Patricia Pearce

Helping You Be the Change

Being the Light in the Darkness

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Perhaps we need the Darkness in order to know our Light.

I have never really had a bucket list. No experiences I think I need to have, or places I feel I must visit, or accomplishments I think I ought to achieve to make my life complete. Of course there are things I’ve never done that I might enjoy, but for the most part I am pretty content with my life as it is.

But recently I was reading the news reports of the stunning Northern Lights that have been occurring due to all the solar activity that’s been going on, and I felt a strong desire take shape within me: I’d like to see the Northern Lights before I die.

I’ve seen them only once, back in my college days in Boulder, Colorado, where they appeared as a red glow in the northern sky. It is extremely unusual for them to appear so far south and most people had no idea what was happening. Since it was during the Cold War, many people’s thoughts went to the worst possible scenario: we were seeing the glow of a far off nuclear attack. Eventually the radio announcers found out what was going on and filled us all in, quieting the community’s fears.

Looking back, that was a vivid example of how good we humans are at creating catastrophic narratives. When something occurs that is outside our normal experience, our go-to explanation is that it must be a grave threat, perhaps even the end of the world. Maybe it’s time we started questioning our dystopian assumptions.Continue Reading

Lessons from the Labyrinth

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One of the great teachers on my spiritual journey has been the labyrinth. It has imparted a great number of surprising insights over the years, and its winding path that leads me inexorably into its Center has been a potent symbol for me.

One important lesson the labyrinth has taught me is that life is not linear. First it takes us one way, and then it turns us around to go in the opposite direction. And yet every twist and turn and about-face is leading us to the same singular destination: the Center of our Self, the place of our own Wisdom.

I suppose this aspect of the labyrinth has been on my mind recently because I’ve been feeling myself turning toward some new directions.

Yet live in a culture that values the linear. We are expected to map out a plan for where we want to go and follow it diligently, and if at some point we have to change directions we may even judge ourselves for having made a “mistake” somewhere along the way.Continue Reading

Are You Still Passing On Your Light?

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Are you ready to accept the luminous Self you actually are?

The other day, when I was coming out of meditation, I heard the phrase “passing on your light.” At first I heard it as an instruction: don’t keep my light to myself. Pass it on.

But instantly I realized it was actually a commentary on what I suspect many of us do: pass on our light. As in “Oh, I think I’ll pass.”

I notice this tendency in myself. I experience many insights and spiritual ahas, so many that I couldn’t begin to share them all, but always the first thing that springs to my mind when they come is, “How can I share this with others?”

One might think this is an admirable quality. But actually it can be a form of deflection, a way of avoiding owning the insight and accepting it as an emanation of my own light.

I remember as a child playing the game of hot potato, when I and my friends would circle around tossing an imaginary hot potato to each other.

It’s like that. When we give away our light without first accepting it as ours, we are passing on it. We’re playing spiritual hot potato.

I suppose we play this game because we’re afraid of the potency of our divine nature, afraid of the intensity of our light. Maybe we know if we accept it we’ll have to come to terms with the fact that we are something very different from what we have always believed. But we have to ask ourselves if being loyal to a false identity is more valuable to us than being true to what we actually are.

I’m aware that right now we are in the sign of Leo, which is all about discovering our luminous Self and allowing it to shine. The sign of Leo is also associated with the Sun, and one reason life here on Earth can flourish is because the Sun is simply being what it is: a body of light.

So let me ask you this, are you ready to stop passing on your Light? Are you willing to accept that even the Sun can’t hold a candle to the luminous Self you truly are?

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Crow Feathers, Red Ochre, Green Tea

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Crow FeathersI’m excited to let my “tribe” know about the publishing of a book of poetry by one of the guest bloggers on this site. Gwendolyn Morgan was one of two winners of the 2013 Wild Earth Poetry Prize,  and her book Crow Feathers, Red Ochre, Green Tea is being published by Hiraeth Press.

There are so many wonderful poems in the collection that I had a hard time deciding which ones to share with you. “Window, Winter” spoke to me deeply, especially on this anniversary of 9/11 and in light of the current situation in Syria. I’m guessing many of us are feeling the tug of tragedy on our hearts.

“The Way the Soul Crosses” touched me with its mingling of the tangible and temporal with the mysterious and eternal.

