Tools of Consciousness

The other day I shared on Facebook a snippet from my morning writing: Consciousness is your gift. Open it. I’ve been sitting with that statement. Being sentient beings is an amazing gift. We can feel love and joy. We can be aware of and celebrate our own aliveness and place in the cosmos. But we have a choice as we move through our days; we can live consciously or unconsciously. We can try to bring that awareness to all we do, each interaction, each choice that might help or harm the Earth, each opportunity to reach out with kindness, each interaction with other creatures we share the Earth with. For me it’s like having tools of consciousness. We have a toolbox full of things like love, kindness, empathy, compassion, awareness, peace, joy, conscious choice, and more. We all have the same tools in our toolbox. It’s all about whether you open it up and use them. 

For me that is a daily practice. It can be so easy to go through the day on autopilot, without thinking about the choices we are making. Our practice of mindfulness helps us turn off the autopilot and take responsibility for how we show up in our days, which actually can bring a glorious sense of freedom! I get to choose how to react to any given situation, how I want to show up, who I want to be. Knowing that I have so many tools to help me in those choices, to help me live consciously, and to show up as who I want to be is a relief! Honestly, I want to come to the end of my days with a toolbox full of tools that are worn out from use!

Through opportunities like meditation groups or in any relationship we can share our tools with each other, and the cool thing about these tools is that you can share them and yet still have them in your own tool box! You don’t have to worry about loaning one to a neighbor and never getting it back because if you share kindness or love with someone, you receive it back in the simple act of offering it.  Sharing love or kindness or empathy increases it within your own heart, the best toolbox we could have.  

I hope you will take some time this week to sit in appreciation for the amazing gift of consciousness that is ours, and celebrate the beautiful tools that fill your heart!

Pledge of Peace and Love ~ Day 9

I missed a day. I think maybe I didn’t write about yesterday because it’s a little more difficult to write about. It requires a bit more revealing of myself than I would like, but I made a pledge.

I’m a very empathetic person, and that may be an understatement. There are times when it feels as though I can feel other people’s feelings with and for them. There are times when I feel called to allow collective emotions from humanity in general to move through me, sometimes in words, sometimes in tears. I think that allowing, that movement, helps the energies to shift, even a little bit, which I’m grateful to be able to do. Sometimes though it’s very difficult, like when I did the writing about the Holocaust that I posted on this blog a couple years ago. I know it is my practice of peace that now allows me to be able to move through this process as gently as possible. That practice of peace has helped me to know there is a connection to peace within myself which is always present, always accessible. I worked with a visual of it for a long time, an anchor. The anchor was very solidly planted in peace and there is a long and very strong anchor line that connects to my heart. It was a visual reminder for me that helped me return to that place of peace again and again. It helped because it reminded me that I was never disconnected from that peace; there would be times when I couldn’t remember it, couldn’t feel it, but never a time when that anchor wasn’t there. All I had to do was remember the connection and I could begin to feel the peace flow again.

Yesterday was a day when it was difficult to remember my anchor of peace. The emotions and energy that were moving through me were a real challenge to stay disconnected from, they centered on the pain of violence we do to each other. The process is much easier when I remember not to allow the emotions to become my emotions, my energy. Sometimes though the feelings associated with the energy are so intense that it is difficult not to empathize and feel them. That is when I really need the memory of that anchor. Yesterday it took me a while to remember, to feel that peace again, to remember that there is love in the world. Yet, when I did feel it again, I was incredibly grateful for the path of peace I have been traveling, because otherwise it might have taken me much longer to remember.

I’m grateful in another way too. After all, the reason that I made this pledge was because I could feel a shift happening, a shift toward a new way of being in the world, that baby new Earth that I could feel. I suppose it’s no surprise that there might be what feels like turmoil during a transformation like that, and in the midst of that turmoil it is a wonderful thing to remember that I can always return to the memory of Peace and choose to live from there.