Weekly Practice in Conscious Living

As I write this, I’m sitting in Central Park, as I often do on weekend mornings, attuning to the trees that have become my companions.  I notice that I am resonating with their steady, still presence and that their steadiness and stillness, even their expression of presence, is moving into my body-mind experience.  As I sit here, I absorb the qualities I experience in them and I find that access to the steadiness and stillness in me is enhanced by their presence. Central Park has been, and continues to be, one of the most important gifts in my life for over 35 years now, and my gratitude for having access to the natural life of the park is boundless.     

This got me to thinking about how powerful it is to spend time in nature and to absorb the qualities that may not be easily accessible in urban life.  When I look at the large rock outcropping off to my right, I think of its solidity, its constancy, its steady presence.  When I hear the sound of the locusts that populate the park at this time of the year, I think of the freedom to express.  When I think of one of the small waterfalls up in the northern section of the park, I am touched by a sense of flow.  These are all projections, perhaps, and yet they offer me an experience that I find both strengthening and nourishing.

As I write this practice, current violent events that have caused immense distress and suffering continue to fill the news and Internet.  Working through my own responses got me to thinking about what I might offer as this week’s practice that might be both supportive and useful.

Whenever I am in the presence of suffering and challenges that I can’t directly change, I inevitably turn to my heart space for support, comfort, and as a way to actively and mindfully process my sense of outrage, helplessness, or despair that may arise.  And, inevitably and thankfully, my heart space is able to process and manage these difficult feelings in a way that always surprises and eases me.  It may be because I feel like I’m doing something, or it may be—as the HeartMath Institute’s research has shown—that a coherent heart eases the amygdala and reduces activation.

As I wrote this practice, I was on vacation and had planned not to do any work-related activities while out of town.  I spent the first week in a family-oriented resort that touched me in a way that has stayed with me and left me wanting to share what I feel is the underlying dynamic that brought a vividly heart-centered experience to me.

One of the themes I’ve written about many times is the importance of recognizing that every quality we express is its own frequency.  We radiate qualities and frequencies as we move through the world and this is true of individuals, groups, and places.  I’ve written before about how it can be a powerful experience to tune into the quality of a building or a place in nature and to resonate with what you find there.

At this particular family resort, there was a pervasive quality of what I can only call “happiness”.  As a trauma specialist, it was heart-opening and heart-nourishing to watch parents with children of all ages interacting with kindness, interest, and a focus on fun. Again and again, I saw parents engaged in play with their children, and families engaged in enthusiastic and laughter-filled “team” activities.  Even the trees and many animals around the property—deer, chipmunks galore, birds, geese, fish, and the occasional bear—seemed to also resonate with a fundamental and underlying experience of being welcomed and at ease.

Listening to the news these days can be an invitation to concern, suffering, compassion, action, and many other responses.  I’ve been thinking lately about the power of the moment-to-moment choices we make as we move through our daily lives, whether our choices lead to action or non-action, and how that reflects the quality and nature of those choices.  Here’s a quotation from Joanna Macy that speaks to what I’ve been thinking about:

“The obvious choice, then, is to extend our notions of self-interest. For example, it would not occur to me to plead with you, ‘Don’t saw off your leg. That would be an act of violence.’ It wouldn’t occur to me (or to you) because your leg is part of your body. Well, so are the trees in the Amazon rain basin. They are our external lungs. We are beginning to realize that the world is our body.”  ~ Joanna Macy, Greening of the Self

I would add to this quotation that this also applies to every one of our brothers and sisters in our global human family, as well as to all our kin of every species within every form of life on this planet.