How I'm dealing with the Horror

without spiritual bypassing

Aug 04, 2025

My dear friends,

I have struggled to find words to write.

It’s difficult to not spiral into deep sadness over the human cruelty I’m witnessing.

How do I write about beauty, spirit, or creative pursuits? It feels like I’m ignoring the in-your-face events unfolding in such a horrific way.

But I am not ignoring when I focus on other things.

How could anyone not be moved by the horrific human-inflicted suffering we are witnessing. It’s not just politics either. It’s about our humanity. And yet, I don’t want to write specifically about the horrors.

Kindness, acceptance, curiosity, compassion, caring, understanding, love.

These are traits that I have tried to embrace as a human being and impart as part of my work in the world.

You know, the only way I can even sit here and write about things that are not subject specific to what’s going on in the world while simultaneously being TOTALLY aware of what’s going on in the world, is to zoom my perspective way, way out and see it all from the bigger point of view of consciousness itself.

And when I say consciousness I mean awareness that is always present; the spiritual component of humanity. The truth of who we are beyond our self concepts and beliefs.

Focusing on the truth of who we are rather than on what’s happening “out there” is not spiritual bypassing the events of the world, which infers a kind of numbing out and disassociation.

The thing that helps me deal with the horrors I witness is to remain present within the essence of who I am, who we are.

Being in the world but not of it

I found myself diving once again into the simplicity of Nisargadatta Maharaj's message.

There is no personal individual separate self.

There is no personal “doer”.

The “I” drops away.

No ownership.

And when it drops, compassion arises as a deep spontaneous response.

Not calculated, nor thought about.

When action is needed it happens from this place of being moved by life itself, the source of unconditional love.

This message is difficult for the mind to grasp and it’s even more difficult to write about.

Trying to maintain a sense of a separate self who identifies with changing thoughts, feelings, sensations is not who you are.

The unchanging is what is real.

Be with that which never changes and is always constant.

The rest goes on and on and we witness.

Not with dispassion or dissociation, but with even more compassion that naturally and spontaneously arises when you don’t attach yourself to or identify with who you think you are.

You are vast,

You are consciousness itself.