I get it, I really do. The world is in a terrible, terrible state. There is such widespread suffering and mind-bending injustice, it is hard to see, and almost impossible to look away.
And since the world is round, and spinning on it's axis, and processing around the sun, there is no respite from it. Open your phone and there it is - humanity, suffering, in real time. To look away feels dangerous (are we next?) and immoral (how can I ignore what's going on??)
I get a daily email from the 'Centre for Contemplation and Action' and the most recent one explored this idea. I copy it below because it is written by someone far wiser and more eloquent than me! I have shortened and adapted it a bit, but full credit to the writer, Brian McClaren. I found it full of wisdom, compassion and an important message: what you focus on shapes how you experience the world and in turn, how you interact with it.
So if you want to partake in and importantly, contribute to the good in this world it is important to allow yourself to look away sometimes. I am not saying good vibes only - but to establish and keep a boundary between yourself and the suffering of the world is not weakness or immoral: it may even be necessary, if you want to be able to effect it positively in some way.
"During my years as a news junkie, I found myself getting a strange high from the latest ugliness report. Each time I indulged, I fanned the flames of something unhealthy … my moral superiority, or resentment, or fear, or despair, or desolation, or us-versus-them hostilities….
The internal realities we construct in our minds actually exist in our minds, ugly or beautiful, false or true. They shape our internal values which influence our external behavior. We tend to make the world around us resemble the world within us. Based on our focus, ugliness is everywhere or beauty abounds.
Alexis Wright is an Aboriginal writer from Australia. As an indigenous person, she understands that the end of the world has been happening for centuries for indigenous people. She understands that both colonizers and colonized need to be liberated from the mindset of colonization. The first step toward freedom, she says, is to decolonize or de-capitalize the mind, so you can “develop strengths that will not be defined by how others believe you should think.” She calls this liberation “sovereignty of mind”.
The journey to sovereignty of mind requires an inward migration, where we in a sense become refugees from our external nation, culture, economy, and civilization, even though we still live within its borders. We withdraw inwardly….
...and go forward on this inward migration toward sovereignty of mind, where in defiance of a rising level of ugliness, people cultivate beauty… seeing it, creating it, savoring it. Savoring beauty within will lead to beautiful outward action."
My contribution: here is an instagram reel that I made that is aimed at supporting people who are overwhelmed by fear at the state of the world, or those who are engaged in activism to try to to make it a better place: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DXK6XcKiHUa/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==
If you haven't tried EFT before, you could give it a go 🙂