You can't get away from differences.
It's beauty,
It's diversity,
It's so much of our life.
I have long blonde hair,
Nathan has no hair.
This is a difference.
No,
And we have these deeper differences too that define who we are and how we identify with ourselves,
Where we've come from.
But there is a risk when we start to make those differences to be defining of who we are and how we can relate with each other.
Makes me think of the experiment that they did with the blue eye,
Brown eye experiment.
I think this is,
I mean,
This is back in the mid part of the century and it showed how just,
How we can take such a small difference and make something so big out of it.
People with blue eyes,
Bad,
People with brown eyes,
Good.
And this dichotomy that can be created then becomes something that can be manipulated and create real harm in the world.
And that's something that I'm nervous about right now as we have kind of poles pulling apart at each other.
It feels like there is kind of the fabric of our society.
It's woven with these different threads and we're being pulled apart like at the seams,
You know?
The division that we're experiencing and the division almost always,
When it sets root in our hearts and in our beliefs,
It self-replicates,
It just creates more and more division.
It gains power as it grows because we become less and less able to see what the other side is feeling or saying because we just stop engaging because we feel afraid of what they're saying.
We feel afraid of the feelings we're gonna have when we confront them.
We become afraid of the repercussions of giving any power to this other perspective which we feel is so wrong or so evil or so whatever it is,
Whatever the stories are that we have about the other.
And so these divides just continue to expand apart and apart.
And I think they will continue to until we can come back to phase one together,
You know?
Until we can come back to the witness and we can come back to just listening to what the other person has to say and staying there,
Staying with the listening.
When we can attune ourselves to what they're saying so that we can start to feel the truth of the words that they're offering us.
Even if they aren't our own,
Even if we don't agree with them,
We can still resonate with some portion of what the other person is offering.
And then today we get to the kindness component.
So once we've kind of resonated,
Once we've listened,
Once we've really steeped in what the other person is saying,
Then we can respond with kindness.
And this is a really tough practice.
This isn't easy.
You know,
Bridging these divides,
It really is confronting to all of our sensibilities,
All of our judgments,
All of our deep beliefs that have taken root within us.
And I think what's at the core of this is that every one of us brings so much of ourselves to every conversation that we have,
No matter what it is that we're talking about.
If we are digging within ourselves and drawing up a belief,
Drawing up an idea,
We are making a creative and a vulnerable act to bring something that feels like it's us,
That feels like it's true to us out into the world.
And when that's met with immediate resistance and rejection and- Judgment.
Judgment,
It feels like an affront on who we are.
And of course,
It's not our responsibility to manage everyone's identities with their beliefs,
But we can see the deeper human underneath the ideas first.
We can honor that person.
We can relate with and attune ourselves to the feelings of maybe frustration,
Maybe grief,
Maybe anger that that other person is feeling because we felt those feelings too.
And we know that that suffering that comes up with those feelings is tough.
It's hard to feel those things.
We know what it is to feel afraid and we can be compassionate to the fear in the other person,
Even if we disagree with everything that they're saying.
And I think today,
What we wanna practice is bridging that divide with compassion to reach across,
To see the human underneath the beliefs,
Behind the ideas,
Behind the inflammatory language,
Because it does take something of someone,
Some courage,
Some expression,
Some vulnerability for them to show up that way.
And the healing can only start when we start the conversation with,
I hear what you're saying.
Yeah.
Yeah,
I think that there's a block of listening happening right now.
It is causing more hate,
More dysfunction,
More othering.
Othering is at the base of how all atrocities happen.
Dehumanization.
We belittle people enough to feel like they aren't as worthy human as we are.
They don't know.
And that happens very,
Very slowly.
And it is happening now.
It is happening now as we have those opinions about Republicans and Democrats or this side or that side,
Or it is separating us and our differences.
They don't have to be a point of separation.
They can be a point of diversification and creativity,
Like that tension holding that's there.
And I think another big problem is that we retreat into our like-minded bubbles.
We like the same things.
We have these same experiences and we insulate ourselves from those differences.
It seems kind of benign to say it,
Like we know that,
But it really does take this effort to extend outside of our bubble,
To reach across our differences,
Like you were saying.
And I definitely know in my life,
I feel scared of having conversations with people that think really differently than me.
I'm afraid of the hostility that will come.
And sometimes we don't know,
We're unconsciously bringing that hostility forward.
We're bringing that judgment forward.
And so that's where this practice of cultivating kindness with ourselves first,
And then with other people,
That's such a breakthrough place.
Because if we can meet the person that's voting totally different than us,
That's got a completely different yard sign that waves a different flag.
And if we can be with that human there,
Not dehumanized,
Not other,
We have hope,
I think,
To move forward together as this sort of body politic that we are.
So yeah,
That's something that we wanted to meditate on today.
Yeah,
Yeah,
Just,
I think one last point to draw this home for our own personal experience of saving our sanity during this time.
It's not always about the other person.
Oftentimes what's happening inside of us is a conflict within us.
It's a conflict of competing beliefs.
It's a conflict of competing ideas that we hold.
We hold so many different thoughts and ideas within us that aren't very compatible,
And that are oftentimes fully paradoxical.
Yes.
And that is something that takes this same practice.
When we have these different parts of who we are,
These different ideas that come and they clash within us,
It can cause tension,
The same kind of tension that you can have between the right and the left in our political environment.
And it takes that same stepping across of kindness,
The same extension to hear the fears of one side of you and the hopes of the other side and the frustrations of another part of you and to scoop yourself up as if you were a child,
As if those feelings of that,
Of a frustration,
Those big feelings,
Those big hard feelings that make us want to cry and shut down and throw a tantrum like a child.
If we can reach across and have compassion and scoop ourselves up like that little child that we have inside of us,
Then we can soothe and release and allow and start to close those gaps between ourselves and ourselves.
Because when we reject,
Whether it's someone else or whether it's us,
When we push back,
It's not just about the separation between myself and the other person.
It's about the separation that I create in myself.
It's about the sense of the tension that I create,
The hostility that I hold in locking that anger,
Locking that frustration inside of me.
And that instead,
When we can allow the other person,
We can see them compassionately,
When we can hear their words,
When we can hear our own fears inside of us compassionately,
Then we can start to mend rather than to divide.
