June 2012 Audio Meditation

Over recent months, I have found myself painfully aware of everything I throw in the trash in the course of my everyday life.  Being a long-time recycler, I’ve always been mindful of my use of paper, bottles, cans, and other recyclables.  Lately, I’ve been aware of all the plastic that lands in my trashcan, with new additions just about every day.  About a year ago, I started shopping with canvas bags and stopped using small plastic bags for produce at the grocery store.  While these steps won’t save the planet, they do cut down on the amount of plastic that moves through and from my home.

This deepened awareness of plastic, and all the photos we now see of what plastics are doing to the inhabitants of our oceans and other waterways, got me to thinking about the natural capacity we humans have to generate options when confronted by circumstances that demand change.  

Confronted as we are by mounting evidence that our current lifestyle cannot continue unchanged, I got to thinking about the importance of our innate curiosity, flexibility, and ability to generate options when circumstances require change.  Drawing on these skills as part of everyday living is like engaging in exercise each day. It builds a kind of “psychological muscle” that allows curiosity, flexibility, and an ability to generate options to become more readily and spontaneously available as part of how we engage the world around us.

Read More “752nd Week: Cultivating Flexibility”

As I thought about what kind of practice in conscious living to share this week, I found myself thinking about the fact that we are part of a variety of fields of collective consciousness. Most of us are generally unaware of this dynamic, even as we constantly affect the world around us, as it also affects us.

In my world, I’m aware of many fields of collective consciousness. There’s the collective consciousness we share as a human species. There’s the field of consciousness that is part of our individual families, our communities, our nations, our world as one organism, and also any groups to which we belong. In all these fields of information, fields of consciousness, we constantly contribute to and draw from the quality of these collectives.

Just as we are keenly aware of the impact of living in a physical environment that has pollution and toxic elements, there are aspects in some of these fields of collective consciousness that have a similar impact. This brings me to the subject of frequencies, which I’ve written about before, and of the importance of the frequencies with which we resonate. Within a context of collective fields of consciousness, it’s all about frequencies. For example, if we are anxious, the quality and tone of that anxiety in ourselves automatically resonates with whatever anxiety exists within our collective field of consciousness and actually amplifies our feeling. On the other hand, if we are grounded and steady, those will be the qualities with which we resonate within the collective and those which we spontaneously contribute, as well.

A key thing to remember is, again, we constantly contribute to and draw from these collectives and the frequencies/qualities with which we resonate play an important role in the quality and tone of our psychological life.

Read More “866th Week: Exploring Collective Consciousness”

Recently, I’ve been ramping up a practice as I go through Central Park on my way to the office that has to do with recognizing that everything I encounter along the way, every living being—human or otherwise—is kin.  This recognition comes from the awareness that we are all “children of Gaia”, with no exceptions.  A colleague mentioned to me last week that she saw a documentary in which the anthropologist pointed out that not so long ago, geologically speaking, we humans were part of nature’s “wildlife”.  It was only when we began to use agriculture that we shifted from actively participating as local wildlife.  It was a reminder that we humans, as well as every other life form, are born from the same source of physical life—we are all Gaian beings.

This practice got me to paying more attention to what I experience as I recognize that every living being I encounter in the course of my daily activities is kin.  On my walk, for example, acknowledging people, trees, bushes, birds, dogs, grass, rocks—everything I encounter along the way—as kin, I notice that my heart becomes more open and I feel more immediately connected to the world around me.  It’s hard to describe, but I become aware of a deepened sense of relatedness to, and part of, my world.  That experience then touches something deeper that nourishes a richer sense of well-being. Read More “714th Week: When Every Being is Kin”