Part 1 -- Love, Fear and Revolution

A friend wrote to me that she despairs that this may not be, once again, the tipping-point we had hoped for. But it is a tipping-point, in one way or another – and how it tips depends upon our not despairing, because it is by our actions or inaction that we help determine which way it will go.

The outcome is not outside us, it is inside us. It depends upon how we see what is happening, and how we act or fail to. This choice-point is not black and white along racial lines – what matters is what is in our heart, and whether or not we act from it.

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Beyond the divides of black-and-white thinking, can humanity realize its one shared human heart, and rise up together in action on behalf of all life and the planet we all call home? Beyond black-and-white thinking, and the vicious cycles of fear and despair that come with it, can we come together in our one human heart, and act together from it -- its wisdom, power and caring, its love of truth, beauty and justice?

It is too easy to polarize, to say that there are this kind of people and that people, this kind of future coming or the other, cause for despair or hope. But things are not that black and white; there are nuances and they are important – in the way we see things, the way we act, and they make a huge difference.

There are not just two different sides, the good guys and the bad guys, nor a predictable outcome, but a spectrum of responses to what is happening, and we need to see where we fall on that. We unconsciously position ourselves somewhere on this spectrum, and don’t usually see beyond it. But if we can see the wider perspective, we might consciously choose otherwise, other options that are wiser and perhaps far more effective. We have to see the whole picture so that we can decide where to act from, where we want to put our energy and our heart.

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The Spectrum of Fear and Love – Where Do We Position Ourselves?
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It is not so black and white, not along the blunt lines we usually draw them. (This is not to draw false equivalences, but to soften hard and fast divisions.) It has often been said that human beings are motivated by either one of two basic emotions – fear or love. This is basically true, but even this is not so clear-cut, as most of us have both of them. We live in a churning, a struggle between the two, individually and collectively. There are whites who are coming from fear or love, and blacks who are coming from fear or love, and a mixture of both in most of us.

Of course, there are some vital differences, and recognizing these is just as important as recognizing our sameness. The fear and anger of many whites comes from their position of privilege, which is now sky-rocketing (rich white elites) or eroding (middle/poor whites getting poorer -- mainly due to the rich getting richer, but the rich are very clever at blinding the poor to that reason). This white fear and anger is the offshoot of a long history of aggression and violence towards blacks, the violence from which empire was built, and the desire to maintain that privilege at all costs.

The remorse and caring, the solidarity, that is also now being awakened in many white people’s hearts, is another response, coming from love, not fear. They are hearing a red-alarm signal calling them into action, action for the good of all, to dismantle the causes of harm. In an extraordinary show of solidarity, all over the world, in the midst of a global pandemic, white people, side by side with people of all races, have risked their own safety and lives, to show how much they care for black people’s safety and lives. They have gotten the message, and are now getting it out there, that yes, black lives matter.

Both love, and fear and anger, are being expressed by both blacks and whites, but along this same spectrum of emotions, there are also important differences. Blacks who are coming from fear and anger are coming from another position than the whites who are angry and fearful – it is a defensive fear and anger, a long-stifled cry of outrage and self-protection. They are fighting for their lives, not their privilege or exorbitant lifestyle. And this makes a very big difference – it is an anger and fear that needs to be heard and understood, not feared, aggressed or crushed in turn -- a cry for help that is deserved and needed, a desperation for justice that has been so long and so egregiously violated and neglected.

And the black people who are coming from love, and the willingness to reconcile, a desire for peace, are many – and a shining example to us all. Black people have, traditionally, love and joy aplenty – a sense of interconnectedness, with each other and nature – the deep understanding that we live in each other, and, in that, a capacity for forgiveness, deep in their ancestral bones, that many white people have forgotten. We white people need to learn that from them, not crush it, in them or ourselves. (I say this not out of some romantic notion, but have lived in African villages and experienced it first-hand. I was always astounded at how kindly I was treated, especially given the history of the relations between my race and theirs, and gained an enduring respect for the profound spirituality of African culture.)

We can see this so clearly in the ancient African principle of Ubuntu -- I live because you do – and the tremendous capacity for love, forgiveness and reconciliation manifested in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission process in post-apartheid South Africa. We should take a clue from that exemplary playbook, that extraordinary turning-point from the most extreme racist oppression to love, reconciliation and renewal.

I have also seen these qualities – true grit, resilience, love and forgiveness --in black friends in the US and around the world. In countries outside Africa, where there is so much prejudice against them, black people are survivors, and survivors have strength in their genes – a buoyancy, a joy of life, a no-pretenses realness and at the same time a sense of the sacred -- it is not an accident that we speak of black “soul”. These are the essential, vital qualities that have allowed black people to survive, even the harshest of circumstances, to stay with the truth at their centre, even if they’re not allowed to express it anywhere else outside.

