I started Spotlight Planet Earth in 2016, after jumping into the climate crisis arena and not being sure which way to act. At the end of my first blog post I wrote: “I want to share what I am learning, doing, questioning, even struggling with as well as share books, films, people, podcasts, blog posts that particularly touch me. It will definitely be an evolving blog site with the sense that I am not so different from many others who have not wanted to really peer too deeply into this overwhelming arena and who are perhaps not so sure what we can do to effect change…and yet are definitely concerned.” That was six years ago. I’m still involved, but it’s a slow activism because change is not happening quickly or quick enough to address the dramatic changes that are happening and will continue to happen.
These are troubled times. Lurking always in the background is our environmental/climate planetary crisis. In addition, there are wars, pandemics, extreme divisions among people…so much suffering.
What sustains me during these troubled times? And it isn’t just about what sustains me. For that I could look to many earthly interests, activities, and dear relationships, but I am using the word sustain in a bigger way. Sustain in the sense that there is some higher, grander purpose to life, to why we are on this planet, to why we were given life, to how life evolves and what makes sense in the most glorious way possible. Sustain in the way thousands of years ago and even today religion for some gives life purpose or fighting for a worthy cause can sustain us beyond survival.
So, a taste of what sustains me.
Imagine being with another or others in deep meditation but a meditation not on one’s individual pillow…it’s a meditation that is being shared with another or others; in other words, we are communing in the same place. You might call it the same inner sanctuary with another, and that sanctuary is sacred, deep, playful, light-hearted. It takes many shapes but always there is a sense of something so good, vast, and awe-inspiring. And like explorers in a new territory, it feels both like home and very new – we are exploring together, groping and finding words, sentences, the pause between words, to touch and express what is there. And as we gently touch it, this sacred space moves, evolves, keeps revealing itself.
This sanctuary is dynamic. It is a dynamic stillness at times where opposites merge to express that which is inexpressible like empty and full, still and moving, quiet and alive, inner and outer. A dissolution of boundaries.
As we explore, we stretch to find new ways to touch it. Our language feels at times outdated or clunky to express that which we don’t have words for yet. We are literally breathing a different air together – air that is clean, purified, uplifted as we stay ever close to what is just emerging in this shared unified space.
This new way of being together, accessed through a practice called the mutual awakening practice, is happening with an ever-growing community of people from all over the world.
It’s a collective practice that I’ve been doing for the past eleven plus years and points to new potentials, possibilities for us as human beings where there is transparency, trust, acute aliveness and effortless interest. It nourishes, heals, and most importantly gives hope for a humanity beyond division, beyond individual striving and strategizing, beyond ego.
I am part of a group called the Evolutionary Collective led by the visionary modern mystic Patricia Albere and it is sustaining me in a bigger, deeper way.
In future blog posts, just as I shared my journey into climate activism, I’d like to share my deepening journey in this new shared unified “land” which is pointing to a wholly different way of living and being together.
g blog posts.
More to say in upcoming blogs.