In times of personal and collective distress, it’s important to have ways to re-center ourselves as we move through daily life, as we hear news reports of terrible things happening to people and the planet, and as we face the ordinary challenges and stresses of everyday life. One of the things I do each morning is take time to settle myself, even if I don’t have time to meditate or do my regular attunement process.  Each of us may have a different way to settle ourselves. The practice that follows organizes itself around what I think is the fundamental importance of not only having a reliable way to ground yourself but also to have a commitment to do so each day.

One of the reasons I feel it’s so important to re-center and settle ourselves each day is because of the powerful impact of collective consciousness on all of us.  Read More “718th Week:  Supporting Re-Centering”

Sitting in Central Park listening to early morning birdsong, surrounded by the gift of lush green and inhaling the fragrance of Locust trees laden with their summer flowers, I find myself soaking it all in with a grateful heart. With so much strife and suffering in the world, these quiet moments with nature represent a powerful gift, a time of restoration and deep nourishment.

As I sit here, my thoughts turn to a conversation I had recently with a group of colleagues.  We were talking about practices that enhance a focus on heart intelligence and heart perception, and how different a heart-based orientation is when compared to experiencing the world primarily through a head, or brain-based, orientation. Read More “7l7th Week:  Thinking with Your Heart”

One of the books from graduate school that powerfully impacted me was “Blaming the Victim”.  I was in a class where I focused my work on shame—collective and individual—and got deeply immersed in how we tend to blame the victim as a way to validate our beliefs and actions.  The impact of that class, and particularly the above book, has never left me.  It started me on a 40+ year journey of tracking my own internal process of judging and blaming, catching myself when I can and challenging my own rationalizations about what’s happening to people locally and around the world.  Even with this practice, I know that there are countless times when I engage in blaming the victim, unaware of my own biases and limiting beliefs.

As I watch the current situation in the United States—and we are not alone in our mistreatment of people we consider to be “other”—I not only feel deep heartache and distress, but am also keenly aware of how vividly a “blaming-the-victim” mentality seems to have captured the minds of those in power.  That this stance lacks empathy goes without saying.  The deeper problem is that blaming victims allows us to remain unaware of our privilege, of our seemingly justifiable disconnection from the suffering of others. Read More “716th Week:  Blaming the Victim”

It’s a holiday weekend and I spent a bit of time on Facebook this morning.  Reading about the plight of immigrant families being separated at the U.S. border and all the other unfortunate developments arising in so many different ways, I found myself again wondering how to cultivate hope and hold a sense that things can be better.  Then I remembered a documentary I recently watched that ended up giving me some unanticipated optimism.  It’s a talk given by Jeremy Rifkin, an economic and social theorist.  It’s called “The Third Industrial Revolution” and, even though it begins with examples of our dire environmental crisis, it ends on hopeful notes of what is emerging already within the awareness of millennials around the world.  Even with all the challenges and misuses, the Internet has created a more directly connected experience amongst young people in many countries and that is already creating change in how they think about and treat one another.

For this week’s practice in conscious living, I invite you to watch the documentary and notice what it touches in you.  Your experience may be different from my own, and it may not bring a hopeful sense to you. Whatever arises when you have watched it all the way through, notice what it may prompt you to do.  We are all in this together and our individual and collective actions matter.  For me, having a sense of possibility, a sense that there may be solutions to what we see happening in the world today, is a great gift.  I hope it is for you, too. Here’s the link to the documentary: Read More “715th Week: Cultivating Hope”

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”