Tag: compassionate

Categories
Blog

DEPTH, BEAUTY, AND POWER

DEPTH, BEAUTY, AND POWER

share on social media

I am always amazed by the depth, beauty, and power of people. I see these things often at our events, and they thrill me. Last month at our first urban Journey to the Soul retreat, a large, beautiful, black woman stood to speak. She was big in size, voice, and presence, but she was trembling and struggling to find her voice. A previous sharing about loss had activated a frightened part of her personality, a part deep in terror, pain, rage, and humiliation. She spoke haltingly. “I am fed up with it. I am sick of being afraid. I am so tired of fearing the police. How many more of my black friends will be arrested, beaten, or killed?” She was sobbing with despair and rage and powerlessness. “Everyone I know who is black fears being stopped by the police. The police always have a reason. Its driving while black. Or breathing while black.” Now her whole body was shaking, and her face was wet with tears. She held to the back of a chair to remain standing. “I am fed up!” she struggled to say again. “FED UP!” Then she seemed to physically grasp herself and said in a different voice. “A frightened part of my personality is fed up. It has had enough. Enough!”

The transformation was palpable. Before she was speaking from a frightened part of her personality. Now she was talking about it. She was present again. Her shaking stopped, but her face was still wet. This strong woman was an executive in a multinational corporation. And she was black, terrified of the police, and had had enough. I could see her centering herself, scanning interior places for painful physical sensations, and deciding not to act on them more. This was a moment of creating authentic power. It was intimate and heroic. As she moved beyond the fear of beatings and bullets, beyond the control of this part of her personality, she entered a courageous, compassionate, and caring part of her personality, and we all moved with her.

Another woman on the other side of the room stood up. She was small and blonde. “I am the wife of a cop,” she said. “My husband is not like that. I feel what you are saying, but he is not like that.” There we were, all of us, courageously experiencing the ragged tear in our country and in our world without the anesthetics of righteousness and rage. It took courage, because creating authentic power always does. It requires challenging painful frightened parts of your personality that are so strong they shake your body or so beguiling they envelop you in blaming. These two souls did neither. They cultivated loving parts of their personalities, the big black woman and the white wife of the white cop.

Our dear friend, Maya Angelou, often said, “We are more alike than we are different.” She was so right. We are all immortal souls learning how to love in the Earth school, in the domain of the five senses, in the realm of right and wrong, gain and loss, good and bad. This requires creating authentic power, and we all witnessed a moment of that creation, one of myriad moments in the life of each individual who is growing powerful – aligning personality with soul.

Can you challenge the frightened parts of your personality and cultivate the loving parts of your personality like these two women did and do? Can you create authentic power?
Love.
Linda & Gary

post tags

published in:

filed in:

Categories
Blog

AFTER THE ELECTION – THE NEXT STEP

AFTER THE ELECTION – THE NEXT STEP

share on social media

The great American president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, said at the beginning of World War II, “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.” That was a brave statement made from a five-sensory perspective to a five-sensory country in a five-sensory world. Human perception was limited to what we could see, hear, touch, taste, and smell. Now our perception is expanding beyond these limitations. We sense ourselves as souls as well as than minds and bodies, the world as meaningful rather than random, and the Universe as wise and compassionate. This expanded perception, multisensory perception, is emerging in each of us, and as it does it is revealing new things about fear that are very relevant and helpful. Here is one of them: “When fear ceases to scare you, it cannot stay.”

Fear will continue to scare you until you have the courage to turn inward and face it – the painful physical sensations of it, the judgmental, destructive, and violent thoughts of it – and challenge them by acting with an intention of harmony, cooperation, sharing, or reverence for Life while you are experiencing fear. This creates a new type of power in you – authentic power, the alignment of your personality with your soul. Authentic power is now necessary for your evolution and the evolution of our species

Can you do this? Yes, you can. And we can support one another. This is what we were born to do.

Love.
Linda & Gary

post tags

published in:

filed in:

Categories
Blog

HOW TO CREATE COMPASSIONATE HOLIDAYS

HOW TO CREATE COMPASSIONATE HOLIDAYS

share on social media

Compassionate Holidays require that you act consciously each moment. Unconscious caretaking and pleasing others (giving gifts because it is the “season”) are NOT compassionate deeds. They ignore the humanity of the recipient because the recipient is being exploited by frightened parts of your personality. This type of interaction multiplied billions of time each “Holiday Season” makes the experience much less than it could be.

Compassion is being moved to and by acts of the heart. I am not speaking of the sentimental “heart,” the “heart” that feels pity and need to fix other’s problems (these are experiences of frightened parts of the personality). I am speaking of the most healthy, inclusive, grounded, and loving part of yourself. If this heart is not involved, no compassion is present. Therefore a compassionate Holiday, like a compassionate family dinner or a compassionate country requires you to replace the experiences of frightened parts of your personality (which also include anger, impatience, frustration, and judging) with the experiences of loving parts (gratitude, appreciation, patience, caring). This creates authentic power.

People who do not know about authentic power want very much to experience compassion, especially during the Holiday Season, but they don’t know how so they try to will compassion into themselves. This makes compassion even more difficult to experience because the effort to experience it is really an effort to make themselves feel better, which is the opposite of compassion
Most people are not aware of this close relationship between creating authentic power and experiencing compassion, but it is obvious to those who know even a little once they begin to think about it. You cannot be compassionate and angry at the same time, or compassionate and jealous at the same time, or intend to exploit someone and be compassionate with that person at the same time.

There is no such thing as compassionate Holidays. There are only compassionate individuals, and in each instance, compassion is a matter of choice – the choice to create authentic power, to challenge frightened parts of your personality and cultivate loving parts. A compassionate Holiday is impossible without a compassionate day before the holiday, day after the holiday, and compassionate days before and after those.

Happy Holi (Holy) Days,

Linda & Gary

post tags

published in:

filed in: