Heaps of gratitude to Kenny Johnson, Phileena Heuertz, A. T. Ariyaratne, and Mona Polacca and their communities for making my research possible!

The dark moon envelops me,

holds me in a sweet blanket of tearful surrender.

Mourning unborn Life,

Roads not traveled,

Lives not shared,

Endings.

The blanket of darkness envelops—

Holds.

Space and time collapse in death,

Energy flows free.

Which door will open?

Which path will unfold?

The grieving of loss beckons the heart to open further—

To feel Death,

and rise in hopeful anticipation of 

Birth.

The in-between uncertainty

and its enveloping darkness Potentiate.

Patience—embracing, sitting, Be-ing, opening, loving, mourning.

The dark Goddess holds it all.

Embodiment is no small feat. It is, however, your birthright.

In my view, we get born into bodies as our souls pour into these infamous “skin bags,” but becoming fully embodied is not a given. Even relatively minor traumas or unsupportive primary family environments may halt full embodiment as states of dissociation remain preferable to constant awareness of one’s own pain. This is best seen without judgment because partial embodiment upon birth usually serves to protect the emerging psyche until a fertile environment is present. Disembodiment then becomes a stage of one’s own growth.

So, rather than being an affliction of the “mentally ill” and a state limited to a unfortunate few as most might imagine, I posit that dissociation from one’s embodied experience is our norm. Most of us, especially in Western contexts, live disembodied lives to varying degrees. This means that our society and culture have been built upon and structured from places of human incompleteness. Thus, the Age of Enlightenment and the subsequent gifts of the modern era only just begin to inform how we as humans would best approach our lives, each other, and our collective engagements even though those antiquated and disembodied individual and social habits are what seems to surround us and feel most real. Our past appears as our present, and incompleteness pretends to be fullness.

Think of your current surroundings, including the buildings, social systems, and interpersonal mores, as ancient rather than modern and up-to-date. If you have ever visited a historical site of ruins, you will then have a picture of what I am effecting to portray. We’re living in the equivalent of an ancient Rome or Athens with perhaps beautiful (and often ugly) vestiges of a disembodied past around us. My point is that what we surround ourselves with everyday, including our own inner landscapes, are only partial truths and do not reflect to us the fullness of our humanity. As many have said, we are human becomings rather than human beings.

Why begin the new year with such unsettling news?

I believe that all of us at some point touch into the places inside ourselves that feel unsettled. Often, in a moment of pain, uncertainty, or struggle, a feeling can well up that suggests that the pieces we have put together do not complete the puzzle. Something is felt to be missing or “off.” It can often feel like we are not as well as we might hope, that things are not turning out as we had imagined, or as a deep disappointment. Often, we push these feelings back into our subconscious because they threaten how we have chosen to live our lives, and we cover those feelings with distractions of various kinds—food, activity, and work can all serve to pacify the small but strong voice that feels the pain of living in incompleteness.

In the new year, we are all offered a fresh start to deepen, heal, and grow. I want to reach out and proclaim as loudly as I can from the virtual mountain tops that this state you reside in and have come to know as normal is only a partial truth. Inside of you lies the seeds of radical embodiment, and with those, a full expression of yourself as a divinely human being/becoming. Your pain serves then as a fantastic guide to show you where to dig, open, and explore. And, while pain is well painful, this profound inquiry into your pain is a journey that will lead you deep into your own heart and will illumine your body and ignite the spark of your spirit.

Embarking down the road to recovery from disembodiment has been my most worthy quest. Inviting and claiming radical embodiment has offered me the opportunity to read from the future and live the new world now rather than rely on antiquated and out dated models for human relating and social architecture. It has also brought me into contact with fellow pioneers and visionaries that are dreaming reality into being.

I invite you to join us, find your human birthright, and dance your way into cocreating our shared existence in the collective interawakening. I am happy to guide you in this process if you are curious about your next steps to find your own radical embodiment. Much love and happy new year! May this year be the year that you come home.

