841st Week: Revisiting Kindness

ByNancy Napier

I wrote last week about drawing on steadiness as a form of subtle activism. Another quality that is sorely needed within our human family is the expression of kindness. Here in the United States, we’ve had an unfortunate shift toward a lack of civility toward one another, and it seems that there is a lessening of kindness in many places on the planet. This lack of kindness, and an accompanying lack of care, extends to our other-than-human earth-kin and to the planet in general.

Kindness and care are expressions of the heart more than the head. They are heart-centered responses and it’s possible to strengthen the tendency to express kindness and care when we offer ourselves practices that orient to heart perception and intelligence. I’ve written about this a lot and continue to return to it because of its central role in helping us to be with one another in more compassionate ways.

Drawing on a combination of information from HeartMath (www.heartmath.org) and other sources, I’ve spent a good bit of time orienting to my “heart brain” and to checking in with what my heart thinks about various issues. How often the heart perceives things differently from how the head brain understands them and how helpful it can be to have both perspectives available!

For this week’s practice, following is a brief meditation for you to play with. It’s focused on generating kindness, remembering that the qualities we generate in ourselves—the frequencies with which we resonate—affect not only our personal life but also have an impact on the information field that is our collective human consciousness.

  • Begin by settling into that place in you that is your natural internal landing place. Notice the steadiness that is always there—it is the part of you that is never disturbed.
  • Notice how your body settles into the support under you and how you may settle even a bit more into yourself.
  • Take a moment to feel the quality of support you receive from the environment around you. You are in an ongoing reciprocal relationship with the energies all around you, where the qualities you emanate from inside your experience touch the environment and the qualities in the environment touch you.
  • Now, notice what you experience as you take a few moments to breathe in and out through your heart, bringing your awareness to your heart’s awareness, too your “heart brain”. Simply notice the quality of your experience as you orient to your heart.
  • Next, bring to mind the frequency, tone, and quality of kindness. If it helps you to connect with the living presence of kindness, allow an image or symbol to arise, or hear a sound that embodies kindness for you, or perhaps a sensation in your body. In whatever way you connect with kindness, allow it to become more alive for you and in you right now.
  • Now, focusing in your heart space, begin to more consciously resonate with the frequency of kindness, the living presence of kindness, experiencing the heart-based qualities that arise as you connect more deeply with it.
  • Allow this quality to fill your whole body and notice the sensations you experience as you resonate with kindness. Also allow your thoughts and emotions to fill with the quality of kindness. Spend a bit of time resonating with the qualities of kindness and offer it to yourself with your whole heart.
  • Next, imagine that the frequency kindness you have generated flows out of your heart into the environment around you and, from there, into our field of collective human consciousness. The kindness you offer touches people you will never know and supports expressions of kindness in ways you will never hear about.
  • Remember that this is a form of subtle activism, above and beyond the benefits you personally receive from resonating with the frequency of kindness. The few moments you may spend doing this practice offers a powerful and meaningful gift to all of us.
  • When you’re ready, reorient yourself and move into whatever is next for you, and hold the intention that you will continue to resonate with kindness throughout your day and/or night.

As with all these practices, there’s no right or wrong way to do this one. There’s only your experience and discoveries of what works best for you. Please remember to bring along curiosity as your constant companion and to pat gently on the head any judgments that may arise, allowing them to move on through without your having to do anything with or about them.

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914th Week: Discovering Moments of Delight

914th Week: Discovering Moments of Delight

ByNancy Napier

Walking in Central Park this morning, I came across a Springer spaniel who was having the time of her life. I watched her run full tilt here and there, sometimes chasing a squirrel, sometimes a bird, but mostly just running full out. Every so often, she would orient to her human companions and then take off again. It was clear that she was experiencing complete delight and I noticed that my body resonated with her and also filled up with a sense of freedom and delight. I wish I had a video of her to share, as it was one of the most exuberant expressions of pure enjoyment I’ve seen in a long time.

