From Kandkadventures.com
Today, I send into your meditation Paris. How can we best serve the wounded, the dead and the aggrieved, as well as, the angry, the vengeful, the perpetrators of such suffering? Where in our practice can we rest our thoughts of confusion, fear, and despair? In what way can we be most effective? How might we turn this tragedy into something else entirely? Something that heals, binds us in love and strengthens us in our deeper knowing that we are all one. For we are as much in the lost and frightened wandering in the streets of that great city, as we are in the hearts and minds of the bombers.
When we come to understand this deeply we see there is no escape. There is nowhere to go. We are already in it with them. We carry their pain, hatred, fear, and grief within ourselves. We are The One and so we are the terrorist and the terrorized. We are the dead and the living. We are what remains whole and what has been destroyed.
Separation from the Parisians or from the terrorists is an illusion.
In Joe Vitale’s work on the Hawaiian prayer for healing and forgiveness, ho’oponopono he speaks of Dr. Hew Len’s work in a Hawaiian prison where he prayed each day for forgiveness from each prisoner. The psychiatrist asked for forgiveness from prisoners he’d never even met, because in his culture the prisoner’s wounds were his wounds. The crimes they’d committed he believed were his crimes. Through this process extraordinary healing came to that prison. If we are one, then we each can ask for forgiveness, healing and grace for the whole. We need not wait for the accused to heal themselves. We need not wait for the wounded to become whole again, to reach within our collective being and see our own wholeness manifest before us. We can ask forgiveness now from all who suffer.
In the end are we not the best to do so? Are we not in the safest position, away from the smoke and cries to ask for forgiveness and healing? To give what others in our Oneness are not yet able to give? As we do so with love, we are laying our own hands, in this moment, on the hearts of many. We are all connected. We are not powerless. We are not trapped in violence and despair.
And so we sit. The silence descends amidst our wandering thoughts, and still we persist. We turn back again and again to the breath, the mantra, the voice leading us down a guided trail. We let go. We accept. We see our own wounds inside this situation and we seek in the next breath to heal ourselves. For healing of others begins within our own being.
Be fearless and step into the heat of this breath full of our collective pain, breathe out all the love you have to give. Do not spare your amends to the bomber you would give willingly to the baby. For us to heal, we must all heal. To be whole, we must all be whole. There is no force greater on this earth than our own willingness to except responsibility for the wounds we all share and bow our heads in humble forgiveness that we find our way together.
Meditation Travelogue 
In the confusion of external events, I can only go within to review my core beliefs. My lovingness My worthiness. My trustingness. My wholeness. Centering and offering each value to myself and find a way to extend these beliefs to you. To you whomever you are. A wounded child. A soul confused terrorist Namaste’
Loved this response. Yes, I share in your thoughts. This is what is within me. It is what I have to give you. Beautiful.
wise healing words!
i’m remembering joyful visits
to Paris & France
with sadness & hope 🙂
Maybe that, too, is what we can do for them. Remember their amazing city and amazing country until they can remember themselves.
Beautifully shared Noelle. Ho’oponopono is a powerful prayer to say for each other. You are right, each of us play a part in this healing. Thankyou.
I say that prayer daily about something. Right now, it seems we can be saying it over and over for all that is happening around the world.
I agree Noelle, and together we can create peace.
I think there is immense power in collective focus. We may never know complete peace, but I do believe we can draw peace in with greater and greater levels of depth as a species.
Beautifully expressed Noelle.
Thank you, my friend
“to be whole we must all be whole.” That’s it exactly.
Thank you Noelle for putting into words what i was feeling.
An outpouring when i rang my friend in Paris.
And then the karmic.
(And what about the deaths in Japan, Beirut, Mexico and elsewhere on the weekend.)
Merci,
Shokran (Arabic for thankyou)
We are not helpless. There are many places we can put our minds and hearts that can contribute to healing rather than destruction, though the energy around the world on this feels anything but calm. I hold you, my friend, in peace and together we can hold two more and so on and so on….
Thank you for these reminders of how to deal with tragedy in a positive, hope-filled way so that we all grow together and go deeper. Namaste
It takes a village, does it not?
Well said Noelle.
How very lovely and powerful Noelle, and coincidentally, your practice reminded me of one that a commenter on my own site pointed to just a few days ago:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tonglen
Can you send me the link to your thread that had the comment. I looked but didn’t see it. Love Tonglen meditation and thank you for stopping by, my friend.
Ah, that was Liz the artist from Donegal who commented on Saturday though on my previous article ‘Empathic Apes’ Noelle:
http://contentedness.net/2015/09/03/empathic-apes/comment-page-1/#comment-7499
Not an easy task. Yet there’s no real alternatives to it, I guess
No, no it’s not, but what we are doing now isn’t easier. Just more habitual with far more tragedy and death.
I wonder sometimes if our fear of being that vulnerable has made us believe we are not up to the task, when really, each of us possesses a warrior’s heart capable of great love. We have come to believe these tragedies and hatred must be greater than our hunger to forgive, heal and offer peace. I no longer wish to believe this.
