Where Is Safe?
FINDING OUR INNER SAFETY
Q:where is safe?
A: Or maybe, “To read the headlines or not to read the headlines, that is the question.” I recall a conference years ago where Alberto Villoldo, amongst others, was speaking on prophecy, shamanism, climate change, etc. He spoke about the changing times and the impulse for us as humans to seek refuge from natural disasters, wars, and intolerable temperatures, offering the example of someone seeking to get away from land swept by fire only to be devastated by floods somewhere else. His eventual point, there are no “safe places”.
I really heard those words as they rang so true to me in the sense that everywhere I have sought refuge outside of my own inner sanctuary has eventually dissolved, perished, or toppled from the pedestal of my mind. Relationships, teachers, people in general, cities, jobs, schools, identities, physical well-being, and the list goes on. Perhaps another way to say this is that nothing is forever, impermanence reigns, and in full cliché form, change is the only constant.
A BREAKAGE OF TRUST
For me, it is personal. Safety has always been an unconscious concern as mine was breached at a very young age. Fragmentation occurs in the early psyche when a boundary is violated, which creates a shattering effect that spreads over time. In retrospect, I can trace the shards of these emotions back to that initial break of trust. I became someone who, from seeking the familiar, gave my power to various authority figures throughout my life beginning with my father, and moving through various alpha female bullies disguised as friends, my so-called husband (never legally married, plus he ended up being a cult leader so there’s that), bosses, and even my own demanding work ethic.
And ultimately I have learned that safety does not exist “out there”. I cannot put that responsibility upon another and instead have had to reestablish the trust within myself to maintain healthy boundaries and from there flourish in the healthy dynamics I have always dreamed possible. This is complex and also obvious simultaneously. But obvious doesn’t make it easy to change the embedded patterns when one has been trained from early on in life to act, respond, behave, believe, and become a certain way.
CURRENT HEADLINES
This week many of us have felt sickened to our stomachs by the headlines circulating about the Dalai Lama. It is a devastating occurrence of the twists and turns of media as well as a stain upon the faith of humanity, regardless of the why, how, or what will come to be. It is sad. It just is. This perceived instance and the collective spectrum of response to it reveals so much about our current zeitgeist on every level. The shock, horror, wrongness, rightness, spiritual bypassing, projection, trauma, hastening to judge, condemnation, finger-pointing, justification, squirming, spewing, meme-ing, ignorance, destruction, disregard for inquiry, egoic triumphs, and loss of face.
We are the world and everything in it is a reflection of an aspect of the current state of our psychic affairs. This week nor this reality has been easy to digest, to say the least, but I am afraid that the worst is yet to come, especially if we continue to seek “safe” spaces outside of ourselves, and as mentioned, I know this error too well. The good news? That which is true can never be taken from you. Seek the truth and it shall set you free. While illusion is the master of Samsara, Clarity is the antidote to the virality of a deep fake false paradise.
SEEKING WITHIN
I’ll leave you with this potent teaching from a Buddhist Sage who stated, “If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him.” Why? Because those who feel that they “know” or have found all the answers in a particular religion, philosophy, or politic (or maybe are feeling too “safe” having given over their spiritual authority to a guru or spiritual leader outside of their own pure heart) need to start asking questions rather than jumping to conclusions. Maybe now is a time to start asking ourselves the questions we tend to ask others instead.
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We cannot change the world until we accept we are the world. This is the new conversation.