MY POLITICAL PARTY IS LOVE

The platform for the Politics of Love is “Oneness.”   Sign me up!!

This is a continuation from my last post titled, "Let's Talk About Love baby ~ L.O.V.E."  As always, I’m writing from a place of love, merging Eastern and Western views, sharing perspectives and supporting our wellbeing.  It's important to keep in mind that both Eastern and Western Psychology and Philosophy are not written in stone. They are written in sand so there's a lot of room for various perspectives when it comes to this stuff. I'm not writing from clinical perspective, more of a practical perspective, so it can become a daily practice.

Love is probably the most confusing emotion in the whole entire world.  Nothing heals or grows without love.  Absolutely nothing!  Nature has endlessly proven this.  Unconditional love is the only emotion that doesn’t create separation.

Both Eastern Wisdom and Western Science would agree that the divide and separation that we see outside of ourselves is a reflection of the same divide and separation within ourselves.  Both East and West share the understanding, that this is directly affecting our physical, mental and emotional health. 

We are in a time where there seems to be so much instability, lack of safety, lack of trust, lack of faith, and lack of sanity.  Guess what…it all boils down to lack of love.  The lack of love that we see out in the world, is a collective reflection of the lack of love within ourselves. 

This is what I’m calling a shakeup of our systemic human conditioning.  What I’m saying is that for as long as we can look back, we have been conditioned to trust what is outside of ourselves.  We are also conditioned to look outside of ourselves for health and healing.  Let’s look at our immediate environment from birth.  As children, all of our patterns are established before the age of 10, but let's look at our behavior patterns. This is a compilation of nature vs. nurture, biology vs. social and cultural influences. From a nurture perspective, if our feelings were dismissed or not nurtured, we quickly get the message to suppress and repress our feelings, emotions and thoughts.  The immediate message to the “self” is, that it’s not OK to feel the way we feel.  So, we mold ourselves in order to conform to the “requirements” of our environment.

So, if a child’s feelings are not validated, or worse, if they were scolded or shamed for expressing their feelings, the translation is, “I don’t matter.”  This can formulate into a negative self-image.  Every single action we engage in during our lives, will come from the place of feeling the way we’ve been conditioned to think and feel. These feelings positive or negative, play a role in forming a view of ourselves.  Our actions come from our thoughts and feelings and if our thoughts and feelings of ourselves have been suppressed and repressed, guess what’s going to happen…triggers, reactivity and wobbly communication with ourselves and with others.  Why?  Well simply put, they were never nourished and validated.  It’s like a gas tank, what you put in is what you get out.  If you put bad gas in a car, the car will not run well.  It’s the same thing with humans.

Our entire view of the world is based on this concept.  We have to remember that we don’t see the world as it is, we see it as we are.  So, take a look at all that’s happening out there.  It’s clearly a love starved world.  The question we need to ask ourselves is, “How are we feeling about whatever it may be, and why are we feeling the way we are feeling?” 

The next question is, “What is this doing to our mental and physical health?”

Let’s bring this back to the Yamas and Niyamas of Yoga Philosophy, also known as the 8 limbs of Yoga.  Swadhyays is one of the 8 limbs, and it means self-study.  When we commit to a Yoga practice, or a practice of self-discovery we continually observe ourselves in all of our interactions.  This helps us to understand and learn about ourselves, and why we act and react in the ways that we do.  So, when we are deeply triggered by what’s happening out in the world or within our immediate environment, it’s an opportunity for us to heal another layer of ourselves.  The hope is to uncover the root of our triggers. This is where we can connect the dots and break old patterns. I will expand on this in much greater detail, but for the sake taking one concept at a time, let’s continue.

The good news is that this is a HUGE opportunity for humanity to heal.  Sounds great, but how do we do this?  The most important and effective, yet most difficult thing to do is to look within.  Yes, that’s it.  Look within.  Here’s another fundamental conditioning.  As I mentioned earlier, we typically aren’t taught to do that, instead we are taught to look and seek outward.  Why are we taught to look and seek outward?  Well, for lots of reasons.  First, culturally and generationally within families, patterns (good or bad) get passed down with no awareness of it happening.  It just happens.  If we were never exposed to this concept, how would we ever know this is an option for growth and healing.  We wouldn’t, unless we deliberately seek information outside the family environment.  So, these patterns will continue through generations until someone in the family asks the question, “Why am I being punished for having feelings?”  This is the beginning of breaking a generational cycle.  There’s always someone courageous enough to do it.

