Everyone Is Distressed

Dear friend,

The good news is that Maisie’s paw is getting better, which is a relief. Malik is a doctor and I remember him telling me, years ago, about lungs healing—that so long as you’re seeing gradual improvement, that’s good. So I’m applying a similar logic for Maisie. She seems happy in every other sense, and I keep thinking of Tuxedo, Chiara’s parents’ cat, who had a much worse injury that healed completely.

I also imagined Maisie surrounded by golden healing light—something I’ve been encouraging people to do for years, going all the way back to the first kids I taught Exam Magic to in 2003.

It’s the most natural thing in the world to imagine your body—or the body of another—filled with healing, intelligent light. You don’t need to know anything at all about healing. In fact, it’s best if you remember that you don’t know—and not get in the way by trying to force it with willpower.

Your willpower is needed simply to remember the light. To trust that it knows what to do.
And to let it do its work.

That—and to care physically for the symptoms, ideally with the help of someone who knows what they’re doing.

Enzo, meanwhile, is turning out to be the most chilled-out dog I’ve met since Santy. I just hope Chiara gets to meet him, and that he becomes a regular guest.

But even with sweet company, it’s hard not to be distressed knowing that children are being shot and starved, drones dropping grenades on them. And people here in the UK are going to jail for refusing to pretend this isn’t happening—or that there’s somehow a justifiable reason for it.

The neighbours behind us are having a very, very difficult time.

I heard gut-wrenching screaming today, desperate voices. And yet—I could hear the adults trying to calm the situation. Chiara called from Rome while their two dogs barked in the garden (thankfully north-facing and shaded), and the family tried to cope with whatever emotional crisis was unfolding.

I wasn’t sure whether calling the police would help or hinder.
I’ve called once before, a few weeks ago, when it was truly off the scale and I feared someone might snap. This time, it felt like they were doing their best. I could hear both parents trying to work together, and eventually the girl calmed down.
So I guess that’s a little like Maisie’s paw.

I just wish we could all come together and help one another feel at home—to come into the safety of peace.

We can. And I believe we will.
Even as we weather systemic collapse and work to build new systems that support life, instead of being so determined to harm it.

There’s that old story about the baby elephant, tied to a stake.
It sees its mother and father also tied. The baby tries to pull the stake up and can’t. And because the grown-up elephants don’t move, it assumes they’re powerless too.

But they’re not.
They could walk away any moment without even noticing the stake.

They were once baby elephants too—and fell for the same old shtick.
(If you’ll forgive the pun.)

If you’re feeling distressed by what’s happening in the world, maybe there’s comfort in knowing that you’re having a human response.

For a moment I looked at the back of my neighbour’s house with all of the barking and screaming and shouting and thought that I wished they lived elsewhere and then I connected to compassion and the desire for them to leave melted like the nothingness it was. Shadow projection of the false self. I sat on the edge ofthe bed looking out the back bedroom window with Enzo beside me and wept for their suffering. Their dear hearts must be in so much pain.

It’s humane to weep.

If it helps - you could think of yourself as a weeping saint—letting love move through you, bringing you home into the peace that comes after the storm.

I’m learning to accept the crying as a process that I’m willing to enter over and over until there’s no more need of it. Who knows how or when, all I know is that I am bigger than any problem that comes and that in unity we are power itself.

Not just powerful.

We still have the strength of a fully grown adult…
after the sobbing has passed.

Till tomorrow

Love
Mikey