i'm inviting you to take a breath. to forget what you know for a moment. this is not a guilt trip. i have no agenda with this writing except for you to consider the possibility that transformation and truth are possible right here, right now. it is not anywhere else. and that change is not scary. it's not hard work. it's not tiring. it's actually about letting go. it's a relief. it's about setting down your baggage, removing the lenses from your eyes, and perhaps by doing so, you give yourself the gift of seeing something clearly for the very first time. a return to love.
pandemic.
murder.
a cry to how much healing this world needs.
a cry to start paying attention to where we need healing .
a call to
instead of finding all the things and people to blame,
to look inside of your self.
because we cannot control or change another,
much less the whole of humanity.
we cannot change the world with blame,
we cannot heal with hatred.
instead of waging war on each other,
can we raise the white flag
on the battlefield that is the real source of all suffering;
the source of every single one of our problems...
the war we fight every single second of every day... inside our minds.. against ourselves.
hate, anger, and all forms of evil,
are not love’s opposite,
but a cry to return to her.
as our brothers and sisters ask us to speak up,
to have the uncomfortable conversations,
and ask the difficult questions...
can we be brave?
can we put our pride aside for a moment?
can we let down our defensive guards and reactions?
this is not about you.
this is not about me.
this is about us.
there is no "I" in we.
as long as you feel the need to protect your own ego and identity and beliefs,
we can never stand in solidarity with one another.
because as we all know,
someone will always find something wrong with what we’re saying.
but let us speak with truth into our outer world ,
even if our words fall on deaf ears.
regardless of the opinions of others.
may we find courage to speak up and plant the seeds of justice .
let’s not hide or remain silent for fear of being seen and judged for your voice.
and may we ask the same of inner world;
with our relationship to ourselves.
ask the uncomfortable questions.
have the difficult conversations.
examine what we "think we know."
let us take a pause and be reborn within.
let us heal the very source of all darkness on this earth
the darkness that is not a fight against the light.
it is not a matter of good versus evil.
or this against that.
but the darkness that is a disease of our low consciousness.
and that low consciousness is not our fault.
it's not your fault.
it's no one's fault.
it's just how things are.
religion and opinion aside, we really don't know why.
that's just one of those existential predicaments.
call it sin. call it evolution. call it karma. the name and origin doesnt matter.
it's a sense of seperateness.
and it's just how things are.
it's not your fault that you're ignorant and unconscious of certain things.
everyone is.
i am.
it's not your fault that you are ignorant.
but it is your responsibility to heal and bring those unconscious, deeply ingrained beliefs into the light of your awareness, question them, and move towards refinement and truth, because otherwise you'll only continue to hurt yourself and hurt others.
the reason any man acts in cruelty,
is due to him experiencing lack within himself.
and he is trying to fill that hole ineffectively...
and at the expense of others...
actually only inevitably causing him self more and more pain and suffering.
hurt people hurt people.
let us honor those we lost,
by learning to love and honor ourselves.
for when we are so full of light,
we can never see another person not as a reflection of our own being.
and that light can dissolve all darkness.
that light and that love that you grow within,
is the only medicine that can truly heal this earth.
this is not a call to inaction or a disregard to our external world. you know what you need to do. you know your duty - your role. but i firmly believe that real change starts within. and when our own cup is full, we will actually be more effective in our external efforts because we will never operate out of lack - our cup will always be overflowing. An empty well cannot provide water to the village. Activism and humanitarianism are SO incredibly important, don't get me wrong. but for the purpose of this essay, which is calling us to look more closely into our inner worlds, consider this chinese proverb:
If there is light in the soul,
There will be beauty in the person.
If there is beauty in the person,
There will be harmony in the house.
If there is harmony in the house,
There will be order in the nation.
