you do.  This is where the statement, “Just like me,” is so valuable, for they are not different from you. You too have felt the same feelings that fuel their actions. You may not act them out in the way they have, but you carry the same hurts deep inside.

So, the next time you are with somebody who is either irritating the heck out of you or your mind thinks they are doing it wrong (and thus you are getting tight and reactive), remember to say, “Just like me!” In other words, you had moments in your life where you experienced the same feelings. This can help immensely in allowing your reactions to melt back into your heart so you can respond with kindness rather than reaction and one person at a time is how our world will be healed.

To discover how to respond rather than react may seem like a daunting task because reaction, hatred and fear are much louder than kindness. But even small acts of kindness ripple out into the world and eventually touch our whole planet. A simple act of kindness may not seem like a lot but remember the ocean was made out of drops of water. Everything you do affects everything in the universe!

So please know that you can truly make a difference during this increase of hate and terror. Move from your heart at every opportunity. The reservoir of your heart that feels gratitude, kindness and even forgiveness is huge. It can contain the whole world!