What is here for me?

I have been taking my time processing what is happening in the world right now.I have been taking in what I can while staying grounded and rooted.I’ve been in a pressure cooker of personal stuff and intense emotional waves for the last couple weeks, as I know a lot of people are.As a person who is not Jewish and does not have any personal ties to Israel or Palestine it can be easy to tell myself some story of “this isn’t about me or this doesn’t involve me.”There is a way I could believe the idea that I should just stay out of it and let those who do live and know this conflict and subject matter speak.And that is partially true. I will not pretend to know more than I know or be something that I am not.But as a teacher that teaches about true nourishment on a physical, mental, emotional and spiritual level there are actually some things I need to say.It would actually be more untrue for me to say nothing here.I can feel in my bones that this point in time is a never-going-back-moment.On a spiritual level this is a time of prophetic proportion.There is something playing out here between what it means to be justified vs unjustified and ultimately good vs evil.The truth as I see it is both sides have ample reason to be justified in their hate, violence, and judgments. Each side is due vengeance on some level.As Charles Eisenstein said in his recent piece about this conflict: “vengeance is self-escalating, as each atrocity loosens further the bonds of restraint.”In this situation there have been atrocities committed on both sides, that is clear. The bonds of restraint have blown completely off to where we have witnessed some of the most inarguably ‘evil’ and inhumane atrocities.But those evil and inhumane atrocities were predicated by slightly less evil and inhumane atrocities over time.And my point here is, people are suffering and people have suffered gravely.I will not actually choose sides here because choosing sides is what perpetuates the justification vs un-justifcation.I could also escape into bafflement and fog. To say, “I just can’t believe this is happening. How could people DO these things?!” And then feel uncomfortable while I move along with my daily life. It also would be easy to do some major spiritual bypassing here. To say something like, why can’t we all just get along? We are all human, right?! To say something about the human heart and its capacity for forgiveness and move on. We are all absolutely human but if you haven’t noticed humans are capable of some mind bendingly awful things.The human heart does have an infinite capacity for forgiveness and it also has an infinite capacity to wall off, shut down, and to vitriolicly spew hatred.I won’t ever operate from a political, policy, or social justice level.My being only sees things from the microcosm of my own internal practice and on the macrocosm of spiritual principle.To me the externally oriented level in between the micro and the macro is just a mirror, so the only way to change something at that level would be to change your relationship to it.But that is not a reason to bypass the very real third dimensional pain that is happening here either.So what do and we do here?What is the commensurate response to what is happening here? What is this asking me to see on the microcosmic level of my own internal landscape? How can I alchemize what is inside me so that I may see a change on the outside?Or as my teacher Perri Chase said recently in one of her teachings on this: What is here for me?What comes up for me when I sit with these inquiries is that this moment is asking us to look inside ourselves and see where we are capable of vengeful atrocities.To look at all the places in our bodies and minds where we harbor hate, the desire to hurt, the desire for retribution and pay back.We are being asked to go in and go in deeper than we have maybe ever gone before.To feel our pain, our anger, our wounding, so that it may be alchemized.I just keep hearing the statement: You have to feel it to heal it.This isn’t just for us on an individual level, but it is also for us on a collective level.We are indeed interconnected. What hurts you, hurts me.And we can continue to add to the collective trauma by perpetuating an idea that there is an us vs them, a good vs evil, a justified and an unjustified, or we can get down on our knees and forgive ourselves.My mentor, Coly Vulpiani, gave me this prayer and I have given it to many of my clients. This prayer is meant to be directed at yourself, not others: “I judge you not. I forgive myself for what I have created with my judgement. I embrace you. I accept you. I leave you with the blessings of forgiveness.”This prayer is what I leave you with as advice on what to do in times like these.Forgive yourself, my love.Lay your judgments of yourself down. Be open to and with the most inhumane parts of you.Practice forgiveness towards the parts of yourself you’d like to keep locked away.This does not mean let those parts drive. No, it means to stay open to them and see what wounds they are protecting so that you may connect with them. Connection is what we need right now. Radical self acceptance and self responsibility. And also, take care of yourself. Hold your family close. Feed yourself well. Rest and sleep. Go outside and as my 3 year old says, “be a sun catcher!” This is a long, long game we are playing and the state of your nervous system contributes the state of the collective nervous system. For those of us that have the privilege and luck to be safe and sound, please do not take that for granted and keep yourself stable and healthy with all you’ve got.This poem that has given me the metaphor to understand in my body what I am trying to convey here. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit clarabelize.substack.com/subscribe