Tag Archives: Peace

I took on a 108 day practice challenge

Posted in Being Peace, Healing Journey, Personal, Spiritual Journey, Uncategorized by

Yikes???

For a while I’ve been feeling like it’s time to get back on a more consistent path with some of my spiritual practices. You know, after all the deaths and the grieving and the moving and the surgeries…

So I was really pleased when I saw a local kirtan leader whom I follow has a practice group on Facebook and does 108 day challenges. She’s also a yoga teacher and a lot of folks are doing yoga but she said you can choose any practice. Regular yoga practice is one thing that has never been an issue for me since I began in 1986.

But there are lots of other practices I’ve done for long periods then wandered away from. Lately I’ve been feeling I should return to my practice of chanting Jack Kornfield’s lovingkindness chant from Path With Heart for 10 minutes plus singing a 10 minute version of the Gayatri I like. So I picked that one.

The lovingkindness chant has been an on and off staple for me for many years, the Gayatri is more recent. I made up this 20 minute practice of the two early in the first term of the orange monstrosity and it served me SO well for staying more calm and at peace. But I got into Steve Nobel’s meditations on YouTube and eventually moved into doing those instead of the chants (still doing).

Now, of course, I’m also thinking about how I dropped my 5 Tibetan Rite practice and how much I love ho’oponopono but don’t remember to do it… How I keep picking yoga nidra back up and then wandering off. Questioning if I picked the right one.

I’m about 8 months in on a giant effort to change my schedule fairly dramatically from the night owl pattern I’ve had my whole life to an earlier one. It’s shaken everything up including, it turns out, trying to fit a practice back in when the schedule in general has never completely settled down.

But I’m doing it. Often I’m doing it lying down and yawning the whole way through, but I’m doing it. And it feels as good as it always did. I wanted something to calm down some of the anger I keep feeling at current events and it’s working beautifully.

I love the calm and peace it leaves throughout my body. I can always feel heart chakra expanding and energized by the end. And yet I’m dragging my feet sometimes. It’s day 19 and today it feels like an endless time till day 108.

Which is why I’m really glad I decided to take this challenge. It isn’t always easy to commit to practice and in unsettled spells in life it’s harder to do. I hold on to knowing I feel better from the chants as support for my commitment to 108 days. Right now I have no idea whether the practice will stick after 108 days or fade away or change. The yoga nidra I’ve been loving lately is a 20 minute one so I’m wondering about alternating the two after the challenge.

I love this eclectic spiritual path I’ve wandered. I’m also aware many times the picking up and putting down of various practices is part of a flow for me. Sometimes it’s the moment for a shift to something different. In this case thoughts of going back to this practice had been popping up for a while so it feels like a flow into something I was being nudged by my inner voice to do.

I know many people pick one path and are faithful from then on to those practices only. It’s possible one day I’ll arrive at something that feels like “the one” but it’s hard to imagine. Right now I’m just pleased to revisit a practice I’ve loved.

Resolutions and Grind Culture

Posted in Healing Journey, New Age, Personal, Spiritual Journey, Spirituality, Uncategorized by

For my whole life New Year’s has been a moment when one “must” make a list of resolutions for the coming year. Not a practice I’ve ever been into; I think some part of me resisted being tied to a list & another part knew life throws too many curves to make a plan for a year. In recent years, as I’ve come to understand how our corporate culture has molded a grind culture mentality, I see those resolutions as further invitations to the grind — another to-do list adding more time to the constant activity roster.

It took me a LOT of years on the spiritual path to finally, a few years ago, start seeing how affected I am by grind culture and a lot of American ideas about what counts as a life worth living. And then to see how the goals of being in the moment and following an inner flow are direct contradictions of the demands of grind culture.

If I were to make a resolution now (and probably for every year to come) there would be two interrelated ones: stay in the moment and stay tuned in to follow the flow. I’ve been really working these last few years at doing both. I’m a long way from being sufficiently mindful to hold myself in the moment or to stay always in the flow. But I have reached a point where I stop and tune in often during the day to decide which of several (or multitudes of) actions all clamoring in my head to be done is the best choice in the moment — or whether there is another choice I’m not hearing because of the mental noise.

My days often feel much more smooth and satisfying and I often get more done while draining less energy by listening to inner wisdom about the next moment instead of laying out a plan. An early change involved a daily check in I’ve been doing for years with a friend of mine. We started because of a blog post suggesting it as a daily text activity, checking in on how you’re feeling, what you intend to do & what you’re grateful for.

We changed it to an e-mail and have turned it into a much longer check-in than the quick few words intended by the post that inspired us. A few years ago as we both leaned in to trying to follow the flow more of the time we decided that calling one section “intentions” was too grind culture and put on too much pressure to feel like we must accomplish the list. We changed it to “flow wishes” and we’ve both been much happier with that much less judgmental & demanding title. We both often find the flow leads to something other than the plan being the thing that feels right to do. Life also often throws a curve into the plan and “flow wishes” makes that much more okay.

As New Year came and went this time I really thought about the resolutions requirement and I really didn’t want to make one. I did participate in a spiritual exercise that asked me to go deeply inward and name some words about a few aspects of the coming year and I did though I have some questions about whether I even want a word for the year that asks me to follow it instead of my inner guidance (it was a lovely inward journey anyway).

Staying in the moment and being always tuned in to the flow are such foreign concepts in our culture and time, I feel like an annual resolution to work on those — and maybe eventually to keep living with those — will be a long journey. So far it’s a slow process to keep my thoughts in the moment and my being tuned in to the flow and I’m okay with re-learning those culturally ingrained habits in baby steps.

On “being” and “doing” in “must do” U.S.

Posted in Being Peace, Collective Consciousness, Healing Journey, Personal Growth, Uncategorized by

One of the most enormous transformational journeys in my life involved going through the Fisher-Hoffman process in the 1990’s, then continuing for approximately 10 years to “process” every deep issue I could identify and release. At the end of the 9-month Fisher-Hoffman class* the facilitator warned us to be careful, once finished, about jumping too fast into things.

