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THE REFUGEE CRISIS and the AWAKENING OF CONSCIENCE
The current vast movement of migrants and refugees and the challenge it represents to individuals and nations is part of the unfolding purification of the Earth, revealing to human consciousness(areas) of thought and action that need to be brought to the light.
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The refugee crisis that many have come to feel concern for today is bringing to our collective awareness the potent dilemma of this time, captured in the question: "Am I my brother's keeper?" As we witness the tide of human suffering sweeping across previously solid and opaque boundaries - from Syria, Somalia, and other African nations in particular - we must face this question within ourselves. "Am I my brother's keeper?" For this tide of suffering that seeks to press through the boundaries of nations, that seeks to find refuge and a home among peoples with whom it shares little common cultural heritage, this tide asks each of us to locate our true humanity, to answer the question: How responsible are we for the plight of others? How much are each of us "our brother's keeper?"
The current vast movement of migrants and refugees and the challenge it represents to individuals and nations is part of the unfolding purification of the Earth, revealing to human consciousness issues, prejudices, and dark areas of human thought and action that have sought to remain hidden. In America, recent exposure of latent racial prejudice in the attitudes and practices of those in authority has led to the exposure of patterns of behavior that let us know that though we strive for equality and claim equality, all are not equal under the law. It is in this same way, on a global scale, that we are being now asked to face our feelings about human inequality and especially about the unequal distribution of wealth in the world. How responsible are we for those whom we do not know - for the poor, for the incarcerated, for those who have been left behind in one way or another? How responsible are our leaders and our governments?
These questions are being brought before our collective awareness in order to bring to light the very ancient dilemma of self-interest versus concern for the common good. Such a dilemma has been with us from the beginning, brought into being by the belief that we are separate from each other and from the life of the Earth. Today, one may choose protecting self-interest or national self-interest and letting others take care of themselves, one may choose to reinforce boundaries that prevent others from entering, yet the number of those suffering before our eyes and the need for us to come together to find a way of dealing with this suffering is awakening and purifying the consciousness of the Earth, appearing as a challenge to recognize and come forward with a greater degree of caring and with an intention to overcome the fear of not having enough ourselves that we may attend to the needs of all. Individuals are facing this dilemma. Nations are facing this dilemma.
We cannot run away from this question, though we may try, just as we cannot run away from the consequences of climate change, though we may try to do that as well. Both issues evoke in us a need to respond, one way or the other, and out of our response to face that within ourselves that remains closed to the collective 'I' that is trying to be born.
We are at a precious time in this unfolding revelation, a time in which we may be barely conscious that the world is changing and that we are each being deeply affected by this time of challenge. This is but the beginning of what is needed - that nations and peoples shall come together to care for all. That there shall no longer be strangers in our midst whom we can choose to ignore as they suffer silently surrounded by our indifference, but rather that we, as individuals and as nations, shall recognize that there is no 'other,' no fellow inhabitant of the Earth who is not part of us as well.
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