November 2010 Audio Meditation

There’s a concept drawn from quantum research that resonates deeply with many spiritual traditions and also touches into ideas that are found in psychology. It is called “entanglement”, and it proposes that we are intimately connected to and affect the world around us in everything we do. It also proposes that we, as individuals, are part of a collective within which there is no real separation, even though our physical bodies lead us to imagine that we stand alone. In the Rig Veda, there is a saying that says something like: “We are all woven into Indra’s net, out of which we cannot fall.” According to quantum research, it appears that we are, indeed, all part of a living system out of which we cannot fall. In addition to that, as part of this system, everything we do has an effect on the larger collective system.

As I thought about writing a practice today, I found myself orienting to a deepening sense and understanding of entanglement. I think that part of me is also chewing on subtle activism practices for these times. And so, with entanglement in mind, here are a few subtle activism possibilities for you to explore.

In these times of such challenge, I have found myself having to return to an underlying steadiness and calm again and again. This month, in my monthly posting of an audio meditation on my website, the focus is to attune to, call on, and embody the frequency of steadiness. I have understood and experienced steadiness to be a natural aspect of our deep core presence, the place in us that cannot be disturbed, no matter what may happen in our own lives or in the world at large. This doesn’t mean that we don’t register and respond to what’s happening within and around us. Instead, this place of steadiness that we carry deep inside offers an internal place of “refuge”, an aspect of our internal home base that is always steady, no matter what.

Another aspect of orienting to steadiness is that it allows us to contribute to the steadiness of our human collective consciousness. At this time, many countries around the world are embroiled in internal conflict between differing factions, religious and ethnic groups, between people fighting for rights and those in power working to limit freedoms of various kinds. So, when we look at what’s happening in our own countries, wherever we may live in the world, it’s helpful to remember that we are experiencing a global human-species crisis.

One thing I’d like to say about my belief in and experience of our human collective consciousness is that our moment-to-moment contributions matter. Whenever we experience a particular emotion or response, that experience is enhanced or intensified by the impact of all the people all over the world who are feeling the same way. Where we resonate matters, both in what we offer and in what we receive. For me, each time one of us is able to resonate with being centered, grounded, steady, or in any other way solid and stable in the presence of hurtful experience, I believe our experience offers to those who are teetering on the edge finding their center something like a foothold that helps them step into their own steadiness. We have an opportunity to support one another in every moment.

When I actively taught Somatic Experiencing, one of the themes that I passed along from my first SE teacher and good friend, Diane Poole Heller, was the distinction between expressions of “power over” and those of “mutual empowerment.” Diane embodies and expresses mutual empowerment in her relationships with the people around her and her influence and modeling have had a powerful impact on me. The distinction between power over (where there are only two options—you’re on the top or you’re on the bottom) and mutual empowerment (where no one has to lose power in order for things to work out) has stayed with me as an active intention to support mutual empowerment in every way I can. I have lived that not only as a teacher but also as a mentor. When people talk about the “new Earth” that needs to arise from the breakdown of the old institutions that are now being challenged around the world, what comes to mind for me is a fundamental shift from power-over styles of leadership and dominance, including our relationship with the planet and all our human and other-than-human earth-kin, to styles that embody and express mutual empowerment within every aspect of our lives.

A key thing about mutual empowerment is that it has, as its foundation, the belief and experience that your having power doesn’t automatically take away from anyone else and their having power doesn’t automatically take away from you. A stance of mutual empowerment tends to naturally engender respect, as well as wishes for others to have as much success, happiness, satisfaction—whatever—as is possible for them.

For this week’s practice, I invite you to pay attention to those times when you encounter people or situations that express “power-over” dynamics and those where you see, or experience, styles of “mutual empowerment”. Also notice these dynamics in yourself so that if you have slipped into a power-over style of interaction you’ll be able to choose whether you want to continue in that mode or if you want to experiment with shifting into a mutual-empowerment style.