If there is order in the nation,
There will be peace in the world.
listen,
i don’t have some huge following,
so i don’t know who’s going to hear this.
or how many it will reach.
but that’s not my concern.
if my words play any kind of role in just one persons path to love… it’s worth it.
i hesitated in posting this,
because i thought,
who am i to have a voice?
who am i to express my self?
well... it's funny. i’m actually no one.
and you are too.
everyone is just what they are: a human. not above or below anyone else.
why do some people feel like their opinion is always the right view while others hide in fear of being judged?
this is everyone’s first time on earth (that most can remember) if i’m not mistaken.
and you may not agree with me...
good. i don’t want you to agree with me.
i want you to question what i’m saying.
i want you to question yourself,
and experience for yourself what is true.
i don’t have an answer.
and neither do you.
neither does anyone.
i am not a product of my culture and my circumstances.
you are not a product of your culture and your circumstances.
you are your own person. you are not a product.
however, we have tricked ourselves into believing that we are “someone”
who are you without all these labels and identities?
think about it.
experience it.
if you take away your name and your job title and and what you look like and your relationships and your past?
think about it.
experience it.
in the absence of thought.
experience it.
well, you’re no one...
you're just awareness.
you don't know what you are.
all you might be able to gather is that you’re just another human having an experience and trying to be happy and figure it all out.
you do have a choice in deciding who you are and who you want to be.
ask yourself...
"what beliefs have i TRULY decided for myself and what have i blindly accepted because my surroundings told me they were true?"
really sit with this.
... and may i just suggest that... from my years of study both of psychology in academia and through personal study of religion, spirituality, physics, other masters and teachers, etc., and through my own personal direct experience... you may find that you actually know nothing.
...
and so as you read this. and maybe re-read this, you may find yourself subtly agreeing or disagreeing with every statement made (we usually do this subconsciously). or maybe a lot of what i'm saying sounds cliche or you're just silently saying "i know" because you've seen it a million times.
stop.
don't agree with me.
don't say "i know"
do you?
if we truly knew these, perhaps simple, truths that i'm advocating for here, we would not ever suffer. ever.
the most simple things are often the ones that are overlooked because we're so quick to say "i know." and by the assumption that we already know, we exclude every other possibility. we exclude the possibility that we don't know. we exclude the possibility that we need to look deeper - that we can always learn to embody something with more depth.
our lives are so saturated with content and ideas and opinions that we're always looking for something "new" to know and consume, and so we don't sit with, and really look into the depth of simple things like what it is to "love yourself" or "love all". or what it is to "be in the moment" or what it is to "be happy" or what it is to "serve"... anything.
so as you read, pretend you don't know anything. pretend it's all brand new.
because when we look at everything as brand new, that's when we actually begin to learn.
...
from that place of complete surrender of what you know, you get to decide to act out of fear and resentment and hatred and anger
or to act out of love.
it is a choice.
have you ever stopped for just one second from your constant obsession with your own likes, dislikes, choices, and actions... stopped for just one moment from drowning in what you thought was "right" or "wrong"? who was right or wrong? have you ever taken one single pause from your opinions, your obsessions on your past and future? your addiction to your own thoughts and beliefs?
ever took one second to realize,
“damn... i really don’t know anything”
i have absolutely no idea what is going on.
i don’t know what life is
i don’t know what reality is
i don’t know what i am
i don’t know why im here
why am i having a human experience?
why are things the way they are?
what is the very basis of this human experience we are having?
you see, everyone is so wrapped up in their lives that they don’t pause and even question the fact that they are having a life at all!
and even if we have questioned it, we forget it. it fades into the background.
life is the stage. we are the actors. we forget that we are having this thing called "a life." we get so caught up in the drama of the scene that we forget that we are playing a role. that we are on a stage.
we don't know anything.
perhaps with the exception of the enlightened, but even then, we cant know. we're not there. yet.
and guess what... every single human being is in this same exact predicament.
myself included of course.
no one knows anything
no one knows what they are
no one knows what life is
no one knows why we were born
no one knows why we die
or where we came from
or where we go
you see, the problems arise when we think we know something..
can we let go of our egos for one second and recognize that all we can really know is that we are having a human experience? and we don’t even know what a human experience is, or what is means, we just know we’re having it. it is all unknown. and it is all terribly confusing. and the mind cannot even begin to grasp these existential phenomena…
who are you without your identities and labels?
pause. experience this.
