Burying the Triangle

Ah, the refreshing feel of a cool breeze. Fall has arrived in Central Texas and you can feel it, at least in the early morning hours. The air is crisp and carries more moisture. The clarity of the night sky has shifted, too, giving the Moon and stars a sharper image, reminding me of the bigger picture.

How are YOU feeling these days? How are you managing the tension? You can't avoid it, really. It is everywhere we turn: politically, financially, emotionally...Everyone I know seems pushed to their limits of coping.

Big questions are arising as societal illusions crumble beneath the weight of transparency. The underbelly of our lives - secrets that have been hidden in the shadows for decades, some maybe longer - are being exposed, creating waves of conflict between what we thought things were and what they actually are. It's unsettling, to say the least.

When the people we give our trust to are exposed as frauds, who do we trust? When the systems we rely on are exposed as manipulative, what do we rely on? Where do we find comfort when the shadow aspects of our humanity are exposed - those ugly truths that remained safely hidden from our view for so long? Once we've seen them, trying to ignore them is like trying to forget someone you've known your whole life.

It's not possible or pretty. In fact, it's downright ugly. Messy. Scary.

Fear is a funny thing. Fear seduces us into a mode of defensiveness, judgement, and blame. We fear being victimized; we also fear being responsible. We don't want to be victims; nor do we want to be perpetrators of persecution. Yet where we find one, we find the other, plus a third: the rescuer. These three energies feed on each other and thrive together.

It's the ever-living Triangle of Victim-Persecutor-Rescuer...the essential fabric of our most beloved tales.

The funny thing is, until we face what is lurking in the shadows - all the things we fear and reject - until we accept their existence and take responsibility for calling them back to the light, to a place of love, we will suffer. Because until then, we will continue to play out the Victim-Persecutor-Rescuer Triangle, ad infinitum, within our psyches and our lives.

To break free of this Triangle, each and every one of us must recognize our role in it. How do we perpetuate this Triangle? How does it play out in our lives, in our relationships, communities, and society? Which of the three are we - Victim, Persecutor, Rescuer - and how can we stop it? How can we put an end to the Triangle template that currently rules our lives? There is no denying that it does. It's a psycho-emotional epidemic within the human race.

As long as we keep this Triangle in play within our lives, we will live in fear and we will suffer. It is that simple.

During these heated times of debate, opinion, perspective, preference and emotional acting out based in fear, it is important to practice the one bit of wisdom that flows through every channel: LOVE.

Finding LOVE for those we respect and trust is one thing. But can you find LOVE within your heart for those you fear and reject? Disagree with? Detest or loathe? Feel victimized by? Can you recognize that even they are held in the hand of the Divine (because nothing and no one is excluded), and that you are as much a part of the Triangle messiness as they are? 

Perhaps you feel like a Victim at another person's hands. Interestingly, the roles in the Triangle are fluid, meaning each player at some time or another takes on the other roles. We are all Victims, Persecutors and Rescuers to some degree, moving in and out of these roles in different life situations. As an example, consider that if you fear and blame someone for something, you make them a Persecutor and yourself a Victim. By blaming them, however, you become a Persecutor and make them a Victim. If you then set out to protect others from this person, you become a Rescuer and make the others Victims...and the Triangle paradigm continues.

The many problems with this paradigm are obvious, but one big issue with it is that playing these roles is a waste of our time and energy. It gets us nowhere worthy. Nothing will settle into a place of stability as long as we keep this Triangle going. Our time and energy are better spent building a collaborative Circle with others rather than deepening the divisive nature of the Triangle. Yes, life can be a collaborative Circle of peace and LOVE.

Now more than ever, it is time to step out of this exhaustive, destructive Triangle and into a new paradigm of peace-filled co-existence. All we have to do is give up this Triangle game - stop feeding it within ourselves and in our relationships. Yes, if you look, you can identify your very own places of being a Victim. Persecutor, and Rescuer. Remember - we are all all of them. We must ditch our willingness to play this game if we are to have a hope of shifting the ugliness of its drama within our culture at large.

Grab a shovel - a BIG one, not a wimpy gardening one. It's time to put this Triangle to rest six feet under.

In the name of LIFE

 A few nights ago I went to a world-wide screening of a new film called "Unity." It was...well, quite frankly, disturbing. I nearly walked out within the first 10 minutes. Instead, I covered my eyes, sat in my seat and sobbed at the suffering being shown. It was not fiction; it was life - the suffering in this life that we humans have created and that we maintain through things like war, and how we feed ourselves. It was a sort of documentary. I felt compelled to stay, though at the time I was uncertain as to why. Typically, I would have left immediately.

In hindsight I realize there was a part of me ready to bridge the gap, to change my choice of not looking to looking, to feel the reality of what humanity has created, to fully step into the realm of Oneness and to recognize that on some level, I am contributing to the horrors shown...perhaps through apathy, denial, resistance, justification, by being choosey about what I allow into my consciousness...

It took all my conviction to stay in that theater, watching the reality before me. It is one thing to read and hear about such things; it is quite another to watch their painful unfolding and feel it throughout my body as if it were happening to me. Now I know that it was happening to me. It does happen to me, because on the most intimate level of being, there is no separation. The experience, at times, was nearly unbearable and was certainly traumatic...as it should be. Only a sociopath might watch such a film and feel something other than complete disgust and deep compassion.

