All of us are One.
One consciousness…
And that is the way the world can right itself.
Start with your peace, your love, your compassion and go from there.
Love everything…everything!
Let’s all walk each other home.
- Spoken by Ram Dass in the 2018 movie “Going Home”
WELCOME TO OUR CIRCLE
Dear Wise Women,
My beloved mentor, Pamela Wilson begins each Satsang (sacred gathering) by saying the word “welcome” two times…followed by a little bow of her head.
I invite you to pause for a moment and really listen as I say these words:
Welcome, Welcome.
I invite you to open your heart to receive and feel the intention - more than a greeting, this is an invitation to open the heart and to receive and to feel the unifying power of this circle.
May our time together be sacred and purposeful.
May we create an authentic and safe environment to be vulnerable and be seen.
May we listen with an open heart to ourselves, to each other and to the silence.
This week we embark on an eleven week journey together, which spans over the course of fourteen weeks. I invite you to feel into the intention for our time together, and I ask you to make an inner commitment to yourself and to each other. This is much more than a weekly class…it is a true opportunity to co-create energetic transformation.
The work we will do together goes much deeper than meets the eye. By gathering with a common intention and a shared commitment, we activate a unifying presence. The energy of this presence extends far beyond the two hours we spend together each week and beyond the fourteen weeks of our session. The one and only prerequisite to the creation of this unifying energy is the unconditional presence of each one of us.
Deep listening is the portal to presence.
Eckhart Tolle says that when we are able to “listen to the space between the words” we hear the voice of stillness and we activate presence, or life energy. In this session, we will explore and practice the infinite ways to listen and, together, we will deepen our ability to listen with what Ram Dass calls the “ear of the heart”.
One Living Sense
For some reason we tend to make a distinction between hearing a sound and feeling a vibration. In reality, they are the same thing. It is interesting to note that in the Italian language this distinction does not exist. The verb sentire means to hear and the same verb, in the reflexive form, sentirsi means to feel.
Hearing happens physically when a signal is generated in the ear that gathers discrete pieces of information from all the senses and sends the aggregate to the brain, which creates a brief and comprehensive sound from it all.
What we call listening is actually an innate process that integrates an array of sensations we encounter through different ways of knowing (sight, smell, touch, taste, and sound). What we hear is the sum of life’s vibrations, which constantly arrives like waves that soak into a perceptual shore that the oldest traditions call the mind-heart.
A vibrant example of such fundamental hearing is Evelyn Glennie, one of the most innovative percussionists in the world today, who is profoundly deaf. She says she lives the rhythms and feels the vibration of the music, not instead of hearing but as the foundation of all hearing. Her gift comes alive from opening herself to where the senses begin as one integrated sense. She views the hearing world’s insistence on separating the living whole as a disability.
- “Seven Thousand Ways to Listen”, by Mark Nepo
“By holding the stick tightly I feel really quite, believe it or not, detached from the instrument… and from the stick. If I simply let go and allow my hand, my arm, to be more of a support system - suddenly I have more dynamic with less effort, much more drum sound and I just feel, at last, one with the stick and one with the drum… and I’m doing far, far less.”
- Evelyn Glennie Ted Talk “How To Truly Listen” TED 2003
There's a voice that doesn't use words. Listen.
- Rumi
Walk with Me
Come be with me
and let’s just walk for awhile
side by side
let’s watch our feet
move upon the same earth at the same time
step by step
moment by moment
let’s listen together
to what we know is true.
We are soul.
We are infinite.
We are just walking each other home.
- Patti Wardlaw