We are responsible ...

 

We are responsible for our own ignorance or, with time and openhearted enlightenment, our own wisdom.

ISABEL WILKERSON

Just to be...

 

Just to be is a blessing. Just to live is holy.

RABBI ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHEL

– Giving Yourself Permission to Heal

 

– Giving Yourself Permission to Heal   Knowing that we can heal the old pain in our hearts gives us hope that we can realistically create deep, loving relationships. In our meditation today, we learn that the next step toward healing is to consciously give ourselves permission to heal.   This means opening up and connecting to our inner love and kindness. As we open and expand into our true being, we are accepting and permitting genuine healing to occur. From this core healing, we find it easy and enjoyable to connect with others. All meditations are available through December 21, 2020.

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Our centering thought for today is: My intention to heal sustains me through everything. “Awareness in itself is healing.” – Frederick Salomon Perls

“You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment.” –

 

Day 6 – You Deserve More Than Second-Hand Experiences   Today’s meditation is about learning to live authentically from your real self. That means your thoughts, feelings, and behaviors arise from within the silence of your own awareness. This is in contrast to experience and behavior that is driven by others’ beliefs, expectations, and demands. That is second-hand experience: the mode of living that is responsible for pressure, frustration, and feeling stuck in life. First-hand experience is living from our true self, where you direct your life from within, and find love, beauty, and joy in every experience you have.

Our centering thought for today is:  Today I am completely free of the past.  “You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment.” – Henry David Thoreau

Rising Above Your Old Conditioning

 

Day 5 – Rising Above Your Old Conditioning  In today’s meditation, we learn that our old conditioning isn’t just mental, it’s also physical and shows itself as unconscious brain responses. If we let our conditioned brains be in charge, we remain stuck in old, predictable patterns. We become biological robots. To break free of this habitual behavior we need to cultivate self-awareness. In meditation we recognize our true self to be ever-present awareness, and in this self-knowing, we become free from the conditioned responses of our minds and bodies.

Our centering thought for today is:  I am in charge of my brain, not the other way around.  “We first make our habits, and then our habits make us.” – John Dryden

. Don’t mistake the cracks for a flaw in the design.

 

We need impact for transformation. Don’t mistake the cracks for a flaw in the design. The flaw is in the perception that wholeness is lost.

ALEXA ALTMAN

The more I wonder,

 

The more I wonder, the more I love.

ALICE WALKER

The Trauma of Toxic Masculinity

 

