I've really enjoyed what the Venus work has brought me. I feel very loved, and I offer my love with joy. Sometimes, perhaps even often, I embrace the third truth and feel myself as love. I'm generally amazingly happy and find ith easier to bounce back from negative emotions. I've accomplished several difficult emotional things with results I'm proud of. When I regret some of what I've done, I am more likely to have constructive thoughts about the future. Often, I can execute on these thoughts.
However, I feel a strong calling to reach out and more successfully offer Venus's love to the world. My work seems to work best when connected with individuals. Certainly there are people near me who I hope will find the strength to embrace what they desire and embrace the transformations of love. When I can help, I rejoice.
However, ever more increasingly I've been sad when I think about the broader world. I wrote about the fear and sadness I felt when confronting organized efforts to spy on the world and how I connected with someone fighting that effort. I wrote about the death of Groklaw, a site dedicated to understanding (and in a sense developing empathy for) the system of law under which we live. Over the past year I've watched in confusion, disgust, numbness and frustration as we explore our police culture. Recently I've become to connect the micro-level individual work that I do to the macro-scale problems of fear, frustration and lack of connection. Which I guess also shows that I believe that the broader problem is one of fear and frustration and lack of connection. Many of us don't connect with potential criminals, we can't see ourselves as targets of police process, so it is hard for us to empathize with how we'd like to be treated. Many of us don't connect with how decisions are made, we are afraid because we need our concerns and needs to be given adequate consideration. Much of what we see and read doesn't encourage us to connect and develop empathy with those who are different, with whom we disagree. The news, our discussions, etc focus on crimes, show us people who would judge. When is the last time you've been asked to develop empathy and understanding of the terrorists? I ask you to do that, remembering that empathy and understanding are very different than agreeing with or supporting someone's actions.
Increasingly, I begin to feel that lessons I've learned walking Venus's path could be very helpful. I've been struggling looking for a way to work the magic of offering those lessons more broadly. I feel that my little corner of love and empathy is threatened, and I want to find a way of helping the world find strength to support love and empathy. This is becoming an exploration that I find myself drawn to with greater urgency and importance. I'm considering options I never would have considered before; I'm finding that some of the relative priorities in how I focus my energy continue to shift. I hope I can find some way to make a difference and take a stand.