I had the great honor and joy to spend a beautiful weekend holding space for my Quaker friends to discern how we skillfully engage in practices of justice, liberation, and healing.
Leading with Spirit + Faith, practitioners were guided to focus on “discernment over data” in order to:
GET GROUNDED — Cutting through the noise in order to get clear about one’s intentions and to honestly assess what one feels compelled and equipped to do.
BUILD CAPACITY — Cultivating an intimate understanding of one’s self and one’s values; examining the ways we each embody privilege and risk as well as each individual’s unique relationship to injustice, power and oppression; fortifying one’s self through transformative practices of deep listening and skillful communication. Discerning how each of us shows up, lends our presence and privilege, and can learn to apply our skills without creating more harm.
CENTER OUR WELLNESS + PRACTICE ACCOUNTABILITY — Using sacred tools and skillful strategies to restore, nourish and sustain healing, well-being, and wholeness; and establishing the circles of trust to support our learning and growing toward compassion, connection, and reconciliation.
if there is no silence, there is no stillness. if there is no stillness, there is no insight. if there is no insight, there is no clarity.
— tenzin priyadarshi
“No, my hope is necessary. But it is not enough. Alone it does not win but without it my struggle will be weak and wobbly. We need critical hope like a fish needs unpolluted water.”
“Resistance may be deeply resonant with black culture and history, but it is not sufficient for describing the totality of black humanity.
In humanity, quiet is our dignity. This quiet is represented by our interior…In its magnificence, quiet is an invitation to consider black cultural identity from somewhere other than the conceptual places that we have come to accept as definitive of and singular to black culture—not the “hip personality” exposed to and performed for the world, but the interior aliveness, the reservoir of human complexity that is deep inside…
It is this exploration, this reach toward the inner life, that an aesthetic of quiet makes possible; and it is this that is the path to a sweet freedom: a black expressiveness without publicness as its forbearer, a black subject in the undisputed dignity of its humanity.”
As a contemplative and empath who has a heart for justice, liberation and healing, this excerpt from Kevin Quashie’s book rings loud and true for me!
Don’t mistake someone’s deep-soul need (or preference or disposition) for quiet/silence as passivity or inaction. In my practice, the opposite of active is not passive. It is receptive.
Some of us need to time to cut through the noise in order to thoroughly digest and reflect on the energy and information we receive. So I value and facilitate processes of discernment and self-inquiry that help us transform “silence into language and action” (in the words of the powerhouse Audre Lorde). From this place of quiet introspection, we can cull insight, clarity and resilience to move from personal healing and transformation toward skillful action.
Last month a highly-intuitive friend sent me this video for releasing ourselves from the karma and burdens of others, and it was a pure revelation!
First and foremost, this meditation arrived divinely-timed at the end of a season when I had discerned a need to reclaim pieces of my soul from those who were incapable of bearing witness to my growth and my wholeness. In that process of reclamation, I had also recognized the importance of leaving the blessing of grace and mercy to stand in for those old impressions/memories of me. And because healing is not one-time event, I was prepared for something more to eventually show up and support this new level of growth.
Second, with one simple metaphor — likening cutting cords to cutting weeds: they’ll grow back if you don’t pull them out — it shifted the paradigm of teachings I’d previously encountered on cutting energetic cords! In the past, I’d used cord-cutting visualizations to unfetter myself from people and situations whenever lingering unresolved issues were unlikely to be fully addressed and transformed, and reconciliation was not possible. I truly found it helpful. Still, as we get equipped with new tools and new understanding, we can go back and dive deeper in order to rectify, amend, clear out and transform the seeds of suffering.
Between the two full and new moon cycles since then, I have pulled it out of my medicine bag nearly a dozen times for myself and in prayer on behalf of others who asked for support with transforming conditions and circumstances that are a source of discord in their lives. And it has indeed been good medicine! So now, under the auspices of the new moon, I offer it to you. Make it your own (as you’ll see below the video that I have done).
May it open the gates to new possibilities for compassion, generosity, skillful understanding, and authentic connection.
May it release you from the exhaustion, worry, guilt and resentment of over-giving.
May it help you discern the difference between duty and obligation so that you are empowered to make skillful choices from a sense of honor instead of acting out of habit and expectation.
May you trust that by centering your wellness and unhooking yourself from those who lack the capacity to offer mutual care, opportunities for healing will deepen and expand.
May you trust that they will be guided to grow into skills, tap into resources, and call upon a larger circle of wise council for support.
May it restore you and fill you up with abundance.
Unhooking Meditation (with my expansions in italics):
I unhook myself from the ancestral burdens and adverse karma of all people, places and things that no longer serve me — sending them into the light with love, grace, and mercy to be healed and resolved as I am/ have been healed and resolved from them — and restore, reconcile, and redeem myself with the Divine Lightnourishing me with love, peace, strength, grace, mercy, good health, free will and the optimum balanced flow of Divine energy. This wound is healed.
Shining the light on and supporting practitioners of Lansing Area Mindfulness Community in the effort to bring this documentary about our root teacher Thich Nhat Hanh to the Regal Cinema on November 6 at 7:30 PM.
Our fall series, Bearing Witness begins this Sunday! Over the next few months, we’ll be looking back, beneath + beyond as we contemplate a range of queries as practices related to our encounters with joy, sorrow, in/justice, forgiveness and reconciliation.