hola relatives - given the violence done by men recently and for all the years of the patriarchy i thought you might find this article interesting in terms of looking at causes.  my own healing work required stalking the poison in me from my conditioning in this culture, an ongoing process. love, t.    reflection statement for consideration until we meet again april  7th, see what it brings up for you -  When the going gets tough, you get what you practice.   The Trauma of Toxic Masculinity  Why you can trust us BY JARED YATES SEXTON What really lies beneath the anger and aggression of traditional White masculinity. During the two years I reported from the 2016 campaign trail, I watched Trump speeches in cramped union halls and polished addresses to thousands, survived the major conventions, dodged flash bangs and retreated from burning limos at an inaugural riot, and generally dove headfirst into one of the most bizarre and contentious political contests in American history. The majority of this time, however, was devoted to studying the phenomenon that was the Donald Trump campaign, a rolling disaster equal parts professional wrestling and pure rage.   After sneaking into his rallies, speaking with his supporters, and examining that mess from every conceivable angle, what I eventually found, at the dark heart of it all, was White men. At the rallies they’d crowd into a scrum in front of the stage and stand shoulder to shoulder. On their way in they’d buy buttons calling Hillary Clinton a “bitch,” or else they’d choose between two of the most popular shirts for sale: “Hillary Sucks, But Not Like Monica” or one with Trump riding a motorcycle that Clinton had just been thrown from and wearing a vest that said, “If you can read this the bitch fell off.” In the comfort of the crowd they used disgusting language and trafficked in casual racism, virulent misogyny, and undisguised homophobia. At times, they seemed spurred on by each other, as if in competition to see who could step furthest over the line of common decency.   I was able to be one of the first journalists to walk among them because these are my people. Growing up in a dirt-poor factory family in southern Indiana, I’d heard all of this before, though usually behind closed doors, and thus could observe without flinching or revealing myself. I also knew how to dress—jeans, T-shirts, scuffed boots, an old, soiled baseball cap—and to carry myself as if I had better things to do and yet was ready to fight at a moment’s notice.   I could blend in because I’d been doing so for years, faking it with my own family. The things those men said I’d heard at barbecues and holidays. The same groups they were angry with were the ones they’d railed about for as long as I could remember. These men raised me. They punished me when I didn’t fit in. They beat me and tortured me, all in an effort to toughen me up and make me just like them. They were my uncles, my cousins, my friends, my neighbors, my stepfathers, and even my own father. There in the crowd I looked and performed like them, but I still felt as strange and as odd as I did back home.   From the time I was very little, I’d always been like a stranger among my family. I watched them and took my cues, but I could never escape the suspicion that in some way, shape, or form, I was unusual. That fact didn’t go unnoticed by the men in my world. To my relatives I was “different,” a word I’d heard them use in a suspicious voice whenever they thought I was out of earshot. They were uncomfortable around me, thrown off by how I spoke and how often I’d ask questions that required more than a monosyllabic “yes” or “no,” or one of their customary grunts or groans women had learned to translate out of necessity. I talked about feelings, read books, and when I played with my toys, even the action figures and robots that all came with missiles and machine guns, they spent more time communicating than battling each other.   The patriarchal structure my family operated under was described by the women as “the way it’s always been,” a tired nod to a way of life that’d been rooted in place since before they were born. It meant that women tended to the home, even as they worked jobs to make ends meet, and then raised their children. The man was expectantly beleaguered by his backbreaking job, and having given his all to the factory, mine, or body shop, he had no more energy to spare for his partner or his family, no more strength for functioning besides maybe taking out the trash or mowing the yard on the weekend. Men were effectively the kings of their household, the final word on every matter, above reproach or question. They were to be feared and taken care of. They sat in front of a game on the TV like a royal contemplating stately matters upon a throne. And like many kings, they possessed a great ability to be cruel. When their power or sovereignty was questioned, their response was anger. They yelled, they threw things, they were violent, and these outbursts always coincided with lapses in authority, humiliations at work, and any number of breaches of that sovereignty.   Like kings, they were also benefactors of privilege they had earned by simply being born. And when those privileges were tested—whether these were my relatives or the men like those at Trump’s rallies—they declared war. When I think about masculinity, and particularly my struggle to find my place in the masculine world, the man who comes to mind most is my father. Of course, father issues are nothing new—art is littered with books and songs and plays and movies about it—but when I look at my relationship with John Robert Sexton, those difficulties mostly center on what is expected out of a man. Like the others, Dad knew I was different. Five years after he died, I sat down to talk with my stepmother, Nancy, and the word she used to describe his feelings about me as a child was “soft,” a catchall that meant sensitive, vulnerable, artistic.   