First, Offerings would like to thank all of those who have taken the time to post or comment here. The conversations have been enlightening, surprising, heartfelt and true.  We look forward to more, more, more!

And here is a different kind of posting.  A posting without a question to answer, an opinion to express, or a philosophical pondering of any kind.  It’s just an invitation.  Do you have something to say that doesn’t quite fit into any of the posts so far?  Are you running for an office, or considering it?  Are you volunteering for a campaign?  Has this election (or any election) moved you to think, speak, act, dream in a way you never have before?  Want to look at politics from a whole new angle, ask a different question, tell a new story?

Do it here!  We want to hear from you.  Whatever you’re thinking, however you’ve been touched.  Please… share!

A New Possibility Opens

I was on the phone with a circle of 7 women. Into one of our fertile moments of silence, Bonnie shared her story of having just come back from 4 days with 8 women whom she had not been with since her high school graduation 47 years ago. It soon became clear to her that the majority of this group was not only Republican, but actually excited about Sarah Palin as candidate for the VP position. Feeling as different as she did, she told us how hard she had to work to stay connected.

After her story she asked, “What do you all think of Sarah Palin? And how do we women begin to sort out how to think and talk about her?” To which, after some silence, Lynda responded:  ”I’m open to the possibility that the overall good is being served by her presence at this time.”

It was this comment from Lynda Terry, founder of Vessels of Peace and author of The 11 Intentions: Invoking the Sacred Feminine as a Pathway to Inner Peace, that led to the very enlightening exchange below.

Teresa: Lynda, this is such a powerful and provocative statement. Could you please say a little bit more? For example, what do you mean by the “overall good”? And how do you see Palin serving it?

Lynda: I do not assume, by how something looks - people’s  behavior or words - that that is the whole story. This comes from the spiritual journey I have been on in the past several years. It taught me to drop my judgment of others. Then I had to drop my assumptions that my perceptions were reality, then my belief that there was anyone or anything on the planet that was not divine.  One thing that helps me remember this is my meditation practice, which I started eighteen years ago. My practice transformed me physically and psychologically, and then began to transform me spiritually. In the many paths on my road - a teacher of meditation, working with women - there was one path into which I delved particularly deeply, and that was this idea that God, or divinity, dwells within each of us. So, now I can look at anyone, and I do mean truly anyone, whether it be Osama Bin Laden or a serial killer or a pedophile. I can.  I do. It does not mean that everything they have done is okay. I simply mean that I don’t go to a place of demonizing them, of separating them from me. I am able to accept that there is a reason that that particular behavior or history is playing out in them even though I may not be able to understand it. And I may not condone it.

The other part of it is that I have great trust in, and surrender to, how much I do not know. I am aware that I do not know the greater plan. The miracle of life, the miracle of this planet and this universe is so beyond my human mind’s comprehension of anything. Sure, I can fall into the trap of duality, but it is not where my system of value is based any longer. I only see good.

So when I look at a situation like this election, and Sarah Palin, I see the possibility that her being chosen for this role will enable us to get to the good, get to the next evolution of our consciousness, the next shift in our societies and belief systems quicker, stronger. If that will get us there quicker or more easily than other possibilities might have, then of course that is what I want, because what I want is for us all to keep moving towards that from which we came and the ultimate playing out of that.

Teresa: Did you see the blog that Deepak Chopra wrote about Obama and the Palin Effect? It basically suggests that the rise of Sarah Palin at this time is not surprising as she represents the shadow to Obama’s light. The more Obama evokes the light of hope, change, positive futures, the more likely he is to trigger or attract “the opposite fear, anger, suspicion of the other,” etc. I thought it to be an interesting perspective.

Lynda: I also received the Chopra post from someone. It’s an interesting perspective but still partisan in that his word choices indicate his preference and, in my perception, judgments. I find it surprising that some of his word choices are diminishing of others. Surprising, because I make an assumption that Deepak is a certain way, because of his spirituality. But his rhetoric here does not align with my assumption. (Of course, we all know assumptions are slippery slopes! )

Still, it brings me back again to this question: What will it take to uplift and transform the level of public discourse in America? How do we offer an appealing alternative to a communications style/habit that many seem to find entertaining or in some other way satisfying in how it separates, wounds and diminishes the dignity and divinity of others?

I have been contemplating this for more than a year now, and what I keep coming to is: 1) It is women who must lead the way, bringing forth this change, and 2) it requires, in part, a going beyond words, into the power of silence, as part of the healing, the solution, the shift. It’s almost as if we have to get still enough, long enough, to do a countrywide smudging, if you will, of the energy all these words have created. There is a long quote about silence and its role in shifting humanity’s consciousness by a 6th century saint, St. Isaac of Spoleto. It starts with: “Silence is the language of the centuries to come.”

It also helps to get clear and put forth core intentions and blessings to the volatile situation we find ourselves in. Here is mine for our upcoming elections.

Teresa: That is a powerful invocation. I do very much get and appreciate the largeness and wholeness with which you are holding us at this time not as an us/them, but as an Us All, as one body. What is the relationship between what you are speaking of this non-bi-partisanship and making a choice of one candidate and not the other? So, for example, do you vote?

Lynda: Yes, I vote. So I do choose one candidate, ultimately (although sometimes I choose not to choose, in a particular category). I honor the sacred process of contributing my energy to the collective decision the process may not be perfect, but the intention behind it stems from a value I align with: that humanity does better, as a whole, when we participate collectively, as a community, in decisions about where we are going and what we need as a people. What I try my best not to do is generate energy against those I don’t choose. I try to not engage in those kinds of conversations or thoughts or emotions. It’s not easy. But it gets easier over time, with steady intention and practice.

