Alexis Wright, an aboriginal writer from Australia, writes about the end of the world being a reoccurring event that has happened over and over again. Just look at the many layers in the Grand Canyon. She also writes that for centuries, the end of indigenous people around the world has been happening too. Both the colonizers and the colonized need to be liberated from the current mindsets of “better than”, “domination over”, and “the right ways”. She says the first step toward freedom is to de-capitalize the mind, so you can “develop strengths that will not be defined by how others believe you should think.” She calls this liberation, “sovereignty of mind”:
When you move into the realm of your own sovereignty of mind by shielding yourself
from the kinds of interferences that rob you of the ability to think straight, that sap your
spirit or block you from seeing and making your own judgment, then you are able to
govern your own spirit, creative imagination, hopes and dreams.
Social Media & The News
My interest goes back and forth about reading the news and the stories that matter to me around a couple of our current global situations. There is an ugliness in the world’s toxic political atmosphere with all the hot air being spewed from the left/right positions. For me, it’s about the lack of spiritual awareness and people touting their religious extremism. It’s about the rising economic inequality and racial injustice. How the bonds of connection have been dissolving among us. The story is a sad one, full of lies, deceit and betrayal.
One side of the coin include the many versions of similar stories that dominate social media and daily news about the crazed politicians, mass shootings, greedy corporatism, record profits, failing institutions, record temperatures, sexual scandals, exploitation of the poor and destruction of the Earth. These are the same stories that have been exploited for years with only the words in the headlines changing. It’s the same old “sh!t”? When I make the choice to read the news, I come away seeing the ugliness everywhere.
The other side of the coin is different. It’s the newness of life and beauty being birthed into the world every moment and every day. How the beauty of life unfolds and the goodness that people are capable of bringing into the world. These stories seldomly appear in the news except in the last segment on the nightly news so people can go to sleep on a positive note. There are amazing stories of beautiful people and events that happen daily. We just have to know where to look.
I continue to take my daily morning walks. The landscape is recovering from the flood of the century, and I can see the trees and plants get green again. The flowers are returning and the scents from the jasmine and lime trees are wafting in the air. A few of my neighbors say “sawadee kaa”, offering me their kind “good morning”. The rainy season has ended, and I can see the tops of the mountains with the temple domes. Beauty is all around me. Have I cultivated the sovereignty of mind to be able to see it?
Undoing the Training
The toll traumas take on our life is measured not in sadness, but in aloneness. Sometimes we like to call it, “taking space” when it’s really the fear and pain that we allowed to confine and isolate us. Connecting to others become a danger that we distance ourselves from. We temporarily lose the ability to see multiple perspectives because we are stuck in our own one-sided beliefs. We have patterned ourselves to see the critical ugliness inside ourselves, which makes it easier to get sucked into and be validated by all the ugliness on the outside.
The ugliness is all over the news and there is a strange draw for me to look at the internet and indulge myself. I realized a long time ago there is something unhealthy going on inside me when I indulge. I can feel my growing moral superiority or resentment or fear or despair or the us-versus-them hostilities. My primary care physician told me that consuming this negative information was a cause of stress which was leading to the lowering of my happiness. I was looking for a way to have my opinions and positions validated by some outside group by getting more likes on my social media posts.
There is a vortex where the stories of beauty become insignificant, and we become more irresistibly drawn to the ugliness. The ugly, the hate, the fear will never satisfy the heart’s desire for love. No amount of self-deprecation, outrage, or fighting will undo the training of the past. It’s the realization that our own lives and individual stories are still unfolding. We can make our little corner of the world that we felt backed into more welcoming. To look at all this fear and ugliness in the eyes and see all the love inside of us staring right back. Where is the turning point?
Allowing the Feelings
One of the adjustments I am asked to make in my move to Thailand is the acceptance of how the culture here contends with individuals’ feelings and their expression or lack thereof. It doesn’t seem like an acceptable practice to talk about feelings and emotions. By having feelings, let alone communicate them, is believed to exacerbate the problems and makes others uncomfortable when they get expressed. The expression of “just be happy” is the one that is embraced.
