The Solstice is near, and every day, the sun sets earlier now. The gathering dark is a reminder of how important it is to rest, to pause, to nourish ourselves with quietude. In the dark, growing things germinate. In the dark, our shadows sigh with relief, grateful for a moment away from the harsh light that seemingly always finds our flaws. In the dark, we can be present with the truths about our vulnerability that we might fear to bring out into the public square.
When we are submerged in the dark time of the year, we can bleed the crisp edges of our mundane lives off the page a bit and become more magical, more diffuse, less judging, more generous, more magnanimous. For many, the nadir of the solar year represents a complex combination of revelry, love, stress, and critique of false or forced jollity. It's not simply the holiday season that brings this forth. It's something about the light, or lack thereof. The peaceable and inconvenient silence of the long night beckons us inward, away from inauthenticity, regardless of how many blazing neon signs leer and tempt us to fling caution to the winds and overindulge, overdo, overspend, or overachieve. We are, if we deeply listen, instead being called to just get very, very real, and love very, very much.
In the gathering darkness of this solstice season, and the gathering shadows of greed and systemic abuse in the world, it is tempting to vanish inward in a spirit of discouragement, fear, or sorrow. While these feelings are valid, they are not likely to accomplish much, so try your best to reframe your perspective so that your quietude is not torturous, but is rather nurturing and healing. You must not allow yourself to be overcome. You must remember who you are, and the power of one person's love.
How many times in your life has the kind word or gesture of one person changed everything in a moment for you? Countless times, to be sure. When you needed it, many times, loving people in your life came along and lit a lamp for you in your hour of confusion and murkiness. When you are feeling low, one of the most valuable things you can do is to recall those kindnesses, and to light your own heart like a candle, illuminating the way for someone else in pain for a while. Doing this may not end your own pain, but it can supply you with a different emotion for a while, and even that is enough.
You can succumb to the glaring stressors and hide from the world, or you can soften into the glow of your own inner fire, warming yourself and others, even when times are tough. The choice is yours. Try it. You are allowed to emerge from the dark night of the year, and from the dark nights of the soul, feeling grateful for what you have and who you are, generous, pleased to participate in the joy of others, and aglow with the happiness that even a single moment of compassion can generate.
This winter solstice, and every season, you are the light. Don't forget.
Being the Change
From an informative 2011 article in The New York Times:
Perhaps you’ve noticed a bumper sticker that purports to quote [Gandhi]: “Be the change you wish to see in the world.” When you first come across it, this does sound like something Gandhi would have said. But when you think about it a little, it starts to sound more like ... a bumper sticker...
Sure enough, it turns out there is no reliable documentary evidence for the quotation. The closest verifiable remark we have from Gandhi is this: “If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him. ... We need not wait to see what others do.”
Well, another reminder...things are not always as they seem. But just because Gandhi did not say that exact quote, nor did Nelson Mandela, Henry David Thoreau, the Buddha, or any other number of notable thinkers actually say exactly the quotes that appear on mugs, t-shirts, and memes, doesn't mean the sentiment isn't valuable. It just means we have to work a little harder to a) document our sources, and b) apply ourselves to the actions that keep us from sliding into the torpor of bumper-sticker activism.
Note from Captain Obvious: If you want to be the change you wish to see in the world, you are going to have to change. What's more, you may end up having to change in ways you don't think you want to change, or in ways that feel uncomfortable to you. There is no escape from the completeness of your intention to change when you actually sincerely ask for change.
So, today, really try to identify one thing you will do to be the change you wish to see in the world...something that actually involves YOU CHANGING. What will it be? Putting a note in your phone to bring re-usable grocery bags? Literally sitting down and being quiet instead of sharing your opinion when a person who has less privilege than you starts talking? Setting a timer to ensure you take showers of fewer than 5 minutes in duration? What will it be? Because to be the change, well, you have to be the change. It starts at home in your own body, actions, and space, and then rather than ending there, it proceeds forth from there.
I'm planning to make a big change in my life in 2017. Through two new projects, I plan to shift more fully into the role of advisor and support for the many people who are doing the beneficial work of creating and sustaining sacred circles and spaces. Watch this space next week when I announce:
- my new Patreon page where you will be invited to help me develop and test Priestess, my forthcoming book about methods for living a sustainable life of sacred service
- a monthly video conference class to help assist people who are building Pagan and polytheist temples. This class, called "Raise the Temple" will be offered by donation with 100% of proceeds benefitting CAYA Pagan Congregation, a nonprofit 501(c)3 Pagan, polytheist church.
Seed the world with magic
Part of the practice of taking joy in the joy of others is to actively create opportunities for others to experience their joy. But how can you find the wherewithal to do that amidst difficult times of your own? You shouldn't fake it. You shouldn't give up, either. Instead, you can launch a personal campaign to seed the world with magic, and ripple it outward from there. Your magic does not need to involve wands or velvet capes, though if it delights you to bring these along, please do. Your magic involves actions taken to make the world a better place for others, in ways small and large.
