From Judgement to Curiosity ... & Beyond

Wispy Morning Clouds

People typically see others through a self-referential lens, and thus are driven by the polarities of gaining and losing, having and lacking, seeking and rejecting, and, ultimately, success and failure. But whether in politics or everyday life, there are no real winners and losers, selfing and othering harms everyone. Guo Gu (Electing Freedom: Overcoming Despair – Lion’s Roar magazine) 

Anger is the deepest form of care, for another, for the world, for the self, for a life, for the body, for a family and for all our ideals, all vulnerable and all, possibly about to be hurt. … But anger truly felt at its centre is the essential living flame of being fully alive and fully here; it is a quality to be followed to its source, to be prized, to be tended, and an invitation to finding a way to bring that source fully into the world through making the mind clearer and more generous, the heart more compassionate, and the body larger and strong enough to hold it. David Whyte (Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words)

Picking up the pen early this summer morning these words came: We react with harsh, violent words yet we expect the world to be different. Judgement has replaced curiosity. I find it even in myself. I gulped and looked at the morning sky’s wispy clouds. I watched the feeding frenzy of the hummingbirds at the feeder. I sensed something deeper wanted to come forth.

The week past was an active one with more engagement, in person and online, than is my norm, participating in a weekend tour of several farms here in the valley and engaging in an exploration of tones and energetic frequencies via a fascinating online technology. Threads in the weave of my curiosity about health, personal and collective well-being, and, more broadly, the deeper workings of the energy that is Life.

Outside this active flow, but undoubtedly connected, I observed the extreme divides of dissonance in our world. Right here at home there were quick and volatile judgements in the wake of a fatal law enforcement/citizen event. Almost every day I notice harsh comments about something, the latest about the amount of rent being asked by someone willing to share their home. The following day I noticed a snide comment about a friend’s outreach to a particular political campaign.

I observed my own habit of judgement about these posts. My ‘self-referential lens’ bristles at such comments which further separation. I’m humbled to recognize this habit and to observe how it separates me not only from others, but also from knowing and living in the truth of Oneness, a way of being that for me holds the key to forging a new world. A world of compassion. A world of peace. A world of justice, freedom, and sovereignty that is our true nature. How is that we use tools that could bring us together to drive further wedges into our relationships?

I wondered what’s underneath my bristling, my othering, my judgement of others’ judgement and what’s at the root of these outbursts from others. What separates us from walking in the world knowing that we are One?

In asking and opening to possibilities, I was surprised to find anger, more specifically my habitual avoidance of it, as a thread in the fabric of possible answers. How might I pivot my relationship from avoidance to embrace, to dancing with anger as an “essential living flame of being fully alive and fully here”? How might it be to give anger space in the home of my life?  What relationship with anger would have me see that it has a role to play in living the very Oneness of my heart’s longing?

I carry these questions as I look to the days ahead, not as questions to which I must discover the answer, but as threads of curiosity, the weaving of which opens new possibilities for co-creating a world beyond our differences, a world in which we again know and live from our wholeness.

As he so often does, John O’Donohue offers additional threads for the fabric of life in his poem For Citizenship.

For Citizenship

In these times when anger

Is turned into anxiety

And someone has stolen

The horizons and mountains,

Our small emperors on parade

Never expect our indifference

To disturb their nakedness.

They keep their heads down

And their eyes gleam with reflection

From aluminum economic ground,

The media wraps everything

In a cellophane of sound,

And the ghost surface of the virtual

Overlays the breathing earth.

The industry of distraction

Makes us forget

That we live in a universe.

We have become converts

To the religion of stress

And its deity of progress;

That we may have courage

To turn aside from it all

And come to kneel down before the poor,

To discover what we must do,

How to turn anxiety

Back into anger,

How to find our way home.

