Love is the Answer

On this Christmas day, many people all over the world celebrate the birth of Jesus, whose main message is love. Three times in the bible he said, “Love one another.” But if you watch the news about the Middle East or the war in Ukraine or the Houthi rebels capturing ships in the Red Sea, it can be disheartening. It looks like we are living anything but Jesus’s message. Instead, it seems like violence, power struggles and judgment of others is getting the upper hand.

I don’t think any of us really know what is going on here. Life is too vast and complex for that. But it is useful to frame what is happening in a way that brings more heart, more spaciousness, and even more trust into the process. To do this, it is helpful to stand back from what is happening right now and see that life is an evolving process. Our planet was once just a ball of gas and dust, made out of atoms that were once a part of other stars. Over the eons, the creativity of life took this stardust and made everything you see now – oceans, mountains, flowers, giraffes, icebergs, and you.

Over and over again, in the unfolding of life on this planet, it went through phases where there was chaos as one phase was ending and a new one was being born. I believe we are in the middle of the chaos of a shift of evolution.

The best way to understand this is through the story of the butterfly told by Evolutionary Biologist and Futurist, Elisabet Sahtouris, PhD. The caterpillar is a destructive animal relative to its size. It can mow down the branch of a tree in a day. It eventually goes into a cocoon and becomes goo, and out of this goo begins to appear what they call imaginal cells. They are the beginning of what is to become the butterfly.

But the goo always kills the first wave of imaginal cells!  What this tells us is that the old in any evolutionary shift always fights to stay in control! But this causes the imaginal cells in the cocoon to come together into a community of imaginal cells. Then the urge of the new becomes stronger than the pull of the old and out comes this magnificent creature, the butterfly.

The butterfly is not a “taker” like the caterpillar. It is a “giver.” It pollinates and gives beauty to the world. It also has a bigger view of life than the caterpillar who lives mainly on one tree. Monarch butterflies travel from Canada to Mexico and back every year! These truly amazing creatures were once destructive caterpillars!

I invite you to see that the ‘caterpillar’ of the human mind is being transformed and just like with the first cells of the butterfly, the goo – the old mind of humanity – is kicking up a fuss.  We see more and more right-wing radicals in charge of countries around the world and we see politicians sounding like Hitler.

Before this scares you and breaks your heart, know that human beings are a relatively young species.

And just like humans have an infancy, a childhood, then teenagerhood and hopefully adulthood, so does humanity as a whole. And right now, most human beings are children in adult bodies acting from the kind of mind that has caused so much heartache down through the eons.

 If you watch this old kind of mind carefully you will see that it feels I am better than you because of the color of my skin, or my religion or my ethnicity, or my political orientation, or my gender. And because of that I can judge you, dominate you, hurt you, take from you, destroy your home, and even kill you. This kind of mind has brought forth untold suffering on this planet through violence, domination, and endless wars. And that is what you are seeing on the news.

But you are reading this blog because you are a human being maturing into adulthood. What is calling you is a new kind of mind, the kind of mind that includes, cares, listens, and values our sameness and our differences. For this new kind of mind, it is impossible to cause harm to yourself, your loved ones, all the sentient beings who live on this planet and the planet itself. You are a part of humanity maturing out of a fear-based mind (the caterpillar) to the awesome healing of the heart mind (the butterfly).

As you live more and more from your heart, experiences such as being irritated in rush hour traffic, feeling fear of where the world is heading, impatient while standing in an endless line, judging somebody who has political beliefs different than yours, or blaming others for what you are experiencing, defuses and transforms, which impacts not only you but those around you. It may not seem like much, but I ask you, which drop of water was not essential in the creation of the oceans.

Yes, the old kind of mind is very seductive. It likes to be right and make others wrong. But over and over again you have a choice. You can choose to be with what is going on with the old kind of mind (fear, anger despair, and judgment) or you can choose to relate to it through your heart (compassion, forgiveness, trust, care, kindness). Every time you recognize and unhook from the old mind inside of you without judging it, and every time you come back to your true home in your heart, your presence in the world makes a difference.  As Mother Teresa once said, “Not all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with great love.”

What I am saying is that out of this chaos, humanity’s “butterflyness” is showing up as more and more of us are becoming the imaginal cells of this new mind. We need to keep on remembering as Jesus, Einstein, Teilhard de Chardin, and John Lennon remind us, “Love is the answer.”

So, I invite you to consider that what looks like a catastrophe is actually a healing in progress. Hold with me that out of this chaos the heart of the world is being awakened. If more and more of us can live from a place beyond fear and hatred, our planet will be healed.

Starting January 1st, because the world is in the throes of this transformation, I feel called to open Being Healed by Our Compulsions self-paced course up to a sliding scale, so that those who would benefit from the teachings but can’t afford the usual price can still benefit. The core teaching of this course is how to unhook from struggle which in times like these can feel more difficult than ever. This course will walk you through exercises and knowledge to aid you in your process of unhooking and awakening to life. See how to sign up below.

I leave you with the words of John Lennon’s insightful and healing song, Imagine:

Imagine there’s no heaven
It’s easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us, only sky

Imagine all the people
Livin’ for today
Ah

Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion, too

Imagine all the people
Livin’ life in peace
You

You may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will be as one

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man

Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world
You

You may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will live as one

Are you interested in getting Being Healed by Our Compulsions self-paced course on sliding scale? Because the world is struggling so much right now we are offering it on a sliding scale. We are asking that you pay what you can afford, from $347-$50, although, if $50 is still too much, let us know and we will work with you. Please email aja@maryomalley.com and let us know what you can afford and we will set you up with a coupon so you may purchase the course at your afforded price. Visit Mary’s Website to learn more about the course. If you scroll down to the box that says “Sign up for free access…” you will get a free video preview of the course.

If you haven’t already, don’t forget to register for the next Free Live Call: Are You Ready to Move Beyond Struggle? We will look at how to unhook from our reactions in life so we can respond instead, using our compulsions as our teachers. We will meet virtually on January 16th at 5:30pm PST. Even if you can’t make that time, you can still participate. Learn more or Register HERE.