Begin by making a short list of things you can do, quickly, quietly, and with minimal effort, to bring joy into someone's day. You can pay for the coffee of the person behind you in line. You can pick or purchase an inexpensive bunch of flowers or fragrant herbs and surreptitiously leave them in public places, tied with a piece of ribbon. You can bake or buy a cake for your co-workers and leave it with an anonymous note in the break room. You can compliment strangers on their good taste, cute smiles, or witty remarks. You can participate in a Little Free Library. Each of these small acts is a seed.
From there, reach higher. You can bag food at a local food bank. You can help with a fundraiser for a good cause. You can organize a beach clean-up day. You can light candles for those who are suffering. You can sing love-grams into the voicemails of your friends. You can jump on the bandwagon of someone's GoFundMe and spread it like wildfire. You can organize a group of friends to serve soup to the homeless. You can participate in ceremonies and rituals for peace, or lead them. You can remember tiny details about people that others don't usually remember, and watch them smile shyly when they realize you have. You can make the effort. Each of these acts is a seed.
From there, reach higher. You can start a business that creates joy for others through art, beauty, nourishment, and creativity. You can fill out the paperwork to create a 501(c) charity organization and provide services that are needed. You can help to build a temple or two, advise ethical organizations as they strategize for their futures, step in when you see abuse happening and refuse to back down, create a commune where artists can safely live and hone their craft. Teach yourself to build websites. Host epic parties that raise money for good causes. Each of these acts is a seed.
I used to think about how I could create happiness in the world, and I considered all of the items on this list. They intimidated me. My ego stepped in and tried to tell me my ideas were both frivolous and impossible.
Now, I have done everyone one of these things and I refuse to be intimidated by any dream I have of creating joy, no matter how frivolous or impossible it may seem. Instead, I look for new frivolous and impossible ways to create more joy. Not all of the seeds I plant take root, but I would rather scatter thousands and reap hundreds than stay frozen in fear of planting a single one.
Start where you are. Your magic is needed. Now is the holy moment.
Joy in the joy of others
"May I be a brimming vessel of joy in this world and all worlds, delighting in the happiness of others as their suffering is alleviated."
Daily, I recite this phrase as part of my devotional practice. In the dharma, joy in the joy of others is one of the Four Immeasurables, that is, one of the four qualities that is needed by immeasurable numbers of people, that can generate immeasurable amounts of benefit, and that is immeasurable in its vast and timeless nature. The other three Immeasurables are lovingkindness, compassion, and equanimity.
To take joy in the joy of others is a profound practice. It's fun, but not frivolous. It is a way of life more than a once-per-day meditation. In order to accomplish this practice successfully, we must be willing to a) recognize the true cause of joy, which is the alleviation of suffering, b) actively seek to alleviate suffering in the lives of others, regardless of whether we like them or not, c) analyze our motivations when we feel someone else's joy is somehow unwarranted, or when we are judging it, and d) allow ourselves to fully experience joy in the moments where suffering is alleviated, with full awareness that all emotional states and circumstances are fleeting.
To recognize the true of cause of joy is to first acknowledge that everyone, without exception, experiences suffering in their lives. Some may experience more suffering than others, but there is no hierarchy of pain here. Rather, when we acknowledge that all beings suffer, and that all suffering is difficult for the one experiencing it, we are then freer to truly have compassion for all beings who are suffering, and we are motivated to help. The true cause of joy is in that moment when suffering is lifted and a person can breathe a sigh of relief, have a belly laugh, smile a secret smile in their heart, or otherwise experience upliftment.
When we actively seek to alleviate suffering in the lives of others, we must transcend the definition of suffering as mere emotional or physical discomfort or pain in order to assess the best course of action. As I mentioned last week, seizing power from a dictator will certainly make him and his followers feel unhappy, but will ultimately alleviate the suffering that he is experiencing from his creation of negative karma, and that he is causing to many other people with his overbearing actions. Similarly, having a frank and direct conversation with an addict about their harmful behavior might not immediately feel happy-making, but it is an action taken toward generating lasting happiness by ending the suffering of addiction. Taking your child to get a cavity filled is not an immediate joy at all, but will create lasting joy when the painful tooth is repaired. We need to be aware that while balloon animals, jokes, gifts, and hugs help to alleviate suffering, so can boundaries, difficult conversations, the accomplishment of challenging tasks, and resistance to harmful patterns.
One of the most difficult steps in this practice is to learn to take joy in the joy of even people you do not like. One of the most instructive aspects of this process is to look at how you respond to the success of those you think are undeserving, and to analyze the ways in which you compare your joy to the joy of others as if there was a cosmic scale out of balance. Do you worry that you are somehow not getting your fair share? The ability to release judgment and genuinely celebrate the joy of others, whether you like them or not, and even when you are facing your own suffering, is a sign of a certain level of spiritual mastery.
