A young woman recently told me she believes God is the energy between two people. Such wisdom and awareness! I appreciated the reminder that I must take responsibility for the energy I give to another.
It isn’t easy. I quite regularly catch myself holding back or feeling competitive when interacting with someone new, as if the person across from me must prove herself trustworthy, before I will “love my neighbor as myself.”
The instruction, “So glorify God in your body,” (1 Corinthians 6:20) helps me in my quest to remain open-hearted in my interactions. When I allow God to course through my whole being – heart, mind, strength, and soul – I am much more able to extend “God-like” energy to others.
The yogi Paramahansa Yogananda writes in his mind-opening book, The Yoga of Jesus, “When one actually perceives the Divine Presence in his own soul, he is inspired with love for his neighbor – Jew and Christian, Muslim and Hindu – in the consciousness that one’s true Self and the Selves of all others are equally soul-reflections of the one infinitely lovable God.” (pg. 99)
Can I recognize God in another? Would I even try to see God in my enemy? What kind of energy would I create with her if I did? I find it hard enough to be conscious about my energy with those I love – to love them as completely as I would like to love myself. Therein lies the problem. If I love myself conditionally, I will love others the same way. Similarly, the judgment I feel toward others often reflects hostility within me toward myself.
In interpreting the gospel writer John’s account of Jesus speaking to a Samaritan woman (which a Jewish man at the time would not have done), contemplative priest Cynthia Bourgeault illustrates beautifully what can happen when two people recognize each other as Divine:
“Something he sees in her gives him the confidence to be so nakedly vulnerable; and something she sees in him gives her the confidence to follow his lead, to go higher and higher and deeper and deeper in herself, knowing far beyond what she could know from ordinary knowingness, knowing fully in the immediacy of her own heart. This quality of awareness is not something that comes from outside the moment. Rather, it grows up in the moment itself through the quality and energy of the heart connection.” (The Wisdom Jesus, pg. 11)
May we all give to each other and experience that kind of God energy.
Posts Tagged ‘a woman’s body’
The Energy Between Us
April 18, 2010Peace
April 5, 2010Of all the devotion, betrayal, strength, fallibility, sadness, and glory I heard and read about during Holy Week, the line that moved me the most was this: “Peace is my last gift to you, my own peace I now leave with you; peace which the world cannot give, I give to you.” (The Book of Common Prayer)
I’ve written often about doubt and uncertainty on this winding path of mine. It is challenging, at times, to feel lasting peace about earthly matters such as money, love, work, health insurance, family misunderstandings, and social injustice. Yet, in the midst of all or any of those, I’ve come to recognize the kind of peace that is a gift from God – “peace which the world cannot give.”
This peace I feel in my body. When the core of me is open, breathing, and calm, my mind feels safe to follow suit. In this state, I trust the peace of the certainty I feel – certainty that it all means something and God is there for me to lean on. It is the deep peace of forgiveness after confessing “things done and left undone.” It is the peace of saying, “Yes, I do believe in this mystery that ‘passes all understanding.’”
When watching and participating in Maundy Thursday and Good Friday services last week, I had to acknowledge that I believe in what this sacred practice represents. Seeing my clergy dressed in black with their backs turned to the congregation as they prayed was incredibly moving for me. I believe in the underlying story. So I say the words; I sing; I kneel; I eat the spiritual food. On Easter, it sank in deeper.
The judgmental, exclusionary, violent, sexist, neighbor-against-neighbor interpretations of Christianity have made me wary of Christianity as a whole. I’m grateful now to be learning a profoundly different take on what Jesus was teaching and to have found an understanding of God’s kingdom that I want to be a part of.
My mind still asks, “Am I for real? Is this devotion to and worship of God coming from my heart or my head?” I trust my body when she replies, “Yes. This is real for me. I feel this deeply. It has integrity.” Writing about and saying “Jesus” out loud is, at times, uncomfortable for me, yet being with him in private always feels natural. When I meditate, I invite him to sit with me. He offers his hands. I take them. This is complete peace for me.
What brings you peace? If you’d like to share your own practice, please do so.
Tree Lessons
March 16, 2010This weekend a friend and I went for a walk through Hollywood Cemetery. Normally, as I amble past the markers of people’s lives, I’m observing dates and calculating the lengths of lives lived. On Saturday, however, the trees consumed my attention – especially the enormous oaks with roots visibly growing out of the stone embankments of the cemetery.
I love that trees in winter, especially these grand old trees, feel no need to prove themselves. “Here I am” they seem to say, “naked, proud, and knowing.” Through them, I learn to trust nature’s cycle – even when they look dead, life is simply resting inside, waiting to reemerge.
A teacher once told me that the yoga involved in tree pose isn’t necessarily about holding perfect balance. Instead, it is about getting back in the posture with grace, patience and commitment, each time I fall out.
On occasion in my coaching and women’s circle, I ask participants to practice grounding and taking up their rightful space in this world by embodying their favorite tree. They usually look at me a bit sideways. After some gentle coaxing, they set their skepticism aside that this could be at all illuminating. I ask them to feel their roots growing deep into the Earth and their branches reaching wide open, sky high or perhaps, in the case of willow, draping gently and gorgeously. “Breathe as your tree, let the wind and weather move you, feel your strength and your beauty.” Sometimes it works for them in the moment, sometimes not. It always works for me. Becoming a live oak centers me, calms me, and opens my heart.