The release of a big block of old stuff for most leaves a sense of a hole that needs to be filled, she told us, and if you anxiously leap into filling the space immediately you’re most likely to re-build the familiar old stuff. I took it to heart and kept it in mind as I continued marching down the “release the old” path.

Eventually I reached a point where I felt as if I no longer had a strong sense of who I was. Here in the U.S. where “being yourself” is endlessly celebrated along with a strong moral certainty that having goals and working hard to reach them is the only way to be worthwhile, such a journey has been an interesting challenge.

It’s been 20+ years since I reached that moment and I have to tell you the ongoing journey of transformation has mostly just increased the sense of not knowing. All those old issues, auto-programmed reactions, etc defined so much about how I operated in the world that without them, I’m not sure. I pick up, look at and drop various “goals” and longings-to-be of different stages of life and find they no longer appeal. At the same time I don’t have a strong sense of “what’s next”.

A lot of health issues created a strong sense that healing had to be the primary objective and, of course, it has included more digging into the depths of consciousness as well as following a lot of alternative therapies to heal the physical aspects. Mostly I keep moving through what seems to be in front of me.

The Buddhist concept of “no self” has helped me negotiate through these years. Not that I have any illusion I’ve achieved that ultimate space of the Buddhist path, but I think stripping away a lot of old touchstones and auto-behaviors has brought me closer to that space and farther from the American ideal of deciding who you are and insisting upon sticking to every aspect of that.

To me life seems far more flexible and shifting and my goal has more to do with always tuning in to “hear” the inner sense of the right next thing to do in this moment. I watch people from many spiritual traditions, including the more “New Age” type spirituality paths, insist that having a plan, deciding on steps and “doing things” is a MUST and at this point I mostly shrug and think to myself it’s a deeply held American belief that needs to be culled out of the collective consciousness.

I’m not unaffected by the overwhelming majority view. In fact it leaves me uncomfortably questioning whether I’m doing something “wrong” by not having a plan and a destination more often than I’d like. But I always wind up tuning in, breathing deep and throwing off the “do, do, do” dictates in favor of listening and being…

I wrote a longer piece discussing this a while back but it’s on my mind again as I contemplate how this all applies to political activism. Stay tuned for that post 🙂

* If taken via the Hoffman Institute, the course is much shorter (a residential week or two?). Ellen had facilitated there for some years and evolved the process into a longer and, to me, much more in-depth one. Instead of being residential, hers was a weekly class with assignments to do in between, some gatherings to help one another on release work, etc. and spread over a period long enough to let everyone have time to delve into many issues. Unfortunately she died some years ago and as far as I’m aware no one else teaches the method as she transformed it.

Healing my anger with ho’oponopono

Posted in Being Peace, Change the World, Collective Consciousness, Healing Journey by

I’ve been making my way VERY slowly (i.e., most of the time not at all) through the ho’oponopono course for which I signed up a few months ago. So far, though, completing the class isn’t feeling like the point as much as reconnecting with the practice — also gaining insight from the videos of the course I’ve watched — and the deep reminder that everything I see reflects something inside of me.

The big place in which it’s come into play has been noting my high levels of anger at Republican pseudo-Christian right-wing fascists. How often, as I watch MSNBC or read articles pointed out by fellow progressives on social media, I yell and shake my fist at the lying, misogyny, bigotry, hatefulness, murderous intent, utter lack of compassion, etc.

Now I shout “You lying f**k!!!” and then repeat “I’m sorry, please forgive me, thank you, I love you.” I contemplate how much anger must be in me to be constantly that angry. To question how much misogyny, bigotry, etc. there is in me if I keep seeing that much outside of me. Yikes. “I’m sorry, please forgive me, thank you, I love you.”

At the moment I can’t say I see a big change in the frequency with which I erupt upon seeing various news items, though I have moved to watching MSNBC less and spending more time researching on subjects raised on social media, like learning more about Constitutional interpretation, etc. Watching less means fewer occasions to get angry. What I really notice is how the constant repetition of the prayer keeps shifting me back to a more peaceful place.

Those of you who’ve read my blog for a long time will know I always come back to the Oneness of energy. We’re all energy and exist as one wholeness of energy. Thus we each contribute to the peacefulness or hatefulness of the planet by which energy vibration we choose to hold. Knowing that, I continue repeating, “I’m sorry, please forgive me, thank you, I love you”, trying to release all those hateful qualities within me.

I also believe in the basic theories of David Hawkins’ Power vs Force, which posit that those who raise their vibrational levels to higher points help to raise the vibrational field for thousands (or, at the highest, avatar-type levels, millions). And I think the spiritual movement that has built around the world, quietly, in the background since the 1960’s, has been raising the vibrational level.

The movement brought westerners into practices that eastern spiritual leaders have taught for centuries as well as bringing eastern lights like Yogananda and Thich Nhat Hanh to the west and also led many people to study indigenous spiritual traditions. Human vortexes of higher energy have thus been created at various points around the world. Some spiritual leaders have actually set up places where certain numbers of people chant or pray 24/7 to keep a high vibration helping to counterbalance lower energies.

Much of the world has lived in apathy, the 100s, the bottom of the scale of energy. The next level up is anger, so when enough people have raised their vibrations to impact the whole, a significant number of people who’ve been in apathy are raised up to anger, something I believe we’re seeing now. The next level up is the 300’s, where self-awareness and introspection begin to operate. I feel that when we move the energy up enough to have a majority of people vibrating above 300, we will start to see the harmony, justice, equality, etc. for which so many of us yearn.

I can’t control what other people are doing, I can just work on my own vibration. As well as repeating the ho’oponopono prayer, I meditate, practice yoga, chant, etc. I belong to several spiritual groups in which I’m able to periodically participate in the “energy of two or more” phenomenon around building peace. Right now I have a big focus on the readiness with which I yell and shake my fist at what I consider Republican perfidy and keep repeating, “I’m sorry, please forgive me, thank you, I love you.”

