A few weeks ago, I wrote a blog called No More Poison! Here I wrote about the need for us to refuse to internalize any message from others that is not of love or to present a message to others that is not of love. When we do this, we are eating or serving emotional, mental, and spiritual poison to others.
I have been thinking a lot about the effect of the global poison of fear, which presents itself in so many different ways in our world. One of the ways this poison presents itself amongst our youth is through bullying and hatred. The news has been filled lately with stories of at least ten young lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered youth who had ingested so much poison from their peers and their society that they were no longer able to see hope or joy in life.
It is not a single dose of this poison, which contributed to the poisoning of these youth; it is repeated doses, which led to their deaths. Over time, these repeated doses of poison affect one’s ability to think clearly about the world and one’s future. We have all been wounded at one point or time in our lives. In time, a single wound can heal. However, when we ingest high levels of these poisons our reasoning starts to fail. Even when there are people in our lives who love us, there is so much poison in our hearts and minds that we now live in a state of fear that defies description and where the wounds are so painful that it seems as if there is nothing that will ever alleviate the pain. The poison can now make it seem as if our lives will be filled with nothing but wounding and thus increased pain. Even a youtube video that says it will get better may not be enough. The healing cannot begin until the wounding stops. The clarity of vision and mind cannot be restored until the poisoning stops.
In those times when we most need to experience unconditional love, we need to remember that we have dominion over our lives. We have the power to restore balance in our lives. A friend of mine once shared with me that he sees dominion as a womb, which holds everything within it in a loving and compassionate manner.
Within the womb of dominion, I no longer need to struggle against anything in life. I can accept who I am and where I am in my journey. It is a space in which I love myself into healing. It is a space in which I can ask myself what it is that I need to do or hear to feel loved and nurtured and then I do it. I love myself into healing and wholeness. My joy and peace then is more about me and what I am doing for me in my life, then what others are saying or doing to me. Sometimes I need more time then others to walk around the perimeters of the womb until I figure out what I need to feel loved and affirmed. However, what is clear is that I have the power to use my emotions to love myself into wholeness.
One of the most powerful lessons that I have learned in my journey is that I cannot always change the external. I can work at bringing about systemic change, but that takes time. In the meantime, I can change the way I think about events in my life. I have learned how to not let my emotions imprison me. Instead, I find constructive ways of releasing them. I find ways of releasing the feelings so they are no longer controlling my actions and behaviors. I have had to learn how to use my mind to keep myself free rather then being controlled by my mind and the beliefs others have planted in it. When we free our mind from the poison, the rest will follow.
Just as it has taken years to master the emotions of anger, fear, jealousy, hatred, etc. it will take time to retrain the mind. It will take time to learn how to control one’s emotions in a loving way.
Recently, I was asked, how one can begin. Perhaps the simplest place to begin is with something you are already doing – breathing. Pay attention to your breathing. Connect with the one thing you are already doing. Be mindful of how it feels to breathe. Breathe in love. Breathe out love. Those with whom I work individually will tell you that the one thing we always start with is a time of breathing. A time to breath in love and a time to breathe love back out into the universe. This simple act of breathing love in and out is a simple way of connecting with the Infinite who is love.
Give yourself and others a gift of love. Breathe it in and breathe it out.