I presume the intent of this hard-hitting film was to shake people out of their comfort zones, to fling us out of complacency into a place where we can no longer deny the brutality we participate in every day, even if by default...and not just to other Homo Sapiens but to all creatures that share this life, this planet with us. Important questions were raised...

For instance, 

• How is it that one can condone and allow horrific stockyards for the inhumane growing and slaughtering of cows, pigs, turkeys and chickens in the United States yet scoff at how the Chinese handle dogs and cats in the same inhumane ways in their country? 
• How is it that one can justify eating sea-dwelling creatures but not land-dwelling creatures? What about sky-dwelling creatures? 
• What makes the life of a shrimp or a crab any less significant than the life of a cow or a chicken? What about a horse or a dog or a cat? A clam?
• What is it that puts the value of one living creature's life above or below the value of another living creature's life? 
  

Every creature values its life and wants to have it just as we do ours. They also have a right to have it, just as we do ours. We may believe we can speak for them, choose for them, disregard them for our own purposes but that is not ours to do. Their life is not ours to overtake. It is no more or less valuable than our own life is in the whole of creation. They do not want it taken away from them any more than we want ours taken away from us, especially without consideration and in fact, with complete disregard. Why would they? Why would we? Why would any living creature?

For many of our fellow creatures, we take their babies, their freedom and ultimately their lives. We separate them from their family, their clans, their tribes and even their homes. We use them for selfishness and greed in the name of survival, sustenance or even worse, pleasure or entertainment but this is a great lie. It is the error thinking of our ego. It is nothing more than the brutality and insanity of what I now call species slavery: exhausting labor, drudgery, bondage, one life sacrificed without regard...

And by whose authority? None of us - not one of us among the race of Homo Sapiens has the authority to say one life is more or less valuable than any other, or in essence: My life is more valuable than yours; your life is less valuable than mine. Money does not give one that authority; nor does power. Some may take it, but it is not theirs to take. Life belongs to us all, period. It was given to us all by the same loving Source. No species has a right to dominate any other. We are not the same, but we are equal.

Spiritual master S'rila Prabhupada once said, "As a state is protected by the department of law and order, so the state of the universe, of which this earth is only an insignificant fragment, is protected by the laws of nature. This material nature is one of the various potencies of God, who is the ultimate proprietor of everything that be. This earth is, therefore, the property of God, but we, the living entities, especially the so-called civilized human beings, are claiming God's property as our own under both an individual and collective false conception. If you want peace, you have to remove this false conception from your mind and from the world. This false claim of proprietorship by the human race is partly or wholly the cause of all disturbances of peace on earth." 

There are those that will argue to maintain the brutality in the name of livelihood, survival, necessity, etc. but these excuses are all lies. Many lies are used to maintain species slavery today. It does not have to be this way. We can change this tragic trajectory, but it will take a major overhaul among the lives of Homo Sapiens. 

• It means that as Homo Sapiens, we relinquish our false conception of proprietorship of the earth and its creatures back to God, by whatever name you choose to call that creative life Source and force.
• It means that as Homo Sapiens, we agree to turn away from the destructive brutalities of war and turn instead toward peace, acceptance, compassion and collaboration.
• It means we get rid of the industrialization of our food system and return to local, sustainable food systems that do not prioritize or include meats and flesh of our fellow creatures. 
• It means many livelihoods change form. 
• It means laws align with the affirmation of all life forms. 
• It means, above all, that we come to view life on this planet as one living organism of which Homo Sapiens are but a tiny part of a much larger whole comprised of many, many species...not the same, but equal....equal in terms of our right to and desire for life and freedom and peace, no matter what.

To say I cried a lot during the film is an understatement. I sobbed deeply at times, for the breaking of my heart at the brutality being witnessed, and knowing that it happens every single day across the globe on a mighty scale. I spent hours crying and meditating when I got home, saying Ho'Oponopono and doing recapitulation, feeling the pain and suffering Homo Sapiens inflict on our own species and on other species of this world seemingly without regard, as if we are separate from them, better than them. And that was the key to this film.

In realizing once and for all that there is no separation of life - that what one life suffers we all suffer - we find compassion, the kind of compassion it takes to make something different happen. 

• Only by choosing to see the brutal truth of what we have created in this world, are still creating, can we change it. The reasons we got here no longer matter; it is time for change. 
• Only by recognizing how we participate in the suffering as Homo Sapiens can we change it. 
• Only by acknowledging that everything here is sacred - animals, birds, people, plants, sea creatures - can we stop the brutality. 

What we do to ourselves and to other species is disturbing, traumatic... insane even. We shy away from responsibility for things we are not a direct part of and yet we do participate as members of the Human species, Homo Sapiens. In the film, they used the term Homo Spiritual to describe the next level of our evolution. This means we evolve past the point of believing in the (ego) illusion of separation. This means we evolve to view all life as sacred and equal. This means we evolve to coexist in balance, harmony, compassion, collaboration and egalitarianism. Homo Spiritual: humans who have evolved beyond the drives of their egos to a place of true Oneness where every living creature can thrive in life.

This is ours to rectify. This is ours to balance and harmonize because it is the species of Homo Sapiens that perpetuate it. Start now, today, somewhere, somehow, with one loving, compassionate choice. It is time. It will take every single one of us to change what we have created and continue to support, even if by choosing not to look too closely. No one is excluded from the brutality of this creation...no one...because we are this creation and this creation is us. 

Do not close your eyes or your heart any longer. It is time. Please. In the name of life...