February 2008 Audio Meditation

In a recent interview with Bryan Stevenson with Krista Tippett on her On Being program, I found myself resonating with a new and deepened experience and understanding of hope. During the interview, Bryan said something along the lines of “without hope there can only be injustice.” It had to do with what happens to people when they lose hope. They give up, we give up if we don’t have hope that things can be different.

Here’s the link to the podcast, in case you’d like to hear it:https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5zaW1wbGVjYXN0LmNvbS9BdUF4SF9CZg/episode/NzRlNzI4NGEtNDgyNC00MGI0LWFhMjgtODRjNTE3MDFkYTJl?hl=en&ved=2ahUKEwj7kIzZwrntAhXqpVkKHUJiAwcQjrkEegQIBRAI&ep=6

I remember being in a class a long time ago where someone taught that hope implies that we don’t have what we need. Now that I have returned to an early interest in quantum physics and what the dynamics of quantum realities reveal, I have a different take on hope. I now relate to hope as a dynamic statement of intention orienting me to possibilities that contain positive outcomes I can’t currently imagine. They key is that my relationship to hope resonates with intentions focused on healing, on opening the hearts of all humans, and more. I no longer feel that hope implies lack. For me, now, it implies focused attention on potential healing outcomes.

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.

In times of personal and collective distress, it’s important to have ways to re-center ourselves as we move through daily life, as we hear news reports of terrible things happening to people and the planet, and as we face the ordinary challenges and stresses of everyday life. One of the things I do each morning is take time to settle myself, even if I don’t have time to meditate or do my regular attunement process.  Each of us may have a different way to settle ourselves. The practice that follows organizes itself around what I think is the fundamental importance of not only having a reliable way to ground yourself but also to have a commitment to do so each day.

One of the reasons I feel it’s so important to re-center and settle ourselves each day is because of the powerful impact of collective consciousness on all of us.  Read More “718th Week:  Supporting Re-Centering”

So many of us have been taught that the nature of nature is “survival of the fittest”, suggesting that competition is the underlying principle of evolution. Elisabet Sahtouris, an evolutionary biologist, points out that the early stages of a species development involves competition, and that the mature stage is characterized by cooperation and collaboration within and between species. Agustín Fuentes, a biological and evolutionary anthropologist also points out the many moments of collaboration and cooperation in our human species, moments that arise spontaneously and seemingly without thought countless times each day.

There’s no question that we humans can be cruel and injurious to one another, and to other species, and I don’t in any way mean for us to ignore those realities. As I listened to Elisabet recently in an interview, though, I thought about how important it is to support the movement toward maturity in our species, and also pay attention to the natural expressions of compassionate collaboration among our kind, not only to each other but to other species, as well.

I’ve mentioned many times that I start the day watching or listening to something that inspires me. That’s where I again encountered Elisabet and her wonderful wisdom. Because of this commitment to finding inspiring resources, I’m more able to live with my heart open and free of hatred and fear—well, not overwhelmed by fear or carried away by outrage, anyway—and to allow my heart to be a major source of information and understanding. I’ve written any number of times about the importance of orienting to heart intelligence, which has a different take on things than does our brain intelligence. In fact, I’ve posted as a past practice a process of shifting into heart intelligence when pondering a problem or exploring a situation, then comparing what your heart says to what your head said. It’s a very useful practice!