I’m also contemplating whether I should return to more frequent metta practice. I’ve been a big fan for many years. In the leadup to the Iraq war, I spent half an hour every day saying it for President Bush. It didn’t stop him from faking intel or starting the war, but it did shift my feeling about him and my sense of his deep insecurities. Didn’t mean I suddenly liked him or agreed with him, but it created a softer place in my heart that has remained that way.

For me it was a profound shift and I wholly credit the power of the lovingkindness chant. I’ve always used Jack Kornfield’s version from Path with Heart: “May I be filled with lovingkindness, may I be well, may I be peaceful and at ease, may I be happy.” Obviously, substitute someone else’s name to say it for them. And I often leave off the “may” and state it as an affirmation “___ is filled with lovingkindness,” etc.

Whatever practice or technique works for you, I hope everyone is finding a way to keep returning to peace, to keep releasing old anger and fear, etc. in order to raise their vibration and contribution to lifting up the planet.

For some interesting info on energy in the world, etc. see https://www.heartmath.org/gci/gcms/live-data/ and https://noosphere.princeton.edu/

Playing all our notes

Posted in New Age, Spiritual Journey, Uncategorized by

Even before I received the news that Nine Gates Mystery School founder Gay Luce is in the process of dying, I’ve had Nine Gates on my mind. Thinking a lot about Gay, though, I’ve really been reflecting on her creation and the amazing ideas at the core of its structure. Although there are many layers to Nine Gates, the central theme is that we are like flutes with many notes possible but most of us only play one or two all the time. Each chakra has its own tone, its own characteristics, vibration, etc.

When you really learn to tune into each chakra and understand the uses and purposes of each, you can move at will from the energy of one to the energy of another, shifting energy to suit circumstances. As you proceed through the 2-part workshop, you spend 2 days on each of 9 energy centers. There’s a master teacher for each who teaches practices from his or her tradition or specialty that use that chakra and help you build energy there.

The teachers have changed many times over the 30+ years since I attended, but just as examples, for my sessions we had:

  • David Patton, Celtic tradition with the Dromenon, or labyrinth, as the central focus for the bubbling spring chakra in the feet
  • Gay Luce, who trained extensively with Tarthang Tulku and Claudio Naranjo, teaching practices about birth and beginnings for 1st chakra
  • a teacher from Mantak Chia’s school teaching the Taoist practices of the Inner Smile and the Microcosmic Orbit for second chakra
  • Ellen Margron, longtime facilitator of the Fisher Hoffman method teaching techniques of discovering locked in emotions and releasing them for third chakra
  • Angeles Arrien teaching practices based on her Basque background for moving from third to fourth (heart) space
  • Paul Ray, Sufi master, teaching chants and breathing practices to hold heart space
  • Gay Luce teaching Right Speech and Right Listening for the fifth chakra
  • Serge King teaching Huna practices for sixth chakra
  • Gay Luce leading death and dying practices for seventh chakra
  • Gay Luce teaching about connection to higher realms for the transpersonal chakra

There was always a large staff composed of Mystery School graduates. Behind the scenes, they helped elevate the energy of each chakra by resonating together before each class session (3x a day) into the energy of whichever chakra was being addressed and then dispersing around the room amongst the students and holding that energy space.

As a student, I was way too wowed by all of it to realize what the staff was doing aside from also mentoring all of us, being there to help if we struggled with a practice, etc. And it took a couple of times serving on staff for me to really comprehend how much it added to the power of living in each chakra to have the staff holding the energy space.

The sessions are designed with three classes a day, one filling the morning (and for those who want it there are exercises before breakfast), one the afternoon and one the evening. There are also some amazing rituals thrown in. It’s an immersion experience. For some people, the teachers are exciting, the multitudes of new practices they learn almost come too quickly to take everything in and they come away with more enthusiasm about all that than understanding about “playing the flute”.

Many of us also went on to study more with some of the teachers. I did a lot of emotional work with groups facilitated by Ellen Margron, read a lot of Serge King’s books and went to one of his workshops, attended various Sufi events, practiced Right Speech and eventually taught it, etc. Many people who were taken with some of the Buddhist practices Gay taught went on to join Spirit Rock. After Baba Harihar Ram began teaching a lot of people joined his Sonoma Ashram. You get the idea. So many ways to get a LOT out of Nine Gates.

Throughout all of it, though, there are lessons to be learned about moving among the chakras. At feet, for instance, so many useful things about grounding are part of it. If you’re in high anxiety, really worrying about something, all your energy has moved up to your head. If you put your attention into your feet and hold it, the energy will flow downward and it will help calm and ground you.

One of my fave stories was about a grad who was in NYC one day when a storm created winds so strong at rush hour that people were blown down if they tried to go outside, so thousands of people were caught in their buildings. She really wanted to get to the subway and on to an appointment. So she put her energy in her feet, imagined her feet having tentacles into the ground and walked across the plaza to the subway.

Many times when I’ve been on my way to an interview or a meeting about which I was nervous and for which I wanted to be in my power, I’ve quietly done the microcosmic orbit while riding along on the bus or up in the elevator, bringing energy into the power space of second chakra. A grad who worked as an exec for a big company would make sure he entered meeting rooms first and would move into heart energy, working to fill the room with it and hold that energy space during the meeting.

These are just some examples of the ways in which we can play much more complex music in our lives than the repetitive couple of notes we usually stay stuck in.

My spirituality centers around my belief that everything is energy, so learning how to work with energy for me is the goal. And hanging around with a teacher whose core teaching and way of living were so totally immersed in energy practice was such a gift!

Gay Luce, friend and mentor, on her way to the other side

Posted in New Age, Personal by

I received word that my dear friend Gay Luce, whose health has been failing rapidly the last couple of years, is in transition, expected to die at any time. She’s been so important in my life, I can’t quite grasp the idea of a world without her in it.