...
what do you know without creating concepts and without a past to reference? what can you know without sensation and perception? what can you know that is not through some kind of lens of your own subjective experience?
pause. experience this.
...
and so... in the realization that we all know nothing... we’re all just ultimately confused humans tricking ourselves into thinking we know something about anything; with the ego gone, with our GRIPS to our identities and beliefs softened. with letting go of being the “someone who knows something about anything”...
...we begin wake up... and we begin to see that when we stop knowing, stop judging ourselves, stop judging others, we can just experience this thing without the need to make distinctions and separations between what we believe to be this or that. black or white. good or bad.
and maybe just maybe... this is absolutely absurd.. since we know nothing, and are all confused...
maybe we can come together to support and be there for each other and love each other through all the confusion.
perhaps some people don’t wanna hear this...
us, us people, don’t like the notion that we might be wrong hehe.
or not even wrong, but that we don't know anything.
people don’t like the thought of reevaluating the beliefs they’ve clung to so dearly their whole lives. that have been injected into them and reinforced by their ancestors. their culture.
because this questioning and reevaluating involves letting go of our identity... letting go of that sense of "I" as being different than anything else.
questioning yourself, your identity, can be uncomfortable.
not knowing is uncomfortable.
uncertainty is scary.
but EVERYthing is uncertain.
and regarding the horrific things that happen in this world,
you may think it is not your place to speak up,
to not care,
to not have an opinion,
but it is your place because like everyone else on this planet, you are a human.
only you can know what “caring” looks like for you.
but it is your duty as a human being to genuinely want every single human on this planet to be liberated. to be happy and free.
because i truly believe that at the very core of every human... all we really really want... is to feel connection. to feel something real. to feel something true.
so we should care about the fact that humanity is very very sick
and we spend our lives trying to ignore and bury and distract ourselves from the fact that we are terrified of the fact that we don’t know anything.
we are sick.
we need healing.
and only you can heal yourself.
you cannot heal another person,
but you can be an example of what love looks like.
so they can learn to heal themselves.
however,
it is not your place to judge,
it is not your place to say how one should live,
how one should be.
it is not your place to add even more darkness and hate into an already dark and hateful world.
yes there is atrocity...
but also beauty.
what direction do you want to move in?
with all the brilliants minds, in all of history has anyone ever found a meaning to life all the yogi monks and devotees and scientists and philosophers has anyone found THE ONE true answer?
no
you can search within and search outside yourself for an answer for a lifetime
and you will only find more questions.
and what can we do with this?
when we finally come to the experiential realization that we know nothing?
we become humble.
and we look around...
and begin to maybe for the first time fully begin to see what this life is.
not a competition...
against ourselves each other or an ideal.
life is the ultimate mystery.
and what else can we do but turn to each other with love and compassion as we are all lost in this great mystery together?
we are all alone.
so give everyone a damn break. give yourself a break. learn to cultivate compassion instead of judgement because this is all our first time living! obviously we're going to mess up. but we cant ruminate in guilt and shame, we need to learn to love every single part of ourselves. every single part of life - from the horrific to the sublime, because life is the only thing we can know in this moment, and we cannot move towards healing the planet and supporting one another and acting with positivity, autonomy, and efficiency is we are blinded by judgement.
letting go of judgement. learning to heal... these things are not an event. they are a process. there is no rush. be patient. your direction and sensitivity is so much more important that your speed. don't let this be overwhelming. you don't need to (and shouldn't because it's near impossible) try to heal everything at once. you don't need even to search for what needs healing. you just create the space to listen and deal with whatever it is, as it arises, in the present moment. and every time you let go of something - you heal a little more... you get just a little bit more room to breathe. you learn to love yourself, your circumstances, and others, just a little bit more. and it will feel like small steps until you look back on your journey and see just how far you've come.
