Undoing and Becoming

Apr 6

Undoing and Becoming ~ Finding Our Way, In Prayer, Into The Heart, In Service Of The Whole.

As the external structures are being dismantled, shaken and shattered around us what can we hold on to?

Where can we find stability and where do we plant the seeds of our heart visions when the future is quivering with uncertainty?

Live In Prayer

To Live in Prayer, is not grasping helplessly to a dream or desire that is beyond now, rather it is opening the awareness to the reality that it already is. It is now about waiting for Love, God, Spirit or Magic to appear, for that is already within us, rather it connects us to the Source from which it comes. There is no bridge to cross and we don’t need to shout to be heard as we are already with the One to whom we pray. Prayer connects us through Love and it becomes how we move through the world. It is to collaborate with the living potential of now and to co-create with the infinite possibility that exists through all time; before, now and beyond.

Prayer generates connection, it kindles the vibration of joy, devotion and trust through which wisdom and guidance can flow and from where we can then take right action to create and experience the very vision of our prayers. For both ourselves and the collective.

Now is the time to tune into the deeper place within and to go beyond the surface and material dreams we have been led to believe will make us happy, desirable or complete.

The spiritual and wisdom traditions teach us that change is constant, everything moves within the same cycle of creation, sustaining itself and then dissolving back into Source, and so it goes on. The exception is that of our innermost Self, the Atman, the Soul, the part of us believed to remain constant and eternal through all of time and space. Consider a single drop of the larger ocean of unchanging, eternal awareness or a flicker of light belonging to the all-pervading light of consciousness that is the ground of all Being. This drop or light is within each of us and it is where we must turn to as the world shakes beneath and around us. It is our anchor of stability and it is the well of wisdom that we have been taught to seek outside. It is the Sanctuary that offers an unconditional embrace of Love and the refuge for our weary heads and hearts.

We can enter this refuge through the spaces between the breaths, in the emptiness beneath each rising breath and at the end of every exhale. We can discover this ever-present sanctuary when we rest into the stillness beneath the movement and sounds around and within us, when we relax into not doing and are willing to become.

Take yoga, a path that seeks to show us this non-changing aspect of our Being and offers tools, practices and methods to discover a gateway to deeper peace, greater freedom and unconditional compassionate Love actually within us. The ancient scriptures guide us into the Hrdaya, the spiritual compassionate heart, the inner sanctum where we can explore our living potential and grow to become more resilient, loving, receptive and creative.

The body of the yogi or yogini is the vessel and the heart is the alchemical chamber through which we transmute and transform our experiences into the fertile soil from which to evolve, unfold and expand our true Self. Remembering, returning and becoming One with the eternal Self within. It is this innermost essence that recognises our place in the dynamic field of consciousness and trusts the Intelligence that is constantly birthing and destroying and re-organising the highly complex, living, interconnected fabric of the universe that we are a part of. Through prayer and meditative inward practices we return to our heart, seeing and trusting all challenges as opportunities to evolve and invitations to practice acceptance and non-attachment, to grow compassion and loving-kindness. To remember our place within and to co-create with this great tapestry of ever changing life.

Prayer asks for deep trust and attunement to a Higher Intelligence, whatever we believe that to be, God or Goddess, Great Spirit, Nature, Love or Consciousness. It is invoking, listening into and believing in the power of This as a universally accessible force that can pierce through the darkness that we individually and collectively experience and illumine our mind and heart. It awakens courage to help carry us across each threshold into the ‘caves we fear to enter’, with the innermost knowing that those scary dark places 'hold the treasures that we seek’ (Jospeh Campbell). Prayer speaks from a place of recognition that all of Life is Sacred, all of Me and all of You, all that is Seen and all that is Unseen. Prayer is the voice of our Soul, speaking to the Highest Truth which although sometimes hidden, is alive and dancing through all time and space. It is the shraddha, the courageous, undoubting faith that tirelessly seeks to bring us home to the Heart.

“In this space within the heart are placed both Heaven and Earth, both fire and air, both Sun and Moon, both the Lightning and the stars. Whatever is here and whatever is not here, all that is rests within it”

~ Chandogya Upanishad VIII.1.3

Rest In The Heart

When we bring our awareness into our heart we are able to return closer to our natural state of being, the place within where we discover a softness and a yielding strength. Where the walls of resistance melt and we surrender a little more to the innate process of becoming, unfolding into our most expansive creative selves, empowered with Love, rooted in and guided by our deepest inner wisdom.

Now is the time to turn within, to get grounded and quiet and where possible, to pull back from the race of doing and achieving. Most of us have already been physically grounded yet the mind and nervous system can still be running on over drive. To find that place of refuge and heart wisdom, we must invite and give permission to our whole being to take time to rest into NOT doing, to begin the undoing and truly enter the becoming. We are being asked to surrender not only to the undoing of the external world as we know it, but equally to our own breaking down, from which then arises the breakthrough, the rising anew.

Notice how the mind grips to media fed stories and information, desperate to understand and greedy for information that might create some (false) sense of control yet is also triggering the sympathetic nervous system. This heightens the fight or flight mode and anxiety gnaws more easily under the surface as a growing collective fear and pain penetrates through the dynamic field.

When the mind grips at information it creates a bondage that imprisons the innate freedom of the (breath and the) heart to expand and carry us through the tougher times. Consider the heart as a flower, with the potential to unfold its petals infinitely into space, with no resistance and no force. Breathed effortlessly by an innate life force. Imagine an energetic web contracting tightly around the closed petals, the web, tightens as the mind races around, gripping at threads of information, clinging desperately to old comforts or past traumas, grasping at hopes of the future or battling fears of what might or might not happen. What if we can let go, even a little, of the tendency to fill the mind space by spinning stories and rather bring the awareness to the breath and into the heart?

