Patricia Pearce

Helping You Be the Change

Jumping to New Year’s Conclusions

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What future do you want to imagine?

I am not a big fan of New Year’s resolutions even though I am a firm believer in the power of setting intentions and visions for the future. That’s why my practice, when the year rolls to a close, is not to make a list of “shoulds” for the upcoming year, but to jump ahead and imagine what it is I want to be celebrating a year from now.

I take out a pen and paper and write a letter of thanks to the Universe for all that has come to pass in the year ahead, as though the coming year were not commencing, but concluding. The more I write, the more I can feel myself entering into the reality that I am envisioning. Then, when the new year begins, I feel as though my dreams have already come to pass and all I have to do is cooperate and do my part to let them express themselves.

My New Year’s practice draws on the wisdom of Jesus, that great guru of imagination and intention, who said that whenever we pray for something, we should believe we have already received it and it will be ours. It is our willingness to receive what we ask for, without reservation or resistance, that makes all the difference.Continue Reading

Release All Concept of Enemy

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What would it be like to release all concept of “enemy”?

Several years ago, while on retreat, I was meditating as I walked an outdoor labyrinth. Suddenly, the words came to me: “Release all concept of enemy.”

I was startled. I hadn’t been thinking at all about enemies. In fact, having been on retreat for several days, I hadn’t even had a disagreeable encounter all week.

More surprising than that, though, was what the message was telling me: enemy is nothing more than a concept—just an idea in the mind.

Thanks to that labyrinth revelation, I have become more aware of how often the concept of enemy is invoked. There are the obvious examples, of course—people of other nationalities, ethnicities, religions, socio-economic classes or worldviews are often seen as enemies—and the concept of enemy fuels much of our current politics.

But it doesn’t stop with people. We can see all kinds of things as enemy: the weeds in the garden, the stain on the shirt, the morning commute, the cold virus that’s paying a visit.

People sometimes look to the natural world for evidence that having enemies is, well, natural. Isn’t the lion an enemy to the gazelle, the hawk an enemy to the rabbit? Well, no. They are participating in the food chain that we’re all part of—life sustaining itself on itself. Enemy has nothing to do with the food chain. It’s a category we use to justify malevolent actions towards another.

To release the concept of enemy we first have to notice it. We have to be aware of when we are caught in the concept ourselves, and also notice when it is being used to manipulate us. How many times have you received a phone call from a fundraiser invoking the concept of enemy in order to raise money for a candidate or cause? Can you imagine if we all rejected the whole concept and politely asked them to come up with a different strategy for making their case?

Of course there will be people with whom you disagree. There may even be people whose actions you feel you must oppose. But the only way they become an enemy is if you make them one in your own mind.

One of the most famous sayings of Jesus is, “Love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you.” By saying this, Jesus was actually negating the concept of enemy. It’s not possible to love someone and at the same time place them in a category called enemy.

Maybe one reason we cling so tenaciously to this concept of enemy is that it enables us to project all the traits we don’t like in ourselves onto other, avoiding the hard work of healing ourselves. But as the Tao te Ching so wisely states:

A great nation is like a great man:

. . .He considers those who point out his faults

as his most benevolent teachers.

He thinks of his enemy

as the shadow that he himself casts.

(translation by Stephen Mitchell)

Who falls in your category of enemy? CEOs? ISIS? Wall Street bankers? Right-to-Lifers? Immigrants? Marines? Fox News Anchors? Democrats? Your neighbor? Your boss? Humanity?

Yourself?

Can you imagine for just a moment how profoundly your life—and the whole world—would instantly change if this concept of enemy simply vanished from our minds?

Looking Out for One Another

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Do we have the courage to bless and share?

One day I was riding the bus back home from Center City. We had pulled over at a stop to let some passengers on, and it was taking much longer than usual. Curious, I looked out the window and saw that a couple of people were trying to help a woman onto the bus.

When the woman boarded, wearing dark glasses and carrying a white cane, I understood the delay. She sat down up front, and the woman following her sat down next to me.

“We’ve got to look out for one another,” she told me. It seemed the driver hadn’t noticed the blind woman, so this woman and her husband had intervened.

Let me pause to interject an important contextual note. The blind woman was white. The woman sitting next to me was Black. I’m white. None of which should matter, except that in a society still divided along lines of race, it does.

“We all come from one Creator you know,” she continued. “Some people think God’s a man, some people think God’s a woman.” She waved her hand as if to dismiss such a trivial question, her enormous bling ring catching the light. “Doesn’t matter.”

Then she laughed, her face beaming. “Or maybe we’re all descended from the apes.” From the same apes, that is.

“We’re all in the same boat,” I replied, offering up my feeble cliche and marveling at the incredible encounters one can have on public transportation.

“That’s right,” she said.

Then she started telling me a story. She ran into a woman once who had gone through some terrible struggles. She was down on her luck with no place to go and no money. My bus companion had only forty dollars herself, but she took out twenty and gave it to the woman.

Later on that day, something drew her attention to a listing of winning lottery numbers. She noticed one that she was sure she had played recently. She went fishing for her ticket and sure enough, she’d won $250. She was certain she never would have discovered it if she hadn’t given the twenty away.

“I always tell my friends, ‘Now I’m not sayin’ you should go out and play the lottery!'” She laughed again. “It’s not like that. God does something different every time.”

As we spoke, I remembered the story about Jesus wanting to feed a hungry crowd out in the middle of nowhere and asking the disciples how much food they had. Five loaves of bread and two fish. Enough for the thirteen of them and their inner circle of friends to have a meager meal, but nowhere near enough for a crowd of thousands.

Jesus seemed completely immune to their scarcity mentality. He took the bread, blessed it, broke it, shared it. His trust, expressed through that act of generosity, unleashed their collective abundance. The hungry masses were fed.

Some people look at that story as a demonstration of Jesus’ greatness as a miracle worker, but I see it differently. For one thing, I don’t believe Jesus was at all interested in demonstrating his greatness. If he had he would have been a charlatan, not a spiritual teacher. Instead, what I think this “feeding of the multitude” is about is Jesus embodying a teaching: this is how it’s done. When the crowds are hungry and it seems there’s not enough to go around, that’s precisely when you truly need to bless, to share.

Our instinctual inclination—especially in the midst of bleak economic circumstances—is to contract our circle of concern, curse the hungry masses and hang onto whatever we might have. Lean times can make for mean times.

Or, they can make for the most miraculous times imaginable—when acts of selfless generosity turn the whole scarcity storyline on its head.

It wasn’t long before the bus reached the stop where my dharma teacher and her husband were getting off. We wished each other well as we parted ways. But her teaching hasn’t left me: we’ve got to look out for one another.