March 2017 Audio Meditation

I ended last week’s practice with a suggestion to come back to the present moment and to this current breath as a way to manage some of the stress of this time in our collective lives.

One of the practices that I used to teach in the Somatic Experiencing® trainings was to invite people to notice how they “add fuel to the bonfires of activation”. Many of us have grown up in cultures that don’t focus on tracking how we allow our thinking to drag us hither and yon, an experience that generates enormous amounts of suffering. In this time of the coronavirus pandemic, it’s more important than ever to be able to notice when we increase our suffering by allowing our fear-generated thoughts to dominate our attention and experience.

One of the practices that can be difficult but is powerfully important is to hold the intention to come back to the present moment, to the breath you’re taking right now, and to focus awareness on this breath, on this moment. In terms of self-talk, one of the things that’s helpful to say while doing this practice is something along the lines of, “In this moment, right here and right now, I’m okay enough.” 

There is a Japanese philosophy called “wabi sabi”, which is about accepting and embracing that which is imperfect or flawed.  Most of you have probably seen kintsugi pottery, where gold is used to fill cracks that appear in a piece of pottery—a bowl, cup, vase.  One person who wrote about this said that kintsugi is how one can acknowledge the fact that the pottery object earned those cracks through the process of living and that filling the cracks with gold honors the fact of that experience.

Read More “698th Week:  Embracing What’s Imperfect”

There is no question that we live in a time of intense crisis and disruption.  I think of the indigenous prophecies I have heard about this time and the one that constantly comes to mind is about how we are in the darkest time of a “dark age”.  I don’t remember where I heard it, but it may be a Hopi prophecy or from some other indigenous nation and, when I heard it, it struck me that being at the apex of a “dark age” implies that there will eventually be a swing into a new cycle.

At this moment in time, and this possibly feels more extreme because we are globally connected via the Internet and are much more aware of what’s happening in other places on our planet, it seems that fear has become an even stronger driving force behind much human interaction and activity.  It’s not the whole picture by any means, but it seems to be what is in the foreground of awareness much of the time. Read More “712th Week:  Meeting Fear with Your Heart”

I’ve written a number of times about a particular dog I run into in Central Park on many mornings as I walk to my office.  She’s some kind of border collie and finds a great deal of delight in chasing and retrieving a Frisbee her human throws for her each morning.  What she adds to her fun is to capture the attention of certain people who walk amongst trees along a small path near where she plays, and her relentless enthusiasm has caused many of us to risk being late to work to throw the Frisbee for her “just one more time.”

One morning, I walked along a different part of this particular area in the park, up a bit higher, amongst some pine trees, and I was able to watch her discover yet another person she chose to be her playmate for that morning.  It was delightful to watch her enthusiasm when the woman picked up and threw the Frisbee for her.  This dog’s human is always right nearby, but he has also learned that she enjoys including others in her morning ritual of play.

As I walked on across the park, I got to thinking about the many opportunities a day provides to connect with people, animals, plants, critters of every kind.  Read More “710th Week:  Catching Moments to Connect”