It’s as if negative feelings such as sadness, anger, disappointment and grief are perceived as bad feelings. And feelings of happiness and joy are considered the preferred emotions. Being happy and choosing happiness has a dark shadow side in the spiritual teaching that encourages emotional repression. This kind of fragmentation is called “spiritual bypassing”. Spiritual bypassing is an avoidance tactic. A superficial way of glossing over problems. In hopes that it might make us feel better in the short term, but ultimately solves nothing and just leaves the problem to linger on.
If we allow people to have their feelings and communicate them in a heathy manner, there is a possibility that perspectives and feelings will change. But if the culture or others discourage people from having their feelings, it’s possible that they will never feel differently. Getting locked in at the point of obstruction, in all the ugliness and fear, and these feelings might remain right there where we left them. Feelings can change when they are allowed to be themselves and expressed. The same way people can change when they are accepted as they are.
The only way out is through. Another cliché term used to describe how feeling the emotions we perceive as negative, is a necessary process so we can arrive in a place of acceptance and happiness. As I have lived through my own traumas and disappointments, this is the practice I have become most familiar with. I can see and feel the pain, suffering and ugliness. Its only being able to get through the hard times, that allow me to make different choices and decisions for the future.
I wonder, with all the ugliness in the media and with all the hidden stories of love, acceptance, forgiveness, and happiness… how many people are satisfying their need for intensity of emotion by seeking outrage, superiority, resentment and conflict?
Internal Structure
The structures of our internal realities we construct in our mind actually exist in our mind. We get to make the choice to be in the ugly or in the beautiful, in denial or the truth of our experience, to see the light or be in the dark. These choices shape our internal values which will directly affect our external behaviors. “As within, so without – as above, so below” … the world around us will resemble the world within, and vice versa. Based on our focus, ugliness is everywhere, or beauty abounds.
The journey to sovereignty of mind requires an inward migration. Where we can create some separation from our external nation, culture, economy, and civilization, even though we still live within its borders. We withdraw inwardly, to cross an internal boundary. Where we become aware of the patterns we’ve become so accustomed. To establish new goals, priorities and dreams.
In this internal migration, we stop consenting what is going on around us based on an inherited story and set of values we can no longer get behind. Individually, we continue to hoard material goods, buckets of food, and money in the bank for our own selfish interests that is encouraged by our capitalist world. While corporatism carries on buying and selling, burning and profiting, extracting and exploiting, celebrating record-high profits and trying to ignore record high temperatures. We travel inward to create a new way of thinking, believing and living.
It’s in this internal shift of consciousness, a spiritual migration, where I want to embody a new way of being. I cannot ignore, dismiss or disregard the story of ugliness that so many around me are living. I can make a different choice. To transcend and include the story of ugliness. So, I can live a different story of love. Where beauty abounds. This is a story (maybe even a dream) where all the religions of the planet can go forward and form a world religion in defiance of the ugliness to cultivate a sovereignty of mind that savors beautiful outward actions for all to benefit.
The Dream
On August 28, 1963, a quarter million people gathered in Washington, DC. Dr. Martin Luther King decided to go off script that day to begin his “I have a dream…” speech. His words can still be heard today. We all have dreams, goals and desires of what we want for ourselves, our loved ones and the world.
I sometimes find it easy to be demoralized by the ugliness of our species. The ignorance, stupidity, cowardly, greedy, egotistical, violent sides that exist in all of us that seem to predominate in too many. And I want to be careful with my words here and not get sucked into believing these traits are the only human traits. One of my dreams is not allowing the worst stories of humanity eclipse the best. As much as humans can be cruel to each other, they are also full of compassion, courage and kindness. I get to make the choice to focus on life and remember the dream I have for the next chapter in my life.
Our lives and our identities are not defined by our life’s disappointments, traumas, or bad decisions. We are defined by the good we continue to do in the world. By having the sovereignty of mind to choose to cultivate beauty and be generous of heart to fellow humans.
I have had this dream for the next chapter of my life. To reinvest my energies into the larger-than human system of life. It’s one of the reasons I moved to Thailand and S.E. Asia. To invest in the divine ecosystem of interdependence and sharing, into the harmonious arrangement of life, where we can see how we are all the same and interconnected. It’s why I think the concept of loving your neighbors, especially your poor neighbors, is so important. Better to be detached from what is stored in the bank account and more given to those in need. Better to be poor in money and rich in relationships.
In the end, it’s not the ugliness or the impending doom that is the point. It’s the dream. After I am gone, life will continue. Hopefully with more humble and wiser versions.