Marya Mann : Blog : MAKE AMERICA KIND AGAIN

MAKE AMERICA KIND AGAIN

Namaste, Friends, Yogis, and Cultural Creatives!

Last week, I wrote to you about the Tree of Life, which we climb like our ancestors before us, upward, sideways, and even down sometimes. Little did I know how far down we would go in just a few days, and that this week we would be mourning the loss of life at another Tree of Life, a synagogue in Pittsburgh.

The Tree of Life is the same one. It didn’t change. It’s still our family tree, and it was assaulted by a rage-fueled gunman shaped by hateful rhetoric by hateful people. Our one tree of life on Earth has deep roots that are suffering because of these strange, misbegotten fights between the limbs, the cultures, the races — even though they grow from the same tree. It’s like two rabbit paws – on the same rabbit — fighting each other. It simply makes no sense.

To let sadness overcome us would let the terrorists win. But thinking about the 97-year-old woman, the elderly couple, the holy Jewish people making peace with the light, being slaughtered in complete innocence, is too horrifying for words.

I am not hopeless though. I know us. And we won’t let the darkness win. It’s not in our humanity, in our steady minds or in our open hearts. When the murderer entered the Tree of Life synagogue, he took lives; he did not take our resolve to Make America Kind Again.

Of course, it’s not about being Jewish any more than bombs sent to Democratic leaders is about political parties, or the two Afro-Americans gunned down in the Kroger last week is about groceries. They are about hate. They are about brains and hearts that are so sick they are at war within themselves.

Hate, like violence, doesn’t begin in a school, church, synagogue, or temple. Not in governments or movements. Hate begins in the human heart. Then it grows in fearful families, is shaped into corrupted ethics, and becomes part of the socialization that belittles the miracle of the soul while praising groupthink. Demagogues who rely on inflammatory rhetoric instead of sound ideas set matches to the hate, which then explodes in fiery events like those we’ve seen this week.

Where does it stop?

THE WORLD AS IT IS vs. THE WORLD AS WE SEE IT

Hate stops where it started, in the human heart. Take a moment now to dive into your pure, deep, sweet heart. It’s always there, your closest companion, pulsing with goodness, playing a rhythm in your chest and creating the backbeat in the music of your life. Unsullied by hateful words of bullies and boasters, the heart naturally sends waves of love into the blood through the body, and into the atmosphere.

Heart breathing reminds us of our real presence. We feel the heart pulsing in the chest, Inside the heart, we see a light glowing there. The seed of light we were given at birth, when we received the breath of life, still radiates there, like a candle flame. Being aware of the light in the body, the vital energy radiating from the heart, inspires more prana to flow everywhere inside you, filling the muscles, bones, and fascia with a gentle power. It’s like magic. Being conscious of the breath distilling prana in heart gives us more energy to establish a field of well-being.

People are their spiritual presence. They are not hate. But the presence turns hateful when it is fragmented. It’s like having a body with no center, just a jumble of bio-electrical cables we don’t know what to do with, so we’re always flying off center with disconnected thoughts.

We are the center, not the hate. We are the whole, not the fragments. The hate is a fakers’ emotion because hurt people are terrified the world will find out they are fragmented and have no real center, no center of presence to come home to. These are often traumatized people. Without deep breathing, a human has a hard time every feeling a home, the disconnections worsen, and if they happen to be president, their decreasing cognitive function from partial-brain states associated with fragmentation, we are all in trouble.

They can’t process experience fully in the world as it is. The world as it is, on the surface, may seem untenable, painful. But the world as it actually is is a field of energy and story, a pulse and the stories we make up about it.

Do we want to live in the story of hate and violence, or do we choose kindness and love? We have to start telling the stories of love and deep breathing and wholeness and remind ourselves we all in this together. The world is one dance in infinite patterns. What we do ourselves, and each other, we do to all.

Heart Breathing operates at both levels — the world as we see it and the world we would rather have. It’s essential to take part in the resurrecting story by dreaming up your best visualizations for the future we want to see. It’s an important part of good spiritual practice. In your vision, seeing both what is and what we would rather have, there’s a gap, and your inner light builds a bridge between the two that can carry us across any river of suffering.

