Patricia Pearce

Helping You Be the Change

Spread Your Wings

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What would your life be like if you spread your wings fully?

A few months ago, artist Sara Steele wrote a post for this blog, Pas de Deux, describing her experience of watching a hawk take flight from its perch on a tree branch. It spread its wings, fell onto the wind and soared away. After reading it, I had a realization that has stayed with me as an important teaching.

What I realized is that, in order for the hawk to be able to soar so effortlessly on the wind it has to spread its wings — fully. Otherwise, there is no way the wind can support it, and its flight becomes aerodynamically impossible.

It’s such an obvious point, but one I hadn’t ever thought about before.

The wind is often thought of as a metaphor for the divine Spirit, the invisible force that moves through our lives, and I happen to believe that the Spirit, the Divine, the Universe, God, whatever name you choose to give that Reality which is greater than ourselves, is a force that supports us as we seek to manifest our dreams and give expression to our soul’s purpose. It is like the wind that carries the hawk to its destination.

But in order for our dreams to be supported we have to to do our part.  We have to offer the fullness of our gifts and essence, in other words, we have to spread our wings wide.  If we hold back because we aren’t certain how we or our gifts will be received we are like the hawk stepping off the branch with its wings tucked in tight.  Playing it safe, we jeopardize our own success.

Since having this realization, I have become more aware of the ways in which I sometimes hold myself back, and as this new year begins I am more deeply committed to spreading my wings fully.

How about you? Are there areas in your life in which you are “playing it safe” by withholding your gifts and who you truly are? If so, feel for a moment what your life would be like if you spread your wings fully and gave yourself over to the spirit realm whose nature it is to support you and enable your dreams to take flight.

 

 

Pas de Deux

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Where did the expression “leap and the net will appear” come from? When did it come into use? Is there evidence for its veracity? I guess I don’t have enough faith to assume that this vast Universe cares enough about any particular leap of mine to put a net under me in the nick of time.

They say spider’s silk has a relative tensile strength greater than steel cable. It is certainly far less visible and weighs a fraction of it. Is the tensile strength of the theoretical net-to-appear as strong as spider’s silk? Is it as invisible as wind?

Several years ago I was driving along a familiar road when out of the corner of my eye I saw a large hawk, high on a branch in a cluster of pines. I pulled over immediately and shut off the engine to watch this bird sitting silently amidst wind invisibly setting needles and branches dancing.

The bird was quite still. I watched. Time telescoped. I don’t know how long we stayed that way, in spacious time.

Spaciousness feels liberating –– a big inhale, ribs expanding, arms extending wide, followed by an exhalation of great relief. So comforting. A friend once explained her experience of Sabbath as “A Palace in Time.” In the luxury of spaciousness I can float, buoyed by invisible currents of thought or creativity or simply being. Yet without a center that can hold, vast openness can provoke anxiety.Continue Reading

Imagination: Our Super Power

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How are you using your super power?

I had a dream once in which I was attending a conference where a couple of speakers had connections with Fanta. One had established a Fanta distribution center as a form of ministry. The other was the chemist who developed Fanta and understood its molecular structure.

Sitting on a table next to the podium where they were speaking was a bottle of Fanta. Its label read: Renewing Energy.

It felt like an important dream, so I spent some time working on it. Fanta implied the word “fantasy,” which led me to investigate the etymology of that word. It comes from a Greek word meaning: to cause to appear, make visible, expose to view, show.

Fantasy, often disparaged as being “out of touch with reality,” is actually the imaginative impulse out of which all that we create—all that we make visible—arises.

I believe, as human beings, our imagination is perhaps our greatest super power. Some would say it is the divine image in us. It is what has enabled us vulnerable weaklings without tooth or claw to survive on this earth.

Human history is really the story of the human imagination. How it has built empires, created vaccines, invented language, and calculus, composed symphonies, penned poems. Human history is the story of our collective fantasy—our power to cause to appear that which has never before existed.

Many who have left their mark on human civilization and culture have extolled the power of the imagination:

Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life’s coming attractions. ~ Albert Einstein

Imagination rules the world. ~Napoleon Bonaparte

It is through imagination that we transcend understanding and travel into the world of possibilities. ~Danielle Pierre

Every great advance in science has issued from a new audacity of imagination.  ~John Dewey

Live out of your imagination, not your history. ~Stephen Covey

This super power will shape our future, and if there’s anything the future needs of us now it’s that we engage our imaginations in positive, life-enhancing fantasy. It’s the only way we can break out of the gravity of an old story that is leading us to destruction.