I hope you enjoy these poems, and I encourage you to visit the Hiraeth Press website to read more about Crow Feathers, Red Ochre, Green Tea and the glowing reviews it is receiving, of which this is one:

“Reading these poems is like taking a dip in a cool moun­tain stream. We are refreshed by the poet’s sen­si­tivity to the move­ments and rhythms of soul. Gwen is able to embrace a wide expanse of life, pulling in the wild sur­rounds of nature as well as tender moments of loss and sorrow. These poems sat­isfy a thirst for some­thing real and sub­stan­tial. A rare gift indeed.” —Francis Weller, author of Entering the Healing Ground: Grief, Ritual and the Soul of the World.

 

Window, Winter

Each day I wander through the landscape of spirit: this evening painting
dry bamboo, watercolor blocks, four months in my studio, restless,
thoughts lengthening with the shadows.

Body, stalk, limb, weary with winter.
Together with the OBGYNs, I witness three babies die,
one SIDS death with the Midwives, then, a man my age of cancer,

a nine year old child unnecessarily killed when towed
on a wooden sleigh behind a sap green SUV; she was not pulled
by the Fjord ponies who neigh at my window, waiting for grain.

Our neighbor’s twenty-three year old grandson
comes home from Iraq, Afghanistan,
back to Stumptown with a stump (not a leg)
and a wheelchair (not a cobalt skateboard)
Seven colors of paint on my palette.
How many years have we been at war now?

Another neighbor chops down a row of apple and pear trees
I stare at the lovely rounds of wood in disbelief
they were dead,” he says. I shake my head, “no, they needed pruning.”

The kestrel, robins, chickadees, juncos
the hummingbirds, raccoons and dragonflies
all shared the canopy of these trees as their homes.

Compassion fatigue: intuitive grief, instrumental grief,
no. 2 sable brush.

 

The Way the Soul Crosses

St. Mary’s, Alaska

Look, the moon is pure light.
It swells, translucent.
That’s how it will always be
held in your belly.

We cross the tundra,
kneel on moss and lichen,
pray wild roses, red berries.
Questions rise dense as mosquitoes.

There are so many things we can’t change,
so many things that change anyway.
Transfiguration: the grain becomes
bread, the berries become wine.

The way the soul
crosses over the Yukon River
in a small aluminum dinghy.
The way the seal gut
is painted with red ochre.

The way we remember
one another when faith is
stretched like skin on a drum.
The way we remember
the taste of light, wine, bread.

 

 

Gwendolyn MorganGwendolyn Morgan learned the names of birds and wild­flowers and inher­ited paint brushes and boxes from her grand­mothers.  With a M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Goddard College, and a M.Div. from San Francisco Theological Seminary, she has been a recip­ient of writing res­i­den­cies at Artsmith, Caldera and Soapstone. Her poems appear in: Calyx, Dakotah, Kalliope,  Kinesis,  Manzanita Quarterly,  Mudfish,  Tributaries: a Journal of Nature  Writing,  VoiceCatcher, Written River as well as antholo­gies and other lit­erary jour­nals.  She is a member of the Unitarian Universalist Society of Community Ministries and is a board cer­ti­fied chap­lain with the Association of Professional Chaplains.  She serves as the man­ager of inter­faith Spiritual Care at Legacy Salmon Creek Medical Center.  Gwendolyn and Judy A. Rose, her partner, share their home with Abbey Skye, a res­cued Pembroke Welsh Corgi. | Photo by Kim Campbell-​​Salgado

Living by Heart

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The Heart creates from the limitless possibilities of uncertainty.

I’m recently back from retreat, and once again I am convinced that taking time away from the incessant noise of our society is good for my soul. I can hear myself so much more clearly when I’m unplugged than when I am constantly navigating and responding to external communications and distractions. I can tune in more completely to the wisdom of my heart that perceives possibilities that my analytical mind is simply unable to access.

While on retreat I always do a drawing or two by heart — meaning, I let my intuition guide the process — something I wrote about in a previous post, The Life of a Heartist. This year on retreat I again immersed myself in the fluid ways of intuitive knowing, and in the process I saw more clearly that when we live guided by the heart, we must by definition live in the field of uncertainty.

Our society values certainty. We live in a very left-brained culture that believes that in order to accomplish anything you must have a clearly laid out plan and you must focus your attention on numbers, statistics and “proven” strategies. All of that has its place, but only if it is in service to the heart’s desires and the heart’s guidance. To live a life in alignment with our deepest values and soul purpose, the heart must be in the driver’s seat.