John O'Donohue (from To Bless the Space Between Us)

Breakfast at the Local Diner

From Meta-crisis to Metamorphosis

Baby cones and every needle belong with the tree …

I love ‘belonging’ coming into beautiful clarity as more than unity expressing as diversity. All and everyone of us, just as every leaf on every tree, every snowflake, every drop of water, belongs to the entire sentience of our living and loving universe. And it is a journey where nothing has been wasted … to bring us to this point and invites us onwards into this great adventure of what awaits if we say ‘yes’ to this invitation. Dr. Jude Currivan (interview with Heather Ensworth – watch it here)

To be human is to belong. Belonging is a circle that embraces everything; if we reject it, we damage our nature. The word ‘belonging’ holds together the two fundamental aspects of life: being and longing, the Longing of our being and the Being of our longing. … True belonging is gracious receptivity. (John O’Donohue – Belonging: the Wisdom of Rhythm in Eternal Echoes: Exploring Our Hunger to Belong – read it here)

Watching this rich interview, I heard Jude Currivan’s words as if they’d been written bold and highlighted on a page. ‘This!’ I thought. To live more deeply into belonging is the truth that I long to live more fully into. To know beyond the construct of mind that I BElong. That WE belong.

This is after all the Truth of Oneness. And living into this, living this is an invitation to the evolutionary party of the age. We are invited to BE what we LONG for. We are invited to know from the inside out that we belong to the ‘entire sentience of our living and loving universe’. How can we be graciously receptive to what is so?

The great adventure in saying ‘yes’ is that of being hospice workers for the old systems of separation, gratefully releasing that which no longer serves and attending to birthing, nurturing, and building systems and structures that are grounded in and honor our belonging with All Life. With one another. With our Mother, Gaia. With the vast cosmos.

In an exercise years ago at a coaching conference, participants were invited into an hour of quiet, slowly walking around indoors and out, stopping at each thing we noticed, and quietly speaking, ‘I am that’. I am that chair. I am that door. I am that tree. I am that beautiful flower, that blade of grass I am that trash in the dumpster. I am That I am.

I revisited the exercise on a short segment of my morning walk, remembering its potency. As I write, I sense this potency as support for our journey to Oneness, to Interbeing, to a deeper knowing and living that we belong with All Life.

The practice is simple. And, sometimes challenging to engage. I can easily accept and speak ‘I am that hummingbird at the feeder’. Or those baby cones on the pine tree. ‘I am you, dear reader,’ I can speak with heart-felt gratitude. Easy. Yet my mind, well trained in separation, is challenged to accept and speak that I am an individual with whom I disagree, with those who do harm, with weapons, with vitriolic words. But, indeed, I am that too. I am each of those as surely as I am each member of the community that I love.

In this gap is our opportunity. The invitation. The path of our evolving to a new level of wholeness. A new reality. All is part of this living, loving universe. All is part of this evolutionary impulse to pivot from crisis to opportunity, or as Currivan suggests, “from meta-crisis to metamorphosis”.

At the crossroads of choice, to what will I/we give our attention and to what will we belong in so doing? Will we listen to the doom and gloom of meta-crisis and follow along with those who continue to try to solve the crises with the consciousness of separation, the very thinking that created them?

Or will we invest our attention, our energy, our lives in the evolutionary impulse of metamorphosis that invites us to break free of the cocoon of separation that has held us for far too long?

Every choice we make matters to the greater whole of life. In those choices let’s be butterflies! Let’s fly!

Every drop of water belongs with the creek … Every sunbeam belongs with the cosmos …

Vulnerability: From Avoidance to Embrace

Morning at the Creek

Vulnerability is not a weakness, a passing indisposition, or something we can arrange to do without. Vulnerability is not a choice. Vulnerability is the underlying, ever-present and abiding undercurrent of our natural state. To run from vulnerability is to run from the essence of our nature… David Whyte (Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words)

I’ve been sitting with what to write in the wake of violent events for some time. It seems an unavoidable question these days especially after last weekend’s attempted assassination.

