Patricia Pearce

Helping You Be the Change

Returning Light

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Do you ever doubt that the light will return?

Some years back we had a lot of rewiring done in our house, which was a huge project. For days on end, the house was crawling with electricians pulling wires through walls, and installing outlets and switches. The basement ceiling looked like a rat’s nest of conduit and copper. To a layperson’s eye it looked like complete chaos, and the work just seemed to go on and on.

One day, just as I was beginning to wonder if this would ever end, our electrician comforted us by saying, “It always looks the worst right before it’s done.” And sure enough, in a couple of days the chaos settled into an orderly array that magically lit up the house with the flip of a switch.

That experience came to my mind probably because tonight is the winter solstice, the longest night of the year for us in the northern hemisphere. Although I love the long nights, I realize that a lot of people don’t. The season seems bleak and depressing to them and they long for the return of the light.Continue Reading

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

Occupy the New Mind

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Which operating system are you feeding?

Suppose just for a moment that we are all living in a false reality, an illusion that has been generated by a collective misconception, very much like a program that’s running on a holodeck on one of the ships on Star Trek. This false reality is the creation of the human mind out of touch with our true nature as timeless, divine beings. Everything that you witness in the world around you that constricts or annihilates the ongoing creativity and diversity of Life is the mind’s illusion taking on manifested form.

Let’s call this false reality the emperor’s world. The emperor’s world constructs systems that benefit a small minority by dominating, conquering or enslaving others. In the emperor’s world, nature is understood as a commodity to be exploited, and the goal of life is to accumulate power and wealth.

The misconception at the root of this false reality — the operating system, if you will, running beneath the emperor’s world program — is that there exists in this Universe something called “separateness”: “separateness” between people, “separateness” between humans and other species, between humans and the Earth, “separateness” between the physical dimension and the non-physical.Continue Reading

Autumn’s Wisdom

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May the autumn trees be our spiritual teachers.

I love the season of autumn, the brilliance of the sunlight, the golden trees that blaze so gloriously before the onset of winter, the graceful dance of leaves riding the wind. Every year this season reminds me to trust in nature’s cycles, not to hold onto what is ready to pass away but to let the necessary shedding occur so that emptiness can hold the space for something new to emerge. Continue Reading

All Structures Are Unstable

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Are we willing to let the structures collapse?

A few years ago I was on spiritual retreat in New Mexico and one day, while sitting, reading, up on a mesa overlooking a valley, I suddenly heard a thunderous roaring sound and I looked up. Across the valley a billowing cloud of dust was rising high up into the air as an enormous landslide cascaded down the side of the mesa across the valley.

I was in awe. This geological formation had stood there for millions of years, and here I was witnessing it as it began to reshape itself.

As if that wasn’t incredible enough, the book I was reading was Eckhart Tolle’s A New Earth.

And if all of that wasn’t incredible enough, after the dust from the landslide settled and I continued my reading, I turned the page and found that the next section of the book was headed: “All Structures Are Unstable.”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?

Dump the Pushing

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Ready to dump the pushing?

Once, driving down the freeway, I got behind a dump truck that had the words “Do Not Push” on the tailgate. It looked like the Tao on wheels.

For those who may not be familiar with the Tao te Ching, it’s an ancient Chinese wisdom text–one of my favorite pieces of spiritual writing–which emphasizes living in accord with the Tao (roughly translated “the Way”), the guiding principle of the Universe.

The wisdom in this writing at first glance seems to be foolishness because it speaks of the potency of non-action, the power of yielding, and the effectiveness of letting things follow their natural course.Continue Reading

Thinker in a Cage

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Do you ever feel trapped in thought?

This summer they were renovating the grounds of the Rodin Museum here in Philadelphia where the largest collection of Rodin sculptures outside Paris reside. One of the casts of Rodin’s renowned statue The Thinker sits in the courtyard entrance to the museum. In order to protect it during the renovations, they enclosed the sculpture in a mesh cage.

It seemed apropos.

Most of us spend our days so caught up in our thoughts that we are oblivious to the world around us. Cut off from the raw experience of life, we spend our days trapped inside the prison of our own minds.Continue Reading