I suspect one reason we prefer to live out of the analytical left-brain is that we feel more secure. If we can head out the door knowing exactly where we’re going and how we’re going to get there, we feel safe.

To live by heart is to live very differently. When we live by heart we center our lives not in certainty, but in trust. We don’t know ahead of time what the outcome of our actions nor the destination of our path will be. We simply follow the step-by-step leading of our intuition.Continue Reading

Unplugged

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Information and wisdom are two different things.

Each year in early February I take time out for a spiritual retreat. It’s a time when I unplug from just about all the external sources of information — news, Internet, email, phone — so that I can plug into the inner sources of wisdom that come from journaling, meditation, prayer, dream work and other spiritual practices, and the rejuvenation that comes from walks in nature.

So much of our life is spent responding to external stimuli, and when we’re constantly attending to what’s coming at us we can’t really listen to what’s already in us.

The plugged-in world is a fabulous source of information, and I learn a lot from what it has to offer. But information and wisdom are two different things, and I know I have to get in touch with my internal bearings on a regular basis so that I can be selective about what I take in from other sources.  Otherwise it’s just too easy to get lost in the deluge of trivia that, in spite of its fascination, may not benefit my own development or nurture my own spirit.

How, you might ask, am I posting a blog while I’m unplugged? Well, I wrote it before my retreat and scheduled it to be published automatically. It’s a wonder, isn’t it, what we are able to do these days?

So, during this time of winter, when nature invites us to hibernate and go inward, I wish for you moments when you too can unplug so that you can tap into your inner wisdom, the wisdom of your soul.


Enough Already

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Do you still think you’re inadequate?

If I had to characterize the dominant belief that orchestrates our society it would be: Not Enough Yet. If you think about it, this basic belief drives just about everything we do. In fact, it forms the foundation of our entire economy. Stock prices aren’t high enough yet. Profits haven’t been maximized enough yet. Jobs haven’t been outsourced enough yet. The Gross National Product isn’t high enough yet.

The belief shows up in our individual lives too. Our income isn’t big enough yet. Our house isn’t elegant enough yet. Our car isn’t sophisticated enough yet. Our clothes aren’t stylish enough yet. Our computer isn’t fast enough yet.

The harm this belief causes is obvious. In our frantic efforts to reach that elusive state of enoughness, we raze more forests to build new tracts of bigger houses, displace more workers to maximize corporate profits, lead more stressed out lives trying to keep up with the bills and the Joneses.

Imagine what would happen if we all stopped buying into the myth of Not Enough Yet. We would only buy clothes when we actually needed them. We would be content with a simple home. We would no longer demand that the corporations we hold stock in exploit workers and the environment in order to give us a slightly higher return. We would enjoy the local fruits of the season rather than going to the grocery store expecting to find fresh asparagus in November shipped in from Chile. We, and the Earth, would be far healthier and happier.

This belief in Not Enough Yet is something that spiritual teachers have been trying to help people get beyond for a very long time. The Tao te Ching teaches, “If you realize that you have enough, you are truly rich.” Jesus said, “Don’t worry about your life, what you’ll eat or what you’ll drink, or about your body, what you’ll wear. Isn’t life more than food, and the body more than clothing?”

I think we’re missing the point, though, if we think all of this is about believing we don’t have enough yet. I think the real issue is that we believe we aren’t enough yet. Our drive to acquire more is often a coverup for our desire to be more. We haven’t yet accepted that the sheer miracle of our existence is enough in itself.

Let me put the question to you: How do you think you aren’t enough? Do you think you aren’t successful enough? Not popular enough? Not confident enough? Not smart enough? Not strong enough? Not talented enough? Not pretty enough? Not happy enough?

Or how about this: Not spiritual enough? Not enlightened enough? Not evolved enough yet?

Pause for just a moment, if you would, and really think about how you would complete the sentence, “I believe I’m not _______________ enough yet.”

Now, let’s set that aside for one moment while I ask you a few more questions.

Has it ever occurred to you that the cells in your body, yes, the cells in your optic nerves that are sending the images of these words to your brain, are made of material that originated in stars that went supernova and spewed their matter out into the cosmos billions of years ago?