As has been true of a number of big changes that turned out great, meeting Gay was a fluke. I’d been taking some classes with spiritual teachers Arthur and Ann Cataldo. They met and liked Gay so much they helped sponsor a workshop in Chicago. Since they lived in FL and I lived in suburban Evanston at the time, they asked me to help field phone calls about the workshop in exchange for a free ticket.

I was happy to help but the workshop was a long haul from where I lived and I wasn’t sure I’d go. Literally up until getting up that morning and driving, I was never sure I’d attend. I felt uncomfortable in the crowd of people I didn’t know and wondered if I could slip out at a break when Gay walked in the room and the light around her drew me in. She hadn’t talked much about Nine Gates Mystery School before I knew I had to sign up.

The tuition for Nine Gates, which is a residential program that takes place over 2 9-day sessions, is high and it took a lot of questioning and negotiating to finally wind up with a time-payment plan and to head off in the winter of 1990 to Westerbeke Ranch in Sonoma for the first session. See here for more info on the workshop.

Not only did the workshop completely blow me away–life changing, really–but I met fantastic people, many of whom lived out there. My life was in transition anyway and after the 1st session I started wondering about moving out there so I could immerse myself more deeply. With that in mind I drove out to Joshua Tree for session 2 and after went up to the Bay Area to look around. By the end of the trip I’d decided to move.

It took quite a while to sell my house, but in spring of 1991 I headed to San Francisco. A horrible roommate left me soon looking for new digs and it happened that Gay had just evicted the tenant in the apartment attached to her house. So, suddenly I was living at the home of my revered teacher. Initially I felt some trepidation, but it didn’t take long for Gay, her husband, David, and I to become a family. We wandered in and out of each others’ homes and our pets felt equally free to hang out anywhere.

They were already talking about selling the 2-acre place in Corte Madera; that didn’t happen until 27 years later, but every time they brought up the possibility, they also told me they were looking for something that would have space for me too and it’s hard to tell you how deeply that moved me. Eventually, due to the high cost of living and having a lot of senior relatives in Kentucky, I was the one who wound up moving away…

The property had been and continued to be the scene of many rituals and spiritual gatherings and it’s hard to describe the magical energy of this land in the hills near Mount Tamalpais. Amazing teachers came through all the time. Constant heady discussions of deep metaphysical topics and learning insights became my norm.

Perhaps the most life-impacting aspect of time with Gay was, for me, experiencing absolute love and acceptance for the first time ever. There was no potential career path or odd plan I could come up with that Gay didn’t meet with absolute enthusiasm and expressing her certainty that I would be good at it. Being more accustomed to being discouraged from following the paths that most interested me, it took a while to understand what a gift it was to be so totally supported.

For many years after I moved to Kentucky we talked often and I went out to house and cat sit while they went to sessions of Nine Gates many times but in recent years between more on my plate with “Mom care” and Gay’s increasing problems with aphasia along with their move away from the home I’d shared meant contact decreased.

This is not the first time I’ve felt terrible at the end that my contacts with someone had not been as frequent as I felt they should have been, but I’ve also realized life just works that way sometimes. In the meantime, I’m gratefully running thousands of images of our years of laughter, shared meals, amazing conversations and adventures through my mind. As far as a positive and major transformational influence on my life, I think Gay had more impact than any other. I also know we closed every conversation with “I love you” so that’s the last thing I said to her…

May her journey into the light be joyful and easy.

What does “my own schedule” look like?

Posted in Healing Journey, Personal, Personal Growth by

Since Mom’s death, several people have asked me about my new “freedom” of schedule now that I don’t have all the caretaking duties. From my perspective I just traded one set of time-dictating “musts” for another. And it has me contemplating how we all so often set up our days by the “musts”.

Losing my mother set off an emotional roller coaster of its own and on top of losing her, because of a lot of not very smart decisions she made years ago, instead of inheriting the house in which I’ve lived for 24 years and a sizeable trust fund, materially I’ve inherited nothing from her but a giant hoarder’s mess to clean up and the need to move with great speed to pack up and move to the condo in Florida my dad’s more careful ways left me.

Some of the time I’m pretty angry and put upon. Until I remember the privilege that means I have a condo to move into and enough money to scrape by for a while.

The last months of her life, taken up with hospitals, nursing homes, diapers, wheelchair, etc. were exhausting and the second she died I had to begin the even more tiring task of clearing out her unbelievable piles of crap and trying to separate out and pack up my own stuff for the move. So no, at the moment I don’t feel free.

And Salty apparently decided to help me see it. He’s very old and frail and really upset by all that’s changing around him, from the absence of Mom to furniture and items disappearing and moving around, etc. He climbed on my lap a while ago for a snooze. I had a packing schedule in mind and the snooze was interfering.

I sat for a couple of minutes, tense and worrying about being late already at starting. He gently snoozed, his head tucked under my chin. I tuned in and noted the tenseness and chose to relax into the lovely moment with my fur baby. I’m not sure he’s going to live through all this and I’d rather drink in his sweetness while I can than be sorry later that I was too busy packing to enjoy him.

I’ve also been thinking about how nice it will be once I get to FL and at least largely unpacked. No caretaking. No clearing and sorting after I finish getting the dad/stepmom stuff I don’t want out of the condo and my stuff put in place. Ah, but then I remembered, in order to survive, I have to re-start yoga teaching, figure out doing classes on line, etc. Or get a job. How long can I float and relax, schedule-free, before I must get moving again?

Which then started me thinking about how many days when I have nothing on the schedule like an appointment or a lunch, etc. I still feel I “must” go to the grocery, do a load of laundry, make a new batch of granola or cashew creamer. How free is my schedule ever? And don’t most of us have these daily “musts”? Actual days of floating along, doing nothing are pretty hard to come by unless you have the money to pay someone else to fix your meals, including getting the provisions, or to take spa vacations.

Now I’m contemplating how little activity still leaves me feeling my day is “free” and mine. Much relies on perception and how I choose to feel about what I need to do. My mother resented pretty much all domestic tasks (she grew up in a household with a housekeeper and a cook) and I realized years ago that I internalized that dislike.

