Patricia Pearce

Helping You Be the Change

Preparing to Take Down My Website

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For a lot of people, fall is a difficult season. As the darkness grows and the trees shed their leaves, autumn serves as a reminder of the impermanence of our temporal lives, and this reminder can bring with it a painful melancholy, perhaps even a hint of depression.

For me, though, fall is a welcome teacher. Yes, it brings a tinge of loss, but that loss has a sweetness to it. Each year autumn teaches me that life is a cycle I can trust, that letting go into the long, dark hibernation of winter, where unseen possibilities can gestate, makes way for future birth, and the splendor of the fall colors — and the vividness of the light this time  of year — reveal that there is a remarkable beauty in this act of letting go.

All of this is why this season seems like the fitting time for me to be shedding some things in my life, including this website that I will be soon be taking down. This site and the writings I have offered here have served their purpose, and if they’ve touched you in any way, if they’ve nourished you on your spiritual path, I’m very grateful. I also know, though, that it’s time now to let it go in order to make way for what is to come.

In a few weeks, maybe months, I’ll be launching a new website with a different focus. I will still be addressing the spiritual life, but in a way that is more aligned with what I believe wants to come through me at this period of my life.

For some of you, the writings and teachings I will be offering may no longer be in alignment with your personal path or what you need most in your spiritual life. Believe me when I say: I understand, and I offer you my blessing as you journey on.

For others, I believe what is coming will be deeply resonant — perhaps even exciting — and I look forward to us continuing to be in touch so that we can travel this journey together. If you are a subscriber to my email list I will be in touch with you during the interim via email, and I may even ask for your engagement with this new vision along the way.

I really do believe that now, more than ever, the Earth (including her human offspring) needs us all to be attending to our spiritual maturation, for the conflicts and environmental devastation we are witnessing will not be healed by the consciousness that created them (to paraphrase Einstein), nor can that new consciousness emerge with mere  spiritual dabbling. It will require a deep commitment on our part.

I believe the time is now for us to give this our all, because we each have a role to play in the process of healing that our planet so desperately needs. Part of what will be asked of us is to shed old identities and beliefs that cannot serve the future so that we can make way for what Being will bring to birth on this planet.

Fortunately, in autumn we have a wise teacher that shows us what letting go can look like  when we reside in trust:  a season of grace, beauty and splendor.

 

Are You Making Your Best Contribution to the World?

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be your pixel 1
Are you being your pixel?

I’ve been thinking a lot about pixels lately. It might seem like a strange thing to think about, but it will make sense once I tell you the backstory.

I’ve been taking a couple of online classes to help me build a more robust author platform in preparation for some book launches down the road. One of the classes talks about finding your niche and positioning yourself against the competition.

Needless to say, I’ve been doing a lot of translating—trying to straddle the worlds of marketing and spirituality.

They emerge out of two very different worldviews. Conventional marketing focuses on competition and setting yourself apart. Spirituality, where my interest lies, is rooted in the realization of our oneness.

The way I see it, each of us is like a pixel in a larger picture. We each have our own authentic, unique attributes which the big picture needs. This is why I don’t need to think of my compatriot pixels (those who are offering similar teachings) as competitors, because we’re all doing our part to bring forth the big, beautiful picture. After all, an image of a dahlia needs more than one yellow pixel.

I was talking to a friend about all of this recently and she reminded me of that old Hassidic tale of the rabbi Zusya who died and went to stand before the judgment seat of God. As he waited for God to appear, he grew nervous thinking about his life and how little he had done.

He began to imagine that God was going to ask him, “Why weren’t you Moses?” or “Why weren’t you Solomon?” or “Why weren’t you David?”

But when God appeared, God simply asked, “Why weren’t you Zusya?”

We’re each here to be our authentic, unique pixel. Nothing else.

Despite what you may have been taught, it isn’t self-centered or arrogant to simply to be who you are and offer the world what you have to offer. In fact, if enough of us withhold our true hue and try to shine as a different sort of pixel, the big picture becomes nothing but a chaotic, indecipherable jumble.

So here’s my bumper sticker advice: Be your pixel. Go down deep into your essence, beneath all the beliefs that you’re supposed to be like somebody else or act like somebody else. Search for your authentic Self and let it shine—because the world needs you.

 

Are You Looking for a Good Resource on Mindfulness?

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Rather than posting a blog of my own writing this week, I’d like to share with you a wonderful resource I recently came upon through Shambala Sun‘s website. In case you aren’t familiar with it, Shambala Sun is a magazine that features teachings from the Buddhist and other contemplative traditions.

This free eBook (PDF), The Mindfulness Sampler, contains chapters by some of the pre-eminent teachers of mindfulness in our day, such as Thich Nhat Hanh, Pema Chodron, Jack Kornfield, and many more, all writing about the power of awareness in daily life.

You can access the PDF here: The Mindfulness Sampler.

Peace,

Patricia

Finding the Quiet Beneath the Clamor

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sugar packet
Tune in to a different drummer: your soul.

I have a friend who is an exceptional drummer, and she told me a story once of being in a drumming competition and advancing until it was just her and one other drummer remaining. During the break before the final round, she went to a cafe to get a cup of coffee and to try to figure out what she could do to wow the judges that she hadn’t already done.

As she reached for a packet of sugar she thought, “That’s it!!”

