Practices around seeing with new eyes,
The third stage of the spiral of the work that reconnects.
We move into the next stage of the spiral as we realize from personal experience that it is from our connectivity that our pain for the world arises.
The very distress that when we hid it seemed to separate us from other people now uncovers our connective tissue.
This realization,
Whether it comes in a flash of insight or a gradual dawning,
Is a turning point.
We shift to a new way of seeing ourselves in relation to our world and a new way of understanding our power.
It is like a turning of the tide or the pause between breathing in and breathing out.
As we allow the world's pain to flow in,
It rearranges our internal structures.
Then the outflow releases our gifts of response into the world.
We base this realization on the acceptation of the following principles.
The industrial growth society cannot be sustained.
Now,
In the great turning,
We perceive once again the interdependence of all things and build a life sustaining society upon that understanding.
The global crisis is at root a crisis in perception.
There is no technological fix.
As we acknowledge the fatality of our situation,
It is time now that we also acknowledge the merit of us human beings.
The following practice,
Renamed the great ball of merit,
Is adapted from the meditation of jubilation and transformation,
Which was written down 2,
000 years ago at the outset of the Mahayana Buddhist tradition.
The great ball of merit.
Relax and close your eyes.
Open your awareness to all the beings who share with you this planet time.
In this town,
In this country,
And in other lands,
In your mind's eye behold their multitudes.
Now let your awareness open wider yet to encompass all beings who ever lived,
Of all species and creeds and walks of life,
Rich,
Poor,
Kings and beggars,
Saints and sinners.
See the vast vistas of these fellow beings stretching into the distance like successive mountain ranges.
Now consider that in each of these innumerable lives some act of merit was performed.
No matter how stunted or deprived the life,
There was a gesture of generosity,
A gift of love,
An act of valor or self-sacrifice.
On the battlefield or in the workplace,
Hospital or home,
From these beings in their endless multitudes arose actions of courage,
Kindness,
Of teaching and healing.
Let yourself see these manifold and immeasurable acts of merit.
Now imagine you can sweep together these acts of merit.
Sweep them into a pile in front of you.
Use your hands,
Pile them up,
Pile them into a heap,
Viewing it with gladness and gratitude.
Now pat them into a ball.
It is the great ball of merit.
Hold it now and weigh it in your hands.
Rejoice in it,
Knowing that no act of goodness is ever lost.
It remains ever and always a present resource,
A means for the transformation of life.
So now with jubilation and gratitude you turn that great ball,
Turn it over and over into the healing of our world.
This ball of merit meditation enriches our attention to all we meet in our daily lives,
To view them with fresh openness and curiosity as to how they can enhance our ball of merit.
It's especially useful when dealing with a person with whom we are in conflict.
We can ask silently,
What does this person add to my great ball of merit?
What gifts of intellect can enrich our common store?
What reserves of stubborn endurance can she or he offer?
What flights of fancy or powers of love lurk behind those eyes?
What kindness or courage hides in those lips?
What healing in those hands?
Then we open ourselves to these strengths,
Inhaling our awareness of them,
Relishing their presence.
We too often let our perceptions of the powers of others make us feel inadequate.
Alongside an eloquent colleague we can feel inarticulate,
In the presence of an athlete we can feel weak and clumsy,
So we can come to resent both ourselves and the other person.
In contrast the practice of the great ball of merit delivers her from comparison and envy.
The gifts and good fortunes of others appear not as competing challenges but as resources we can take pleasure in.
We can learn to play detective,
Spying out treasures for the enhancements of life from even the unlikeliest material.
Like air and sun and water they form part of our common good.
The next exercise is based on the concept of deep time.
People of today relate to time in a way that is surely unique in history.
The technologies and economic forces unleashed by the industrial growth society radically alter our experience of time,
Subjecting us to frenetic speeds and severing our felt connection with past and future generations.
Deep time work has arisen for that express purpose to refresh our spirits and inform our minds by experiencing our present lives within larger contexts of time.
As humans we have the capacity and the birthright to experience time in a saner fashion.
Throughout history men and women have labored at great personal cost to bequeath to future generations monuments of art and learning,
To endure far beyond their individual lives and they have honored through ritual and story those who came before.
As we take part in the great turning to a life-sustaining society we learn to act like ancestors of future generations.
We are tuned to longer ecological rhythms and nourish a strong felt connection with past and future beings.
For us as agents of change this isn't easy because to intervene in the industrial growth society we can't avoid falling into its temper.
We race to find and pull the levers before it is too late.
Nonetheless we can learn again to drink at deeper wells.
Please prepare your notebook now for your letter from the future.
A letter from the future.
In this writing exercise we identify with a human living on earth one or two centuries from now in the future and from that perspective see our current efforts and receive counsel and encouragement.
Please close your eyes and take three deep intentional breaths with me while you relax your body and your thoughts.
Breathing in.
.
.
Breathing out.
.
.
Breathing out.
.
.
In.
.
.
Out.
.
.
One last time,
Breathing in.
.
.
Breathing out.
.
.
I now invite you to journey forward through coming generations and identify with a human living one or two hundred years from now.
You need not figure out this person's circumstances but only imagine that he or she is looking back at you from their present lives.
Now imagine what this being would want to say to you.
Open your mind and listen.
Now begin putting it on paper as if this future one were writing a letter just to you.
Please allow for at least 10 minutes or as long as you write for this letter from the future.
Please pause your recording now for as long as you need.
You may read your letter out loud as if you had just received it and opened it.
This is a letter that the person from the future wanted to send you with the intention to support you on your journey through this transition.
Please join us soon for our last episode when we set intentions in the going forth stage of the spiral of the work that reconnects.
Mrs Gaya speaking,
Thank you for listening.