Fantasy is not to be taken lightly, and the collective leap of imagination into the new world we must create together begins with each of us. Just as we go to the gym to build up our physical strength, we need to exercise the muscles of our—perhaps flabby—imagination if we hope to meet the global challenges before us.

It isn’t enough to just sit around expecting someone else to step in and save the day. We are that someone. As Madeleine L’Engle said, “It might be a good idea if, like the White Queen, we practiced believing six impossible things every morning before breakfast, for we are called on to believe what to many people is impossible.”

My Fanta dream helped me see that part of my calling is to help people discover and unleash the power of their imaginations. It showed me that fantasy is Renewing Energy—the capacity to make new. If that isn’t a super power, I don’t know what is.

 

 

Crossing the Sea

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Which shore do you see yourself on?

Several years ago an artist friend of mine was looking across a field and suddenly the field appeared to him as a red sea. Bo sensed the vision was intended for me, so he painted a water color wash of what he had seen and gave it to me.

When I contemplated the painting, the sea looked like an enormous, unsurmountable obstacle, as the Red Sea must have appeared to the Hebrews in the mythic story of the Exodus. Fleeing Pharaoh’s army, horses and chariots bearing down on them, the Hebrews’ situation appeared absolutely hopeless.

One day as I meditated on the painting, something extraordinary happened. I saw the sea as something that was behind me. I was on the other side of it, looking back. I had left behind the life of bondage. I was in the land of freedom.

What I experienced in that moment was a quantum leap of perception, and I realized how, when one’s perception changes, so does one’s inner reality.Continue Reading

Dream. Then Do.

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In some Native American circles, Lizard represents the capacity to dream.

One of our local colleges has launched a new ad campaign which I first noticed a few weeks ago while riding the bus. In the front of the bus behind the driver there is a plexiglass panel which is where they often display ad posters. That day there was a poster with a picture of a young woman, dreamily gazing upward, smiling, and next to her the words: “Don’t Dream. Do.”

While I understand the intent of the campaign — to encourage people to get off their duffs and do what needs doing to activate their potential — I think they are making a tremendous mistake in telling people not to dream.

A lot of us are actually pretty good at doing, the problem is that so often our doing isn’t in accord with our true selves or highest good. We may just be living out the expectations others have of us rather than really exploring what it is we want for ourselves. If I were designing the college’s ad campaign it would say: “Dream. Then Do.”

It’s essential for us, after all, to engage our dreaming capacity because it is the first step in manifesting the future we want, and actually the picture on the ad is instructive in one way: it shows that the young woman, as she dreams, is smiling. That, my friends, is the key because it is our joy that leads us to our true path. It is like an exuberant, tail-wagging dog that is taking us for a walk, leading us with its own gleeful nose to our truest treasures.

Rather than squelching our capacity to dream we need to cultivate it. When we are stepping into a new life for ourselves we need a vigorous and bold imagination to help catapult us beyond the restrictive boundaries imposed by self or society; only in that way can we begin to live into our fullest potential.

Then, yes, doing becomes essential. Taking the dream and translating it into actions, no matter how small, is the way we honor it and begin to prepare the way for it to come forth. When we’ve taken time to dream in order to get in touch with our own inner wisdom and true direction, then our doing will be in the service of manifesting our own life purpose, rather than settling for the life others have told us to live.

What You See Is What You Get

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Decades ago when I was first learning to drive, one of the first things my driving instructor cautioned me about as soon as I got behind the wheel was that I would instinctively drive towards wherever I was looking. His words of warning have stayed with me over the years not only as an instruction for driving, but as an instruction for living.

One of the challenges we face in our society is that we are constantly bombarded by the news media with stories of catastrophe and violence that draw our attention towards an image of a world fraught with danger. Sure there is danger, that’s part of life. But there is also exquisite beauty, miraculous possibilities, innumerable instances of goodwill, heroic compassion, and just simple kindness.Continue Reading

All Big Things

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What is one tiny seed you could plant today?

We’ve been harvesting chilis from our garden and so far have canned 34 jars and the plants are still producing. We started the plants last winter from small seeds, no more than a quarter of an inch across, but now, from those few tiny seeds, we have chilis to last us for at least the next couple of years, and plenty to share.

Is there something you envision for your life, but you feel immobilized because it seems too big and you don’t know where to begin? Or is there some shift in the world you long to see, but because the status quo is so entrenched there just seems no possibility of it ever becoming a reality? If so, take a lesson from the seed: all big things start small.

Let me repeat that, because it’s so easy to forget. All big things start small.