I just read the book, The Underground Railroad, by Colson Whitehead. I hold it as a flag as to what the courageous and heart-centered can do to protect and help others, to be fully involved in life and what each of us is here to do.
The underground railroad is active again as we each ask ourselves how to activate our own way stations, and be our own conductors of passing on the wisdom of organization and connection that assimilates and spreads love and light.
Dr. Frederic Luskin, director of the Stanford University Forgiveness Project has written, “When we feel separate, there is no way to ensure our safety and the safety of those we love, so we fear. Separateness gives us a level of permission to judge - with distance, we can condemn.”
His research involved studying people when they were angry or upset. He concluded, what might seem obvious. “You’re going to feel better if you don’t hate people.” He developed a Forgiveness Practice because he realized that “without forgiveness we are defended and in the past. Forgiveness is simply to allow us to love.” Why would we want to love? We love because “we are healthier organisms when we live in love and openness, rather than fear and anger.”
We know that when a certain number of people meditate in a city, the crime rate goes down. Focusing on what is right with the world, we relax and blood flow to the cortex increases. We breathe more fully and there is peace.
Sir Laurens van der Post wrote that “The age of the leaders has come and gone. Every person must be their own leader now. You must remove the projection, and contain the spirit of the time in your own life and your own nature, because to go the old way and follow your leader is a form of psychological imprisonment.”
It is time to cultivate, develop and claim our own leadership skills as we lead our lives with full heart and trust that there is a collective gut that knows and honors this world we share.
