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THE SHADOW OF VIOLENCE THAT HOVERS OVER AMERICA
America is now suffering in shock and grief at the deaths this past week of Alton Sterling in Louisiana, of Philando Castile in Minnesota, and of at least five police officers shot down in Dallas, TX. We are called to bear witness to this escalating violence,, and out of our grief to awaken further to the meaning of this time. May all tears soften the hardened places of the heart, that the roots of enmity may no longer find nourishment there.
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To the Beloved Citizens of America, now suffering in the face of violence of one group toward another that seems beyond all reasonable expectation and that feels like it is spiraling out of control. To you, Beloved Ones, I say: Be awake! Be awake to the grief in your hearts. Be awake to your feelings of helplessness. Be awake to your feelings of loss of hope and to your dismay. And let not your awakeness convert these feelings into rage, into hopelessness, into despair, or into polarization which creates even more enmity than that which already exists.
Be awake, Beloved Ones of this nation, and let the grief concerning what is taking place sink deeply into your hearts so that you are aware of it not just when an event of violence happens to a black man in Baton Rouge, Louisiana or St. Paul, Minnesota, or to the police force in Dallas, TX. Be awake when the event is over, when it passes from the news and there is a lull in outbreaks so that it seems like 'ordinary life' has returned.
Do not subscribe to the illusion of 'ordinary life,' Beloved Ones. For the suffering of those who are being harmed by the beliefs of others goes on and on, even when there is a lull in the news, perhaps especially when there is a lull in the news since there is then less public support for an end to the horrors that those who are being harmed are experiencing.
Beloved Ones, grief is appropriate to the time we are in, the time of the expression of darkness that is affecting our collective awareness, rooting out those hidden places of our consciousness that have historically contained superiority, disdain, false pride, fear, and selfishness - rooting these out so that we may move forward as a nation. It is the purification of consciousness as a result of expanding light that is taking place now, Beloved Ones, and so what has been concealed or only partially exposed must come, now, into the full light of observation in order that we may be set free from it, and in order that we may truly become a nation in which all are free.
This has not happened yet. Freedom is in our nation's songs and in the symbolism of our flag, but we are not a nation of freedom. Until the tendencies to belittle, despise, fear, or hold others as less than ourselves are removed from our awareness, and even from our subconscious minds, we shall not be free. We shall not be able to manifest that freedom-to-be that lives at the heart of this nation.
Be awake! Be awake! The outbreaks of violence that are occurring with greater frequency now are a call not to arms but to consciousness, to responsibility for our own perspective that it may be healed of all that does not permit us to love our neighbor - our neighbor who may appear different from us in belief or outlook or physical appearance, but who, in their essence, is a soul, a child of the Divine as we are. All partake of this essence, no matter how they appear.
Let tears flow, Beloved Citizens of America, and let the pain of the tears soften the hardness of all hearts that seek to dispense with true solutions to the problem of separation of one from another by choosing a path of forced encounter and forced confrontation, a false path that can never lead to a true solution to the problem.
Let grief become pain, let pain become compassion, let compassion become a willingness to see all beings, black or white, police or non-police, Muslim or non-Muslim, as equal, as beloveds of the heart of the One that lives within each of us as well.
This time is of sorrow but it is also of hope. For all that is being purified now shall bring forth a new consciousness and a new nation that will change the trajectory that America has been on since her founding, despite the great light that is embedded within her heart and soul.
May all tears flow in sorrow for those who have died so brutally in this past week, and may these tears form a well out of which a new nation of light, trust, and hope shall grow.
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