Following a traumatic and abusive divorce, my parents were estranged, and I spent the overwhelming majority of my time with my mom. I saw Dad on holidays and the occasional vacation, but I got a sense I made him uneasy and, over time, that he was happier when our time together was sparse. When I did see him, though, I was terrified of his macho act. He bragged incessantly about his time in the Marines and preferred to be outside drinking beer and working with his hands. In his absence, the family told stories about his legendary days raising hell. He had no time for my bullshit, and when we talked, which wasn’t often, he was dismissive, sexist, racist, and closed off.   Back then, my dad would have been the exact type of man you’d expect to vote for Donald Trump. When talk with his buddies turned to outsiders, be they immigrants, homosexuals, feminists, or the few African Americans or Mexicans who dared to move into our small Indiana town, things turned ugly. Like the conversations I’d heard in and outside Trump rallies, it was “our” town, “our” country. There was no doubt White men ruled the world and everyone else was looking to steal it away. The older I got, and the more the distance between my dad and me started to hurt, I tried to play the role he expected. I’d go fishing, camping, bowling; I would stand there as he and the other men talked.   Much like Donald Trump’s infamous locker room session where he bragged that he could grab women “by the pussy,” men unencumbered by the presence of women often break their self-imposed vow of silence, and what they say, more often than not, is beyond offensive. I’ve heard men joke about wanting to rape women. I’ve heard men describe their sexual encounters in stark, humiliating detail. I’ve heard men use every slur, racial or otherwise, you could ever imagine. I’ve heard men express their most fundamentally racist and sexist beliefs, have heard them lust after authoritarian power, say they’d be just fine eliminating all minorities, that they wish every man, woman, and child in the Middle East would be incinerated with nuclear bombs, have heard them discuss the merits of reinstituting slavery, and go several rounds of admiring Adolf Hitler. For those men, communication is either a utility to get something done or another opportunity to further the illusion that they are unburdened by consciences or weak emotions.   My dad was like that for the majority of the 30 years I knew him. At nearly every occasion he was either stoic or aggressively politically incorrect, and the worldview he presented was as cold and cruel as he would like to have been perceived. But then something happened. He changed. Wholesale. When I look back on it I wonder if it was because he knew he was running out of time. Unchecked diabetes—like many men, Dad refused to tell anyone he was sick and then avoided seeing a doctor for fear of appearing weak—took his life at the early age of 59. But before it did, Dad spent the last decade of his life as a different man. This came after we finally got to know each other and grew into friends. I was older and a few rough years had worn away some of the softness he’d despised in me. We met somewhere in the middle: me turning into a harder, stoic man and my father finally emerging from his shell. In these years we did the tried-and-true masculine things. We watched ball games on the TV, fished for catfish and bluegill in stripper pits in the Greene-Sullivan State Forest, shot guns, stood out in the garage, as is customary, and generally bullshitted.   But what was most amazing, other than my father’s apparent transformation, was that Dad, seemingly exhausted by years of near-silence, began to speak openly about the burden of masculinity. He told me the expectations he’d carried, as a father, as a son, as a man, had sabotaged his relationships and prevented him from expressing himself, or really enjoying intimacy, emotionally or intellectually, his entire life. Shocked at the depth of frustration and despair my dad had suffered, I listened and realized, for the first time, that the masculinity I’d sought, the masculinity I’d been denied, had always been an impossibility. Deep down, I realized that masculinity, as I knew it, as it was presented to me, was a lie. Men like my father, and men like him who attend Trump rallies, join misogynistic subcultures, populate some of the most hateful groups in the world, and are prisoners of toxic masculinity, an artificial construct whose expectancies are unattainable, thus making them exceedingly fragile and injurious to others, not to mention themselves.    The illusion convinces them from an early age that men deserve to be privileged and entitled, that women and men who don’t conform to traditional standards are second-class persons, are weak and thus detestable. This creates a tyrannical patriarchal system that tilts the world further in favor of men and, as a side effect, accounts for a great deal of crimes, including harassment, physical and emotional abuse, rape, and even murder. These men, and the boys following in their footsteps, were socialized in childhood to exhibit the ideal masculine traits, including stoicism, aggressiveness, extreme self-confidence, and an unending competitiveness. Those who do not conform are punished by their fathers in the form of physical and emotional abuse, and then further socialized by the boys in their school and community who have been enduring their own abuse at home.   If that isn’t enough, our culture then reflects those expectations in its television shows, movies, music, and especially in advertising, where products like construction-site-quality trucks, power tools, beer, gendered deodorant, and even yogurt promise to bestow masculinity for the right price. The masculinity that’s being sold, that’s being installed via systematic abuse, is fragile because, again, it is unattainable. Humans are not intended to suppress their emotions indefinitely, to always be confident and unflinching. Traditional masculinity, as we know it, is an unnatural state, and, as a consequence, men are constantly at war with themselves and the world around them.   Excerpt from The Man They Wanted Me to Be: Toxic Masculinity and a Crisis of Our Own Making by Jared Yates Sexton (Counterpoint Press, May 7, 2019) published by permission of the publisher.

