Bringing Balance To Our Communities
“Everyone’s job here is to create heaven on Earth.” - Dr Robert
Are you old enough to remember Limp Bizkit? This morning I got the song with the lyrics (shut your eyes and ears if you’re sensitive):
“It’s just one of those days,
where you don’t wanna wake up.
Everything is fucked.
Everybody sucks.
You don’t really know why,
but you wanna justify…
RIPPING SOMEONE’S HEAD OFF
No human contact
And if you interact, your life is on contract
Your best bet is to stay away, motherfucker
It’s just one of those days
I used to sing this shit, loudly, with my first real boyfriend. I was 14. Were the kids ok? lol
There are days where everything does seem fucked. The world is hopeless, our society on a path to never-ending crumbling and loss. The Earth will survive and swallow us whole. Humanity is a goner.
And then you listen to someone or something that makes you think something is still growing here.
I had thought, earlier today at around the time that song jumped in my head, that the woman I was giving a ride to the doctor’s office probably benefitted greatly from her doctor visits because of the interaction it gave her with loving people. I thought about how she could have health issues in order to get close to people.
We’ve done stranger things in our lives.
But this isn’t what I want. This isn’t balanced. This is a desperate workaround filled with pain and circumstance.
I want balance in my community.
I want a community to balance.
It occurs to me that -unity is a part of “community.” A sense of unity for an intended purpose. Our community might be centered around kickball and drinking with our friends, as one of my friends joined back in college. Our community might be church, which I’ve momentarily decided I can’t get on board with because of its apparent limitations on God, no matter how they portray the infinite. But maybe you’ve got a great church that suits you and you them. Community might be a sense of culture, of common experiences and common places.
Community is a something you feel part of. Strings of connection that bind you to your humanness as well as to the people in your immediate surroundings.
You must be known to be a part of a community.
When it comes to intimate community that’s just a measure of showing up even more honestly and over a wider subject matter than kickball or D & D or a political candidate.
I think of balancing community as starting with a central point of one person, who is willing to listen to the humans around them while avoiding condemnation of those people. One person who can begin the process of creating safety for honest expression. From there the release of pressure and the knowledge that one person will listen to them be honest lets that person begin to spread that message for themselves.
We have come a long long way from allowing people freedom of expression. What we see now is a world of suppressed and twisted words and phrases tiptoeing around a commonly-viewed sense of “progress” that tries to make people lie to make themselves look good.
I don’t know many spaces where people are encouraged to be honest.
When and where I see them are in the trainings, videos, and podcasts I eat up about healing, because that’s what happens when people are able to be honest. We forget that everyone sees, feels, and hears things beyond our literal, logical bounds and the moment they can express those things they begin to put pieces together. Today I watched a woman be healed from something she had carried since she was 7. Now 53, she found peace and respite because she was guided in how to listen and be with her own feelings and responses around her problems.
It’s alien if you’ve never done it.
That’s why I started writing the shamanic meditation book I since put down (for now at least), to help reacquaint you with your honest observations. (Basic meditation guide is here).
I’m also here to help you learn to listen not only to yourself but to your neighbors, your friends, and all the people you wish good things for. Most people much more easily wish good things for their friends and others but feel scared when they think about wishing them for themselves. Scared of being selfish, of being rejected, or of the unknown it may take to get to a place of loving oneself. The point is that all of these emotions that rise up can be witnessed. They can be lovingly handled. They can be made safe for consumption in order to provide a space of healing and connection for the community around you to connect more deeply.
When you imagine the best sort of community and connection that you can, I bet you skip over all the scary parts and go straight for loving and being loved.
I invite you to practice in Listen Up 2, where we will discuss, reframe, and listen to one another and create balance to move forward with into our communities. When you become the one who listens you become the spaceholder for future generations. For one person. For one relationship that matters.
Listening is more than just hearing. It’s channeling energy. At its best it includes empathy and understanding. It’s a skill that helps people feel safe so they can heal.
Join me in this next workshop. Become one of the leaders in your community.