February 16, 2022
What did Abe Lincoln know?
By Amba Gale
In a dangerous world, where violence and strife prevail outside, where the lines of war are being drawn as I write, how do we live?
How do we live peacefully?
How do we live, emanating love for our planetary companions?
How do we carry the energy of peace with us as we walk through our days?
How do we live free from fear while the news each day bombards us with messages of coming destruction?
How do we not exhaust ourselves with our own busy-ness and allow ourselves to be overwhelmed with the plethora of advice coming our way?
These are some of the questions of our times.
While the turbulent storms of the world outside us rage on, we CAN do the inner work necessary to walk settled and centered, integrated and whole purposeful and joyous.
What is that work?
It is the work of creating Awareness, of separating and dis-identifying our Selves from the mind. We can do the work of connecting with one another, and with ourselves, and with the world, through authentic heart listening, and through cultivating compassion.
Abe Lincoln said, “I don’t like that man. I’d better get to know him better.” This is a quote good to remember.
We can do the work of healing, of forgiveness for ourselves and others, the work of integrating the past in a way that we do not have to let our past be our future, in a way that we do not have to repeat old patterns over and over and over again throughout our lives.
We can do the work of hearing our own heart’s wisdom, were we to slow enough, to still ourselves, to listen.
We can do whatever work we need to do to discern what fulfills our Soul, our Lives, and stand for that, live from that.
We can collaborate beautifully with others, in mutual regard and honor, if only we were willing to drop our usual ways of being so attached to knowing what we know, and to being right about that.
Does this sound attractive to you? It takes hard work, this opportunity for leading life Wakefully, Meaningfully, for creating a present and a future worth living.
There are many teachers out there, alive and dead. I am ever out to find those that resonate with me in each epoch on my life, and, these days, it seems, I move through some of those epochs rather quickly. I don’t know about you. Certain books speak to me, certain poets speak to me, certain practices are mine to commit to, and certain people speak to me. These days, there are so many opportunities virtually, and there are beginning to be opportunities, as well, that are live.
The Heart of Leadership, a conversation, is also one of those teachers. In The Heart of Leadership, we open up a territory for living into these questions, for taking a look at our lives, healing ourselves, and creating a future worth living, a future grounded in our own core, our own integrity, our own commitment to meaning. We find that listening, and communicative pathways, live at the heart of both creating and fulfilling such a future.
In April I am offering a live Heart of Leadership, where, while even masked, we unmask ourselves and be with one another and one another’s lives, expanding our own humanity.
There are a few spaces left. If interested, let me know.
The poem that follows, The Healing, was written after I led the last offering of The Heart of Leadership.
The Healing
By Amba Gale
Slowly,
ever so slowly,
one by one,
they opened.
Heart by heart,
they spoke.
Story by simple story,
they let us in
to the truth of lives
lost and gained.
With each speaking, a shedding.
With each speaking, a new heart opened
like a rose petal in the spring sunlight,
little by little
coming out of winter
little by little
coming out of the grief
little by little
coming into the peace.
Even those who never cry,
having bowed to fear as their god,
shed tears those days,
shared with us their wounds, exposing their hearts for all to hear.
As the Silence of the Listening grew deeper
and the depth of the love grew larger
and the richness of the human soul
brought its roots out of the earth,
buried for so long,
Everything
got more real.
We grew to know one another
and ourselves
in ways that are way too rare
in these days of division.
“Sharing is the gateway to connection,”
a young man said,
a man who has been private and closed before.
And Humanity was born.
There-right there-
in a room full of masked faces
where people took off their masks,
even while leaving the physical ones on.
We came to know
the immense opportunity
of shedding our protections
and, in that shedding, finding
we are safe already.
We are, already, loved.
We came to know
that love that lies
beneath all lives.
We came to know
the beauty of the human spirit,
the courage of the human heart
the wisdom of the Greater Mind
the Generosity of the Bountiful Spirit.
We cam to be at One.
