Lies of Separation

In light of recent events in Orlando I wasn’t sure what to write in today’s blog. I wanted to write something inspiring which gives you a better picture of who I am and what I am about. At the same time I wanted to write something respectful that doesn’t pretend like there isn’t still a lot of pain and suffering in our LGBTQ family going on in the wake of the shooting. I certainly am not ‘over it’ and I don’t expect others to be ‘over it’ either. In my mind that would be cruel and uncalled for – and I experienced enough of that during the last week myself when I dared to express my sadness and my anger.

I’m not much into pretense. I don’t see a point in calling for positive focus while my leg is bleeding. I don’t want us to ignore our emotions or suppress them. Quite on the contrary.

It is my firm believe that everything about the human being is true, correct and beautiful. This includes all of our emotions, our wounds, our minds and our souls. It’s when we start denying and disowning parts of ourselves that we actually get into trouble. Evil enters into the chasm of separation – inside and outside of us. Which is why I’m spending so much time teaching about how to become whole again and how to learn to live with true compassion. It’s because love truly is the glue of the universe. It’s the only thing actually able to overcome hate, violence and the evils of this world. You essentially can’t shoot or consciously hurt someone who you consider to be part of yourself. The same goes for a tree, the ocean and all life on earth. If we truly start to get that all the separation we see is just created in our minds by an insecure and dominant Ego that wants to run the show, we can start not only to heal ourselves, but all the worlds. We can even begin to love our Ego back into wholeness. Like the rest of our parts it serves a valuable purpose if aligned with the rest of our being.

At the same time we shouldn’t pretend either that a gunshot wound can heal just fine as long as the bullet is still inside. Likewise we have to suck the poison out of our wounds sometimes before the real healing can begin. Love is the ultimate cure. And sometimes we need to create a space for love first by removing the poison. That’s the alchemy of transforming lead into gold. Inside of us that’s sometimes called shadow integration. Outside of us it can mean everything from compassionate listening and political activism to the complete arsenal of self-defense. Given the circumstance different tools serve best.

While sitting at the local river today I was reminded of another truth, too. Between all the trash that had been washed on the shore there were still beautiful wild flowers and proud plants with their branches held high. The trash is a concern to the Fey, the nature spirits watching that place. At the same time, though, they remember, too, that nothing that’s true can ever die. Life is unbeatable.

In our Western society it’s easy to get lost in the thought that death is final and a threat to life. That given the state of our world everything is going to end up in some horrible kind of apocalypse and that’s that. Given all the stories that we have been told for the last couple of hundred years it makes perfect sense to feel that way.

At the same time I think we should start to understand that all of these stories and thoughts were born from place of separation themselves. That there is another truth which is revealed in connection.

When we take a look at nature and let go of our cultural conditioning we will see that nothing truly ends there. Everything lasts forever. Matter and energy can’t really be destroyed. They can only be transformed into something else. That’s all what death and decay really do. They are the flipside of birth and growth.

Another thing we can observe is that nature fills the void. Nature itself doesn’t really accept separation. Cross-pollination is more like it. Turning an empty lot first into a meadow and then into a forest is more like it. The more diverse an ecosystem ends up to be, the stronger and more resilient it gets. That’s why nature always advocates diversity.

Likewise the powers of life Themselves will always be on the side of interconnectedness, interdependency and creative self-expression. They will always work towards closing the gaps. They will always be on the side of love in diversity.

It is a tragedy that 49 of our sisters, brothers and siblings lost their life as the result of (self-)hate. They became dispensable to the attacker because in his mind what they represented was evil. Something that he needed to see as something separate from himself and therefore dispensable. Evil flourished in his attempt to widen the chasm of separation he was told and believed was necessary.

In a way that’s all homophobia, sexism, heteronormativity, transphobia, xenophobia etc. are about: The idea that separation is necessary. The idea that what is different from us needs to be worse than us and therefore can’t be a part of us, because we need to be ‘good’.

From a spiritual perspective nothing can be further from the truth, because we contain everything. We contain the same-sex attraction. We contain the desire for genderqueer expression. We contain the homophobia and xenophobia, too.

So my advise would be to take a really deep look at ourselves and face the ways in which we still define ourselves as better or fundamentally different from “those people”. We have to face the reality of who we are. Only then can we begin to heal the wounds. Only then can we really begin to integrate our shadows and love our wholeness into being.