a lush forest: April 2009

Healing Affirmations

Firmly establish your intention to live your life for the healing of the world. Be conscious of it, honour it, nurture it every day.

Be fully present in our time. Find the courage to breathe in the suffering of the world. Allow peace and healing to breathe out through you in return.

Do not meet power on its own terms. See through to its real nature - mind and heart made. Lead your response from that level.

Simplify. Clear away the dead wood in your life. Look for the heartwood and give it the first call on your time, the best of your energy.

Put down the leaden burden of saving the world alone. Join with others of like mind. Align yourself with the forces of resolution.

Hold in a single vision, in the same thought, the transformation of yourself and the transformation of the world. Live your life around that edge, always keeping it in sight.

As a bird flies on two wings, balance outer activity with inner sustenance.

Following your heart, realise your gifts. Cultivate them with diligence to offer knowledge and skill to the world.

Train in non-violence of body, speech and mind. With great patience to yourself, learn to make beautiful each action, word and thought.

In the crucible of meditation, bring forth day by day into your own heart the treasury of compassion, wisdom and courage for which the world longs.

Sit with hatred until you feel the fear beneath it.

Sit with fear until you feel the compassion beneath that.

Do not set your heart on particular results.

Enjoy positive action for its own sake and rest confident that it will bear fruit.

When you see violence, greed and narrow-mindedness in the fullness of its power, walk straight into the heart of it, remaining open to the sky and in touch with the earth.

Staying open, staying grounded, remember that you are the inheritor of the strengths of thousands of generations of life.

Staying open, staying grounded, recall that the thankful prayers of future generations are silently with you.

Staying open, staying grounded, be confident in the magic and power that arise when people come together in a great cause.

Staying open, staying grounded, know that the deep forces of Nature will emerge to the aid of those who defend the Earth.

Staying open, staying grounded, have faith that the higher forces of wisdom and compassion will manifest through our actions for the healing of the world.

When you see weapons of hate, disarm them with love.

When you see armies of greed, meet them in the spirit of sharing.

When you see fortresses of narrow-mindedness, breach them with truth.

When you find yourself enshrouded in dark clouds of dread, dispel them with fearlessness.

When forces of power seek to isolate us from each other, reach out with joy.

In it all and through it all, holding to your intention, let go into the music of life.

Dance!

THE SHAMBHALA WARRIOR MIND-TRAINING

John Wigham / Akuppa akuppa@mac.com

Sustainable Communities by Fritjof Capra

Five principles of organization that are connected to the basic principles of ecology and can be used as guidelines to build sustainable human communities.

The five principles are:

Interdependence, Recycling, Partnership, Flexibility, Diversity

Interdependence: In ecology, interdependence is the mutual dependence of all life processes on one another. The behaviour of every living member of the ecosystem depends on the behavior of many others. In human systems, the success of the whole community depends on the success of its individual members, while the success of each member depends on the success of the community as a whole. A sustainable community is the multiple relationships among its members. Nourishing the community means nourishing those relationships. This aware of principle emphasizes turning our attention from parts to the whole.

Recycling: The cyclical nature of ecological processes is an important principle of ecology. What is waste for one species is food for another. A major clash between economics and ecology derives

from the fact that nature is cyclical whereas our industrial systems are linear. Our businesses take resources, transform them into products plus waste, sell the products to consumers, who discard more waste once they have consumed the product. Sustainable communities need to achieve sustainable patterns in consumption and production to mirror the cyclical processes in nature.

Partnership: The cyclical exchange of energy and resources in an ecosystem is sustained by pervasive cooperation and partnership. Partnership - the tendency to associate, establish links, live inside one another, and cooperate - is one of the hallmarks of life. In human communities, partnership means democracy and personal empowerment, because each member of the community plays an important role. As a partnership proceeds, each partner better understands the needs of the other. Both partners learn and change and co‑evolve.

Flexibility: The flexibility of an ecosystem is a consequence of its multiple feedback loops, which tend to bring the system back into balance if there is a deviation from the norm due to changing environmental conditions. In human communities, flexibility means finding the optimal performance level rather than maximizing performance. Stress in a system is caused when one variable is pushed to the extreme (maximized). Flexibility also means finding the dynamic balance between stability and change, order and freedom, tradition and innovation.

Diversity: A diverse ecosystem is more resilient to change because it contains many different species with overlapping functions that can partially replace one another if something goes wrong in one part of the system. In human communities, ethnic and cultural diversity enable many different relationships and many different approaches to exist. In a diverse community, information and ideas flow freely through the entire network, and the diversity of interpretations and learning styles ‑ even the diversity of mistakes ‑ will enrich the entire community.

"A human being is a part of the whole called by us "the universe," a part limited in time and space. We experience ourselves, thoughts and feelings, as something separate from the rest - a kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of a prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and affection for a few people nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of understanding and compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty."

-Albert Einstein

The Invitation

It doesn’t interest me
what you do for a living.
I want to know
what you ache for
and if you dare to dream
of meeting your heart’s longing.

It doesn’t interest me
how old you are.
I want to know
if you will risk
looking like a fool
for love
for your dream
for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn’t interest me
what planets are
squaring your moon...
I want to know
if you have touched
the centre of your own sorrow
if you have been opened
by life’s betrayals
or have become shrivelled and closed
from fear of further pain.

I want to know
if you can sit with pain
mine or your own
without moving to hide it
or fade it
or fix it.

I want to know
if you can be with joy
mine or your own
if you can dance with wildness
and let the ecstasy fill you
to the tips of your fingers and toes
without cautioning us
to be careful
to be realistic
to remember the limitations
of being human.

It doesn’t interest me
if the story you are telling me
is true.
I want to know if you can
disappoint another
to be true to yourself.
If you can bear
the accusation of betrayal
and not betray your own soul.
If you can be faithless
and therefore trustworthy.

I want to know if you can see Beauty
even when it is not pretty
every day.
And if you can source your own life
from its presence.

I want to know
if you can live with failure
yours and mine
and still stand at the edge of the lake
and shout to the silver of the full moon,
“Yes.”

It doesn’t interest me
to know where you live
or how much money you have.
I want to know if you can get up
after the night of grief and despair
weary and bruised to the bone
and do what needs to be done
to feed the children.

It doesn’t interest me
who you know
or how you came to be here.
I want to know if you will stand
in the centre of the fire
with me
and not shrink back.

It doesn’t interest me
where or what or with whom
you have studied.
I want to know
what sustains you
from the inside
when all else falls away.

I want to know
if you can be alone
with yourself
and if you truly like
the company you keep
in the empty moments.

By Oriah © Mountain Dreaming,
from the book The Invitation
published by HarperONE, San Francisco,
1999 All rights reserved

1 April 2009

The Great Turning