Tara Brach - Disarming Our Hearts - Part 2: Guidance from the Bodhisattva Path

Episode Date: June 13, 2024

Greetings. We offer these podcasts freely, and your support really makes a difference. To make a donation, please visit tarabrock.com. Namaste, friends. Welcome. Thank you for being here. Well, I'll start with a short little teaching story. This is about a man who had been hired as a new CEO of large corporation. The current CEO is stepping down, so he meets with this new hire privately in his office and he hands him three numbered envelopes. And he says to open these if you run into a problem, you don't think you can solve. So things are going pretty smoothly for the first six months, but then sales takes a downturn and the new CEO begins catching a lot of

heat. So he goes to the drawer and takes out the first envelope and the message reads, blame your predecessor. So the new CEO calls a press conference. conference and skillfully lays the blame at the feet of the previous CEO, and sales begin to pick up and the problem soon behind him. About a year later, the company is again experiencing a dip of sales and there's serious product malfunctions and so on. So having learned from his prior experience, he opens the second envelope. And the message reads, blame a senior executive then aggressively reorganize. He does it. The the company quickly rebounds. After several consecutive profitable quarters, the company again

falls on hard times. So the CEO goes to the office and closes his door and he opens the third envelope and it says, prepare three envelopes. Okay, so blame and anger and resentment and so on. They might pump us up. They might give us a feeling of control. They might forced temporary acquiescence and they don't work in the long term. Blame comes from our survival brain. It's a survival reaction that creates divides and it doesn't offer a pathway of true transformation. And as we know in our current world, so many of us are caught in this trance of judging and blaming and anger towards the enemy out there. of what I call bad othering.

And that's what really keeps us from joining hands, collaborating, and addressing the multi-crisisuses our world's facing, the world's really struggling. So we need to respond with a wise heart. I'd like to share with you a poem that I love. It's called Hieroglyphic Stairway by Drew Dellenger. It's 323 in the morning, and I'm awake because my great-great-grandchildren won't let me sleep. My great-great-grandchildren ask me in dreams, what did you do while the planet was plundered? What did you do when the earth was unraveling?

Surely you did something as the mammals and reptiles and birds were all dying. Did you fill the streets with protest when demolished? democracy was stolen, what did you do once you knew? What did you do while the earth was unraveling? So I'm imagining that as you listen like myself, you feel that kind of unraveling. Many levels are natural world in crisis, the human-to-human violence, democracy endangered. It's a fragmenting world. And I know many care. and also perhaps feel powerless. Like, how can I help?

It feels too big. It feels inexorable. And I know I felt that. But there's something that feels even more true. And this is really a teaching from Buddhism and from the Bodhisattva path that we've been exploring, that every one of us is always impacting the world with our thoughts, with our words, with our actions, with our inaction. every moment we're impacting. And so if what we think or express or don't express arises from fear, from hatred, from blame, from dividedness, we seed more of the same. And any

moment that we are experiencing caring, that in some way we're expressing love, expressing compassion or part of the healing. So on the Bodhisattva path, the grounds of the inner training, and this is the theme last week and this week, is disarming the heart, freeing up our loving. Because the primary block to love and compassion is judgment, it's blame. It's the conditioning really behind those directions in those envelopes, and it's a conditioning that really shapes a lot of our thoughts and behaviors, and yet as we know, if we want to participate in true transformation, we need to disarm. Okay, so last week we explored disarming our hearts, our bad othering in our personal relationships and the closer relationships to us.

And this week we're going to widen it, and we're going to look at disarming our disarming when our mind has created enemies in the larger world. So when we're feeling judgment, aversion, blame towards certain groups or certain particular leaders, bad actors, certain countries, certain ethnicities, religions, races, politically. And often when I talk about disarming in this way, letting go of the bad othering, you know, cultivating that inclusive compassion. The questions I get are, well, if I'm compassionate towards those who are causing harm, how will I protect myself or protect others? How will I act to stop violence, to relieve suffering? In other words, compassion won't protect us from

further attacks. So that's the fear with the path of compassion that nothing will change. So I want pause here because there's a difference between judgment, blame, you know, what I'm calling bad othering, which closes the heart, and discerning wisdom, which is actually an intrinsic part of true compassion. And this is a crucial understanding on the bodhisattva path. And maybe by way of example, if an older child is bullying your child and you are judging that older child, you aversion, oh, they're a bad apple, bad person, it's going to cut off compassion. It dehumanizes them. You won't really be able to see that they were bullied, or traumatized, and how they're hurting. So the heart's armored. It's closed.

