Staying sane in crazy making political times.
Staying sane in these maddening and frightening times requires love and strength. I’m not talking about loving yourself or loving your enemies or loving your family. I’m not talking about physical strength or even daily emotional strength. I’m talking about developing and holding such a strong belief in love as the most important, and biggest force in the universe, that it cannot be shaken. Not even by 45. Full disclosure, I’m having a hard time with this myself.
This is the hardest time to love. We’re saturated with this hate that’s going around and coming straight from the top. The news is horrific and toxic every day. Capitalism wants you to worship money and money only. It is evil. And it’s got a strong hold on us. But the light of love can never be fully put out, and it is up to us to nurture it within ourselves, and push it out to others. ALL others. I firmly believe that this is what will save us. And to look for love within the core of our beings, and find joy, and to soak it in.
The wealthy who are driving this hate, (and who’ve always driven it, from the time of serfs and kings, and probably earlier.) are well aware of the power of love, and that the divine feminine has love at its core and that it cannot be monetized. They know that if we all cared for and loved each other that we’d all be happy, and no one would be rich, but no one would be poor either. They are aware that we will only be the rabid consumers that make them rich if we feel deficient and unloved. They drive hate to keep us fighting and buying. They hold nearly all the wealth but they say to us, “look out, you’ve got a little money and that other guy who has a little less and looks different wants to take what you have… you better get rid of him…”
And this is why walking in this angry world with strong open hearts, solid faith, and loving acts is currently, a revolutionary act. To be loving to the relative you disagree with is a revolutionary act. It’s not easy, but nothing worth doing is ever easy.
And I’m not going to lie and tell you that I’m personally having tons of success with this. I have had several serious bouts of anger and feeling hateful and anxious to the point of near panic attacks. But when I sit and focus on what I’m grateful for I can slowly feel this slow, hard turning going on inside. Like I’ve grabbed the bull by the horns, albeit with weak shaking hands, but grabbed nonetheless, and am slowly getting it to turn, turn, turn, until I’m almost seeing straight again. My racing raging heart rate goes down, I can connect with love and hope again. I have dreams where I’m trying to run but my feet are just not gripping the pavement. It’s like running against a strong wind, or dragging sandbags. But I do move forward some, it’s just really slow and takes way more effort than it should. But I keep going, and every now and then I get strong streak and shoot forward.
Other thoughts that help me: LOTS of people are fighting.the world has frankly, always been a mess, suffering has always been a big force. good and evil cannot existential twithout each other, they will both always be with us. It is up to us to fight for good, and it's always going toe more time consuming than we'd like, but it's worth doing, and is the only way we've ever mad change for the better. Also, ti's not up to you to do it all. DO your part, but don't get depressed thinking about the whole big mess, just do your part, and love your people and come to yoga and love yourself, and keep on chugging forward.
