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2022 January Audio Meditation
Here’s the 2022 January Audio Meditation. This year, we’ll focus on frequencies, the energy qualities that we embody and express in every moment. Each month, we’ll draw on a different frequency, exploring identifying, accessing, embodying, and deepening awareness of various frequencies.
If you like to listen to the meditation along with images of our beautiful planet, here’s the YouTube version…
866th Week: Exploring Collective Consciousness
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.
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761st Week: Holding Space for Ourselves and All Our Kin (Which is Everyone)
As I write this practice, current violent events that have caused immense distress and suffering continue to fill the news and Internet. Working through my own responses got me to thinking about what I might offer as this week’s practice that might be both supportive and useful.
Whenever I am in the presence of suffering and challenges that I can’t directly change, I inevitably turn to my heart space for support, comfort, and as a way to actively and mindfully process my sense of outrage, helplessness, or despair that may arise. And, inevitably and thankfully, my heart space is able to process and manage these difficult feelings in a way that always surprises and eases me. It may be because I feel like I’m doing something, or it may be—as the HeartMath Institute’s research has shown—that a coherent heart eases the amygdala and reduces activation.
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782nd Week: This Breath, This Moment
I ended last week’s practice with a suggestion to come back to the present moment and to this current breath as a way to manage some of the stress of this time in our collective lives.
One of the practices that I used to teach in the Somatic Experiencing® trainings was to invite people to notice how they “add fuel to the bonfires of activation”. Many of us have grown up in cultures that don’t focus on tracking how we allow our thinking to drag us hither and yon, an experience that generates enormous amounts of suffering. In this time of the coronavirus pandemic, it’s more important than ever to be able to notice when we increase our suffering by allowing our fear-generated thoughts to dominate our attention and experience.
One of the practices that can be difficult but is powerfully important is to hold the intention to come back to the present moment, to the breath you’re taking right now, and to focus awareness on this breath, on this moment. In terms of self-talk, one of the things that’s helpful to say while doing this practice is something along the lines of, “In this moment, right here and right now, I’m okay enough.”
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856th Week: Returning to Steadiness
For quite a long while now, I have invited myself and others to find the fundamental and ever-present steadiness that is an inherent part of our core presence. Within this living presence of centered and grounded awareness, there is always a steadiness that is undisturbed by anything that may be happening in our lives. It’s a practice I’ve cultivated and returned to again and again, and the habit of orienting to the steadiness that cannot be disturbed has proven to be a powerful and useful resource.
One example of the benefits of settling into the underlying steadiness we all carry at the core of our being is a mundane one, but one that has had particular importance to me. As the child in my family who felt responsible for caring for my mother’s happiness (definitely a child’s perspective!), I developed an underlying anxiety around caregiving. Needless to say, this anxiety was readily present over the years whenever animal members of my family needed medication or some other challenging treatment. Inevitably, I would be anxious—anything but calm—and that never helped. What I discovered in recent weeks, when three feline members of my household had medical issues come up, is that my practice of orienting to my internal steadiness has offered an opportunity to meet these medical needs with a calm presence that I didn’t know was possible.
For this week’s practice in conscious living, I invite you to explore the following practice to see what it might offer to you.
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