I spent the past week conducting a seven-day retreat in Big Sur with an extraordinary group of people supporting one another in transformation. As the sun set over the ocean on the last day of 2019 and the final hours of a decade, I felt my feet softly planted on the green earth and allowed myself to savor the experience of transition, acknowledging the threshold and invitation that the new year brings.
As a group we asked the questions:
What is it time to let go of? Are we willing to let go?
What is it now the season for?
What are we ready and willing to step into, acknowledging our intentions for personal and collective healing?
What clarity arises when we choose to drop the popular approach of “resolutions” for a new year and meet ourselves from deep listening and awareness instead?
As I reflect on the gravity of our times, I'm reminded of the Chinese symbol for crisis, which translates as "danger and opportunity." While many people are feeling overwhelmed by these times and powerless in how to respond, I invoke the spirit of my dear friend and teacher Joanna Macy, who in a recent conversation shared in her passionate and compassionate voice, "I wouldn't want to miss this for anything." In other words, systems which have failed to serve life for generations upon generations are finally unravelling, and we are privileged to be here to witness, to serve, and to be part of transformation. Being part of the self-healing of our world does not mean that we can feel confident that we can do anything to stop climate change or species extinction; however, regardless of the outcome, each and every one of us can choose how we respond to the challenges of these times. What this means is that we can be courageous in our practice and take risks in our lives in order to re-awaken together to the wholeness that is who we really are. We can take responsibility for releasing the myth of separation which has confused humanity for so many generations.
This is NOT a time for spiritual bypassing, which means to use spirituality to justify avoiding the deeper work of facing our collective pain and our shadows. This is a time to listen deeply and to acknowledge both the loss of living systems on our planet and the potential for change. While feeling pain for the growing tension with the Middle East and the fires burning ferociously in Australia, I learn that Finland is considering a 4-day work week and 6-hour work day for all… a true expression of peace and sanity. I learn of mushroom guru Paul Stametz’ global project for healing the honeybee crisis. I hear from a meditation student whose entire life has changed through his willingness to wholeheartedly take on the practice of deep listening. I feel the true resonance of “danger and opportunity.”
I offer these encouragements for 2020 with fierce compassion and possibility:
1. Be willing to feel wholeheartedly.... your sadness, grief, anger, outrage. You are part of the natural feedback system of planet earth and your willingness to feel fully serves the whole. Your tears are an expression of wholeness. When we are honest and honor our grief thoroughly, we can allow the reality of interconnection to inform us. Grief and joy are two sides of the same coin.
2. Every time you engage with the news, please pause to come back to center, breathe, and affirm out loud with others the wholeness that is innate, even at the same time that destruction is going on. One of the symptoms of this time is the degree of stress weighing on the human spirit. Please take devoted care of your nervous system in these times of disruption.
3. Pay attention to everything. Believe nothing. Are you not tired of assuming that your conditioned mind is the authority? How can you support yourself to pay closer attention and turn to your actual experience as guide, rather than to the mind of separation? There is a collective invitation now to reclaim the authority of our hearts rather than the conditioned mind.
4. Be willing to take passionate responsibility for your stuff. We all get triggered. Cultivate a devoted practice relational mindfulness. Become a social relief in times when we do not need more drama in the social and interpersonal field.
5. Ask for help. We are in this together. The mind of separation always affirms the narrative, "but I'm alone... I can't do it. It's hopeless. I’m helpless." Are you sure? Do you really want to keep believing this redundant and limiting voice? Are you willing to step into a larger field of possibility? Know who your allies are and ask your allies for support. Open up to allies from all realms of life, the visible and the invisible.
6. Be willing to meet those you interact with each day, yourself included, with openness and curiosity rather than assumption and judgment.. Become curious about cultural humility. The conditioned mind has a strong capacity to perceive different as “other” and to perceive through the lens of hierarchy. We all have an opportunity to end that habit now, but it has to begin within.
7. Risk compassionate action. Compassion can be gentle and compassion can be fierce but we know it by how it feels, not by doing mental analysis. When is it time to be transparent and speak up? When is it time to simply listen and be a compassionate witness? When is it time to take a risk and take a stand in a way that you never have before?
8. Be a spiritual friend to all, first and foremost to yourself. Spiritual friendship or kalyanna mitta means that you are willing to see and recognize the wholeness and good in another even at the same time that you can see their conditioning.
9. Get off your phone and off your screen. Create conscious boundaries and right use of technology, so that technology may be our ally rather than a deterrent. Do it!, as an offering of sanity and relational intelligence.
10. Play…Dance… Engage in laughter as often as possible! Celebrate your vibrant aliveness and creative energy. We need the nourishment of genuine body-based play, co-creativity and celebration of life more than ever NOW.
11. Every day, work on one piece of re-weaving the web of human relationship. It has been torn and frayed. One interaction at a time, one breath at a time, let's re-weave it together. We do this by being real, being authentic, and letting ourselves be seen as we are, perfectly imperfect. We do this by learning vulnerability and re-learning honesty.
12. If you find yourself in moments of dismay, open your eyes and look around you. Remember the miracle of nature's intelligence. Open your eyes to the healing medicine of flowers, the consciousness of trees, the power of mushrooms, the intelligence of the network of myceliae just beneath the soil. Remember that both creation and destruction are a part of life’s cycle, all of life….and that the earth is going through a natural cycle that it has gone through before.
May we be willing to meet life as it unfolds with awe, wonder, courage and generosity. May we access both the willingness to grieve, and feel together and the willingness to re-awaken to wholeness. May we be willing to listen deeply and act courageously..
I will end these reflections by invoking a metaphor. Imagine yourself outside on a dark night. The lights which make life feel familiar and make navigation easy are gone, and you find yourself walking along unfamiliar terrain, moving along a path in the pitch dark. The only choice is to walk step by step, letting your body deeply listen as you walk - listening within and out. As you begin to let go of your fear of the dark, you strengthen your capacity to move gently through this unknown terrain, with care and curiosity as your guide. You begin to perceive yourself and your environment in a new way, trusting that life is guiding you. You feel reconnected to the powerful apparatus for relational intelligence which you embody as a living organism. If you allow your self to move in this way, it will begin to dawn on you that darkness is not the absence of light. It is a powerful essence of nature itself and a great spiritual teacher.
My commitment as a teacher this year is to offer support in all the ways that I can for those who are ready to go deeper. I guide a community of people who understand the power of practice to cultivate personal, interpersonal, transpersonal, social, societal, and global change. This New Year’s blog post will be followed by deeper inquiries into each of these encouragements.
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In Peace and Passion,
Eden