Finally, when amidst suffering, human beings experience constriction. We tend to clamp down around negative feelings. We pull inward and become small, tight, and fearful. Sometimes we over-identify with our suffering, making it a stubborn source of pride or self-abasement or social status. Suffering can become competitive, with people vying for the position of "who has it worse." In order to accomplish the practice of joy in the joy of others, we must learn to fully observe the moment of joy, wherever it arises, and for whom. We can all, then, share in one another's good fortune. We can allow ourselves to open to joy, to surrender to it, and to experience the innocence of it entirely, regardless of our constrictive tendencies or our fear of the inevitability that suffering will arise again. It surely will, yet it should not block our joy in a child's giggle, in the smile on the face of an Elder after a good turn, or in a pure moment of heart connection between friends. Indeed, only by fully opening to the joy of each possible moment can we cultivate the skills that will help us when we also must accept the realities of suffering. Joy and suffering are not a double-sided coin; rather, they bracket a spectrum of experience, each with their own lessons to teach us.
Cultivating Awareness
Last week, I asked you if you were really and truly ready to understand what it means to "be woke." Have you been thinking about it? There is no better time than now to wake up from the dreams of delusion that govern the majority of our day to day lives.
Awareness is not automatic. It is not reflexive. It requires attention and cultivation, and a willingness to engage with discomfort as your brain begins to process what it might mean to accept reality. Otherwise, in the name of "self-care", a very broad term that occasionally thinly veils abject self-centeredness, we might be cultivating avoidance instead of awareness. Psychologists report that avoidance is related to anxiety, and that it is quite common. In finance, aversion to reality among investors is known as the "Ostrich effect." Our daily avoidance often amounts to simply numbing out by playing pretend, eating, drinking, rationalization, addiction to work, and refusal to engage with facts over feelings.
Putting things off, assuaging one's own fears with half-truths and platitudes,spiritual bypassing, and related phenomena might seem easier than making the decision to stay alert, pay attention, watch keenly, speak up, and be present for what is happening. Our world is not really set up to encourage us in our awareness. In the age of the Internet, when attachment, aversion, and indifference are merely a click away, we can follow our whims regardless of where they lead us. Our knee-jerk reactions can swiftly lead us down the path of obsession, down the path or avoidance, down the path of rage, or, with awareness, we can step off the intensity express and start walking down the path to enlightenment.
Cultivating awareness of how, why, and to what we are reacting and responding in stress situations is one step in cultivating overall awareness. Enlightenment is the individual's capacity for total, limitless awareness, which perceives everything exactly as it is. The ability to see what is, and accept the reality of it, does not mean that we should allow oppression and persecution to stand while we bliss out listening to mantras on our headphones and congratulating ourselves on clear seeing; it means that we know what is happening, we know where we stand, and we know that we are ready to take compassionate action as needed to alleviate suffering.
In a universe made of suffering, where we are each veritably soaking in the suffering of our own lives and others, to truly "be woke" is to refuse to turn away from suffering in any form. It is easy to start cultivating your awareness of suffering among people with whom you agree. It is much harder to cultivate awareness of the suffering of the people with whom you rigorously disagree. Plus, when you work to cultivate that particularly difficult awareness, it is possible that you may engage in spiritual bypassing by removing your focus from the reality of their suffering and instead focusing on your own tepid, temporary version of "love and light." That's not the same thing as incisive awareness of the reality of their situation.
When we cultivate awareness, truly, we begin to see that our opinions aren't actually very reliable. We begin to confront the stories we have been told, and the stories we have been telling ourselves. The fact is, lack of education begets suffering, but education itself can also force you to confront unpleasantries and therefore cause suffering. Poverty begets suffering, but so does wealth in that it ripens one for paranoia and greed over time. Loss begets suffering, but so does an overabundance when one is unprepared for it. Pain and stress cause suffering, but so do ennui and boredom and cynicism.
The key to acknowledging the reality of suffering is to acknowledge that all beings, regardless of their circumstances and privileges, experience suffering and wish for that suffering to end. From this point of acknowledgement, we are free to then address the causes of suffering. We can address the suffering of the oppressed, and we can also address the suffering that caused people to become oppressors. We can address the needs of victims, and we can also address the needs of perpetrators, who may be mentally ill, or might have been victims of abuse themselves. We can address the suffering of the poor who constantly experience fear and pain over their basic survival, and we can also address the suffering of those who, burdened with more than their fair share, have become cold-hearted and callous, effectively limiting their ability to participate in the act of being human.
Not all methods of addressing suffering are gentle, and this is why we must assiduously avoid spiritual bypassing, because the alleviation of suffering is not merely about how we address emotions and feelings, but rather is about how we address the causes of suffering. Seizing power from a dictator will certainly make him and his followers feel unhappy, but it will ultimately alleviate his suffering, and the suffering of many others. Sometimes, compassion is a splash of freezing cold water upon the cosy warmth of privilege.