Dear ones,

One may only speak for oneself and offers this in response to a posting in a mail group about the silence surrounding the Not Guilty verdict in the Zimmerman trial. Shock can silence us until it passes. Even though the verdict of not guilty was not fully unexpected, the reality of it and the meaning of it, respectively is still hard to believe and hard to discern.

We are all Trayvon Martin. We are all George Zimmerman. The former is no doubt easier to imagine as everyone has experienced feelings of powerlessness or fear or dread. The latter may well cause one to recoil in horror. Yet, the differences between good and bad we know are a false dichotomy, a product of accepting the limits of duality, limits teachers, sages, and prophets have told us for millennia are false as the universe is one, complete, whole entity of which we are an integral, unified part.

However, as we live in this world of duality, we find there are actions that grab at our hearts and pull us toward reactions of lower vibration. Injustice, death, illness, war … such things remind us that while we walk a path of heart, of peace, of love, and of unity we are indeed all one and harm to others can be perceived as harm to ourselves. It truth, harm to others is harm to ourselves.

Hzt. Inayat Khan wrote, and one paraphrases, that the mystic, the Sufi is at the crossroads of the horizontal realm, the physical world, and the vertical realm, the spiritual world and that what occurs in one affects the other. This can been seen in the various manifestations of the Sufi messages such as Ziraat, the Universal Worship, the DHO, etc. An imbalance or injustice perceived by one walking this path on the horizontal thus is motivated by the spiritual to seek to bring about healing, justice, or balance. Actions taken in the physical realm then inform one’s spiritual growth.

So, the recent verdict of not guilty for Mr. Zimmerman can deeply affect us as it reveals social and cultural imbalances that all of us possess and are included as part of the work of polishing our hearts, and remembering our essential unity and oneness. What to do, however, will vary from person to person. Some may want to take to the streets to join the crowds that thus far are showing hurt and disbelief. Some may want to redouble their efforts to bring awareness of race and gun violence to their communities. Some may also feel led to focus upon their own places of shadow, to increase the reflectivity of the heart to increase their own vibration and the vibration of the world around them. Some may feel led to do nothing.

As with all events and changes in our world, the response of each of us is exactly right for each of us. One feels led to continue to be an ally to people of color, to seek to increase one’s openness to the Light, and to pray for greater awareness in one’s society of the deep wounds of race and violence. One knows one may only truly change oneself, but one is also aware that this may result in actions taken in concert with others, in public, in the horizontal or physical realm, but this will not be known until the work within takes place.

A few thoughts which one hopes contributes to whatever conversation may occur.

Blessings, dear ones.
Luccia Jalila