May 2008 Audio Meditation

A colleague and I were talking about the polarization currently expressing in human communities all around the world. I mentioned that I have a practice of sending universal love to people who are caught up in the kinds of fears that generate aggression, harsh laws, nationalism, and other similar responses. As we continued to talk, I also mentioned something that I learned in a class with David Spangler: When we find ourselves encountering energy or behavior that we experience as negative or threatening, remember to generate a frequency that is inhospitable to that energy or quality of being. 

In my experience, the most positive frequency or quality of energy is universal love. Every spiritual tradition I’ve explored speaks to the power of universal love, that it is the most essential healing energy in the universe. Because of this, I’d like to offer a practice this time that orients to offering the essence, the frequency, the light of Universal Love to our beautiful planet and all beings on it. In this practice, not only do we imagine Universal Love pouring into our precious planet but remembering that this energy naturally conveys blessings and healing. Gaia, Earth’s intelligence, then decides where healing is needed most.

For many people, doing this kind of practice means imagining the light of Universal Love, usually a white or golden light, but see what color comes to you, flowing into the body perhaps through the back of your heart, filling your entire heart space, and then out through your heart to the planet. For this practice, I invite you to imagine a place on the Earth that you experience as a sacred place. It may be a mountain, a lake, a forest, or some other natural setting that calls to you. Hold in your awareness that this sacred place accesses the intelligence of Gaia, of our Earth, and that Gaia receives the healing energy and will distribute it as needed most.

In addition, and I offer this only as an additional suggestion, I also hold the thought that all humans on the planet who suffer from fear, and who act in violent, repressive, and/or aggressive ways, even when they don’t realize that it’s fear that drives them, will also receive an inflow of universal love, along with the blessings and healing that this powerful energy automatically conveys. I don’t qualify the blessings or healing in any way, other than to hold the thought that these people can be healed from the grip of the kind of fear that leads to hatred and division.

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.

I post a daily inspirational quotation and nature photo each morning on Facebook and on the Devadana Sanctuary side of my Portal to Multidimensional Living that keeps coming back to me this morning, so I’d like to share it here, along with some resources that have inspired me recently.  Here’s that quotation.  It’s a long one, but it has two elements in it that will be the basis of this week’s practice:

“So in this time, the Shambhala warriors go into training in the use of two weapons. The weapons are compassionand insight. Both are necessary, the prophecy foretells. The Shambhala warriors must have compassionbecause it gives the juice, the power, the passion to move. It means not to be afraid of the pain of the world. Then you can open to it, step forward, act.

But that weapon by itself is not enough. It can burn you out, so you need the other you need insightinto the radical interdependence of all phenomena. With that wisdom you know that it is not a battle between “good guys” and “bad guys,” because the line between good and evil runs through the landscape of every human heart.

With insight into our profound inter-relatedness, you know that actions undertaken with pure intent have repercussions throughout the web of life, beyond what you can measure or discern. By itself, that insight may appear too cool, conceptual, to sustain you and keep you moving, so you need the heat of compassion. Together these two can sustain us as agents of wholesome change. They are gifts for us to claim now in the healing of our world.” ~ Joanna Macy Read More “737th Week: Embracing Compassion and Insight”

I’m in the process of preparing a webinar for professionals on the subject of cultivating a sense of connection with the world around us. One of the things we contribute ongoingly, but usually unconsciously, is the essence, the quality of being that emanates from us in every moment, wherever we are, whatever we’re doing. We add to the quality of the world around us by the qualities we radiate into our environment.

I’ve mentioned many times about the importance of the frequencies with which we resonate. So this practice will be a reminder to many of you, and I figure we can’t be reminded enough to pay attention to the frequencies with which we resonate in any given moment. For example, if we resonate with the quality of kindness, chances are that we will emanate that frequency into our environment and into the interactions we have with others along the way. Because of this, we may discover that we encounter kindness from others more often than we might otherwise experience. If we resonate with a quality of irritation or anger, chances are that we will emanate that frequency throughout ourselves and into our environment, and it will have an impact on the quality of our interactions with others as we move through any given day. Frequencies, qualities, essences matter.

I want to make a distinction between upsetting moments, jarring experiences, and blissful times of elation and the fundamental qualities/frequencies/essences with which we resonate on a deeper and more habitual basis. We all have moments of shifting emotions and up-and-down qualities of self-talk. That’s inevitable. What we can cultivate, though, is a foundation of qualities that we consciously choose, frequencies with which we want to resonate, frequencies/qualities we want to radiate within ourselves and out into the world around us.