Grief, Anger, Pain - there must be another way!

There are varying ways to look at the chaos in the world right now - from anger, disappointment, fear to compassion, love and forgiveness. If like emotions attract similar emotions, what do we think is most helpful for the collective? For anyone to act out in such hideous violent ways as we recently witnessed in CO or in Newtown CT, they must be experiencing incomprehensible pain and suffering internally - whether they are aware or not.

When I heard the news of CT shooting and of the subsequent accounts of death to innocent little ones and their care providers, I was overcome with grief. What a sad world in which we live...I sat in meditation and allowed those feelings of pain, grief, sorrow and anger to arise and released them. My shamanic teachers sent out a wonderful email about different activities that we could engage in to release these patterns of fear, in whatever forms they take, that do not serve the collective.

It seems to me that our most critical purpose at times like this, when the world seems so overwhelmingly negative, is to find the place in our hearts that is capable of raising the frequency out of the depths of hell and toward the light of abundant love by focusing on compassion and forgiveness. Forgiveness is a challenging concept - one perspective is that you are forgiving someone for some bad deed that they did. But, another way of looking at it is forgiving yourself for believing in separation from Source/Spirit/God - whatever your preference. The pain and suffering people experience stems from the ultimate belief that they are separate. This inspires fear and a belief in scarcity rather than it's opposite of love and abundance. If we can look at this somewhat objectively and ask ourselves if we too believe that we are separate from Spirit - that Spirit dwells only outside of ourselves or the opposite - that Spirit dwells within me and I within Him, what might this yield? Personally, I believe I walk with Spirit. As such, I am connected with all of my brothers and sisters as I believe we all walk with Spirit - we may just not know it on the surface.

While the outward acts of killing innocent people are aggregious and haneous, who among us have not ever expressed anger outwardly. And that anger - what was at its base? Anyway you slice it, bottom-line is that it came from some form of fear or cry for love. If we own that, can we not find compassion in our hearts for those who suffer so deeply internally that they lash out against a world they feel imprisoned by/wronged by? Is this not what Jesus meant by "turn the other cheek". If we engage fear with fear, anger with anger, pain with pain, are we not perpetuating the same cycles from which we seek escape?

What better purpose in our lives than to shift the tide - to allow the frequencies of love, compassion and forgiveness to emanate from our hearts and begin to shift the field of the unconscious, the sleeping beings who believe they are alone and without solace, eternally locked into a living hell?

What is the value of education? In an age when trends point to data collection and analytics as necessary elements to measure student progress toward achievement, are we at risk of diluting the ultimate value of developing human potential to its fullest? Parker Palmer in The Heart of Higher Education does a brilliant job of talking about holistic education and the value of contemplative inquiry, which he defines as "the expression of an epistemology [theory of knowledge] of love that is the true heart of higher education.


"Education is a vital, demanding, and precious undertaking, and much depends on how well it is done. If it is true to the human being, education must reflect our nature in al its subtlety and complexity. Every human faculty must be taken seriously, including the intellect, emotions, and our capacity for relational, contemplative, and bodily knowing. An integrative education is one that offers curricula and pedagogies that employ and deploy all these faculties, delights in the interactions, and is spacious enough to allow for their creative conflict.
Values such as compassion, social justice, and the search for truth, which animate and give purpose to the lives of students, faculty, and staff, are honored and strengthened by an integrative education. But to be truly integrative, such an education must go beyond a "values curriculum" to create a comprehensive learning environment that reflects a holistic vision of humanity, giving attention to every dimension of the human self. Integrative education honors communal as well as individual values and cultivates silent reflection while encouraging vigorous dialogue as well as ethical action. The geometry of the human soul is dense with such antinomies. They are essential to our nature, and real teaching and learning must reflect that inner complexity." Parker Palmer in The Heart of Higher Education.