Dear Friend,
The journey to Italy was quite pleasant. I sat next to an English guy who had his airpods in for the entire journey. I took that as a ‘do not disturb’ sign and worked on my laptop editing some music.
I felt a wave of emotion - a mix of excitement, anticipation and perhaps relief pass through my fellow passengers as we emerged into the warm spring sunlight at Turin airport. There’s a softness to the light in Italy. My brother first told me about it when he was studying fashion in London.
Kevin won a design competition and was flown out to a shoe producer in Italy, I forget where, most likely Milan, he wrote me about the light.
On the plane I read a line from Paramahansa Yogananda.
“Learn to see God in all persons, of whatever race or creed. You will know what Divine love is when you begin to feel your oneness with every human being, not before.”
- Paramahansa Yogananda from “The Law of Success, Using the Power of Spirit to Create Health, Prosperity and Happiness”
To feel our oneness with every human being.
To the human mind that’s a pretty tall order.
Human behaviour, the things we communicate and the things we do, is or can be deeply challenging. We don’t have to look too far to find someone saying and or doing something we’re going to judge. Something upsetting. Scroll through the media and the stakes are raised to appalling, horrifying and heart breaking.
Then there are the people and animals who are sweet, caring, strong, humble. They break your heart too. It cracks open and love floods through.
Love itself is divine.
To be swept along in a river of love, heart open, joy pulsing through our body. A fleeting experience, often accompanied by intense disappointment and pain as the object of our love leaves or lets us down.
Everyone we love must leave this world, as must we.
And yet.
We do love.
That’s enough. To love the ones close to us and commit to non judgement of the others.
Here’s a funny thing.
We went to a beautiful family run restaurant this afternoon to celebrate Angelo, Chaira’s Dad’s 77th birthday. I wasn’t able to complete todays letter before we set off.
We’ve just this minute returned.
There was a table with two couples who during lunch had spoken so loud everyone else either had to listen to their conversation or raise their voices to be heard over them.
Not unusual, it is Italy after all.
Chiara was able to get them to lower their voices by vibing them out. You don’t want to be messing with a petite Italian female. Especially not on her Dad’s birthday.
The restaurant has a beautiful garden where all of the diners hung out after their meals. Coffees, icecreams, cigarettes, kids. Italian style sunny afternoon.
In the garden, a group of cyclists had dropped by to say hi to the owner. Family friends. One of the cyclists had a pronounced gate to his walk, made more prominent by his cycling shoes.
I was watching the cyclist as he and his friends ambled to their bikes, thinking. “I really like this guy, he’s got such a lovely energy about him”, when one of the guys from the loud table, waiting till he’s left, mimicked the cyclist’s walk. Laughing with his friends.
The voice in my head which had been eyeing this fella since he walked in pounced. ‘See, he is an arsehole!” My mind continued on for several minutes inventing fantasy scenarios for how I’d teach him a lesson, what I’d do if he was rude to any one in our group.
There was a time when my mind would hold on to this kind of stuff for days or weeks.
You just have to practice forgiveness.
People are where they are in their own personal evolution.
Let them evolve and learn from the interactions.
I don’t want to make this stuff seem any harder or any easier than it is. Forgiving someone for clownish rudeness is clearly of a different order to some of the forgiveness stories needed on earth at this time.
The inescapable is that we cannot be at peace while we are attacking.
Criticising is a form of attack.
The Course in Miracles calls them attack thoughts.
After millions of years of practice I am now able to drop the judgement within a few minutes. We don’t have to be floating on a cloud of bliss to be in this world. To evolve.
To live in peace we must become peaceful. Peaceful in our thoughts, words and actions.
Refuse to act out on your mind’s thoughts.
Practice dropping or swapping out attacking thoughts for something with a wider perspective.
Scrolling online frequently moves the needle in the wrong direction.
There are infinite examples of human compassion and creativity. More material than any one of us can read or see or listen to in a lifetime.
The more of us who live this way, the stronger the magnetic force we create, pulling more and more of our human family into the oneness we share.
We only need to begin.
Again and again.
Beginning each moment.
Till tomorrow
Love
Mikey