For me, the most exemplary person is one who can undergo tremendous hardship and still come through with love and faith. Black people, more than anyone, have been forged in this crucible, and many I know rise in triumph. If some are still churning in anger, so would many of us in their place, given the outrages they have suffered. It needs to be heard as a cry for help and solidarity – and fortunately, many are hearing it now, all over the world, and responding. Something is quickening now, even as the crises thicken. Something new is emerging, for all of us, in this crucible of mixed emotions, fear and love, faith and confusion, vulnerability and strength. Something new is breaking now, breaking open – the one heart of humanity, beyond its black and white thinking, beyond all separation.

In fact, at the heart of the racial crisis, like the climate crisis and other eco-social crises we are facing, is a spiritual crisis. If we don’t recover our spirit, we will not recover our Earth, nor our lives. Black people have within them this deep spiritual aspect, soul, that many of us have lost, and the truth is if Black lives don’t matter, no lives matter, and few of us will survive.

The truth is, if this deeper sacred essence within us and our precious Earth do not matter to us, it is not that they forget us, but we that forfeit our own lives. If, though, we care about unity, awakening, redemption from our own divisiveness, they will surely forgive us, and work with us to regenerate our planet and create a new society with reverence for all life.

It is not that black people have the exclusive claim to “soul” – white people have it, potentially, it’s just that they’ve sourced their power elsewhere. Just as black people are now claiming more outer power to express their inner power, white people need to find their inner power to balance their outer power, and reduce their exclusive dependence upon it. Then we would begin to converge in a true equality, the sacredness of our common human spirit.

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Part 2 -- At Heart We Are Not Racist, But All One Human Race
 

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Black people are historically, the ancestors of us all, the elders of the entire human race, not a race apart from us. They are the root of the human race, in the deepest sense, the race of which we are all a part -- we need to learn from them, not crush them; respect them, not condescend to them. And (despite our abysmal track record so far) we have this potential in us. If we recognize that the entire human race has sprung from African roots, how can we be “racist”? – it is like turning on ourselves, destroying the roots that created us, the very basis of our own existence.

It is fashionable today to say we are all “racist”, but if we can get past our programmed social conditionings (and yes, there are complex historical layers), at our roots this is not true. In our bones and in our heart, we know we are not apart from each other. It is up to us who have lost them, to go to those roots.

The idea that “we are all racist”, supposedly with bona fide scientific proof, has harmed the cause of unity as much as the earlier social-Darwinist, scientific programs of eugenics, that also had clear political agendas behind them. I believe that racism is accrued, not born in us – an accretion of layers of history, brutal and distorted – and it is very important not to take it on board as a given, but go deeper to our true roots. Yes, it is very important to see those accretions honestly, and yes, to acknowledge and admit them, but so that we can strip them away, not cling to them -- to know they are not at heart true.

The notion that we are all “racist” at heart may seem innocuous, harmless enough, even admirably honest, like some liberal, self-congratulatory virtue-signaling in reverse – yes, I admit how bad I am, sorry, nothing much I can do, even the science proves it – but it is actually very pernicious, and ultimately untrue.

There are political agendas behind science, and much of racial bias is perhaps not racial at all but just the confirmation bias of those who would prove that it is. We tend to take anything science “confirms” as a given, not realizing that science (often backed by political and economic agendas) also operates on a confirmation bias. Research is designed to prove certain outcomes, and of course that influences the outcomes, the way experiments are set up and how the evidence is interpreted.

It is our mind-set that determines what we see “out there” and what we make of it, not what is actually “out there”. We are constantly framing reality through the frames of our thinking, and that thinking is highly limited, dualistic, based on oppositions, black and white. As our highly divisive society reinforces that – educates us in that in the first place – many of us never exit that trap, never see reality through our own eyes. (In fact there is no “in here” and “out there”, it is all one undivided, interconnected field. We trump ourselves whenever we see it otherwise.)
We see things through the mind, but we ourselves are emanations of the heart of creation -- all of us, and all life. The mind, and its divisive thinking, is a false overlay, hiding the truth of our unity, but to the eye of the heart that truth is in plain sight.

Latching on to our fixed beliefs – our fixed categories of thinking – stops the flow of evolution. We need to let those categories be fluid – at best completely open, even if just for a moment – so that the new can flow through us. And the new, in our case now, is totally timeless, ageless, boundless, the eternal truth of our unity.

The idea that all white people are innately racist, which has taken hold amongst both blacks and whites over the last few decades, has had other repercussions which have worked against the cause of unity. It helps to disguise the fact that racial divides were deliberately constructed to mask class divides, disparities of wealth and power, and thus effectively keeps us from going to the deeper roots of the problem. Racial divides have arisen not because whites instinctively hate blacks, but as part of a much greater complex of class divisions, divisions of power, and the divisive thinking that underlies them, that pervades every level of our current society.

