THE NEED TO DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT ALL

Action and reaction, the wheel that we run on called life. We can’t help but react when we see disturbing things; children burned, women dead, houses crumbled, politicians screwing us, and wounded puppies- especially wounded puppies. There ain’t nothing that gets us more than puppies and kittens – not even blown-up cities.

What is a person to do? We see an image that pains us. The pain of the situation is directly shot into us like a vaccine of unrest. The agitation it creates inside of us is undeniable and leads us to try to undo the situation that disturbs us; like sending money to an advocacy group or going to a protest, but most of us just stew until we are invited to a dinner party and then we let it out with a lively rant that is doing nothing because we are preaching to the converted.

If we really want peace. We have to be peaceful. No one is going to do that for us. We must be peace, talking peace, and feeling peace. This is extremely difficult to do. Probably the most difficult reaction because we have to stop reacting. To be with ourselves, and deal with the spin cycle that is going on within us - like who has time for that? So much easier to let the violence disturb us and then go out and make a scene or scream at the universe. But the universe actually doesn’t mind. It is happy with any kind of action; stars blowing up, galaxies colliding and you screaming at injustice -it’s all good.

But maybe what the universe really seeks from its conscious beings is a reflection. It wants to know itself through us. When you sit down and just let the dust settle inside, feel yourself being alive; the gurgle of your stomach, the in and out of your breath there is something there that is really compelling- a deep reservoir of feeling. We have an ocean of feelings inside and it is ready to latch on to anything, any image we see, any slight word, any car pulling out in front of us, any child mischief, any puppy rolling around. We crave to feel.

When we know this about ourselves, we can work with that to channel feelings in a certain way. If people all over the world began to use our deep reservoir of feeling to feel peaceful, to choose peace, and value peace, society would reflect that.

I’m not asking that we be at peace because it is just about impossible, but what if we took a tiny baby step? We just decided to have a moment of peace. Maybe you see something disturbing and instead of latching on or screeching into a U-turn, you just take a breath, feel the quiet in the room or the ticking of the clock, and send that feeling, through your heart, to those who need it. A kind of peace-o-gram.

Instead of taking in the pain, you send out what is needed to soothe the pain. Now we are talking revolution, change, and healing. It’s surprising how that also seems to satisfy the need to do, to react. We are reacting and doing. We are creating and sending peace. We are making the world we want to live in.