Just after 9/11 I wrote an essay shared with colleagues and friends, Most Important Now is What We Think. I shared it in a weekly post some four years ago as we navigated the Covid pandemic.

We feed ourselves and we feed the collective with our thoughts, our words, our deeds. Healthy food in multiple forms surrounds us, reminding us of who and how we need to be in tumultuous times. Yet all too often we grab junk food.

I think of my friend, author, activist Rivera Sun’s words from The Dandelion Insurrection: Be Kind. Be Connected. Be Unafraid. Simple. And not so easy in our reactive world. Choosing this way of being requires us to be mindful. To think before we speak. And perhaps it asks that we be willing to be vulnerable, willing to discover and to speak our deep truth. Willingness to not join the chorus of negativity that pervades media and can so easily reel us in.

A Facebook meme currently making the rounds offers a reminder: “Post wisely over the next months. Contribute to discourse, not division. Check your facts. Resist memes and cheap digs. Create beautiful content. We can transcend the bitterness and be better, even when we disagree.”

Yes, I get that I’m sharing a meme that suggests resisting memes, but this one is near and dear to my heart, a heart visited with pangs of sadness as I saw cruel and crude comments posted after the attempted assassination of Donald Trump. Some of them were posted by friends and revered colleagues whom I know and love, and all prompted in me to wonder yet again ‘what will it take for us collectively to understand that our every thought, word, and deed is contributing to the collective and to what we experience in our world?’

Yes. My thoughts, words, and actions. Your thoughts, words, and actions. You and me, not just those of the talking heads whose words and deeds all too often seem hollow and desperate. Each is a vote either for continuing the discord of separation, polarization, and violence OR for taking a step toward unity consciousness and co-creating that as our reality on Mother Earth. We all matter to the greater whole!

As I often do when settling in to write this weekly post, I’d pulled a book from the nearby shelf, David Whyte’s Consolation: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words (I LOVE this book!). Opening it to the contents page, I’d wondered what word would step forth. Courage? Maybe crisis? Despair? Anger? Honesty? Just as the book had a few moments earlier, ‘vulnerability’ came forward. I sensed it was the needed word. I read the short essay, and then I knew.

Vulnerability is not a weakness, a passing indisposition, or something we can arrange to do without. Vulnerability is not a choice. Vulnerability is the underlying, ever-present and abiding undercurrent of our natural state. To run from vulnerability is to run from the essence of our nature; the attempt to be invulnerable is the vain attempt to become something we are not and, most especially, to close off our understanding of the grief of others. More seriously, in refusing our vulnerability we refuse the help needed at every turn of our existence and immobilise the essential, tidal and conversational foundations of our identity.

To have a temporary, isolated sense of power over all events and circumstances is a lovely, illusionary privilege, and perhaps the prime and most beautifully constructed conceit of being human – and especially of being youthfully human – but it is a privilege that must be surrendered with that same youth, with ill health, with accident, with the loss of loved ones who do not share our untouchable powers, powers eventually and most emphatically given up as we approach our last breath.

The only choice we have as we mature is how we inhabit our vulnerability, how we become larger and more courageous and more compassionate through our intimacy with disappearance; our choice is to inhabit vulnerability as generous citizens of loss, robustly and fully, or conversely as misers and complainers, reluctant and fearful, always at the gates of existence but never bravely and completely attempting to enter, never wanting to risk ourselves, never walking fully through the door.

I read it aloud. I read it again. I listened to Whyte himself read it as part of an interview some years ago (listen here!)

I saw vulnerability as a doorway that I must walk through more fully and more generously on my journey in this chapter of life. I saw unpleasant glimpses of my futile attempts to avoid the natural vulnerability that is life here and now when I forget Source. I see that it’s time for me to pivot from avoiding vulnerability to embracing (or at least befriending) her. I sense vulnerability’s gifts and consider how I can open to receive them.