Doors open just before 11 AM. Centering begins @ 11:10ish. Doors are locked at 11:30 AM.
The new end time reflects the reality of how our time together has organically unfolded. So I’ve officially extended the practice an extra 30 minutes to allow more space to enrich our silence, connection and insight.
Whether arriving late or departing early, please enter and exit with mindfulness-–observing noble silence and, if possible, arriving/departing during the transition periods between practices.
sun + breath + good spiritual friends + scratch-made yummies = harvest!
Thank you, loves, for sharing your gifts — hugs, hearts, laughter, presence, silence, curiosities, discoveries, baking/gardening/pickling talents…and so much more!
We’ll take refuge in the full embrace of Sangha on October 8th when our fall series Bearing Witness begins.
Love that this gorgeous bouquet serendipitously became the yantra for our meditation and contemplation:
Turning toward the joy and magic of harvest — reaping and celebrating the abundance we’ve earned in the form of clarity, truth and authenticity, love with wisdom, trust and accountability.
Open ya eyes wide and see the truth of the skin I’m in. #TakeItAllIn
As a Dharma practitioner, I have cultivated Sangha on the sacred grounds of the Satipatthana Sutta (theFour Establishments of Mindfulness) and, in our gatherings, turn us again and again and again back to this foundational practice that teaches us to listen deeply,
see clearly,
and “remain established in the observation of the body in the body, diligent, with clear understanding, mindful, having abandoned every craving and every distaste for this life” [Majjhima Nikaya 10, as translated in Thich Nhat Hanh’s Transformation + Healing]. So too with the observation of feelings, thoughts/mental states and perceptions of whatever is in our field of awareness as we engage the world around us.
It is a spiritual discipline to help us acknowledge, take care of, and free ourselves from our attachments (what we cling to) and aversions (what we avoid). It is a spiritual practice that fosters discernment, accountability, transformation and healing.
Our skillful understanding of how connected we all are — the principle of interdependence — does not negate or override the commitment we make to:
Show Up, Notice, Pay Attention, Be Present, Hold Space, Cultivate Silence, Listen Deeply, Bear Witness.
To avoid seeing race/ethnicity is to cling to delusion. It is neither an act of compassion or generosity and not only hinders authentic connection but flat-out undermines our capacity for justice, liberation and transformative healing.
I usually tune out during commercials, but when I heard Iyanla drop this gem in a teaser for her new season of Fix My Life, I woke the hell up!
I know what resistance looks, sounds, and feels like (thank the goddess I’ve learned to own mine). And, as an empath, I’ve been admittedly agitated by recent encounters with folks harboring energies of delusion, denial, dissatisfaction and the inability to practice accountability about things that are within their sphere of influence. all of these qualities are manifestations of our resistance to spiritual growth.
If we are truly willing to do the work, then we can develop, expand and strengthen our capacity to change our perceptions — even though we may not have the power to (immediately) change our conditions or circumstances.
Spiritual accounting calls for an honest and loving look inward to:
discern the unresolved areas that are causing disparities between our thoughts, words, and deeds.
see our habit energies and patterns of behavior that keep us stuck in grooves that cause suffering.
tend to our wounds and move toward wholeness and healing.
I’m blessed with a circle of beloveds who hold each other down, lift each other up, and trust each other to lovingly say, “Hey, sis, your shadow is showing!“
It’s okay to not be ready, to have doubts ans fears. Where I’ve learned to draw firm boundaries is with those who wear the armor of unwillingness and who are committed to their stuckness. With them, I call on the tough-love wisdom I grew up hearing: “I can’t want [your wellness/healing/wholeness] more for you than you want it for yourself.”
Uninitiated healers often spend way too much time trying to minister to wounds that aren’t theirs to heal and guide those who aren’t theirs to teach. On this, I speak from hard-won experience.
So I’ll conserve my energy, guard my intuitive spirit, filter out the lesson from the agitation, and step waaay the hell back before the connection becomes toxic.
some may see it as a premature sign of fall and lament the coming season of harvest.
but this here is actually a sign of distress and, most importantly, of its inherent capacity for self-preservation by inducing its transformation in order to heal! its profound cellular wisdom illuminates the beauty in the process of surrendering to rebirth.
a lesson for those of us who seek, cultivate and advocate/facilitate transformative healing:
the healing of wounds happens in stages and at a pace that is determined by the quality of our attention and care as well as the conditions we create to optimize our healing.
it begins with developing the capacity to discern the source of our suffering and committing to the heartwork of lovingly tending to our wounds. and, because some scars never go away, recognizing that our healing continues beyond the restoration of wound to new tissue.
rather, we invite a complete transformation that — like the tree ridding itself of invasive pests that are feeding off it — involves shedding, releasing, eliminating, purging and, ultimately, being renewed. in body, heart, mind and spirit.
healing through transformation is a willingness to be changed by the process of healing!
“Many biologists believe that an early color change is an attempt of a tree to rid itself of insect pests, especially those that feed on the juices in the cells. These insects have evolved with these trees and shrubs, and understand that when the chemical process behind the leaves changing color begins, their meal ticket ends. Rather than feeding on other leaves, many will move on in search of a better food source…
In essence, leaves changing color too early is a defensive mechanism that allows the stressed out shrub or tree to eliminate at least one source of trouble.” ~ Kristi Waterworth
tscottmiller 