I have to actively shift my emotions just to get to neutral. Thanks to how much I love the smell of Mrs. Meyers cleaning products and love a clean floor, I’ve come to enjoy mopping and ignore the twinging back that results, which leads me to believe I can manage to shift the “ugh” feeling about other chores 🙂

I figure the whole schedule thing is mostly a question of staying in tune with how I feel about all the aspects of my day and choosing the feeling tone that leaves me also feeling free. But I’m not sure I’m gonna get there about clearing 30 years of clutter or packing for a move…

Protests: Public, Private and Non-Violence

Posted in Opinion, Uncategorized by

Note: readers here who are also on FB with me know my father is in hospice. It definitely deserves a post or two but I’m not ready to do it yet…

wave3.com

Here in Kentucky a big, debated news story in recent weeks has been the tale of two protests with wildly different results. In one case, white supremacists armed with assault rifles spent two hours around the Governor’s mansion yelling, banging on windows and threatening with their guns. Not one arrest was made.

In the other, peaceful  Black Lives Matter/Breonna Taylor protesters sat quietly, arm in arm on the KY Attorney General’s lawn. All 87 were arrested and charged with felonies (charges later dropped). Much outrage has ensued over the disparity of treatment.

After the incident at the govenor’s mansion, Governor Beshear gave an emotional speech in which he talked about how one of the rooms where they were banging on windows is the room where his children play and it was only happenchance that they were not there. I’ve been edgy for quite a while about protests at people’s houses — as well as politicians being assaulted in restaurants (and yes, verbally attacking someone in a threatening way is assault), etc.  And listening to the governor has put me solidly in the position of feeling adamantly that both sides should cease and desist on this bit of going to people’s houses to protest.

My main reaction comes from a spiritual belief in non violence; as “Governor Andy” spoke it hit me forcefully that to anyone at home, be it a cleaner, children, grandparents, wife, etc., a huge crowd of people showing up on the lawn is violence.

But also from a legal place about where our laws and Constitution say freedom of speech is operable and where it is restricted. In this case I think the obvious disparity between a peaceful situation and a situation that threatened incredible violence — which is against the law and should have led to arrests and prosecutions — makes the concluson of racism in operation inevitable but it ignores a couple of things about protesting that I believe should guide protestors of any persuasion.

Private vs. Public Property

In this particular case, besides the general attitude of giving white people a pass, I think the differrence in place also had something to do with the different responses. It is legal to protest on public property. Protesting on private property is NOT protected by the First Amendment and has been held illegal both via Supreme Court opinions and laws.

Again, there are other laws unrelated to free speech that, in my opinion, were violated. I haven’t dug through KY statutes, but generally it’s illegal to threaten violence or assassination of an elected official and I’d say waving guns around on the govenror’s front porch (or in a state legislature, etc.) constitutes a threat sufficient to file charges.  So I don’t disagree that a very different standard was in play for the thugs at the Governor’s Mansion.

A better comparison here would be the hypothetical case where the 87 protestors decided to show up outside the Attorney General’s office. In this case they’d be on public property and within their rights to protest and as long as they were peaceful, I doubt any arrests would have been made. It’s protected.

To me, given how well known it is that free speech doesn’t allow people to protest on private property it seems ill-conceived to even consider protesting on someone’s lawn. There are a lot of legal advisors around for such groups/protests whom I think should be telling people to stick to public property.

Non-Violence

I generally find when most Americans speak of non-violence they fail to understand the full meaning of it as it is practiced in the traditions from which the idea came (and which MLK studied to create his non-violent stance). Americans often think it refers only to whether you do something physical, whether it’s hitting someone, breaking a window, throwing a rock, etc.

In Hindu and Buddhist non-violent traditions, far more is contemplated. Being non-violent means not using words to attack. It means being compasssionate in your thoughts. It means taking no action that would lead someone else to feel threatened.

When I look at the pictures of the 87 protestors sitting quietly on the lawn and imagine what it would be like to be 10 years old and looking out the window of my house to see 87 strangers sitting on my lawn because they were mad at my dad, I don’t think they’d feel non-violent to me. If I were a wife, home alone, and glanced out to see a crowd of strangers on my lawn, I don’t think they’d have to throw a brick for me to feel afraid.

Taking actions that lead other people to feel afraid is violent.  Protestors who want to follow a non-violent path should stay away from private homes. And if they don’t they should realize they don’t really believe in non-violence.

Final Thoughts

This is a really tough one. I totally see the view that circumstances are so dire that some radical action is required.  At the same time, I feel there are plenty of ways to make a point with a protest without frightening someone’s family members.  And to do it in an arena wherein free speech is protected.

 

Teetering: “Righteous Anger” and Compassion

Posted in Being Peace, Change the World, Healing Journey, Journey2Peace, Uncategorized by

As mentioned off and on for a while, I’m struggling with anger over so man things that are going on. Periodically I realize I’m back screaming at certain “leaders” every time their faces appear, grinding my teeth as I scan social media and follow links to read more, and, a couple of weeks ago when a station I was watching moved from old shows to airing some kind of evangelical church service, I found myself angrily making up words to the hymn they started with and singing: “My Jesus hates you, and we kill, kill, kill…”

Being self-aware enough to see this is DEFINITELY in conflict with my beliefs about holding a space of love, peace and compassion, I keep circling back to questioning the source of the anger and how to shift it. And one puzzle I constantly come back to, is how to be “righteously” angry and yet hold that space.

Many spiritual leaders and writers feel there is such a thing as righteous anger and that, when great wrongs are being committed, we must all feel that anger and do something toward righting the wrong. None seem to address how such anger impacts the energy of the web nor do they seem to offer much advice about how to feel that angry and still find the love and compassion with which to “do something” but do it with nonviolence.

I have long been unconvinced that “righteous” anger is any different, energetically speaking, than any other. It worries me when I react with anger because I can feel how it takes hold and shoves the loving, peaceful aspect of me out of function. And since I believe the energy space each of us holds adds up to the totality of energy that is All That Is, every time one of us is angry instead of loving, our energetic contribution to the web is the energy of anger.