In the conflicts and violence of our world I see the high cost of collective efforts to avoid vulnerability. We favor guns over guitars, propaganda over truth, prisons over restorative justice, protection from over engagement with others, and so much more.

So, I move into this day, putting my toes in the stream of vulnerability, moving from avoidance to exploration, and then on to befriending and hopefully embrace. Where will opening to vulnerability help heal our fractured world? I wonder …

Toes IN!

BEing and Being In Isles of Coherence

Metaphors for a Rocky, Prickly World

When a system is far from equilibrium small islands of coherence in a sea of chaos have the capacity to lift the entire system to a higher order. Ilya Prigogine – Chemist & Nobel Laureate

On an early walk this morning, rocks and cacti caught my attention. As systems show their dark sides and begin to crumble, the rocks and cacti seem to represent the chaos in our world. Times are rocky and we may find ourselves feeling prickly as we experience the prickliness of others. How far we are from equilibrium. Such is the chaos of creation, the old must fall to make space for the new.

A few paces down the path two blooms on a small, lone plant brought a smile. ‘Yes,’ the flower seemed to say, ‘and I’m here to bloom amidst it all!’

These metaphors walked with me as I continued along, and the phrase ‘isles of coherence’ joined us. I noticed their presence along with the inner peace of ease and comfort as I sauntered along.

Returning to the sacred land I’m blessed to steward as the sun’s first rays reached the woods out back, I realized that, like the little flower on the rocky path, this place is an isle of coherence for me. It is home, the ecosystem where I thrive. It is where I feel grounded and safe while recognizing that ‘it’ is not the source of my security. It is a place of beauty that holds the wisdom of the ages. A place where unseen life thrives as part of a larger ecosystem. A place with much more information than I’m aware of. A place to listen, observe, and learn.

How grateful I am for this place, this life, this expanding and deepening awareness.

My walking companions stayed with me as I settled in to write a bit later. The rocks and cacti, a familiar part of the landscape, took on a new symbolic meaning. The phrase ‘isles of coherence’ felt familiar as well, yet I wasn’t in touch with a specific remembrance of encountering it, so I turned to my friendly search engine to inquire. Prigogine’s quote above emerged in the first entry, a rich article Islands of Coherence by Stephen Posner, PhD. [link: https://www.garrisoninstitute.org/islands-of-coherence/]

A quick read reminded me of the many islands of coherence being co-created in our world as well as right here in my community (and most likely yours!). Emergent systems aligned with Nature and honoring the interconnectedness of all Life. Initiatives that are fair and just to all/for all. Farmers and ranchers who are regenerating soil while growing healthy, nourishing food. And more. All aiming to co-create the more beautiful world our hearts know is possible (thank you Charles Eisenstein), not from calculations of mind and goals of bottom-line profit or winning some competition. Not from maintaining the false security we so often place in the material world, a job or business, but from open hearts listening to and guided by wisdom of ages past. Wisdom that holds the memory of living in the reality of Oneness, that we are each part of a greater whole: wisdom all to uncommon in today’s world.

From the morning journey I was reminded of the importance of choices we each make about how to BE in and with the chaos in the world. Our choices matter as each one contributes something to the greater whole.

Do I put my attention on the chaos and inevitable fear that joins it?  Or do I seek and support the islands of coherence of an emergent, beautiful world?

The choice seems so simple, yet the forces of the old fight to maintain their grip. Commitment and vigilance are required to seek, find, and co-create new, heart-based, coherent systems and practices that will build this new world.

I was reminded as well that in order to strengthen my capacity to make and support creating these frequencies of coherence, I need to be in and connected to supportive ecosystems and islands of coherence, right here at home, in the sacred woods out back and beyond in local community and community around the globe.

Cutting the ties of the old that bind, seeking the uncommon wisdom of the new for prickly, rocky times. Choosing to be part of lifting the entire system to a higher order.

Blooming Right Here!

