Personal vs Collective: Finding Balance

I offer this, not as a hard truth, but as personal insight into navigating personal and collective truths. This serves as my experience while practicing the method of somatic opening. These thoughts are my best attempt to put my journey into words.

Cycles are an integral part of life around us. Both within and around. Dew fills, it drops, it fades. Seasons birth, they fruit, they blossom, and they die. Just now, walking outside we witness the slow decay of leaves as the cold weather invites the death of summer blossoms. So is such within us. Our path towards healing, towards what is true does not have an ending point; there is a constant cyclic unfolding. This non linear journey creates a sense of uneasiness, and discomfort at times. In our western culture we often run from our uncomfortable, our despair and hopelessness. We relish in advertising our success and happiness while hiding our failure, guilt and darkness. If we can shift from a self referencing mindset, demonizing and resisting our uncomfortable qualities we can recognize them as transformative states. If we can be held in the arms of our darkness it invites a softening (yin) and deeper, more whole integration. The knowledge gained from each of these seasons of BEing integrate to become our [w]holiness.

Our seasons of humanness unfold in an interesting way. For years I tried hardening and protecting myself (we will call this yang). I tried and I tried until my body and mind bore too much tension to hold. I resist the urge to refer to these times as negative. These dark and forceful years provided security and drive during stressful times of grad school, motherhood and moving. I clung tightly to ego-asking for safety and protection. These times are no more good or bad than where “I” am, or am not, now. They were integral stepping stones of my path. Inviting strength and security. Within the safety and protection of my fury I found space for contemplation. Yang fueled conceptual growth through principles of Buddhism, chiropractic and compassionate living.

Through the slow process of integrating these principles in my life fear was tenderly invited to the compost heap. A current state of wide-openness followed, begging for my reclaiming my safety in this world. Open heartedness is the fruit of the integration of yin and yang, masculine and feminine. We can be open and raw when we have free access to the library of balance. Free access to our vast capacity to be both tender/open and autonomous/strong.  We can find safety in our tenderness when we trust our ability to take a stand. The full potential of our femininity is expressed when we reclaim our power. It is not our softening that has created such generational and cultural harm. It is the pathological state of allowing Yang, masculine, to condition us all, either through engendering it, or resisting it.
Recently, I have shifted into an embracing of my yin, feminine, tender sinking. It feels as It is an interesting state to BE during a collectively, karmically, dark moment. Through the confusion of personal vs common BEing, I have drawn strength from this yin-I open my ears and gut to the call to embrace rather than divide. This opening within me has been the ultimate testimony that when the ground of division shifts into ground of embracing, worlds open.
I refuse to contribute hate to the commons. I commit to donate non division and compassion as an attempt to compost our aggressive and yang collective state. I acknowledge I have been a contributor and transmitter of this inability to integrate, I acknowledge I carry both dark and light. I will do everything I can to eradicate and heal this pain I carry. I pledge to hold space for women in pain and men in fury. I choose to reflect the transformation I hope births from the death of our current power.
I will speak against hate and violence with compassion and truth.
I will vote.
I will love.