Patricia Pearce

Helping You Be the Change

Are You Looking for a Good Resource on Mindfulness?

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Rather than posting a blog of my own writing this week, I’d like to share with you a wonderful resource I recently came upon through Shambala Sun‘s website. In case you aren’t familiar with it, Shambala Sun is a magazine that features teachings from the Buddhist and other contemplative traditions.

This free eBook (PDF), The Mindfulness Sampler, contains chapters by some of the pre-eminent teachers of mindfulness in our day, such as Thich Nhat Hanh, Pema Chodron, Jack Kornfield, and many more, all writing about the power of awareness in daily life.

You can access the PDF here: The Mindfulness Sampler.

Peace,

Patricia

Facing Diverging Paths

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Is there a path beckoning you?
Is there a path beckoning you?

In one of my morning meditation times this week, an image from a famous poem by Robert Frost came to my mind.

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth

I knew why this image of diverging paths had come to me at this particular time, since I am facing some important decisions, so I took the image as an invitation to do as Frost did, to take time to pause and consider.

I imagined myself sitting down in the woods at a place where two paths part to see what I could see, knowing as Frost did that by choosing one I was saying no to the other, leaving it untraveled, a life I might have lived and chose not to.

Choices can be difficult because we know we will forever wonder about the paths we chose not to take, all those roads that we have left unexplored. We must accept this particular kind of loss so inherent to life — the loss of what might have been. Frost alludes to this in the title of his poem. Rather than calling it “The Road Taken,” he titled it, “The Road Not Taken.”

Choices can also be difficult because when we face diverging paths we can only see so far. We may be able to see what might lie ahead in the near future, but beyond that the path bends out of sight, into the undergrowth of uncertainty. This means we must always make our choices in the absence of full knowledge. We must make them guided by a deeper wisdom instead, one that we can only access within ourselves. Rather than merely deciding, we must discern which way to go.

In my meditation, letting any sense of urgency recede, I invited that deeper wisdom to come forth and show me what these diverging paths were representing.

As I gazed at them in my mind’s eye, what I saw was that one of the paths, the one slightly more traveled, was the path I would choose if I allowed fear to govern my choices. It was the safer path in so far as it was the way of conformity, the way of blending in with cultural norms and abiding by other people’s expectations.

The other path, the one less traveled, followed a different course. It followed the contours of the Self (not to be confused with self, or ego) rather than the contours of external expectations, and because it wasn’t beholden to accepted norms it was the path that could also lead to controversy.

Controversy literally means turning against. Ideas are controversial when they turn against established norms, challenging viewpoints or worldviews that have become accepted as reality.

Taking time in meditation to listen to my inner wisdom helped me see the choices before me more clearly and understand the dynamics at play in my ambivalence. I could recognize how fear had been whispering to me to take the “safer” road.

While some people thrive on controversy, I am not one of them. Nonetheless I know, and can sense that I have always known, which path I will choose, and that, for me, will make all the difference.

 

When Snow Claims the City

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IMG_3241Yesterday we got about a foot of snow in Philadelphia, and most of us are enjoying a snow day today as the city digs itself out.

Throughout the snowstorm yesterday, sitting in the comfort of my home watching the fat flakes accumulating on the sidewalks and cars, I was grateful I didn’t have to go anywhere. After dinner, though, I put on my boots and bundled up to take a walk around the block.

The neighborhood was peacefully quiet, the only sound that of a snow shovel scraping the sidewalk in the next block. When I got to the corner I stopped near a street lamp and watched the flakes swirling in its light. Mesmerized by their random movements as they swooped this way and that on the currents of air I settled into that experience of timelessness that is always present but which I miss when I’m immersed in the daily tasks of life.Continue Reading

Opening to the Great Love: The Second Aspect of the Spiritual Life

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How do you open to the Great Love?
How do you open to the Great Love?

In last week’s blog, Knowing Yourself, I wrote about what I see as the first aspect of the spiritual life and I offered some practices to help us grow in self-awareness. This week I’d like to explore what I see as the next aspect of the spiritual life: opening to the Great Love, by which I mean the consciousness that animates the Universe and each of us, the Reality in which everything is being birthed, nurtured into its fullness, and received back again in complete acceptance. This second aspect of the spiritual journey is one in which we come to the real, experiential awareness that we are not living our lives as isolated individuals alone in the cosmos.Continue Reading

Jailed for Earth’s Sake

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How shall we each put our bodies on the line for Earth's future?
How shall we each put our bodies on the line for Earth’s future?

