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883rd Week: Cultivating A Deeper Awareness of Interbeing and Interdependence
As we experience the intense polarization and conflict in the United States, and also that which has arisen in so many other countries, it feels more important than ever to engage practices that remind us that we are one earth family and that we can’t survive independent from the countless contributions of our human family and our other-than-human earth family.
I’ve written before about the South African concept and practice of Ubuntu—“I am because you are”, which recognizes and lives into the reality that it is only through the support of the people around us that we are able to be. Here’s one reference describing Ubuntu, one among many: https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Ubuntu_(philosophy)
Another approach to this same idea comes from Psychiatrist Dan Siegel who has developed what he calls “Intraconnection”, where he describes our awareness as moving from “me to we to mwe”. Here’s a link to his new book on the subject: https://www.amazon.com/IntraConnected-Integration-Belonging-Identity-IPNB/dp/0393711692/ref=sr_1_2?crid=N39CCKTAR989&keywords=Dan+Siegel+intraconnected&pldnSite=1&qid=1658667706&sprefix=dan+siegel+intraconnected%2Caps%2C124&sr=8-2
Then, there’s Thich Nhat Hanh’s coining the verb interbeing, where he says that we interare in every moment, that we cannot really be separate from everything around us. Here’s a link to an article by Thich Nhat Hanh on interbeing: https://www.garrisoninstitute.org/blog/insight-of-interbeing/
These and other related approaches and concepts invite us to expand our worldview to move beyond U.S. culture’s (and the cultures of other countries, as well) emphasis on individual issues such as rights, freedom, and independence. For this week’s practice in conscious living, I invite you to dive a bit more deeply into this subject than you may have done before and ask yourself, each day, to recognize your interbeing and interdependence in some way you might ordinarily ignore it.
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859th Week: Each Small Act Matters
I’ve mentioned a number of times that I post a daily inspirational quote and photograph of our beautiful earth in two places. One is the Devadana Sanctuary Facebook page and the other is on the Devadana Sanctuary side of my Portal to Multidimensional Living. I’ve done this for a number of years now, as the process of choosing the quotation and photograph each day has become a form of meditation for me.
Two recent quotes, one I posted through Devadana Sanctuary, the other posted by someone else on Facebook, touched into a practice that I engage in daily and I wanted to share it with you at this time of the ending of one year, one cycle, and the beginning of the new. First, here are two quotations that touch on what I want to share in this weekly practice:
“I do not think that it is naïve to think that it is the tiny, particular acts of love and joy which are going to swing the balance.” ~ Madeleine L’Engle, A Circle of Quiet
“We live at a time when the greatest form of courage is to act as if our lives made a difference.”
~ William Sullivan, The Secret of the Inca