Oprah talked about this as she said, I thought this was really one of the most important teachings that when someone's misbehaving or causing harm, the question is, what happened to you? You know, it may have been past generations too, but seeing the bigger picture. But here's the thing, if an older child is bullying your child, it's crucial to have the wise discernment that sees that that older child is behaving in a harmful, unhealthy way and you need to take action. You need to prevent more bullying. And if possible, to do whatever it takes to take care of both children.

So, I bring this up because on the Bodhisopha path, truly awake full compassion, cultivates, and I love this expression, it's from Roshi Joan Halifax, cultivates a strong back and a soft front. Okay, so just take a moment with this because you might find that as you keep exploring this in your life, that that sense, a strong back and a soft front. front really can be useful. The strong back is that clear discernment, okay, this is unhealthy behavior, whether it's an individual in your personal life or a country or a group or whatever. This is unhealthy behavior. It's causing suffering. I need to act. That's that clarity, that

discernment, that truth. And the soft front is there's a caring for all involved. that they're suffering everywhere and that your action is for the good of all. So, true compassion, the compassion that leads to wise action includes both wise discernment that's strong back and the soft front. I'm noticing even as I say that I'm feeling the uprightness of posture of the strong back and yet softening my belly, opening the chest. It's a very beautiful weave. Now, not all modes of disarming are wise.

Just take a moment with that. A story I like and some of you might remember as a couple that's been married for 60 years and they share everything with each other. They don't have any secrets except one thing. which is that the wife keeps a shoebox in a closet. She's asked her husband never to open it or even ask about it. Okay, so the day comes when she's dying and the husband takes a shoebox to his wife's bedside

and she agrees it's time for him to see what's inside. And so his eyes widened he sees $95,000 in it and two crocheted dolls. So she explains, when we were married, my grandmother told me that the secret of a happy marriage is never to judge or blame or argue. She told me if I ever got angry with you, I should crochet a doll. Just keep quiet. The husband was really touched. She said, two dolls, you know, that meant she was only angry with him twice in 60 years. So after he overcame his emotions, he said, honey, that explains the dolls. What about all this money? Where did it come from? Oh, that, she said, that's the money I made from selling all the dolls.

So, I know it's a silly example. And when we're triggered, when we're angry, the pathway to caring to really coming into that transformational compassion is not to stuff the anger. It's actually to let the anger be there, honor it, let it be a portal. Because under anger, there's something we care about. always, something that matters to us. And if we can open to the anger and then feel under it to where the vulnerability is and what we're really caring about, you know, what's the unmet need? Is it for safety, for respect,

for freedom, more justice, more compassion in the world, then we can focus on what we care about. The strong back sees the harm, the soft front, sense us what we care about, then we can end. When we go through that portal of anger and we tend to the unmet needs, we're with what's there, self-compassion, with a willingness to stand behind ourselves, it actually widens our perception and we can see better. You know, again, Oprah, what happened to you? We can see the other's pain more.

We can ask that question, where does it hurt? and include their humanness in our hearts. I really love this cartoon of, there's two women behind locked doors and they're peeping through a window at a monster on the doorstep and one saying to the other, calm down, Edna, yes, it is a giant hideous insect, but maybe it's a giant hideous insect in need of help. and kind of sense the Gary Larsonhood on that. So again, you get the idea. We need both that clarity and wise discernment and an inclusive heart.

Okay, so even if we think of ourselves as tolerant, liberal, that we don't create enemies, the conditioning towards bad othering, dehumanizing, demonizing, demonizing, demonizing is really strong and it's what cuts off compassion. It's what makes it so that we might have an abstract compassion for, let's say, a group of people for their suffering, but it's not a felt sense. So if we just step back and just sense throughout human history, the demonizing of others has been the psychological fuel that drives warfare. You know, we can look at any violent conflict across the globe and we'll see othering and a devaluing of human life. And in this process, the other is actually stripped of their humanity. They become unreal,

a symbol of evil or a threat. So when we make others less than human, we can violate them. We've armored our hearts. We're severed from our conscience, from our humanity. And through the history of our species, this is what has enabled humans to commit and rationalize killing, torture, massacres, pogroms, ethnic cleansings, all the acts of cruelty. And here's the thing. Some level of dehumanizing happens daily in most of us, especially if we're reading the news and involved with our world, it certainly happens in our personal relationships. If another person offends us, triggers hurt, triggers fear, we have a limbic response where