contemplate the ways you judge "this is good" "this is bad" in even the smallest ways. comparison to others or an ideal. your possessions. your appearance. your relationships. your decisions, your goals, your daily activities. cleaning your house. taking a shower. looking at social media. driving your car. watching a movie. brushing your teeth.
as you become more sensitive, you'll notice that you are always judging! this is why most people dislike meditating; because when they become quiet, they become aware of how loud their minds are, and they cant stand it... it's wildly uncomfortable. it's uncomfortable because the mind is constantly trying to find something to judge. it's an addiction. and this judgement is the source of every bit of suffering in this human experience. you want to be free from it, believe me! or don't believe me, experience it for yourself. listen to other people who you find more credible and share a similar message.
and when i say suffering, i don't mean "negative" things. i'm referring to our mind's reaction to "negative" or "positive" things. how we label. how we make events personal to ourselves (when most things have nothing to do with you). how we take everything so seriously. you can be in pain and not be suffering. suffering is not a condition of the heart or of the body. it is a condition of the mind. and when we suffer, we add an additional layer of resistance and pain on top of an already objectively painful experience.
we judge and therefore suffer, because, whether we are conscious of it or not, we interpret everything in our lives as "how does this relate to me? how does this effect me?" just sit with this. have you ever experienced much, if anything, that was not from your own point of view? just sit with this. whether in overt or in subtle ways we do this in response to everything. we become slaves to the self-mind instead of mastering it and using it as the beautiful and incredible tool it is.
judgement is not the same as discernment. letting go of judgement doesnt make us stupid. it actually makes us more clear-headed and therefore more effective at thinking and acting from a clear mind and open heart. judging is the mind trying to make everything about "me". discernment doesn't take things personally and remembers thats we know nothing but we make the best decision from what we can, with clarity, see in the current situation. judgement deals with past or future attachment to our identities. discernment presently sees the bigger picture. the landscape that is bigger than "me" bigger than my attachments and identities. discernment works, from a place of love, towards truth.
how do we let go? how do we heal?
love is the answer.
learn to see through the eyes of the heart. where judgement cannot exist.
dive deep into the practice of loving present awareness.
i've spent my whole life looking for answers.
looking for truth.
and look, i don't know any more or less than you.
but speaking from my own personal direct experience,
love is the only answer i've found.
or rather, it's what i remembered.
i am 22 years old.
which to many seems young.
"how could i know anything?"
well, im not claiming to.
but i the more i return to love, the more beautiful life is.
the more effective i am in my relationships and day to day activities.
and the happier i am.
it takes letting go, to uncover that love.
it's nothing apart from you.
it's just been forgotten.
as we've become so distracted by identifying and attaching to material reality;
taking ourselves out of the present moment;
lost in and victim to our minds.
love only asks us to remember her.
to come home.
...
and so in returning to current events,
and here’s something that might make you uncomfortable or angry,
can we even love the murderers?
the oppressors?
the 1%?
the corrupt government?
the bystanders?
our friends and family or neighbors who act in ways we can't understand?
can we even show them love and compassion?
not to condone their actions...
not to like what they did...
but to know that hurt people hurt people.
and if those people had known love instead of lack,
consciousness instead of ignorance,
connection instead of separateness,
acts of barbarity would never occur.
we are not free until we are all free.
we cannot love until we are all become love.
an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind
-gandhi
darkness can not drive out darkness only light can do that.
hate cannot drive out hate only love can do that
-MLK jr
be the change you wish to see in the world.
-gandhi
yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. today I am wise, so I am changing myself.
-rumi
can we revisit these quotes with more integrity. can we sit with them an experience them with more depth?
can we learn to TRULY be love?
instead of telling ourselves that love is the answer,
making it another belief,
another ideal,
can we be the living embodiment of its essence?
can we be love?
