Dear Humans

Dear Humans,

First off I will say, so there’s no misunderstanding, I love you.

This is not love that needs something from you, or is some sort of burden or expectation you need to carry around with you. I love you with our common heart. Common molecules, common history, common planet, common energy. We are One. I know this is not a popular belief these days with so much side-choosing, but it’s a fact. My love for you is the same energy that lies underneath the love I have for my self and for my family and my pets and my place of manifestation. Love, at the core of myself, this energy shared with you.

Also, I love your music. Your baked goods. The silly things you say and the way you make me laugh. Your capacity for compassion overwhelms me. Your ability to create beauty fills my heart with wonder. You are creative and magnificent and I am blown away at how you fix things, and how you help.

That said, I’m not crazy about the way you act sometimes. When I see your awful actions I can still love you, but I abhor the behavior. The way I do that is to believe that each of you is a divine being, a true light, true source at your core. Each bad action is a sign that you have forgotten this truth, and have spun so far away from your true nature that you can think and act in terrible ways.

I see you behave like that, and it breaks my heart. It is tragedy. How tragic for you, to have chosen such a difficult path to learn through. How tragic that you have forgotten how to live in peace and beauty and divinity. How tragic for the rest of us that we are made to feel your pain through your actions.

To damn you is to put you in darkness, so I try not to do that. Because we are One, if I damn you to darkness then that’s where I live too. If I see your true self beyond your actions, it elevates us both, brings us both into light. You make it difficult though, and this is my lesson to learn.

This letter is really to let you know that it’s okay to change your mind. If you have believed for your whole life that the way to validate your existence is by power and domination, I want to say right now, there is another way. I don’t fault you for these beliefs. The world we’ve created and agreed to has been ruled by these concepts, and money and power and status is the currency by which we judge the winners.

A beautiful thing is happening, though, and I’m inviting you in on the ground floor. The game is changing, after centuries of the game. There is another way of being, with new marks of success as we step forward into the future.

Remember, nothing stays the same forever, and progress means letting go of the things we hold on to. We let go of our childhoods and our loved ones and our identities all through this life, and that’s something we have to get used to. If we fight it all the way, then life is an unhappy one. Those of us who bend like a willow in the face of great upheaval are usually the ones who make it through to the other side, while cement pillars crumble or get drowned in the flood.

It’s hard to let go of our identities. We have come to believe that this is all we have, this solid sense of self. As someone who is regularly challenging myself to get rid of mine I will tell you here and now that to release the old habits and patterns and beliefs and attachments is a kind of freedom that is, for the lack of a better word, delicious. Of course, you must get comfortable with being vulnerable. You must risk losing everything you know, and opening up so wide that it is immensely terrifying.

But coming out the other side is remarkable. We taste joy.

Have you felt joy lately? Have you walked down the street and felt welling adoration for every being who crosses your path, an energy so expansive that even the air feels different?

I’ve been doing something lately that I’m sure sounds ridiculous to you. I remind myself to see each person around me as god. As divine. No matter what your actions, no matter what kind of mask you are wearing, no matter how my small self immediately feels a judgment about what you do, I fall into my heart and recognize the divinity in you. I don’t need you to change your behavior, or to stop your goofy bullshit. I just see you as divine as I know myself to be. I see you in your infinite potential. I see you moving through a life that is a series of choices you have chosen to make in order to find your way to the divine source. I see you get so lost and far away from this source.

Dear humans, the point of this rather rambling missive is to say, it’s okay to change course. It is okay to let go and change the way you think and do things. It is okay to gather up everything you have been doing and working for and believing and just set it down and leave it. Realize your pain and then jettison that which keeps it on the boat.

If you have been placed in a leadership position, for instance, and you have worked your whole life to be feared and admired at the expense of your deep truth, your deep ethics, it is okay to say, I’m going to change it up. I’m going to change the way I see other people and the way I see myself. I am going to begin to set a value on things I have had to ignore: humanity and kindness and compassion. I’m going to wake up, and be new.

To be hated by people sucks. To harm other people, sucks. I look back at the thoughtless and shortsighted and selfish ways I have acted in my life and nothing causes me more misery. There are people in this world whom I have harmed and these are the things that keep me up at night, the dark regrets that roil around at the center of myself and cause pain. When I remember these moments the skin recoils, the heart sinks and withers. This is the truest misery I know.

