Nurturing our Collective Karma Back to Health

Throughout the history of our human presence on planet Earth, ours has been a story of suffering and hardship. With only a few brief exceptions, our lives have been initially a struggle for survival in a desperate search for food and shelter, followed by blood-thirsty battles rooted in religion, politics and just plain greed. Humanity’s inhumanity to itself is likely unparalleled by any other species. 

And yet, our story is also of extraordinary creativity, ingenuity and kindness. In this precarious point in humanity, how can we shift the scales toward collective thriving when we occupy such opposing states of consciousness?

Whether or not we believe in reincarnation per se, there is undeniably a karmic field that we all share. Experiments with rats have shown that when they receive electrical shocks associated with, for example, the smell of almonds and cherries, up to five generations of their offspring will still experience fear of the same scent. The horrors and suffering from our history, our past lives if you will, or the collective karma of our ancestors, hang over our psychological state like dark storm clouds. After being exposed to such trauma for millions of years, it is no wonder that the human psyche is predisposed to fear and self-protection.

However, this way of reacting isn’t always the default. Hurricanes Helene and Milton have left unprecedented destruction in their wake, and escalating global conflicts continue the horrific suffering of so many, and yet, in the midst of these tragedies are also so many reports of communities coming together, feeding one another, offering shelter and support. Entangled in our global chaos are strong threads of compassion and generosity, embracing our human family.

Collective Thriving Starts Close In

In this love-in-action, we take the tentative steps toward nurturing our collective karma back to health. This deeply personal and collective work requires an active commitment from each of us. But how do we even begin to clean up the karmic field saturated with grievance and trauma? As poet David Whyte suggests, “we start close in.”

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Start close in,

don’t take the second step

or the third,

start with the first

thing

close in,

the step

you don’t want to take.

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Start with

the ground

you know,

the pale ground

beneath your feet,

your own

way to begin

the conversation.

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Start with your own

question,

give up on other

people’s questions,

don’t let them

smother something

simple.

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In the first three stanzas of his poem, Start Close In, Whyte guides us in how we can create change by taking humble and loving steps in all the ways we are capable. He explained the inspiration for this poem on social media. 

It deeply resonated with my own belief in how we can take responsibility, no matter the circumstances, to shift our global consciousness. He writes:

“It reflects the difficult act we all experience, of trying to start again when everything has been taken away; the necessity of stepping bravely again, into what looks like a dark wood, when the outer world as we know it has disappeared, when the world can only be met and in some ways made again from no outer ground, but from the very center of our being. The temptation is to take the second or third outer step, not the first inward one, to ignore the invitation into the center of our own body, often into the source of our grief and our reluctance: an attempt to finesse the raw vulnerability and the absolutely necessary understanding at the core of the pattern, to forgo the radical and almost miraculous simplification into which we are being invited.”

In our current times of polarizing politics, tribal mentality and epidemic of loneliness and isolation, this can be a terrifying first step. So often, it is our pain and despair that binds our communities. What happens when we choose to release these self-appointed identities? Will we be left behind? These are not easy questions to answer.  

Writer and activist Rebecca Solnit, in her book “Hope in the Dark,” speaks to this choice we are called to make again and again throughout our lives. Do we keep our fists clenched around our suffering, or can we loosen hold of our experience long enough to explore another way? 

She writes: “Thus it is that the world often seems divided between false hope and gratuitous despair. Despair demands less of us, it’s more predictable, and in a sad way safer. Authentic hope requires clarity–seeing the troubles in this world–and imagination, seeing what might lie beyond these situations that are perhaps not inevitable and immutable.”

Love-in-Action to Shift Perspectives

We can reprogram ourselves to make a leap into a new outlook on our life that sheds the karmic baggage of trauma and pain. Engaged in love-in-action, we can begin to shift our perspective. Energy follows our attention. When we take those first steps from the heart and pay attention to our higher instincts, we begin looking and sensing the connecting thread that binds us together. 

In this state of consciousness, we can embody the Holomovement Effect that allows us to begin healing our karmic field. The very building blocks of our universe offer inspiration for this powerful shift in perspective. When energy is absorbed by an atom, the electrons can instantaneously leap into a new, wider orbit, without passing through space and time. They can go from orbit A to B in literally no time through a so-called quantum tunnel. We have this same opportunity. Beyond the limiting assumptions fueled by fear and trauma is a vast field of potential that we can easily access with our will.

The Holomovement defines one of its community values as “Joyful Service for the Good of the Whole.” This doesn’t mean a naive disregard for the colossal challenges we all face, nor is it a call to ignore the pain and suffering we all experience. What it does mean is that as stewards of the Holomovement, we move in action from a place of love rather than fear.

It’s why finding and following our purpose is critical in these times. We each have a gift to offer that serves the good of the whole. Anger, fear and despair silence the personal truth of what our hearts are trying to reveal.

There is no perfect way forward in healing our collective trauma and fear, but each step we take in collective action tips the scales in our favor toward a world that works for All. We can’t plant transformative seeds with fists of anger. Like cosmic gardeners tending our Karmic field, we arrive at the task with love and possibility for not just our generation, but for the future we are creating for generations to come. 

Philosopher George Gurdjieff advised us to “Remember yourself, always and everywhere.” What he meant was: take the first step in. Look inside of ourselves to feel the love in our hearts before we react out of fear and anger. It’s a simple truth, but it requires our constant attention to remember it, every day in every way, always and everywhere. The choice is ours to make.

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Photo by Anna Kolosyuk on Unsplash

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