Coming out of the haze of the go-go-go world is both a welcome relief and a critical necessity to those who are profoundly engaged in a worldly mission. As time perceptively speeds up with “round the clock” connectivity capacity, the snail mail days of yore have all but disappeared—along with it the experience of having time to respond. Can you even imagine the days when you might communicate by correspondence delivered by the postal service? As a lover of the art of letter writing, it’s easy for me to imagine living a life slowed down to the speed of molasses and luxuriating in the viscosity of communication slowed way way down. Reveling in that fantasy, I find that the physical tension and contraction in my body begins to unwind and release. My breath begins to deepen and my abdominal cavity opens further to life.

In the face of raw unadulterated technological speed, social and internal pressures mount to encourage rapid response styles.  “He emailed me a few days ago, and I haven’t responded yet. I need to get on top of that!” Does this sound familiar? For those that are social change artists—activists, bodhisattvas-in-training, and agents of deep change, your pressures to respond quickly may be even further heightened. Facing the world and those around us in the midst of many crisis/opportunities seems to spawn extra degrees of internal and external pressure to respond and take action. Have you ever thought, “If I could just do more…get in touch with that organization…call that person…connect those people….” Yeah. Me too. In the face of marginalized, impoverished, traumatized, and forgotten beings, human or otherwise, I feel called to use my humanness to respond, even if it means just being present with what is happening around me.

Of course, there is nothing inherently wrong with responding quickly, and greater technological capacity comes with many obvious and novel gifts. What I have come to understand, sitting at the feet of great spiritual activists, is that staying in tune with my own rhythm—the beat of my unique drum—is utterly essential. As the world spins itself into a maelstrom of orgasmic frenzy, your unique and indigenous rhythm may become more faint, difficult to discern with all of that background fuzz. Know that it is still there. Behind the go-go-go beat of the world is your beat—steadfast and genuinely you.

Tuning into your own signature rhythm means turning one of your ears inward and listening inside to your own needs, desires, and dreams while you attune one ear outward to the needs of the world around you. Let’s call it “stereo” attunement. Attuning to your rhythm might ultimately mean taking some days off, a vacation, a retreat, or a new direction for your professional and/or personal life. Ultimately it means being able to commit to profound engagement for the long haul. Being a deeply engaged social change agent means dancing to your own beat so you can keep dancing, serving, engaging, and caring for the life of this party to which we’ve all been invited. The world and your internalized notions of it may not tell you to slow down, take a break, or stop, but your own beat will. Your own beat knows you.

Just imagine what engaging from a place of renewal would feel like. Nice, huh?

If we can do anything to revision and refashion the archetypal humble servant for the twenty-first century, let’s sacrifice the archetypes of the stoic martyr and the glorified disembodied workhorse to the alchemical fires of transformation so that we in service can open ourselves to balance and self-love in a harried world. Self-love and balance yield wise responses—the ones we most need and the world craves. I encourage you to find your rhythm and give yourself permission to attune to it—live through it. May you give yourself this gift so that your well-worn dreams of freedom take root and blossom through you into embodied glory.

Social action could look like each

person living from their truest self and

offering that self to the world. Our

truest self is connected to the divine. If

we are connected to the divine, living

from our truest self, then we can’t help

but live in a place of love and peace

and kindness and generosity and

forgiveness and acceptance and a

sense of there are no boundaries

between us and we can truly love one

another.

Recent travels, a new volunteer gig, and amazing meetings with exemplars in socially engaged spirituality have me struck with deep tones of sweetness. Struck with deep tones of sweetness? Yes! While the words do not necessarily make sense together, and I find myself nearly at fault for mixing metaphors, those words seem right. “Struck” meaning hit, impacted by, affected by. “Deep” meaning profound, moving. “Tones” meaning essences—a felt presence of a quality of…”sweetness.” Sweetness to me speaks to the intensity of heart connection or heart opening that has been inspired in all of these meetings. I have been deeply and wonderfully affected by the profound essences of heart expression that I have been blessed with in my latest ambulations.

