I have a tendency to shield myself these days from the news.  I work internally, work with others to help them shift internally and try not to allow myself to be bombarded by the negative messages that come from the media or our culture.  Also, I recently married into a beautiful family that responsibly pays attention to all things prejudice, unfair, not-right with the world.  To me this is beautiful.  So, I find myself in the midst of a lot of pain and anger within my beautiful new family over what is happening in our world today.  Rightfully so.  

The pain and anger we all hold, no matter what side of the line you are on, is valid, and it needs to be transmuted, not acted upon.  We do not know how to allow for pain and shift it in this society and we need to learn, quickly.  It actually happens over and over, the victim of a crime forgiving the perpetrator.  I believe Jesus was big on this.  The end of Apartheid is an example, 
truth and reconciliation, building a bridge between the oppressor and the oppressed.  Every once in a while you will see a news story of parent or spouse of a victim going to the jail to confront and yes, forgive the perpetrator.  

This is not airy-fairy stuff my friends.  This takes courage.  And to me this is the way through.  The only response to violence is love.  There I said it.  I have felt this for a long time.  I felt it with 9/11, I feel it when others act out against me personally and I believe it is called for here.  My family will probably respectfully disagree with me.  That is ok, because we love each other.  Love.  It is more powerful than hate or blame.  

Allow yourself to sit with your pain, your anger, your hatred and breathe and let yourself feel it.  Feel it burning deep within you.  This is actually painful, but it is the only way.  Allow yourself to feel it without adding to the story.  Each time you notice you are feeding the story inside your mind, “oh, he did this and that was wrong and he needs - a, b, c, or d…” catch yourself and lovingly bring yourself back to simply feeling the feelings that the event and this story brings up in you.  You have a right to be angry.  You do not have a right to act out on that anger.  It is your responsibility to feel it and transmute it.  You and you alone can do this.  We must all do this.  There is no other way.  

When I do this in my personal life the affects are sometimes miraculous.  Rather than yelling at the other as I would like, I sit with my pain for as long as it takes, breathing in and out, feeling it, stopping the storyline in my head.  At some point I shift into understanding that the other, no matter what they have done, the other has done their deed because of all they have been taught, and all they have not been taught.  We are products of our conditioning.  And we need to stop acting out.  We can shift into compassion and love for the perpetrator no matter what the deed.  It is the only way.  I cannot say it enough.  It is the only way.  This other, this perpetrator was acting out on his own pain, conditioning, using the information he or she was taught throughout their life.  This is not an excuse to allow anyone to continue violent behavior.  It is a call to stop ourselves from doing the same.  Understand the other is conditioned, taught unhealthy mechanisms, ideas and is in great pain and is incapable of doing anything other than acting out.  And sit with the pain that informs you it would help you to do the same.  This is not true.  We have been conditioned erroneously too.  It will satisfy your ego for a very limited time to act out.  And then the cycle continues.  It never stops.  The only way to stop it is to shift into understanding, compassion and love for the perpetrator.  Breathe in and out, feel the anger, then breathe in and out and feel love.  It is possible.  It is possible, it is possible.  

When I was a young girl I used to be called many names.  Bush-head, because I had really unreasonable, bushy hair, stupid and various forms of this, and I was mistaken for a boy all the time.  In the midst of this it is understandable that I was depressed and thought poorly about myself.  I did not have any friends and I retreated to the solace of my bedroom where I would listen to music for hours to help me shift out of a very dark place.  

Music was a very helpful tool.  I also happened upon one other technique that was helpful to me.  I looked in the mirror, mostly to determine how ugly the acne and bushy hair made me.  But one day, I looked into my eyes and I felt something other than the heavy depression I was constantly experiencing.  When I looked into my eyes, I connected with another part of myself, a part that did not follow the story that was being told by the bushy hair, acne, and barrage of negative words being thrown my way.  When I looked into my eyes, I knew there was a part of me that was good.  Even if it was buried deep underneath the surface.  I knew it was there.  And this saved me.

As I work with people now, I run into this all the time.  Young and not so young identifying with the thoughts they have about themselves.  And these thoughts have been taught to us, conditioned within us by others who are looking at us and telling a false story about us.  This happens because of the pain that other person is holding within, but that is another story. We hear these things and we start to inflate the story.  We pile more onto it and we spiral downward.  

Two things to know - our feelings are very loyal, they will follow where ever our thoughts lead them.  So if you are telling a negative story about yourself you will experience negative feelings.  If you are telling a positive story about yourself you will experience positive feelings.  Also, we humans with our big brains experience about 60,000 thoughts per day, 80% of which are not true.  We have erroneous thoughts all the time, so we have to be careful, just because a thought pops into our heads, does not make it true.

So, back to 13 year old me looking in the mirror.  I had a constant story running inside of me that said, "you are ugly, worthless, stupid, you were supposed to be a boy, you couldn’t even get that right," and on and on….  Imagine how this would make a person feel.  Oy!  Not a fun bunch of years!  But as I looked into my eyes, I started to slowly chip away at this erroneous story.  I started to identify with another part of myself.  A part that had nothing to do with my appearance, my gender, my intelligence or my abilities in any way.  I began to know and feel, even though I could not have said it this way at the time, that I was not only made up of the negative thoughts and feelings I was identifying with, they were a part of me, but they were not me.  I began to know that I was so much more.  And I slowly shifted my identification with all the negative stories coming at me from others and from within myself.  This was a process.  It took time, especially because I was doing it alone.  

I have clients who insist they were born bad, that there is just something inherently wrong with them.  They hold fiercely to the belief that for them, life is just different, and not in a good way.  And when I speak to them and say, this is a conditioned belief, this is not the truth of who you are, they never believe me - at first.  It takes time.  You may not find the whole of you by looking into your eyes as I did.  But perhaps you can try an experiment.  Allow yourself to imagine that there might be more to you than what you currently think and feel.  Allow yourself to imagine that what you believe to be you is just a part of you.  A painful part, but only a part.  Even if you have no evidence to the contrary, allow yourself to imagine that your pain and the events causing this pain are simply part of a greater whole.  And within that greater whole, you too are good, loving and lovable.  Even if you don’t believe it, try it as an experiment.  And try reaching out to someone you trust and revealing your pain.  It may take time, but the pain you are experiencing is not you, and you do not have to stay in your pain forever.