March 2013 Audio Meditation

As I write this, I’m sitting in the Admiral’s Club of American Airlines, waiting for a flight to California.  I’m flying business class today, on miles, and I’m struck by the difference between the experience I’m having right now—complimentary coffee and food and a comfortable place to sit—compared to what it’s like when I fly economy.  What this brings into my awareness is how easy it could be to overlook the quality of life being lived by people who don’t have the economic privilege I do. I find myself wondering how I would cultivate a deepened empathic awareness of people in need if my everyday life were regularly as generous and comfortable as the situation I’m in at the moment.

I remember reading some recent research that suggested that the more money people have the lower their scores on tests of empathy. Sitting here this morning, I can understand how that could happen.  So, the question I have deals with any and all areas of privilege, be that economic privilege, racial privilege, gender privilege, ethnic privilege, religious privilege, or any other kind of privilege that comes automatically to certain classes of people.  How do we expand our awareness to include those who don’t have access to whatever kinds of privilege we may take for granted and not even recognize as privilege? Read More “713th Week:  Cultivating Empathy”

Sitting in Central Park on a Sunday morning, there is a loud and enthusiastic race going on nearby with lots of hoots and hollers as people run by.  I’m here amongst my tree friends and what I’m aware of is the pervasive and steady quiet they radiate into my awareness.  This moment has taken me back to my experience of the foreground/ background dynamic that is always present.  By bringing my awareness to the background of pervasive quiet here amongst the trees, it shifts into the foreground of my awareness even as the enthusiastic shouting of the race slides into the background.  I feel my body relax into the quiet, into the pervasive silence that the trees radiate.

This got me to thinking yet again about how important it can be to be able to choose what we bring into the foreground of awareness and what we allow to hover in the background.  In my practice of attending to wholeness as much as possible, I do my best not to leave out an awareness of what’s happening around me, what’s happening in the world, and to acknowledge not only what brings me ease and happiness but also what touches into an awareness of suffering, outrage, and compassion. And so, shifting things from foreground to background and vice versa doesn’t mean to actively go into denial about what’s unfolding in my immediate environment or in the world. Rather, it offers a way to choose which awareness is most appropriate and most healthy in any given moment.

Read More “764th Week: Choosing the Focus of Attention—Foreground/Background”

Whenever I have to go to a doctor or any other kind of practitioner, I spend time resonating with gratitude around the fact that they can do something for me that I can’t do for myself. I started this practice many years ago and find that it makes even challenging medical and dental visits easier to move through.

When I think of resonating with a specific frequency, it reminds me of putting on particular clothing appropriate to what I’ll be doing. For me, frequencies are “energy garments” which we take on and these energies affect both our own perceptions and responses as well as the environments we enter. They “set a tone” that then supports a particular quality of experience.

This has gotten me to thinking about the effects of resonating with the frequency of gratitude. With my background in working with trauma resolution and my understanding of somatic aspects of healing, I find myself wondering if the frequency of gratitude generates a quality that conveys to the body that there’s no threat, that all is well, that there’s nothing to struggle against. 

What I want to offer in this practice is an opportunity for you to experiment with the effects of resonating with gratitude in a variety of situations, especially in those where you are dependent on some kind of practitioner to offer healing opportunities that you can’t offer to yourself. You can also explore your experience when you attune to gratitude before entering a store, a business, an educational setting—anyplace. I often attune to gratitude when I come into Central Park, where I am now as I write this practice. I am deeply grateful to the Spirit of Central Park for all that it offers to so many of us in this crowded urban setting.

Read More “882nd Week: Resonating with Gratitude – A Practice in Frequencies”