From Anger to Compassion: A Cosmic Perspectiveby Caroline Vernon
Blog for Iowa would like to welcome Caroline Vernon of Davenport to the blog team. We are very pleased to have her with us!
Anger is most often a difficult emotion to sit with even though it often serves as an indispensable catalyst to act. The challenge for me (the Bush junta sure doesn't make it easy) has been in making an operational shift from anger to compassion in order to obtain a higher understanding of what ails us, let alone determine the best way to move forward from where we find ourselves. In order to do so, I believe it is important for us to take a step back and look at things from a more impersonal or cosmic perspective.
The essential ingredient in allowing understanding to take place is that the overwhelming waves of personal emotion have subsided. We have all had the experience of watching a friend become romantically involved with someone whom we could clearly see was wrong for that person. We had the advantage of an impersonal, wise perspective, whereas our friend was under a romantic spell -- and nothing we say can break a romantic spell. The clarity we had is a very real example of a cosmic perspective as opposed to a personal one.
However, an impersonal or cosmic perspective can often feel threatening to people, precisely because it appears to lack the warmth of personal emotion. What cosmic understanding actually lacks is not emotional animation as such, but the interference of toxic emotion, which can include self-pity, self-righteousness, or the inability to detach from the moment and see the greater purpose hidden within the chaos and pain of an event or relationship.
For many, the response of compassion could seem weak and powerless. Who can see the immediate consequences of compassion, especially when measured against the satisfaction of a bullet? A bullet satisfies the ego’s need for immediate physical action, whereas if one’s spirit were enlightened and truly understood the Divine paradox that ours is an intimate Universe governed by impersonal laws and cycles of life, then a reply of compassion is the only answer that holds any power. For to awaken to the nature of consciousness is to awaken to the truth that the only domain of true power is that force which is pure light, eternal, transcendent, and impersonal -- like the invisible power of an act of love or forgiveness.
Global events – even natural ones – are created through a complex of energies. And included in that mixture of energies are the psychic forces generated by the collective consciousness of the global soul of humanity. We are a part of the earth and its consciousness. The earth does not exist separate and apart from our psychic energy. Mother Earth is involved in the evolution of the human species. Global warming is occurring and we have been continually tampering with the balance of nature in an ever-increasing momentum. That may well be creating a psychic stress for Mother Earth that we have no way of measuring; but Mother Earth could be feeling the pain of the human condition as much as humanity is – including the pain generated by a build-up of anger and rage in our collective spirit.
Mother Earth doesn’t discriminate. She isn’t a political being. People will continue to die as a result of acts of Mother Nature. Some of these events, like the recent tsunami, may be enormous in proportion to others. But let’s look at the good that is coming from this crisis. What other event could possibly have drawn the world together and caused humanity to act as a global community, transcending political differences? What other force could possibly cause so much destruction yet leave no traces of hatred in its wake? While grief abounds and will for years to come, so does compassion. The bonds of care, gratitude, friendship, and new beginnings that will be formed as a result of pulling together to overcome disaster may have consequences on behalf of peace that will save who knows how many lives in years to come.
I believe compassion is one of our most potent progressive values, which brings me to the topic of my next blog, "From the Perspective of Values"... Stay tuned Iowa...
In Service,
Caroline Vernon
