“There’s certainly no quick and easy answers for how to address the violent injustice that’s just come to the forefront of our awareness, or the whole spectrum of violent injustice against the dark / the feminine / the other that the recent murders of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile belong to…
… and also I do sense that the collective efforts of many individuals taking deep self-responsibility and doing their own shadow integration work is one key piece of the puzzle that can lead our world to healing.
Why?
Because there’s not a single one of us alive who’s blameless in this.
As humans, we’re all implicated in the cycle of pain and violence that surrounds us, and until we meet our own internal violence, shamelessly and fearlessly, we just unconsciously perpetuate it in our personal and collective lives.
My strongest encouragement and my best wishes for you to do just that.”
Carolyn Elliott
WITCH magazine.
Yes, come to think of it, there is a deeper layer beneath the surface of violent injustice in this world, and doing shadow integration work can “lead our world to healing”. To me, the root cause is as ancient as the proverbial two trees in the garden in some mystical traditions, whether it be esoteric or gnostic Christianity, or kabbalah, or Buddhism, or as Thich Nhat Hanh’s words put it – “we are here to awake from the illusion of separateness”, which I interpret as the illusion that we are separate from the Source, or Divine Love, or our Higher Self, and consequently the illusion that we are all separate from our true self and from one another in this world.
I learned from some resources that the two trees may symbolise two systems of thoughts, for the intricate network of the branches and roots of the trees resembles the complex network of neural pathways in the brain. The tree of knowledge of good and evil, to me, is a mindset that thinks we are separate from the Divine, causing us to lose sight of our true identity as Divine Love, and mistaking our actions or any outward things to determine if we are good or bad. Some fundamentalist religions, including evangelical christianity, went further and suggested that humans were so-called inherently evil or “originally sinful”, and this destructive mindset only fuels a sense of self-loathing and self-hatred, from which violent injustice arises – both towards oneself and towards others.
Healing comes, in my opinion, when we return to the Source of who we are, knowing intuitively and experientially, that we are t’shuvah – made in the image of Divine Love, born with the power to do good or bad, and these actions don’t change our true identity as a Beloved child of the Universe or Source or Divine Love. I love the story of the African tribe that demonstrates this truth or principle of how a person who had done something hurtful and wrong can be held up in truth and love by his brothers and sisters “to reconnect him with his true Nature, to remind him who he really is, until he fully remembers the truth from which he’d temporarily been disconnected: “I AM GOOD” (or more specifically, “I am Love”).”
Whether the story of the tribe is historically true, as discussed in the above link, I believe it underlines the ancient and timeless truth that we are essentially Love, and the tree of life, or the system of thought that says we are One with Divine Love and with one another, frees us to be our true self, and to love and heal ourselves and one another from the inside out, as it is a transformation of the mind from within the heart and soul.
In fact, at this point of my understanding of how the world functions, I would venture to take one step further and surmise that as human civilisations move away from the Motherland or the birthplace of humanity, there is a risk of them losing sight of their original root or true identity, except perhaps in indigenous societies that retain their ancient way of life and cultures, such as the Aboriginals in Oceania, the tribes in Asia and South America and the native North American tribes. I believe much of the western civilisation (as well as other non-indigenous societies that have adopted a “modern”, urbanised way of life) have lost sight of the roots they had in Africa as their ancestors moved out from Africa to settle in Europe and other places thousands of years ago.
Somewhere along the way, the white Europeans started to think they were separate from their true self and from others, and started to hate themselves and others. The modern legal and criminal justice system probably came from the white people, which stems from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. For instance, the western christianity teaches retributive justice through the concept of a literal hell as a place for punishment and the penal substitutionary theory that presupposes an angry God in the sky demanding a blood sacrifice to appease his wrath. So, the more legalistic the white Europeans became, the more they ended up hating themselves and others for not measuring up to their own perceived standards. When they lost sight of their true identity as Love, they became blinded by the illusion of separateness and sought to define their worth and identity by outward achievements and power and status. Hence, that is probably the reason the early European imperialists started competing with one another and went to other continents to invade and conquer the lands and the native peoples of Africa, Asia and America, destroying peoples, culture and the natural environment as a result, simply to prove they were so-called superior.
So in a nutshell, I see white supremacy (or any other kind of supremacy), capitalism and patriarchy as a manifestation of having lost sight of our true identity of Divine Love, and consequently, having internalised self-hatred and self-loathing. (At this point, I want to say that this malady affects everyone, not only the white Europeans, but because European colonialism and imperialism has such a huge impact around the globe, I want to use this example to make a point.) Hence, through integrative shadow work, I believe the systemic violence and injustice in this world can be addressed when each of us returns to the Source, as often as possible, whenever we forget or lose sight of who we originally are, and rediscovers and remembers all over again that we are in essence Divine Love, thereby experiencing a deep transformation from within, and awake and continue to awake from “the illusion of separateness”. I believe the result will be a deep, lasting peace and unity, which we can experience individually and collectively.
Nature and Us 