Without tuning out the pain of the world (a daily intake of NPR keeps me abreast of this), learning from spiritually mature social change agents and becoming active in my own small way in social engagement lets me relish in the “what’s good/exciting/inspiring” stuff of our times. As a good friend said to me a few months back, “I’m living the better world right now.” No talk of when we get to that new place of world peace/functionality/empathy/kindness sometime far off in the future or of the post 2012/consciousness transformation worldscape. The new world is happening now—right under our fingertips and toes. People all around you are living as if true freedom existed right now, and they are giving all of us permission to do the same. For every negative conception you have of a people or group, there is another collective turning that feeble expression on its head. Unhealthy societal patterns are being rewritten by thoughtful trailblazers around the globe every minute of everyday. Love as much as you want to! Treat yourself like you treat your best friend! Pretend like that person next to you in line at the market is one of your friends! Do not fret too much—please. Even just a tiny step in this direction can change the cosmos. Yes, I really believe that!

The other week, I was gifted a free session with the Berkeley Psychic Institute. My “reader” reported to me that my heart chakra was only 37% open. I was immediately forlorn. How, after all of this “work” on myself could I still have a heart that is not ready to love completely? My sadness transformed into compassion for myself, and I gave myself credit for that 37% and became aware that I could give myself a little push to express more of my love and gratitude, open my heart with folks I might normally shy away from, and feel what I am feeling as those things arise. My spiritual teachers and spiritual community are an ever-present invitation to do just this, and I am grateful that I have such a place to feel more safe in revealing the never ending folds of my heart.

What does this “new” and “better” world look like to you? What would it be like to pretend as if this world was already real?

As the darkest most introverted day of the year approaches with the winter solstice, I am hoping life offers you some space for reflection on what waking up together means for you. And, I wish you much joy this holiday season in waking up on the “new” side of the bed where every preconceived tired notion is up for evolving and where your heart moves your feet. Many blessings on your journey friend! Let’s wrap each other in our prayers and hold our dreams close.

The elephant’s ear of Africa

tells all.

It tells us to listen —

to listen wildly

to listen grandly

to listen anciently

and to listen with abandon

Forsake all!

Listen —

Hear

Receive

Imbibe

In-take

In listening we hear ourselves

In listening we are spoken into being

Roll up those gifts of sound

into your knapsack,

Tuck them away inside yourself

keep them close —

as close as your own skin

Ask yourself where “you” end and “they” begin.

The questions are themselves

the answers,

The answers,

just more questions

In the elephant’s ear we see

the eternity to which we belong

And we see our futures

dirty, torn, rough

worn into beauty, perfection

The ears of Africa are upon us,

a dewdrop

a petal

a path made by walking

In being heard we become

In hearing we rejoice

Hearing

Holding

Loving

Dare I learn to love, hold, and hear?

A couple of years ago I began reading about the Sarvodaya movement in Sri Lanka for my doctoral thesis. If you do not know of the organization, please feel free to read about it through the link under the “Socially Engaged Spirituality Resources” section in this blog or pick up a copy of Joanna Macy’s Dharma and Development, an *excellent* read incidentally. Totally inspiring.

As I began reading about it, it seemed miraculous—an organization that is based in Buddhist principles, works from the grassroots, prioritizes the needs and wants of those being served in the many villages around the country, is decentralized, AND is dedicated to the awakening of all. I am still struck by the beauty of that last idea. The awakening of ALL. The AWAKENING of all. The AWAKENING of ALL!!! Of course, like leaning a little leftward politically, I also lean a little East-ward spiritually. In my heart of hearts, I dreamed of finding a way to visit Sarvodaya, and, if I was really lucky I thought, I would get to study it for my thesis.