We think that we are competitive animals and must do terrible things to other people, that this is just the way that we are built. Sometimes we believe that the more we are hated, the more we are successful. We believe that it’s just our nature to compete. That it’s what we’re called to do, to prove ourselves in some vision of a jungle, eat or be eaten, kill or be killed.

I’m here to say, that in one breath, you can stop believing this. You are not an animal. You are a human. You get to be happy and peaceful. You are not without choice. You have the power to make your life joyful. You are loved and love.

Become aware of your body for a moment. Somewhere in there is a deep open peace that feels like the depth of love. Maybe you have never felt this before. Maybe you believe that there is no such thing and it doesn’t exist. Maybe you believe I am a lunatic and you’re ready to stop reading. Guess what? You can believe whatever you want. I want to ask, though, how do your beliefs make you feel? Do you drop into that lovely peacefulness? Do you feel unconditionally loved? Can you imagine what it would be like to stop fighting?

The love of other people will sustain you whether you know them or not. The love of people loving you will open up a channel to find a way to love yourself. Maybe you don’t believe yourself to be loveable. That is wrong. Maybe you’d rather be feared than risk realizing you will never be loved. Be brave.

Tomorrow morning, you could wake up. You could tell those around you, I’m going to change it up. Some of those people will be angry, but you will find the eloquence of truth. Allow others their opinions and emotions. They are not you.

You will say: I see the way I have been living has been divisive and has caused great pain.

You will say: I can see my judgments of others have kept me separate and in great pain.

You will say: I am sorry. You will feel the wave of vulnerability that comes with those words. Let it wash over you for a while, this delicate opening, this letting go.

Then you will say: I can see that my strength lies in not caring to be dangerous or powerful. I will give love. I will do what I can to care for the world and for other beings. With the power and influence I have created I will now create wonderful things. With the intelligence it took to achieve my hollow success I will now invent new strategies to lift others up. From now on, I will use every moment of my life to create what is good, what I know is good and true because of the way it makes me feel. I will open my heart to be vulnerable and trust that it will fill with love.

When this moment comes for you, when you decide to lay down the swords and stand naked and new, I will be there for you. I will trust your intention and help by seeing you in this new way. I have always believed in your godliness and I will prove it by supporting you, by loving you. There are so many of us who are capable of this, a great army of people who are waiting for you to wake up. Every mother who has forgiven her child’s murderer has done it. Every person who has changed their rigid beliefs about the neighbor, about the other-skinned person, has done it. Every person who has allowed themselves to choose love over fear has done it. We are waiting for you.

Imagine for a moment that only your own judgment has caged you. Imagine for a moment that we all see you as you are, devoid of the actions and the terrible things you have decided to create and live through. Imagine for a moment we all want you to change and will love you once you come out the other side. Imagine letting the weight of history go, the weight of culture go, the weight of judgment and punishment and the clutching and needing and desire. The pain. The suffering. The longing and fear of loving and being loved.

You will say: I’m tired of this charade. I’m tired of believing that I am the only guy who matters. I’m tired of believing that we are not connected and I see that causing you pain causes me pain.

Then, get in the cab, say hello, ask how the driver’s day is going. Go into the restaurant, look at the waiter and recognize him as a real person. Love him.

Decide that no one owns you, and that it’s the right thing for your mother and your sisters and your female friends and your differently-oriented friends for you to pass laws that lift up their lives.

Decide there is no reason to fear cultural differences and vow to care for each human as if they were your child or someone you love deeply, no matter their appearance or status or background or ethnicity.

Decide that you will allow yourself to see the gorgeousness of the plain on which you have been set, and that all the planet is a reflection of your capacity to love and be loved.

Do your job as a politician or an activist or a leader or a teacher or a businessperson and shine a light on this new paradigm. Show us all the power of change, the power of unity, the power of speaking light to darkness. Bring every bit of your heart to the light so we can collectively love you. Realize this as your true power, realize your infinite potential. This is your infinite potential.

Be the Dalai Lama. Be Jesus Christ. Be the sung or unsung hero who sets the world right with their being. You have the ability to be these people. Why do you decide not to be? Who else would you rather be? You are going to die, alone. Your last thought will be your last thought. Your name is your name. Can you let it ring out like a clear perfect bell, reverberating an expanding song of love as legacy?

Sincerely,

Clementine

***

You can hear me read this on Soundcloud HERE and as an iTunes podcast HERE.

Please visit www.patreon.com/clemthegreat for goodies. Thank you for the support!