Noticing how energized, enlivened, and filled up my body and psyche felt as I watched this sweet earth-kin enjoy herself, the experience got me to thinking about how important this kind of nourishment is for the well-being of our entire body-mind being. I often feel delight when watching the three felines who live with me, as they engage in their own forms of play and discovery. I also touch into this experience at times when watching animal videos on Facebook.

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887th Week: Orienting to Lovingkindness

Note: At the end of this written practice is a recording of the Lovingkindness meditation. Please remember never to listen to recorded meditations while driving or using dangerous machinery.

The practice at the center of this week’s offering is heart-oriented. I’ve written many times about the importance of accessing and listening to the “heart-brain”, as it has a different take on many things compared to what the “head-brain” perceives and understands.

In our current political climate, characterized by a style of interaction that began 30 to 40 years ago, there is a new habit of thinking about the “other” in deeply negative terms with labels such as “devils”, “traitors”, “enemies”. This style of interaction has moved about as far from heart-centered styles of perception and interaction as possible. In the years before the current style of political conversation started, people understood that there are disagreements about policies, but this didn’t lead to a direct attack on the characteristics and attributes of colleagues. 

All this got me to thinking about the importance of remembering that we are one human family and that we need each other in order to survive. It also orients me to the practice of lovingkindness, where I can remember and affirm that all living beings want the same thing—to be free from suffering and to be happy. It’s sometimes hard to access this awareness when it feels like we have lost the ability to disagree with one another without an attack and alienation as part of that disagreement.

For this week’s practice in conscious living, I invite you to orient to lovingkindness, if you aren’t doing this kind of practice already. This means to remember that anyone and everyone you encounter along the way wants the same thing. It can be helpful to remember that people who tend go attack are often being driven by fear. 

Here’s one version of Lovingkindness practice that I have on my website:

How to use this Meditation Exercise:

It’s been my experience that doing this meditation once or twice a week, when you have time to really sit with it and enter into the spirit of what it touches, can have a powerful healing effect over time. Doing it regularly in this way creates a state of mind that promotes greater self-acceptance, compassion, tolerance, and ease with ourselves and also with others. It also offers a way to experience and honor mixed feelings while continuing to open your heart. (Note: Doing this practice doesn’t preclude feeling outrage or the need to take action on behalf of social and environmental justice…) If you choose to experiment with this meditation, give it several months to have an effect and notice how you feel as you use it over time.

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855th Week: Cultivating Empathy

855th Week: Cultivating Empathy

ByNancy Napier

As I thought about what to write for this week’s practice in conscious living, I found myself pondering the painful lack of empathy, kindness, and care that seem to characterize our human family’s interactions in my country. It has been quite disheartening to watch people focus so fervently on their own well-being and self-interest. For just one example, to know that countless people are currently losing their homes because they can’t afford rent due to the pandemic is heart-breaking. It’s as though we forget that we’re all in this together and that nothing happens in isolation or outside our collective social life.

This week’s practice may feel heavy if you choose to do it, but it also is a heart-opening and heart-expanding practice. Empathy requires our heart perception, even when it’s painful to go there, as it opens us to an awareness of the experience of others. Deepening empathy also deepens our sense of connection and belonging to a larger community of being. It expands our sense of identity beyond our personal self.

So, for this week, I invite all of us to deepen our experience of empathy. This means being able to imagine how something feels to someone else, to imagine how we would feel were we in their situation. For example, notice how you feel when you imagine that you don’t have enough food to eat today. Or that you are saying goodbye to your home and have nowhere else to go but out on the street.

Empathy can expand to include our other-than-human family, as well, and our earth environment as a whole system. For example, empathy might extend to polar bears who find that their environment is changing so drastically that starvation is a constant possibility, an ever-emerging reality.

Here’s a brief practice focused on empathy and it draws from the Buddhist practice of metta or lovingkindness.

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