When you truly heal your emotional Being and you no longer harbor resentment or pain, you will notice how disinterested you become to any form of gossip, personal negativity, or ill thoughts directed at you or others; you will feel a peace that is not shaken by the physical world nor the seemingly urgent demands it attempts to place upon you; you will perceive with a clarity that simply reveals, without projecting an emotional imprint; and perhaps most revelatory, you will realize that suffering is truly a choice and a state of mind, and it is, in contrast to all that society will try to make you believe, not the result of any actions by others nor of preexisting conditions beyond one’s control, but rather the result of perceiving Life as flawed in its expression. 

Suffering is rooted in the belief that Life, or another, or oneself, should somehow be different than it is. As long as you see yourself as a victim, your loved ones as victims, even the Earth as a victim, you create dissonance between Life and your view of Life. You may choose to assist others, you may express your compassion through action, but it does not have to come from the need to end suffering; rather you can choose to be motivated by pure joy, inspired by potentiality, and fueled by limitless creativity. 

There is Life, and then there is your belief about Life. If you want to be free of suffering, let go of the latter and embrace the former. It awaits you like a ripe fruit hanging from a tree!

Society has taught you to be what you are not.

You are water. You have no attachment to form, you remember everything, you conform to your environment.

You are mycelium, interconnected to the Earth. You are fungus, serving as an extension of the soil, emerging and decaying; an integral part of the infinite web of cellular filament. You touch everything and everything touches you, even as the appearance of distance attempts to convince you otherwise.

You are a monkey. You need air, water, nutrients, touch, and love. These are your real needs, even as society claims otherwise, even as you claim otherwise. At some point in history a monkey became convinced it was no longer a monkey but rather a superior creature with needs other than air, water, nutrients, touch and love. It then convinced the other monkeys until society emerged as a blueprint for attaining the fictitious need of approval from other monkeys.

You do not need approval from the other monkeys.

You’re a Fungus Monkey. You’re good enough and I love you, just as you are. You don’t have to change, grow or accomplish a thing.

I’ll say it again:

I love you. You’re good enough. Now let’s go have some fun.

Love Makana & R.D.

What we are witnessing is a culture shaped by emotional reaction, rather than carefully chosen values and principles. We can see that events shape our perceptions; rarely do we acknowledge that our perceptions shape events. There is a general consensus to end violence; yet even the conversation to end violence is riddled with violence.

In a reactionary culture, the root issue is rarely addressed. We seek to eliminate symptoms while masking the cause; we demand further external action from others while demanding less internal responsibility from ourselves.

Violence begins within. Each of us is violent. Violence is the result of insensitivity to the emotional well being of another; it is motivated by a failure to process one’s own emotional pain.

Thus we cannot affect the outcome we seek- in this case, to end violence- merely through an emotional reaction based in fear. Fear is the root cause of violence; it cannot be the solution to it. Fear leads to control. When we cannot control ourselves we seek to control others. Control is an attempt to fight what is. Fighting what is gives strength to it. It feeds what we don’t want.

Rather than fight what is, we ought to first see what is.

From early childhood we are immersed in a culture of glorified violence. Many of us are born into dysfunctional families. We bear the emotional burdens of our parents through transference; this violence is passed down through generations, like a game of hot potato; each carrier of pain- often unconsciously- slinging their own hurt at whomever is closest, and most defenseless: in many cases, the child.

Each of us is that child, carrying that pain. Each of us is that grown-up, trying to deal with the same pain we have been carrying since childhood.

When we become aware of the uncountable instances we have caused another pain, through our words, our looks, our inability to communicate lovingly; it is then and only then we embark on the road to ending violence.

When we can see that inconceivable violence, such as what we have witnessed in Connecticut, is the final and horrific result of barely perceptible violence that begins when we are very young; that the early pains of life, seemingly small as they may be, if not healed, grow to immense power in our life, shaping every thought and action; then the solution to ending violence becomes clear:

Each of us must acknowledge our role in creating violence. In acknowledging our role in creating violence, we accept that we are powerful, and that each of us also carries within the power to end violence.

Essentially, we are the solution we seek. You are the only one who can put an end to violence.

This is not about guns. It is about emotion. Only love can quell destructive emotion.

If you want YOUR world to be free of violence, heal yourself, love yourself, and see yourself in all others. Once you do this, let go of trying to control anyone else’s world.

There is Love. All else is propaganda.

To seek enlightenment is to acknowledge the self as priority. The act of seeking reinforces a centralized awareness by directing focus toward self assessment. The byproduct of this process is a reinforcement of identity and distancing from that which i…