Most of the spiritual leaders who say it’s fine to be outraged over injustice, etc. but to be nonviolent in what you do about it, seem remarkably silent on the question of how to move from the angry place of the one to the compassionate place of the other. I’d guess the majority of people aren’t well equipped to transition on a dime from place to the other.

I see 3 main arenas we as individuals can work on to help us in recognizing the wrongs that need to be righted but stay compassionate and develop non violent solutions:

  1. Ferreting out repressed anger (or other deeply held negative emotions). I’ve noted the above video before and I really like how deeply it works on transforming anger but there are many other methods, including “process” work like Fischer-Hoffman, the Diamond Heart approach, transpersonal psychology, etc. Just find the mode that works for you.
  2. Being able to stay present in the moment is really important. If you can’t even stay conscious enough to realize anger has grabbed you and it’s time to shift away, how you can move into non violent responses? I include more than just sitting vipassana; chanting (sung or spoken), movement practices like yoga or qi gong, and some guided meditations like yoga nidra are all ways that people of different temperaments can tune into the present.
  3. Long ago I read some spiritual leader saying the key to coping with emotions and events coming at you is to allow them to pass through you without affecting.  One of many teachings that’s easier said than done. I think it takes a lot of practice and dedication to reach a place where you don’t even have to think about staying in the space of lovingkindness and compassion and calm.

There are many ways to work on holding that space.  One factor is how you “feed” yourself in your life.  Are you doing practices like metta or singing chats or meditating (whatever form) regularly? Are you reading books like Tara Brach’s 

Boomers, Revolution, Politics

Posted in Change the World, Environmental, Opinion, People Power, Uncategorized by

I’m an old hippie boomer and never really stopped being a hippie. Nor did many of my friends. And everywhere I’ve lived I’ve pretty much wound up with a bunch of friends who were hippies in the day and/or live like hippies now. So many of the slurs the millenials keep tossing about boomers feel like they’re talking about some other group.

From that time forward I’ve been left of democrats in my leanings. Never particularly identified with another party like Socialist or Green, but my political sensibilities were shaped by the protest days and, most especially, Oscar Lange’s On the Economic Theory of Socialism. So my perspective favors the systems places like Denmark and Sweden have created. And I delight that in millenials we finally have a group that gets the political/economic ideas we embraced so long ago.

Voting for me through all these years has been just kind of practical, vote for the least bad kind of thing. My evaluation through all the years has been that corporate influence is too strong to really “revolutionize” the government and too large a portion of the populace has not understood the more liberal viewpoints, so it has long seemed the best we could do was not to have the Republican — and indeed it has proved to be true that Republicans have always made inequality, climate issues, etc. worse and Democrats have always improved those some but never beyond what corporate overlords could accept.

I like the push for Democratic Socialism but I still see too many in government controlled by corporate sponsors (and let’s save discussion of corporate lobbyists controlling way too many watchdog agencies that are supposed to be regulating them for a whole other post). I’m encouraged by the many Democrats running without corporate help and with more Democratic Socialist platforms. This change is heartening and we need to give it momentum. But it’s also time to get outside the box and quit thinking that changing some officeholders will change the fundamentals.

Unlike much of what I read from the millenials, I don’t see it as likely we can shift the government as radically as we need to in the short time frame we have to turn climate change around. For some time I’ve been questioning the degree to which most of us in America have fallen into the habit of expecting government to “save” us and assuming if we just change some people in Congress or change the President, we will be delivered from harm. I think we need to be more rad.

Many years of study and observation lead me to believe that government will not change sufficiently or fast enough to save us. We need People Power. I’ve laid a lot of this out in the People Power series but want to include some thoughts again here.

In much of the world corporations are really running governments like puppet masters. While there’s increasing awareness of this truth, most people still want government to save us from this power. Right now, government works for corporations and throws enough sops to the rest of us to get the votes they need.  GOVERNMENT IS NOT GOING TO SAVE US.  Take that in.  It’s time we understand this truth.

While we also need to work on voting in people who haven’t taken corporate money, the two main things I see as grass roots necessities: (1) massive boycotts and (2) a huge wave of going local; starting co-ops for banking, manufacturing, food production, etc. that are run by the people for the people and employing the people.

Two percent of the people are hoarding vast amounts of wealth and acting as though the other 98% are expendable. It’s a very weird way of looking at us when our buying dollars provide the bulk of their profits. Without us buying their stuff, booking their hotel rooms, eating their food products, etc. they can’t make a profit.  The truth of this is finally hitting now in the Covid-19 pandemic and the government still can’t get it that it’s not the 2 percent they need to save. Without us out there buying, businesses are feeling the pinch (though the super rich owners and CEOs are untouched so far).

I’ve been calling for massive consumer boycotts for a long time and running around talking about how we really vote with our dollars and few have really been listening. I find it kind of funny that the Universe has basically ordered up a massive consumer boycott without anybody actually deciding to have one. Now we need to keep it up when we’re allowed to get out again.

Thirty-four years ago when I started practicing yoga and taking the Yoga Journal, then becoming interested in metaphysics and flipping through magazines like New Age Journal (now Body and Soul), etc. I began to notice a whole secondary economy in their pages.  Health foods, yoga props, meditation retreats, herbal supplements, etc. Companies you never heard about nor, in those days, ever saw on the shelves of a mainstream grocery or drugstore. Companies with healthier products and often a healthier way of doing business.

Over the years those companies have often become more known.  Some went down the dark path — Whole Foods, for instance became a corporate monster long before Amazon took over. And many more companies have been added to the list. For the most part all these places still advertise in magazines and on web sites that cater to those who are into healthy and/or spiritual lifestyles and this other economy is still under the radar.