I know that no matter what, I wish to carry no fear in my heart for anyone, no matter their religion, culture, race, history, or country. Such isolation from my fellow mankind feels like an old coat with so many holes it can no longer keep me warm. This isolation feels as if it is the cornerstone of how all of this is happening in the first place.
Thank you so much for stopping by and leaving a note, my friend.
Mind blowing my friend, although I know of the practice of ho’oponopono and sometimes use it myself it had never crossed my mind that I could use it as a way to send positive energy into this situation. Your words are an inspiration on so many levels, giving the power back to us to do something that can bring healing to the entire world as we intercede for the whole of humanity through our love.
I think this is the heart of it, Julia. To be aware we are not powerless. We are not without a means of responding and responding powerfully. I often think of Hew Len sitting there going through each prisoner’s file offering them his amends, forgiveness and love. Men he’d never even met. So powerful. We need to stop believing that other’s anger and hatred is so much more powerful than our love. Thanks for poking in, my friend.
I did this process as I walked in nature soon after reading your blog and it was very healing for as well as being a way of sending positive energy into the world, thank you ♡
I have been using this prayer often on virtually anything and everything I can think of. I had a miscommunication with a friend and have been running the prayer through my head, even as I sent her a note to correct it. I don’t want anything to hold me up in healing myself or others. This prayer feels like a powerful way to do that. Sending love and beauty your way, my friend.
I have not been able to feel the prayers I have been lifting until I read this post. When I came close in and asked for forgiveness from all who are affected by tragic loss and suffering -starting with those who terrorize others – the connection was made. There is a great truth here. Thank you for speaking it.
Many blessings, my friend.
“There is no force greater on this earth than our own willingness to except responsibility for the wounds we all share and bow our heads in humble forgiveness that we find our way together”
These words ring so true. I have struggled with the divisiveness, with those who do not want to help the refugees, assuming they are terrorists.
How can even tragedy be so polarizing and politicized?
Thank you for this post, Noelle
I often look at all of this polarization and ponder it like a mirror. As if I am looking at myself at the farthest ends of the spectrum. If we are truly all one then we all share in these wide swings. But I also see, like a reflection I am only seeing the part of me that my eyes can capture in the mirror which is really quite small. People with extreme views tend to like the media, but that doesn’t mean, collectively speaking it is really what most of us think. It’s easy to refuse a refugee whose image is on a screen, but I often wonder if that is what is truly in most people’s hearts. If they were faced with families and children, would they refuse assistance if it was within their power to do so? I think many people are good at yelling their darker, negative side, because maybe they fear their softness and kindness so much, they fear someone will see it. Americans have to be some of the most generous people. A calamity happens and we are all opening our pockets, emptying our food pantries and clothing closets. We can bluster on about how we won’t do this and that, but when push comes to shove, most of us have far more love in us to give then anything else. I suspect, my friend, it’s why you ran for office….
you are so right and so wise, Noelle
Moving.
How do you mean? As in you live in France and are planning on moving?
Forever Paris.
As they say, “Viva La France!”
“. Breath out all the love you have to give ” yes, dear Noelle . Thankyou for your lovely bright light ….blessings , hugs and always love , megxxx
Noelle, your beautiful words offer kindness and solace during a difficult time after such a senseless event. Thank you!
I think events like Paris are meant for us to dig deeper into our own wells of love and resources rather than spend hours being overwhelmed by the shock and gore of mass media reports. I don’t think we help the world with that. I think we help the world when each of us responds to tragedy with just a little more love and compassion in our own environments. A little more forgiveness then we might be want to give. That changes worlds.
And now San Bernardino. Jeez. This is part of why I moved out to the sticks. I can separate from everything by merely turning off my TV and phone. Then I’m in a different world, one with only birds and trees. No humans, no cars, and no senselessness. 🙂
My brother, 8 month pregnant sister in law and their toddler daughter lived next door to the world trade centers on 9/11. Longest day of my life was hearing how they all were and that they were safe. I was glued to the TV. A week of that viewing literally made me physically ill. Prior to this I’d noted a lot of apathy for my species. Not feeling overly hopeful about where things were going. Since giving up the news which I did after 9/11 which very rare exception I have grown even more hopeful, even in the face of these stories. The truth is most of the planet is made of kind and loving people like you and I. People like us who are more peaceful than dramatic don’t make good news. We aren’t what lands on a reality show. But we are the majority, just a silent one. You begin to see this when you stop watching the hours of negative media coverage. Then you find yourself hearing more cool stories of heroism, love and tremendous forgiveness and compassion. So yeah, I don’t really watch the news. Once I know what event I want to respond to, I respond. I don’t need the hours of coverage to dampen my spirit or get in the way. Because for me, that’s all the news does. Get’s in the way of my being the kind of loving, peaceful, hopeful person I know that I am and I believe most people are.