Gratefulness is possible with the awareness

 

Gratefulness is possible with the awareness of the fragility of what we have.

MIKE MARTIN

 

Unity of Charleston Sunday VIRTUAL Service Time is 10:30am, Services in Sanctuary with STAFF ONLY AND ON FACEBOOK ONLY! Wednesday Backyard 6:30PM services on Facebook only! See below VIRTUAL Meditation for the Earth and Eco-Justice still ON ZOOM ONLY every Sunday 9:30 am, SEE BELOW FOR DIRECTIONS Nursery and Children Program available during service, suspended. Usual office hours: We are IN some days due to the virus, but answering emails and voice mails. Please call ahead of time to make sure we are here. Sat. Thur Thursday, 9am-3pm Address: 2535 Leeds Ave. Charleston, SC 29405 Phone: 843-566-0600 Fax: 843-566-9997 Email: UnityCharleston@msn.com Website: www.unitychs.org Minister: Rev. Ed Kosak Asst. Minister: Rev.Sarah Scott Putnam Administrator: James Mitchell Youth Minister: Naomi Garcia Music Minister: Brad Henty If you've been trying real hard to fast from negative thinking, and feast on positive thinking, here is a last minute booster (before Easter) to help you in finishing out the last few days of Lent. Don't power through whatever it is you're fasting from. Sometimes powering through a problem or situation is necessary. But when it comes to fasting, powering through effects are short term. If you're trying to give up smoking for instance, powering through urges to smoke is fine, but short lived. The urges come back even stronger sometimes. That's because we resist the urge. Another approach would be to ALLOW the urge to be, to let it be and let it's energy dissipate. When we resist something and just power through it, we repress the energy. Letting the urge "be", allows it to be observed, to be learned from, and to ultimately pass. The urge loses its power over us. This is a very Taoist approach to life that I just love. It denies nothing, yet it doesn't just "wallow" in the urge. It goes with the flow.     Rev. Ed

I cannot tell the truth about anything unless...

 

I cannot tell the truth about anything unless I confess being a student, growing and learning something new every day.

SONIA SANCHEZ

Reverence brings healing.

 

Reverence brings courage. Reverence brings knowledge. Reverence brings skill. Reverence brings healing. It is the fulcrum of the great turning of civilization toward reunion with nature.

CHARLES EISENSTEIN

When we learn to fully embrace the limitless potential in the now, we are continuously renewed,,,

 

Day 4 – How to Be Renewed Every Day   Today’s meditation teaches us that when we rely upon familiar repetition to guide us through life – instead of stepping into the ever-new possibilities of the present moment – we remain in a stale, stuck pattern of living. When we learn to fully embrace the limitless potential in the now, we are continuously renewed and liberated from the stuckness of powerlessness and blame. Living in a state of renewal then becomes easy and natural.

Our centering thought for today is:  I embrace the newness of this day.  “I can hardly wait for tomorrow, it means a new life for me each and every day.” – Stanley Kunitz

...You cannot keep Spring from coming...

 

You can cut all the flowers, but you cannot keep spring from coming.

PABLO NERUDA

“Creativity occurs in the moment, and in the moment we are timeless.”

 

Finding the Key to Your Creativity  Creativity is a natural quality of life itself. It is not limited to artistic expression. Living from your creative core means you respond to every moment from a place of possibility and openness. This is how every cell of our body knows to respond to every changing circumstance with adaptability and creativity to maintain its health and balance.  In today’s meditation, we learn that our awareness is designed to meet each moment with freshness, receptivity, and creativity.