I am blessed. Many of my most heartfelt dreams come true, and my dreams of Sarvodayan research bliss were no different. I arrived a few days ago. Enough days to dread eating another curry—it’s a breakfast, lunch, and dinner affair here, but not nearly enough to take in all that Sarvodaya does. It is a behemoth of an organization. Twelve different separate departments and operations in all of the districts of Sri Lanka, including those in the Northern provinces that are riddled with political violence. Honestly, it feels like the organization is operating like a shadow national government (much to the government’s despise). What the government cannot do, will not do, or cannot do enough of, Sarvodaya does. Elder care, legal assistance, community mobilization and development, leadership training, preschools, care for victimized teenage mothers, child nutrition, technology training, and so on and so on and so on. The list of activities will baffle your mind.

And so I arrived, a little wearied from the 32 hours of travel but mostly excited to meet the folks here. The spiritual leader and founder of the organization, Dr. Ari, is rather unassuming. You might know him only by his all-white dress (and the multitude of pictures of him that decorate each office and division of the organization). He is quite famous and beloved by Sri Lankans. Walking down the street, many stop to speak to him, some prostrating and touching his feet in devotion. One Sarvodayan said to me that he is the only great leader that anyone can speak to and the only one that can walk around Sri Lanka without security.

What has been told to me over and over about Dr. Ari is that he trusts people. This trust is often named first as one of his best qualities. He trusts even when those he trusts are unscrupulous. Dr. Ari himself said that only good people come to him. When asked why, he remarked that bad people know they are bad and are afraid of him, presumably for his goodness. He further explained that if a good person is not afraid of a bad person, the bad person loses all power and retreats. Dr. Ari relationships are based in the Buddhist principle of non-separateness. When he sees others, he sees himself—no difference. He then is free to approach others with friendliness and compassion, and presumably trust.

I have been pondering what it would be like to trust everyone. There has always been a child-like part of me that wants to trust all, and I have been burned many times in the process. I’ve adopted a faux-shell, a semi-hard outer covering that is more mistrustful. I’ve taught myself that being trustful is naïve and immature and that wisdom is somehow aligned with a careful calculated caution. I’m seeing that perhaps there is a more profound phenomenon at work—that opening to one’s own goodness and the goodness of others diminishes fear and allows a compassionate nature to govern. Trust in other is ultimately trust in oneself. Being hurt fails to be a compelling reason to mistrust.

Certainly easier said than done. Yes, but inspiring. Inspiring and heartening.

nobility (nō-bĭl’ĭ-tē)

n.   1. The state or quality of being exalted in character. 2. Grandeur or magnificence.

[1398, "quality of being excellent or rare," from O.Fr. nobilite (Fr.nobilité), from L. nobilitatem (nom. nobilitas) "nobleness," fromnobilis "well-known, prominent." Meaning "quality of being of noble rank or birth" is attested from c.1440; sense of "noble class collectively" is from 1530.]

The word “nobility” is commonly thought to describe those of noble rank and birth, a descriptor that calls to mind earls and duchesses dressed in elegant finery with all of the elite accoutrement. This concept of nobility has surfaced for me again in the last few days and weeks, and I realize my “knowingness” is digesting it—first in an inner search and uncovering and next in a seeing of it in others past and present. What is emerging for me is the knowing that nobility is at once special and ordinary. We can find it in the faces of those around us, in the many postures we see displayed, in the kind and excellent actions performed at every moment everywhere we can imagine. The nobility that we have projected onto the elite classes—the kings and queens of our societies all resides within us, in our hearts, minds, and bodies. We can rise to small moments and find ourselves writ large, moving fluidly with grace and benevolence.

Many of the wonderful communiques from Haiti, in the aftermath of the devastating earthquake, have told us of the extraordinary kindness of the everyday person. A friend of friend writes the following:

We picked up 5 badly injured people and drove towards an area where Ellie and Berto had passed a woman earlier. When they saw her she was lying on the side of the road with a broken leg screaming for help, as they were on foot they could not help her at the time so we went back to try to find her. Incredibly we found her relatively quickly at the top of a hill of shattered houses. The sun was setting and the community helped to carry her down the hill on a refrigerator door, tough looking guys smiled in our direction calling out “bonswa cheri” and “kouraj.”. . . So, don’t believe Anderson Cooper when he says that Haiti is a hotbed for violence and riots, it is just not the case. In the darkest of times, Haiti has proven to be a country of brave, resilient and kind people and it is that behavior that is far more prevalent than the isolated incidents of violence.

