~ North Korean Saying”

There are many things I cannot change in this life, but there are some things I can. For example, I believe the personal is political, so I am committed to use my Authenticity and Personal Power (that intangible quality that can say NO! with force that commands attention, and changes the way ‘The Dream’ appears) to show up, be present, real and available.

I will lean in to discomfort, I will go the extra mile, I will bring my best game to everything I do and I will be impeccable. I will apologize if necessary. I will even let you ‘win’ if it means a connection with you will be preserved. I will stand up for you, with you, when you cannot or will not. I will even wear your self hatred long enough for you to see how you hurt yourself but not long enough to let you destroy me.

All this I will do for you, even though we have never met – because this is what I believe friends do for each other. We need more friends. All of us do.

Sometimes all I can do to support you is to show you something. What I have to show you today is hard.

Each of us have swag of Inner Selves that make up who we think we are and how we live out life in an everyday way.

Much of our Inner Experiences, our feelings and senses, get edited or marginalized or ignored and sent to the part of us that remains unaware before they can be considered or expressed due to the filtering effects of culture or ‘the rules’ we have internalized that show us what is safe and what is not.

Ignoring feeling based information can make us cold, callous and cruel. This way of existing, for it is not loving, is maintained by an Inner Dictator commanding an Internal Totalitarian Regime that prevents the expression of love, care or concern to some extent.

I have something to show you today, and it is hard.

These are the words of a Warrior. Can you stand to hear them?

Yeonmi Park allows us to walk in her powerful footsteps as she tells her courageous and heart wrenching story of escape. She is helping you, connect to the part of yourself caught in an Inner Dictatorship that violates a long list of human rights. If you let yourself feel what it was like for her, you connect to the part of yourself, consciously, that resonates with her experience and both she and you, are less alone.

If we can find, individually, the courage to face our own Inner Dictators … if we can be uncomfortable long enough to connect to the part of ourselves locked in an internal ‘North Korea’, connections can be made, feedback loops established, self organizing solutions facilitated, wholeness and healing will spontaneously arise.

If we can face the Dictator within … we don’t need to collectively and unconsciously dream up the Dictator ‘Out There’. Do the Inner Work, it is worth it. For all of us.