Spiritual Resistance to the Desensitization

This is my concern: We’re being desensitized to it all.

Another article about the sexual abuse of children. Immigrant children in custody by Health and Human Services. By our government. By authority that represents us as people.

How do I wrap my head around this? More importantly, how do I help my heart ?

I tune into my heart and notice that it’s becoming increasingly desensitized by this information. I see calluses and muffled padding that take the form of “Well, we can’t really trust the media 100% all the time anyways.. I wonder where that data came from? ..Is this trustworthy in our politicized climate?”

Resistance. Denial. Products of the heartbreak and shocking horror induced by previous reports, instances, and examples of this type of thing. Products of the ultimate, deep knowing that this type of thing takes place.

That this type of thing took place for me.

And for so many of us.

It’s like re-living the abuse all over again but from this pulled, hall of mirrors where it’s hard to differentiate where my wound begins and the collective’s ends.

The abuse of power. The experienced helplessness. The loss of innocence.

All funded by my tax dollars.

Jeez..

And here I am once again. Knee deep in the question - how do I process and make sense of all of this information? How do I process and make sense of this current news story? How do I create a narrative about this that’s of service to me (i.e. doesn’t send me into a spiral of despair), and how do I allow this information to truly land in my body? For if I don’t feel it then part of me is repressed or dissociated. If I don’t feel it then I’m not connected or in my body.

Can I shape my narrative about the world to hold opposing realities? Can I expand my field of awareness to accommodate both horror and hope? Fear and faith? The gross and the sacred?

This inquiry and the practices that emerge from it are spiritual in nature.

Being in relationship with the reality of our times is a practice of non-duality. It is a practice of the bleeding heart and the contemplative mind. It is a practice of committing to questions with no promise of answers. It is a practice of sitting in the fire and breathing.

I do not trust the fact that I’m becoming desensitized to the systemic sexual abuse of children. To be sensitive is to use one’s whole self to sense what’s around you. To be sensitive is to use extra-sensory faculties to understand one’s world. If we are shut off from these faculties due to overstimulation, lack of investment in them, or a desire to shut them off then we miss out on an entire way of knowing our world. We miss out on an entire set of tools that are integral to learning how to solve these problems and to heal our world.

We can’t tune out. We can’t become callused. We can’t chock all of this up to the world just being fucked up.

We have to dig deeper within ourselves through stillness, observation, crying, and community to look for the wisdom that’s underpinning these times. The wisdom that’s beckoning to come forth through the cracks in our hearts.

I see you, Dear Mother, pushing our hearts and our minds to break open to new possibilities. Help us do so with grace and ease. For this shit is rooouugghhh..