AUGUST 26, 2020
NEW WRITING FROM GURUJIMA
Love in the Presence of Fear and Hatred
With the shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin, we witness, horrified and saddened, something that we thought could not happen in the same way again, following the death of George Floyd. Yet, it has happened. This shooting with its apparent physically crippling effect, has once again awakened the feelings of rage and outrage in this nation at the treatment of black persons. In some, it has served as an incentive to instigate riots and vandalism, not as a form of protest, but as a form of generating increased agitation within the public at large.
When emotions run high, when they affect millions of people, we feel them coursing through us and think that they are our own when they are only partly our own. And because the current of collective emotion is so strong and for the most part indistinguishable from our own feeling-response, we lose sight of the choice that we have in each situation and in each moment about how to feel.
We may not think we are affected by these mass currents, influenced by energies that are invisible, but we are. As a result, we must work with greater diligence to separate ourselves. Within the privacy of our own consciousness, we must ask ourselves: “What is right relationship to this situation of pain and sorrow that has now been created once again? What is right relationship to the shooting of Jacob Blake and to the protests that have occurred as a result?
We have a choice concerning how we feel. We may start out feeling one way, yet, our deep decision to stand for light and love and to have our responses be helpful to others rather than contributing to greater harm, can lead us in the right direction. First, we must believe that we have a choice.
In a time in which fear, hatred, and the lesser forms of these that are anxiety and anger are everpresent and widespread, we have a choice...
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