The Unity principle at Red brings us back to knowing that we all have the rapist and murderer inside of us. We all embody both Trump and Hitler. They are not separate from us. Do you recoil from that? I know I certainly do. That can’t be true! But it is.
Time for confession. During this latest pandemic surge I did the math for how many amongst the vaccine refusers were Trump supporters. I wanted to see if the number of their deaths would change anything politically. The super dark side of this? I was hoping it would. Do you know who else had this kind of mindset? Hitler. If only we got rid of “those” people things would be so much better. Again we have to step back from “good” and “evil”. When we point our finger at “those” people there are three fingers pointing right back at us.
As I write this, I’m writing with a heart smashed into a million pieces. My partner, the one I thought I was going to die with jumped into an emotional affair with another man. He became the main focus of her romantic attraction, and when caught she completely denied she had done anything wrong. So what does this have to do with the unity principle? In my previous marriage I cheated several times on my wife, and I also steadfastly didn’t believe I had really done anything wrong. So yes, Karma is a bitch, but even more importantly I need to see that my partner is just another mirror. I might not like what I see, but there it is. I’m rightfully quite hurt, but a lot of that anger I’m sending her way? Really that anger is about the cheater in me. And now the circle is complete and I finally realize, oh this is what it feels like to have your trust betrayed. I keep on wondering why can’t she understand how painful this is to me?!? And then I can look into the mirror and remember that I also didn’t understand really understand why my wife’s pain. I didn’t really understand because I had never gone through that particular pain myself.
When a car driver treated me like just potential bug-splatter, I found a crazy amount of rage inside. Enough rage to do incredibly rash, stupid things. And worse, if I’m honest I found that I really love that crazy wild energy. I can easily see how anger can be addictive. And then I look at people who go to Trump rallies to get their fix of anger. Instead of judging them I need to remember yet again I’m looking into a mirror and not liking what I see. I also could get easily addicted to rage. I also could get so angry about our broken, corrupt system that I want to just burn it all down and try something new. So all that anger I have at those other angry people? Shouting at my reflection in the mirror.
This mirror work at Red is not all just the hard things. It works the other way too. That crazy drive to conquer the world and then actually succeed that is in all of us too. That beautiful, righteous anger that made Martin Luther King so powerful is also in all of us. It took me the very longest time to realize I can be a leader. When I was in Boy Scouts they went on and on about leadership and I always thought why don’t they just take the boys that are the obvious leaders into another room and talk to them about this stuff. This is just so irrelevant to an obvious non leader like me. I realize now that I shrank back from leadership because even as a child I associate strong domineering men (which is the usual stereotype of leadership) as the root cause of much of the suffering. The truth is there is a bit of domineering involved with most leadership, the trick is to harness it to do the right thing instead of the harmful, selfish thing. And even more important though is to fully accept the part of me that wants to dominate. To celebrate the part that wants to throw my partner hard on to the bed and have my way with her (with her previously negotiated explicit consent of course). I still struggle with that. Even when it is beyond clear that my partner loves this, I have to struggle to really acknowledge that yes that scary dominating monster is in me. Yet again when I’m looking at those dominating men, yet again I’m looking at a mirror.
And what is the most important thing to do when looking at a mirror? Send as much love as possible to what you see. Time to yet again go back there.