Mindful Celebration and Grace

First Light on the Labyrinth

Although stable, form is fragile. It can emerge only under specific circumstances. Eduardo Kohn (from How Forests Think – essay in The Language of Trees: A Rewilding of Literature and Landscape, Katie Holten.  Pg. 105)

I began my day with movement: walking a favorite path before the sun crested the peaks of the Sangres, then the labyrinth, and, finally, a short walk with bare feet on the sand. I’d woken feeling called to be in Nature. I needed her grounding to guide me in bringing forth what is bubbling inside.

For some years the celebrations of July 4th, Independence Day, have rung hollow for me. While I love a parade, good music, food and festivity, I wondered whether and, if so, how I might celebrate in this time of dissolution, division, and rancor when the dark side of who and what we have been is coming to light.

The ‘dust’ of separation in its many forms swept under the rug for far too long has grown to dangerous mounds that the rug will no longer hide. Colonization. Slavery (with forms and disguises of its own). Racism. Inequality. Environmental degradation. Sexism. War mongering. Corporatocracy. Injustice. Violence. Untruth.

I feel a deep sadness that we have fallen so short of the ideals set forth on parchment in Philadelphia a short 248 years ago. We have not created the circumstances that would allow these ideals to flourish in form. Indeed, we have tamped them out at many turns, favoring profit over people, competition over cooperation, and encouraging war not peace. We’ve created and been allegiant to systems and forms that are contrary to the idea that we are all equal. We’ve cast aside the indigenous wisdom that we are one with Mother Earth and should listen, cooperate, learn from and with Her.

I’m aghast at our arrogance on the world stage and the treachery of our backstage ‘performances’, present and past. I no longer buy this story. I don’t feel the love of or loyalty to the country that I was raised to feel. I cannot and will not mindlessly pledge allegiance to a flag or sing its praises in a national anthem. I won’t cheer fireworks that celebrate war as they disturb the peace of many – those who suffer PTSD, our animal companions, Nature and her creatures.

I see little honor in our history – a history of enacting violence on one another and plundering the planet. All in the name of competition and separation. Believing ‘my way is better than yours’ so you must follow me (all too often under threat of death). We are not mindful and honoring of our connection to one another or to Gaia, our planet home as we cling to the fallacy of ‘survival of the fittest’.

And so, I place my attention and intentions elsewhere. The winds of change are blowing. Mother Earth and all her creatures, including we humans, are in the crucible of change – the crumbling of the old to make way for the emergence of the new. New light and new energy to adapt to and integrate. Evolutionary emergence.

Releasing and dissolving the old is messy. It’s scary. What’s ahead is unknown, yet its potential is deeply buried as seeds of knowing that a more beautiful world is possible. Seeds that will burst forth as more and more hearts awaken to their call. Seeds nourished by mindful choices and grace, not by systems currently hanging in place.

Late last week as I was reflecting on recent events and on the more beautiful world that I want to participate in co-creating, these words landed on the pages of my journal:

 How can I be in the grace of the emergent world?

The Grace of Emergence is the antidote to the chaos of dissolution.

Grace grounded in wholeness, the recognition that we are all One.

Grace grounded in love.

Grace grounded in interconnection and interweaving – of ALL threads.

What threads of light remain in the ashes of what is dissolving?

How do we weave them?

What remains beneath discord and distrust?

What deep knowing is rising to be woven into the fabric of Life to burn away that which stands in the way of service to ALL Life?

Yes, I will celebrate the day. I will tap into the ideals and ripe possibilities yearning to emerge. A more beautiful, just, and collaborative future will have my pledge. My dance to the music will hold the intention to call forth that world. For me. For you. For all. And for all who come to call this planet home in the future.

