March 2020 Audio Meditation

897^th Week: Orienting to the Greatest Good for the Greatest Number

I’ve mentioned often that I believe that each of us is a participant in a dynamic collective human consciousness (as well as a collective planetary consciousness) and, because of this, that we are both contributing to and receiving from this collective all the time. When we develop new skills, discover new understandings, master something that was a challenge before, my belief is that we contribute what we experience to our human collective. Then, people who are on the verge of similar accomplishments can spontaneously draw on what we have contributed to the collective through our experience. In the same way, I believe that we also draw from the collective to support our individual journeys.

One of the powerful realities of our collective being is that we are affected by both positive and negative events and responses happening within our human family. As a trauma resolution specialist, I’m keenly aware that groups of people can generate what is called a “trauma vortex” that affects people who aren’t directly involved. Deep suffering can touch all of us even if we aren’t consciously aware of it. We resonate with one another simply because of our participation in collective consciousness. It can be the same on the positive side of things, as well, as was demonstrated in research a number of years ago where people in large groups in a city doing transcendental meditation seemingly affected the statistics on lowered crime in that city during the time of these meditations. We affect one another whether we mean to or not and whether we are conscious of it or not.

During  the years that I taught Somatic Experiencing®, and whenever I have done workshops for the public or professionals over many years, one of the thoughts/wishes/intentions I have held was that the workshop or training would offer whatever amounted to the greatest good for the greatest number of those present. I would also hold the intention that the workshop or training would offer healing support in whatever ways was needed for each person present.

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.

A post on Facebook had a picture of Mr. Rogers describing what creates success and there were three sentences all ending in “kindness”. This got me to thinking, yet again, of the importance of kindness as a primary stance in moving through daily life. In the present state of our collective interpersonal life, adding in more kindness seems an important and useful antidote (at least in all the small ways kindness can make a tangible difference).

Thinking about kindness also got me to thinking about the relationship between heart intelligence and perception and kindness, as it feels to me that kindness arises and emerges from the heart. I recently read an article about what is now considered by science as the real possibility of a “heart brain”. Stories of people who have received heart transplants attest to the fact that the heart is more than merely a physical pump.