I also think a lot of white people’s fear of black people is not inborn but comes from deep guilt and remorse, an actual recognition – even if subliminal, not consciously admitted – of the horrific harm and injustice whites have subjected blacks to, and a fear of reprisal. It is not that whites don’t know the violence and harms they have inflicted on blacks (or benefitted from, indirectly) – it is that they know it too well, and they fear the more it comes out, the more they may face reprisal and revenge.

But black people already know that, and many are a step ahead of the game. In this respect, I think of the words of the heart-rending song that came out from 12-year old Keedron Bryant: “I just want to live – my people don’t want no trouble, we’ve had enough for so long”. Truth-telling, forgiveness, reparations, and together changing the systems that have caused the harm – that is the way to go, not guilt and reprisal (or fear of it) – a vicious cycle that spins endlessly round.

Above all, we must not shame each other, either whites shaming blacks (as they have  done for centuries), or blacks shaming whites (as they now claim their power), because shaming and silencing the other always leads to anger and revenge, spins the cycle of harm without end, in a lose-lose game with no winners. History shows us that blaming and shaming always incites a backlash, a reprisal, and so defeats all parties.

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The Racial Divide Has Been Constructed to Mask Wealth and Power Divides

 

Race (a false, constructed racial divide) has been the smokescreen to mask real inequalities of wealth and power in the American system, from the very beginning. Rich and powerful white people have always deliberately promoted the division between whites and blacks, so that the poor white people who are actually also the victims of these rich white elites, see blacks as their enemies rather than their fellow victims, with whom they might otherwise rise up in solidarity.

This pattern of divide and conquer, especially along racial lines, has always been there in the American culture, the basis of black slavery and poor white bigotry, in the land of “equality and freedom.” Now, with the skyrocketing wealth and power inequalities of the neo-liberal system, it has been deployed again, full-power – which is why the racial issue is now exploding, full-on, in our faces, so that this sham becomes transparent, exposed, to be finally faced and redressed.

It is telling, symbolically, that the divide that is threatening to topple the human race has devolved, literally, into “black and white”, the quintessential expression we use for separation, the irreducible opposition of two irreconcilable sides. The problem is the sense of division that plagues the human mind, and it couldn’t be played out more starkly than in this total polarization between black and white -- this false construction of separation, that belies our true unity, the fact that we are all one human race, and one with all life. The time has come for this fatal error at the core of our consciousness to be exposed and uprooted, or else we will not survive.

We have to see that separation itself is a false construction, that in essence we are all one. And yes, at the same time, the sufferings that have ensued from this false construction are genuine, and painful, and need to be acknowledged and addressed. To say that we are all one, at the ultimate level, is not to turn a blind eye to the sufferings our misperceptions and actions have caused at the relative level, but to dive into our true heart and find the passion, wisdom and deep inspiration to uproot that false separation, and build true connection, in ourselves and our world.

Healing the racial divide is an essential foundation in healing ourselves and our world, in healing the wider social, economic, ecological and political collapses that are now hurtling down the pipeline. In every sense of the term, we need to go beyond “black-and-white” thinking – the false separations that have plagued us -- and find the one true heart of our shared humanity, that alone can save us, our care and love for all life.

What is happening now is mythic. We have to read the book of life, in nature and the events of these times. The lessons we have needed to learn for centuries, perhaps the whole history of mankind, are now coming to the light. Let us take them as the gift they are, a blessing in disguise, as they light our way to a new future.

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Part 3 -- Beyond the Divides of Black and White: Wholeness and Whole-Systems Change

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We must forge our power, and join our voices, as equals – even as whites listen deeply to blacks now, absorb their perspectives and ally with their directives – if we are to come together to forge a new world, of freedom, justice and well-being for all, where our strength is both our unity and diversity.

As long as we are creating an “other” outside us, that “other” will come back to haunt us, will eventually rebel. This is true when we “other” the other out of greed or aversion, or when we take revenge against those who have done that to us – either way, we keep the cycle of greed, fear and reprisal spinning.

The only way we can break this cycle is by coming back to our heart. We must fall between the opposites of “black and white thinking”, of opposition itself, and fall into the heart of our true Wholeness. It is from there we can make true reparations, repair the systems that have divided and harmed, distorted and fractured, us all.

Both being the aggressor and defending oneself from aggression are traumatic, debilitating and wounding. They make both sides so much less than they could be, than they essentially are. So it is time to end this vicious cycle, and enter into the heart of our true Wholeness, giving back, and taking back, what is rightfully ours. We are all exhausted, and our Wholeness is welcoming us home.

It is true that many people still seem far from this, but even as some dig their heels in, others are awakening, and each one that awakens, that falls into the heart of that Wholeness, has a powerful effect on the Whole, far greater than those who would divide us, because in truth we are that connected Whole. Those who act from Wholeness cause ripple effects in the quantum, energetic and social fields that connect us, that are ultimately far more powerful than the rifts of those who would divide us, who are acting from opposition and their self-profit alone.