She was called up for her final performance and when she walked out on stage she had nothing in her hands. No djembe, no conga, no trap set. Nothing. She stepped up to the microphone, reached into her pocket, took out two packets of sugar and with them began creating subtle, complex rhythms that blew the judges away.

As you might have guessed, she won the competition.

I often think of that story because it has so many lessons to teach me, one of which has to do with risk-taking. I admire my friend’s courage, even when so much was at stake, to do something so original that it could have been seen as completely outlandish.

Her story also reminds me how much we crave the novel — something, anything, that will shake up our expectations. How refreshing it must have been for those judges to see someone dare to take such a creative risk!

What I think about most, though, when that story floats through my mind is what it teaches about the gift of quietness. We live in such a loud culture; we’re constantly bombarded with messages shouting for our attention, messages that keep getting louder and flashier in an effort to stand out from all the others.

The end result of this is what many of us experience as a kind of fatigue, where all we really want is a refreshing dose of quiet honesty and simple authenticity.

But it’s senseless to point the finger at the culture, as if it were to blame for our distractedness, because if we’ve done our inner work we know where all the culture’s bombastic insecurities come from. A culture, after all, is simply a mirror of what’s going on inside all of us, and those of us who have taken the time to really examine our own minds have no doubt felt like we landed smack in the middle of Times Square.

Living a spiritually-centered life, though, we compassionately notice that inner clamor and we tenderly dismiss it, recognizing it as nothing but the imaginary, often fearful, chattering of the ego-mind.

And then, finally, we begin to hear the quiet, beautiful, sweet rhythm of our own soul.

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Recognizing the Praying Ego

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[This post is the fourth in a blog series on prayer. If you haven’t yet, I recommend you read the previous three posts first, beginning with Learning How to Pray.]

dawn clouds
It’s best to let the ego’s clouds of fear dissolve until the spacious, open Self can pray.

Before I launch into this week’s theme on prayer, let me tell you an old Zen story.

Once upon the time there was an old farmer who had worked his crops for many years. One day his horse ran away. Upon hearing the news, his neighbors came to visit. “Such bad luck,” they said sympathetically.

“Maybe,” the farmer replied.

The next morning the horse returned, bringing with it three other wild horses. “How wonderful,” the neighbors exclaimed.

“Maybe,” replied the old man.

The following day, his son tried to ride one of the untamed horses, was thrown, and broke his leg. The neighbors again came to offer their sympathy on his misfortune.

“Maybe,” answered the farmer.

The day after, military officials came to the village to draft young men into the army. Seeing that the son’s leg was broken, they passed him by. The neighbors congratulated the farmer on how well things had turned out.

“Maybe,” said the farmer.

I love that story because it reminds me that I can never see the big picture enough to judge whether something is “good” or “bad.” Things that at first seems like hardships can end up opening the way for blessings, and vice versa.Continue Reading

Being the Prayer Bowl

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[This post is the third in a series on prayer. If you haven’t yet, I recommend you read the previous two posts first: “Learning How to Pray” and “Praying With the Heart.”]

crystal prayer bowl
Praying with the heart, we empty ourselves like a prayer bowl.

Last week I talked about how I go about prayer as an act of the heart, not the head, and about how when I pray I let my awareness rest in my heart, which is the part of me that is always aware of my connection with all things. OK. But then what?Continue Reading

Praying With the Heart

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[This post is the second in a series on prayer. If you haven’t yet, I recommend you read last week’s post — Learning to Pray — as an introduction.]

disconnected telephone_prayer
How’s your prayer connection working out for you?

Down the street from our house is a booth for a pay phone that’s no longer there (another casualty of the cell phone age) that somebody decided to have fun with. They glued a fake paper phone on the back wall of the booth and stuck a tin can on the end of the cord. Anybody who walks up to that booth expecting to place a call is in for a surprise.

I’ve been walking by this faux phone for a while now, appreciating the humor of it, but recently it occurred to me that it’s an apt symbol for the way a lot of people feel about their prayer life — like they’re trying to connect with the divine realm and it’s just not working. If this describes your experience, it might be an invitation to change your way of approaching prayer.

Before I get into the details of how I go about praying, let me clarify something that you’ll need to know about me. I often use the word “Reality” to describe what monotheistic religions usually call “God,” and the reason I do comes out of my own spiritual experiences that have shown me that all is One, that nothing exists outside of the Great Love, that all of our notions of separateness are illusion, as well as any apparent forms that arise from that notion. Because the word “God” can conjure up ideas of a Being that stands apart from the world and humankind (think Sistene Chapel), I don’t often use it.

This perspective about Reality has significant implications for how I go about prayer, because I no longer approach prayer as though I were placing a phone call to request help from an external being. When I pray, I move inward, to the part of my being that already knows my oneness with Reality and with the situation or people for whom I’m praying.Continue Reading

Learning How to Pray

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prayer bowl
Prayer isn’t a technique or a formula. It’s more like an inner orientation.

Several years ago, when I was still working as a pastor, I traveled to California to attend a conference of church leaders. The keynote speaker was a man who had made a name for himself as a director in the movie industry, and one thing he said has stayed with me all these years. He told the clergy gathered there what he thought lay people really want from their pastors: “Teach us how to pray.”

To be honest, I was surprised. Is that really what people wanted to know? How to pray?

His comment struck me not only because of what he said, but how he said it. It was obvious he wasn’t just making a request. He was pleading with us. He truly wanted to know how to pray.Continue Reading