Let’s break down the ripple effect of always looking out. If we were taught to look outside of ourselves for everything, that can create a need for external validation in all ways, such as what we think, what we do, how we look, what we wear, how we act and so on.  This will trickle into in every single relationship that we have, both with ourselves and with everyone we communicate with.  Let’s take the concept of FOMO (fear of missing out).  This is a perfect example.  FOMO can lead us down an exhausting path of “Keeping up and fitting in.”  One question to think about is, “What is dedicating our need to keep up and fit in?”  What this may uncover is our need to be seen and loved externally, but what about internally?  This is where Swadyaya comes in. By becoming the observer of ourselves, we can find answers to all of these questions, and then some. Yoga, Ayurveda, and Western phycology remind us that we always have everything we need to grow and heal within us.

The biggest effect of always looking out, is that we don’t know how to look within. This is an undeveloped skill.  Most of us have lived our entire lives this way, so looking in, is like looking through a window of an abandoned house.  That abandoned house is ourselves, specifically our heart space.  It’s completely uninviting because it’s never been lived in.  Who wants to move into an abandoned house and do all the work to clean it up?  PRACTICALLY NO ONE!!  So, once we take a peek into the abandoned house, which is our heart space, we don't like the way it makes us feel, so we look the other way. We rule that out as an option. It's always easier to do what we've always done. It's the path of least resistance. Where does this leave us? Well, seems like there's two choices, start the clean up of the abandoned house one step at a time, or ignore that option and continue looking outward.

Maybe we are open to exploring our heart space. Maybe, just Maybe. This is where pratyahara can help us tremendously. Pratyahara is also part of the 8-limbs.  By definition it means, withdrawal of the senses.  It is the ability to draw our attention inward, and away from external stimulation.  This is a crucial concept to understanding who we are, and to simply maintain our sanity.  Why? We are culturally conditioned to react to external stimulation. Many of you have heard me refer to this as, "Chasing shiny objects syndrome, " meaning we are deeply conditioned to react to every external stimulant. What we heard, what we saw, what we tasted, what we felt, and so on. We have to remember we are sensory beings, living in a material world. That is the conundrum. We have to find a harmonious balance of being in the world without being consumed by the world. If live a life of reactivity, how do we find peace?

Try this...Using the practice of self-inquiry (Swadyaya), observe yourself and observe others, with no reaction, judgement or criticism, just observe.  Now, notice how much of your energy you spend reacting to external stimulations.  

So what does this have to do with love?  EVERYTHING!  Why???  The deeper we understand ourselves, and our emotional triggers, the less reactive we become within ourselves and with others.  This is how we can create a ripple effect in a positive direction. 

When we are hanging on to our righteous opinions, lets go into our heart spaces.

When we can’t see or hear another perspective, lets go into our heart spaces.

It’s only through these shake ups within ourselves that we can iron out the conditioning that triggers our reactions.  This is Yoga Therapy.  This is Ayurveda.  This is putting modern science to work.

We can see freely, hear freely, speak freely and love freely both within ourselves and in the world.  It doesn’t mean we have to be passive.  It doesn’t mean we have to like or agree with everything that comes our way.  We are not doormats!  We are lovemats!  When we are able to contain our energy by not reacting to every little sensory experience, we become quiet within ourselves.  When we become quiet, we can actually see, hear, touch, taste, and smell things in a completely different way.  In soft, loving way, as opposed to a ridged and righteous way.

This is what will help connect us to our heart space. This is what will help us see things from different perspectives. While we may not agree, we are able see, understand and create love around it all. We can hold ourselves steady while things seem rocky. This will expand our capacity to love, beyond what we can imagine. When we deeply understand that love and hate are energetically parallel, we can witness the hate from a loving perspective, without throwing more hate into the fire. We can accept that pain exists and always will. We can hold space for all growth and healing to happen in its own time, it its own way, without getting ourselves tangled up in it.

This is "Oneness."

This is what will heal humanity.

This is the politics of love.

~ WE ARE ONE IN LOVE, WE ARE ONE. ~

Sweet memories of chanting this during my years with Mukunda.  Jai Mukundaji.

~ Leelah Lakshmi ~

We Are One In Love