Fear & Love...

"Our goal is to create a beloved community and this will require qualitative change in our souls as well as a quantitative change in our lives." ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

I've been thinking about this for the past few days. I don't necessarily move on from things overnight and the many "social justice" posts from last month are still floating around in my head.

Typically, I like to look for the root issue. Just as the principle in gardening is that diseased plants need to be culled from the root, I believe the same is true of social issues. There are plenty of examples of problems, many diseased plants, but what are the solutions? And where are the roots?

The backbone is dualism. The offshoot is our relationship to love and fear.

People are hungry because at the root, we believe there is not enough food to go around. If everyone is fed, there won't be enough left for us.

Dualism supports the belief that there is not enough to go around so we have to fight and compete for our share. That manifests in war, power-over and hierarchy.

We believe that sharing our emotional resources with others means that there is less for ourselves. If our significant other spends time with friends or work, that must mean that we will not get our share of that energy. It is a perception of limitation. That brings about alienation and fractured relationships.

Dualism supports the idea that we must be either material beings or spiritual beings. We choose material because it's too scary to let go and trust the cosmos that surround us ~ or each other.

The truth is that we are organized as a society, using obsolete social principles. They are obsolete because they reflect separateness. They reflect fear over love. The culture encourages us to believe creating wealth is the primary goal of human work ~ although it certainly is not. We have forgotten how to treat each other as brothers and sisters, although that is certainly what we are.

As long as this continues, we will see these same problems repeating themselves, generation after generation.

We need to consciously let go of these beliefs. We need to consciously examine ourselves for these beliefs, where we hold them and where we support them. We need to let go of the belief that resources are limited, that there is only just so much to go around, that the earth is not capable of producing enough food, that we are not energetic enough to create housing for everyone, that we are not smart enough to create medical care and education for everyone, that we are separate and must fight so strongly for our own identities, both personal or national, that we bring about war. We need to replace fear with the practice of love.

We have to allow ourselves to be transformed.