American anthropologist Laura Wagner, who survived after her home collapsed around her in Port-au-Prince, echoes the above in these sentiments:

In the aftermath of the earthquake, there was great personal kindness and sacrifice, grace and humanity in the midst of natural and institutional chaos and rupture. My friend Frenel, who worked cleaning and maintaining the house, appeared within minutes to look for survivors. He created a passage through the still-falling debris using only a flashlight and a small hammer—the kind you would use to nail a picture to a wall. Completely trapped, the nerves in my left arm damaged, I could not help him save me. He told me, calmly, “Pray, Lolo, you must pray,” as he broke up the cement and pulled it out, piece by piece, to free me. Once I was out, he gave me the sandals off his own feet.

In the face of such excellence, such beauty and strength of character, we owe ourselves the opportunity to gaze inward to see that those same seeds of nobility are sown into our deepest fibers. Shimmering, resonating, and somehow returning our gaze. Recognition happens, and we find ourselves plus some. Beyond ourselves, we can see that the shared human fabric is woven with these so-called exaltations of character embedded in it. Looking closely, we can see that the seeds of nobility are the prima materia that is drawn forth and spun into thread. This essentialness shines with an incandescence that our souls know well. As it is woven, the thread holds us together, assuring our fundamental interconnectedness and our potential for awakened mutuality. This human fabric shows us our divine birthright—made manifest through everyday gestures and formerly unthinkable heroic deeds.

Always available to be lived, ready to be engaged, and just beneath the surface, this is the nobility of the everyday.

http://transformingpower.ca/en/blog/indigenous-elders-and-leaders-across-americas-gather-inaugurate-their-spiritual-leader-evo-mora

I am having flashbacks to 9-11 when I became absorbed into the media bubble and gorged myself on news updates for hours at a time. I am not succumbing to the media obsession this time around, but I find that my attention keeps returning to this beloved country and people. Because of my personal connection, I have lost perspective on the scope of this disaster, but I am reminded of it by friends, facebook posts, tweets, and active message boards. I know that 9-11 changed the course of my life forever, and, in some small way, it helped me to wake up, dust off the lenses through which I see the world and find my innermost values and ethics reflected back to me. I think what this horrible tragedy is showing me is the way those around me are waking up—how connected people are becoming to a country that many could not pick out on a map only a few days ago.

Something has happened here, to us. It has happened and is happening right now.

Is it just a product of this globalizing world we find ourselves inhabiting? I am seeing more than awareness of other in all of this. I am seeing love for other. Love given to those outside of the boundaries of a personal relationship. Love freely given from one human being to another, from one who has to one that has lost, from brother to sister, from family to family.

In spite of the tragedy, with great respect to those that sacrificed their lives so that others could love, I find myself feeling the warmth of hope in a river of tears. I am devastated, and I am devastated by Love’s total embrace.

Please take a moment to embrace and be embraced by this if you have not already. And, may all of those that have passed find peace.

And neglects Compassion

Does not reach the highest state.

But he who practices only Compassion

Does not gain release from the toils of existence.

He, however, who is strong in the presence of both,

Remains neither in Samsāra nor in Nirvāna.

—Saraha, teacher of Nāgārjuna,

Mahāyāna Buddhism’s greatest metaphysician

This week marks the passing of two historical touchstones-slash-perennial markers that encourage contemplation of what is truly meaningful in our lives. The first was the 10th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall on the 9th. This was a photo that I took when I visited Germany in ’04 on the heels of my service in the peace corps. For those of you that have not seen it, the remains of the Berlin wall have been revisioned by artists from around the world. The second happened today in the U.S. as we remembered all of those servicemen and women that have dedicated themselves to our safety and protection.

