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902nd Week: A Practice for Healing Collective Fear
One of the things that comes to mind just about every day, as I listen to the news, is how powerfully fear motivates actions that cause suffering to so many. It might be fear of difference, fear of losing power, fear of the “other”. Whatever the focus of fear, it can become a motivator for lashing out, tearing down, striving to get rid of or destroy that which is feared.
One of the practices I’ve used over many years now is a derivation (my own “translation” of the process) of the Buddhist practice of Tonglen. As a trauma therapist, there have been many times where I’ve sat with someone working on an overwhelming trauma and what has offered me support in staying steady and present over all these years has been this practice of Tonglen. It allows me to keep my heart open in the presence of suffering and pain and has helped me not to be overwhelmed by what clients have shared over these years.
A number of years ago, I realized that Tonglen was a beautiful example of a subtle activism practice—of a practice I could use regularly to help metabolize collective fear and hatred. When I do this practice as subtle activism, I focus on fear because of my belief that this state of being is the source of hatred, violence, and so many other ways in which we harm one another.
And so, for this week’s practice, I invite you to explore the following guided process of using Tonglen (my derivation of it) to contribute to our collective healing. If you haven’t done this kind of practice before, let me say just a few things about it. Pema Chodron, the Buddhist teacher, has wonderful material on Tonglen. You can find her in her books and on YouTube. One of the things I heard her say early on in my explorations of Tonglen is that the light of the heart is fiery and is capable of neutralizing negative energy. She has also said that the more we do this kind of practice the brighter the fiery love in our heart becomes. I have found this to be true and, at this point in my life, I deeply trust the fire in my heart to be able to neutralize or transmute negative energy.
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693rd Week: Orienting to “Seeing What’s Good”
In a recent conversation with a colleague, she mentioned reading an article that focused on the fact that what we perceive, where we focus our “seeing”, has a concrete effect in our world. This reminded me of the quantum physics findings around the “observer effect”. The observer effect speaks to the fact that the observer of an experiment seems to have a powerful and important impact on the outcome of the experiment. What the observer expects turns out to be what actually happens.
In the article my colleague mentioned, the author encouraged people to see what is good and right in their world as, in this way, they promote those qualities and outcomes, drawing on the dynamics of the observer effect. This reminded me of something I’ve shared before in a number of experiments on the dynamics of what is called subtle activism. Read More “693rd Week: Orienting to “Seeing What’s Good””
690th Week: Meeting Challenges
I had an experience recently where a colleague brought to my attention that three years’ worth of postings to one of my websites had never actually shown up for the pubic. I mentioned last week that I post a daily inspirational quotation and photograph to the Devadana Sanctuary Facebook page, and I also post it to the Devadana Sanctuary website. What I discovered is that the posts to the website were incorrectly programmed by me and never appeared… Read More “690th Week: Meeting Challenges”
765th Week: Blessing Water
As I’ve written about before, I’ve been noticing the tangible impact of practicing offering blessings as I move through the world. One of the most important is the ongoing practice of blessing water. Water carries memory, as demonstrated in the work of Masaru Emoto, where he looked at the crystalline structure of frozen water molecules before and after they were blessed, as well as when they were sent love, gratitude, hate, or “you’re a loser”. It’s quite compelling research and, in case you haven’t seen it, here’s a link to a YouTube video about water and memory: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eOp-bxNug5A. There are many other related videos, as well, if you are interested.
Many people don’t believe that water carries memory, or that it matters if water is blessed before taken into the body. Many of us forget that our bodies are up to 65% water and, when we take into account the images that come from Emoto’s work, we can better appreciate why blessing water is an important practice for our overall sense of well-being.
I am also a proponent of expressing a great deal of ongoing love and gratitude for my body, as it’s the means by which I’m here in the world. I include my awareness that the water in my body will carry my love and gratitude within it as it circulates. Whether it directly affects my body, I don’t really know but, even with the inevitable changes that come with aging, I know I feel better when I actively engage this practice.
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721st Week: Grammar Shapes Our Worldview
We know that different languages generate different world views, different ways of experiencing the world around us, and different expectations of what we can expect from our world. Several times now, I’ve run across the writings of Robin Wall Kimmerer and each time I experience her worldview I am deeply moved. She is a botanist who is also has a Potawatomi heritage and a perspective that is much more inclusive and honoring of our planet and our global family of relations with whom we share this home.
I’ve written before about Robin’s very wise and powerful sharing of the need for pronouns that are inclusive of all the life on this beautiful home we share with so many other beings. Read More “721st Week: Grammar Shapes Our Worldview”