the divine meditation newsletter: earth will be safe when
A newsletter contemplating the divine in the everyday
This newsletter contains mention of sexual abuse.
“Earth will be safe when we feel in us enough safety.” –Thich Nhat Hanh
This quote fell out of a meditation talk when I needed it. I had been experiencing intrusive thoughts which disturbed and unsettled me. The thoughts would come during calm and even joyful moments in the day, creating a harsh contrast. In a way, they were showing me where I was ready to focus my healing attention. With the support of a trauma therapist, I began attending to the pain of childhood abuse.
In What Happened To You?, an insightful book by Bruce D. Perry and Oprah, I learned that kids slowly build their resilience for addressing trauma. A long conversation about what happened, that is outside of their control, can actually be dysregulating. At first, the conversation lasts five seconds. The next time, it’s 10. “It is through controllable, brief revisits that the sensitized system can slowly, painfully be ‘reset’. Ideally, thousands of such therapeutic moments can be provided by the therapeutic web of loving, sensitive people in your life,” writes Dr. Perry.
As an adult, I’m finding that growing the ability to be with the pain of what happened is not too different. I had one such short exchange with a friend. They asked, “What do you wish your mom had said to you as a child?”
“That it’s not okay for adults to touch kids,” I responded.
Saying these words aloud, I felt the profound absence of their safety in my life. They touched into the deep lack of protection in my childhood. Quite quickly came a retrospective of many decisions I’ve made as an adult, not knowing in my bones that I am worth protecting; the ways unaddressed harm can run through the course of a life. Retelling this conversation to my therapist, I say, “I know these words to be true, on one level. But I can also feel how much I don’t know it in here,” pointing to my heart.
The healing work revealed itself to me: to generate the internal safety and protection I did not receive as a child. To begin nourishing my system with fierce compassion and boundaries. These days, I marvel at how even five seconds of loving self-talk can change the energy in the room of my body.
Meditation teacher Spring Washam writes this about preparing herself for a three month solo retreat in a very isolated cabin: “I began to have second thoughts. Still, I encouraged myself [...] I thought the worst that could happen would be a feeling, that is that I would have to feel something. ‘Okay,’ I thought, ‘I’ll feel whatever comes up. I can do this!’”
We can build our whole lives around avoiding what we are afraid to feel. I come back to Spring Washam’s words frequently when finding the courage to enter into the deep waters of trauma healing. “The worst that could happen would be a feeling,” lives right beside another truth: that it is no joke to begin feeling the incurable grief of our lives.
A note-to-self in my journal and one possible formula for transformation.
As I mentioned in the last newsletter, I am living this year as if it were my last. Being in the throws of shadow work, I sat with how I could embrace this part of life, too. These words kept coming to me: “Love it all. I love it all. My practice right now is to love it all.” To love it all means not abandoning any parts of life as less than another.
It is no coincidence to me that this piece of healing work emerged months into the ongoing genocide in Gaza. Thich Nhat Hanh’s words were a timely reminder; a bridge between the personal healing journey and the creation of safety on earth, for all earth bodies of the world.
During meditation, when I ask, “who am I, really?” I feel for the consciousness which witnesses this whole great life– the awareness watching the thoughts appear and dissipate, again and again. This presence is proof of something more infinite than the self, and a reminder that I am not just healing for “me.” It’s towards the unseen promise that this healing courses through the water that connects this earth body to everything. As Janelle Monae said, “I am having an earth experience.”
We thrive where there is mutual safety. I think of the research on how hearing birdsong allows our human nervous systems to settle– showing us that where birds are safe, we feel safe. It’s why these words from poet Marwan Makhoul stirred thousands of souls into action:
“In order for me to write poetry that isn’t political, I must listen to the birds, and in order to hear the birds, the war planes must be silent.”
We watch and protest as our government participates in the systematic traumatization of Palestinians across lifetimes. It is not only that so many have been killed, it is that millions of Palestinians in this moment cannot say, “I am safe.” Our conscience cannot make sense of why some of us are granted a peaceful trip to the grocery store, while Palestinians are trapped under the rubble, starving, and killed when accessing aid. It haunts us. And we would rather be haunted by the horrific truth, than be ignorant or numb to their pain. Because we know, as writer Susan Abulhuwa said after returning from Gaza recently, while holding herself, that it is “worse than the worst videos that we’re seeing in the West.”
During and after these months of witnessing a human made catastrophe, so delusionally justified by the harm-doers as an act of self-defense, we may find ourselves turning inward to do our small part to heal for the sake of all of us. To face delusion and hatred, with the clear eyes of compassion. To transform our world to one where a Nakba will never happen again, for anyone. Where the generation of our children’s children can point to their hearts and say, “I know it, in here.”