...
again, i, nor anyone can say what the "right" way to live is.
only you can discover that for yourself.
for me, that's been continuously surrendering to the fact that i know nothing. and trying my best to fuel every action with love in the direction towards the truth.
and that looks different for every person.
to move in the direct of truth is about learning how to live with more and more honesty. and honesty is more that just telling the truth of what you know. it's about having the courage to uncover all of the things that you do not know.
...
if you ever want to talk i am here for you. questions. clarifications. expansions. resources. anything. no matter who you are.
no matter who you are, i love you. and you are loved. if you've even read this far, and if anything was triggering and made you get defensive, good. because everything i said was out of a place of authentic not-knowing and the genuine desire for the happiness and freedom of all people. nothing i said was intended to be a personal attack (and it actually can not be personal because i don't know who's gonna read this! :). this is hard love. its a hard truth. swallow it. you make it personal. you choose to suffer. so perhaps in those places where you felt offense or guilt, in those instances where you felt yourself get defensive, (well maybe i was out of line or didnt communicate something well - please tell me, i'd love to have a conversation) but maybe those are some places to begin to send love and compassion to yourself.
maybe that's a good place to start.
to question.
to begin the healing process. <3
in every moment, each time we have an undesirebale experience, it is an opportunity to either wake up, or to fall further asleep. you choose. waking up leads to peace, joy, love, and freedom. whereas falling asleep leads to more rigidity, a deeper sense of separation, and more suffering.
i believe it’s becoming increasingly clear with the current global events and the current social climate that no one has a correct answer.
quarantine? or let the virus run its course?
peaceful protest? or express your anger violently as a cry for recognition so maybe they’ll finally pay attention?
i don’t know.
no one knows.
but this world knows a lot of suffering.
whatever happens will happen.
i just pray it bring us closer together instead of separating us further.
and remember to help anyone else, you cant be drowning, yourself.
learn how to swim.
and smile. breathe.
change is scary and passionate and angry. but it is also filled with so much love and joy because we are fighting for the good, for positive change, for a better world and we are uniting together to dissolve this darkness and ignorance. fighting for positive change is exhausting. i empathize with you. but with all your struggles and commitments aside, for just one second, just let it go. forget who you are. forget what you're doing. take the time to take a breath. smile. look at or listen to something beautiful. and do it for no reason at all. do it just for the sake of itself. just appreciate being human without all the chaos and judgement and meaning for a moment. remember love for a moment.
i can’t say that i can ever begin to understand what being the target of such injustice is like....
but i stand beside you.
i accept the extremely likely possibility that i have unconscious behaviors and beliefs that are contributing to a broken system, instead of fighting against it. and that's not my fault. it's not my intention. i don't like that possibility. my best friend is mixed. my sister is black. i have so many friends and role models who are people of color. but it's my responsibility to uncover the ignorance and dissolve it. that's the most important thing i can do. and this uncovering isn't limited to this movement alone. this is in terms of all prejudice. of all marginalization. of all injustice. if you do nothing for the current social movement, just do this please.
you are all my brothers and sisters
my heart is with yours
i pray for peace.
i pray for unity.
i pray for love.
...
with so so so much love,
kat
i chose to include various images from my trips to haiti because although this nation is one of the most poverty-stricken areas of the world - these people are happy. these people know how to love. perhaps it's because when you have nothing, you have to look for something you cant hold in your hands. that something that will always feed you. that thing that will always keep you warm. that thing will never leave you. when i spend time with these beautiful humans they remind me of what it is to live with love. a love that knows no condition. a love that is independent of all circumstance. something money, nor health, nor social position, nor education could ever give. something you have to learn to accept from those around you and to spread unto everyone. not out of obligation, or expectation, but because we genuinely want to. because love never runs out. because we are love. it is something you learn to remember within yourself. nothing can take that from you. that is your birthright.
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