Sunday, April 29, 2018

Michael Meade: Stopping In Time

A powerful piece and, I believe, deeply needed wisdom from one of my longtime teachers, Michael Meade. Michael skillfully brings forth the wisdom that we all carry within ourselves. May each of us deepen in relationship with this soulful wisdom within and which is woven through the world and all of life together. Molly



"Only if we can manage to stop in time and 'slow downwards' can the old soul within us catch up and help find a way through the growing darkness." 

An old idea suggests that the world inside us is greater than the world we see around us, that each person is a cosmos with all the stars hidden inside. The individual soul can be seen and held as a microcosm, a little world and realm unto itself. If penetrated deeply enough, it might turn inside out and become the living thread to the soul of the world. Amidst the current speed of life and rush towards the future, the presence and value of the individual soul is easily lost. The soul’s natural horizon is the cosmos yet the modern world tends to become smaller and more horizontal as it loses the vertical dimension and the grounding depths that the soul brings to life.

In losing the soulful ways of connection, we risk losing what relates us to great nature on one hand and the eternal realm and touch of the divine on the other.  Amidst the modern fascination with newness and things that move faster and faster, there is something older and wiser trying to catch up with us.

There is an old story of a young spiritual seeker who set out in the world determined to find a sacred way of life that could lead to inner meaning and spiritual fulfillment. It was a noble quest, one that can awaken at any time in life as each life longs for a true awakening. After a period of searching and encountering some of the sorrows and troubles of the world, the young seeker felt more exiled than when he first began his search for meaning. It was as if he had to lose parts of himself along the way and become truly lost before finding his true sense of self.

Eventually, he found himself in the vicinity of an old temple and managed to be accepted amongst the others there who also sought more than the common world could offer. He began to study the ways of that place, which included the practice of deep meditation. Having searched far and wide and wandered throughout the world, he now had to sit still in order to learn how to search deep within. Soon enough he learned to turn inwards and was meditating day and night. He gave himself to the work and barely stopped his inner practice long enough to eat or sleep. As time went on, he grew quite thin and often seemed on the verge of complete exhaustion.

One day he was granted an audience with the old teacher who had long been the master of that temple. After observing the avid student and inquiring about his interests and aims, the old teacher advised him to slow down, to rest more often, and to learn to take better care of himself. Of course, the young seeker ignored the advice; he even intensified his practice and doubled his efforts.

When next they met, the teacher asked: “Why are you rushing so much? What is the great hurry?” The devotee answered quickly: “I am after enlightenment and spiritual fulfillment and there is no time to waste.” 

The teacher considered that idea for a while and then responded, “How do you know that what you seek is running somewhere before you, so that you must spend all your energy rushing after it? What if what you most need is actually behind you, trying to catch up to you? What if the knowledge and wisdom you seek is waiting for you to descend to it? What if all your haste and feverish determination turn out to be your own habitual pattern of running away from what has been trying to catch up to you all along?”

Looking inside for knowledge and grounding is an old idea that by now can seem counterintuitive and contrary to contemporary attitudes about life. Yet what we often need most, whether we are on a spiritual quest or simply trying to make our way in the world, is the soul connection that allows us to deepen and grow inwardly, to “slow downwards” enough to find who we already are at our core.

― Michael Meade
Excerpted from Why the World Doesn't End

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Sunday, April 15, 2018

George Monbiot: The Highest Purposes Of Humankind

I have long held great respect and appreciation for George Monbiot and his integrity, wisdom, courage, truth-telling, and deep caring for life. May we all find those teachers who inspire and nourish our awakening and acting out of awareness of the highest good for all of life. Molly 


Thinking like ethical people, dressing like ethical people, decorating our homes like ethical people makes not a damn of difference unless we also behave like ethical people.

If wealth was the inevitable result of hard work and enterprise, every woman in Africa would be a millionaire.

Progress is measured by the speed at which we destroy the conditions that sustain life.

Deregulation is a transfer of power from the trodden to the treading. It is unsurprising that all conservative parties claim to hate big government.

We are often told we are materialistic. It seems to me, we are not materialistic enough. We have a disrespect for materials. We use it quickly and carelessly. If were genuinely materialistic people, we would understand where materials come from and where they go to. But, at the moment, the entire global economy seems to be built on the model of digging things up from one hole in the ground on one side of the earth, transporting them around the world, using them for a few days, and sticking them in a hole in the ground on the other side of the world.  

Beware of anyone who describes a human being as something other than human being.

'Environment' is a term that creates no pictures in the mind, which is why I have begun to use 'natural world' or 'living planet' instead.  

Governments are deemed to succeed or fail by how well they make money go round, regardless of whether it serves any useful purpose. They regard it as a sacred duty to encourage the country’s most revolting spectacle: the annual feeding frenzy in which shoppers queue all night, then stampede into the shops, elbow, trample and sometimes fight to be the first to carry off some designer junk which will go into landfill before the sales next year. The madder the orgy, the greater the triumph of economic management.

The problem with gross domestic product is the gross bit. There are no deductions involved: all economic activity is accounted as if it were of positive value. Social harm is added to, not subtracted from, social good. A train crash which generates £1bn worth of track repairs, medical bills and funeral costs is deemed by this measure as beneficial as an uninterrupted service which generates £1bn in ticket sales. 