(Part II in next blog post)

Teresa: Did you always see people and circumstances from this point of view? How did you get here?

Lynda: Invariably, everything I believe comes out of my own experience. For example, I was in the middle of working on my book and had just sat down after meditating to write about Gaia.” It was a warm summer day and my windows were open. As my fingers touched the keyboard a breeze came through that window and  though I didn’t literally hear the words, I heard:   “Before you write, come out and walk with me. Be with me.”  So I went outside, and walked up to where there were a lot of bigger homes, a lot more space, more woods. I felt so present to all that was around me - noticing the beauty of summer, knowing the smells and hearing the birds eating. I was running my hands along bushes as I walked by them. At the same time, I was keenly aware of lawn mowers, air conditioners and planes up ahead, motorcycles and fancy yards with fancy lawn furniture. I turned a corner; it was trash day the next day so people had put their trash out. One person’s trash had a bunch of styrofoam pieces in it that had been blown into the road. As I saw them, I felt the beginnings of a reaction, a judgment rise within me.  But before the reaction could grow, I once again heard, “Look for the beat of my heart in all of this. There is nothing on earth that I am not a part of; every being, every thing is natural. Nothing on earth changes form without my energy and everything changes form eventually. Accept change and you accept me and receive the blessing of harmony.” And then as I picked up each Styrofoam piece, I totally changed it. I picked it up like I was picking up a flower or a beautiful rock; and I put it back where it came from. As I did that, I heard, “Reject nothing.”

That was the teaching from Gaia that day and it has influenced my life ever since. It reinforced those other teachings but it took them even further in that I cannot look at anything anymore and hold it apart from me as another or see it as unnatural. That can really be a stretch for us because so much of what we look at appears to have no life in it. The teaching showed me, not in an abstract way or intellectual way, but I had the experience of it.

Teresa: How do you sustain this point of view? How is it that you are able to let go of old beliefs and assumptions that have been ingrained in you for so long? What is it about this way of learning that has stuck?

Lynda: I have a very strong Leo personality.  In my young adult years, I was quite self-absorbed, a drama queen, lots of turmoil in my life, lots of emotional back-and-forths. Coming out of that was nothing short of a miracle. The initial catalyst was learning how to meditate, and I made a commitment to learn it everyday for the rest of my life. I have not broken that commitment, and it will be 18 years on Oct. 19.

That is part of it. Another part is that I made a lifetime commitment to everyday get still and turn within. I paved a neuro pathway in my own brain over time, in my own psyche, to choose a different response. But, even into several years of meditating, I can still go into the places that most of us are able to go into pretty easily. I can still yell at my husband, judge people, see things in terms of polarities and dualities. What has accelerated my transformation, or my capacity to hold this more consistently, is making a choice to surrender to a period of being a student of Grace.

There is a story spoken in several traditions. It is about the two wings of the bird; there is the wing of self-effort and there is the wing of Grace. With either wing alone, you will not fly. You need both. Many times we just want to depend on Grace, and we may have a lot of blissful experiences and avoid dealing with life in lots of ways. If you use just one wing, you basically go around in circles. You can make a lot of wind, but you just go around in circles. So self-effort. I understood that I had a responsibility, that I couldn’t make Grace come, but that my self-effort certainly made it more likely that Grace would show up.

Teresa: That’s beautiful.

Lynda: The final piece in growing my current ability to accept all that is. I learned how to confront resistance. I saw that resistance was always an invitation to grow, an invitation to change; so I learned to be with it. When I see it, I say Oh goody, resistance. This means something exciting is going to happen.”  If I am willing to be with it, not be caught in it, it makes a big difference.

Teresa: Lynda, thank you very much for the wisdom, presence, compassion, power of your sharing. It does two things for me.  It taps a deep part of me that knows of what you are speaking and longs to live in this spirit as I interact in the world, and it stretches me my ego, mostly to let go of my attachments and habitual ways of seeing only what is right or wrong, good or bad. I have a lot of work to do on this front — we all do! Thank you for your offering of a possible way to be true human beings with each other and with this beautiful planet.

Lynda: I want to share with you something that I know relates to all this, somehow …I see it as a gift for all the work I have been doing on myself and perhaps a sign of my service. Last Thursday night I had a dream that I was reunited with a college friend whom I’ve not seen or had contact with for 40 years. In the dream I threw my arms around her and said “I’m SO glad I’ve finally found you!” She and another woman and I were an inseparable trio our freshman year at Kent State University. Then I dropped out to get married to my high school sweetheart - a marine who was going to be sent off to Vietnam  and that world was so different from theirs, we just gradually lost touch. The dream was so powerfully real to me that I went to my computer and googled her name. Now, I’ve done this several times over the years, but never one link or lead.

THIS time though, a link … that led to another link … that led me to a different last name, but a face and smile I very much remembered, framed in white-hair now and living in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, where she owns a B&B in the Tetons. I emailed her through that site.  She responded with as much joy as I was feeling for she had been searching for me too! We’ve had two phone calls since Friday. She and I set about to find our other friend and found her today, in New York City  a former actress and now a career counselor for actors, who also works at NYU and who also has been searching for us. We hope to do a 3-way phone call before the week is out, and then get together in person in the next few months.

Here is what feels related to our circle thread.  The college friend in Wyoming became a born again Christian a decade ago. We have not talked about politics or religion in depth yet, but I know this is part of why we were to find each other now, that this reconnection is a one-on-one opportunity to practice what we are writing about in these emails, to be together in the joy of our finding one another again and from there, celebrate both our common ground and our differences. My heart is SO open to her that there is nothing she can believe or say or do that will close it down. And I know she will teach me something important to my (our?) service …

In love, humility, and joy, joy joy at the reunion,
Lynda