As I’ve been writing about lately, there’s a lot of darkness swirling around in our world. By darkness I mean pain, fear, heaviness, worry, and despair. People are worried about money. They’re worried about health. They’re worried about safety. They’re worried about their jobs. They’re worried for their parents, children, and friends.

As sensitive people, this is always true, for embedded in our exquisite sensitivity is an acute awareness of the fragility of being human; we know from an early age that physical safety is ultimately an illusion and that life can turn on a dime.

My friends in Los Angeles are painfully aware of this right now: one moment they’re sitting down to dinner, enjoying the peacefulness in their home, and the next morning they’re fleeing from a massive fire with a few belongings. Their neighborhood has been burned to the ground, the anchoring of life as they knew it, gone.

Many Pathways of Light

There are many pathways out of the darkness.

We can read a poem that buoys us and brings a bit of ground.

We can look up at the stars and allow the magic of those tiny pinpricks to bring a sense of awe, on the wings of which we taste a beam of light.

We can listen to music that reminds us of the one rhythm of the world, whose beat inspires us to dance.

Creativity, nature, awe, dance: these are a few of the pathways of light that lead us out of the darkness.

We Need Each Other

But the pathway that we might need the most right now is human connection. We need each other. There is unfathomable light that we can bathe in when we know we’re not alone with whatever darkness we’re experiencing.

The same friends who lost everything in the fire have been bowled over by the levels of kindness they’ve received from total strangers in the new neighborhood where they’ve found themselves. As it happens, the best of humans seems to come out in the worst of times. It’s what we saw in New York City after 911. It’s during these times that we remember – for it’s easy to forget – that at the core most people are good.

We must connect with each other always. But when life is particularly challenging, we need each other even more. In the first weeks of our cat Tashi’s cancer diagnosis, I reached for all of my practices, but the one that held me up the most was human connection. It was when I cried in someone’s arms that I could feel a bit of steady ground returning and I could find the island of okay amidst everything that wasn’t okay.

We must feel each other’s pain. We must reach for safe others, where we can be held in the darkness and we can hold it for another.

For it’s when we allow ourselves to feel the pain at the core of being human – the pain that we all carry, regardless of beliefs – and allow that pain to be held in community so that it moves through, that we clear the channels for joy to enter.

Community Ritual

This is what I’ll be offering tomorrow: a safe space to gather together as we learn how to alchemize pain and fear into comfort and even joy. Over 75 minutes, I will lead us into ritual space, offer a brief teaching, then guide us into the practices that can transform pain into joy. You’ll also be hearing from each other, connecting with safe and sensitive others in a virtual circle as we lean into each other and find ground amidst the groundlessness, comfort within the chaos, and light within the darkness. I look forward to seeing you there. You can learn more and sign up here.