That is why they say the critical mass needed to turn the tide is only a small percentage of the population – that small percent is incalculably stronger than those defending their own self-interests and the status quo, than those who are divided in themselves and divided against others. Divide-and-conquer is conquered by a much greater unity, still unseen but rising.

We are not used to thinking this way; the deeper dynamics of life are hidden to us. We usually just see the surface of things, and admittedly on the outside things are looking grim right now, but if we look beneath the surface, we see another story happening, and it is rising up now, coming forward, gaining momentum towards a breakthrough in this liminal moment. It is the story of our unity, the heart of our true Oneness, that is rising up today, like a force of nature, to heal and make whole our divisions, and it is far more potent than those divisions. In fact the breakdowns descending on us now, at break-neck speed, are making way for this Wholeness.

When we can see these hidden dynamics, we can put our energy behind them, and amplify these dynamics. That is why it is so important to look deeply, to see the layers of our crises and unveil them. We see that there, there is no cause for despair, but deep inspiration to lift us, and powers far greater than our own to carry us forward.

 
We are in a radically new stage of our evolution, where all of this is hitting home now. On the surface things may look overwhelming, and we may feel hopeless, helpless, but if we align with these deeper forces beneath the surface, we find they are on our side, with tremendous support and power – that side is not one side as opposed to another, divided and conquered, but the side beyond sides, our Wholeness. How could it be otherwise? The whole show is coming from there, and, like us, it longs to return to its Wholeness.  And how can it do otherwise, for it is us. We are no less one with it, than we are with each other.

To learn from our own suffering is one thing – to learn to see the sufferings we are causing others, and stop it, is far more powerful. That’s why the protests now, the shows of solidarity, are so impressive, impactful – we are breaking through the barriers of long-entrenched patterns of separation, domination and suffering, into the heart of our true Wholeness, the basis for our true reconciliation and healing.

But if we are truly to stop the sufferings, we must understand their roots deeply – again, it is not enough just to see the surface and, with all the best intentions, apply band-aids. The racial crisis goes far beyond the need to defund the police, end violence and mass incarceration, even to pay reparations, though of course all of these are included, and are essential starting-points. It demands a whole-systems change, from the bottom up, so that our systems truly represent us, all the people, and the planet.

The racial crisis, like all the interlinked crises besetting us today, cries out for a whole-scale, whole-systems transformation to a whole new society – a just, egalitarian, cooperative, caring, regenerative one, of unity-in-diversity. It is time for us to come together, and work from, and towards, that Wholeness, the essence that connects us, in all our diverse colors and cultures.

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In a Divisive Society, Privilege and Deprivation Inevitably Go Together

 

What many white people fail to get is that any privilege we have in society, whether by race or by class, is built off the backs of others it is depriving; in other words, anything “exclusively” available to us, inevitably excludes others, and, almost invariably, the very people it has exploited to provide it. This means any privilege we enjoy is not just our good luck or blessing, that we can charitably wish for others, but stands in a direct relationship to the deprivation of others, and their continued suffering.

Liberals have long liked to believe that a rising tide lifts all boats, that as the rich get richer, they bring up all the rest, and the same idea, applied to race, allowed whites to relax their conscience, on the assumption that as the rich (and whites) got richer, blacks were also making progress, that they would eventually “catch up”. As Hillary Clinton put it, “the American Dream is big enough to hold all of us”.

This idea, like many of the capitalistic assumptions, that have gone so long unquestioned, has now, of course, been blown wide open. The American dream – of freedom and equality for all -- has been exposed for the nightmare it always was for so many, because its very foundations are built on self-deception and division, on divide-and-conquer, with the same privileged demographic always coming out the victors, always at the top.

The richer getting richer, with no limits, raising everyone else up – that’s not the way it works – there are limited resources on this Earth, and whatever race or class takes more than its share is depriving others of the same, and exploiting those others, often cruelly, to support their own privilege in the process. It is ridiculous to think that billionaires have the interests of those they deprive in mind; their privilege depends on that deprivation, of health, basic human rights and even often of lives.

That the rich and privileged can get ever-richer, with no upper limits, and raise up everyone else at the same time – is a perilous deception – and now the truth is coming home to roost, from all sides. There are limited resources on the Earth, and we are meant to share those resources and to respect those limits. Indigenous people, blacks and people of color have always known this, it is basically only whites – the adolescents of the human race – that have transgressed these limits and these natural laws, and brought us all to the brink of possible extinction.

