Call and Response Special Edition Conversations With KD June 4 2020

Taking time to look back and move forward. Conversations With KD episodes are derived from the recordings of KD’s online events from his home during the 2020/ 2021 days of social distancing and quarantine from the onset of COVID and beyond.

Call and Response Special Edition Conversations With KD June 4 2020

“We have to find a way to help implement the changes that have to come in our society, the changes that we hope will correct the imbalance of power and the devastating way that people of color are treated and hurt and abused and victimized. We definitely have to find a way to help make that happen, but we can’t allow our actions to come with negative emotions, if we can help it. It’s very hard, very hard, but that doesn’t mean you don’t do what you do. You do whatever you can do to help.” – Krishna Das

Namaste. Welcome back. Hope everybody’s okay, feeling good physically and hopefully able to deal with all the emotions flying around inside and out.

Believe it or not, It’s said that human birth is the best place to be to do work on ourselves, to actually achieve peace, find liberation from suffering, enter into the place within us that is real love, find compassion for ourselves and others and find a way to live in this world in a good way. Because they say that in human birth, we’re right in the middle, between the lower forms of birth and the more subtle planes, and they say in either one of these places, it’s impossible to do practice, because in these two places, we are too consumed with experiencing the fruits of our karmas. In the heaven worlds, in the subtle planes, it’s very pleasant.  In the hell worlds, in the lower realms, it’s not very pleasant to say the least. That’s what they say. But here in this world at this time, we have the opportunity to get a vote how we respond to the world around us and how we respond even to our own stuff within us.

But somehow, we have to find a way to get the strength, to release the emotions, the feelings, the knee jerk reactions that we have to everything that we come in contact with, because for the most part, all day long, every day of our lives, we are responding blindly with no mitigating factor of consciousness or awareness to the things that show up in our awareness, in our consciousness.

So, the idea is how do we get a vote and why do we want a vote? We want a vote so that our own actions won’t create more suffering for ourselves and others.

So, in this situation that we’re in now in the world, which seems very intense, it’s a very good mirror for us to look within and see our reactions, see the causes of our suffering, and then we can expand that awareness to the outside world, to social action, to living in the world and to dealing with the issues in our culture and our politics and in the way we treat other beings.

So, the way that I find that space to, when I’m lucky, not react blindly and instantly to everything that comes towards me, is through chanting. Because in chanting, we start repeating one of these mantras, one of these names of God, and then the deal we make with ourselves is that when we notice that we’re lost and not paying attention, we come back. We let go of whatever we’re thinking about. We don’t try to figure it out. We just let it go and we come back, again and again and again and again and again and again, and as time goes on, we begin to feel more comfortable being more present. We’re released from that obsessive flow of constant evaluation and judgment, constant flow of emotion, negative emotions, positive emotions, everything that pushes us around. Little by little we’re released from being the slave to that, and then we can extend that feeling to others and our own actions will extend that feeling in our relationship to every one of our situations in our lives.

Same, same,