More recently I’ve been following a more recent and quietly grown trend for forming local co-ops. From neighborhoods taking back an old shuttered business district and supporting small local enterprises, to co-op banks owned by and serving Blacks or women or poor neighborhoods to farming co-ops, etc. across the world a movement of creating local businesses that operate for local people has been spreading.

It’s been going on for long enough there are now studies showing they are making good profits, employing lots of people and paying them better in both wages and benefits. Again, mostly under the radar though if you hunt for it you can find scattered articles. (I’ve listed the People Power posts below — many links to articles and sources there) A Thrive Economy serves better than a Growth Economy.

I see this quiet growth of a whole tier of businesses operating differently, quietly in the background as our best answer and hope. We need more of it. We need the younger progressives who are excited about change to leap on the bandwagon of going local. We need to have so many products, supplies, banking opportunities, supply chains, etc. that are both supplying consumer needs and providing jobs that we can increasingly do business only with local outfits and stop buying from corporations.

We have to be the ones to break corporate power because government is not going to do it.

I love seeing lots of enthusiasm for progressive candidates and causes from the younger generations and I hope they keep working on those things. But I also hope a huge number can be persuaded to launch themselves into a local movement. While I know plenty of older hippies who are participating in local co-op type efforts and pushing for buying local, we’re kind of old for being the founders of banking co-ops and small manufacturing plants, etc.  We need you.  And I know I can speak not only for myself but for so many people I know, we’ll do anything we can to help you.

It’s time for a quiet, under-the-radar revolution in which we seize power by taking our dollars away from the global corporate giants and put them into businesses that serve us and the needs of our communities. It isn’t just getting “them” to pass progressive policies. We have to seize the reins and create the progressive roads.

The People Power posts — in these posts you’ll find many links to articles and studies:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

@ProudResister @davidhogg111 @WilliamMMcKee @OurProgressive @eve_levenson @EdwardJDavey @marwilliamson @ewarren

 

People Power: Not Government

Posted in Change the World, Uncategorized by

Stop waiting for government to fix our problems

Stop imagining that government is capable of fixing our problems

Stop thinking that it’s up to government to fix our problems

IT IS UP TO US

Corruption and Global Corporations

Around the world, global corporations have bought their way into power and so many politicians have been bought and paid for by them that it is pointless to hope governments as they’re now constituted are going to move on a big enough scale or fast enough to save the planet.  That’s not to say we can’t also work on changing government, which will be discussed below, but for the urgent needs of now, they’re not gonna do it.

As I’ve mentioned several times, I’m puzzled as to why these corporations are hell bent to gather most of the world’s wealth into their hands and leave everyone else bickering and starving since buying power in the hands of the 98% whom they so readily consign to doom is required for them to maintain profits.  Some of the wiser corporate heads have been realizing the only way to keep going is for everyone to benefit but not enough have seen the light.

It is up to us to break their power and we do that buy boycotting their goods and services.  They control so much of our food and products  it is key, as I mentioned in the last post, is to create local markets, manufacturing, etc.  The more I research these topics, the more things land in my path about what’s already happening.  There’s a worldwide network forming of “BuyNothing” groups, which are using local barter, production and trade to avoid buying from any corporate entities.  This group is not alone in such ventures, but a place to start if you want to start opting out of giving corporations the dollars to rule the world.

Governments will only start serving the needs of all the people when they are no longer in thrall to the 2%.

Elections without Corporate Ties

The Democrats have a lot of people running now who are only taking money from crowd source type funding and refusing to take corporate contributions.  We need to start electing ONLY politicians who are free of all corporate ties and obligations.

There will be push back and the 2% has always contained members who are willing to assassinate anyone who threatens their sovereignty.  They’ve interfered in elections by convincing people of false info in order to stop passage of laws they don’t like.  They’ve orchestrated “accidents” for people like Karen Silkwood; and recently there have been 35 mysterious accidental deaths of witnesses who were about to testify against pesticide makers.  So don’t underestimate their power or determination.

Here in Kentucky, the solar power industry has been burgeoning and the utility companies are now trying to get the state legislature (Republican) to pass laws that would devastate the industry.  So far the number of jobs and revenue that would be lost seems to be holding back enough votes to keep this from happening.  Be aware though, that if we start going local and reducing corporate business on a scale big enough to get their attention we can expect them to use their power to try to outlaw co-ops, stop small manufacturing, etc.  See article on the solar story in KY.

We need to make sure our local, state and federal government officials are free of obligations to corporations.  But even that won’t stop them from mounting multi-million dollar disinformation campaigns every time the go-local movement or the climate change remedies interfere with their insatiable quest to own everything.

It’s important for us to pay attention to donors and candidates and to refuse to vote for people who are supported by corporate $$ so that over the next 4-8 (or ?) years we can build a new government that will help foster going small and local and green.

Creating a New Story and a Government to Go With It

As I’ve delved ever further into current issues, the need for change, and how to accomplish it, books and articles providing me with more info and insights are constantly dropping into my lap.  The last 10 days are so have been just the beginning of a lot of time sitting around at a hospital and now a rehab center so I’ve been catching up.  I’m really excited at the moment by Charles Eistenstein’s The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know is Possible and Michael Lerner’s Revolutionary Love.

Though there’s much more to them, both make key points about how our cultures and governments are defined by the stories about the world we have developed.  Capitalism, scarcity, wealth gaps, etc. are all considered necessary and inescapable but they’re actually just constructs that have survived because we were convinced to believe in them and now no one questions those beliefs.  Lerner has valid criticisms of both major U.S. political parties, which arise from the degree to which both are mired in a global corporate view.

In order to accomplish real change, we need to shift our structures to reflect a different set of beliefs and values.  To work on a thrive economy instead of a growth one.  To insist that our elected representatives have no ties to corporate power.  To make love and compassion primary forces and the heart of policy and government.

Marianne Williamson was the only candidate who tried to get us to understand the need for this shift and I’m terribly sorry she’s left the race so soon. We need thousands of candidates who understand how dramatically we must change.

Whether our Constitution has sufficient flexibility and enough humanitarianism at its core is a question I’m still contemplating.  Perhaps we need to prepare for something altogether new?