Old Makes Way for New Growth and Change

Redirected! A Pivot from Plan to Tending Inner Landscape

First Light in the Sangres

…become the source that makes

the river flow, and then the sea

beyond. Live in this place

as you were meant to, and then,

surprised by your abilities,

become the ancestor of it all,

the quiet, robust and blessed Saint

that your future happiness

will always remember. (David Whyte. Excerpt from Coleman’s Bed)

If you neglect your own immensity, your life-path itself becomes repressive and unnatural. It cannot unfurl in its own natural rhythm. (John O’Donohue. To Keep the Contours of Choice Porous in Eternal Echoes)

Starts and stops, words scratched out as I begin writing this morning. Mind wants to take a safe, easy route and share recently encountered inspirations. There is so much positive, innovative action, aligned with Nature and our true nature that I want to shine a light on. We need such light amid the world’s conflict, chaos, and dark ‘news’.

Heart and Spirit say, “Save that for another day. Today weave the thread of your inner landscape experience.”

So, with some tenderness, I share my experience of pivoting from following my mind’s plan to allowing guidance and a deep inner knowing to unfold my day. I suspect the experience will be with me for some time as I unpack and discover gifts, meaning, and relevance, present despite the seemingly mundane nature of the experience.

My experience itself was quite simple in its unfolding. So simple that I might have missed it, unaware of its presence on another day. Yesterday I woke with a clear plan of activity for the day – a trip to a nearby town to begin the process of purchasing new kitchen appliances. The old ones are tired and functioning poorly. Unfortunately, repair is not an option.

I also woke feeling a bit of angst and unsettledness as if something new in the world was off. 

As I engaged in my morning practices, the angst lifted. At the same time, I began to feel a sense that I was not to make my planned trip, a sense that deepened in short order. Guidance had been given and I received it. I felt a sense of trust that the ‘right’ time would reveal itself for the appliance journey. Besides I could do more research, make some calls, and focus on other things needing attention.

Then, as I began to redirect my energy, I felt a strong energetic surge with further guidance, “NO! Not any of that … Do this…”. The ‘this’ was a mundane task of washing the leaves of two large house plants that had become infested with insects that left a sticky residue on them. Hmmm???

Despite it not making so-called ‘rational’ sense (heck, I had a plan and other important ‘stuff’ to do!) I sensed that I was meant to follow the guidance.

Two-plus blissful hours later, I felt a sense of accomplishment as well as much gratitude from the plants. Their leaves could breathe again! Their beauty had been restored. They were happy. I embraced the felt sense of satisfaction and acknowledged myself for following heart-led, spirit-filled guidance rather than my plan.

The earlier angst had lifted as well and I devoted several hours to watching a wonderful film on regenerative agriculture, a heart-felt area of exploration ripe with potential for community engagement. Inspiring stories to share on another blog day!

Early Sunbeams in the Woods Out Back

Back Home in the Woods

Sunrise in the Sangres

Home is the nicest word there is. Laura Ingalls Wilder, American author

There’s no place like home! Dorothy

I was delighted to discover Laura Ingalls Wilder’s quote this morning as ‘home’ is a word that I love, representing a place I love as well as anywhere that I feel a sense of belonging.

When and wherever I roam, I aim to make ‘home’ and to experience feeling at home. We each have our own ways of doing so. For me it’s maintaining my morning practice of sipping warm lemon water (now with a pinch or two of mineral rich Celtic salt) as I reflect and write in my journal. Feeling gratitude, I look ahead to the day before me. What will the day bring? How will I BE with whatever that is? Is something lingering from yesterday that needs my attention?

This ritual has come to anchor my day, grounding me at the start of each day’s dance.

And so it was on the short, four-day road trip to visit an elder friend who I hadn’t seen in 17 years and to meet up with my stepson and his family, meeting his beautiful children for the first time. Laughs, curiosities, creativity, exploration, love, hugs, and more were shared with all. Home away from the home where I dwell.

Love makes any place be like home – the love we bring and the love we discover is there awaiting our recognition and receptivity. That was my experience on this entire journey.

