Is It Personal?

I have a private counseling practice, in addition to my work at the University.  I've been doing that for about 20 years; so I've had plenty of time to watch as my approach to being with people in that setting has changed.  I was surprised the first time I heard myself telling someone, 'What you're experiencing is deeply personal, it is about you.  On the other hand it isn't personal at all.  What you're experiencing in your life is what is happening in everyone's life, one way or another.  It's your part of the suffering that's in the world right now, your share of the world's suffering.' (Trust me, the person I was saying this to was in a position to hear and use that perspective.)

Our time, this end, this transition from what has been to what will be, is a deeply wounded time.  Put your own personal angst and pain aside for a moment.  Put the guilt aside.  We are ever and always, living or dead, a part of everything else that exists on this planet.  We are made up of the planet.  We will return the borrowed pieces that are our individual life to the planet someday.  What our civilization has done and is doing to our one and only home we are doing to ourselves, to each other.

I think a time is upon us when we will be greatly tempted to pull even more within, a stance that seems to be one of the hallmarks of this civilization.  As the water becomes scarcer, as the changes to the climate make the day to day of our lives more challenging, we'll find ourselves thinking all the more about our needs, our suffering, our piece of pie (sound familiar).  The more altruistic of us will focus on the needs of those humans most immediately effected by these changes, those who have virtually no buffers in their lives.  We will want to do what we can ameliorate the suffering of these people.

It seems very difficult, even for the most enlightened of us, though, to extend that same care to the earth itself, to our brother and sister animals and plants and insects, the rocks, and the wind which is our breath and the breath of all other breathing things.  The voice in our heads that relentlessly demands that we must think of people, we must take care of people, that people must come first is that voice which heeded has created this nightmare we all experience so deeply, so personally, so helplessly.

Do all you can to let your focus move from all that is human, all that is human-related.  Let your vision begin to shift.  We are lost because our vision is almost always on that which is human and human-related.