Our centering thought for today is:  I always have access to my inner creativity.  “Creativity occurs in the moment, and in the moment we are timeless.” – Julia Cameron

Day 2 – Why Do We Get Stuck? (Oprah and Chopra 21 day free meditation)

 

Today’s meditation shows us that the root of getting stuck is awareness leaving the present moment and attaching to the past or the future. But present awareness is never stuck or limited – it flows effortlessly in “the now.” In order to release the blockages and frustration that occur when our attention attaches to the past or future, we must learn to recognize the presence of our true self in each present moment. 

Our centering thought for today is:
I am never stuck when I live in the present moment.

Is the "Critical Judge" called the "ego" by most new age teachers?

 hola Tomas, I think most new age teachers would just call the "Critical Judge" the "ego", and would definitely not direct a teacher to love it. Is the "so called" ego a multi-faceted aspect of our personality that includes the critical Judge, the hurt child, the victim, the bully, the perpetrator, the rebel, the proud part of us, etc.? 

Of course, many religions would just call it the "devil".  very grateful, Ron Alexander

BLACK EYE CAUSED BY FEAR FROM MY INNER CRITIC

 Dear Tomas, That was a very helpful meeting. Audio problems led to me not being heard and not hearing in group afterwards. I was telling them my black eye may have been caused by my inner critic. Sunday when I went to protest the Confederate flaggers, where i got out of my car, with my BLM Veteran for Peace flag, there was a horse and buggy full of tourists. I felt very self conscious carrying my flag. I was very self conscious of not being different. Assuming they were critical of what I was doing. I was definitely not being mindful. I tripped over a stone (the path is made up of ballast stones and coquina (ancient shell fragments and fossils) from ancient sailing ships). I fell flat on my face, and it was certainly not slow motion. My glasses were broken, and part of the metal frame dug into my cheek causing lots of blood. I sprained a thumb, and abrasions were on my knee and forehead and hurt an elbow. An Angel nearby named India, who said she supported BLM, insisted she call an ambulance and that I wait. While I waited I found out she was brought up on a cruising sailboat over many of the islands I have visited. At the ER, they had to wash out the gravel out of my wounds, and took an Xray. I had no fractures so I am very grateful. 

Yes, my inner critic needs a lot of love, so thanks for the lesson tonight. I felt heard by Marilyn in the dyad, however disappointed in the audio after your departure, though it was probably the fault of my slow hotspot wi-fi?   

I am a Sacred Worthy Luminous Being

I am Love, and my Love is For Giving

                                                                     So much gratitude for your loving.

Tomas, Ron Alexander   

hola relatives - following up tonight's sharing on "Healing the Relationship with your Critical Judge", here is a quote from Nancy Wood to take you down inside and be with it to see what it brings up for you -     "We are not important.  Our lives are simply threads pulling along the lasting thoughts which travel through time that way."    How about this lasting thought  to carry through time -  The critical judge is always coming from fear trying to control outcomes to keep you in line so you won't be kicked out of the tribe.  Knowing it is frightened, feed it with love.  Fill it with love, with kindness that comes from understanding.  The attacking judge is afraid of losing love so fill up its heart with love transforming the fear into inner peace because now it KNOWS it is loved on a regular basis because you as wisdom warrior are sending it in there whenever  it sends out out one of its attacks.  Live Love Now and keep it growing and flowing. love, tomás

Learning to live the Unlimited Life

 

Presence

Tap into the power of being present and feel the energy of limitation begin to shift.

Potential

Experience and call upon inspiration all around you. Learn to let go of the past and participate in life afresh.

Creativity

Share the spirit of creative awareness and spread the energy of “getting unstuck” to the world.

