Compassion Awakens

From Joe Brewer

I saw this statue in Bucaramanga yesterday….

On the left is an indigenous man who stands with fierce conviction. Behind him is a missionary seeking to conquer and destroy his worldview with a religious book. To his side is a conquistador coming to murder his people.

My family came to this continent to decolonize ourselves and stumble into the embrace of indigenous lifeways. We have already come so far in just a few years that our actions make little sense to those who remain trapped in the mindsets of the dying globalized civilization.

— Joe Brewer

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I’ve watched the process of looking at another person, and looking beyond my reactivity to their individual differences to see a fellow soul in there….I see a fellow soul, “You here? I’m here. Ahhh yeah, I see you…”

So I practice tuning into that in other beings. I’ll sit on the bus and I’ll look at all the people on the bus, and I’ll feel that these are all souls who have taken birth, who are all going through different things, and I see so much in their faces and in the way they exist about who they ‘think’ they are, and what they’re going through, and then compassion awakens in me.

— Ram Dass

Is our civilization really dying or is it just coming down with a bad cold? Can we get better…