880th Week: Orienting to Steadiness

ByNancy Napier

In these times of such challenge, I have found myself having to return to an underlying steadiness and calm again and again. This month, in my monthly posting of an audio meditation on my website, the focus is to attune to, call on, and embody the frequency of steadiness. I have understood and experienced steadiness to be a natural aspect of our deep core presence, the place in us that cannot be disturbed, no matter what may happen in our own lives or in the world at large. This doesn’t mean that we don’t register and respond to what’s happening within and around us. Instead, this place of steadiness that we carry deep inside offers an internal place of “refuge”, an aspect of our internal home base that is always steady, no matter what.

Another aspect of orienting to steadiness is that it allows us to contribute to the steadiness of our human collective consciousness. At this time, many countries around the world are embroiled in internal conflict between differing factions, religious and ethnic groups, between people fighting for rights and those in power working to limit freedoms of various kinds. So, when we look at what’s happening in our own countries, wherever we may live in the world, it’s helpful to remember that we are experiencing a global human-species crisis.

One thing I’d like to say about my belief in and experience of our human collective consciousness is that our moment-to-moment contributions matter. Whenever we experience a particular emotion or response, that experience is enhanced or intensified by the impact of all the people all over the world who are feeling the same way. Where we resonate matters, both in what we offer and in what we receive. For me, each time one of us is able to resonate with being centered, grounded, steady, or in any other way solid and stable in the presence of hurtful experience, I believe our experience offers to those who are teetering on the edge finding their center something like a foothold that helps them step into their own steadiness. We have an opportunity to support one another in every moment.

For this week’s practice, I invite you to explore your core steadiness and, when you are able to access and rest in it, to notice what it contributes to the quality of your inner life. Here’s a brief guided practice, even as I encourage you to find your own way to access and cultivate the part of you that is never disturbed. And, please remember that even though this steadiness is never disturbed, this in no way suggests that you shouldn’t feel outrage or take action that you feel is necessary to meet and then respond to situations with which you disagree.

  • To begin, follow your next out-breath all the way down to the bottom of the breath and notice how it is to settle there. Often the bottom of the breath can bring you to your internal home base, where you can settle. 
  • Now, notice that there is an ever-present steadiness here in your internal home base. This place is also your internal center of gravity. Notice that this is the steadiness you touch into here is an aspect of your being that cannot be disturbed.
  • Take some time now to feel into that steadiness and to allow it to fill your awareness in whatever ways make sense to you. Also, feel how it can fill your body, or elicit a sensation that invites you to deeply experience the quality of this steadiness.
  • As you explore your experience of steadiness, notice the quality of your thinking as you do so. How does the steadiness affect your thoughts?
  • Next, explore the quality of your emotional experience as you resonate with steadiness. What does it elicit in you emotionally?
  • Do any images arise that embody the quality that you feel as you explore this aspect of your core presence and being, this part of you that is never disturbed?
  • Next, if it appeals to you, take a moment to remember that we are part of a collective consciousness of humanity and, in every moment, we draw from and contribute to this collective. In this moment, as you resonate with steadiness, you contribute that quality to our collective.
  • Before closing this practice, take a moment to again feel the sensation(s) you experience as you resonate with your own, internal steadiness. It can become a true internal refuge, a place you can return to again and again…
  • When you’re ready to come back, wiggle your fingers and toes, take a look at the environment around you, noticing sounds, smells, colors, and textures. And, please remember that even when you complete this practice, you can choose to continue to resonate with your core steadiness whenever you choose.

As with all these practices, 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 having to do anything with or about them. They are just the next thing arriving on the ever-flowing stream of consciousness.

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As I write this, I’m sitting in the Admiral’s Club of American Airlines, waiting for a flight to California.  I’m flying business class today, on miles, and I’m struck by the difference between the experience I’m having right now—complimentary coffee and food and a comfortable place to sit—compared to what it’s like when I fly economy.  What this brings into my awareness is how easy it could be to overlook the quality of life being lived by people who don’t have the economic privilege I do. I find myself wondering how I would cultivate a deepened empathic awareness of people in need if my everyday life were regularly as generous and comfortable as the situation I’m in at the moment.

I remember reading some recent research that suggested that the more money people have the lower their scores on tests of empathy. Sitting here this morning, I can understand how that could happen.  So, the question I have deals with any and all areas of privilege, be that economic privilege, racial privilege, gender privilege, ethnic privilege, religious privilege, or any other kind of privilege that comes automatically to certain classes of people.  How do we expand our awareness to include those who don’t have access to whatever kinds of privilege we may take for granted and not even recognize as privilege? Read More “713th Week:  Cultivating Empathy”

810th Week: Cultivating A Sense of Connection

810th Week: Cultivating A Sense of Connection

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As we collectively continue to be met with powerful challenges of loss, grief, change, and concerns about the future, having practices available that allow us to ground ourselves, re-center ourselves, and orient to a more heart-centered perception and awareness is more important than ever. One of the practices that I have found comforting during difficult times is to remember that I am part of a much larger context of connection and to orient my awareness toward ways of experiencing that sense of connection.

For this week’s practice, I’d like to share one of the approaches that helps me feel more grounded during times of distress and uncertainty. It relates to something I say all the time, which is, “We’re not in this alone.” As much as we may feel disconnected at times, from an energy perspective, and from the perspective of collective consciousness, it’s impossible for us to be truly alone, impossible not to be connected to our larger collective presence, comprised of each of us and of all our earth-kin.

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714th Week: When Every Being is Kin

714th Week: When Every Being is Kin

ByNancy Napier

Recently, I’ve been ramping up a practice as I go through Central Park on my way to the office that has to do with recognizing that everything I encounter along the way, every living being—human or otherwise—is kin.  This recognition comes from the awareness that we are all “children of Gaia”, with no exceptions.  A colleague mentioned to me last week that she saw a documentary in which the anthropologist pointed out that not so long ago, geologically speaking, we humans were part of nature’s “wildlife”.  It was only when we began to use agriculture that we shifted from actively participating as local wildlife.  It was a reminder that we humans, as well as every other life form, are born from the same source of physical life—we are all Gaian beings.

This practice got me to paying more attention to what I experience as I recognize that every living being I encounter in the course of my daily activities is kin.  On my walk, for example, acknowledging people, trees, bushes, birds, dogs, grass, rocks—everything I encounter along the way—as kin, I notice that my heart becomes more open and I feel more immediately connected to the world around me.  It’s hard to describe, but I become aware of a deepened sense of relatedness to, and part of, my world.  That experience then touches something deeper that nourishes a richer sense of well-being. Read More “714th Week: When Every Being is Kin”

806th Week: Being a Mountain

806th Week: Being a Mountain

ByNancy Napier

During a recent attunement, I experienced myself orienting to my usual resource, steadiness, and I suddenly found myself “being a mountain.” My felt-sense experience was of the strength and steadiness of a large mountain and, what added to the experience, was the felt-sense of literally being part of the body of the earth. I could feel how I, as the mountain, had an unbroken connection with the entire mantle of the planet, that I arose from the depths of the earth, and that it was impossible to fall over or become disconnected from the stability of the earth itself.

As a regular practice, I invite myself and just about everyone with whom I connect professionally in the course of any given week to take a moment to feel into the steadiness that is an inherent part of their embodied, core presence. I remind people that the experience of our ever-present steadiness may fall into the background of our awareness and be momentarily unavailable, but it represents a part of us that cannot be disturbed. It’s an inescapable aspect of our wholeness and resides within our core presence.

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