Traditionally, politics and business have been something I’ve tried very hard to keep separate. Healers serve any who are hurting and in need of help. However, there are times when a specific group of people are hurting more than the rest of us and we can no longer stay silent. Now, more than ever we all need to be reaching out and supporting our friends and neighbors of color.
We are being offered an opportunity to create lasting and long over due change. To do that we must each look within ourselves with a brutally honest eye. We need to see how our action or inaction contributes to the problem. We need to understand how to change our actions and our words to build a world within which our brothers and sisters no longer live in fear or risk bodily harm and death for simply being who they are.
It can seem overwhelming and confusing to try and figure out how we can each individually create this change. How can one person change such an enormous problem? It starts with any small action you are able to take and then a second and a third and so on. If everyone takes small actions, they will build into bigger movement. An avalanche isn’t a handful of pebbles or even a boulder rolling down a hill . An avalanche is started when a few begin to shift, then more and more until millions of them moving individually become a torrent which carries all of them even farther forever changing the landscape.
It is easy to say, “How can my small action make any difference? The problem is SO huge.” While it is true that the problems facing us are vast, we are many. If we all take a small part, we can make big change. Choose a part of the problem you feel strongly about and then do something to change it. That can be as simple as writing a letter, donating time or money to an organization, offering a smile, a kind word or a helping hand to a stranger. As with any new habit, the more we practice it, the easier they become and the more energy, emotion and time we seem to have to do more. Like a muscle, compassion and working for change gets stronger with use.
Many organizations have been posting useful resources for those interested in learning and doing more. Links to several of them are below for anyone who might find them helpful.
There is a set of phrases that is part of the Pangu Shengong forms which have been running through my head a lot lately.
Take kindness and benevolence as basis
Take frankness and friendliness to heart
Speak with reason
Treat with courtesy
Act with emotion
Accomplish results
Change, whether it is within ourselves or within our society requires starting from a place of love, kindness and openness. However, that must be followed with actions in order to achieve our goal. You can not achieve change without BOTH.
Resources: (this is by no means an exhaustive list, but simply a place to start)