Jesus is reported to have said “They know not what they are doing” Why would anyone harm themselves or another if they “knew” connected with compassion and care what they were doing. We have all betrayed ourselves and each other in acts that are in disconnection from care.
We have all been innocent and unconscious with carelessness, where we didnt know we were harming another or ourselves.
Humans are also capable of “double think” and many defenses to feeling that can rationalise, deny and be in selective negligence from the harm that might result from our actions.
Harm can be erotised in the service of feeling powerful and triumphant over another in reaction to past unintegrated experiences of helplessness. Revenging others for the failures of care we have suffered perpetuates the vicious cycle of harm happening all over our planet.
Every time we reject an aspect of ourselves or another person or any aspect of the world around and inside of us, we are never actually successfully getting rid of this. We are perpetuating harm in the service of creating the illusion of realities based in denial of the fuller picture. If i can’t see you, then you have gone away. This is literalised by many humans with the belief that if I kill you, you will go away. Little do we know that this is an act that will never go away and will wake us up in the dead of night and haunt our souls till we die too. People who have killed have the depths of hell to live in should they ever get to “know” what they have done. Suicide is a common response to the intensity of this knowing. Remorse is not easy. Saying sorry is harder. Acknowledgment is like Jesus nailed to the cross. It is no wonder we humans block emotions and close our hearts from even the seemingly little betrayals of lack of care that causes harm.
When a bird flies over the horizon, it never disappears, it still exists in the world. We as humans can acknowledge what we can see and our minds can deceive us with what we cant literally see. We are little more matured than a child hiding their eyes in the belief that they are hidden. Now something that is microscopic is harming us that we didn’t see coming. The microscope world is actually more powerful than anything big. I know this from nearly dying from Malaria after being bitten outside of my awareness by a tiny Mosquito. We know this from the myriad of hidden bacterial and viral colonies that live alongside us and inside us that are not all in harmony with our health. Our attitude and intentions seem also mysteriously influential on these little creatures.
I am amazed with how many parallel realities we are all engaging with simultaneously. I wonder if our imaginations are the most powerful creators? There are people living in harmony without hygiene barriers or disinfectant sprays against the microscopic worlds, living without fear in harmony and health beside the opposite predictions of others. There is a tradition in the Bwiti in Gabon where the chief breathes his mouth and gut bacteria and rubs his sweaty armpits into the hands of each member; the bacteria colonies being important participants within the community. I am in awe of how this healthy cohabiting of all aspects of life can this be true alongside the other true realities of other people who kill bacteria and viruses with “anti bacteria sprays and disinfectants living with the real life threatening affects of the microscopic worlds. The Bwiti tribe also surrender to the intelligence of insects until they are in relaxation with their stings and bites. This leads to fearless walking barefoot through the forest and wading wait high through swamps.
Surfers surrender their minds to hundred feet high waves and ride them with body intelligence without which they would surely drown. Our minds can separate us from the natural worlds around us and in us when they are directing and not receiving life.
“I am sorry” is perhaps the only spell to transform pain of separation back into harmony. When we are sorry from what we have directed without receiving, we know the power of our creations.
It came to me in a dream … the universe spoke to me – “be careful what you let go of, whether it’s a tin can or a screwed up piece of writing you’ve rejected or someone in your life or an aspect of your nature you despise and are ashamed of. I know there is much to not accept happening on this planet but know that I am all of you and if you want to place these things in different places outside of you put them where they are useful and bless them with the deepest gratitude in your heart for they are you.”
When I judge another with what I announce does not belong to me, whether it is a germ or a piece of rubbish, it never goes away and there is very often a price to pay. There is a big debt building for us humans that we are just starting to pay the price for. Buy now pay later is what the forests said. Only when we can feel the deepest grief and rage in ourselves and in others for all the grief and rage that’s been discarded with disregard can we end the hurting of it.
Hurting with each other rather than hurting each other heals wars. We hurt another less when we can feel it hurting ourselves too. We are less anxious or depressed when we are not alone with our grief and losses.
Feeling the pain of hurt we’ve caused and hurt we’ve felt is part of the excruciating birthing of ourselves back into connection.
Part of being human is the relief when we feel ourselves belonging, even if we are hurting together. The pain of torture witnessed with another’s mirror neurons in empathy is less than the pain of torture on our own. The pain of torture witnessed by a sadist is magnified. Deep inside of us every act of separation from care leaves spikes of terror in our memory.
Words of re-cognition can soothe this terror literally calming the parts of the brain that are signaling hormonal and nervous system responses anxiously seeking resolution and integration back into harmony. Words are spells that can change our state from terror to harmony. Our own words are the unique healing spell recipe of validation and belonging when they are recognised in the heart voice of another as it is experienced in Body Poem.
Remorse is necessary if we are to recognise these parts of others we have rejected as also parts of who we are.
I listen to my children and their soul beings outraged desperate to birth somewhere that’s true and congruent, to grow their creations from carefully prepared foundations of care. The double thinking of life and blinking out of all the harm that’s being done is an outrage.
How can we look directly into each other’s eyes and not blink away from what we are hiding from each other?
That could be why so many of our inner and outer children are raging and trying to jump into the driver’s seat of cars on routes to destruction. It is our duty of care as adults driving such powerful vehicles to change the ways we have disregarded other people and the “otherness” and “it” of animals, plants, trees, and all conscious matter and beings on our planet.
At the same time, justice is being with the “just is” and I also accept the limitations of what I have the capacity to bear witness to and integrate. I accept my frailty and predisposition with the impossible dualities of needing permanence in a transient world, of fearing my mortality in the immortality of the cosmos, of seeking certainty when the next moment is emerging in ways I cannot predict.
I am growing my voice exploring with language and art the spaces in between these dualities. My tender breaths vocalising what’s true, what I am experiencing in my body right now, singing from the lonely and terrified parts of me held in the memories in my heart beating to be heard. When I accept my non-acceptance and accept my frailty and outrage and grief, I welcome home all those aspects for another to come home to and from too.
I am both sorry and grateful for all the people and bins who have received my “rubbish” and the Earth that holds it all in “landfills”. Recycling and Body Poem can be likened to harvesting our projections, welcoming home, and transforming the parts we have exiled because nothing ever really goes away. I keep coming back to the bird flying over the horizon and still being there even though I can’t see it.
Every plastic bottle I have thrown away is still there. With the understanding that words are spells, every insult I have given is still there as a silently hidden cortisol spike in another’s body when those words are heard again. Only when the hurt is seen, recognised, validated and shared does it stop hurting out of sight.
Remorse is necessary. I feel its necessity when I hear my sorrow felt by another saying “I am sorry” when I am hurting.
Someone sometime has to say “I am Sorry” and understand that “I” is also the “we” past present and future of all human beings including the ones we don’t identify with as being aspects of ourselves.
I know I will not need to say sorry if I ask myself with each decision I make in life “Is this win-win?”
Imagine every being is sentient with intelligence, insects plants animals birds bacteria crystals water trees … and imagine our relationship in win win co creation. We can begin with listening to the exiled and un recognised parts of ourselves and from this kindness and acceptance we have a greater capacity to offer this to the other beings on our planet.