Carolyn Zaikowski

Dear weary folks,

On the morning of the 2016 USA presidential election, I thought in horror: Well, here it is. A violent confrontation with the USA’s shadow-self. Here lies all that’s been banned from our official, feel-good mythos; America's cultural and psychological shadow, undigested, unhealed, viciously vomited into consciousness, presenting itself to be dealt with and demanding to be made right. I felt in my bones, chest, and stomach, unable to unsee the enormity: This is everything the USA - by which I mean the USA’s official version of itself, not the actual USA, which has always been held tall by vast pillars of invalidated suffering - hasn't integrated or looked in the face. Many people smarter and more focused than me will have many more concrete solutions as to how to deal with this. But, in these times, the realm I often default to is psychospiritual.

In Buddhism, the “indestructible drop” is that most real and subtle center of our hearts where never-ending consciousness and massive, lifeward goodness lives. My advice is to find that indestructible place within you and land in it. Wherever the indestructible is in you, make a home there. If you don’t know that place yet, take some time to find it. The indestructible drop is our birthright and, as sure as we exist, it is in us somewhere. Maybe it’s a personal or ancestral memory of some moment of connection or deep knowing. Maybe it’s a pre- or post-word felt sense which can’t be articulated in any form, because it is beyond form, or maybe it’s a well-defined force in your art, poetry, emotions, intellect, or actions. Maybe it’s spiritual, or maybe it’s secular. Maybe it’s as subtle as a ticking clock in the basement of your life, or as pointed as a deliberate daily practice. Maybe it’s as big as a conscious and life-altering epiphany, or as small as one passing moment in your childhood when you saw a bird or a waterfall and felt awe. Maybe it’s something else entirely that only you can access.

Of course, we are made of many things. For instance, I could write ten thousand more letters about all of the heartbreak and injustice we are comprised of, but accompanying it all are these indestructible drops of fierce love, strength, creativity, wisdom, solidarity, compassion, and determination. We have always used these drops as rafts to carry ourselves and each other to the other shore when the heartbreak and injustice becomes an ocean. So, wherever it is, call upon the indestructible place in you. Move into it. Begin to identify with it. From there, love and fight.

In solidarity,

Carolyn Zaikowski

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