731st Week:  Wholeness

ByNancy Napier

A friend sent me this quotation after a particularly violent and challenging week in American life and it touched into an awareness that’s been growing in me over recent years. There is so much suffering within our human family, so many acts of cruelty and violence around the world, and we are aware of so much more of it with the Internet. Because of this, it can be hard to remember wholeness, the wholeness inherent in our human family, when we see so many examples of how we, as a species, are capable of hurting one another.

I was very moved by the quotation from Howard Zinn and wanted to share it as part of this week’s practice.  I think that it not only inspires but it also speaks to a powerful and ever-present truth: within wholeness there is more than whatever aspect of it is in the foreground at any given moment in time.

Here’s the quotation:

“To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness.

“What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places—and there are so many—where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction.

“And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.”

Because of the above quotation, for this week’s practice I’d like to invite you to pay attention to the reality of wholeness.  Each time you hear bad news, please also take a moment to remind yourself, “And, that’s not the whole picture.”  This doesn’t mean not to act in whatever ways you feel moved to do in order to correct, protest, or in some other way alleviate suffering or circumstances with which you disagree.  It does mean to constantly remember that within a context of wholeness there is always more to the picture…there are alwaysboth foreground and background.

For every horrific action on the part of someone, there are inevitably compassionate and healing actions being taken by countless people all over the world at the same moment. While we never want to settle for mistreatment or violence in any form, we also don’t want to fall into collapse where we become helpless and unable to notice options and possible responses.

It’s for this reason that I constantly encourage people to search for good news on the Internet. There are a number of sources of good news that I regularly explore and I’ve shared some of them before.  One is the New Story Hub, where you can find blogs, videos and other sources of good news:  http://newstoryhub.com.  Then, there’s Service Space, found at https://www.servicespace.org.  They offer a number of good news options:  DailyGood postings; KarmaTube videos, and much more.  The Dodo offers good news stories about animals:  https://www.thedodo.com.  There are many more and most of us can find sources that meet our particular style and needs.  I have many spiritual sources, such as Buddha at the Gas Pump interviews, www.batgap.com, Conscious TV, www.conscious.tv, Sounds True’s Insights at the Edge, which is a podcast, one among many that are available on-line.

As part of this week’s practice, notice what happens when you start out the day with good news and when you expand the resources for good news that you have available.  I’ve written many times about the impact and importance of frequencies and you set the frequency for the day by how you spend your morning, or whenever your day begins.  Explore more deeply the impact of where you focus your awareness and attention as you move into a new day.  Also notice what happens when you remember all the good that so many people do every day, all around the world.

As with all these practices, there’s no right way to do this one.  Instead, it’s an invitation to continue to explore the impact on your quality of life of where you focus your attention and awareness.  While none of us can choose what comes our way, the choice we do have is where we place our attention, what we bring into the foreground of our awareness.

Also, please remember to bring along curiosity as your constant companion, keeping in mind that curiosity opens us to experience, whereas fear and anxiety constrict our relationship with our world.  And, as always, please remember to pat on the head any judgments that may arise as you explore this practice, allowing them simply to move on through without your having to respond to them in any way.

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ByNancy Napier
905th Week: Living into Our Intentions

905th Week: Living into Our Intentions

ByNancy Napier

I recently posted the following quotation from Jean Houston to one of my Devadana Sanctuary postings on Facebook: “My prayer is, let me be a blessing to someone or something today.” It got me to thinking about how powerful it is when we live into our intentions, when we actually follow through with what we say we want to do.

I also recently offered the following quotation from Joanna Macy in another Devadana Sanctuary posting on Facebook: “…every act we make, every word we speak, every thought we think is not only affected by the other elements in the vast web of being in which all things take part, but also has results so far-reaching that we cannot see or imagine them.” This quotation also brought to mind the importance and power of the intentions we carry and those we actually live into.

For this week’s practice, I invite you to notice what intentions you carry that have the same kind of positive qualities as those above. In this troubled world, it seems to me that the one contribution we can all make, regardless of our circumstances or physical abilities, is to hold positive intentions about how we move through the world with care and awareness—how we treat ourselves, others, and our environment.

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703rd Week:  Supporting A Sense of Connection

703rd Week:  Supporting A Sense of Connection

ByNancy Napier

I am, without question, a creature of habit.  There is a place in Central Park where I sit on weekend mornings and do a lot of the writing that shows up here as weekly practices.  Because I’m pretty much a regular during seasons that encourage being outdoors, I have come to know others who are also regulars on weekend mornings.  One man who works at the restaurant in the park comes by each weekend morning and we have a bit of a chat.  One morning, because it rained the day before, he mentioned that he missed seeing me on his way to work… Read More “703rd Week:  Supporting A Sense of Connection”

693rd Week:  Orienting to “Seeing What’s Good”

693rd Week:  Orienting to “Seeing What’s Good”

ByNancy Napier

In a recent conversation with a colleague, she mentioned reading an article that focused on the fact that what we perceive, where we focus our “seeing”, has a concrete effect in our world.  This reminded me of the quantum physics findings around the “observer effect”.  The observer effect speaks to the fact that the observer of an experiment seems to have a powerful and important impact on the outcome of the experiment.  What the observer expects turns out to be what actually happens.

In the article my colleague mentioned, the author encouraged people to see what is good and right in their world as, in this way, they promote those qualities and outcomes, drawing on the dynamics of the observer effect.  This reminded me of something I’ve shared before in a number of experiments on the dynamics of what is called subtle activism.   Read More “693rd Week:  Orienting to “Seeing What’s Good””

823rd Week: Beginnings, Intentions, Probabilities

823rd Week: Beginnings, Intentions, Probabilities

ByNancy Napier

I write this practice on the first weekend of the new year. The year just passed brought many challenges, not the least of which has been our global, collective experience with Covid 19. Other challenges arose, as well, bringing with them an inescapable awareness of cultural beliefs and norms that need to be updated, changed, eliminated, or transformed depending on what they represent and what they support in our social consciousness and behavior. 

I’ve also been thinking about the intersection between deeply held intentions and what has been called the “quantum foam”—the arena in which an infinite array of probabilities may be found. In quantum research and theory, it has become apparent that probabilities dance in and out of reality all the time, responding in part to the “observer effect”. For me, this equates with how our deep choices interact outside our conscious awareness with the emergence of particular probabilities and I find this a much more dynamic and creative idea than our usual “New Year’s resolutions” type of activity.

Read More “823rd Week: Beginnings, Intentions, Probabilities”

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