As Dorothy says to Toto, “There’s no place like home!” With this adventure on the yellow brick road behind me, today finds me feeling deeply satisfied as I ease back into life in these woods. Watching as the day dawns and the sun makes its way over the peaks on this day before the Summer Solstice, my heart is filled with awe and gratitude for the beauty, the abundance, and the peace of this sacred place that I’m blessed to occupy.

How often after a journey do we give ourselves the gift of time to simply feel satisfied? Perhaps we find it challenging to embrace satisfaction in a world that constantly emits messages that there isn’t enough, that life is a mess, and that we need to do more and have more to be satisfied.

Certainly life is messy and chaotic and uncertain, with discord easily found in all directions. Yet we need not allow that world to keep us from experiencing a sense of satisfaction, for that world is not the only world available to us.

These thoughts and queries rise in me as I settle in here at home after a satisfying and joyful journey. So often we don’t give ourselves the gift of inviting satisfaction and then resting in its joy if only for a few moments.

As the sun begins to break through early morning clouds over the peaks of the Sangres, I linger in that gift and carry it with me as I move into the day.

Early Morning Clouds

Pivoting to Rest

Leaping Limbs

There are days in life when you just need to pull the covers over your head … Gregge Tiffen

While I’m not pulling the covers over my head this day, I am guided to rest as I allow body, mind, and spirit to begin integrating the deep and wide experiences and learnings from a six-day retreat that ended yesterday.

Words will come in their time to share, and my guess is that I’ll be back next week.

Meanwhile I invite you to explore your own need for rest. Are you pushing through at a time when rest is calling? And, enjoy these quotes [compiled by Jennifer Healey in a 2019 blog post - https://healingbrave.com/blogs/all/quotes-about-rest-give-yourself-a-break] about the benefits of rest and to assess your own need for rest at this intense time.

Real rest feels like every cell is thanking you for taking care of you. It’s calm, not full of checklists and chores. It’s simple: not multitasking; not fixing broken things. Jennifer Williamson

When you rest, you catch your breath and it holds you up, like water wings… Anne Lamott

Your commitment to your wellness is part of the revolution. Danielle LaPorte

Cottonwood Creek is Flowing!

Unconscious Choices Speak Loudly

Grandmother Tree thrives long after a wound …

When we hold on to an idea or notion we feel rigid and less free. It prevents us from arriving at a deeper insight. In the spirit of meta meditation we can wish for ourselves and others to be free from wrong perceptions and wrong desires: “May I have clarity into my habits and shortcomings.” We can practice this in the morning as a reminder to be aware of our perceptions throughout the day.   Non-Attachment to Views & Freedom of Thought  -- Sr Tuệ Nghiêm (blog from Plum Village website)

 I popped into some friends’ home late Thursday afternoon to pick something up. They came running down the stairs excitedly asking, “Have you heard the news?”

“No. What news?” I was clueless having been out and about in town for several hours.

“Guilty! Trump guilty on ALL 34 counts!” they exclaimed. I joined their celebration and continued to do so at my next stop. Upon coming home I logged into network news for the first time in eons, listening to the commentators, feeling both stunned, pleased, and perhaps a bit smug with a sense of ‘victory’.

Journaling early Friday morning these ‘morning after’ words landed on the page shortly before an early Zoom and a full plate of activity for the day: “insight re Trump as the U.S. shadow and reckoning -- and shows me how embedded separation is in me as I celebrated his guilty verdict quickly upon hearing and felt a sense of celebration and 'WOW' for many hours.”

I gulped and set the thoughts aside as I moved into my commitments for the day. But I sense they sat with me; simmering, marinating as I moved through the day.

On Saturday morning, I returned my conscious thoughts to Friday morning’s insight, writing in my journal:

“I want to get back to this idea of Trump as our shadow and reckoning and how embedded separation is in me as I celebrated the decision quite easily and in flow with others who shared the news with me. I feel sad about celebrating for it represents in some way celebrating separation. Victory over another. I'm sad for our vilification of one another rather than recognizing that in each of us, no matter how hidden beneath pain, trauma, and who knows what else, is the seed of Source. Of that which is aligned with what Sources Life. The root of corruption is in our broken hearts - not the broken hearts of romantic love and lust - but the heart severed in awareness from its connection to the Cosmos. To Light. To Love. To Gaia. To ONE Another.”

