"Everything you are feeling, name it love."
- Andrea Gibson
Over the last few weeks, I found myself glued to the phone observing our country's horrors unfold until my body and my heart had become completely saturated and overwhelmed with grief and anger. Maybe you can relate?
In a particularly cathartic and tear-filled breathwork session last weekend, I heard: the pain you feel is because of what you love. You hurt because you care. As I was able to look at my emotions through the lens of my own love and compassion, I remembered I could stay connected to my experience without hardening my heart. And staying open-hearted is not the same as agreeing with what's happening.
That remembering brought me back to a teaching by Ram Dass: "All I am is loving awareness."
What he's pointing to is both simple and profound. Beneath our stories, beliefs, and emotional reactions, there is a steady awareness within each of us that is innately loving by nature. Spend time with a baby, and you can feel it immediately—and sense it within yourself, too.
When we connect to this place of loving awareness and embrace even our most difficult emotions with compassion, we can begin to shift from fear and reactivity toward love—starting inside our own bodies and hearts. An open heart is not a weak one. And loving awareness allows us to look at how we’re meeting what’s happening, starting within ourselves.
Because the only thing we can actually control is how we respond to what’s happening.
Tending to our inner world is how we show up for the outer one with sustained, compassionate action. In this way, loving awareness becomes a quiet form of resistance.
This might look like:
Speaking to yourself the way you would talk to a good friend, with care and compassion
Setting boundaries around how much news you consume so your nervous system can stay regulated
Holding grief without turning it into hatred
Letting yourself cry, rest, or turn away when you need to—without guilt
Staying connected to your values while refusing to let rage be the only fuel
Seeing the humanity in people you disagree with, especially when it's hard
Honestly, there are days this feels impossible for me to do. It feels like spiritual warrior-level work. But, life is practice. If you'd like to practice with me, here’s a guided meditationand a guided music track from Ram Dass that you can work with at home, as well as my own personal practice below.
I hope these practices can support you in staying rooted in your values, tender with your own humanity, and open enough to keep choosing compassion.
To our collective loving awareness creating the world we wish to live in.