what can i give?
practices aligned with the times
I (uncharacteristically) don’t have a lot of things (or the “right things”) to say today. And, maybe we are all “talked out” anyway at the moment. Or, maybe I’m just in the mood to DO MAGIC rather than talk about it.
Whatever the case, I do come to you bearing a few gifts:
If you are ever feeling a bit lost, unmoored, or disconnected - please avail yourself of this free nature practice. It takes about 15 minutes and you don’t need to make a big deal out of it or “go into nature”. You can do this indoors as long as you are near a window. But, if you can “go into nature” it will work even better; and there are printable instructions so you can enjoy the process without an electronic device.
The July Free Page - four, full-length visualizations to help us integrate and process and regulate. This week, I would especially recommend utilizing Release and Call Back to clear our systems of the old, outdated and call in the new.
I’ll be sharing the super-magical (and surprising!) Parallel Worlds + Small Objects meditation in the Friday space. This is a classic “Jessica Snow Meditation” - a real flight of fancy that… always… delivers good intel.
My wish for us this week is that we find a little time to BE MAGICAL, to DO MAGIC, to call in PEACE, to call in the BEST FUTURE POSSIBLE…
Hopefully one or more of the tools above will help us do just that…
Until next time,
Jess
"It's a folk singer's job to comfort disturbed people and to disturb comfortable people."
— Woody Guthrie
“Certain professions are more or less completely incompatible with the achievement of man’s final end; and there are certain ways of making a living which do so much physical and, above all, so much moral, intellectual and spiritual harm that, even if they could be practised in a non-attached spirit (which is generally impossible), they would still have to eschewed by anyone dedicated to the task of liberating, not only himself, but others.”
- Aldous Huxley
“The mind which responds with conditioned automatic likes and dislikes is dominated by reactive pleasure and pain. With training, this conditioned reactivity is reduced, and the mind gradually becomes less reactive and more calm. As such, it becomes more easy to control and remains unperturbed in the face of an increasingly broad range of experience.”
- Dr. Roger Walsh
"In India, I was living in a little hut, about six feet by seven feet. It had a canvas flap instead of a door. I was sitting on my bed meditating, and a cat wandered in and plopped down on my lap. I took the cat and tossed it out the door. Ten seconds later it was back on my lap. We got into a sort of dance, this cat and I - I tossed it out because I was trying to meditate, to get enlightened. But the cat kept returning. I was getting more and more irritated, more and more annoyed with the persistence of the cat. Finally, after about a half-hour of this coming in and tossing out, I had to surrender. There was nothing else to do. There was no way to block off the door. I sat there, the cat came back in, and it got on my lap. But I did not do anything. I just let go. Thirty seconds later the cat got up and walked out. So, you see, our teachers come in many forms."
- Joseph Goldstein
“The beauty of our situation is that, despite the danger and fragility and outright darkness that lie on all sides of us, we are free. We are free to be something. There is nothing marshalling or supervising the expression of our whims or will. We can find out what’s going on, all by ourselves - every sentient creature can. It must explore embodiment beyond precept or precedent.
Ours is not a set dance or a play with choreographed moves and scripted lines - nor is it even quite, for the lobster crab and mayfly.
Our freedom burgeons, a flowerlike thing ghosting, shape-shifting, sui generis. Anything can be chosen today; we can take ourselves down any trail or tracery tomorrow. We can try another spoor or detour the next day. We are free to live, free to die; free to pout, free to disco; free to fast, free to pig out.
Our bodies are algorithms, warranted to function or not, on any given afternoon. They are not even ours. They are pet dogs we wash, we feed, we play with. And yet we have nothing else to rely on, as we awake and set our course anew. Before we sleep and dream, and wake again.
We oversee a torrent of blood and crystalloids and catalytic saps inside our wetsuit, but we are utterly ignorant of how - how it came to be, how it works, what role we play in its maintenance or innate intelligence. We haul around this oasis of proteins and enzymes and genetic molecules, doing stuff that even advanced biochemists and neurologists don’t understand. It is no luxury or high-end conveyance, either. It is a crude proletarian beast, yet our sine qua non. It has to happen for us to happen. We rely on an invisible helmsman, the indifferent capacity of impersonal systems, and the esoteric command, to continue existing at all.
As long as these carapaces hold us, as long as they mumble mutely to themselves what to do, as long as the secret vessel sends out ciphers day and night, as long as we draw instructions out of some obscure imagination of what we desire, we are practitioners of this shindig of life…
Yet gloriously we are free, without a warrant or deadline. Any day we can live; any day is a good day to unravel and die. Now that is slaphappy, foolhardy, goofy, ecstatic freedom.
We become. Simply that. Exposed to novelty and chance and the aberrations of our own mindedness and circumstances, as every moment - nonlinear, linear. We are the perfect unchaperoned dance.”
- Richard Grossinger, The Bardo of Waking Life
"Life's splendor forever lies in wait about each one of us in all its fullness, but veiled from view, deep down, invisible, far off. It is there, though, not hostile, not reluctant, not deaf. If you summon it by the right word, by its right name, it will come."
- Franz Kafka
"Let there be a calming of the clamoring, a stilling of the voices that have laid their claim on you, that have made their home in you, that go with you even to the holy places but will not let you rest, will not let you hear your life with wholeness or feel the grace that fashioned you.
Let what distracts you cease. Let what divides you cease. Let there come an end to what diminishes and demeans, and let depart all that keeps you in its cage.
Let there be an opening into the quiet that lies beneath the chaos, where you find the peace you did not think possible and see what shimmers within the storm."
- John O'Donohue
“We call upon the spirit of evolution, the miraculous force that inspires rocks and dust to weave themselves into biology. You have stood by us for millions and billions of years — do not forsake us now. Empower us and awaken in us pure and dazzling creativity.
You that can turn scales into feathers, seawater to blood, caterpillars to butterflies — metamorphose our species, awaken in us the powers that we need to survive the present crisis and evolve into more eons of our solar journey.
Awaken in us a sense of who we truly are: tiny ephemeral blossoms on the Tree of Life. Make the purpose and destiny of that tree our own purpose and destiny.
Fill each of us with love for our true Self, which includes all of the creatures and plants and landscapes of the world. Fill us with a powerful urge for the well-being and continual unfolding of this Self.
May we speak in all human councils on behalf of the animals and plants and landscapes of the Earth.
May we shine with a pure inner passion that will spread rapidly through these leaden times…”
We call upon the power that sustains the planets in their orbits, that wheels our Milky Way in its 200-million-year spiral, to imbue our personalities and our relationships with harmony, endurance, and joy.
Fill us with a sense of immense time so that our brief, flickering lives may truly reflect the work of vast ages past and also the million of years of evolution whose potential lies in our trembling hands.
O stars, lend us your burning passion.
O silence, give weight to our voice.”
~John Seed
WE BELIEVE...
1. Meditation can be approached in a modern and magical manner.
2. Meditation is not a dry chore, but a rewarding and pleasurable art.
3. It is fine to be physically comfortable while you meditate. You can lay down, you can wear headphones, you can sit in your favorite chair.
4. It is natural for your mind and heart to be active during meditation.
5. Meditating links you up with the purest, most extraordinary parts of yourself AND the world.
6. Meditation typically feels pretty good. Even when it doesn't, there is insight there.
7. No one can meditate for you. You are your own direct connection.
8. There is no substitute for being fully awake to your life, as it is happening, in real time.
9. Right now you have everything you need to access the love, light, power & insight that is your birthright.
- Jessica Snow
"You have not grown old, and it is not too late
To dive into your increasing depths where life calmly gives out its own secret.”
- Rainer Maria Rilke