Free 21-Day Meditation experience with Oprah—

 

Getting Unstuck: Creating a Limitless Life

Get unstuck from the rut of everyday routines with Oprah and Deepak, and invigorate every aspect of your being with newfound wonder, meaning, and inspiration! This is your last chance to be a part of a 21-Day Meditation experience with Oprah—join us as we close this very special chapter.

Citadel cadet charged in Jan 6th riot at U.S. Capitol

He and another S.C. student at out of state college, Citadel Cadets started the Civil War here in Charleston, by firing cannons at Fort Sumter. BLM protest near the cannons against Confederate flaggers weekly.

Gratitude is not a mere word; it is not a mere concept.

 

Gratitude is not a mere word; it is not a mere concept. It is the living breath of your real existence on earth.

SRI CHINMOY

Please notice when you are happy,

 Please notice when you are happy,

and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, “If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.”

KURT VONNEGUT

YOU ARE UNLIMITED:

 Once we crack ourselves open from our perceived limitations, we can have an embodied experience of active hope to manifest authentic connection, joy, and buoyancy.

Enjoying the sunset years of my life.

We must have the courage to live with paradox.

 

We must have the courage to live with paradox. The strength to hold the tension of not knowing the answers and the willingness to listen to our inner wisdom and the inner wisdom of the planet which begs for change.

MAUREEN MURDOCK

The beauty of the Soul:

 

I speak of change not on the surface...

 

I speak of change not on the surface but in the depth–change in the sense of renewal.

JAMES BALDWIN

Here are some reflection questions towards dissolving the barriers to the awareness of love's presence so we can Live Love Now more consistently in our lives

 

hola relatives - following up this evening's sharing re. busting the first attention dream of the socially conditioned personal reality dream  with its fault-finding judge  and innocent child,  and creating a new dream, a consciously chosen one based on the truth that we are sacred, worthy, luminous being of love that is for giving, here are some reflection questions  towards dissolving the barriers to the awareness of love's presence so we can Live Love Now more consistently in our lives.  May it be so.  All Blessings.  tomás   WHAT IF THE ESSENCE OF OUR BEING IS LOVE?    what is we are here to simply to remember Who We Are?     what if we are here to recognize each other?   what if our attitudes are preventing us from seeing our Love Essence right now?   what if fear is blocking the awareness of our Love Essence?   what is Love is our natural state of being?   What if we looked beyond another’s behavior, beyond appearances, beyond skin color, beyond shape, beyond personality?  What would we see?     What if we looked beyond our own physical bodies, our weight, our degrees, our jobs, our bank accounts, our personalities, our clothes, our home?  What would we see?   IF THE ESSENCE OF OUR BEING IS LOVE, WHAT DOES THIS MEAN….   In my relationship with …   …my partner…my ex-partner...my child…my parent…my neighbor…my co-workers…my boss…political leaders…the police…the military…criminals?   …in how I feel about myself?   …in how I treat each person I meet today?   …In how I take care of myself?

IF YOU TRULY LOVE NATURE...

 

Only when we’re brave enough to explore the darkness

 

Only when we’re brave enough to explore the darkness will we discover the infinite power of our light.

BRENÉ BROWN Love your shadows

You might as well answer the door, my child

 

You might as well answer the door, my child, the truth is furiously knocking.

LUCILLE CLIFTON

Grateful living is the awareness

 

Grateful living is the awareness that we stand on holy ground—always—in touch with Mystery.

BR. DAVID STEINDL-RAST

Sending out good vibes is touching...

 One does not have to touch to be touching.

Real love is not based on attachment to wealth.

 Real love is not based on attachment to wealth, but to altruism. The Dalai Lama 2002. 

Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism.

 

Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.

VÁCLAV HAVEL

When I Rise Worldwide Choir

With gratitude,

 

With gratitude, optimism becomes sustainable.

MICHAEL J. FOX

Compared to the moon....

 

Sometimes weak and wan, sometimes strong and full of light. The moon understands what it means to be human. Uncertain. Alone. Cratered by imperfections.

TAHEREH MAFI