 

People Power: The “be-ers”

Posted in Being Peace, Journey2Peace, Spirituality, Uncategorized by

The Three Key Paths:  The “Be-ers”

In recent months I’ve watched my own anger erupting over politics which has led to a lot of contemplating, especially what’s best for the path of People Power for which I’m advocating here. That exploration along with dialing back my personal anger with chanting has led me to a stronger conviction than ever that the lovingkindness path of “be-ers” is the key to shifting the world.

I see be-ers as those of us who believe being is as important as doing, who meditate, pray, vision, chant, etc. and understand the vibration, or energy, of those activities changes the world.

The above chart from David Hawkins’ Power vs. Force has been a touchstone point to which I often return. His studies on higher vibrations and their powerful impact on large numbers of other people resonated to my core and aligned with how I felt–and continue to feel–the world worked.

Each of us has our own vibrational level as well as being part of the whole and that individual level impacts the totality. If I am carrying a lot of anger and negativity, I add those things to the web of life.  If I am heartful and loving, I add those to the web.

As millions of us around the globe have landed on various spiritual paths in the last 40 years, we have been raising the vibration for the world.  Maharishi Mahesh Yogi started a group in Fairfield that has been meditating for piece and holding a powerful vibration for many years and there are many other such groups around the world. Such groups create powerful vortexes of energy.that counterbalance of lot of lower energy.

I also believe that when two or more gather together and join energy in the same purpose the impact of that energy grows exponentially. It’s why such groups of high vibrating participants are so important. When I’ve felt the power of groups resonating in compassion and love… it’s amazing.

In this time of transition there are thus two important offerings us “be-ers” can make: (1) clear lower energies from our individual selves as we work on also raising our own vibrations; and (2) put together a group and regularly meet to chant or pray or meditate together for peace.  Create a ritual, make a celebration, or do something as simple as doing metta practice together.

Most of the “doers’ think such activities are nothing, add nothing, etc. They’re wrong. And now isn’t the moment to waste time trying to convince them, it’s just time to “be”.  To ignore them and put our all into “being compassion” and radiating love.  The moment to “be the change we wish to see” has arrived.

Previous People Power posts;

People Power: the three key paths

Posted in Change the World, Opinion, People Power, Uncategorized by

My People Power series has been dormant for a while, though often in my thoughts,  On one hand I keep feeling there’s perhaps another piece to add to the mix.  And on the other it feels like it’s ready for a conclusion.  The conclusion is at the forefront for me these days as I watch the push and pull between democratic forces and right wing autocratic forces around the world and I’m feeling some urgency on the “what to do” so I’m concluding while holding a door open for more 🙂

I’m seeing three main arenas for our attention, which I’ll summarize here and then give each its own post:

The “be-ers” — going inward

Maybe I should say, “the woo woo crowd”…  I believe so completely in our interconnectedness and how the vibration of each of us impacts the whole, that I actually think our most likely source of salvation will be having enough people consciously clearing their issues and raising their vibrational levels — ’til we lift the consciousness of the world.

The do-ers–going local

The biggest enemy I’ve seen to democracy and equality is global corporatism and the best answer I see for breaking their power is a large-scale movement of local co-ops creating small-scale manufacturing, banking, farming to supply jobs, goods and services at the local level.  The best way to beat them is to stop participating in their businesses but that means we need other buying options and jobs for those who will be displaced.

Many current issues like police brutality and water supply problems are best dealt with on the local level as well and need serious organizing and action.

Everybody change government

Most people in many movements are still looking to the government for change.  I think the government in most countries is too broken and too tied to corporate interests for that to happen.  In the U.S. the most hopeful thing I see is multiple candidates raising their campaign money through crowd funding which will leave them unentangled with corporate interests.

At every level of government we need to concentrate on electing people who are completely free of corporate influence  Both be-ers and do-ers can contribute to campaigns, volunteer to help elect good candidates and GO VOTE!

Previous People Power Posts:

Revisit to People Are Who They Are..

Posted in Communication, Personal Growth, Uncategorized by

I used to do a series of posts during the holidays with tips on negotiating some of the emotional minefields many of us have.  I think I’ve skipped a few years now, and thought I’d revisit.  I originally posted this in 2011 (hard to believe I’ve been blogging this long!):

One of my all time favorite teachings came from Serge King when he taught the Huna segment for my class at Nine Gates Mystery School (he doesn’t teach for Nine Gates any more): “People are who they are and they do what they do.” The more you know about who somebody is and what he does, the less you will ever be disappointed because you know you can’t expect him to be or do something else. When Don Miguel Ruiz’s Four Agreements came out some years later I found his “Don’t take anything personally” to be aligned; if you know your friend is being who she is and doing what she does how can you take what she’s doing personally?

That piece of advice has been so incredibly helpful to me and some of my friends have found it life changing too. One friend had a really unhappy relationship with her dad. She was a great believer in communication to heal relationships so she kept writing him letters in which she explained how upset she was by certain things he did. She was disappointed every time because her expectation was that he would change because of what she told him and he never did.

This had been going on for years when I described the concept and said, “seems to me he’s just being who he is.” As I explained it her eyes grew wide and her jaw dropped. As soon as she looked at it from that perspective the whole situation changed for her.

I don’t have a personal anecdote that’s as dramatic but in many subtle ways it has changed relationships and kept me from a lot of hurt feelings. It doesn’t mean you have to stop liking people or to judge them, it means you can make decisions about relationships based on knowing and accepting who people are.

For me that sometimes means creating a little distance and sometimes feeling more trust or closeness. I was always a little oversensitive and I’m so grateful for reducing the hurt feelings factor; I get it that almost everything other people say and do reflects everything about them and nothing about me.

In the holiday season when lots of people are dreading events that involve spending time with relatives, I think it’s a good time to take a breath and remember, “People are who they are and they do what they do.” Don’t expect that anybody’s going to be different and know that whatever is being said and done is not about you – don’t take anything personally.