In the brochure “The Method of Centering Prayer: The Prayer of Consent“, Thomas Keating writes, “The principal fruits of centering prayer are experienced in daily life and not during the prayer period.” I hope that even if women feel a bit silly and self-conscious embodying a tree for three minutes, the effect is felt out in the world – in them and by others. I hope they are reminded of their own dignity, especially in the presence of “their” tree.
The Year of Love!
December 6, 2009When my sister and her husband were starting to create their family, she declared to him, “This is going to be the year of sex!” (It worked!)
So, on my 41st birthday, I’m declaring that the year ahead is going to be the year of LOVE! And since love always works (even in those mysterious ways that we don’t quite understand at the time), I know it’s going to be a super-powered, super-fun, super-fabulous year!
I commit to you today that I will make good on my declaration by: contributing love to my community by sharing what I have… discovering and creating love through my work in myriad forms… loving my body and taking care of my heart… expressing selfless love for and experiencing fabulous love with a man (whoever he may be!)… and channeling love to my family and friends through prayer, encouragement, laughter and acceptance.
In yoga this morning, my teacher Kyra read a poignant story* about Mother Teresa’s choice to start serving the West and her reasoning that while we may not be starving for actual bread on any comparable level to the people of Calcutta or Bombay, we are starving for the spiritual food of love.
When she received the Nobel Prize, Mother Teresa was asked, “What can we do to promote world peace?” She answered, “Go home and love your family.”
So, today, this little missive will be shorter than usual because a) love – generating it within yourself and sharing it with others – is all you need, and b) I have to go get a birthday pedicure (lovin’ my toes!)
xo for your own coming year!
Making a place for uncertainty
November 16, 2009I began to wonder if my arch nemesis – uncertainty – could somehow find a comfy home within me along side my yearning to know. Normally I try my damndest to make uncertainty disappear just as fast as it came deeming it wrong, harassing, and unsafe. Perhaps its presence isn’t so bad after all.
Another wise friend, who is entering into a potentially amazing or potentially heartbreaking situation with ease, said that she was “making a place at the table for uncertainty” because it was not hers yet to know the outcome. She was so calm. I want that…
Gracefully making space in me to hold both the excitement of new love and the fear of being abandoned… The tender and profound memory of my father’s last weeks of life and the agony of witnessing his journey towards death… A clear and cherished vision for a family and career while not knowing in what exact form either will unfold.
I feel repeatedly asked to say goodbye to one safe harbor, surrender to unpredictable seas, and become willing to land in a place that is perhaps different (and I believe always better) than my planned destination.
Allowing these paradoxes to live within me takes an enormous amount of courage. Sometimes I don’t think I can do it because the fear of failure and disappointment is too huge. Then I ask myself, “What if I give up? I will miss so much beauty. I might even miss a miracle.”
As you live with your own internal paradoxes, I bow to you and my heart is with you. I would love to hear from you here or privately your own experience and practices with this aspect of being human.
The Body as…
November 9, 2009I’ve been away practicing what I preach – deepening my commitment to my work at a profoundly impactful Presence-Based Coaching retreat with Doug Silsbee in North Carolina and deepening my well of trust and joy on a profoundly fun adventure in Chicago!
This “Body as Prayer” video by master yoga teacher and social activist Seane Corn became the moment-to-moment meditation for my journeys. It brought a new, gorgeous level of awareness and devotion to my actions and state of being.
She inspired me to consider how much richer my experience of life might be were every gesture of the hand an offering. Every breath a dedication. The subtlest opening of my heart a sublimely felt blessing to another.
The body as commitment. The body as surrender. The body as power. The body as happiness…. as tenderness… as curiosity… as faith.
Exploring this over the past 10 days meant breathing low and steady into the deepest part of me. It required coming back to the center of my energetic self again, again and then again. In moments of fear, it asked me to ground into my inherent value as a human being, my commitment to something greater, and my faith in the goodness of life.
I consciously allowed each sensation to permeate my whole being: every limb, each fingernail, the light in my eyes, the sides of my smile, the tissues of my brain, my big Buddha belly, and the center of my heart.
Then I practiced giving it away. Devotionally. As if it meant something.
I’m no Seane Corn; I wasn’t nearly as elegant in my practice as she; yet still, it was a profound experience of life fully felt in this body, with this heart and grounded in this soul. I don’t do drugs (ok, I do have an iced green tea addiction) but I imagine this is what they feel like. I just prefer to get there in a slightly more conscious way.
Whatever you are feeling in this very moment as you read this… what would it be like to let it permeate your whole being? Breathe it in deeply, allow it to move your body and move through your body to its final transformation. Even (and especially) if you are feeling stress, anger, fear or sadness… what could they be as bodily prayer? How would they feel as a whole-you offering?
I’d love to know.
Are we living in Hell?
October 6, 2009Even though I’d like this site to be all about mind, body and heart goodness, I couldn’t not post anything about the public raping of women in broad daylight in Guinea. Minds, bodies and spirits ravaged for a lifetime by rifle barrels. Of course the world has known about “women as battlefield targets” for years now in Bosnia, Darfur, the Congo and elsewhere. I personally haven’t done a thing about it. Geez, where have I been?
When I was in the first grade, I wanted to be the Mighty Isis (a child of 70′s television and a feminist mother!) This is one of those times when I really wish I had her super hero powers and could use them to stop rape from being used as a diabolical weapon of warfare. Until then, the best resource I’ve found is this list of NGOs on Stop Rape Now the UN Action Against Sexual Violence in Conflict.
God, help us.