Can we let the mind breathe and reach, without expectation or need to know, into the open space beyond the narratives to touch the stillness, just for a moment. This void (of potential), the emptiness of not knowing can become a place of great freedom and it is a living possibility within each of us right now. It is our responsibility to both our individual and to the collective wellbeing to tap back into this inner well of quietude, for here we can be guided by the heart to see beyond the limited systems of ‘us vs them’, of blame and shame, of scarcity and fear, which somehow seem carefully planned to suck us in.

It is a daily practice to stay open to a Truth beyond this, to remain conscious that we do not become entirely manipluated. We have to question everything, ask ‘where is this belief coming from?’ The more we come into the heart, the more we are able to seek a Higher Truth and to see the Self in others, then a true longing for and sense of community may arise within this dynamic living field. Reverend Michael B Beckwith speaks to this need for true community to rise within the collective as ‘evolutionary collaboration’. I believe it is an essential evolution which requires the dissolution of old ideas and paradigms, ones where comparison and competition fuel a sense of separation and amplify inequality and injustice. Collaboration is the necessary ground from which we are being asked to evolve and it is definitely a path of the heart.

The Vibration of Joy (serving the dynamic field)

There has never been a more necessary time within our collective lifetime to welcome the vibration of joy.

If we are truly part of living dynamic field, which quantum physics has proven that we are, each one of us has the opportunity to make choices which raise the vibration of and strengthen that field. Our thoughts, words and actions imprint the field, they ripple through and can either lift or dampen it. To be joyful in a time of intense collective suffering and pain is not to dismiss the circumstances, and it may also have to be sought more consciously with direct intention to penetrate through the heavy dark energies. And when awaken that joy in our hearts, it must certainly be without shame or guilt as each smile, every echo of laughter, each appreciation of beauty and of the sacred, every song sung and dance danced, will quite literally raise the vibration, growing Love and protection to support all beings.

We are meeting a literal virus yet fear has also become a living breathing virus in itself, weakening not only the immune system as our body freezes into the sympathetic nervous system, but also the dynamic field, essentially flooding a heavier more challenging energy into, what is in essence, pure unconditional Love. We become deprived of direct access to the all-Loving energy of the raw dynamic field; an energy that innately seekes to strengthen the interdependent fabric of our existence so that we can rise up to meet the challenges we face with courage and compassion, in true service of our own and one another’s welling, not in defence of an old paradigm that feeds on hate and division.

The virus is teaching us just how interconnected we are and waiting for us to find evolutionary collaborative new ways from which to move forward.

If we listen in, most of us will recognise that this is not a time to wait for things to return to what they were, it is a time to question everything. To prepare to let go of the old ways, to let the fierce loving destructive force of Nature dissolve us so that from the ashes, we may begin again. This is not a time to try to win, rather to receive the lessons that come through the great dissolution and use them to co-create the new instead of fight for the old.

“The Self does not identify itself with success or failure - the very idea of becoming this or that is unthinkable. The Self understands that success and failure are relative and related, that they are the very warp and weft of life. Learn from both and go beyond. If you have not learnt, repeat.”

~ Nisargadatta

We will meet great loss and pain, this is Life, initiating us through processes of letting go and grief, asking us to rethink and question everything we have ever held onto. Yet even in the darkest, most challenging moments we must remember to look up to the sky at the never ending space that holds galaxies of planets and stars, expanding and becoming until they each return back into space. Can we find a moment to rest our back against the steady still trunk of a tree or lay upon the unmoving earth beneath us and remember we are held. Can we look deep into the eyes of another and see the eternal soul that lives within even the deepest pain, can we allow flowing tears to bless our cheeks with the healing waters of our body. Can we appreciate the exquisite beauty of a flower or a single leaf, unfolding in a love prayer to the skies and let the innocent giggle of a small child reflect to us the innate joy that lies within each of us.

Life is still happening, the unfolding of nature is the song of Ananda, of blissful joy in divine play, the Universe birthing love into and unto itself, Shiv and Shakti in Divine Love play with one another.

Yes, we must stay informed, we must attend to our duties and responsibilities to ourselves and one another, but we must not forget joy. The song of the heart is the greatest medicine of the Soul and of the Earth. To generate the vibration of Joy is the medicine and a high service of now to the Whole as it will penetrate through the dynamic field.

This is a time for song, for mantra, to sing the names of the divine, to chant the ancient songs of the Vedas and of the great sages where we are literally sending capsules of Love (as described by Sally Kempton) out into the world. Sacred sound and songs is an incredibly powerful way to awaken the qualities of the heart within us. To bring healing to all the layers of our being, to the heart-mind continuum and to charge the space-time continuum with healing frequencies. We can all do this, sing, dance, laugh, appreciate the simple withstanding beauty around us, and it is easy to share through live internet space and time, over the phone or within your ‘quarantine’ family.

What small thing can you do today to activate the vibration of joy?

I encourage you, sing, dance or play a game, a sport of an instrument. What brings joy and laughter into the field for you?

Maybe it is to listen to a song, reach out to a friend, take a walk in nature, hug a tree, get creative with papers and colours, cook your favourite meal, find a way to share a sweet and joyful moment with another. If we keep stretching our energy and awareness out in this way we will grow joy within ourselves and others. Healing will happen and the Power of Love and Community will reach far and wide.