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America and the world, my heart goes out to you.

The challenges we are facing are daunting, unprecedented, and heart-breaking. In the United States, California is on fire. The Gulf Coast is getting pummeled by hurricanes. Anti-police protests are increasing, police are getting away with murder again and again and again, and now protesters are being shot as well.

1,000 people are dying every day to a disease that has ravaged the country. The President is pushing the limits of authoritarianism, actively working to destroy our democracy while our supposed system of checks and balances stands idly by.

Abroad, China is underwater. Bangladesh, even more so. Putin is poisoning his opposition. Argentina hit record COVID numbers as much of the world grapples with the economic devastation of the pandemic.

Every day, our hearts break more, our minds get overwhelmed by the news, and our collective anger grows as we shelter in our homes feeling helpless and anxious.

And I am here to tell you that everything is happening exactly as it is supposed to be.

Yes, you read that right. These moments are necessary, needed, and all a part of the natural order of the universe.

Let me explain.

The Wake Up Call

When I was 21 years old, I was at a concert with my girlfriend. Since she was a bit shorter than me, and I wanted to prove my masculinity, I bent down and lifted her up so she could get a better view.

Two hours later, I was in the hospital emergency room with a herniated disc and a flow of tears rolling down my face, in the most pain I had ever been in in my entire life.

Now many years later, I see that injury as a wake up call. It needed to happen. It had to happen. The muscles in my body were chronically tight and imbalanced. If it didn’t happen then, it would have happened later.

The injury put me on a necessary path of healing. It was a singular event that showed me all that I was doing wrong and put me on the path of making everything right. Now things are more right than they ever could be. Before I couldn’t touch my toes, now I do handstands. Before I was cut off from my heart, now I live in it.

I don’t claim to be an awakened being, but I do like to be inspired by those who are. And those great teachers have all said the same thing: there is not a single atom in the universe that is out of place.

This is our moment of both individual and collective awakening, rooted in one singular understanding: everything we encounter on the path is part of the path. Everything is grist for the mill.

None of these current events came out of nowhere. In fact, we created them, both directly and indirectly, both consciously and unconsciously. This is our karma. And it is finally time to face it.

This is Our Karma

Karma is not some strange metaphysical force that affects the world. It is simply the law that we reap what we sow. The accumulation of our actions in the past is what has created our present.

The fact is that we have known about climate change for four decades. And known, identifiable forces and people have fought against addressing it tooth and nail. We have been warned, repeatedly, and through our own hubris and lack of foresightedness, have failed to take enough action.

Now is a time of reckoning. To be awakened is to be free of delusion, and we have so many delusions to dispel. We are pulling ourselves out of long held beliefs that our society is fair and that the people we have put in charge will do the right thing.

I am reminded of the poem Sixth Month by Luisa A. Igloria,

You close your eyes and shapes flicker
beneath your lids: even in all of this, you’re
zealous about remembering as much as you
can about the world we used to think we had.

The death of George Floyd was not a catalyst, it was an X-ray: it forced us to look at the growing tumors of racial injustice and unrestrained police indemnity inside.

In truth, all the events we are encountering right now are just symptoms of larger underlying problems that have been growing for decades.

If white supremacy is the lung cancer that has been growing in America, then Donald Trump is the cough. If anti-science anti-intellectualism is the mold rotting the foundation of our public discourse, then the politicization of what scientists are saying is the creaky floorboards.

Answering the Call

The sore has gotten infected, and we have finally removed the bandage to see just how bad things have gotten.

If just one police murder was able to catalyze protests in every single major city in the country, and protests against police brutality are being met with police brutality, clearly the organization is rotten from the inside out and needs to be rebuilt, with funding going to prevention and social services.

If floods and fires and hurricanes are devastating entire communities and countries, clearly we have to address climate change immediately, meaning aggressively and without remorse targeting the 100 companies responsible for 71% of the problem.

If a clearly racist, misogynistic, nepotistic, violence-encouraging president continues to receive support from far too many millions of people, clearly we need to have a reckoning with the very roots of our culture.

If a single, microscopic virus has the power to bring the entire world to its knees, clearly we must devote time, attention, trust, and funding to the scientists and institutions that are designed to give us the data, advice, and vaccines we so desperately need.

If 40 million people have lost their jobs during a pandemic, clearly we cannot have health insurance be tied to employment. If people with more money than they can spend in a thousand lifetimes gain billions of dollars while millions stay in poverty, there is something incredibly wrong with how our monetary system works.

It’s time to treat the wound. All of this needs to happen. It has to happen. If it didn’t happen now, it would happen in the future.

This is our collective awakening.

And caught in the middle of it all is you. Fortunately for you, the entire world is here for your personal awakening too.

Freedom From Suffering

Yes, I know, I’m suffering too. It’s hard. I didn’t want this either. What are we to do?

We can start by recognizing that everything that happens to us is a vehicle for our awakening. Even our suffering.

Suffering, in short, is our resistance to what is. Suffering is when anything happens that we do not want to happen. Whether we walk into work to find a pink slip on our desk, or walk into the ice cream store to find they are out of our favorite flavor, when we resist anything that happens in life, we suffer.

Many people spend their entire lives trying not to suffer, which results in the endless pursuit of control. A separation is created between who we are and what is happening. We get cut off from our experience.

From the perspective of awakening, this strategy ignores the fundamental nature of reality, which is that everything changes, nothing lasts, and there is no way to protect ourselves from the world.

As part of our path of awakening, on the path to freedom, we have to welcome pain into our lives as just another experience. We have to realize the words of Kahlil Gibran: “Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.”

Letting Go

Earlier this year, I was quite sad when I realized it would be quite some time before I could go on a meditation retreat again. Then it dawned on me, this is our meditation retreat. We are all sheltering in place in our little home cocoons, and if we do it right, we will be transformed and ready to fly when this is all over.

And on this path of transformation, we can use suffering and everything that is happening as just another vehicle for growth.

Suffering points us to exactly where we are clinging. And once we let go of that resistance, suddenly it doesn’t seem so bad. Rather than a big monster we are trying to avoid, it’s just a feeling. We can handle feelings.

We then become wholehearted participants in life. We open ourselves to every moment, we remain present in the face of pain and keep our heart open.

So yes, even now, even in the midst of fires, hurricanes, protests, pandemics, murders, the entire universe is surrounding you and supporting you on this path.

Welcome to the journey of awakening. No one said it was going to be easy.