In the most hopeful of lights, we can see these events as reminders of the continued efforts on the part of humanity to forge even deeper relationships to each other in truth, justice, and peace. In what can be viewed as an ocean of samsara, radical and painful transformations occur that rock the very foundations upon which our narrow views are premised.

“Breaking open” is certainly not for the faint of heart, and quite frankly, it’s not anything that a so-called normal person would ask for if they knew what opening that gift would engender. Fortunately or unfortunately, it comes of its own accord whether you like it or not! There have been a few pivotal times in my own short life where I felt like I was being persecuted by the most merciless being ever created—one that had as its sole agenda my continued desolation and dismemberment. These were the times that I feel to my knees, literally, and begged for mercy, begged for some sort of emancipation from the misery. These were the times that I cried out, “Why me?” and “Mother of God I will surrender, just leave me in peace!” Other times I just fell into a heap of tears, eventually to fall into a tired slumber of existential weariness. It sounds gruesome, histrionic maybe, but the pain and feeling of terror were very, very real. These were the times that I lost hope.

I hope that I am not sharing this tale of woe as some sort of proof of my own worth (albeit in some perverse, martyrish way), but as an honoring of the intense processes of Spirit on the psyche and what some call the “ego process.” It is only through these “dark nights” that we surrender to the alchemy of Spirit-in-body-ment—opening to Spirit realizing itself in flesh and bone.

It’s carnal and visceral and divinely human. It’s this marriage that obliterates the apparent separation of self and other that binds us to our myopic self-absorption. And, it’s this seating of the infinite in the finite that allows us to give of ourselves so freely in love at the same time as we feel our hearts breaking, bearing witness to the dumbfounding tragedy that surrounds us.

In his new book on sacred activism, Andrew Harvey, writes

The door into this empowered solitude, the voice of the fire told me, was through facing the cruelty, the injustice, and the agony of the world head on and letting them shatter the heart open. The detachment and serenity so prized by the old patriarchal mystical systems could not be enough for a crisis so enormous. The authentic rebel of love would have to let himself be penetrated and broken open by love. This would be a devastating experience—devastating to the tidy brutalities of the false self. (p. 58)

So my wish is that I continue to be devastated, broken further and further open by Spirit in its relentless course to reveal and transform. Being a force for Love is my deepest desire, and I keep hopeful that Spirit continues to imbue me with the courage to surrender farther and fail better at being a fragmented human. I would wish the same for all of humanity actually, for everyone to see the end of adversarial relations and the perpetuation of dissociated ways of being and knowing. And, as Harvey suggests, I wish that we all retain hope in the face of what is and what is to come.

Hawkens suggests that a similar sort of movement may already be underfoot, another Axial Age that is represented by the thousands of community organizations dedicated to social justice and planetary survival. Instead of major social movements led by charismatic leaders, however, this movement is mostly disconnected and atomistic. It seems to operate seemingly in silence.

In a sense, this movement is part of what I mean to locate in the term “interawakening.” For all those looking to the future for some era of great social transformation, you might ask yourself if the transformation is coming up all around you. What you are waiting for and wondering about may be silently circling you, bubbling up to consciousness as we speak.

As Hawkens writes,

No one in the Axial Age imagined that he was living in an age of spiritual awakening. It was a difficult time, riddled with betrayals, misunderstandings, and petty jealousies. Bu the philosophy and spirituality of these centuries constituted a movement nevertheless, a movement we can recognize in hindsight. Just as today, the Axial sages lived in a time of war. Their aim was to understand the source of violence, not to combat it. All roads led to self, psyche, thought, and mind. The spiritual practices that evolved were varied, but all concentrated on focusing and guiding the mind with simple precepts and practices whose repetition in daily life would gradually and truly change the heart. Enlightenment was not an end—equanimity, kindness, and compassion were. (p. 185)

If you are curious about this silent movement, I suggest you check out WiserEarth, www.wiserearth.org, a network of civil society organizations that make up this new social landscape. Perhaps consider your interest in engaging in this movement. What is your part to play?