March Free Page
and other assets
So far this week, I put all my best words into two spaces - the March Free Page and the Virgo Eclipse video in the Library. I am including video samples from each space for you to see if they are a match for where you are directing your attention and energy.
Likewise, our third Read Yourself is this SUNDAY 10-11:30am PST - 90 minutes of guided self-reading and spiritual practice. This online experience is normally $36, but I am offering 50% off with code RY50, so you can join for $18. I have a special plan for our reading this time that I am really looking forward to sharing. Please note, this event will not be recorded.
Here is a little clip from the video from the March Free Page - you’ll also find a coloring (yes!) practice and an audio practice there - all supporting the theme of deep and awakened listening.
Here is a little clip from our Virgo Lunar Eclipse practice in the Library where the theme is compassion - for our world and ourselves.
I know this is very tricky terrain.
I also know it is a good time to engage compassion - internally and externally.
It is also a good time to say, “I don’t know” and then listen deeply until we do know.
I know right now it is a hard time to pull ourselves out of the hive-mind in order to develop our capabilities for compassion and deep, awakened listening.
But, that’s why I’m here.
To help us do that.
Now.
And we can do it.
Please avail yourself of the Free Page, join us this Sunday for guided self-reading, and if you like your practice in rhythm with every new and full moon, consider joining the Library.
Sending lots of love and dreaming of peace on earth…
Until next time,
Jess
“And if all that seems too much, if your heart is breaking under the weight, look up into the night sky. Find three stars in alignment: name them Empathy, Compassion, Courage. Draw a line between them, make it a laser beam to cut through false boundaries and carve a new circle, one big enough to include us all.”
- Starhawk
“To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places - and there are so many - where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction. And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.”
- Howard Zinn
Just yesterday I watched an ant crossing a path, through the
tumbled pine needles she toiled.
And I thought: she will never live another life but this one.
And I thought: if she lives her life with all her strength
is she not wonderful and wise?
And I continued this up the miraculous pyramid of everything
until I came to myself.
- Mary Oliver
Now we will count to twelve
and we will all keep still
for once on the face of the earth,
let’s not speak in any language;
let’s stop for a second,
and not move our arms so much.
It would be an exotic moment
without rush, without engines;
we would all be together
in a sudden strangeness.
Fishermen in the cold sea
would not harm whales
and the man gathering salt
would not look at his hurt hands.
Those who prepare green wars,
wars with gas, wars with fire,
victories with no survivors,
would put on clean clothes
and walk about with their brothers
in the shade, doing nothing.
What I want should not be confused
with total inactivity.
Life is what it is about;
I want no truck with death.
If we were not so single-minded
about keeping our lives moving,
and for once could do nothing,
perhaps a huge silence
might interrupt this sadness
of never understanding ourselves
and of threatening ourselves with death.
Perhaps the earth can teach us
as when everything seems dead
and later proves to be alive.
Now I’ll count up to twelve
and you keep quiet and I will go.
-Pablo Neruda
FOR WARMTH
I hold my face between my hands.
No, I am not crying.
I hold my face between my hands
to keep my loneliness warm —
two hands protecting,
two hands nourishing,
two hands to prevent
my soul from leaving me
in anger.
- Thich Nhat Hanh
“We feel overwhelmed. The situation seems bigger than us. But meditation restores us to that calm, without which we cannot face the truth of our condition and think clearly about how we can get out of our predicament.”
-Ben Okri, The Role of the Artist in a Time of Crisis
“When all the ordinary divides and patterns are shattered, people step up to become their brother’s keepers. And that purposefulness and connectedness bring joy even amidst death, chaos, fear and loss.”
-Rebecca Solnit
“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
“What does this wildish intuition do? Like the wolf, intuition has claws that pry things open and pin things down, it has eyes that an see through the shields of persona, it has ears that hear beyond the range of mundane human hearing. With this formidable psychic tools a person takes on a shrewd and even precognitive animal consciousness, one that deepens her humanity and sharpens her ability to move confidently in the outer world…
…To be strong does not mean to sprout muscles and flex. It means meeting one’s own numinosity without fleeing, actively living with the wild nature in one’s own way. It means being able to learn, to be able to stand what we now know. It means to stand and live.”
– Clarissa Pinkola Estes
“Strange things happen when we pay attention.”
-Helen Jukes
“An ant hurries along a threshing floor
With its wheat grain, moving between huge stacks of wheat, not knowing the
Abundance
All around. It thinks its one grain is all there is to love.
So we choose a tiny seed to be devoted to.
This body, one path or one teacher.
(but there is another choice, an invitation to)
Look wider and farther.”
- Rumi
“Between where you are now and where you’d like to be there’s a sort of barrier, or a chasm, and sometimes it’s a good idea to imagine that you’re already at the other side of that chasm, so that you can start on the unknown side.”
David Bohm
There are many windows through
which we can look out into the
world, searching for meaning …
… Most of us, when we ponder on the
meaning of our existence,
peer through but one of these
windows onto the world.
And even that one is often misted over
by the breath of our finite humanity.
We clear a tiny peephole and stare through.
No wonder we are confused by the
tiny fraction of a whole that we see.
It is, after all, like trying to
comprehend the panorama of the
desert or the sea through
a rolled-up newspaper.
—Jane Goodall
Often a star
was waiting for you to notice it. A wave rolled toward you
out of the distant path, or as you walked
under an open window, a violin
yielded itself to your hearing. All this was mission.
― Rainer Maria Rilke