Nature herself has granted all of us incredible privileges – the privileges of being alive on this bountiful, beautiful Earth, enjoying fresh air, clean water, oceans and forests, food to sustain and nourish us. But when privilege is exclusive, divided, between the haves and have-nots, we ultimately destroy those natural privileges for all of us and all life. We cannot maintain our privileges in a divisive system and hope at the same time to avert this – we need to come together and pool our wisdom, strength and resources to build a whole new system, a world where all are privileged, to live in bounty, beauty on this wonderful Earth we’ve been given.

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Part 4 – Beyond Reform to Revolution: A Whole New System of Justice and Well-Being for All
 

 

High and low, rich and poor, black and white, left and right – it is time for us to end our divisions, and create a world, not of unlimited growth for the few, but the well-being of the many -- a level playing field where all of us, and all of life, can flourish.

Finally we are seeing that all that upward-striving, presumed to work for all, doesn’t work at all -- a rising tide with no limits becomes like a tsunami, dishing out death and destruction. Its downside is as deep and destructive as its own disingenuous presumptuousness, for when there are no limits to the wealth and power of the few, it results in the poverty and the powerlessness of the many, and that cannot be sustained. Nature herself is revolting, no longer taking it lying down, and the people are following suit!

That illusion of perpetual “upward” progress, unlimited growth, hits its peak, and is ultimately balanced, as we see today, by downfall and collapse, or all of us coming back down to Earth and creating a new, even playing field -- of cooperation, sharing, caring and reciprocity. In fact, we see both of these movements happening today – the downfall and collapse of the old top-heavy system, and an uprising from the bottom, the grass-roots, to bring in the new.

We need to remake the system, not just bring blacks equally into the system (or even poor whites for that matter) because it is a contradiction in terms. The capitalist, white supremacist, patriarchal system itself is built upon division, inequality and exclusion, the converse relation of privilege and deprivation; it is predicated upon the denigration and exploitation, in different ways, of the poor, women, blacks and people of color, even of nature itself. All of our crises today point in the same direction – that we cannot continue this way, that we need a whole new system, one that is just, sustainable, caring, egalitarian, one that serves the Whole -- one that works for all of us, because we are all part of that Whole.

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The Crises are Compelling Us to the Truth of Our Unity

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We need a true world of liberty and justice for all, not just in name but reality – a true revolution, beyond rhetoric or mere reform, beyond mere accommodation to a system that is unsustainable.

Liberty is not unbridled freedom, unlimited greed or ambition, to pursue one’s own self-profit, to dominate others and do whatever one wants. It must be balanced by justice, the recognition that we are a part of a larger whole, and need to serve that whole. This is the essence of sustainability; if we don’t identify with the whole, and serve it, the whole will not sustain us. This is why a competitive system, with each pursuing his own self-interest at the expense of others and nature, is inherently unsustainable, doomed to its own extinction.

The racial crisis is essentially a crisis of justice, and we need that justice if we are to survive, make that leap in our evolution that will bring us to our true freedom.

It is only by realizing justice, balance, our true equality, unity, that we access our true freedom – the freedom to realize our highest potentials, not only as individuals but also as the Whole, our true boundless, undivided being.

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The “Minorities” Are a Majority --- They Just Have to Get Together

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We speak of oppressed “minorities” but if we add together all of those oppressed by the system, in different ways, it is the vast majority – not only of people but other life forms on this planet. It is just a tiny minority that is at the helm of the system, and compel all others to bend to their will.

It is not “minorities” that are oppressed by the present system, it is the vast majority, of people from all walks of life, and other forms of life. Black people get the worst of it; that is why, if we are to truly recognize that all life matters, we have to recognize that Black Lives Matter first. If we can see it from their side, and put ourselves on their side, we can break the veil of delusion under we have been laboring, that we are separate from each other, that life itself is divided. We can see the truth of our being in its wholeness, that finally goes beyond, and brings together, all sides; and, with new eyes, rise up together for a better world for all of us.

If we look at the pyramid of domination in our system (white men, women, people of color, black people, nature and all its inhabitants, the whole web of life) we can see the base gets broader and broader. Though the power seems to be at the top right now, it is really at this base that the true power lies. If we can make a broad-based coalition, we certainly have the power we need to create another society, one that serves people and planet, rather than just a tiny elite at the top. The power of the Black Lives Matter movement is to catalyze this collective power, the larger movement to the true unity that is our birthright, and that we all so vitally need now to survive and thrive into our future.

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Going to the Heart of Our Crises – They Are All Connected, and So Must We Be Too

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The 11-year old daughter of an Indian friend of mine, when she heard about the racial crisis exploding in the US, asked her mother “Which is most important – this or the climate crisis?” and her mother said “I don’t know.” Then Isha said “I think this is more important because if we can solve this then we can all come together to act on the other crises.” I think that says it all. Nature, and the events of these times, are saying the same, loud and clear.

All the experts talk about the complexity of our intersectional crises, but I think Isha hit it right on the head: if we get the one thing that matters together – love for each other, and the greater life of which we are a part – all the rest that we need, in the healing and renewal of our planet, will follow. Black lives matter, the climate matters, our health and well-being matter – all of life on this planet matters, and we need all hands on deck now to come together and put that into practice.

