What is going on in the world affects us all on many different levels, both seen and unseen. For me, what’s currently happening also feels a touch personal, closer to home in some small way.

I made the mistake of going on social media today, barely a moment in and I realised this was not the place to be, not for me, not right now. Especially during a retreat, the very thing I advise people against during a retreat! So here I am instead, on beyondimogen.com – my little nook of the internet. I’m not sure if this post will ever make it elsewhere.

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I am horrified by what is going on in the world on all fronts. The divisiveness, the hate, the lines we have drawn in the sand, too many to count. It all feels impossible. How can we make our way through all of this? What is to be done?

Today is the anniversary of my grandmothers death. She walks with me closely still to this day. In someways closer than ever… but that’s a story for another day.

My grandmother’s family were Ukrainian Jews, my grandfather’s, Russian Jews. The current war between the two was and is so deeply felt, the ancient waves of remembrance in my body, in my system. They had family members who died in the Holocaust, and those that survived too, they lived through that reality. The right to exist because of your ethnicity, your beliefs, your way of life and the question of that, feels known in my body, sub-conceptually. I think many if not most can relate to that too. I can feel it thickly in the air these days.

I have met people from all over the world, of all religions, of all faiths. Young and old, wealth and poor. People of all colour and cultures. People with vastly different world views and beliefs. So much diversity, so many differing expressions and ways of being.

Yet what I see throughout all of this, is that it is the same light that shines in all of us. The same love that we are. What moves us, no matter how seemingly distorted and misguided it may be at times, it is the same fundamental movement of life.

When there is a deep unending remembrance of that light, of that love, of our true nature, a transformation occurs that has the power of true change in the world on all levels.

We’ve see it in the likes of Jesus, of Buddha, of countless saints, sages, mystics and prophets. Where they shone, goodness was revealed.

When we move in life from our true Self, our heart, our heart of hearts, when that takes hold, our humanity is enacted from that place. A place of wholeness, a place of love, a place of acceptance and compassion. A place of unity that both transcends and includes all differences and expressions.

It is my fervent view that lasting change cannot be made (only) on a surface level, but it has to come from within. From within the hearts and minds of us all. From the inside out.

It is not to say that action isn’t taken on a certain level. It’s not to say that we should and can turn away from the realities of this human life, turn a blind eye and bury our heads. We must meet the realities and heartbreaks of the horrors that this life brings, with our whole being. But it is to say that when we come from a place of being seated so wholly in our highest, most fundamental, primordial nature – that of love – action from this place is action of goodness, is action of love, is action from clarity and truth, is action from Grace.

When faced with those that cannot yet see this deeper necessity, what then? Well, we can pray for them and we can pray for the world. We can also endeavour to always move and be moved from this deeper place ourselves, doing what we can in whatever way possible from this place.

I pray that all beings discover and live from their deepest ground, the ground of love. And I pray that I may live from that deeper ground and be the change I wish to see in the world. Model this. The possibility of this. Be this possibility. I pray that all beings may know their true undying nature, that of love. I pray that we live in direct remembrance always of that which unites and holds us deeply.

For when we do discover our ground,
we know only love.
And that love includes it all.

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It is the same light that shines within us all, lest we forget.