there's some judging. We're not so empathetic or tune to them. It just happens. And certainly in relating to our larger society, it's often unconscious, but we have many built-in biases conditioned by our society and we can very easily without knowing it slide into perceiving others as less moral or valuable or worthy, really less human than ourselves. Maybe just to pause here as a way of bringing bad othering into full awareness invite a short reflection. And you might take a moment to arrive right here in presence, perhaps take a few

full breaths. And with honesty, with curiosity, observing your heart, your mind, since if you experience any dehumanizing, any bad othering, as I name these most common domains where humans get demote each other. And of course, we can easily begin with political. Is there, what is your sense of the other side if you feel that, or the leaders of the other side? Is there a demoting, a dehumanizing, a sense of less ethical, less moral, less valuable? Just sense. You can do the same, perhaps for you. The bad othering is around major conflicts in the world. Do you demote? Do you demote one side, are the leaders of one side. And for some, you might sense, is there a certain religion, race, that on some level, less valuable, less worthy? And for this, for the purposes of

our exploring together, you might sense where in your life is bad othering the strongest right now. For many that talk to me, it's with identifiable leaders, those with the most power to harm, wherever it is. Just take a moment to inhabit that sense of bad othering. Play with it enough so that you can actually get inside it, feel what it's like. And just notice when you're in it, when you're really sensing what's wrong or bad about the other, what does your heart feel like? Your mind. Just notice is there some contracting? spirit, are you even sensing spirit? So you kind of tune into who you are when bad othering. And for a moment you might ask yourself, what would it be like if I disarmed?

Instead of hating, judging, if I remembered what it was I cared about. This is the strong back, the soft front. You can keep on exploring on your own. own, it's a useful reflection because often it'll show us what's really difficult, how difficult it is to go beyond the habit of arming ourselves and yet we can. So personal side sharing, when I was in my 20s, I was very active in social causes and And that's when I had my first very strong experience of the impact of bad othering versus disarming. And I went to a lot of rallies. I was very involved with tenant organizing.

And we had distinct enemies, which were the landlords and the police and often conservative or right-wing political leaders. And, you know, there was anger towards them. I felt in myself that they were the bad guys, usually guys. And so there was dehumanizing. I remember people would use these symbols, the pig, you know. It was like it was really the fist of anger and demeaning and demoting that was very, very evident. Around the same time, I began going to yoga classes and practicing meditation.

And I remember after one particular class being outside and pausing. and realizing that my body and my mind were in the same time and the same place. And there was this quality of open-heartedness, of belonging to everything. And instead of blame and hate, I got in touch with my care, that kind of tenderness in response to our world, and realize that that's what allows for true change, not the divisive anger, the having an enemy. You know, we're all players, we're all part of the earth, we all have to walk this earth together. So at that time, I decided to dive more deeply into spiritual practice and I joined a spiritual community to really ground my life in the practices that

awakened heart and mind. I re-entered social activism at a different level, but some years later, and I saw really the same tendencies to create an enemy arise up. I remember early in the winter of 2003, the U.S. was gearing up to invade Iraq because of what we found out were the supposed weapons of mass destruction. I was really upset about the impending violence. And every time I'd read a newspaper, I'd feel this rising up. of anger and blame towards the different political leaders that were fueling it and find myself completely judgmental and diminishing and aversive. They were hawks, not humans, and now I love hawks, so I don't even, even the word

dehumanizing is not a good one. It's really just not having respect for a being. So I realized, okay, this trance of blame is really thick. And so I began doing a practice. I called it my newspaper meditation because I usually was triggered reading the newspaper. And I would get in touch with the anger. And rather than blaming out there, I would do that U-turn and begin to say, okay, what's under the anger? Because always under anger, there's something that matters to us.

