Patricia Pearce

Helping You Be the Change

Being Human: Containing Multitudes

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As we make space for our complexities, we know ourselves as Love.

In the daily online WeAwakening meditation group that I facilitate we have a very simple format. We begin by getting centered and open, and then I draw an Angel Card that has a word on it which we bring into our meditation time. As we meditate, we don’t think about what the word means. Instead, we let the thinking mind rest as we open ourselves to the energy of the word, letting ourselves feel how it feels. We allow its essence to become activated within us. This week one of the words was Faith.

As I opened myself to the essence of Faith, I felt its serenity, its certainty, its assured calm. I felt it as an intrinsic quality of the eternal Self that knows no death, no danger, no fear. I could feel how the divine Self doesn’t have faith. It is Faith. What else could it possibly be, knowing, as It does, the Love that is the Source of Its being?Continue Reading

Meditation, Community, and Our We Awakening

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The time of the lone wolf is over

Recently I began hosting daily online gatherings in which people from many different locations have joined together to meditate. I have been amazed at how quickly we moved into resonance—opening and amplifying a Heart Field and allowing ourselves to be attuned to higher frequencies. I launched the group because I had been feeling a strong intuitive desire to gather community as the next step in our collective awakening.

Many of us for years have attended to our own inner work and meditation practices. Now it is time for us to come together and enact the truth of we-ness, which is the essence of the unitive consciousness that is arising. It is like the imaginal cells in the chrysalis, after the structure of the caterpillar has dissolved, finding each other, connecting with each other, and beginning to form a new organism: the butterfly.

What Meditation Has Meant to Me

One of the members of the WeAwakening meditation community emailed me asking that I share my understanding of meditation and what it has meant to me. As I have considered her question I have realized how much my practice of meditation has evolved over time.

Early on I practiced mindfulness meditation, becoming aware of sensations, sounds, breath, developing the ability to notice thoughts as they arise—not getting drawn into them, but simply letting them appear and subside without judgment or attachment.

That practice has been extremely valuable for me. It has helped me cultivate the ability to be present in the moment, and it has given me the essential ability to observe mental activity without identifying with it.

This capacity to notice the thinking mind without believing it or engaging it is fundamental in coming to know the true Self, because the thinking mind generates and sustains a false reality and a false identity. Unless we can see through its chatter we can never experience the Real Self.

Opening to Union with Spirit Realm

Over time though, my meditation practice has evolved into an opportunity to unite with the spiritual dimensions. This is another way in which this is a we-awakening. As humans, we aren’t doing it on our own. It is happening in partnership with the Spirit Realm—as well as with the entire Earth.

In my meditation time I join the Spirit Realm and invite assistance in dissolving all traces of erroneous thought forms. I allow myself to be attuned to the energies that are now present to help us through this moment of planetary transition.

I suppose it has become a blending of mindfulness meditation, prayer, and spiritual energy work in which I open, invite and allow my own awakening to emerge fully, knowing this is my most important contribution to the world and our collective awakening.

The WeAwakening Experience

Now, gathering with the beautiful community of souls in the WeAwakening meditation group I feel as though the whole process is accelerating. My experience so far has been that I have felt an expansion of the Heart as we have joined together from our Heart centers, creating a palpable Heart Field among us.

I have also experienced moments when that greater Heart Field has been present even when we’re not meditating together. The dissolving of attachments to former ways of perceiving also seems to be accelerating.

Since our group began I have also come to see that joining with others from the Heart is a powerful antidote to fear, which as humans is our greatest obstacle to awakening.

But an experience I had earlier this week helped me understand even more clearly why I had been prompted to gather community.

The Need for a Collective Container

For quite a long time I have experienced spontaneous visitations of Joy. It is a feeling, an energy that wells up in my body, unbidden, and ignites my Heart like a bright, radiant Sun in my chest. The other day, while I was in my kitchen (for some reason, these visitations often happen while I’m in my kitchen) I had one of those Joy moments. But this time it was so intense that its energy was almost overwhelming.

I realized then that one of the key reasons for us to join together in community is that the higher frequencies that want to be anchored on the planet right now, the frequencies that will usher in a new world, are very intense. They are more than most of us can handle on our own. They require a We container—a collective Field that is expansive enough and strong enough to receive them.

I am exceedingly grateful for our meditation community and for everyone on the planet who is offering themselves in service of this monumental shift. Earth truly is in the midst of a We Awakening, the radiant sun of the Heart is rising—and as the famous Hopi prophecy says, the time of the lone wolf is over.

If you would like to join the WeAwakening meditation community, you can sign up here.

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Squandering Time: A Spiritual Practice

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pocket watch in sand
What does it really mean to squander time?

Benjamin Franklin once famously said, “Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that is the stuff life is made of.” It’s not surprising, given such a philosophy, that Franklin accomplished an amazing amount during his lifetime. Inventor. Statesman. Author. Public Servant. Founding Father.

But as much as Franklin is revered here in Philadelphia where I live—the city Franklin also called home—and as grateful as I am for all of his contributions to our city and society, I’ve come to question his premise that time is the stuff life is made of. More and more I see that life is made of a kind of attention that takes us into a dimension where time doesn’t even exist.

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Fear: Passage to Liberation

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facing fear

[This article has also been published on the Huffington Post.]

In the wake of our recent presidential election, many people are feeling deeply afraid about what the future holds, and understandably so. We have already seen an alarming rise in hate crimes now that bigotry has seemingly been legitimated through our electoral process.

In upcoming posts I will say more about the bigger picture that I see unfolding and the unprecedented opportunities now before us to come together in ways the world has never seen. But for now, I want to speak about fear and offer some ways we can work with it to become the mindful, liberated agents for change these times need us to be.

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Three Ways to Be a Peacemaker in a Time of Hatred

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flag and dove

[This article has also been published on the Huffington Post.]

In the face of escalating hatred and violence that is tearing at the seams of our country, many of us are left wondering how to be a peacemaker. How can we counteract the alarming anger and violence without engaging in further attack? How do we unleash the power of peace?

The fundamental misunderstanding about reality beneath all the xenophobia, Islamophobia, homophobia, racism and sexism we are witnessing is that something called separateness exists.

The question is, how do we respond to this erroneous idea without engaging in the same posture of attack that such an idea engenders? I am going to suggest three ways, based on the principles of nonviolence.Continue Reading

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