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709th Week: Noticing Emerging Change
Walking across Central Park one morning, I became aware of the returning presence of birdsong throughout the park. It’s always a sure sign of spring and, along with the brightening of the light, touches me with the promise of the season to come. It also reminds me of the inevitability of change and of the gift of having a head’s up that change is coming, no matter how subtle that signal may be.
As a trauma therapist, and someone who works with shock trauma on a pretty consistent basis, I know the price the body and psyche pay when experiences emerge for which there was no warning. As a person who constantly delves into new information about science and processes in nature, I also keep in mind the idea of “emergence”, of the ways in which nature seeks novelty and brings together unlikely elements to create something new. I mentioned this in a prior practice, about how bringing together two air elements—a molecule of oxygen and a molecule of hydrogen—creates an unexpected outcome—a fluid, water. For me, this demonstrates how nature is full of surprises, how life is full of surprises, and that we never really know what will emerge within the context of a new cycle. Read More “709th Week: Noticing Emerging Change”
889th Week: Embracing Wholeness with Kindness
Note: At the bottom of this written practice there is a recording of it, if you would prefer to listen. In the practices that contain a guided meditation, please remember never to listen to these recorded meditations when driving or working with dangerous machinery.
One of the themes I’ve noticed in my work in recent years is an increasing emphasis on inviting clients to notice their wholeness, and on accepting the fact that our human wholeness includes aspects of ourselves that we don’t particularly like. This means acknowledging and accepting these aspects of self, recognizing that we can’t remove or eliminate parts of our human wholeness.
One metaphor I use for managing wholeness when we’re in touch with things about ourselves that we want to hide or exorcise is a rainbow. We can’t take a color out of the rainbow, even if we don’t like it. Another metaphor is the foreground/background dynamic I’ve written about a number of times, where aspects of our wholeness are sometimes in the foreground of our awareness and behavior and then sometimes in the background. Whatever moves into the foreground can be invited into the background and whatever lives in the background can be invited forward.
In addition to becoming aware of and engaging more consciously the foreground/background dynamic inherent in our wholeness, one of the practices I’ve encouraged people to engage is to imagine that they put a gentle arm around parts of themselves that they don’t like. This would include aspects of themselves that generate shame or discomfort of some other kind, ways of being that they see in themselves that they swore they would never express, responses and behaviors that embarrass them or that they dislike intensely. We can’t escape our wholeness, but we can learn to relate to this fact of being with kindness and gentleness rather than with criticism, aggression, and anger.
And so, for this week’s practice in conscious living, I invite you to explore the following guided meditation and notice what works for you and what doesn’t. Please be sure to allow and track mixed feelings, as they are inherent in our wholeness. The key is to bring awareness to them without having to do anything with them right now.
Read More “889th Week: Embracing Wholeness with Kindness”Week 623: Increasing Compassion
There will be a new, tall building going up on a corner across the street from my apartment building and it will block a significant portion of my view of the sky. This is the first time in many years that construction has had an impact on my quality of life and I am making plans to adapt to it in as positive a way as I can. Read More “Week 623: Increasing Compassion”
840th Week: Offering Steadiness as Subtle Activism
Because of my interest in subtle activism—defined as those inner activities we undertake to support positive collective outcomes—I am always aware of the constant opportunity to contribute to our collective well-being through the attitudes, responses, and qualities we generate internally and emanate into our world in the course of our everyday lives. Just about every moment of any day, we can stop for a moment, take note of what we are radiating into the environment around us, and make a conscious choice to resonate with states of being that are positive, compassionate, and/or settling.
The other day, as I was settling into the steadiness I inevitably find within my embodied core presence, I was reminded of the fact that the steadiness I experience immediately flows out and into the environment around me and, from there, into the field of information that is our human collective consciousness. A while back, I realized that purposefully orienting to steadiness—or any other quality that supports self-regulation—can be a powerful and dynamic form of subtle activism.
It’s probably not hard to imagine how much our global human species currently needs steadiness. There is so much distress, chaos, and activation in the world that it seems to me that any added moments of steadiness might be a support in ways I haven’t imagined to people I will never know and yet who are people who share with me our connection within our shared collective consciousness.
For this week’s practice in conscious living, here’s a brief outline of a meditation on steadiness that can become a daily subtle activism practice:
Read More “840th Week: Offering Steadiness as Subtle Activism”