Nine years ago today I went to prison. Along with hundreds of other people in Philadelphia, I had engaged in nonviolent civil disobedience when the US launched its invasion of Iraq in 2003, and a year later we received our summons to appear in court. Those of us who refused to pay the $250 fine were sentenced to a week in maximum security federal prison and kept in lock-down in our cells 24 hours a day.

When we stepped through the doors of the prison on that sunny April day, with Philadelphia’s blossoming springtime in full swing, we entered a world unto itself, cut off from the outside by its thick concrete walls, locked doors, and glaring florescent lights.

We went through several hours of intake, including two strip searches, before we were finally issued our orange jumpsuits and escorted handcuffed to our cells. (My cellmate, Janeal Ravndal, was a Quaker woman who later wrote about our experience in her booklet, A Very Good Week Behind Bars, published by Pendle Hill Press.)

Our only connection to the outside was a narrow vertical frosted window, and a day or two after our arrival I discovered a tiny pinprick of clear glass where the frosted glaze hadn’t adhered. Smaller than the head of a pin, it was my only view to the out-of-doors. Peering through it I could make out the basic outlines of buildings, cars, a distant highway.Continue Reading

Pas de Deux

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Where did the expression “leap and the net will appear” come from? When did it come into use? Is there evidence for its veracity? I guess I don’t have enough faith to assume that this vast Universe cares enough about any particular leap of mine to put a net under me in the nick of time.

They say spider’s silk has a relative tensile strength greater than steel cable. It is certainly far less visible and weighs a fraction of it. Is the tensile strength of the theoretical net-to-appear as strong as spider’s silk? Is it as invisible as wind?

Several years ago I was driving along a familiar road when out of the corner of my eye I saw a large hawk, high on a branch in a cluster of pines. I pulled over immediately and shut off the engine to watch this bird sitting silently amidst wind invisibly setting needles and branches dancing.

The bird was quite still. I watched. Time telescoped. I don’t know how long we stayed that way, in spacious time.

Spaciousness feels liberating –– a big inhale, ribs expanding, arms extending wide, followed by an exhalation of great relief. So comforting. A friend once explained her experience of Sabbath as “A Palace in Time.” In the luxury of spaciousness I can float, buoyed by invisible currents of thought or creativity or simply being. Yet without a center that can hold, vast openness can provoke anxiety.Continue Reading

Listen to the Birds, and They Will Tell You

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May you have time this season to listen to the birds.

“Listen to the animals and they will teach you
the birds of the air and they will tell you…”

— from The Book of Job

 

At five o’clock in the morning, the Robins sit on the peak of the neighbor’s house facing the east, singing their morning song. Sometimes each house has a Robin heralding the dawn.  Sometimes it is only one bird for the whole cul-de-sac. At times the House Finches take the place of, or join the Robins.  For the past three decades I have been out running or walking early in the morning, often before the sun rises.  I had never noticed the consistency of the placement of birds on the peaks of rooftops of houses until recently.  It seems that their singing facing the direction of East is particular to the spring and early summer months.Continue Reading

Dream. Then Do.

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In some Native American circles, Lizard represents the capacity to dream.

One of our local colleges has launched a new ad campaign which I first noticed a few weeks ago while riding the bus. In the front of the bus behind the driver there is a plexiglass panel which is where they often display ad posters. That day there was a poster with a picture of a young woman, dreamily gazing upward, smiling, and next to her the words: “Don’t Dream. Do.”

While I understand the intent of the campaign — to encourage people to get off their duffs and do what needs doing to activate their potential — I think they are making a tremendous mistake in telling people not to dream.

A lot of us are actually pretty good at doing, the problem is that so often our doing isn’t in accord with our true selves or highest good. We may just be living out the expectations others have of us rather than really exploring what it is we want for ourselves. If I were designing the college’s ad campaign it would say: “Dream. Then Do.”

It’s essential for us, after all, to engage our dreaming capacity because it is the first step in manifesting the future we want, and actually the picture on the ad is instructive in one way: it shows that the young woman, as she dreams, is smiling. That, my friends, is the key because it is our joy that leads us to our true path. It is like an exuberant, tail-wagging dog that is taking us for a walk, leading us with its own gleeful nose to our truest treasures.

Rather than squelching our capacity to dream we need to cultivate it. When we are stepping into a new life for ourselves we need a vigorous and bold imagination to help catapult us beyond the restrictive boundaries imposed by self or society; only in that way can we begin to live into our fullest potential.

Then, yes, doing becomes essential. Taking the dream and translating it into actions, no matter how small, is the way we honor it and begin to prepare the way for it to come forth. When we’ve taken time to dream in order to get in touch with our own inner wisdom and true direction, then our doing will be in the service of manifesting our own life purpose, rather than settling for the life others have told us to live.