The truth is we are alive.
And, we are alive without our conscious permission or direction. Without consciously trying we think thoughts, feel emotions, complete cellular respiration, and connect to life: family, community, nature, our convictions, commitments, goals and gods.
If we were raised in a culture of colonization (oppression), rather and a culture of freedom (indignaity), we are, most likely, at war with our aliveness.
We try to drown our exhaustion in caffeine, kill off our overwhelm with tv and social media, choke the life out of our rage with sweets, exercise, sex, or drugs. We are desperate to numb the pain. We are desperate to be less alive.
In part because we dream small, we have not reached the level of power that Israel and the Nazis have. We do not command armies of humans and machines.
But the truth of us is we are limitless.
Through the limitless creative power of our imagination, we have an ever-expanding army of internal judgements ready to murder any part of us (or “them”) that gets out of line.
We are not less violent by committing internal genocide rather than external genocide. We are simply violent in a way that is more hidden, more socially acceptable, and more common to those around us.
It is a big deal to steal the aliveness of someone’s human body through genocide. It is also a big deal to have cultivated such self-hatred that we struggle on multiple levels to defend the aliveness of those experiencing physical genocide.
It is horrific violence that many of us are on the brink of financial ruin and cannot take a day off to attend a protest against physical genocide.
It is horrific violence that many of us are too worried about our sick children to put our attention on a physical genocide.
It is horrific violence that so many of us need to be so numb to make it through our day of oppression that we cannot feel our own grief and rage in response to a physical genocide.
It is horrific violence that so many of us have killed off the powerful parts of ourselves that would rise up to counter a physical genocide.
It is horrific violence that so many of us experience ourselves as too poor, too weak, and too exhausted to impact life the way we want to so we don’t try anymore.
It is horrific violence that we have come to identify as the struggle.
The pot is boiling The lid is rattling now The time is coming to cast aside the inheritance of past generations and embrace the innovations of this present moment Force, shame, and fear are the playthings of the past It is time to reclaim our identity as nature: powerful, sensual beautiful, feral ferocious, tender giving and wild
You can stay in the genocide if you want… Or you can heal your internalized oppression, level up, and embrace what comes next.
Today, I unleash my aliveness in whatever way it wants, craves, needs, hungers for, or desires.
Today, I embrace limitlessness.
Photo by Sid Dalal from Pexels
Fire ~ deep love, deep respect .. Yes, yes ...