Our Only Enemy is Fear of Expanding the Heart

We protect our hearts by transforming fear into an arrow of hate, so that we can project it onto a scapegoat "out there." This vicious art of projection is what has become of our "politics."

Two dueling parties mirror each other, reflecting the same toxic energy back and forth. I meet people on "the left" every day who hate and stereotype the other as much as anyone does on "the right." The far right stereotypes Muslims, socialists, and immigrants. The far left stereotypes Christians, capitalists, and "white" people. What's the difference? Same energy.

Our hatred is fear that won't turn around to face its own heart. But when it does, we discover that fear is simply love not daring enough.

Daring to embrace the other as one's self.

What would happen if we discovered that capitalists and socialists, Christians and Muslims, people of "color" and "white" people, men and women, LGBTQ people and straight people, are all ourselves, all grappling with a frightful and complicated world, all carrying the same broken heart? What if we discovered that we are one human family, one chaos of DNA, one shared breath?

Our only enemy is fear of expanding the heart.

I have no idea what the Big Fix is going to be. But I'm pretty sure it won't be a single ideology, or a single political system, or a single legislative policy from one party that "wins" by conquering the other. I'm pretty sure it's going to happen when each of us discovers, through an organic cardiac sensation of expansion, that we are all drowning in the chaos of love. We each have our own part to play. We are called to perform our own unique duty with joyful integrity, and without wasting our energy judging others.

"Better to do your own work, though humble and imperfect, than try to do the work of another, though great and sublime." (Bhagavad Gita, 18:47)

I once heard my teacher say: "Blessed are you when you are confused, for that is when you sink from the mind into the heart." I don't mind being confused. I don't mind falling into the heart. Because that is where the action is, and the action is love.


Photo by John Arrowood