HEART BREATHING

In the alchemical vessel of the heart, we are changing the lead of fear and suffering into the gold of goodness and wholesomeness. Begin breathing directly into the heart. Envision a ray of light entering your chest, surrounding and soothing your chest, and then exhale out the back of your heart. Feeling the pulse, breathe in from the fullness of the back, and exhale out the full front chest.

Now, breathe in the front and feel the chaos, the suffering, the fear, hopelessness, and uncertainty. Take it in. Let yourself connect to the actual world and accept it. As we deepen the breath, the heart transforms the chaos and when it exits out the back, feel the pulsing of fear has changed into a vibration of love. Breathe in the back and feel the chaos again, then breathe .out the front, seeing cleansed, uplifted vibration emanating from you.

Next, breathe in a cosmic soup of love, sipping in this exhilarating oxygen, the source of our lives on Earth! Feel the warmth, the loving of Nature, parents, friends, and mates who care for us. Breathe out, amplifying the energy of love coming out of your back. Breathe in the back and out the front.

Breathe the love soup in and out of the heart until you feel the fear has melted and the conviction of your love has elevated the energy inside and around you.

Lastly, sit in meditation, grounded in the Earth, rising toward the sky, centered in the heart. Feel the two polarities, the surface chaos and the widening field of love, and the frustration that arises when the gap between them is so great. Continue feeling the two opposites come together in your unifying heart space. Breathing deeply, let the alchemy in your body, soul, and Oversoul happen. You are an alchemical vessel, a converter of raw energy and low vibration into higher energy and loving vibrations.

STAND UP, VOTE, AND DISPEL THE HATE

Yes, we need time to unplug and meditate and connect with our purity, and we also need to use our vital lifeforce to transmute the hate. We hold the keys to making this world a better place.

And even when everything looks bad from one point of view, I remember the immortal words of Hale Kealohalani Makua: “Everything is right on track.”

We see this is true as more people are standing up and fighting back — not only AGAINST Trumpsters, but more importantly, FOR a world that works for everyone. We see it in striking teachers who demand a decent education for their kids. We see it in students across the country leading the fight for sensible changes to our gun laws. We see it from workers demanding a living wage and safe working conditions. We see it in elders and the vulnerable rising up to protect health care and to support social security.

With so much at stake, we can’t stop pushing to recover our democracy from the damage done by a president who makes such immoral decisions. He has tried to divide like no other leader in U. S. history, in order to line the pockets of billionaires. He has pitted us against each other by race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, and immigration status. He is a desperate person who does not know the joy and delight of living in a state of grace where people share kindness, not lies.

He makes the completely immoral assumption that it would be better to sell weapons of mass destruction to the Saudis for more than 100 million dollars than to uphold an ethical concept of using force only in defense of one’s country.

He believes it’s more important to make the sale than do what’s right.

He continues to cut environmental regulations while Florida is drowning in a red tide and fires wipe out neighborhoods in California.

Every day there is a new low. Most recently, in an electoral stunt to win votes, he has sent 5200 troops – already strained from years of war — to the southern border. Both Republican and Democratic leaders, as well as veterans, condemn his action as a political exploit by a president eager to fire up his political base just days away from the midterm elections.

The U. S. doesn’t need its military to ‘defend’ against a group of unarmed migrants – mostly women and kids. The fact is, he is unable to make the right choices, because he is a wounded person, and we need a Congress that can impede his reckless behavior.

Real change is possible when we speak out, get involved in the process, and vote. It takes every one of us to assure that everything is, as Hale Makua says, right on track.

Please vote! Call five friends to make sure they are voting. And do heart breathing. Make love, not hate. Make peace, not war.

Namaste,
Marya

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“There’s always a reason to smile and feel grateful, always a miracle and a place to share, always love and cause for hope. Sometimes you may have to look a little harder, but so worth it.” —Beto O’Rourke, Florida’s Democratic Candidate for Governor
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LET YOUR FRIENDS & COLLEAGUES KNOW ABOUT YOGA!

Are you willing to share and cultivate Loving Kindness? Here’s a link you can share those you care about: http://www.maryamann.com/calendar/month-view/