There are layers to these crises and they must be uprooted together, or we will fail at them all. We must recognize and discern those layers, not to divide ourselves into contending silos and siphon off our energies in different directions -- but so we can see the connections clearly, and uproot them, together.

If we are to act effectively, we have to see the connections, not just the divides, between ourselves, and between the crises themselves; not divide ourselves into different camps that disperse in different directions the energy we need to bring together, and then despair at our failure to garner the leverage needed. We have to get to the roots to the crises, and they are in ourselves, our divisive, black-and-white thinking. If we can get beyond these polarizations, and realize our true unity, we can come together to transform our world.

In fact, indeed, the Black Lives Matter movement is showing us how much all life on Earth matters – how deeply we affect each other, inevitably, for better or for worse… and that now is the time to come together to make it for the better. In this pivotal, decisive moment, it is serving as the turning-point, the turning of the tide.

Just to be clear -- this is not to detract from the centrality of the racial crisis right now, rather, to the contrary. We should not let Black Lives Matter get lost in the mix of all the other causes, all the other crises, coming to a head now. Rather it is a pivot point, one that ties into, and can tie together, all the others, taking us beyond the divides of “black-and white” thinking, that have been our undoing, into action for our unity, at all levels.

To tie the different issues together -- the racial crisis, pandemic, climate collapse, the rise of right-wing fascism -- is not to deflect attention from the racial issue, but to support the kind of deep, whole-scale, whole-systems transformation, without which a real resolution of the racial issue is not possible. We have to tackle the crises together, in the widest possible context, and the widest possible movement, or we will fail to make a breakthrough on any of the issues. They are all connected, and need to be addressed together, and we need to connect with each other, to come together, to do that. We need the momentum of a wide-scale, multi-dimensional movement, and Black Lives Matter—because it goes to the heart of injustice and has stirred the hearts of so many – is at the heart of that movement.

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Part 5 -- Healing the World From the Heart of Our Wholeness

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Black Lives Matter is a catalyst, that points to the heart of the matter; it is a global inflection point that can finally overturn our divisive thinking and systems, and replace them with caring, sharing, sustainable and just ones. This uprising is coming at exactly the point of convergence of many crises within our system, and can be the pivotal point that disrupts them, and constructs a whole new system.

If the protests are not to be a one-off event, cast into the shadow by the next crisis, we need to tie them together, show how they are all connected. It is only in this way that we can gather power, and galvanize the leverage to uproot them. If we run from issue to issue (or run with one alone, or run away from them all), we lose power, the power we need to get to the roots of them all, and avert our demise as a global society and an interconnected planet.

Let us not allow Black Lives Matter to fall to the side-lines, as the next crisis hits, but become the turning point for a new future for all of us. In the rapidly cascading crises we are facing, we must not simply let each new crisis that hits the news over-ride the others, letting our attention be overwhelmed and distracted. In fact, if we look deeper, we see they all go together – all come from the same roots, and all must be uprooted together, from those same common roots. It is there we must turn our attention, at the fulcrum that holds all the crises in place, and the only place from which they can truly be uprooted.

That fulcrum is the false sense of separation, deep within our minds; we are not really separate – it is just our thinking that makes it so. When we go to our heart, and the core of our consciousness (as we do in meditation, nature or sometimes in deep communion with a beloved) we know that everything is interconnected, we are part of a continuous flow of life, past, present and future, a whole. We know that we are all One, infinite and boundless, without borders.

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Weaving Together the Inner and Outer Dimensions

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We must weave between, and together, the inner and outer dimensions, the deeper causes of the crises and their outer manifestations, connecting the dots between them, and bringing together the different sectors affected. But deeper still, we are called to dive into the core of our true unity, the heart of our true being, if we are to  manifest, in the outer forms of this world, a unified, just, harmonious society, of love, cooperation, unity-in-diversity, a new way of life on Earth.

The core of that unity lies in our heart, and its quantum connection with everything around it. This may not be visible to the eye -- neither the field nor our connection with it -- but it is actually the basis of our entire existence. And it can be accessed, experienced, felt -- the deepest sort of knowing -- in the depth of our heart, and brought into visible, tangible expression in the world.

In the quantum field in which we are all interconnected, our heart is the node through which we connect, to all others and the whole web of life in which we are embedded. No matter how vast the differences are on the surface, at heart we are all the same, and if we enter into our heart, we can more easily put our self into the place of the other, and come together to make a world that works for all of us.

It is this deeper natural connection through the quantum field that weaves us together, that allows us to feel empathy for others, that brings our mirror neurons into synch. It allows us to bridge the gap with the “other”, who has never actually been outside us, to find that in truth there is no “other”; we are all one in an infinite, seamless field. When we access that depth of our being, we find we all beat with one heart.

