consciousness Archives - Patricia Pearce

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 other morning I was sitting on my roof deck. It was a gorgeous, sunny morning here in Philadelphia, and I was diligently doing my morning journaling, part of my morning routine. But then a couple of goldfinches arrived and sat on a rope suspended above the bird feeder, and began to sing.

I fell into an amazed stupor. How can yellow be that bright?!? How can such a tiny creature bring forth so much sound?!?

I realized that nothing I could journal about would be nearly as revelatory as these two tiny luminous singing creatures—Avatars of Awareness.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.

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.

Election 2016 and Our Evolutionary Task

October 26, 2016 by Patricia Pearce

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

Many of us are heaving a sigh of relief that this presidential election 2016 is drawing to a close, yet we also know that the hostilities that have been playing out in our nation these last many months are not simply going to evaporate after the last poll has closed and the last vote tallied.

We are going to be left with some important work to do — and we are going to need to be clear about what we are dealing with.

You See What You Expect to See

April 7, 2016 by Patricia Pearce

Look around you for a moment. What do you see?Continue Reading

Finding the Quiet Beneath the Clamor

October 8, 2014 by Patricia Pearce

sugar packet — Tune in to a different drummer: your soul.

I have a friend who is an exceptional drummer. She told me a story once of being in a drumming competition and advancing until it was just her and one other drummer remaining. During the break before the final round, she went to a cafe to get a cup of coffee and try to figure out what she could do to wow the judges that she hadn’t already done.

As she reached for a packet of sugar she thought, “That’s it!!”

The Mind Game We’re Playing

July 3, 2014 by Patricia Pearce

woman's face painted with American flag — What game are we really playing?

This past Tuesday, sitting with my spouse, Kip, in a packed sports bar watching the World Cup soccer match between the U.S.A. and Belgium, I was delighting in the comedy of the situation.

The gathering, mostly young people, many of them decked out in red, white and blue, beers in hand, crowded around the large flatscreen televisions, cheering and groaning together as though they were many bodies ruled by one mind.

The excitement was palpable. Maybe, just maybe the U.S. could pull off an upset and defeat the Belgian team to move on to the next round. Anything seemed possible in this World Cup that has already seen the dethroning of some of the world’s soccer powerhouses.

Thanks in large part to the extraordinary performance of their goal keeper, Tim Howard, the U.S. team managed to hold their own through the 90 minutes of play, and when the whistle sounded to end regular play the game was tied 0-0. During the break before overtime, we all took a breather. The T.V. volume was turned down, the bass-heavy music turned up, people mingled and, in the case of several of us women, stood in line for the restroom.

Not long after the 30 minutes of extra time began, Belgium scored its first goal, and the mood of the crowd instantly plummeted from excitement to disappointment, and then to resignation when Belgium scored yet again. A man behind me, angry, began using expletives more liberally and another young man within ear shot, clinging to the possibility of victory, said, “You gotta believe!”Continue Reading