March 2011 Audio Meditation

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.

Read More “905^th Week: Living into Our Intentions“

With all that has happened in the United States since January 6^th, it seems a good time to revisit the process of returning to steadiness. Also, it’s a time to keep in mind that where we place our awareness and attention has an impact on the quality of reality that we experience and engage.

For many of us, it’s challenging to even begin to imagine how we will collectively heal the polarities and divisions we see not only in the United States, but all around the planet. I have framed this current situation as a potential “healing crisis”, where we are seemingly stuck in a collective situation that seems not to have an easy or ready solution.

In my recent return to explorations into dynamics that are more “quantum” in nature, I have been inviting myself to be curious as to how to orient myself to the idea of an “optimal human family” living on the planet in ways that support healthy living for everyone, including our non-human earth-kin. I’ve done this in much the same way as I have worked with the concept of the “optimal future self” over the past almost 40 years. 

When I think of the idea of an “optimal human family”, I recognize that I have no way to envision specifics around this potential. So, drawing on what I have done with the “optimal future self” over all these years, I find myself calling on this potential, more than imagining it, and asking for it to move into this reality, holding the assumption that such a process is possible.

Read More “824th Week: Returning to Steadiness Revisited”

885^th Week : Exploring Your Unique Energy SignatureThis practice continues with the theme of frequencies and their impact on the quality of our own being and of the collective family of lifeforms that are our earth-kin of every kind. One of the fundamental qualities about our beautiful planet is that it seeks to create, and thrives on, a magnificent array of diversity. We know that ecological systems that are the most diverse are also the healthiest and most robust. Within all kingdoms of nature and environments, we see diversity as a fundamental quality. In our human family, nature has expressed this creative impulse toward diversity in countless ways. We have diversity in skin color. We have diversity in facial features and body types. We have diversity in languages and cultural norms, diets, spiritual practices and everyday routines and activities, to mention just a few of the areas of human diversity.

One of the areas I have focused on exploring with humans in mind is the place of core presence that resides within the internal home base of every human being. It is the place in us where we touch into an inherent steadiness that is never disturbed. It is deeper than our conditioning and everyday reactivity. What we can also touch in this place of core presence is a sense of the energy that our presence radiates throughout our body-mind being and into the world around us in every moment. I think of this radiating presence as our unique energy signature. 

My experience and belief are that life’s emphasis on diversity points to the fact that each one of us is a unique expression of life and that each one of us in an irreplaceable expression of that life. Our unique energy signature cannot be replicated by anyone else and it matters that we are here. Even though it’s hard to put into words, my experience is that life lives me rather than I live life.

Read More “885th Week : Exploring Your Unique Energy Signature”

Listening to the news these days can be a challenge with all the reports of rabid polarization, anger, and fear. This got me to thinking yet again about processes of subtle activism—things we can do within our own body-mind being that might add something positive and, at the very least, not add to the distress going on all around us.

This morning, as I sit in Central Park taking in the green of trees and abundant birdsong, I remember that we all “interare”. The word “interbeing” was created by Thich Nhat Hahn, the Buddhist monk and teacher, and he offered it as a way of reminding us that we are not only dependent on each other and on every other life form that is part of our ecological niche, but we are also related to everyone and everything on the planet. Even when we violently disagree with one another, we are related, part of an earth community of interbeing.

For this week’s practice in conscious living, I invite you to spend some time living with this idea. If it’s already natural to you, then take it a step deeper and find even more earth relations you may have left out of your experience of connection. In a world of interbeing and interdependence, no one and nothing can be omitted. We are part of one global ecosystem and we deeply depend on this earth family with which we are connected.

Read More “842nd Week: Interbeing: Connection, and Interdependence”

When I actively taught Somatic Experiencing, one of the themes that I passed along from my first SE teacher and good friend, Diane Poole Heller, was the distinction between expressions of “power over” and those of “mutual empowerment.” Diane embodies and expresses mutual empowerment in her relationships with the people around her and her influence and modeling have had a powerful impact on me. The distinction between power over (where there are only two options—you’re on the top or you’re on the bottom) and mutual empowerment (where no one has to lose power in order for things to work out) has stayed with me as an active intention to support mutual empowerment in every way I can. I have lived that not only as a teacher but also as a mentor. When people talk about the “new Earth” that needs to arise from the breakdown of the old institutions that are now being challenged around the world, what comes to mind for me is a fundamental shift from power-over styles of leadership and dominance, including our relationship with the planet and all our human and other-than-human earth-kin, to styles that embody and express mutual empowerment within every aspect of our lives.

A key thing about mutual empowerment is that it has, as its foundation, the belief and experience that your having power doesn’t automatically take away from anyone else and their having power doesn’t automatically take away from you. A stance of mutual empowerment tends to naturally engender respect, as well as wishes for others to have as much success, happiness, satisfaction—whatever—as is possible for them.

For this week’s practice, I invite you to pay attention to those times when you encounter people or situations that express “power-over” dynamics and those where you see, or experience, styles of “mutual empowerment”. Also notice these dynamics in yourself so that if you have slipped into a power-over style of interaction you’ll be able to choose whether you want to continue in that mode or if you want to experiment with shifting into a mutual-empowerment style.

Read More “872nd Week: Noticing Mutual-Empowerment and Power-Over Dynamics “