And I could feel my fears, my fears for how many people, would be injured, Iraqi people, American people, how much it would ripple out and affect things in terms of global power dynamics. I felt a lot of fear and under the fear I felt a lot of grief about the losses around the corner and within the grief caring. So I just held that, you know, put my hand on my heart, I just held that with care, the caring with care and felt to myself, you know, what really matters here was anything that can help to stop violence. But I was disarmed. I was no longer focused on hatred,

anger, and blame. I was paying attention to the caring. And I could ask, you know, what is love asking, that kind of a question, what do I want to do? And soon after I went to a, I was part of an interfaith rally, different spiritual and religious leaders, and it was on behalf of all the lives that were threatened. It wasn't angry. It was out of care for the Iraqi families and children, the Americans who would be fighting, and we all got arrested. I remember my clergy friends when they were put in the paddy wagon, the police kind of joked that they had committed white-collar crime. I missed my Wednesday night class. And I share all of this because the crucial learning for me was shifting from the focus of what we hate to what we care about

and that it's a life process. The condition is really strong. It's ongoing that humans in our personal realm and in the world behave in harmful ways. And they hurt and harm people, us, people close to us, people in the world, and it's really natural to feel the anger and the blame. And it takes pausing and re-arriving to make that shift back to caring so that we can then respond with a strong back and a soft front. I can say for myself as I'm speaking to you that if anything, this dedication to disarming is only deepening. Because here's the thing, it just seems clearer and clearer that thoughts that in any way demean others create divides, they cut us off from compassion.

They seed more violence. And I think this a lot, if I'm caught in bad othering, if I'm dehumanizing, how can I expect any movement to a more peaceful planet? You know, peace. It really does start with each of us disarming our own heart. shifting from judgment to care. So it's a life process individually and collectively. Some of you may have heard of Ariyarotene.

He's the founder of Sarvodaya movement in Sri Lanka that was founded in 1948. The word Sarvodaya was first used by Gandhi. It means the well-being of all. It's the Bodhisattva dedication. to the well-being of all. It's based on the Buddhist values of respecting all lives. I met, he's considered a Sri Lankan Gandhi, and I met him in a Zoom meeting a couple years ago, deeply wise, beautiful being. He died just a few months ago. So here's something powerful to consider that this movement he founded grew up during a very violent civil war.

and he brought enemies together for peace walks, peace meditations. He held the largest meditation ever held in the world, 650,000 people. And this movement served and serves villages on both sides of the conflict. It's now it's active in thousands of villages and people meditate together. They work together. It's improved sanitation and roads and shelters and schools. microfinance for women. So when we look at these seemingly intractable conflicts on the planet

that keep being fueled by dehumanizing, it might be difficult to imagine people meditating together. You know, villages helping each other, any sort of real peace. And in fact, the Sri Lankan Civil War, it was 26 years it lasted, and there's still persecution and impression. and alongside there's this slow, deep, wise unfolding of the Sarvodaya movement. And what's interesting to me is early on when the vision was being presented, the Sarvo-Daya vision, it was called a 500-year peace plan.

Just think of that. It was actually a step-by-step plan that was to cover 500 years. It was so wise to frame it that way. It's so wise for us to think of generations. So my takeaway from Ariatine's work is that we need an inspiring shared vision of a compassionate, just society where there's a valuing of all lives. We need patience, you know, the 500-year plan with our own bad othering for this lifetime in the world's. You know, change is slow.

It's possible. Generations. I often think of Rilka who writes, I live my life in widening circles that reach out across the world. I may not complete this last one, but I give myself to it. So a vision. We need patience and we need practices. We need practices of presence that allow us to disarm

our hearts, to have that discerning wisdom so we can move into wise action together. So we'll focus now for the last part of this on the practices that can help us to disarm and just to say that everyone I know needs a practice in some way of disarming, of pausing, of sensing ways we've tightened and relaxing it. I think of Gandhi, who he famously took a day a week off from his activism and he said he needed it so his work would come from a wise heart. So if we look at our own disarming, I know for many because I have received so much correspondence, one key area of bad othering is in relation to the unfolding violence in Gaza and Israel. it's directed in all directions. You know, at Hamas, Palestinian people, pro-Palestinian people, the Israeli government, Israelis, Jews, Zionists, pro-Israeli,

and I may have missed something, but it's directed in all directions. And I just want to slow down a name. It's so strong. There's so much dividedness in pain that it's difficult to talk about. and yet if we want to create a more loving, understanding world, we really need to say, how can the Bodhisattva path guide us? I heard the words of a Palestinian American that really have struck me. Mokusane, he's talking about violence in the Middle East.