Has it ever occurred to you that the water in your body—which makes up most of your material form—has been traveling the world for eons? It has flowed countless times through the Amazon jungle, fallen as snow on the Himalayas, been breathed out by redwoods on the California coast, poured down as rain on the Great Plains, drifted across the sky as thunderclouds, descended into the oceans’ deep?

Just for this moment, consider the places, experiences, substances, beings that the matter in your body has seen and been.

Or how about the DNA that right now is replicating itself in your cells, carrying information that is the creative masterpiece of millions of years of evolution?

And that’s just your physical body. We haven’t even gotten started on the miracle of your consciousness and that this physical matter that was generated in the stars can think and create and love and weep and laugh.

Do you understand that you are nothing less than the miracle of rivers and stars and eons of years now taking on human form that can breathe, dance, write poetry, cook a meal, read a blog?

The miraculous nature of our being was on my mind a few years ago when I was taking a day trip on a gorgeous spring day to Cape May, New Jersey. Come noontime I stopped at a restaurant to get some lunch and sat down on the sunny patio. When the waitress walked up I saw her in her essence—a child of the Universe in every way—and when she began reciting the specials for the day it was all I could do not to bust out laughing.

There was something so wonderfully comical about the moment, that this being in front of me who was living, walking, talking star dust was telling me about the Reuben sandwich and the soup du jour, completely unaware of the fact that she was the Universe in microcosm, a miracle beyond comprehension.

The same goes for you, of course. You are an expression of this Life, this Universe, this Reality that has been expanding and evolving for billions of years. There is no part of you that is not part of that most amazing whole. The sheer fact that you are is beyond amazing.

So. Tell me again. How is it that you’re not enough yet?

The Life of a Heartist

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For many years I have done drawings, usually when I’m on retreat, that help me tune into my intuitive knowing.  We get plenty of practice in our culture tuning into the analytical aspects of ourselves, but rarely are we taught how to listen to other ways of knowing, and that concerns me because there is much our analytical minds cannot do.  They cannot tell us what we really value, what our life’s purpose really is, what our soul really desires.  The analytical mind can dissect information, but it can never provide us with true wisdom.

In this drawing practice, which is a spiritual practice more than an artistic one, I begin by drawing a circle on a piece of paper, then I lay out all of my colored pencils before me.  When they are all spread out in front of me I scan them, letting my eye rest on each one in turn, and as I do I listen inwardly for an intuitive prompting, a nudge that says yes, this one.  Or no, not that one.  I pull out each of the yes pencils as I am being guided and then put the other pencils away.

Then I begin.  I look at the colors and listen for which of them wants to be picked up first, then I pick the pencil up, put its point to the paper and begin to draw, continually listening inwardly, sensing which direction the line wants to go and when it wants to stop.  Then I set it down, and look again at the colors, asking which one wants to go next.  As the image continues to evolve I listen for where the growing edge is as well, and that is where I focus next.  The image itself isn’t intended to depict anything, but the practice is a potent way for me of accessing my deeper Self and listening to my heart.

When I was on retreat last month I was contemplating what it means to live a life like that, guided by the heart, to be a heartist.  It can be frightening for the ego and the analytical mind to let go and let the heart lead, because when the heart leads, you never know where it is all headed.  The path, just as the drawing’s pattern, isn’t nicely laid out ahead of time.  It is only revealed as you follow the inner guidance, one step at a time.

There is an interesting thing that has happened to me in the last few years.  Somewhere along the line I started to experience what I call Heart Glow.  I have a sensation in my heart chakra that I can only describe as a sensation of glowing that comes in response to certain ideas that float into my mind or certain encounters I have.  My heart has become a divining rod for me telling me when I’m on track with something that is true to my core, true to my deeper Self.  And as I move forward with my life path I am listening for that Heart Glow to tell me what the next step is, trusting my heart’s wisdom even though I cannot see the full picture.

Follow your heart.

I find that when I let go of the ego anxieties and the analytical mind’s priorities and listen to my heart, I am led.  All that is asked of me is that I listen and trust, and take the next step.

Listen and trust, and take the next step.

Listen and trust, and take the next step.

And suddenly, unexpectedly, when I step back and look at things from a different angle, something quite surprising is revealed that had been emerging all along, even though I didn’t consciously realize it.

The startling teaching that my retreat drawing gave me this time was just how trustworthy my heart is as a guide and that, in fact, it can create far more beauty than I ever could have knowingly planned.