How can we cultivate mutual respect, love and understanding, even in the face of adversity?

Facing Global Adversity

The conditions we have faced globally over the past 18+ months has created a prolonged state of continued polarity and serious misfortune. These conditions have given rise to physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, financial and social adversity. With over seven billion people in the world, comes many different perspectives, beliefs, and actions. How can we build the capacity to lovingly hold it all?

A major transition period (also transformation) can feel like a “healing crisis”. We are going through this now in a very accelerated way. The old structures can no longer hold us and are no longer sustainable. It can seem extremely chaotic right now as these structures come down and as people fight to “go back to normal”.

It also gives us an opportunity to create a new foundation, one that we can truly build on from a place of common humanity. Consciousness is rising as all of this comes to the surface so there is an invitation to dream a new dream for our world. To embrace new beginnings.

Overcoming Loneliness and Isolation

Are you longing for a sense of belonging?

Loneliness can be described as feeling more stressed than usual, lacking confidence in yourself. You might even believe that they you are unworthy of the attention or regard of other people, which can lead to isolation. Having different beliefs may also give rise to loneliness. You might feel sad, depressed and dispirited. Also one day you might feel like you are thriving and the next in despair.

Have you ever felt like you were alone in the world? Like you were an observer on the sidelines wondering why it felt so isolating to be seeing the world in a different light?

I sure have.

Being in crowds and in any kind of conflict is often very uncomfortable for me and sometimes overwhelming. I get rattled by too much stimulation or loud noises that in the past, was misdiagnosed as anxiety and depression. Really, as I found out later in life, it was because I was part of the 5% of the world’s population known as a “highly sensitive person” (HSP). Elaine Aron, Ted Zeff, Barrie Jaeger, and Kyra Mesich all talk about it in their writings, and I base much of my work on it. You can find more about being an Empath or HSP in a previous article I wrote.

This isn’t just about being an empath though. The whole world is extra sensitive right now.

Shifting Consciousness Around Shameful Thoughts and Oppressive Actions

You may also be experiencing or internalizing shame and think you have to do something you might not want to, but think you should because “everyone else is”. Society and even our loved ones create opposition, making you feel like you are doing something wrong or not enough. Being misunderstood, unheard, unseen, and not fully recognized is becoming more prominent and creates mental adversity.

This mental pressure or distress, seen as a form of oppression can be very triggering. One remedy for this is to stop trying to prove or improve yourself. Instead, embody more of who you are.

Stand strong in your beliefs about what you know is intuitively right for you and learn to trust yourself again. This is where you can draw up some F.A.I.T.H. (finding answers in the heart). This is where healing can begin to take place. Healing is about releasing anything that is not you.

Wiki says, “[Oppression] occurs when a particular social group is unjustly subordinated, and where that subordination is not necessarily deliberate but instead results from a complex network of social restrictions, ranging from laws and institutions to implicit biases and stereotypes.”

A few recent examples of this can be seen from quarantine/lock down, protesters being subdued, and terrorism.

So how do you move from feeling alienated or estranged, and “fit in”? You ground yourself in a state of integrity. Integrity is about being whole and undivided.

It also means maintaining strong moral principles (that come from inner, not outer sources) and being solid in your being. Being solid makes you a strong, grounded pillar of light that doesn’t get pulled by the triggers into what is not soul-aligned.

Self-Regulation and Emotional Safety

It is also important to self-regulate and have emotional safety. I offer some strategies in my article, The Importance of Soul Care which you can find at https://lightingthepath.ca/the-importance-of-soul-care/

Building Community

How can we cultivate mutual respect, love and understanding, even in the fact of adversity?
There is deep, deep pain and despair underlying the current of changes taking place, and yet the end game is for freedom and safety for all. What can we do to reconcile the differences? You have choices of how/when to engage, and a right to establish boundaries, without the need to block yourself off from love. Instead, boundaries can be established to build stronger and deeper connections with others. What would it take to establish space for being heard and listening to another person’s needs?

Finding Mutual Respect, Love and Understanding

When we go behind the needs, we often discover the underlying intentions and motivations. Quite often, and surprisingly, they are the same! We just might have a very different way or approach to meet those needs. For example, someone who decided to take the vaccine to feel safe, and another who chooses not to, so he/she can feel safe. Or someone who says, “I don’t eat meat because I want to be healthy”, and another who says, “I eat meat because I want to be healthy”.

There are many paths to health and safety, and yet some can get very attached to one way which then creates polarity. This then perpetuates the feeling of fear and feeling threatened from “both sides” and so people start defending themselves, grasping, and collecting “evidence”.

This righteousness movement can carry a repulsive energetic and emotions will continue to rise over hurt. The remedy is empathy.

Could it be that what is being imposed or projected, is more about them and not about you? Can you feel into what might be going on for them? Can you take it less personally, and with more compassion about what they are feeling and thinking?

You can express how what they are saying makes you feel. Then ask if you can share and if they are willing to hear/listen.

Feeling Safe in the World and Within Our Human Tribe

Can we bring ourselves to a mutual respect, love, and understanding with a non-violent and more compassionate approach? I think so, and I think we can do it with a shift into hearing, rather than defending. To hear the differences and connect on the commonalities.

When you break it down to everyone just wanting to feel safe, secure and protected, then we come back into common humanity. They are “just like me”.

Remember compassion for those who feel scared or are suffering, and also for yourself. Let’s not turn against each other. Embrace diversity and develop the capacity to hold it all. As Michael Beckwith says, “How can it get better”?