It's impossible to continue burying one's head in the sand when things get seriously difficult. And things do get seriously difficult more often than we like. We're now going through a long period of difficulty. Let's face it wisely!
Pandemic March 23, 2020
What if you thought of it
as the Jews consider the Sabbath—
the most sacred of times?
Cease from travel.
Cease from buying and selling.
Give up, just for now,
on trying to make the world
different than it is.
Sing. Pray. Touch only those
to whom you commit your life.
Center down.
And when your body has become still,
reach out with your heart.
Know that we are connected
in ways that are terrifying and beautiful.
(You could hardly deny it now.)
Know that our lives
are in one another’s hands.
(Surely, that has come clear.)
Do not reach out your hands.
Reach out your heart.
Reach out your words.
Reach out all the tendrils
of compassion that move, invisibly,
where we cannot touch.
Promise this world your love–
for better or for worse,
in sickness and in health,
so long as we all shall live.
Lynn Ungar
as the Jews consider the Sabbath—
the most sacred of times?
Cease from travel.
Cease from buying and selling.
Give up, just for now,
on trying to make the world
different than it is.
Sing. Pray. Touch only those
to whom you commit your life.
Center down.
And when your body has become still,
reach out with your heart.
Know that we are connected
in ways that are terrifying and beautiful.
(You could hardly deny it now.)
Know that our lives
are in one another’s hands.
(Surely, that has come clear.)
Do not reach out your hands.
Reach out your heart.
Reach out your words.
Reach out all the tendrils
of compassion that move, invisibly,
where we cannot touch.
Promise this world your love–
for better or for worse,
in sickness and in health,
so long as we all shall live.
Lynn Ungar
"A good friend of mine said, 'You are married to sorrow.' And I looked at him and said, 'I am not married to sorrow. I just choose not to look away.'
And I think there is deep beauty in not averting our gaze.
No matter how hard it is, no matter how heartbreaking it can be. It is about presence. It is about bearing witness.
I used to think bearing witness was a passive act. I don't believe that anymore. I think that when we are present, when we bear witness, when we do not divert our gaze, something is revealed—the very marrow of life. We change. A transformation occurs. Our consciousness shifts."
Terry Tempest Williams
Psychiatrist Iain McGilchrist spent 20 years researching & documenting the neurological & cultural necessity for a healthy balance between the two hemispheres. Every day on the news we see people proudly trampling on socially & environmentally responsible values. Such folks (& their loyal followers) obviously perceive the world very differently than those with a healthy, functioning right hemisphere.
“The right hemisphere is more realistic about how it stands in relation to the world at large, less grandiose, more self-aware, than the left hemisphere. The left hemisphere is ever optimistic, but unrealistic about its short-comings. …
Although relatively speaking the right hemisphere takes a more pessimistic view of the self, it is also more realistic about it. … The evidence is that this is not because insight makes you depressed, but because being depressed gives you insight. …
If there is a tendency for the right hemisphere to be more sorrowful and prone to depression, this can, in my view, be seen as related not only to being more in touch with what’s going on, but more in touch with, and concerned for, others. ‘No man is an island’: it is the right hemisphere of the human brain that ensures that we feel part of the main. The more we are aware of and empathically connected to whatever it is that exists apart from ourselves, the more we are likely to suffer. Sadness and empathy are highly correlated: this can be seen in studies of children and adolescents. There is also a direct correlation between sadness and empathy, on the one hand, and feelings of guilt, shame and responsibility, on the other. Psychopaths, who have no sense of guilt, shame or responsibility, have deficits in the right frontal lobe ...”
Iain McGilchrist. “The Master and his Emissary. The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World.” Yale University Press, 2019.
Through meditation we learn that true deep happiness is independent of conditions, and has qualities of peace, stillness, silence, equanimity and a sense of oneness or "interbeing." True deep happiness is much more subtle than popular ideas & wishes for happiness: http://www.johnlovas.com/2020/03/appreciating-subtle.html
"The world is not a problem to be solved;
it is a living being to which we belong.
It is part of our own self and we are a part of its suffering wholeness. Until we go to the root of our image of separateness, there can be no healing.
And the deepest part of our separateness from creation lies in our forgetfulness of its sacred nature,
which is also our own sacred nature." Thich Nhat Hanh
“Suffering is not enough.
Life is both dreadful and wonderful.
To practice meditation is to be in touch with both aspects. Smiling (tenderly to our selves as we behold whatever is arising in this moment of mindful self-reflection) means that we are ourselves, that we have sovereignty over ourselves, that we are not drowned in forgetfulness.
How can I smile when I am filled with so much sorrow?
It is natural --- you need to smile to your sorrow because you are more than your sorrow.”
Thich Nhat Hanh