He's saying, you are not gaining freedom if you gain it at the expense of the other. There is no freedom that is built in the back of racism, anti-Semitism. Islamophobia, anti-Arabism, or hatred of any form. We must remember that people on all sides have faced historical traumas and present fears that shape the realities in ways that are painful, potent, and deeply personal. So the starting place is always empathy and an attempt to understand. So this process of breaking free, of dehumanizing, of disarming requires a really courageous and honest and sustained mindfulness.

And that's not often possible and it's understandably not possible for those in the grip of trauma. There's a different kind of inner healing that first has to happen. And yet for those who walk this path of awakening hearts, it's what are our way. world most desperately needs. So I witnessed hearts opening and widening circles around this violence in these last months in so many different groups. This is kind of sincere longing I don't want to be caught in bad othering, people using their own language, but really not wanting to be caught in a prison of reactivity. And I'll share with you, I was very struck. I taught both groups of Israelis, it was two months after October 7th, and then more recently I taught a Palestinian

meditation group. And in the Israeli group, one woman shared her young son was a hostage without parents and asked us to pray for, which we did. At the end of the group, another woman said, please, may we pray for all the children, and you could see. That widening, all children. In the Palestinian group, so many had lost family, friends in Gaza, fears for the life of all who remain. In our closing prayers, one woman spoke through her tears and said, may I keep choosing love even when the forces of hatred are so great.

And in the silence that followed that, this palpable sense of shared presence and tenderness that was really inclusive. So it's up to those of us who are not in the grip of trauma to deepen our practice and find a way to disarm and choose love. And I've been talking about that strong back and that soft front. This is to me the example of all the great spiritual leaders. Martin Luther King called this combination of the force of love and the force of truth, strong backs, soft front.

He called it soul force. He wrote, we will meet your physical force with soul force. We will not hate you, but we will not obey your evil laws. We'll soon wear you down by our capacity to suffer. So in winning the victory will not only win freedom for ourselves, but we will so appeal to your heart and conscience that you will be changed also. I love that. I love the inclusiveness, that this is the action, the wise action of the Bodhisattva is for the freedom of all.

That the only real transformation can come when we're working for the freedom of all. I so often think of Paul Farmer's line that the idea that some lives matter less is the root of all that is wrong with the world. So how do we disarm? You know, when we're disarming, when we've built some resentments towards somebody in our personal life, first we turn the attention inward. What's under the blame? And we tend to that with compassion because that's what's going to allow us then to widen and see the other more clearly.

Then we can out. What is love asking? But we can have a strong back and a soft front. It's the same with othering when it has to do with those out there in the world, those of other groups, those of difference. I'd like to share with you a story, one friend who's a Palestinian meditation teacher. She's also a school teacher and an activist. She shared with me a few months ago. When she was young in her personal relationships, when things didn't work out, when she felt

judged or criticized or hurt, she'd shut down, not talk, and then she'd sink into bad othering, bad othering herself and others. And she began to recognize the suffering of it, how much it separated her. So she learned to meditate, so she could recognize the thoughts and feelings and that when others behave a certain way, I'd go into feeling like a victim, something's wrong with me, something's wrong with them. And that was a really powerful discovery, that sense of, I don't have to believe that. So she practiced with that and she found she was arriving more and more in a larger reality that no matter what happened, she didn't have to feel the victim. In other words, meditations are showing her a larger sense of herself that she's the awareness, the more open

heart space that things are happening in, a wider perspective, which then allowed her to see others more clearly. So she found over more recent years how much bad othering was put to test by being a Palestinian living in Israel because she was regularly insulted and demeaned and excluded so many ways put down. And she shared an experience just a few years ago. She was teaching English to 11th graders in Jewish schools and she was pregnant. And she was about to enter the classroom, someone had written on the door to the room, Muhammad is dead, which is a very humiliating insult. It means all the followers are dead. It's a real, very painful insult. And she walks in and the students had raised the Israeli flag and they were dancing around

and they were also staring at her eager to see how she'd react. And she felt tears in her eyes and she felt that shutting down, that, you know, that tendency towards a bad othering. But she became really still for a moment and she reminded herself. You know, she breathed, this is not about you. You're not a victim. You're okay. And she could feel herself kind towards her inner life. There was a bit more space.

