April 2018 Audio Meditation

As we collectively continue to be met with powerful challenges of loss, grief, change, and concerns about the future, having practices available that allow us to ground ourselves, re-center ourselves, and orient to a more heart-centered perception and awareness is more important than ever. One of the practices that I have found comforting during difficult times is to remember that I am part of a much larger context of connection and to orient my awareness toward ways of experiencing that sense of connection.

For this week’s practice, I’d like to share one of the approaches that helps me feel more grounded during times of distress and uncertainty. It relates to something I say all the time, which is, “We’re not in this alone.” As much as we may feel disconnected at times, from an energy perspective, and from the perspective of collective consciousness, it’s impossible for us to be truly alone, impossible not to be connected to our larger collective presence, comprised of each of us and of all our earth-kin.

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.

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.

With the recent passing of Ram Dass, I am even more aware of something I read in his most recent book, “Walking Each Other Home”. A practice he took on and used every day touched me when I read the book, and I have taken it up as a regular practice of mine. I would like to share it with you. At the moment, I can’t remember if he used this mantra in conjunction with his breathing, but he constantly repeated the words “I am loving awareness.” I mentally say it to myself on the out-breath.

What touches me powerfully about this statement is how it automatically orients me to my heart awareness, which is something that our world desperately needs at this time. I’ve mentioned many times that we affect our environment all the time, whether we intend to or not. As you move through your daily activities, where you place your attention impacts both your internal quality of life and the quality of our collective human consciousness. You cannot not radiate into our human collective the quality of your inner life.