Similar Posts
854th week: Choose Your Frequency
I’ve written quite a bit lately about frequencies and the foreground/background dynamics of our underlying wholeness. One of the practices that, for me, is an effective and useful tool in affecting the quality of both my inner and outer life experience is taking time to choose the frequencies with which I want to resonate.
As I’ve described a number of times, what I mean by “frequency” is the tone and quality of what we experience and embody, and what we radiate into the world around us in every moment. For example, think of people you meet who seem to exude a sense of curiosity, delight, kindness, friendliness, etc. And, also, think of people you meet who seem to exude a quality of anger, fear, harshness, etc. These are all frequencies, and they are the tangible expressions of the qualities with which we resonate and which we radiate into our environment—both consciously and unconsciously. Most of the time, many of us—if not most—are unconscious of the these qualities, and we aren’t taught about how they tangibly affect our internal and external experiences.
Another aspect of our relationship to frequencies is the fact of our wholeness. Everything we have experienced and are is ever-present as part of our underlying and inescapable wholeness. When I teach about wholeness, I emphasize the fact that there’s nothing about us we can “get rid of” or “erase”. Instead, our wholeness is always with us, with some aspects of self expressing in the foreground of our experience and others sliding into the background. In this work with frequencies, we aren’t being asked to get rid of negative or troublesome aspects of ourselves. Instead, we are invited to choose a frequency that we want to experience in the foreground of our experience even as we allow our awareness to enfold all of what constitutes our wholeness.
This is where I call on the metaphor of a kaleidoscope, which I’ve shared many times. When we turn the tube of a kaleidoscope, all the pieces shift into a new pattern. Sometimes, a color we haven’t seen for quite a while may pop into view while another drops away. This is the way I think of the dynamics of wholeness: aspects of ourselves slide into the foreground while others drop into the background.
Read More “854th week: Choose Your Frequency”
743rd Week: Neuroplasticity and Kindness
It’s a Sunday morning and, when I have time, I listen to On Being with Krista Tippett. It comes on at 7am on the East Coast and is an inspiring and nourishing way to begin the day. This morning, she interviewed neuroscientist Richard Davidson and they talked about a lot of things that have kept me thinking throughout the day.
One of the themes was neuroplasticity, the ways in which our brains change with new learning. Davidson talked about how our behavior around and with others changes their brains and that got me to thinking, yet again, how important it is to model kindness as we move through our daily lives. The implication from neuroplasticity is that if we are taking actions or speaking in ways that convey kindness, we are literally spreading that around as people’s brains spontaneously respond to our acts of kindness.
Read More “743rd Week: Neuroplasticity and Kindness”
725th Week: Noticing Relationship and Gratitude
As I write this practice, I’m sitting in Central Park on a Sunday morning, having some quiet time to write, to soak in the sounds of birds, insects, hawks, dogs, and people. It’s a place I come to each weekend morning when weather and schedule permit. What comes to mind this morning is that I bring my iPad so I can write. I bring my container of coffee. I bring the muffin I buy along the way. I carry everything in my backpack, including my phone and earbud connections.
As I think of all these things that are part of my weekend morning routine, I also begin to think about the many people and resources that went into making this moment possible, people I will never know and yet without whom I wouldn’t have all the things with me that I want to bring along on these quiet, meditative morning journeys. Read More “725th Week: Noticing Relationship and Gratitude”
767th Week: Practicing Mutual Empowerment
Listening to a cooking show on NPR this morning, there was an interview with a man who has a restaurant in Houston, TX called Underbelly Hospitality. I didn’t hear the very beginning of the interview, but the gist was that the owner/chef has a great interest in foods of every kind, from many different countries, and has spent a great deal of time with other chefs/restauranteurs in the area getting to know the in’s and out’s of their particular kinds of food, including Vietnamese and others. What struck me most powerfully is that he is a man who practices what I call “mutual empowerment”. At his restaurant, there was a time when the check for meals was accompanied by a list of other restaurants in the area where people could go, inviting them to explore how these foods tasted in various places. His goal was, and is, to share all the wonderful resources in his city and to cultivate his close relationships with other chefs in the city.
I’ve written before about the power dynamics of “power-over” and those of “mutual empowerment.” In the “power-over” model, there are only two positions: who’s on top and who’s on the bottom, who has power and who is over-powered. We see this kind of power relationship in many countries in the world right now, including the United States. In the “power-over” model, only a relatively few people are granted the privilege to have power over a vast majority of people. Many are left out…
Read More “767th Week: Practicing Mutual Empowerment”