When we access that quantum connection between our hearts, we find that in truth they all beat as one, an orchestrated unity, in and through the symphony of diverse and myriad rhythms.

And that heart is beating now, a drum-roll calling us into action, a drum-roll calling us home. The time has come for us to hear it, and to heed its call, before the music stops, before we have no time left. We need to access that timeless dimension, at the core of our heart, and come together and act, for our healing and renewal, before it is too late. When we synchronize our own heart to that deeper heartbeat of existence, we become a vehicle for the sacred, and, together with others, help to re-sacralize our world, our relations with each other and all life.

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The True Revolution: From Fear to Love, Separation to Unity
 

We saw earlier that there is a spectrum – from fear and separation at one end, to love and unity at the other – from which we choose our responses (in everyday life, in fact, as well as the current crises!) That spectrum is not horizontal, it is vertical (though the choices we make themselves emanate in all directions…)

The spectrum of possibilities between love and fear is not a horizontal one, which we can lay out before us and decide with our mind where we want to stand. Rather, it is vertical, depth-wise – we need to go to the depths of our heart, to the core of our being and the core of creation, to align with the powers of love and unity and expand into our true nature, from which to create a new world.

In fact the race we are in is a race to align with the timeless, the dimension of our true undivided oneness, in order to save ourselves and our planet. Paradoxical as it may sound on the surface, deep down it is only our timeless unity that can save us, individually and collectively.

So how do we get from here to there? Sometimes it looks like an unbridgeable gap, an impossible leap. But things are not so black-and-white, once again; we can move along the spectrum, exercise our will to choose. And the more we choose to alchemize our own fear into love, the more we add to the critical mass for an evolutionary leap.

The polarizations in our world have a lot to tell us about the polarization of love and fear within us, and their mixture. Can we see where we stand on the spectrum, or where we choose to move to?

Fear is the other side of love, but even they are not so separate – if we love life, we fear its demise. When we only think of our own self (or our own “kind”) it is our own life we love, and its demise that we fear, and will fight at all costs. But when we expand who we think we are and fall into our hearts, it is life itself that we love, the whole human race and the whole of web of life – and we act, with all our heart, to avert its demise and bring in the new world so many of us long for.

We all have an instinctive fear of death, and a love of (or instinctive attachment to) life. But life, in the widest sense, goes beyond life and death. When we connect with “life” in this sense, we are liberated in this life and beyond, free to take right action for the good of all on this Earth, and yet remain in eternal peace in our heart.

Both fear and love are driving us, albeit in different mixtures, but even that fear itself, in some way, has the potential, the seeds of love, behind it. We all have this potential within us, to evolve from fear to love, from separation to unity. This is the great transition we are called to.
We are all motivated, to some extent, by fear now – the fear of losing our own life, or that of life on Earth; and love, of our own life, or the greater web of life – let us take them to their highest level, and come together in a critical mass that can effect the quantum evolutionary leap to the new life on Earth that awaits us.

Even fear can die in the alchemy of love’s flame -- let us throw our fear in the fire, and ignite the flame of our true unity. In the realm of possibilities, the dimension at the Source of our being, this potential is already there – it is up to us to activate it, to bring it into manifestation.

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Part 6 --Tapping Into the Limitless Power of the Unity at Our Core

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A true revolution needs to be fuelled by love, not fear. When we enter, through our heart, into the core of creation, we are guided by love, not fear, by the power of unity, not separation. We re-align with our true unity, and the forces of evolution that are propelling us to realize it in our lives and our world.

All of us are called to gather in the heart of love, and break through our fears of enmity and separation. The good news is that we are supported in this by powers much vaster, and stronger, than we can begin to imagine.

When we align our intentions, to serve the highest good of all, with the higher forces of evolution, they are vastly empowered. When we ally ourselves with the deeper power of love and unity, not the forces on the surface of hate, fragmentation and destruction, we tap into a tremendous power of cohesion and coherence, that can gather to itself a movement, of solidarity, shared purpose, a coalition across diverse sectors, that can move the world.

And that becomes the fulcrum from which, in concert with others, we access our true fullness, to fulfill our highest potentials and serve the world’s highest good. Our heart becomes the fulcrum, through the unknowing of who we thought we were, to who we really are, that contains the whole world. We can only save the world by coming together in that shared heart of our common humanity, that extends itself to all life on this Earth and beyond.

The heartbreak that is happening now, on a massive scale, is that one heart breaking open, a massive escape from the prison cells of our egos, where we all have been for far too long incarcerated in isolation, a solitary confinement from each other and our true oneness with the world.

When we come from that inner level, all the other levels naturally fall into line, like magnetic filings, that have been dissipated and scattered, realigning to a higher, far more powerful, magnetic force field. When we come from the heart of consciousness and love at our core, we not only heal ourselves from the core, but, joining up with others, we begin to heal our world at all levels, energetic, psychological, social, ecological, economic and political.

