Luminalogue

Finding Our Way Through

Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries.  Without them humanity cannot survive.
     ~ Dalai Lama

A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.
     ~ Albert Einstein

If there was a conversation that could begin to ease all suffering--within yourself, within others, and within the world--wouldn't you want to join that conversation?  Earlier this year, I received an invitation to work with Ashley Cooper and Melanie Wroe to produce a guidebook for Seeds of Compassion, an initiative to nurture kindness and compassion in the world.  We were asked to create a simple process that anyone could use to engage in meaningful conversation about compassion--what it means, what it looks like, and how we can embody it more fully in our world.

Since the publication of this guidebook, Compassion Circles are cropping up everywhere.  In libraries, homes, work-places, churches and play-grounds, ordinary people from all walks of life are taking time out of their busy lives to sit in circles, reflect and converse with each other about compassion.  Melanie, Ashley, and I have had the privilege of hosting some of these gatherings, and every time, I am moved by the experience of being part of a room full of people deeply engaged in conversation about a topic that is so essentially human...so familiar, and yet somehow, often remote from our conscious experience.  It is heartening to see so many people involved in making compassion more explicit in our world.

At a recent gathering, participants observed that the primary words embedded in the word compassion are compass and passion.  Curious to follow that etymological conversation thread, I went to my dictionary where I learned that a compass is not only an instrument for finding one's way, but also a means to bring about and comprehend.  And passion is not only a strong desire, but also a suffering.  It seems that in compassion we have the potential not only to comprehend, but also to find our way through suffering--to extend our small circles of caring beyond ourselves and our familiars to encompass humanity and the world.

What if we can find a way to see beyond our "optical delusions of consciousness" and connect with each other through our suffering?  What if we can find a way to be our best even when we are at our worst?  What if we can create a space to reflect and enquire--to ask valuable questions that get to the heart of what matters?  If you're curious and inspired, please join the conversation and host a Compassion Circle... because it takes all of us to grow the seed within each of us...

Presence: It's about Time

"...But because truly being here is so much; because everything here apparently needs us, this fleeting world, which in some strange way keeps calling to us.  Us, the most fleeting of all..." 

--Rainer Maria Rilke

Many of us regularly travel by air through different time zones, mindfully orienting ourselves to the time of our departures and arrivals at our various destinations, sometimes feeling like it takes awhile to truly arrive, body, mind, and spirit. When we fly, we are particularly attentive to the condition and experience of traveling through time. We navigate clock time—Pacific time, Mountain time, Central time, Eastern time, Atlantic time. We set our watches and schedules, adapting our sleep, meals, and meetings, so we can be on time wherever we are in time. Some of us even have watches that display multiple time zones, so we can more easily attend to the different time zones that constitute our worlds.

Yet, how many of us recognize that we are always traveling through time, experiencing different time zones from moment to moment? At any given moment, we are experiencing the multi-faceted nature of time—simultaneously traveling through past, present, and future, then, now, later, before, after, navigating digital time, analog time, calendar time, biorhythmic time, seasonal time, daytime, nighttime, dream time. We experience the elasticity of time, living years that pass in the blink of an eye, and minutes that hold eternity, and encounters that even seem to transcend time, depending on our experience of the moment. Our history and our potential are present in every instant.

Here's a thought experiment:

The Language of Trees

     I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.            ~Henry David Thoreau

     And this, our life, exempt from public haunt, finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything.              ~William Shakespeare

Ever since I was a child, I have had this curious habit of talking to trees.  I find myself touching their trunks in passing, sitting at their roots to rest, and saying silent hellos...exchanging elements of air well-grounded in earth.  I have always loved their company.

I don't know when they started talking back...  Perhaps they were always talking, and I simply didn't hear or perhaps it took a while for me to extend the bounds of culturally-sanctioned sanity.  I don't know, but somehow it happened, and now, from time to time, I find myself deep in conversation with trees.

The Gift that We Are

...Everyone is a gift waiting to be received. All we have to do is open our bodies, hearts, and minds to receive each other...  Excerpt from a journal entry, Karen Sella, 1993

I have gift. For a long time, I didn't know it. And for a long time after that, I discounted it because it is a gift that we all share---like air---and it seemed kind of dumb to offer a gift that everyone already has. Yet, people kept receiving it just the same. And they would thank me for it with much joy and gratitude---as if I had something to do with it, and I would kind of squirm inside with embarrassment and confusion. How do I accept thanks for something that isn't mine to give? Didn't they know that I wasn't offering anything to them that they didn't already have?

But we don't really have a choice when it comes to giving our gifts---even when we're not consciously giving, people are receiving just the same.

Heart of Becoming

We have been ending since the beginning,
Beginning for fear of ending,
And now, we return once more to finish what we started...

I am a child of goodbye
Always just arriving at the point of my departure,
Destined to leave before reaching my destination.
There is a comfort in rooting and uprooting that is unsettling.
I know how to lift off and touch down--to move through air,
To be in contact without connecting and to connect in a heartbeat
Without anchoring my future in futile desire.

Yet, deep beneath the surface, there is a terror of losing the possibility of this moment--
And the moment that transcends time is lost in my vain attempt to hold on--
To contain that which cannot possibly be contained in the smallness of my being.

I have said a hundred goodbyes without knowing,
Bound by fear to relinquish true presence.
We come, we go, and we are left bereft,
Yearning for hellos that rarely heed our desires,
But deep beneath the waves of coming and going,
Rests a vast stillness
Where surrender grants freedom to those who dare to die.

At the heart of becoming is a fear of absence that dissolves upon arrival.
We cannot hold the love that holds us.
In love, we are eternal.

Karen Sella

An Amazing Place to Be...

On the way home from the airport the other day, my cabdriver, a charming man from Ethiopia, asked me where I'm from--a seemingly simple question for which a suitably simple answer still eludes me. Where am I from? My birthplace? My heritage? My nation? My current place of residence? Born in Rhode Island, the child of an American mother and European father, living abroad most of my childhood, moving frequently as an adult, and currently anchored on Bainbridge Island, I often feel as if I'm from nowhere and everywhere.

My secret response is often "Earth," but beyond the realm of Mork and Mindy (for those of you familiar), and perhaps, a few New Age environmentalists, I have a feeling that this would be perceived as either affected or flippant. Wanting to be perceived as neither, I kept my efficient one-word response to myself and shared a few of the places that the question "where are you from" evokes, prompting another question from my charming cabdriver---what place do you like the most?

It's been a while since someone's asked me that one---yet another historically, crazy-making question. In the past, I would have explained how I like many places for different reasons. I might have thought about another place I'd rather be. This time, however, I found myself realizing that lately I like wherever I am the most---and what an amazing place to be.

Stillness in Motion

Training began with children who were taught to sit still and enjoy it. They were taught to use their organs of smell, to look when there was apparently nothing to see, and to listen intently when all seemingly was quiet. A child that cannot sit still is a half-developed child.

Standing Bear, Lakota Indian Chief

I read this quote years ago, and have recalled it often in idle moments, sometimes as a reminder to quell mindless doing...sometimes as an invitation to rejoice in endless being... Sometimes, I just wonder what Standing Bear would say about a world filled with so many half-developed adults...

Today, on the ferry, eyes drifting over choppy water and gray skies, I saw fins and flukes, a pod of Orcas... stillness in motion...