These are interesting times.
Our home, Earth, seems to be taking a strong, outward stand, erupting and quaking and behaving in volatile ways, all-in-all making quite a concerted effort to get our attention. Natural disasters, and, tragically, man-made ones, seem to be clustering together over the last many months, as if upping the ante each time. Many of us have a feeling that something in this is trying to get our attention, but don’t know what it is or what this means or what to do about it.
We need to expand our response. We must craft a fuller response. But that response is not limited to what we can (and should) do through physical, financial, intellectual or political means of engagement. We are clear about these approaches and how to use them. And we should use them.
There is another way. I have an vision of a “fuller response” that contemplates each of us, each in our own way, beginning to enter into a form of inner activism, beginning with opening our own heart fields to begin to radiate more and more of our birthright as living, loving expressions of positive and creative force. Don’t underestimate the latent power we hold to foment change.
The response and outpouring of compassion towards those who have lost much has been heartening and hopeful. If we take a closer look at our human reaction to these crises, we see in ourselves an innate urge to help, to do something, to take some action, however small. Amidst great devastation, loss, and anguish, we have felt the stirring of our true natures, and responded from the heart.
Living, giving, loving, and understanding through an open heart is our best prospect for success—individually and globally. The field that radiates from an open heart is actual; it is electrically measurable. It offers the opening and the means of traversing the divide between our bodily presence and our origin in and access to pure, unlimited awareness. When we are moved from the heart we are at our best, not only for others, but for ourselves and our own advancement, both in the material and the inner realms.
This is a fine time to begin to explore and expand your own heart awareness, and to recognize the actual impact and effect inner work has on the outer world. I will continue to write about this approach. Meanwhile, you may find some more perspectives on inner or subtle activism at What is Subtle Activism.
Maggie Spilner says
Years ago, when I first moved to my current home, we had a composting routine of throwing kitchen garbage nightly onto a pile of leaves and grassclippings at the back of our property. When we found a large rat under our dog’s house, we stopped the practice. My husband constructed a homemade composter out of a 50 gal. drum, but with a full time job, 3 teens and the stresses of merging two families, that practice fell by the wayside. On my birthday this year, I asked my husband to buy me a composting “Wizard” and I began separating the appropriate materials from our meals to carry up to the “Wizard” daily. I add garden materials and organic soil. I feel this urge comes partly from the feelings of helplessness about the Gulf coast tragedy. While this is a seemingly insignificant act in the scheme of things, I feel the compassion and awareness it brings to me several times a day, as through my actions and thought-full-ness, I apply what knowledge I have to complete this process, in cooperation with Nature and the spirits of my landscape (And kitchen deva!) I feel threads of connection strengthening between myself and my surroundings. I feel increased appreciation for the food, the soil and the landscape. Knowing that these acts carry weight beyond the material that’s recreating itself in my “wizard” is an added blessing. I feel myself connecting with my world in new ways and imagining new paths I can walk to connect with and serve the surrounding community.
susan says
Maggie, thank you for sharing your experience and practice. I love it.