“We walk around with our broken hearts trying to fix or hold together broken systems that reflect this separation. We blame 'the other side' for the failures and our misery. We perpetuate this blame and division with vilifying social media posts, not recognizing how it reflects our own broken connection.”

 “If I truly believe with all my BEing that we are ONE, could I celebrate any condemnation of another? Have we really proven that 'the system works' as many proclaim? Or that 'the system is totally broken and rigged' as others protest?”

 Trump was certainly showing me my own shadow and inviting me to reckon with it and, hopefully, to reconcile gaps between what I say the I believe and the loud voice of my unconscious choices.

 As I’ve continued to sit with this, I understand more clearly why vilifying posts and drama laden news touch me deeply: they point to my own pain, the pain inflicted by separation. They point to those places where I fall short of fully living what I claim are my values. They separate rather than unify. They show me where I am holding on.

 As Sr Tue Nghiem suggests, when I am holding fast to a position,  I lose access to deeper understanding of and insight about self and all beyond. I feel rigid, restricted, and I’m out of touch with the field of infinite possibilities. I’m contributing my energy to separation, contrary to the Oneness my heart knows is real. I’m not at peace with myself or the world.

 Most of all I’m not contributing to the world that I want for my grandchildren and yours. The more beautiful world my heart knows is possible, if I will do my part to stay the course and focus my actions on building that world rather than feeding the old, worn-out world of separation.

And so this day I move into the world with a deepened commitment to choosing consciously and with heightened awareness of my choice.

Sunset Tree

Keeping the Prism Clear

Elder Rocks & Youngling Trees in the Woods Out Back

As far away light yields its harvest of colours when it passes through a prism, beauty opens out its radiance when it shines thorough the human heart. The heart is the place where beauty arrives; here is where it can be felt, recognized and shared. If there was no heart, beauty could never reach us. Through the heart beauty can pervade every cell of the body and fill us. … Compassion and attention keep the prism clear so that beauty may illuminate our life. John O’Donohue (The Heart: Prism for Beauty in Beauty: The Invisible Embrace)

Whether darkness is visiting us personally through difficult events or we are witnessing the darkness and horror of world events touching vast numbers of our fellow humans, we are challenged to hold the light and attend to beauty. Our heart may harden having received some erroneous message from our rational mind that such hardening is protection. ‘Only the rational mind is safe,’ mind may claim.

But a hardened heart dulls and clouds the prism, limiting its capacity, our capacity to witness and experience the beauty that is Life.

This Wednesday musing comes in the wake of hearing from two friends each with a family member in the dark dance of a serious medical diagnosis as well last night’s reading of the beautiful O’Donohue essay quoted above. It comes after investing in an early morning meander through the woods out back. Inviting the elders, tree beings and rock beings, and the youngsters, new blades of verdant grasses and other life bursting forth from underground, to share their wisdom. They are teaching me to listen, not with ears, but with my BEing.

How is it that they live, and some even thrive, without the accoutrements we humans have become addicted to? They need no email or text notification to communicate. To know when to emerge, when to be dormant. They share with one another. Tree to tree. Elder to youngster. Grasses to trees. Trees to grasses. Rock beings holding surface soil in place as one of their many purposes. The vast unseen mycelial network. Nature’s internet. Beauty.

How might life be if we logged into this as our Source? What beauty might we behold? What beauty might we call forth in co-creation with All that IS?

Perhaps this is the compassion and attention that will keep our prisms clear. Step by step. One by one. Until clear prisms illuminate our individual beauty and the beauty of all Life around the globe and beyond into the Cosmos.

Early Morning Softness and Beauty from the Woods