Confronted with the twin disasters of climate change and an impending oil peak, it is hard to see how anyone could justify the assertion that the need to drive a car which can accelerate from 0 to 60 miles an hour in 4.5 seconds (the Audi S4 for example) overrides the Ethiopians' need to avoid recurrent famines, or the whole world's need to avoid the economic catastrophe we'll suffer if petroleum peaks too soon.

The schedules are crammed with shows urging us to travel further, drive faster, build bigger, buy more, yet none of them are deemed to offend the rules, which really means that they don't offend the interests of business or the pampered sensibilities of the Aga class. The media, driven by fear and advertising, are hopelessly biased towards the consumer economy and against the biosphere.

The wealth creators of neoliberal mythology are some of the most effective wealth destroyers the world has ever seen. 

When you warn people about the dangers of climate change, they call you a saint. When you explain what needs to be done to stop it, they call you a communist. 

The angry men know that this golden age (of fossil fuels) has gone; but they cannot find the words for the constraints they hate. Clutching their copies of Atlas Shrugged, they flail around, accusing those who would impede them of communism, fascism, religiosity, misanthropy, but knowing at heart that these restrictions are driven by something far more repulsive to the unrestrained man: the decencies we owe to other human beings. 

The corporations are powerful only because we have allowed them to be. In theory, it is we, not they, who mandate the state. But we have neglected our duty of citizenship, and they have taken advantage of our neglect to seize the reins of government.

Change arises from conviction. Stop voting in fear. Start voting for hope.

Rewilding is not about abandoning civilization but about enhancing it. It is to ‘love not man the less, but Nature more’.

In motivating people to love and defend the natural world, an ounce of hope is worth a ton of despair.

So if you don’t fit in; if you feel at odds with the world; if your identity is troubled and frayed; if you feel lost and ashamed, it could be because you have retained the human values you were supposed to have discarded. You are a deviant. Be proud.

To seek enlightenment, intellectual or spiritual; to do good; to love and be loved; to create and to teach: these are the highest purposes of humankind. If there is meaning in life, it lies here. 

 ― George Monbiot
 

Jack Kornfield: Think of Yourself as a Beacon Spreading the Light of Loving-Kindness

These are some wonderful quotes reflecting the wisdom and strong, beautiful heart of Jack Kornfield, who has long been among my treasured teachers. May the essence of the teachings here inform and inspire us all, infusing us with ever growing conscious commitment to being the peace and loving-kindness our world yearns for. Molly 


The Courageous Heart Is the One That Is 
Unafraid To Open Itself To the World

In the end these things matter most: How well did you love? How fully did you live? How deeply did you let go?

It is not enough to know that love and forgiveness are possible. We have to find ways to bring them to life.

Every individual has a unique contribution.

To open deeply, as genuine spiritual life requires, we need tremendous courage and strength, a kind of warrior spirit.

Much of spiritual life is self-acceptance, maybe all of it.

The willingness to empty ourselves and then seek our true nature is an expression of great and courageous love.

The way I treat my body is not disconnected from the way I treat my family or the commitment I have to peace on our earth. 

The things that matter most in our lives are not fantastic or grand. They are moments when we touch one another.  

We need a warrior’s heart that lets us face our lives directly, our pains and limitations, our joys and possibilities.

Forgiveness is the act of not putting anyone out of your heart, even those who are acting out of deep ignorance or out of confusion and pain.

Forgiveness is giving up all hope of a better past.

When there is no judgment and no blame, we seek not to perfect the world but to perfect our love for what is on this earth. 

To meditate is to discover new possibilities, to awaken the capacities each of us has to live more wisely, more lovingly, more compassionately, and more fully. 

With mindfulness, we are learning to observe in a new way, with balance and a powerful disidentification. 

Equanimity arises when we accept the way things are.

There are many ways up the mountain and each of us must choose a practice that feels true to our heart.

To let go does not mean to get rid of. To let go means to let be. When we let be with compassion, things come and go on their own.

When we let go of our battles and open our hearts to things as they are, then we come to rest in the present moment. This is the beginning and the end of spiritual practice.   

Peace requires us to surrender our illusions of control.

Part of the art of quieting yourself is also to honor the tears that you carry.

The heart is like a garden: It can grow compassion or fear, resentment or love. What seeds will you plant there?

We must look at ourselves over and over again in order to learn to love, to discover what has kept our hearts to allow our hearts to open.

Compassion is our deepest nature. It arises from our interconnection with all things. 

Can we not turn on one another but can we turn toward each other? 

In the end, the aim of spiritual life is to awaken a joyful freedom, a benevolent and compassionate heart in spite of everything.

You hold in your hand an invitation: to remember that no matter where you are and what you face, within your heart peace is possible. 

You can’t stop the waves but you can learn to surf.

Be mindful of intention. Intention is the seed that creates our future.

Weigh the true advantages of forgiveness and resentment to the heart. Then Choose. 

Healing comes from our innate capacity for deep listening. This deep listening or seeing is not through our ears or eyes, but with our heart and our soul.

Gratitude is confidence in life itself. In it, we feel how the same force that pushes grass through cracks in the sidewalk invigorates our own life.

The courageous heart is the one that is unafraid to open itself to the world. 

When we stop running away from what presents itself in each moment, our loving care for ourselves and one another can flow unimpeded. 

Think of yourself as a beacon spreading the light of loving-kindness. 
  
 ― Jack Kornfield

With Jack Kornfield and friends Olivia Oso and Jenn Krumm, 2013