What changes people? Judgement and anger? No. Having their hearts cracked open by love? Yes. You know this already. You have been moved reduced increased by love’s epiphanies. 

What would happen if rather than being angry at those who cause harm, we sat down and held them in our hearts and filled them with love. A great service we can offer, something that is available in each moment, is to feel the hurt others cannot feel themselves and let love flow.

In actuality there is no other, so we are feeling our own untended wounds, our own hidden hurts, the agony of our own heartbreak.

Does it work? There is no way to know, except to trust that on some level it does. It works on us and that is enough to change the world, for we are the world. It calms our nerves and shifts the energy we are pouring into the whole.

It is akin to Tonglen: breathe in the dark, breathe out the light.

Stewing in our pain, adding more anger to an already angry world, more judgement and righteousness to a world struggling under its unbearable weight, serves no one. Right now, this world is keenly set up to let us stew, to force us into the pot. We don’t have to jump in.

Ask yourself what act has the chance of healing, of wholeing, of lasting. Be moved from love, not hate or fear. Acting from righteousness, we cause more pain. All fear holds within it the seed of more fear. 

We can perpetuate the hate or let our knowing go, and be with our pain and sorrow, feel our breaking hearts and that of our world, and be the love we dream of. 

It’s a big ask, to take off our armor, to end the wars within. The wars without sputter and stop without energy to fuel them. Aikido for the body, mind and soul isn’t for the faint of heart.