I have a dream, that all men and women of all colors and creeds, all social classes and castes, all political affiliations and beliefs, are equal children of an invisible force of love that you might call God, had the name not been so abused as a way to discriminate, murder, manipulate, torment, incite fear, cast judgment, and disempower millions of innocent beings. God/Goddess would be horrified to see how Her children have used Her name to separate from each other, to torture, to abuse, to commit egregious acts of self-righteousness in the name of religion and spirituality. God/Goddess would cry heartbroken tears if She was not so infinitely capable of seeing the Divine perfection in all things, including the mess we’ve made in Her name.
But God/Goddess knows better, and deep in our hearts, where God/Goddess lives as a spark within each of us, we know better too. Burning like the flame of the Inner Pilot Light that ignites our life force and fans the flame of love in our own hearts, this spark has a direct experience of Oneness. This spark knows that all men and women, in all ways, are created equal. We have forgotten, but we are Remembering, as the memory of the Martin Luther King, Jr’s of the world and the indigenous people remind us. We are Remembering that we are all doing the best we can, and we must have compassion and fierce love to help one another unlearn our ways back to God/Goddess. We are Remembering that “There but by the grace of God go I.” We are Remembering that most humans have been traumatized and they don’t even know it, and as long as we’re acting out from unhealed trauma, we will hurt ourselves and others in the most unconscious ways.
We are Remembering that we cannot exploit Mother Earth and her resources without harming ourselves. We are Remembering that it’s time to share what we have so that all equal men and women, all animals, and all of the natural world can thrive equally. We are Remembering that we may have to make some choices that may feel like sacrifices, but what we will gain in doing so will far outweigh any inconvenience or discomfort. We are Remembering that everything is alive and sacred, and that deep joy and lasting fulfillment arises when we honor the holy in everything and everyone. We are Remembering that we are tribal beings, deeply interdependent upon one another, rather than Lone Rangers who can do it all by ourselves. We are Remembering the joy that bursts through us when we gather in conscious community to show our gratitude for Mother Earth, to perform ceremonies and rituals, to sing and dance and worship that invisible force of love that unites us all. We are Remembering what it means to be fully embodied, conscious humans, the Godself witnessing the Godself in all Her multiplicity of forms.
We Have PTSD
We are Remembering that our culture is a culture suffering from an epidemic of individual and collective post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). We are burdened with so much despair from all the trauma of years of patriarchy, shame, fear, colonialism, religious persecution, sexual abuse, domestic violence, racism, enemy-making, war, addiction, excessive busyness, and perfectionism. We don’t even know we have PTSD. We can’t even feel how much it hurts to have killed the indigenous people of almost every land, to have stolen their land and raped and killed their women and children. We have bought into the story of war, separation, religion, and consumerism so fully hook, line, and sinker, that we can’t see that we are sinking ourselves and killing our planet.
But we are waking up.
We have become so numb that half of the people in this country can elect into the position of the highest power in our country a man who flaunts his racism, sexism, greed, materialism, and disregard for the disabled, the military, and pretty much everyone who isn’t Putin as if this whole thing is just one big reality TV joke.
But I have a dream, and I have not lost hope.
We Must Hold the Plane for Each Other
I have a dream that Love Wins. Nobody can shatter my trust in this truth. If you don’t have faith, borrow mine or find a friend who can share her faith with you. A friend once promised to “hold the plane” for me. She trusted in a force of white magic that I didn’t yet trust, so she said, “Lissa, I’ll hold the plane for you.” I didn’t understand what she meant. So she explained.
“You know how sometimes you’re rushing through the airport and your bags are flying right and left and you know you’re going to miss your flight, but then you remember that you have a friend on the same plane, and you can just text her to say, “Tell the pilot to hold the plane for me! I’m coming.”
I didn’t want to burst her faith bubble by telling her that pilots don’t hold planes because crazy white witches with magical superpowers send a text that they’re on their way. But then, hell, maybe they do.
All I know is that she held the plane for me, and I found out that she was right, that there is this invisible force of love that is stronger than all the hatred, bigotry, judgment, toxicity, violence, disrespect, and “othering” in the world.
Nothing is more powerful than the cracked wide-open heart. Nothing.
Pronoia
Some people don’t believe in this invisible force of love that lives inside all of our hearts. They need those of us who do trust to hold the plane for them and to be patient while they catch up. They don’t need our judgment or righteousness. They need our compassion and our faith. Those who don’t Remember will call us Pollyannas, as if to insult us for our reckless, naïve optimism. They will laugh at our “pronoia” (the term coined by Rob Brezsny that translates as something like “pronoia, the opposite of paranoia, the unshakable belief that everything in the universe is conspiring to shower you with blessings, even when it looks like everything is falling apart”).