And she actually said to them, I thought you should be honoring, not disgracing the flag. And one of them said, oh my God, she's right. Anyway, she needed more of a pause to truly disarm. So she left the classroom and went to, the teachers' lounds and breathed and did just what we've been talking about, that you turn to feel the hurt, to honor the hurt, to not spend time in the blaming victim thoughts, but to really just bring care to the hurt inside her. And that gave her more of a full presence. And she could see from that larger presence, kind of the conditioning that they were caught in. She wasn't so armored.

and she could remember what she cared about, which was fostering respect, fostering respect and care in this world. So she went back and told them to listen and she said, what you did, that was one choice and there are others. And she talked about respect. She talked about really honoring other people and they sat there and listened. So instead of that old reflexive bad thing, othering, she paused, she got in touch with what she really cared about, and her action was

really impactful because as it happened over the months, they really became friends. She had a real relationship with those students. In fact, it turned out she was the only teacher that could handle this group. She had bridged a divide and forged kind of mutual connection and respect. So, friends, it's much easier if we think simplistically in terms of good and bad, right and wrong. And yet the pathway to true freedom is if we remember beyond the blaming and the anger, what we most deeply care about, a more loving, connected world. I think of peace activists, letterer rights, we like borders, we like white, we like white, we like white, We want to know who's in and who is out.

I have little interest in bordered belonging. I am drawn to a boundaryless belonging. I love that. Okay, so disarming is a life process. It's liberating. Let's explore right now how, for your heart, this might serve you. And I invite you to come into stillness for a few moments. really invite yourself to arrive right here with a kind of openness and a curiosity and just to

send your own aspiration, that vision of awakening this very heart to help serve the healing of the world, feel your sincerity. And then take some moments to scan and choose a situation where you know you go into bad other of a group of difference. Perhaps it's the leaders of that group, a group with different views, behaviors, politics, religion, race, whatever it is that brings up anger and aversion, hatred. And as you do, let yourself tune in to the specifics, maybe behaviors or events that you perceive cause harm that trigger bad othering. And now, make that you turn so you're bringing your attention to whatever feels vulnerable inside you

under the anger and the blame. Just notice what you're feeling. If you weren't inside anger and blame, what would you really have to face? Is it fear? Is it hurt? Is it grief for our world, keep offering a very full caring presence to your own vulnerability. Just sense what you're most deeply wanting. How do you want things to be? And if that happened, what would we get? In other words, what are you most deeply caring about? What's the longing there? Is it to end suffering? Is it safety? Peace? More love? more understanding. It's from the place of caring that you might ask yourself, what is love asking? What is love asking in terms of me responding to this? Maybe it's more

time disarming. Maybe it's to learn more so you can understand better. Maybe it's prayer. Maybe it's to speak truths or dialogue with others. Or to write something. Maybe it's to offer your time or your money or your energy in a particular way. Maybe what love is asking is not this particular cause or situation, but to deepen your attentions elsewhere in a more active way. It's all related. We're trying to bring more justice, more love, more respect, more healing to our world. take a moment from this larger space of care to sense those who were the object of your bad otherings

and just sense them as conditioned imperfect beings reacting to their own fears, their own wounds and also a part of the earth, the part of your heart. And now in a very broad way sense your own being, who you are when you shift, from a focus on judgment, hate, or blame, to focusing on what you care about. And sense that who you are expressed through a strong back and a soft front, strong back, seeing clearly what's happening, taking care, acting, protecting, standing behind, and a soft front that includes all beings. The actions are coming for the well-being of all.

That boundaryless belonging. We started with that poem, What did you do once you knew? What did you do while the earth was unraveling? The Bodhisattah path guides us in responding for the sake of our great-great-grandchildren, all of our great-great-grandchildren. the bodhisattva path invites us to have that aspiration or vision of a world with more and more

beings choosing love honoring the sacred that lives through all of us. The bodhisattva path invites our patience that 500-year plan and invites us to do the inner practices that disarm and awaken a wise heart, shifting from bad othering, to remembering what we care about. Close with a indigenous poem I heard at one vigil I attended. There will be a day and the children of all genders, colors, and face will follow the path of heart. They will speak the language of the earth and understand the language of heaven.

They will live as part of the great circle of life and then peace will come. There will be a day and the children of all genders and colors and colors. and face will follow the path of heart. Their hearts will walk and trust. They will sanctify all forms of living beings and plants. Together they will pray to the loving awareness, the mystery, connected to the source of life. And then peace will come as we close just to feel our collective hearts and prayers, those listening right now, those in resonance around the world, and that caring, that longing for a world with growing justice, peace, compassion, and freedom. Blessings, my friends, a deep namaste to each.