When you meet anyone, remember it is a holy encounter. As you see him you will see yourself. As you treat him you will treat yourself. As you think of him you will think of yourself. Never forget this, for in him you will find yourself or lose yourself. – A Course in Miracles
This week we observed firsthand the effect of dehumanization that resulted in the death of a man in the custody of police officers. The egregious manner of restraint by the officer upon the unmoving man pinned to the ground has shocked the conscience of millions. Me too.
If there is a silver lining in this tragic situation, it is the widespread dissemination of this story which graphically depicts a deadly moral failure and perhaps uncovers a system that allows it to fester unmitigated due to lack of public awareness and demands for justice and reform. Unlike Covid19, this “virus” does not target the human population equally and thus does not become everybody’s problem and concern. Although it is seen by many as an act of racial violence – white upon black, it evidences a much broader human defect, which must ultimately be examined and addressed at its source.
As William Blake eloquently observed “If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, Infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro' narrow chinks of his cavern.” Simply stated, we don’t see the world (including all its inhabitants) as it is, we see it as we are. And the state in which “we are” most of the time is as A Course in Miracles puts it, “At home in God, dreaming we are in exile.” You and I suffer the effects of believing and feeling that we are are separate from our Source, separate from Love, peace, wellbeing. Out of this sense of separation, I look out at the world to see what’s missing or broken that is causing my suffering. And other people, who are out in the world, are all fair game for this projection and become the prime suspects in our blame game, a charade that can devolve into demonization and lay at their feet the cause for our every discomfort.
That this perceptual bias and failure to recognize the source of our suffering would merely affect frustration in our own failure to meet our needs would be only personally tragic in our quest for truth and freedom, but that we flagrantly and indiscriminately contaminate all our relations with this single erroneous basis of our unhappiness is the ego’s pandemic that leaves death and destruction in its wake. When we come to recognize the source of the problem we are on notice and can no longer spin stories of projection and blame. Jesus said, “your enemies are members of your own household,” which I take as a wakeup call pointing to self-examination. It is asking each of us to take an honest, unflinching look at our own hearts and minds to see where we are blocking the “awareness of love’s presence.”
We can call for justice and reform and these are all good and proper for a society that would ensure civility, by setting out boundaries and barriers to deter the harm that unrestrained egoic behavior can wreak upon fellow humans. But first and last we must see where this behavior comes from – it's not from a lack of deterrence. At its source, it is the forgotten awareness of who and what we truly are.
But we are not victims of the world. We can resolve to evolve. The first step can be to change our perspective on difficult relationships - from seeing them as obstacles to our spiritual growth (against us) to necessary grist for the mill of our spiritual awakening. Where we might believe another could block our Light, we come to see the light (and the shadow) is within us. In this context, other people can be the unwitting allies to reveal conflicted parts of ourselves- by seeing in them those unhealed parts of us that we can't see without them being our mirror. Does that sound like spiritual candy coating? Perhaps, at first, but taken in over time, it can be like a distasteful medicine that heals us.
We know that this will not be the last tragedy we witness. The problem took time to become rooted in us. While it may remain an infectious dis-ease amongst us, may it not be due to a lack of willingness on my part; to see where I am part of the problem, where my eyes fail to show me my brother as he truly is, and my willingness to release the false beliefs that my salvation lies without. May I remember in the midst of the myriad of delusional appearances, that I am at home in God, the only true reality, and thus know that nobody and nothing can be against me.
So be it.
Larry
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