February 2015 Audio Meditation

For many of us, these are trying times and it can be challenging not to fall into collapse and discouragement over our collective political, social, and ecological situation. One of the things I’ve found helpful is to remember that there tend to be natural and inevitable cycles that shift what’s been in the foreground to the background and vice versa. When things look the worst, it sometimes means that change is just around the corner, that the pendulum is reading to swing the other way. Read More “696th Week: Trusting in Cycles”

As I prepared to write this week’s practice in conscious living, it became clear that I needed to take two of my three feline family members to an emergency vet on different nights during the week. One of the things related to being in an emergency facility is that there is plenty of time to wait. It’s first come, first served and there’s no way to rush the attention needed in emergency visits.

To help keep my feline friends calm, I needed to draw on the calm part of myself—to bring the calm aspect of my wholeness into the foreground of my experience. This got me to thinking about offering a practice around the importance of embracing our wholeness so that we are able to remember that all aspects of being can shift from foreground to background and, also from background to foreground. In these emergency experiences, I remembered that I’ve developed a much deeper relationship with being calm and centered and that, even when this aspect of being drops into the background of my awareness, it’s always there to invite forward when I’m able to do so.

It’s helpful to remember that trauma can add an energy “punch” to some aspects of our wholeness so that when they move into the foreground of awareness we may find ourselves activated in ways we hadn’t expected and which we may have a hard time managing. A year-and-a-half ago, when one of my feline family members had a dental emergency, I found myself catapulted into a very young part of my wholeness. What I noticed this time around was that the efforts I invested over the last year dealing with what got pulled into the foreground last year made a noticeable difference, for which I have been very grateful. I was calm in a way I wouldn’t have predicted, given my previous responses.

A while back, I listened to a book by Merlin Sheldrake, called “Entangled Life”. Sheldrake is a specialist in fungi and the book is an inspiring journey through all things fungal. He shares stories about how fungi participate in the “wood-wide web”, creating mycelial networks in collaboration with tree roots to support communication and access to nourishment under forest floors. He also describes the creative and truly inspiring research and development that are happening that use fungi to generate building materials and countless other products used by humans.

Listening to the book reminded me how important it is to find sources of inspiration that support an awareness that there is a much bigger picture unfolding than the one our daily lives encompasses. Given our current range of local and global crises, it can be challenging to access inspiration, possibility, and an awareness of potential creative solutions to so many problems we humans have generated and now must solve. 

For this week’s practice in conscious living, I invite you to take a bit of time each day to orient your awareness to something that moves, enlivens, inspires, or fills you up in a positive way that I don’t know how to put into words for you. It may be something as simple as looking out the window and seeing a bird on a tree branch, as I just did. I’m on vacation out of the city and it was inspiring to see this bird standing on a branch in a beam of sunlight. It may be that you are reading a book that touches your heart and that reading just a few lines is a way to begin a new day with a sense of possibility, or with the feeling of a deeper connection in a way that nourishes you.

I’m in the process of preparing a webinar for professionals on the subject of cultivating a sense of connection with the world around us. One of the things we contribute ongoingly, but usually unconsciously, is the essence, the quality of being that emanates from us in every moment, wherever we are, whatever we’re doing. We add to the quality of the world around us by the qualities we radiate into our environment.

I’ve mentioned many times about the importance of the frequencies with which we resonate. So this practice will be a reminder to many of you, and I figure we can’t be reminded enough to pay attention to the frequencies with which we resonate in any given moment. For example, if we resonate with the quality of kindness, chances are that we will emanate that frequency into our environment and into the interactions we have with others along the way. Because of this, we may discover that we encounter kindness from others more often than we might otherwise experience. If we resonate with a quality of irritation or anger, chances are that we will emanate that frequency throughout ourselves and into our environment, and it will have an impact on the quality of our interactions with others as we move through any given day. Frequencies, qualities, essences matter.

I want to make a distinction between upsetting moments, jarring experiences, and blissful times of elation and the fundamental qualities/frequencies/essences with which we resonate on a deeper and more habitual basis. We all have moments of shifting emotions and up-and-down qualities of self-talk. That’s inevitable. What we can cultivate, though, is a foundation of qualities that we consciously choose, frequencies with which we want to resonate, frequencies/qualities we want to radiate within ourselves and out into the world around us.