Blog - Patricia Pearce -

Eudomy: The Land Where Truth Reigns

July 1, 2019 by Patricia Pearce

tree at sunset — In Eudomy there is no judgment.

I once had a dream where I am transported into the future. I look around and I see a thriving Earth and a world at peace. And I think, elatedly, we did it! We humans did it! We made the transformation into the new consciousness!

As I walk around, I see a woman with the most interesting garb. It has a traditional feel, colorful, and somehow it conveys wholeness and wisdom.

Around her on the ground are seated several children and I realize she is their teacher.

The students are reading passages that they have written and one of them reads something that refers to or implies judgment.

The teacher gently explains to the child that in Eudomy, which is the name of the land where they live, there isn’t any judgment. I understand that she doesn’t mean we don’t do judgment because it’s bad. She means in Eudomy judgment simply doesn’t exist. It has no reality.Continue Reading

Squandering Time: A Spiritual Practice

June 13, 2019 by Patricia Pearce

pocket watch in sand — What does it really mean to squander time?

Benjamin Franklin once famously said, “Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that is the stuff life is made of.” It’s not surprising, given such a philosophy, that Franklin accomplished an amazing amount during his lifetime. Inventor. Statesman. Author. Public Servant. Founding Father.

But as much as Franklin is revered here in Philadelphia where I live—the city Franklin also called home—and as grateful as I am for all of his contributions to our city and society, I’ve come to question his premise that time is the stuff life is made of. More and more I see that life is made of a kind of attention that takes us into a dimension where time doesn’t even exist.

The Counterintuitive Path of Transformation

September 19, 2017 by Patricia Pearce

Are you ready to explore the path of transformation?

Imagine you woke up tomorrow to a life that was reflecting the fullness of the potential that you always knew was in you. What does your life look like? What sort of person have you become? Let yourself inhabit that vision for a moment.

You no doubt know that there is far more inside you than you have ever brought forth—more creativity, more contribution, more joy, more love, more life. You probably also understand that you have the capacity—as all human beings do—to consciously choose who you will become and to actively participate in how your life unfolds. The question is: How can you let go of the limiting beliefs and behaviors that prevent that potential from coming forth?

Why Personal Transformation Can Be Challenging

There are a couple of reasons why personal transformation can be challenging: we misunderstand what is real, and we misunderstand the nature of power. First, let’s consider our misunderstanding of what is real.Continue Reading

Why Resistance Isn’t Radical Enough

August 9, 2017 by Patricia Pearce

[This article was also published on the Huffington Post.]

The other day I was having coffee with a friend, and as we got to talking about what is going on in our political arena she asked me, “Do you ever say ‘no’?”

What she was asking was whether, in my way of seeing things, there a place for resistance, for saying “no.”

Her question got me thinking, because—as someone who has been arrested more than once for engaging in nonviolent civil disobedience and who went to prison for doing so when the US invaded Iraq, and as someone who all my life has been haunted by the Holocaust and wondered how it could have been prevented—I am not a stranger to these questions.

And yet in recent years I have strongly sensed that at this juncture, given the political and environmental challenges we face, something far more radical than resistance is called for. We have reached a point where we need nothing less than an entirely new understanding of who we are and why we are here, because it is the stories we hold that generate the world we create.

Money: Ally in Our Spiritual Awakening

March 22, 2017 by Patricia Pearce

Money: Ally in Awakening — What if money could serve our spiritual awakening?

[This article has also been published on the Huffington Post.]

Now that the president has released his proposed budget, I thought I would take the opportunity to talk about something that for a lot of spiritually-oriented people is anathema—money. More specifically, I’d like to talk about how money was hijacked to serve the purposes of ego.

When I talk about ego, I am talking about a thought system based upon the idea of separateness. Because separateness is an illusion (the only place it exists is in the mind) the ego itself is an illusion. Yet this illusion has shaped the world in which we live.

Believing separateness to be real, ego constantly fears for its survival, and its deepest hungers are for security, worth, power, and status. Money came to be seen as the provider of all of those things.

By its very nature ego is insatiable. No matter the present circumstances, it always wants more. More power, more influence, more security, more status. Ego, in other words, is an addictive thought system, and money is one of its drugs of choice.Continue Reading

Solidarity Topples an Old Story

March 7, 2017 by Patricia Pearce

[This article has also been published on the Huffington Post.]

Last week I paid my respects at Mt. Carmel cemetery in Philadelphia, a Jewish cemetery that recently, like others in St. Louis and Rochester, was severely vandalized. Seeing gravestone after gravestone—estimates now say more than 500—toppled with such brute force was sobering. But one thing it wasn’t was news.

News—as the word implies—refers to the new, and bigotry in all its many guises is a very old story. The real news is how thousands upon thousands of people are responding to these acts of bigotry.

In a previous post, Three Ways to Be a Peacemaker in a Time of Hatred, I talked about the importance of solidarity in the face of hatred, and solidarity is exactly what we are seeing take hold. Organizations such as Southern Poverty Law Center have been tracking the rise in hate crimes, but it would be far more telling to track the rise in acts of solidarity.Continue Reading

Fear: Passage to Liberation

November 16, 2016 by Patricia Pearce

[This article has also been published on the Huffington Post.]

In the wake of our recent presidential election, many people are feeling deeply afraid about what the future holds, and understandably so. We have already seen an alarming rise in hate crimes now that bigotry has seemingly been legitimated through our electoral process.

In upcoming posts I will say more about the bigger picture that I see unfolding and the unprecedented opportunities now before us to come together in ways the world has never seen. But for now, I want to speak about fear and offer some ways we can work with it to become the mindful, liberated agents for change these times need us to be.