Many years back, I was earnestly studying the Course in Miracles, and was guided to work with a holy man named Tom, who lived and breathed the Course as if everything were truly the Divine in form. While sitting in his waiting room, I picked up Time magazine from the coffee table. On the cover was a photograph of some horrific massacre, with broken and mutilated bodies of women and children. I began to cry and cry, and did what I always did at such moments—I tried to make sense of the horror, which was not possible.
Tom walked out at that moment, and simply looked at me with eyes exuding love. I held up the magazine and said, “How can these things happen? It makes no sense. How can a loving God allow this? This breaks my heart.” He just looked at me. I felt a mix of outrage, sadness, and longing. I wanted him to tell me what sense it made.
As usual, Tom went into meditation after he sat down in his chair, inviting me to do the same. My heart was wide open, and without much resistance I closed my eyes. Being in his presence, I could always go deeper, and found myself leaving the images of the mangled bodies behind, and dropping into an even deeper sadness than before.
I felt my own sadness, my own horror at feeling separated from God. I had felt it on and off my entire life, and the images in Time magazine had triggered that ancient question about whether God was a loving God, one I wanted to stay connected to. It was all mixed in with my feelings toward my own father, for whom I had many confusing feelings growing up. It is a challenge for the mind to fully realize that both good and evil are contained in God. In Isaiah 45:7, God says “I form the light and create darkness. I make peace and create evil.”
I cried deeply, and because I was with Tom I knew it was good. He was one of those men in my life whose very presence was allowing me to choose a loving God. He began to speak about all those souls in the picture who had given their lives, so that I could experience this moment of awakening. He said if we could see from the eyes of God, we would understand how they agreed to their fate, for reasons that are beyond our own capacity to understand.
He also said that what happened to those innocent people was a co- creation, and not simply a harsh God inflicting pain. And he said that the sadness and anger I felt did not help these souls, and in fact, did not move anything in the direction I would want the world to go in. It gave me the opportunity to feel deeply, out of which I would eventually find a way to be of service. He invited me to release all my feelings and the story I had made up and thank them and see them in all the brilliance of their lighted souls. He invited me to return to love. I did the best I could, and left, with this new way of seeing, which created a huge shift in perception that I have been able to build upon since.
Upon reflection, Tom was teaching me the Path of Zero, which is a way to transform by learning to develop the Witness, to feel fully and be aware of the story I am making up, and to surrender it all into the heart. He showed me a way to accept everything, and receive the gift with gratitude.
There is a huge outpicturing of wetiko in the world at this time, with darkness and suffering televised as never before. Wetiko is an Algonkian Indian term for evil that is the psychic equivalent of a lethal virus in the body. That pain out there is really in us, but we get fixated out there. It can be confusing because we must access the pain within ourselves, so that our individual healing helps to heal the collective, and yet, we are told to reclaim our divine essence and to radiate the love that we are.
In truth, our modern world is making its own descent, one in which we are all participating, whether consciously or not. The world is enmeshed in dreams within dreams. Governments, religions, systems of law, financial systems, and traditional healing and educational modalities are all stricken with the wetiko virus. Our fundamental rules of relating to one another are breaking down and massive chaos is unfolding.
How do we reconcile our need to do something about the suffering with these thoughts by the present day spiritual teacher, Adyashanti: “True sacred relationship with this moment flowers when we are not asking it to be anything other than it is. Then the beauty blossoms. But if we ask the smallest thing of this moment, when we start to miss the beauty. Our asking distorts what we are able to see and experience in ourselves”
Most spiritual teachers and channels keep reconfirming the imminence of humanity's awakening, and yet many of you keep allowing yourselves to be drawn back into doubt by the wetiko manifested everywhere as suffering and corruption. Some of you feel intuitively called to physically assist in alleviating it by working with charities, or by going to areas that you have access to where you can personally help. But if you cannot or are not drawn to do so, don’t dwell on the suffering. Instead, intend to send love, compassion, and healing to any areas that particularly concern you, or even to the whole world. Feel what reverberates within you and surrender those feelings and thoughts, dropping them into the Sacred Heart. Know that your powerfully held intentions are extremely effective, and rejoice when you can, knowing that all is well.
Thinking that they don’t want to “feed the darkness,” many people turn away from the suffering of the world and thus their own darkness. True, we don’t want to feed it, but true peace emanates from inside our own loveseed, and the only way to reach it is through the darkness. The world of flesh and blood and the hell or heaven in our minds and hearts interpenetrate each other, and we are the conduits through which the energy flows.
We fall under the spell of our own narcissistic self-absorption, when we consistently avoid the world “out there.” By dissociating ourselves from the larger world, we avoid engaging with parts of ourselves and unwittingly donate to the cause of wetiko. You may not be called to action, but you can be proactive in your conscious embodiment of the presence of your being and profoundly affect the larger field of existence. Combine this with inspired action, and you amp up the light in the field.
What can you do? Here are a few ideas:
- Refrain from all gossiping
- Refrain from all complaining
- Go out of your way to repair a broken relationship and let go of it having to go your way when you do.
- Join an organization where you can offer your gifts out of the goodness of your heart.
- Spend a few minutes every day praying for humanity
- Every day for a week ask if you can support or help someone, and do it.
- Write a daily gratitude journal, which is simply to write 5-10 things you are grateful for first thing in the morning. Start with your coffee.
- Go out of your way to thank the woman at Comcast who finally understood your dilemma and helped you. Let her know she is doing a good job.
- Be sure to express appreciation every day for the people close to you.
- Practice a compassion meditation like tonglen.
- Thank your lucky stars that you are alive today and can contribute to the creation of the New World.