That level is where everything is connected, and once we make a quantum leap there, dive into its heart, we bring that leap into the world, precisely because it is quantum. As inner, so outer, the fractal contains the whole – when we access the quantum effects of that field that pervades us and the whole web of life, every action we take has ripple effects, local and non-local, that affect the whole world.

This is where the revolution must come from – and in fact, is coming from now – even if we can’t see it. But when we can see it, and consciously align with it, it vastly augments our power.
 

Can We Really Affect Our Future? -- Aligning with the Higher Powers of Evolution

 

The drama that is being acted out on Earth now is neither, in the ultimate sense, true or false, nor is its outcome, in this dimension, determined – but it can either reflect the unity at our core, or desecrate it, depending on how we play it, the choices that we make. We are being called, as never before, to exercise our power and will, to align them with higher ones -- a higher will and the higher forces of evolution -- or forfeit our place in the evolutionary play.

 

I think we the people are finding the power to choose – to align our choices with our highest potentials, and the highest powers of evolution, the highest powers of truth, love, justice and beauty. As Martin Luther King said, the arc of history is long, but for those who can see, the gold at the end of the rainbow is beginning to shine through. The light healing this whole drama of black and white lies in our own hearts – it is not far to reach.

Memes – the beliefs we and others carry -- spread like a virus; the memes of strong thought-forms and feelings have the power to sweep us away or knock us off our feet, depending on how strong we are, and where we set our vision. We have to decide from where, and what, we want to respond to, and what we want to be immune from. Do we, unconsciously, fall prey to dis-information, distorted spins, the fake news of separation?  Or do we consciously choose to align with, respond from, deeper forces of evolution propelling us to the truth of our unity, which correspond with our true highest potential?

There is meaning to everything that happens – these crises, and the uprisings, are part of greater movements of evolution. And we are inevitably part of it – the question is, which part do we want to play?

The future is not something “out there”, for us to despair or hope for – it is within us, within our own hearts, and it is up to make it -- to be the change we want to see, to bring it into the world. Our decisions make a difference, and our actions, as to which way things go -- we are never simply a passive observer, who can predict a given outcome, because our own action or inaction helps to determine it.

This is not to say that things are random, and we can impose our will on them; but rather that there are deeper forces to align with. None of this is by accident, there are deeper evolutionary forces at work behind this uprising, how and why it is happening, and its particular timing. This is the time to open our eyes, to see that nothing is random -- there is meaning to everything that happens, and we are inextricably part of it, intimately part of a greater whole, where everything affects and is affected by each other. Knowing there are no accidents, we must consciously choose how and where we want to put our energies, which direction we want to animate, to put our heart into, heighten.

We energize what we emphasize – we move in the direction we look in, and attract others, who look to us, in that direction too. This is a participatory universe, there is no “objective” out there – we make the future by the way we see it, and the way we move into it; by how deeply we look into things, and our vision for the future.

Things are not so black and white; we have choices. We must see the polarities, but then decide where we want to position ourselves, on either side (in fear or anger), or with love and unity, that brings together all sides.

This historical moment has given us a great opportunity to pause, observe our mind, see the directions it goes in, and learn to redirect them, by our own conscious choices, rather than unconscious pushes and pulls by outside forces, often with their own agendas. Where do we align ourselves, with the sides of fear, anger or divisiveness (or our equally divisive reactions to them, in an unending vicious cycle), or the unity at our true centre, the unity that has the power to transform ourselves and our world?

When we align with the higher will of the universe, we are no longer at the mercy of forces beyond our control, because we merge our powers with higher controls, which created the Whole Cosmos. When we position ourselves, take our stand, at the fulcrum of the Source of Creation itself, we co-create a future in line with our highest potentials, and the highest good of all life. We are no longer at the mercy of our own small minds, blinded to what is really good for us, but operating from a whole new system, the higher intelligence of the universe, propelling us to the highest good, the fast-track of our evolution.

We need to reflect deeply on what is happening, so that we can see the deeper currents at play, and decide what we want to align with…In the midst of all that is coming down now, we have to draw our wisdom, our energy, our inspiration, from a deeper place, one that is far more powerful than the forces of destruction, and rise up together to create a new world.

 
And we are on the way…there has been an explosion of caring around the world; if we can up-level it to the systemic level, we are well on the way. If we can scale up what is happening – the mutual aid support groups spawned by the pandemic and actions of solidarity spawned by the racial crisis -- they can turn into real systems-change, gaining the strength and power, by sheer force of numbers and energy, to displace the current system, and usher in a whole-scale, whole-systems transformation. This is interconnection and Oneness in action, rising up to overturn the old, obsolescent mindset of separation and domination, at all levels.​