Those who don’t share our dream will say we are delusional. They will be critical and judgmental and pessimistic. They will rape, kill, dominate, control, and belittle. They will be like Chicken Little, running around in a panic, screaming “The sky is falling!” They will tell you that you’re crazy for believing in love. They will insist that we must use force to get what we want. They will use their fear to make a case for why judgment and shaming and violence are necessary in order to stop the “bad guys” from having their way with the world.
They won’t understand when you talk about surrendering to Divine Will or trusting that it’s a benevolent universe. Their fear will be so loud that you might be tempted to succumb to it, to let it sink your faith.
But we are here with you in your faith bubble. We are holding the plane for you atop the shoulders of champions of nonviolent transformational leaders like Martin Luther King, Jr. We still believe that Love Wins.
Grieve If You Need to, Celebrate If You Can
On Sunday, I danced with my fellow 5 Rhythms/ Sweat Your Prayers brothers and sisters in the gym that serves as our dance church, and it was intense. The room is always filled with Love Warriors. Most of us do transformational work, participate in activism, volunteer to serve love in the world, and stand with fierce love for truth, equality, justice, non-duality, non-judgment, generosity of spirit and pocketbook, and caretaking Mother Earth. Usually, the energy in the room is ecstatic, effusively heart opening, playful, light, and joyful. Today, it was heavy, as if we were dancing the funeral of our country as we know it. There were a lot of tears. We were holding each other as we grieved. Yet, at the same time, I could feel something emerging—an expansiveness, an uprising, a call to action, almost like a battle cry for Love Warriors everywhere. It was our war dance. Game on. Love Warriors unite. It was a celebration at the same time as we grieved.
This is our great challenge right now, to love so big and so hard that we avoid the impulse to polarize our country even further. We Love Warriors may feel beleaguered and weary right now, but we’ve been preparing the soil for this kind of blossoming for a long time now. We can’t give up now. This is the ultimate test of our capacity to keep loving, to keep our heart open, to come together in unity rather than devolve into hatred and the story of separation. We would be hypocrites if we couldn’t love each other through this. If we say we’re all about love, then this is our ultimate final exam. Can we love even bigger now?
Now Is a Time for Deep Listening
We need to be willing to hear each other. We need to be willing to sit with those who might have different political opinions than we do and ask, “What hurts?” Can we just listen to each other please, without positioning to be right or casting judgment upon each other? The only reason we’re in this situation is because a huge percentage of our country feels unheard. The Middle American white voter has been so demonized by feminism and the far left that he has had it, and he spoke with his vote to try to reclaim what he feels belongs to him. He may not have any clue what his alternative might be. He might feel helpless and hopeless and frustrated and misunderstood because the liberals have been shaming him for so long that he’s willing to put a demagogue into office because at least it will shake up the status quo.
How does he feel? Can we inhabit his consciousness for just a minute to see what it might feel like to be him? Can we open our hearts big enough to find empathy for those who hate? Instead of hating him and her, what if we try to understand how he and she feels? Ask what hurts. Listen generously. Show that you care. Be curious about someone who might be different than you.
Maybe he is tired of being shamed by feminists who don’t listen to him.
Maybe she is exhausted from working three jobs as a single mother, just trying to make ends meet, and she’s frightened that all her hard earned taxes go to supporting immigrants.
Maybe he has no idea how to be a man in a society where the patriarchy is dying a slow, painful death.
Maybe she just wants life to go back to how it was in the fifties.
We don’t know unless we listen.
Reach Outside Your Bubble
If you can find the courage in your heart to expand your circle of comfort, reach out. Don’t just isolate yourself into a little bubble of people who only think like you do. Step outside the bubble to wonder what it’s like out there. See if you can love what you discover. See if you can find even one little morsel of love for that person you judge. Start there.
If every one of us makes room for that which unites us, we just might be entering the most exciting time our world has ever experienced. Let us come together, beloveds. Let us have Truth & Reconciliation. Let us talk about what hurts and grieve what we haven’t grieved yet. Let us wonder what is next as we enter into the mystery . . .
Let Freedom Ring
Martin Luther King, Jr completes his “I Have a Dream” speech with, “When this happens, and when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual: Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”
I have a dream that we are such powerful co-creators of our “reality” that if everyone chose to let Love Win right now, everything could change in one collective heartbeat. Start with giving yourself this same love. If you find yourself being judging, shaming, criticizing, and failing to trust, love that part. As Matt Kahn says, “Whatever arises, love that.”
Love wins.
Love wins.
In deep gratitude for Love Warriors everywhere,
P.S. I’m keynoting at the Energy Psychology Conference in San Antonio this spring, alongside landmark poet David Whyte and scientist and author of The Energy Cure William Bengston, PhD. Wanna play with what’s possible at the intersection of science and spirituality? You can save $360 on tuition if you register by February 6.
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