Meditation: George Floyd and Derek Chauvin

"It is very easy for all of us to feel profound sympathy and compassion for George Floyd... Feel his being as your being, and feel that you love him unconditionally and unreservedly.

And now, bypass everything you know about Derek Chauvin - the policeman who knelt on his neck. Pass through the layers of conditioning that turned him into the person he now is.

Go all the way back to his innocent, unconditioned being. That being is identical to your being, and it is identical to George Floyd's being.

The being that both of these men share with each other and with all of us - that is the same being as the being of anyone who we have ever loved deeply.

The being that each of us essentially is is shared between all of us, and is therefore not limited by any of our individual qualities. It is at once utterly intimate, and at the same time completely impersonal. It shares none of the limits of the person.

The common name for this intimate, impersonal, infinite being is 'I'.

The religious name for it is God's presence. Understand and feel that it is God's presence that shines at the heart of each of us, including these two men, indeed at the heart of all beings.

The recognition that we share our being is commonly referred to as love.

Those of us on this path are not called to like everybody equally, but we are called to love everybody equally.

The reason that this situation has arisen - and this situation is of course simply the last of innumerable such atrocities - is precisely because people do not love each other equally.

People are only in touch with their likes and dislikes. What we like or dislike in a person is their conditioning.

Our love for a person has absolutely nothing to do with their or our own conditioning. Due to our conditioning we may not like their conditioning. But if that is all we allow ourselves to know or feel about another person, then conflict is inevitable.

It is our secret duty to love everybody equally.

I would suggest that the appropriate response to this situation or to any other such injustice must be informed by the understanding of our shared being.

If our response does not come from the understanding of our shared being - that is, if our response does not come from love - then the prejudice and the division which caused the injustice in the first place will be present at least to a degree in our response, and although our response may be effective in the short term, in the long term it will not put an end to the injustice because it has not uprooted the cause of the injustice, namely that we do not love each other equally.

We most definitely should take action. But if that action is not rooted in and informed by the understanding and feeling of our shared being - in other words, if it does not come from love - it will not have the power to effect the change in society for which so many people deeply long."

Rupert Spira