To Love Life ?

 
“…to love life, to love it even
when you have no stomach for it
and everything you’ve held dear
crumbles… ”

— Ellen Bass

Our hearts are breaking as we witness the atrocities happening in Ukraine. With missiles falling onto cities, hospitals, schools, bodies piled up in mass graves, and over 3 million refugees, so many lives have been shattered, families separated and dreams destroyed!

While, for most of us, daily life appears unchanged, we are all participants, in silence or in action. We might turn away in horror from the ongoing tragedies and suffering, but this only covers the wounds with a layer of numbness. Feeling distant and silent in the face of atrocities is itself a symptom of trauma and an active ingredient in the perpetuation of violence.

Unresolved history does not slip into the past, it becomes part of the present. The brutal invasion of Ukraine retells an age-old story of conquest, power and control bringing destruction and death. War perpetuates itself through generations of unresolved trauma. In war, “otherness” has become so great that some are willing to completely annihilate a city, a country, a people.

It has become clear that conquest and control belong to a dying world, to a way of life which no longer serves us. Has it ever?

Wake up! That seems to be the sentiment that is staring us in the face. This, the stories we’ve been told, the ways we live our lives while destroying the planet, this isn’t working. Wake up! It is being shouted from the battle lines as the people of Ukraine take up arms to defend the only life they’ve known. It is being shot from the guns of the Russian soldiers as they destroy the lives of their brothers. It echoes our passivity in the face of all the other ongoing violent conflicts, from Yemen to Ethiopia to Syria to Myanmar and many more. It confronts us with our collective inability to address climate collapse.

Let’s turn toward the suffering of our world, make a stand and actively participate in supporting our brothers and sisters in Ukraine with donations, marches for peace, opening our homes and community centers to refugees and anything else that will alleviate the pain.

One of our SAND team members, Sara, has created a campaign to rent apartments in Warsaw, Poland to provide housing and more for those in need. You can offer your support here.

We also want to bow to the fierce love of life, freedom, and democracy of the Ukrainian people. May we all feel the heartbreak while also connecting with our fierce love of life and humanity. May we open our hearts, let them burst with pain, let them ache for the world and begin to close the gap between you and me, us and them. We all belong to the same thread of mystery we call Life. May we fully embody this truth.

“…we shall go from love to love and peace to peace, until at last all the corners of the world are covered with that peace and love for which consciously or unconsciously the whole world is hungering.”
— Mahatma Gandhi

Love,
The SAND Team (contact@scienceandnonduality.com)

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *