Everyone is feeling unsettled. We can start, right now, exactly where we are and openly admit our fears, our disillusionment, what ever it is we are feeling. Let the feelings come un-resisted, so they can also abate on their own, rising and ceasing, advancing and ebbing like waves cresting, advancing and receding on a sandy beach.
More than ever, it is necessary for people practicing the Dharma and other spiritual traditions to keep their heads, when so many others are losing theirs. Compassionate activism cannot come from a place of anger and resistance, we need to take care of our own mental and emotional states so we might help others who may not know how to find equilibrium on their own. The human body is like an electrical transformer, and toxic emotions can be transferred below the level of consciousness simply by being exposed to others who are grounded in fear and anger. Hysteria can be neutralized, but not by people who are angry, resisting and struggling themselves.
Good evening and welcome to Monday Group Meditation. We will be sitting from 8:00 to 10:30 PM Eastern Time. It is not necessary to sit for the entire extended time, which is set up to make it convenient for people in four North American Time Zones; sit for as long as you like and when it is most convenient for you. Monday Group Meditation is open to everyone, believers and non-believers, who are interested in gathering in silence. If you are new to meditation and would like to try it for yourself, Mindful Nature gave a good description of one way to meditate in an earlier diary, copied and pasted below:
"It is a matter of focusing attention mostly. In many traditions, the idea is to sit and focus on the rising and falling of the breath. Not controlling it, but sitting in a relaxed fashion and merely observing experiences of breathing, sounds, etc. Be aware of your thoughts, but don't engage in them. When your mind wanders (it will, often), then return to focus on breath and repeat."
Note: You are also welcome to join us on Sunday mornings at 10:00AM for the Dkos Sangha Open Threads which are hosted by davehouck.
As Edmund Burke said,
“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”
This week I’ve been thinking in great detail about what I can do, personally, in this world we are currently living in. For the most part, my sphere of influence is rather limited. I’ve felt a need to pull inward, not in effort to withdraw from the world, but to ground myself in that which does not change. Being grounded in That, whatever you might call it, is what provides ballast and strength when it is time to act. It is what provides authentic power to our actions; Ghandi, Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King each were grounded in it, which endowed their actions with authentic power. This is what made them, ultimately, successful.
Even if we are not Ghandi or MLK, we can still have a profound effect on the people and world around us, simply by acting from a place of peace, compassion, and a desire to help improve something, rather than from resistance and anger.
So I will continue the practices we’ve been reading about the last few Mondays: Loving Kindness, Gratitude and so on; these are helpful for both grounding and centering myself, and as a softening response to the harshness in the world. I refuse to hate anyone, people who are acting out are suffering due to their ignorance.
A lot of people are discovering that they are truly groundless and they are struggling for a way to maintain control and get solid ground under their feet by finding someone to blame. Assigning blame solves nothing, and in truth there are many, many factors that have brought us to this point, so blaming this, that or the other is an oversimplification of contents of the place we find ourselves. Often when we are feeling totally out of control and in fear, it is good to bring order to our physical environment, clean up clutter, complete nagging tasks that have been waiting on the back burner, bring some fresh flowers into the house, they have an amazing ability to heal and cheer. Doing these types of things makes us feel empowered on a subtle level, and helps organize our thinking.
Earlier I saw a Sharon Salzberg quote to the effect that sometimes during dark times the only thing we can do is to keep moving forward. It seems to me that we face a situation that can neither be solved, nor fixed from the same level of consciousness that created it. We must continue to move forward with our spiritual practice.
And sometimes it helps to have something concrete to do, to know we can do something beyond taking care of ourselves and our personal environment to make a difference. To this end I am sharing a short, 2 minute 20 second, video entitled “5 Things to Disrupt Racism.” In truth the information contained within it can be used against any kind of bullying: racism, sexism, anti-semitism, etc. So many times when bullies act out, people stand by idly because they don’t know what to do. One person with the courage to offer assistance has the potential to show the way for others to do the same.